from the what-do-I-do-with-all-these-burner-inserters? dept.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
U.S. greenhouse emissions fell in 2017 as coal plants shut
Greenhouse gases emissions from the largest U.S. industrial plants fell 2.7 percent in 2017, the Trump administration said, as coal plants shut and as that industry competes with cheap natural gas and solar and wind power that emit less pollution.
The drop was steeper than in 2016 when emissions fell 2 percent, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said.
EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler said the data proves that federal regulations are not necessary to drive carbon dioxide reductions.
[...] While Wheeler gave the administration credit for the reductions, which mainly came from the power sector, the numbers also underscore that the administration has not been able to stop the rapid pace of coal plant shutdowns.
[...] Natural gas releases far less carbon dioxide when burned than coal and a domestic abundance of gas has driven a wave of closures of coal plants. In 2017 utilities shut or converted from coal-to-gas nearly 9,000 megawatts (MW) of coal plants.
[...] The trend of U.S. coal plant shutdowns is expected to pick up this year, with power companies expecting to shut 14,000 MW of coal plants in calendar year 2018.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by VLM on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:34PM (35 children)
Slight mistake:
On the other hand we got centuries of coal out there.
Yeah but its cheaty, natgas being hydrogenated coal, so you get the hydrogen energy for "free" at least WRT carbon emissions. If you built a combined burner that accepted 1 part coal and 4 parts hydrogen (by atom) or 12 parts coal and 4 parts hydrogen by mass, then the ratio wouldn't be so impressive...
Strange thought experiment, the most likely long term large scale future implementation of "the hydrogen economy" is likely to be very large scale plants hydrogenating coal into natgas and then doing traditional natgas things (making ammonia, electricity, plastics, synthetic liq fuels, cement mfgr, generic heating, general Fing around) There really isn't a better tested and implemented infrastructure for large scale hydrogen transport than hydrogenating some coal and doing the natgas thing... Maybe this is more sci fi plot than actually being realistic, but it is technically possible.
In the real world coal to syngas and syngas to gasoline is more "fun". The good guys used that tech in WWII. I suspect we'll burn most of our centuries worth of coal in our cars, not our power plants.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:48PM (8 children)
And here I was thinking the "temporary domestic abundance of gas" to have something to do with the various gasbags running this country!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:56PM (7 children)
The good news about fracking is the production rate increasing slope is higher than anything ever seen before, the bad news about fracking is the decline rate slope is higher than anything ever seen before, so in at most a couple decades when everything that can be fracked has been fracked and extracted, we'll be making methane out of coal...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:02PM (4 children)
And here I was thinking that the bad news about fracking was the earthquakes and water supply contamination.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:16PM (3 children)
And here I was thinking that the bad news about fracking was the earthquakes and water supply contamination.
Earthquakes are caused by wastewater injection, not fracking. Although, they are related because the injection is used to displace and extract extra gas out of the frack site. You could stop that practice without stopping fracking, though, you just get less gas.
Water supply contamination is still largely hypothetical. Most methane infiltration into groundwater is actually natural and largely harmless. People in PA have been dealing with it just fine for decades before fracking was even invented. You do get contamination from spills and whatnot in the area surrounding fracking since it's oil and gas handling but that's not really caused by the fracking, either.
So on the one hand fracking is good because it makes natural gas cheap enough to displace dirtier coal. But on the other, it makes natural gas so cheap we're going to keep burning it when much larger than 20% reductions become necessary.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:35PM (1 child)
Any idea on the numbers for percentage increase for gas output from injecting wastewater?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:30PM
Any idea on the numbers for percentage increase for gas output from injecting wastewater?
They're called enhanced recovery wells and they make up about 80% of the injection wells in the country. (20% of the injection wells in the country are disposal wells that don't recover any additional oil/gas)
Of those 80%, you get 20-40% extra oil out.
There are alternatives to liquid injection for enhanced recovery wells that don't have the associated earthquake risks they're just more expensive. Using C02, for example, doesn't induce earthquakes (*I seem to recall, not going to look it up though).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:48PM
> Earthquakes are caused by wastewater injection, not fracking. Although, they are related because the injection is used to displace
> and extract extra gas out of the frack site. You could stop that practice without stopping fracking, though, you just get less gas.
So, what you mean is that earthquakes are caused by more efficient fracking.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:09PM (1 child)
...so in at most a couple decades when everything that can be fracked has been fracked and extracted, we'll be making methane out of coal...
Nine decades, according to the eia.
How much natural gas does the United States have, and how long will it last? [eia.gov]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 19 2018, @11:28AM
Yeah good luck with that.
A good SN automobile analogy is I could rebuild the engine in my car, but I don't have the experience, tools, or money to do so. But its not been proven that I can't, so ....
