Posted on 02/29/2008 5:37:35 AM PST by shove_it
Energy Dept. pulls plug on long-awaited power plant
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Last December, a consortium of energy and coal companies announced plans to build a first-of-its-kind power plant in Mattoon, Illinois, a near-zero emissions plant that would generate electricity using a hydrogen turbine and capture 90% of the carbon normally spewed into the air by the facility. A month later, the Energy Department -- the primary financier of the project for the past five years -- announced it was backing out. After more than $1 billion in government spending, the administration no longer sees any reason to proceed despite the involvement and expertise of some of the energy industry's biggest players. [snip] In the meantime, while not providing any details on how it would be financed, the industry group said it plans to proceed with the facility at Mattoon. It estimated the plant would generate roughly $216 million in revenue over 4 years from electricity sales. If the industry thinks this is a sufficient return on investment it will surely move ahead with the project. But the federal government has decided it's time to go back to the drawing board and it's taking its pocketbook along for the ride.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
This is encouraging if true.
The IL politicians must have more juice that the TX politicians.
“The IL politicians must have more juice that the TX politicians.”
Actually, true or not, here in Illinois the word on the street is that the Feds pulled the plug at the behest of the offended Texas politician in the Whitehouse.
They’ve spent at least a $bil so far and they haven’t moved a shovel full of dirt yet. They promise $50 mil a year gross. I don’t have a PHD in economics so I’m not qualified to say if this is a good deal.
At least ONE of the ‘green’ boondoggles didn’t get funded. Now if we could just killed off the corn-whores and the ethanol fiasco.
Considering that the two sources of inflation right now are: 1. Energy (ie, oil) and 2. Food (ie, corn, wheat) and that both of them are being artificially inflated by the US government, Bush could magically cure our economic ills simply by announcing that he will be drilling in every conceivable hole in the US for oil, nat gas and anything else which will burn and will stop the subsidy for corn growers to sell to ethanol refiners.
The threat of increased oil and nat gas production is the only thing which may scare the speculators into going short on crude and nat gas. And ending the boondoggle on corn could send future back down to 2006 levels which would cut the price of eggs, bread, milk and most all grain products in half within 6 months (just in time to bail out McVain who is just as clueless as Bush about what the economy is doing).
Good point.
As with ethanol subsidies or any other aspect of energy that requires government-distored economics to bend the business model to the point of being "sustainable" (a concept the Left only mentions when it advances their favored causes), there is no accounting for the environmental cost of those distortions. The money that funds these grants and subsidies must come from somewhere, and that "somewhere" is either by taxing, inflating or borrowing. There is an environmental cost in any case, and that cost is wrongly assumed to be zero, just as it is just assumed that the money can just be plucked from the trees.
Don’t link the $1B spent so far with this one particular demonstration plant. It is long-term research & development that would be amortized over many plants if the technology is successful.
That said, I spent many years conducting R&D to develop advanced coal plants in the late 70s and the 80s and most of that expenditure came to naught.
If you think the oil situation is bad, wait until we start getting shortages on electricity and it goes through the roof because of raid environmentalism.
Right on!
>>”How are the Europeans disposing of the nuc waste from their plants?”<<
Answer:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31466
Just as I suspected.
” a near-zero emissions plant that would generate electricity using a hydrogen turbine and capture 90% of the carbon normally spewed into the air by the facility”
The concept seems to be sort of a revisition of the early 1900s municipal gas & coke plants with the hydrogen harvested from the methane. The Mattoon plant would then inject the resulting carbon dioxide deep underground. I see they are talking hydrogen turbine. Earlier ideas floated included using the hydrogen for fuel cells. Unfortunately, the fuel cell technology is not there for the size of the proposed plant.
If its a good idea, the power industry should do it without taxpayer funding.
Russia also has nuclear reprocessing facilities.
Europe also reprocesses spent nuclear fuel to greatly diminish the amount waste generated. Part of the Jimmy Carty legacy was forbidding that in the US.
http://www.zetnet.co.uk/oigs/n-base/repro.htm
http://www.ieer.org/ensec/no-2/takagi.html
http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/r/reprocessing-plants-ww.htm
“If its a good idea, the power industry should do it without taxpayer funding.”
See post #3.
If the industry can build a plant without government money, or can be a profitable industry without government help, then this may actually be a viable energy source.
That’s what got my attention in the article I posted.
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