The controversial Indian Point nuclear plant near New York will close in 2021, a casualty of low energy prices and relentless criticism by environmentalists, the power company announced Monday.
Under an agreement with New York State, Entergy plans to shut down one of the two operating units at Indian Point by April 30, 2020, and the second unit will close a year after that.
Entergy attributed the decision to close the decades-old plant to shifting energy economics. Among the changes, power prices fell as much as 45 percent due to natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation in New York and Pennsylvania, part of the American shale boom.
"Key considerations in our decision to shut down Indian Point ahead of schedule include sustained low current and projected wholesale energy prices that have reduced revenues, as well as increased operating costs," said Bill Mohl, president of Entergy wholesale commodities.
Entergy said it would look for other opportunities for the 1,000 workers employed at Indian Point.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and environmentalists applauded the news since the plant, located within 30 miles of New York, has long been a concern due to safety problems and worries that an accident at the aging facility could affect some 20 million people.
Lower energy prices cited by the article have not been reflected in customer electricity bills. Indian Point supplies 30% of New York's power, so if the post-Indian point power supply drops by the same amount the high prices New Yorkers currently pay per kwh will climb even higher.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by meustrus on Wednesday January 11 2017, @03:53PM
This is what happens when you put a public utility in the hands of private profit-seeking corporations. We all buy electricity and there's only one game in town. Putting public resources in private hands is supposed to cut waste, but all it ends up doing is add a profit motive. Not only that, but the waste from being a public service is still there. Waste was never about who administers the services; waste comes from the must-never-go-away aspect that removes it from the free market. Government contracts, or even worse, government-sponsored monopolies are not a free market.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday January 11 2017, @05:37PM
Same thing as gasoline prices when there is a war in the Middle East.
War starts, prices go up.
War ends, prices stay the same.
Next war starts, prices go up...
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 11 2017, @05:55PM
My basic rule whenever somebody describes something as a "private-public partnership": The public gets to pay the bills. A private actor, usually a friend of somebody with political power, get to enjoy a nice profit. The somebody with political power gets some kind of nice kickback from somebody.
And I agree that government contracting should basically not exist. Governments should hire individuals at rates similar to their private-sector counterparts to do work for them, even if on a temporary basis, rather than hiring companies to do work for them, because when they hire a private company the profits are basically just wasted money.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday January 11 2017, @09:09PM
These partnerships exist because they invest capital up front with the goal of earning more back over time. Considering the massive investment required by utilities, many of them are regulated industries to protect that investment. If the public wanted to fund these works projects up front they could have, but chose not to do so. Thus these protected industries exist.
It is not a bad thing these partnerships seek a profit, as it creates an incentive to do things efficiently. Look how Eastern Europe did under a profitless system, where no innovation occurred because there was no benefit to doing so.
A nuclear plant near a major city is not a great idea, and these things are past their designed life. It's time for them to go for that alone. What replaces it is another discussion.
As for government employees, they should never have unions because it creates an unjustified and even unconstitutionally privileged class that is unfireable, unreassignable, and at times leaches off the public by doing little work for decent pay and a pension. If that problem was removed, and unions banned from political donations, I cannot see a reason why the Right would not be in favor of investing in more projects. In a country with perpetual underemployment having these jobs be like winning the lottery is unconscionable.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by meustrus on Wednesday January 11 2017, @11:53PM
I've worked for the government (as a contractor). I have never seen a more cynical, depressed, beaten down group of people than those with whom I worked. On top of that, their pay is well below market rates. But hey, at least they know that if they don't do anything illegal, they can basically sit on their ass all day and steadily gain their seniority benefits without fear of firing.
I guess sitting on your ass appeals to you; it didn't to me. Your idea of "winning the lottery" involves a lot more ennui than I'm comfortable with.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday January 12 2017, @12:26AM
That's not true, for a lot of reasons:
1. Civil service laws and similar clauses in union contracts were put in place so that a government employees' job did not depend on their political loyalties. Imagine a world in which you can get fired from the Bureau of Labor Statistics because you reported numbers that made the president look bad, and you'll see why there's a good reason to protect them. Or, to use a more local example, I got to witness a high school history teacher being protected by civil service laws and a union contract because they didn't want him teaching kids about the anti-Vietnam War Movement.