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:00PM (11 children)
Calling the Nazis the "good guys"?
Geez. I knew you were a scumbag, VLM but really?
(Score: 2, Informative) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:28PM (9 children)
This good guy/bad guy stuff is tricky because the metrics vary widely, and neither side was free of either evil or good.
The side that did not develop and use radiation-spewing highly destructive nukes on civilian populations? That's the Nazis [britannica.com].
The side that developed rocket technology that ensured the triumph of the nominally democratic west over the nominally communist east in the race to the moon? Nazis again [xkcd.com].
Life's funny sometimes.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:21PM (7 children)
Yeah, sure. The US and Britain had their own Einsatzgruppen [wikipedia.org]. Not.
Yes, the US had relocation camps for Japanese-Americans [wikipedia.org], but AFAIK, none of them died due to deliberate maltreatment, disease, starvation, and overwork, or executed as unfit for labor. What's more, none of them were subjected to poison gas unlike the Nazi camps [wikipedia.org], which became sites for medical experiments. Eugenics experiments, freezing prisoners to determine how downed pilots were affected by exposure, and experimental and lethal medicines
Yup. the Nazis were *definitely* the good guys. (that's sarcasm, for you Poe's Law impaired folks).
You make me sick. Don't try that revisionist history bullshit with me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:51PM (6 children)
That spot rapidly vanishing in the distance ? That was the point you missed.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:45PM (5 children)
Nope. I didn't miss any point. Intentions are just as (if not more) important than the actions they engender.
Yes, the US developed nuclear weapons, *before* the Nazis. Had Hitler and his flunkies really understood what a game-changer that was, they might have beaten the US to the punch. But of course, they *never* would have used them. Certainly not against civillian [wikipedia.org] targets. [/sarcasm]
Were the US, Britain or the USSR knights of good? No. However, they were *forced* into war by the Nazis, despite Britain [wikipedia.org] *and* the USSR [wikipedia.org] signing treaties with the Nazis. Who conveniently ignored such agreements when it suited them.
The Nazis had an expansionist, bigoted agenda that caused enormous suffering within their own borders and they then chose to export that suffering to their neighbors. It was their aggressiveness, torture and cruelty that let the Allies to fight against them.
So, no. I don't think the US or any of their WWII allies were completely good and wonderful, and some of the acts (Dresden [wikipedia.org], Hiroshima/Nagasaki [wikipedia.org]) committed by them were reprehensible.
But calling the Nazis "the good guys" is not only ridiculous, it demeans the memory of the millions *murdered* (not killed in battle) by them. Study a little history, you might learn something. I won't hold my breath.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:58PM (4 children)
> Study a little history, you might learn something. I won't hold my breath.
I do. Geography, too. We can compare one day, if you dare, dear AC.
But I have studied humans too. So when someone makes a point via an obvious joke, I don't look like a fool for taking the words literally and out of context.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:01PM (3 children)
You do realize it was VLM who called the Nazis "good guys." Coming from him, I know it's no joke.
You've been around here long enough to know better too. Or haven't you been paying attention?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @09:22PM (2 children)
Even VLM occasionally deserves the benefit of the doubt, especially on a post that reads like a joke.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 19 2018, @12:50AM
That didn't read like a joke and he's said shit like that with the deadly seriousness of a black mamba bite far, far too many times to be given the benefit of the doubt. When someone shows you who he is, believe him the first time.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:19AM
Umm, exactly what part of "In the real world coal to syngas and syngas to gasoline is more "fun". The good guys used that tech in WWII. I suspect we'll burn most of our centuries worth of coal in our cars, not our power plants." is a joke? VLM is known for being the alt-right fanboi of Soylentnews, why would we give him the benefit of the doubt when that "joke" wasn't even funny and lines up with his general biases?
Please, explain to me why we should give shitty fucking worldviews the benefit of the doubt? I wouldn't suggest punishing people for "wrong think" but I sure as hell won't cut such assholes any slack or ease them into thinking I even slightly accept such bullshit.
If VLM isn't a racist neo-nazi piece of shit then he should stop trolling everyone with racist neo-nazi "jokes".
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:21PM
Yeah, sure. The US and Britain had their own Einsatzgruppen [wikipedia.org]. Not.
Yes, the US had relocation camps for Japanese-Americans [wikipedia.org], but AFAIK, none of them died due to deliberate maltreatment, disease, starvation, and overwork, or executed as unfit for labor. What's more, none of them were subjected to poison gas unlike the Nazi camps [wikipedia.org], which became sites for medical experiments. Eugenics experiments, freezing prisoners to determine how downed pilots were affected by exposure, and experimental and lethal medicines
Yup. the Nazis were *definitely* the good guys. (that's sarcasm, for you Poe's Law impaired folks).
