Posted on 04/06/2006 11:15:16 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
As electric utilities look at new power plants for the next 30 years, overwhelmingly they are plowing money into burning pulverized coal — cheap, abundant domestically and full of carbon dioxide.
Some of the 132 new coal-fired plants proposed for the United States will not be built, but federal energy analysts are predicting the new plants will boost greenhouse-gas emissions for the electric industry 43 percent by 2030.
Ceres, a coalition of environmentally minded investors and environmental groups, reported Wednesday at its meeting in Oakland that those releases account for nearly all growth in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions for the next quarter-century.
"Voluntary approaches for curbing greenhouse gas emissions are not working," Ceres President Mindy Lubber said.
If Congress were to cap those emissions and create a market for trading in permits to release carbon as four Senate bills now propose, electric utilities and their customers would pay a premium for coal-fired power or turn elsewhere for carbon-free energy.
The least-expensive alternative, according to utility analyst Swami Venkataraman of the bond-rating firm Standard and Poor's, is to go nuclear.
No electric-power company has ordered a nuclear power plant since 1978, but the nuclear industry could be poised for a comeback, fueled by concern about global warming and more than $8 billion in tax credits from Congress.
The electricity industry has other options. Firms can burn pulverized coal and capture the carbon dioxide to be piped miles underground in places unriven by cracks and faults. But locking up the carbon costs energy and money, boosting the price of electricity.
Power companies also can try a new technology called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, or IGCC, which can turn coal or liquid fuels into both electricity and hydrogen while producing less carbon dioxide to be injected underground. So far, that is the least-expensive way of burning abundant U.S. coal, Venkataraman said.
"Today if I'm a utility executive faced with a carbon-constrained world, I will build an IGCC," he told Ceres members and utility officials Wednesday. "I will not build a pulverized-coal plant. But that's what many are building today."
Still, the cheapest choice of all, he said, is building a nuclear power plant.
"Assuming you cannot emit carbon dioxide, it looks like nuclear might be the option purely from a dollars-and-cents perspective," Venkataraman said. "But can it be built, I don't know."
Christopher Paine, senior nuclear analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, says the heyday of nuclear power has passed.
"The overall picture is of an industry that has been in stagnation for 17 years," he said. "You can buy more carbon reduction per dollar with a package of renewables and energy efficiency and (natural gas) cogeneration than you can with nuclear."
Electric companies nonetheless are lining up partners to license at least 14 new nuclear power reactor sites.
But many of those companies and their shareholders are lukewarm on actually building the plants. Nuclear reactors are expensive and can take at least 13 years to license and seven years to build, subject to rejection at any point.
Executives of Chicago-based Exelon Corp., the largest private supplier of nuclear power in the United States, think nuclear power is an essential part of the U.S. energy mix to clamp down on greenhouse-gas emissions, said Helen Howes, the firm's vice president for environment, health and safety.
"Exelon believes nuclear has to be part of the solution if we are to address climate change in the U.S.," she said.
"It's the largest source of low-carbon energy in the country."
But Exelon won't build new plants unless licensing is more reliable, plant designs are safer and competitively priced with other power plants, and the federal government breaks the impasse over disposal of reactor waste at Yucca Mountain, she said.
"There is no point in investing in a new nuclear power plant if you have not solved the problem of storing the fuel from existing nuclear plants," Howes said.
Nuclear power is safe and efficient.
To go without nuclear is to go the way of California.
California is riven with cracks and faults everywhere.
Just today some men died on the Mammoth Volcano when they slipped through the snow into a CO2 spewing vent.
Good thing the Navy doesn't have to go thru this with their nuke powered subs and boats.
Coal burning in an MHD(MagnetoHydroDynamic)process is theoretically 95% efficient but the plasma ablation(sunburn if you will)in the throat quickly erodes any metal used in that cryo-cooled/superconducting field-throat. Five years ago, sitting on waikiki beach, with its suntan lotion and cameras with films, it came to me : 4 continuous films sliding through on the 4 walls of the square or rectangular throat, recoated with fast drying gel on the outside of the loop. Thus the films take the particle and radiation damage, as well as removing some of the plasma-heat from the cryo-coil volume. If the gel/paint is rich in lime(CaO)any CO2 impinging on it becomes CaCO3(limestone). Instead of huge, messy operations like the athabaska tar sands in canada or synfuel plants in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, West Virginia, one could have mobile MHD plants moving across the coal fields on wheels and pumping out MegaWatts, much preferable to railroad coal trains miles long shipping to distant power plants. They could also be constructed quickly, unlike huge, traditional coal power plants or nuclear power plants in which the pipefitter's union wages makes them unfeasible as a competitive $/KW construction price. Thus, coal burning MHD has been non-viable in the past because of this plasma ablation problem, with protective films it might just be...viable; and the solution many have been looking for...
It seems that the USN has the largest pool of latest nuclear technology as well.
Some of it, though probably not all, could be used in the civilian community to make nuclear power plants even more efficient and cost effective.
I think the solution is for every town of 20k+ to have a standalone unit like those used on ships. Managable size, long lasting, etc.
Apply for a patent, don't spew it out here. Without a patent, you've got no deed on your property, and no one who is serious will give you the time of day.
Thanks but no thanks to patents, my only interest is in helping others develop the MHD energy concept for everyone's benefit. Little story : In 1979 I was trying to patent my mach 4.3 torpedo concept : nothing but gimme, gimme, gimme and a patent lawyer who demanded $400/hr. Then talked to a fellow architect who had gotten a patent on hidden hinges. He couldn't gin-up the money to manufacture them. A couple of years goes by and he finds HIS hinges being sold by some company he'd never heard of in the hardware store. As you may know, all newly issued patents are printed in the patent gazette. So he goes storming into his patent attorney's office : we'll sue their SOCKS OFF. His reply : slap FIFTY THOUSAND CA$H on the table, that's just to get the case STARTED....So much for patents, they're nothing more than worthless pieces of paper or combinations to the safe. If you're not a multimillionaire to begin with, don't even bother. Only 1 out of 2000 patents ever becomes a major money maker anyway, about the same odds as a young athlete making big money in professional sports....I know, I know : casting one's pearls before swine, but the problems with the foreign oil HABIT are REAL, they need addressing NOW. So maybe someone in the MHD field will read this and SINK SPUR!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.