2. Government employees are definitely re-assignable, and that is sometimes used to send a message to somebody they are trying to get rid of. For example, one acquaintance of mine got in trouble working at the US Mint as a metallurgist. The reason was that he knew the methods his boss was making him use to test the purity of gold were faulty (his boss was quite proud of the fact that the lab had never rejected a shipment of gold for impurities, which should have been a red flag on its own), and very publicly said as much. So while they waited to go through all the hearings and such, they reassigned my buddy from doing work as a metallurgist to doing work bagging coins on the assembly line.
3. Even with those protections, it is still possible to fire a public employee if there's a good reason for it. The usual rule is: incompetence, malfeasance, and/or insubordination. The person doing the firing typically has to convince a board consisting of both their fellow unionized employees and some managers. Sometimes they do, as in the case of a chemistry teacher I encountered who couldn't do basic algebra.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 11 2017, @04:06PM
Any environmentalist who doesn't pursue evidence-based environmental policy(like... say... being broadly anti-nuclear) is sabotaging real progress for a healthy environment for the sake of their own feelings.
I would describe myself as a fairly rabid environmentalist on the basis that there's a lot of shit we can't duplicate or control with our technology that the natural world provides us, and a lot of people, especially people with profit to make, don't respect.
But I'd sooner side with a greedy-ass, uncaring asshole who's pragmatically achieving those aims by running a nuke plant than the people who nominally agree with me and shut it down.
A better answer than taking sides is education, but our society seems remarkably education resistant of late.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Burz on Wednesday January 11 2017, @04:50PM
Always blame environmentalists for decisions based on economics (there was no politics involved in the decision). Its helps obscure the real source of failure.
Note how angrily the Forbes piece (we should know better than to use Forbes for an objective viewpoint) blusters about windmills and environmentalists without looking at the cause. I doubt that site will take any sober look at the situation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 11 2017, @04:56PM
That's a fair point, of course. The actual basis of the decision had little-to-nothing to do with the people protesting that it be shut down.
However: there were still actual people protesting for it to be shut down, and the replacement is going to be fucking coal or gas. I can't help but feel more than a little contempt for them if they're feeling like they achieved a victory today.
(Score: 5, Informative) by rcamera on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:31PM
they mentioned on the local news that we're currently OVER capacity in the area based on the addition of non-nuclear-renewable over the past decade, along with energy efficiency improvements - especially in the transmission area. i'd love to see that "overcapacity" reflected in my electric bill, but that's not how that works (1/4 of my electric bill is the flat-rate "service hook-up charge" at this point anyway).
/* no comment */
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 11 2017, @07:03PM
Interesting factual clarifications. More nuance does help make them sound much more reasonable.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday January 12 2017, @02:47PM
The EOL is where anti-nuclear environmentalist politics have done real harm. There are no newer models of nuclear plant in the US because it's impossible to build them anymore. Republicans have a good excuse: their constituents don't like them, and they don't care if coal pollutes. Democrats trying to save the planet aren't necessarily killing nuclear, but for it to succeed they would need to be actively supporting it. Nobody else will.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Alphatool on Thursday January 12 2017, @08:06AM
Always blame environmentalists for decisions based on economics (there was no politics involved in the decision)
In this case it is the environmentalist's fault. The continual moves to increase regulatory burden over the last 50+ years have increased the cost of nuclear power to the point that it is no longer financially competitive with natural gas in many areas. This is a paid off, operating plant with minimal fuel costs. It should basically be sitting there printing money while producing vast amounts of clean, carbon free power. Instead, the cost of meeting needless regulations is forcing it to shut down. Make no mistake about where blame for this really lies.
(Score: 1) by Burz on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:41AM
Uh, there is no way around this... the regulations are written by nuclear engineers.
The *vague* scapegoating isn't going to fly. The pro-nukes need to specify what regulations they'd like to loosen-up, or shut up. But they know doing that would be an exercise in pitting corporate profits against sober risk assessments. There would be too many expert dissenters.
My advice to you would be to move to a country where nuclear has been expanding over the last decade, like China. Then think long and hard about the balance between profit, risk and authoritarianism (hint: the latter makes the other two not really important).
You should also ask hard questions about why France, during its privatisation of many sectors including power, suddenly shrinks at the liabilities and other costs of nuclear power. Their environmentalist focus hasn't changed apriciably... its the shift from public to private sectors that did it.
(Score: 2) by Alphatool on Sunday January 22 2017, @11:03AM
As a starting point, most nuclear regulations are not written by nuclear engineers. Even when they are they have to meet politically set requirements, most of which are hostile to nuclear power. Do you really think that state level prohibitions on nuclear power were written by nuclear engineers?