You make me sick. Don't try that revisionist history bullshit with me.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:55PM
Scientifically, he's an idiot in the first place, scumbag in the second (maybe as a consequence of the first).
Synthetic fuel comes with a high energy cost, reducing the overall efficiency of directly burning that coal.
On top of that, large coal electrical plants will be able to squeeze more efficiency than an ICE.
Even if you'd use the energy produced by a coal plant to reduce alumina to aluminium and then "burn" that aluminium back to oxide into an aluminium-air battery [wikipedia.org] you'll be better off in energy efficiency and environmental cost than going from coal to synthesis fuel to ICE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:15PM (12 children)
The "hydrogen economy" is a con, perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry for the benefit of the weak minded and uninformed.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:31PM (11 children)
Hydrogen burns really well due to its simple chemical structure--its single electron, in pairs, is just what Oxygen needs to fill up that outer shell to 8 electrons.
A "hydrogen economy" is an energy economy that exploits this fact to use hydrogen as energy storage and retrieval. It's not ideal, but neither is anything in widespread adoption and use, so that's not really relevant.
Lots of propaganda on all sides, but I think this term is only loaded when paired with loaded accompaniment.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NewNic on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:01PM (10 children)
But where does the hydrogen come from?
How is it stored and transported?
Whatever the answer to both of these questions is, it involves a lot of inefficiency. That's why the hydrogen economy is bullshit.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:32PM (9 children)
In order to store energy, whether in a battery or as a hydrocarbon fuel or as hydrogen or as ammonia or in the future as unobtainium, you must use energy to convert something that is not very useful as energy storage to something that is.
Calculations of (whatever) vs. petroleum usually compare cost of pumping/mining oil/coal + refining/trumpcleaning it + transporting it to destination = LOWER COST! than producing the new WhatEver(tm) fuel! It takes MUCH MORE ENERGY to make the WhatEver(tm) fuel materialize.
And, as far as that goes, it's exactly right. What this omits, however, is the energy expended in turning the peat or dead dinosaurs or whatever into oil or coal. You might, judging from your posts, be very surprised to learn than when this is figured in, the Hydrogen doesn't look so bad after all in terms of ineffeciency. This is because, as I mention above, that ineffeciency is the cost of storing energy in a convenient form.
For a limited period of time, maybe 10 years, maybe 100 years, even if 1000 years, we will be able to just pick up/mine/drill+pump convenient hydrocarbon pre-made fuels out of the ground. But they run out at some point because we are burning them faster than natural processes are making them, and any conversation about a "hydrogen economy" is about what comes after ready-made free fuels are a thing.
In that context--the one we're heading to more and more as hydrocarbon fuels get harder and more expensive to find and retrieve--hydrogen makes as much sense as anything, and more than many things. For example, it can make more sense than manually cooking dead animals and plants into coal and oil type hydrocarbons.
Biodiesel, BioCharCoal, and BioBurningGas would have the advantage of being able to be plugged into the existing clunky but widespread hydrocarbon infrastructure, but that's their advantage, not some imaginary "efficiency."
(Score: 5, Informative) by NewNic on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:18PM (8 children)
But do we need "fuel"? Or perhaps better stated, how much "fuel" do we need?
Wind turbines and solar panels generate electricity that can be used for almost all purposes that fuel is used for. Heating, transportation and of course traditional uses of electricity, etc.. We can largely bypass the need for an intermediate fuel step in almost all processes. Energy can be stored in batteries, or in pumped hydro, or even just lifting weights.
Hydrogen isn't actually a good store of energy. Its energy density is poor in comparison to many other fuels and it has that pesky storage and leakage problem. Given sufficient energy input, methane can be produced using atmospheric CO2.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @10:38PM (6 children)
Well, no, fuel has energy value not because it's efficient (we covered that, above) but because it's portable.
You can't run vehicles nor a transportation infrastructure unless you have portable energy.
Wind isn't portable. Freight train engines tacking into the wind isn't practical because it requires many more rails, and the solar panels needed to move a long-haul train cover more area than the train; even if you put a solar farm near tracks and let them carry the electricity, that only works for short distances (there's too much line loss for long distance trains). Wind won't power transportation. Wind can charge electric car batteries, which are a tiny part of transportation, but that doesn't move goods around.
Cars and trucks and even ships at sea need to be able to move independently of whether there is wind.
Solar is portable, but only during the day, and only if you can operate on its tiny output per surface area and only while it's sunny.
Fuel is portable all the time and has almost the same energy per mass independently of whether it's windy or sunny.
It beats wind or solar hands down for portable energy storage, because it can store energy and they can't.
Nothing is a good, portable store of chemical, electrical, or mechanical energy; not oil, not gas, not coal. (Okay, maybe Uranium or Thorium are good stores of energy, but not chemical, electrical, nor mechanical energy.) All have drawbacks that are compensated for by the fact that they are *portable*. Hydrogen being included in this is what makes it viable, not something that excludes it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 18 2018, @11:28PM (1 child)
Some values of transportation will beg to differ - e.g. anything on rails, cables, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @11:33PM
Sure, and your electric cars will work fine. But cable cars, light rail, and passenger cars make up only a small percentage of the vehicles in our transportation infrastructure, the rest of which is dependent on fuel for its portability and predictability.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday October 18 2018, @11:34PM (3 children)
Looks out of window. Sees electric car. Sees train powered by electricity.
You failed to address my comment that methane is potentially a better store of energy than hydrogen. You keep ignoring the inefficiencies in producing and storing hydrogen. Hydrogen may be an energy store, but it's not a good one. Note that the Toyota Mirai has a significantly lower MPGe figure than typical battery electric vehicles and that ignores the inefficiency inherent in producing and compressing the hydrogen. And the Mirai still needs a battery, so that it can do regenerative braking.
There is only one reason that there is discussion of a mythical "hydrogen economy": because today, the cheapest way to produce it requires fossil fuels. It's being promoted by the fossil fuel industry.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday October 19 2018, @12:04AM (2 children)
Sure, your electric cars will work fine. But cable cars, light rail, and passenger cars make up only a small percentage of the vehicles in our transportation infrastructure, the rest of which is dependent on fuel for its portability and predictability. You know this; why pretend not to?
Maybe methane has better numbers; that doesn't make the idea of using hydrogen a petroleum-company shill topic.
Frankly, that's step one in deciding to use any fuel that you intend to produce yourself.
There is no "good" fuel in terms of energy efficiency; hydrogen being a "not good one" doesn't make the idea of using hydrogen a petroleum-company shill topic.
Noted. Toyota isn't a petroleum-industry shill. If the next dominant fuel turns out to be unicorn fairy dust, Toyota will bolt on a rainbow-colored carburetor and carry on as usual. They don't care about oil per se.
People make decisions for all kinds of reasons, few of them logical or rational. Someone making an irrational suggestion doesn't make them an evil oil baron.
It's not overwhelmingly likely that hydrogen will be the fuel of the future, but it's possible at this stage for lack of a more viable competitor. And the winning fuel will have the best sales pitch, and not the best numbers, I guarantee it.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday October 19 2018, @12:17AM
Light rail? You know that just about, if not all, high speed passenger trains are electric and they are not "light rail", right?
You know that we have these things called "wires" and they are quite efficient for "transporting" electricity, right?
You know that there are working examples of electric 18-wheeler trucks operating now, right?
You are misrepresenting why I call "the hydrogen economy" a con by fossil fuel industry. It's because, today, hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels.
Remember that you wrote this:
Now, remember that hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, so how can hydrogen be more efficient than "turning the peat or dead dinosaurs or whatever into oil or coal.", when fossil fuels are the input for hydrogen production?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:25AM
A side note to consider, hydrogen can squeeze through other molecular structures and also won't always be 100% combusted. This means some hydrogen molecules will escape and I see no reason why they would guaranteed combine with something in the atmosphere. Long story short, we may end up with a slow loss of hydrogen on the planet. Pretty minor I imagine, but then again maybe not if it becomes a massive aspect of our infrastructure for hundreds of years.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Friday October 19 2018, @02:30AM
According to the Wiki, world energy usage [wikipedia.org] was around 9*10^9 tons of oil, or 109,000TWh - that's TERA-Watt-hours - in 2015. Divide that by number of hours in a year, and that's 12-13 terawatts of power demand on average.
In comparison, only ~12,000TWh of renewable energy was used in 2015. We need to step up our renewable generation by a factor of 10 before it can replace our fossil fuel usage.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:48PM
So true, they were having big problems with the British -- who have always been very aggressive. And later with the Russians and, unfortunately, America (FDR made a big mistake). But, they had a way to get a lot of their fuel from beautiful clean coal. And some that maybe wasn't so clean. For the cars, the airplanes, the everything. And we can do the same thing. If we have to, we will. We don't pay ransoms -- EVER. That's a promise. And our fabulous economy will NOT be taken hostage by OPEC. By Canada. Or anybody else!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:47PM (22 children)
The funniest thing is that tariffs on china, using the cheapest available fuel sources, etc are actually the most effective ways to reduce pollution. Now if he can somehow get the US using a non-inflating currency that encourages people to save instead of waste it will be perfect.