And I'm not sure why you're saying I should move to China (not that I would mind, it's an amazing place), I'm in a country without nuclear power and I have no plans to leave. Also, privatization in France is complicated, the government still owns many things so having them own nuclear power plants isn't unusual. In any case the French built their nuclear plants for national security reasons not environmental ones, so it makes complete sense for the government to retain ownership.
Moving on to the main point and the reason that I'm replying, there are many, many US regulations that need to be removed or significantly modified. The regulatory structure is so over the top the number of changes is far too big to list here, but everything has to start somewhere, so:
The first spot to look is plant security. There is no technical reason why a nuclear plant needs more security presence than a coal plant, yet the NRC demands each site have a private army (10 CFR part 73). Moving from there, access requirements and fitness for duty requirements (10 CFR parts 25 and 26) are massively over the top and add pointless overhead. Removing any dose limits below 1 mSv per year from 10 CFR part 20 is an obvious move that would massively reduce expense with no reduction in safety.
Once things get going there is plenty more space in terms of reporting and licensing where billions are wasted for zero gain. Outside of NRC regulation there are also many state and federal regulations that are burdensome for plant operators but do nothing to keep people safe.
Seeing as you left me with a question I will do the same for you - how many nuclear power plants have been built with the NRC as the regulator for the entire process, i.e. from the initial licence application to commercial operation?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:02PM
I'm a rabid environmentalist too. I'm positively anal about recycling every little thing I can for instance, and I really, really hate it when people throw recyclables (cans, bottles) in the trash instead of the green container. I'm quite annoyed about stupid Trump's push for more coal.
But I really don't understand the anti-nuclear hysteria. We have a certain demand for electrical power, and it has to come from somewhere. Yeah, we could probably be doing a lot better with wind and solar, but protesting nuclear plants and making it impossible to run them is just going to result in more coal and oil-fired plants, which means instead of some nasty pollution that's contained in a few 55-gallon drums and stored somewhere, we have vast quantities of nasty pollution pumped into the air which we have to breathe. What we need to be doing is pushing to shut down the nasty coal-fired plants, and making solar and wind more economical so that those will be used more and more, which eventually should make nuclear power simply uneconomical and uncompetitive with them so those plants are phased out. Finally, it's quite likely renewables won't be able to supply all the power we need for some time, due to their more intermittent nature, so it's better to have some large and extremely modern (meaning safe designs, unlike the crappy old designs they used 40+ years ago) nuclear plants supplying our baseload power with the rest being supplied by renewables, rather than burning fossil fuels and polluting our atmosphere (with both global warming gases and also more short-term pollutants that cause health problems and more immediate environmental problems like acid rain).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:09PM
is just going to result in more coal and oil-fired plants,
This is Marcellus territory we're talking about so its natgas all the way. That means fracking compounds in surface and drinking water. Hopefully, not much. Realistically, too much. Better than coal? Well, probably maybe lots of handwaving? Better than nuclear? oh hell no.
(Score: 3, Informative) by rcamera on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:59PM
the assumption here is that we're not over-capacity already, and therefore require a 1/1 "replacement". there have been huge amounts of additional generated power added to the system over the past decade, and usage is on the decline based on efficiency improvements at the consumer and transmission levels.
/* no comment */
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 11 2017, @10:20PM
It's probably arguable whether natgas/fracking is worse than coal, but I think coal is probably worse. At least with contaminated groundwater, you can personally mostly avoid it by just not drinking it, and sticking to properly reverse-osmosis filter water (plus, properly-treated municipal water should have this stuff filtered out too I would think; it's the well-water drinkers that really need to worry). It's pretty hard to avoid breathing pollution in the air unless you want to run around with a gas mask.
Of course, this is a lot like arguing whether Hitler or Stalin is worse....
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @07:06PM
protesting nuclear plants and making it impossible to run them is just going to result in more coal and oil-fired plants
8-(
instead of some nasty pollution that's contained in a few 55-gallon drums
...drums made of stuff that will corrode-through is a single human lifetime.
Again: 8-(
and stored somewhere
Current experience says that will continue to be within a half mile of where it was created i.e. on the grounds of the nuke plant for decades and decades and decades.
renewables
in 2016, USAians were offered a presidential candidate who had as a major part of her platform a Green New Deal that would create jobs with renewables as a major part of that.
While Trump got $6B in media coverage, gratis, other candidates got little and Green Party candidate Jill Stein got roughly zero.
Lazy people who are eligible to vote made little effort to discover her and her platform.
They instead looked to Lamestream Media to get their "information".
Those people got what they deserved.
It is unfortunate that the rest of us are now subjected to that result.
N.B. Trump's "press conference" this morning demonstrates what we're in for:
A thin-skinned sociopath who seeks the approval of the already-rich. 8-(
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by SacredSalt on Thursday January 12 2017, @03:40PM
Yeah, lets look at this egg from another angle. To get the nuclear materials one needs to mine them. This process generates huge amounts of radioactive waste, contaminates huge amounts of water, and this pretty much forever maintenance on those sites. If you need some examples of what can go wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill [wikipedia.org] Then you have the issue of separation, and you end up with neighborhoods like mine: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/seven-more-nuclear-waste-hot-spots-found-in-north-st-louis-county-missouri-suburb/ [cbsnews.com] (*sites like Niagara Falls are worse, and there are hundreds of these around the country already). Then you have to enrich the materials and you end up with sites like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1BLMosusRI [youtube.com] There are about 30 of those equally as bad that I know of. This process uses as much electricity as you get from the nuclear power plant for many years, for most its around 10-15 years as they have a lot of downtime. Thats just to get the break even energy point. You then *maybe* get 15-20 more years of "relatively safe" operation of the plant, followed by about another decade or two of cooling off waste to be able to potentially store it. The entire time you ARE contaminating the surroundings even in normal operation: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43475479/ns/us_news-environment/t/radioactive-tritium-leaks-found-us-nuke-sites/ [nbcnews.com] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/grndwtr-contam-tritium.html [nrc.gov] Nuclear materials are also *vented into the air* during *normal operation of the plants*. Yes, I did just say that, and most people don't know that. You doubt me? Ask the NRC. Now we move on to the next ***100,000*** years of storage for this waste and we don't even have a way to handle it medium term much less anything like that. Are these companies that generate all of this going to be around and taking care of it for the next 100,000 years? No. They get the profit, if there is any, we take ALL of the risk, and we get almost all of the liabilities.
So the end up with multiple radioactively contaminated sites, contaminated ground water, rising tritium levels in the environment, 100,015 years of having to manage the problem for a short time 15-20 year energy gain. This makes sense to you how? This is the side of nuclear power you aren't being told. Geological storage makes a nice public relations sound bite, but no one has figured out a way to do it long term that works. If you think "Oh we can just dump it in the oceans I point you to Somalia as an example of why that isn't a good idea. I could just as easily point you to Britain or France though. I could also point you to Japan and the United States. If you geologic storage is workable, you need to be able to follow the heat curve of the waste. Those first 10 years, and more often 30 years the high level materials have to be stored in water to keep them from igniting from the radiation being released. A spent fuel bundle is a heck of a lot more dangerous than a fresh one. I could keep a fresh one on my desk without too much concern. I wouldn't survive 10 minutes in a room with a spent fuel bundle that wasn't under about 20ft of water. This is why hydraulic rams have to be used to move these things around. In the US this waste then goes into dry storage casks that have to be continuously cooled for a great length of time by air circulation. Then we still don't have a good way to dispose of it, otherwise we are just passing a Somalia or a Cold Water Creek onto some future generation. The stuff can't even be transported without continuous cooling. Any geological storage system is basically the equivalent of putting a candle that never burns out into a Styrofoam box. That heat has to go somewhere, and it will eventually cause cracks in the structure even if other elements like say water don't also erode the structure. Have a weather forecast for the next 100,000 years that is accurate?
I haven't even mentioned nuclear plant accidents at this point; they do happen and quite a bit more frequently than the public has ever been made aware of. The consequences are also much more severe than anyone will admit to. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about MSR's like Santa Susana (one of the better covered up nuclear accidents) just out of Los Angeles or we are talking about high pressure water reactors like Fukushima. If I look at an incident like the NRX reactor at Chalk River, its pretty much the same accident as Three Mile Island, just more off site contamination at NRX. That doesn't mean the government or the plant operators were honest about the levels of off site from TMI -- they were not. Canada covers up its accidents as does Britain, Japan, Russia, the United States and France. That doesn't mean they don't admit that something happened, but they always downplay the severity of it. They also use health models that somehow magically contain the radiation to external sources. I suppose we are supposed to live our entire existence out in rubber protective suits and never eat or drink anything to make it fit with their model? --- Internal exposures carry far higher risks.