Interesting how the same people supposedly worried about the environment are opposed to all these really simple solutions and instead want the one that leads to them and their friends getting trillions of dollars and the authority to tell people what to do more.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:19PM (21 children)
Trump has incidentally green policies
No he doesn't. The failure of his policy to bring back coal is the only reason this reduction occurred.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:24PM (4 children)
If you listen to fake news for long enough eventually everything you believe will be wrong...
http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Donald_Trump_Energy_+_Oil.htm [ontheissues.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:34PM (2 children)
On the other hand,
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-advocates-clean-coal-despite-not-knowing-what-it [msnbc.com]
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:51PM
Trump gets to sell a product that nobody wants to buy and get none of the downsides of saying it (increased pollution) and all of the upsides of saying it (less disenfranchised workers).
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:31PM
Trump isnt emotionally attached to coal, he just wanted to remove as many political impediments as possible to people choosing the best energy source for their needs. If that isnt coal, who cares?
People are projecting their emotional attachment to solar/wind onto him, like they literally cannot comprehend rational thought processes any more.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:40PM
If you listen to fake news for long enough eventually everything you believe will be wrong...
Yes, the words coming directly out of that buffoon's mouth are fake news now.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Sulla on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:43PM (14 children)
Trump didn't give a shit about the coal economy, what he cared about was getting a good economy and you don't do that by disenfranchising workers. Democrats have been telling those coal workers for decades that what we need to do is ban their business because we don't need it, but not give any sort of suggestion on what they can do instead. Trump came in and said that he would take those regulations away and bring in new jobs for those who are still displaced. Trump was able to reduce regulations but not increase emissions, get credit for one but not get additional blame for the other, and in the process get workers to be happy with him for at least trying and accepting that the workers concerns are valid. So those workers now go look for coal jobs, find out that even with no regulations there simply aren't coal jobs, but that the economy is so good they can get a factory job instead. These workers will be much more satisfied than they would have been under the traditional arguments from the Clintons that those jobs are bad and if the workers knew what was best for them they get some magical education and a tech job.
You can say I'm wrong, and thats fine, but we still won Pennsylvania.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:36PM (13 children)
Democrats have been telling those coal workers for decades that what we need to do is ban their business because we don't need it, but not give any sort of suggestion on what they can do inst
Coal is dying no matter what. It's all about cost.
The Democrat plan is to train these folks to work in an industry that isn't dying.
The Republican plan, per usual, is to deny reality and lie a bunch.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:42PM (4 children)
The republican plan is to scam a bunch and have the government do nothing.
The democrat plan is to scam a bunch and have the government do something.
The first actually works out better, since the government has an inverse midas touch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:13PM (1 child)
Or, and hear me out, you're unbelievably naive and brainwashed. "Gubbmint is da one true evil evil"
pfft, plenty to complain about but you choose a sound bite that just makes you look stupid?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:28PM
Nah, I used to think the US government was a force for good until I was employed by it for like 5 years. It is a force for wasting as many resources as people will let it get away with, good/evil is irrelevant to what it does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:15PM (1 child)
> ... inverse midas touch.
A good friend (sadly died a few years back) called this the "sadim touch" -- everything you touch turns to shit. Maybe it's time to start a new meme?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @01:39AM
I like it.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:44PM (7 children)
There was no training. Back in the late 90s the Clinton's told these same folks that their jobs are going away, that it was a good thing, and that they should figure something else because this is the future. The Democrats never did anything to help these folks in PA (and elsewhere) to get any other type of employment, they just pulled the rug out from under them and told them they didn't need that rug anyways.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 18 2018, @10:02PM (3 children)
There was no training.
The Obama Idea to Save Coal Country [politico.com]
As part of the 2016 budget, the Obama White House created something called the POWER Plus plan specifically to help Appalachian communities that were getting left behind because of the rapidly changing energy market.
For Kentucky alone, that would mean $20 million a year for five years. The money would likely have gone to promote other businesses sectors like manufacturing and tourism and to retrain miners for new jobs like writing computer code.
Job training and community college put coal miners on a new path [pbs.org]
Coal miners in the heart of Appalachia face unemployment and uncertainty as the expansion of automation and natural gas threatens the industry that’s been an economic bedrock. But a West Virginia nonprofit matches displaced workers to sustainable jobs in agriculture or carpentry while helping them pursue associate degrees.
Awaiting Trump's coal comeback, miners reject retraining [reuters.com]
When Mike Sylvester entered a career training center earlier this year in southwestern Pennsylvania, he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing.
What’s Up in Coal Country: Alternative-Energy Jobs [nytimes.com]
The seminar was the last of three that week organized by Goldwind Americas, which is ready to provide as many as 850 giant wind turbines for a power plant planned in the state. The company was looking for candidates, particularly unemployed coal miners like Mr. Davila, to become technicians to maintain and operate the turbines.