One last bit of note. Due to neutrons, the entire plant has to be treated as nuclear waste. Even the concrete ends up radioactive from a variety of elements that are formed. Nuclear embrittlement of materials is a real issue. It doesn't just affect metals, it affects concrete under the reactors. Many of these are built in coastal areas and are further eroded by salt air as well. Future generations are going to look back upon us and curse our names and our unbelievable stupidity for leaving them this legacy.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @05:07PM
OK, can anyone fill in the details? How does it take 1000 workers to run Indian Point 1 & 2? I get that it's a 3-shift operation, so what is the breakdown -- 100 in management (keeping normal business hours) and 300 on each shift? What the hell do they all do? Are there tug-o-war crews pulling damping rods in and out of the core to regulate the output?
Sorry, I didn't allow for the 50 people that it must take to keep the grass trimmed...(sarcasm).
This size of staffing sounds like so much pork that I can hardly believe it.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 11 2017, @05:24PM
If one of those control rods break it'll be a whole lot of crispy bacon.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday January 11 2017, @05:35PM
They probably included post 9-11 security. About a year after 9-11 I was working doing deliveries with a guy. He was the driver and turned up the access road to the plant instead of going further down the road to the marina. Anyway, we were greeted by four solders who promptly signaled us to turn around before we even got near the gate. The other three had hands on the trigger, ready to raise their rifles. I'm sure there are lots more security detail pulling patrols and such. Wouldn't be surprised if they also have boats patrolling as well since its on the Hudson.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:28PM
four solders
My memories of nuke plant security is that is contracted out (to the lowest bidder).
The stuff that comes to my mind is
That was in 2007, so, well after 9/11.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday January 12 2017, @03:42PM
It was around a year or two after 9-11.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday January 11 2017, @05:44PM
A nuclear plant is one hugely big and complex machine. It does take a lot of people to constantly monitor its state and do preventative maintenance. The older, the more maintenance.
Every incident in a plant has to be reported, and every incident that makes it to the public impacts the stock price. Not even counting what does happen if you screw up maintenance and you have to shut down a GW for a month...
Once you have a few hundred people doing monitoring, maintenance and security, it takes another hundred just to support them...
Pork? Probably a bit, but not as much as you imply, since it's not prestigious pork.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:37PM
I used to invest a lot in energy so as a side hobby I learned a lot about the industry of which nuke is a portion etc.
First of all at a nuke even the lower to mid level management work 24x7. The Army thinks it takes on average 5 people to staff a seat 24x365 but more realistically for civilians its more like 6+ bodies per seat. Vacation, hire/train, sick days, it all adds up man. So your 1000 people is like 125 staffed chairs 24x365 plus some 1st shift debris (the lady in HR who handles paychecks doesn't work 3rd shift on christmas day)
The control room has operations personnel and I don't think you can run a reactor per all regulations on less than maybe 15 people. There's three stations at this plant AFAIK two reactors and simulator/training/BS backup room in case someone calls in sick or whatever. They do a hell of a lot of training and simulation at a nuke plant. Some of the 15 are lower and mid-level management. Its actually very much like running a naval ship. Anyway 45 positions in control. There will be a team of plant techs steamfitters and nuke rated welders hands on guys in case a valve jams or needs replacing or a temp sensor needs swapping or whatever. Probably 5 per station or 15 total. The electric team is usually separate and again 5 per station or 15 total. Sometimes they split teams between the switchroom and the turbine hall. Its been a long time since I read up on this... Anyway to keep the plant running takes maybe 75 bodies 24x7. The other 50 or so are security and misc. Now only maybe 1/4 of security is posted guard at the doors and gate and checking ID, theres a big reaction force, folks rotating thru continuous training, interior patrols. There are also folks you'll never see standing guard in places no one knows, like sweeping the perimeter and stationed at certain spots. There are multiple perimeters ranging from they'll yell at you to they'll shoot you on sight. Standing guard takes a lot of people! There are also just extra people. There will be minimum qty two stationary diesel mechanics for the backup gennies. There will probably be some kind of machine tool shop guy on duty if an electrician needs to, I donno, sharpen a screwdriver to prevent a meltdown. The security team has dispatchers and coordinators and management on duty 24x7. Probably a plain old mechanic on duty 24x7 just to maintain security guard vehicles. I don't know if nuke rated industrial maint electricians will lower themselves to changing a light fixture in the executive bathroom so maybe a non-production maintenance team. Group that big gonna need a cafeteria of sorts, custodial services... Pretty soon you got your 1000 people. The general impression I get from sources I've read is there's more guards that desk operators or hands on technicians but there are fewer guards than operators and technicians put together. Also the general impression I get is generic cube people like HR or IT are mostly stationed elsewhere at a non-secure facility, its unusual to see stereotypical cubie dwellers at a plant. If you're taking a HR diversity training class its offsite or online.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @07:14PM
That comment deserves some additional paragraph breaks.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:04PM
How long to power back up? Gonna have to sooner or later, and its gonna have to boot up faster than its shut down...