Clinton is making coal country a generous offer, but it’s not buying [grist.org]
Last week, Hillary Clinton lost the West Virginia primary to left-wing challenger Bernie Sanders, 51 to 36 percent. She lost even though her climate and energy agenda would go easier on coal communities than Sanders’. She lost even though she’s laid out a comprehensive $30 billion plan that would provide suffering coal communities with health care, education, and job retraining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @10:12PM
Plans to make miners into javascript programmers and nurses 20 years too late? No one is going to hire these dudes as programmers because they wont play the pc games. Another plan designed to fail, just like obamacare.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Sulla on Thursday October 18 2018, @10:40PM
Bill and the Dems kill the jobs, ruin the communities, then come back a decade later and say "hey we wanna help trust us". No wonder they didn't buy.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Thursday October 18 2018, @11:21PM
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 18 2018, @10:58PM (2 children)
> The Democrats never did anything to help these folks
Neither did the Republicans. Doing nothing is better than the screwing over the Republicans did. Their Trickle Down Economics that they've been flogging for decades has always been a thinly veiled excuse to take from the poor and give to the rich. The rich have not used that wealth to create more jobs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @12:32AM (1 child)
The inflationary monetary policy that they've been flogging for decades has always been a thinly veiled excuse to take from the poor and give to the rich. The rich have not used that wealth to create more jobs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:28AM
Woah now, don't burst any arteries round these parts.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:59PM
I promised to BRING BACK COAL. As everybody knows. You say I'm a failure. I'm not a failure -- I'm highly successful. Look at the story -- it's a story about 2017. Last year. My first year. And unfortunately we had Obama for part of that one. For almost 3 weeks at the beginning. But we moved very strongly last year. We said, let's repeal the Clean Power Plan -- that's an Obama number and it's really doing a number on our Economy. Because he said, do the scrubber. And some of our wonderful coal plants, they bought the scrubber. Very expensive -- $100 million or even more. Who can afford that, right? So we want to repeal that one. And we're doing the Affordable Clean Energy rule. The ACE rule. epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/proposal-affordable-clean-energy-ace-rule [epa.gov]
Look at West Virginia. They love me in West Virginia. You can see it in their faces. The men. The women. The children. Coal. They love their jobs and they love me for bringing back their jobs. A lot of our coal companies went to China. And to many places. They're coming back, believe me. Like our Country is coming back -- in so many ways. We've added over 2,000 NEW JOBS in our beautiful clean coal industry. Something people said would never happen. It's happening. Much faster than I expected.
And by the way, I'm a huge huge environmentalist. I've won many awards for environment. I don't like to brag. But they call me the Environmental Hero. All I can say is, THANK YOU -- working hard!!!
(Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:26PM (15 children)
They could be replaced by traditional fission reactors within 5-7 years of construction approval and the US would be out in front in-terms of per-capita and total greenhouse gas emissions without tortured subsidy programs and endless debate. But the body politic chooses to ignore that because reasons.
(Score: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:43PM (13 children)
FTFY; YVW.
Molten salt reactors, despite apparently being "really hard to do", have a failure mode of *shrug* molten salt drains into holding tank causing automatic shutdown. That, plus, they could bring about that "greenhouse gas reduction" just as easily, make me wonder what the "reasons" are for the paucity of investment and exploration into their use.
(Score: 4, Touché) by insanumingenium on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:29PM (11 children)
Because *everyone* agrees that nuclear waste is an issue. Even without a risk of a meltdown, fission plants are difficult and dangerous to build and run, and there are zero good solutions for disposing of the waste. Fission has its place, but suggesting that it is a direct replacement for coal, or that you don't understand why it isn't more widely adopted, is silly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:53PM (2 children)
Nuclear waste = future nuclear fuel. Cant believe people are getting paid to store this stuff.
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Friday October 19 2018, @08:15AM (1 child)
Wow you mean all those contaminated bricks, lumps of carbon, clothing etc will magically become fuel? Wow nuclear power is awesome!
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @01:35PM
Anything that can heat up some water is fuel.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:57PM
Tell that to the French.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:49PM (5 children)
With traditional water-cooled fission reactors that use solid fuel, the fresh solid fuel rods work pretty well, until a tiny percentage of their fuel is used up, and they crack all to pieces, and have to be changed. That cracked all to pieces stuff in the "spent" fuel rods [scientificamerican.com] contains waste that will be deadly for hundreds of years, some for thousands of years, some for tens of thousands of years, and some for hundreds of thousands of years.
The current popular reactor designs, besides being designed to melt down in the event of failure, approach this problem with a *shrug* and a *not my problem* response.
So, water-cooled solid fuel methodology, to sum up:
- Designed so that failure inexorably leads to meltdown unless specific measures are taken.
- Designed to produce deadly fission products with half-lives longer than human history.
In stark contrast, consider the molten salt reactor designs [extremetech.com] that not only have the failure mode of "calmly, safely, and instantly shutdown and cool off" but that consume their fuel as a molten liquid. In this case, the dangerous, many-years-half-life fission products can be chemically separated out and kept in the reactor fuel loop until they are broken down by fission into the a-few-years-half-life fission products.
So, molten-salt fuel methodology, to sum up:
- Designed so that failure inexorably leads to safe shutdown and cooldown unless specific measures are taken.
- Designed to consume long-half-life fission products so as to not produce long-lasting waste.
I would argue that that constitutes "good solutions for disposing of the waste" if ever there was one. There's not even anything to argue about here; I genuinely am scratching my head wondering how I can be the only one seeing these differences.
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:49PM
Sure sounds good.
I think the more relevant question is why are people proposing to build them, if they are so much better?
Turns out people are working on refining the molten salt reactor tech. Venture capital $ went into a US company in 2015, Federal $ in 2016, and into many places around the world since 2011.
Sounds like many people think Molten Salt is a promising approach. Hope it works out soon.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Thursday October 18 2018, @10:04PM (3 children)
Which is it, are the fission products chemically separated out or are they kept in the reactor fuel loop until they are innocuous? This separation process, is that going to leave us with more dangerous materials from the handling of the fuel flow?
Not all the products of fission are fissile (as far as I have ever heard the reason we go straight for uranium and plutonium is because they are far and away the easiest fuels to get the necessary chain reaction from). This is the crux of the issue, spent fuel is too unstable to be released into nature, but not unstable enough to be attractive as fissile material in its own right. As your primary fuel breaks down, you are going to be changing the makeup of the reactor, and it is either going to increase or decrease the rate of fission versus your start point (my intuition says it will decrease it because if these end products were easily fissile, they would be a more attractive primary fuel). At that point you will need to add more fuel or more salt. Seems to me the fuel loop is having to get bigger every year.
Let's assume that there is never an issue with waste products becoming too large a fraction of the reactor and interfering with either the fission of the fuel or the moderation of the salt. Seems to me this is a very big assumption, but let's take it.
How does the working life of the reactor compare with the half-life of these accumulating waste products? Nuclear waste isn't just spent fuel rods, it has historically been up to and including literally the entire plant, and all the earth near it in some cases.
If the catastrophic scenario is as safe as we all hope, it seems to me like we are still stuck with a huge issue in case of any kind of failure, be it natural or intentional, which beaches the reactor. These by-products still exist and can still be released into the environment.
I am not trying to say that nuclear power isn't an option, or that research into nuclear power is a bad idea. I am actually a huge proponent of nuclear power. But rushing nuclear into production has already caused untold grief. It is also disingenuous of you to pretend that these are solved issues and a mature technology, neither of which is even close to true.
(Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @11:19PM (2 children)
You ask almost rhetorically, but there's an answer, and it's "both." Wastes are chemically separated, the waste you want to remove (because it's a helpful medical isotope you're harvesting, or a short-half-life waste that you want out of the fuel) stays out, and the waste you don't want to remove goes back in.
That's true of relatively inefficient solid fuel designs, but in liquid designs you don't need something to be "attractive as a fissile material" for the same reason you don't need super-enriched fuel or any other magic tricks to make the design work.
The fuel is a salt. Salt is not some inert thing added to the fuel. Sure, different salts (uranium salt vs. protactinium salt vs. plutonium salt. vs. etc.) will have different profiles and fission at different rates with respect to free neutrons in the mix. But they still fission, and they break down, and they release energy.
"The salt" is not the moderator. It's the fuel. Molten salt designs often use a body of graphite adjacent to the liquid fuel as moderator, perhaps augmented by beryllium mixed in with the fuel.
By chemical separation, at any given time, without shutting down the reactor, you can remove as much or as little of any component of the fuel. The fuel is always exactly the mix you want it to be. But here's the thing: Several of the molten salt fuel cycles just don't produce more than trace amounts of long-half-life waste; their waste is in the hundreds of years vs. bazillions. Processing "waste" as fuel is a benefit of the molten salt design, but not a requirement.
When Chernobyl blew its top, lots of powdered highly radioactive stuff blew around the world, contaminating it.
Water that's still being pumped over the melted cores of Fukushima Daiichi is soaking up radioactive stuff and spreading it out to sea, contaminating it.
If you took a molten salt reactor and drove a truck through it, or blew it open with dynamite, or some such, and the fuel spilled all around, then the liquid would turn to a solid that would then result in a local clean-up.
Because there's no powder, nothing to form aerosols, there's no powder to blow around the world.