The problem is here:
Marcellus Shale formation
The Marcellus has a lot of natgas but it can only be produced by fracking. OK whats the problem? Well, fracking production always follows a Seneca curve where decline in production is always faster than the initial growth in production for some rather boring technological and economic reasons. Combine that with the usual Hubbert fractally self similar curve theory which has so far always proven true, and when Marcellus (as a field) production declines, it'll decline fractally like an individual well would. Except due to Seneca effect wells decline faster than they grow. And the field grew by doubling like every year. Implying when the field gets around to declining, for various geological and economic constraints, it'll halve in production every... oh lets say six months.
So when it declines, eventually, in like two years its gonna go from "we don't need us no stinkin nukes we got us natgas peaking plants" to "ohshit.jpg nationwide blackout unless we boot the nuke up in the next three months" Now before people freak out the doubling and half numbers are real as are the theoretical production curves, and the ohshit.jpg from the NRC is completely made up by me.
So you grab a tiger, thats very nice, but when you let go its gonna snap back and eat you a lot quicker than it took you to grab it. Or some extended metaphor like that.
Someday Marcellus is going to run dry and boy won't that be the most exciting couple years ever.
This also has certain economic/financial system implications where some sleepy as hell well in TX that still sells drip condensate a hundred years after it was drilled can weather a recession or even a depression and keep on pumping because the decline rate is so slow that its longer than the economic cycle. But Marcellus both growth and decline are far faster than recessions or depressions. So in the old days the odds of running out of natgas during a recession are kinda low, but post-fracking when the money spigot from NYC shuts off, the gas shuts off in a year or three and its all over at that point. Isn't that interesting?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:13PM
Projected radiation plume from an incident at Indian Point [blogspot.com]
Original page [agreenroadjournal.com] describes ridiculous extensions to nuke plant lifetimes.
(Content is behind scripts.) [archive.li]
Downwind populations [googleapis.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday January 11 2017, @07:02PM
I'll bite - just what _incident_ would cause that?
And no, I will not accept _accidents_ as answer.
(Seriously - this is about the same level as calling a monitor "the computer" (related, common, wrong).
INES 4-7 are accidents while INES 3-1 are incidents (0 is out of scale, but called deviations in reporting))
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 11 2017, @08:42PM
The left panel of the first link makes sense, and would be perfectly acceptable to me because all that fallout would hit Westchester County, Connecticut, and the North Shore of Long Island where all the bankers live who have done so much evil. The right panel makes no sense, because that's not the way the winds move in NYC. They go west to east, or southwest to northeast; it almost never goes from the north to the south like that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday January 11 2017, @06:32PM
Let's see, indian point is 2x1000MWe, that means 800turbines of 2.5MWe class.
2.5MW turbines have a swept area of 80m, normally sited 7 times swept area apart but can be placed closer (I'm going to assume 5 times, some papers suggest 15 times for optimum energy extraction).
So 80x80x800x5/1_000_000 ~ 25km^2 for nameplate alone.
Seems like when propetly suited wind turbines at sea are exoected a capacity factor of up to 48% while 'indian Point has averaged above 92% for the last ten years (76% over its lifetime) - so, at least 50km^2 needed.
(For reference, would take 2-3km^2 (depending on exclusion zone) for a plant big enough to power NYC by itself (6xAPR1400))
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @08:01PM
it's the burocrazy, dummy.
it's "easier" to giga-ton paper approve ONE project (as in a nuke plant) then to deal
with TEN giga-ton individual paper approvals of solar grid-tie pico-power projects ...
if grid-tie solar were as massively easy as buying a electrical water heater, or microwave
or washing machine or grid-tie fridge or TV (as in plug-in a goooo) then there would be miles and miles of ailes
in best buy or homedepo (or whatever USAians have) of these gadgets called "inverters"
and solar "modules".
since the above isn't true in reality, i rest my case.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday January 11 2017, @08:46PM
The grid is not a storage medium.
If everybody dumped excess power on the grid without regulation, we would have problems.