Because it's a fail-safe instead of fail-insanely-stupid design, you don't have to pour water over it for 50 years to "keep it turned off", so you aren't creating a wastewater stream of highly radioactive end results of bad planning. It doesn't have to be next to an easily pollutable body of water for the same reason.
Sure, local contamination would be a "bad thing", but not in the same class of "bad thing" that just about every currently operating reactor spends its life trying to achieve, stopped only by an incredible flow of coolant that must-absolutely-must continue for the things not to bring about armageddon.
Especially rushing dangerous-by-design reactors into production, then using only that type of design for decades, through catastrophe after catastrophe.
What I claim is that a safe-by-design molten-salt reactor is worth pursuing, and a meltdown-by-design solid fuel reactor probably isn't. Neither design is a case of "solved issues", though both designs are at least proven technology [wikipedia.org], and you're the one saying something is solved, not me.
But, you know, one design will kill everything within 100km if you miss a day watering it, while the other design just turns itself off and waits for further orders if everyone takes the day off and does nothing.
Yet 99% of the effort and almost all the money go towards the meltdown-design and not the fail-safe design. I've heard theories ranging from "the molten salt reactors aren't good at making material for bombs" and "President Nixon had to make a choice and chose the solid fuel designs", but the end result is, we have meltdowns and radiation instead of cheap energy and happiness. Why?
I get that that idea offends you, and you make a lot of noise, but you haven't said anything that changes it. I really want to know--why does the idea of a safe reactor by design bother people so much?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 19 2018, @12:00AM
It's a variant of Ludditism. Anything that makes nuclear power safer makes it more likely to be adopted on a wider scale than present. Can't have that. So we end up with stringent opposition to any improvements in nuclear safety (both R&D and actual construction), be it safer reactors, breeder reactors for reprocessing used fuel rods, waste storage, etc. And thus, the present sad state of affairs in the US, where we're for a nuclear accident from ancient reactors and poorly stored fuel rods, to finish off the US nuclear industry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:40AM
Asshole
insanumingenium was calm and rationale asking relevant questions. You really want to poison the well by throwing around ad hominem insults that directly contradict such simple words as "I am not trying to say that nuclear power isn't an option, or that research into nuclear power is a bad idea."
A safe design bothers nobody, and after the various catastrophes we've had so far it seems pretty damn reasonable for people to be cautious. Why attack someone who seems willing to meet you part way?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:00PM
That is not true [wikipedia.org]:
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Friday October 19 2018, @03:00AM
The military has a reason for wanting traditional fission reactors: fuel supply for the Nuclear arsenal. The U.S. Government's refining process for Uranium results in three main products: weapons-grade Uranium (U235), depleted Uranium (U238. AKA DU), and fissile uranium (mix of 97% U238 + 3% U235). Conventional fission reactors are then run in a "breeder" configuration, producing Plutonium (Pu239) for use in fission bombs.
From the perspective of the U.S. Military, molten salt reactors that don't produce DU as a byproduct of fuel production and that don't produce Pu239 as a byproduct of energy production are harmful to military readiness. As a result, you won't see much support for them from the war hawks in Congress (mostly the Republicans these days, but it's bipartisan).
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:21PM
Listen, we need coal. It's very clean now, and you know maybe it's a little too clean. Obama said, do the scrubber. Put on the scrubber. And some of our wonderful coal companies got the scrubber for their plants. Very expensive -- $100 million or even more. I put an end to that. Repealed. And our coal industry is coming back. Much faster than anybody expected. Something a lot of people said would never happen. Believe me, it's happening. Because of me.
We need nuclear too -- much more than we have. The coal and the nuclear are VERY SPECIAL to our national security. Because they go 24/7. And they can keep 90 days of fuel on site. Wind, solar, where do you keep the fuel? I'll tell you, you don't. The sun sets, it's calm weather -- you got no electric. Zero. Gas, not so easy to store. Look what happened in Aliso Canyon. Big leak -- massive. Oil, that's another one that's very easy to leak. Japan -- they kept their oil in tanks. They had an earthquake. Tsunami. And, bye bye tanks. Big mess from that one.
But we need ALL forms of energy, because our economy is growing TREMENDOUSLY. And we have a very high-energy economy -- the best. Remember 2015? Everybody was saying, "oh, it's going to be Clinton vs. Bush." Well, they were half right. It was Clinton (crooked). But Low Energy Jeb lost the primary. And I won. Like I always win. Big league!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @09:39PM (1 child)
Elon Musk's rockets emitted 20% more CO2 than these plants saved last year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:43AM
Don't worry, those rocket launches were to offset your sheer stupidity. Sadly they were ineffective, but the secondary benefit of launching satellites and improving our space program were still worth it.