2006
28 December 2006. It's
Free, Plentiful and Fickle. By MATTHEW
L. WALD, NY Times. Excerpt:
Wind, almost everybody's best hope for big
supplies of clean, affordable electricity,
is turning out to have complications. Engineers
have cut the price of electricity derived
from wind by about 80 percent in the last
20 years, setting up this renewable technology
for a major share of the electricity market.
But ...wind also ...is unpredictable and
often fails to blow when electricity is
most needed, ....power plants that run on
coal or gas must "be built along with
every megawatt of wind capacity," said
William Bojorquez, director of system planning
at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
... in Texas, and most of the United States,
the hottest days are the least windy. ...A
wind machine is a bit like a bicycle that
a commuter keeps in the garage for sunny
days. It saves gasoline, but the commuter
has to own a car anyway.
...Frank P. Prager, managing director of
environmental policy at [Xcel Energy], said
...that in one of the states the company
serves, Colorado, if ...wind machines reach
20 percent of total generating capacity,
the cost of standby generators will reach
$8 a megawatt-hour of wind. That is on top
of a generating cost of $50 or $60 a megawatt-hour,
after including a federal tax credit of
$18 a megawatt-hour. By contrast, electricity
from a new coal plant currently costs in
the range of $33 to $41 a megawatt-hour,
according to experts. That price, however,
would rise if the carbon dioxide produced
in burning coal were taxed, a distinct possibility
over the life of a new coal plant. (A megawatt-hour
is the amount of power that a large hospital
or a Super Wal-Mart would use in an hour.)
Without major advances in ways to store
large quantities of electricity ..., wind
may run up against its practical limits
sooner than expected. ...In May, Xcel and
the Energy Department announced a research
program to use surplus, off-peak electricity
from wind to split water molecules into
hydrogen and oxygen. ...But storage imposes
a high cost: about half the energy put into
the system is lost. The Electric Power Research
Institute said that existing hydroelectric
dams could be used as storage; they can
increase and decrease their generation quickly,
and each watt generated in a wind machine
means water need not be run through the
dam's turbines; it can be kept in storage,
ready for use later, when it is most needed.
...the amount of energy that the average
wind turbine produces over 12 months is
equal to just 30 to 40 percent of the amount
that would result from year-round operation
at capacity. That number runs closer to
90 percent at a nuclear or coal plant. Thus
a 1,000-megawatt nuclear plant will produce
nearly three times as much electricity as
1,000 megawatts of wind turbines. But operating
costs at the wind farm are lower, and the
fuel is, of course, free.
[Comment from Alan Gould:
the article does not explore possibility "distributed
storage" i.e. each home (or neighborhood)
having enough battery storage to get through
cloudy/rainy/non-windy days. Distributed storage
is the perfect match for distributed photovoltaic
systems. Also, the article's figures about
relative costs of wind and coal energy may
have the classic flaw of not factoring in
environmental costs for the coal energy.]
13 December 2006. Uranium
Is a Hot Commodity, and Claims Have Soared.
By FELICITY BARRINGER, NY Times. Excerpt:
WASHINGTON, A fourfold increase in the price
of uranium in the past three years has led
to a rush of new claims by uranium companies,
according to a new survey by an environmental
group that wants to inform the public of
potentially harmful consequences. Mining
claim data compiled by the Environmental
Working Group, Washington-based environmental
research specialists, shows that, in Colorado,
Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, the total
claims rose from just over 2,000 in 2001
to about 18,000 in 2005. ..."There's
a renaissance of people's attitudes toward
nuclear energy as a viable green, clean,
clean-air type of energy sources," said
Paul Matysek, president of the Vancouver-based
firm Energy Metals Corporation. And, Mr.
Matysek added, the increase in oil and natural-gas
prices, even though they have eased in recent
months, has spurred a mini-boom in the price
of the metal.
"Three years ago it was $12 or $14" a pound, he said. "Today
it's $65.50." ...Environmental groups said that ... the
consequences could be severe. ...In Nevada, for instance, the
environmental group's research found more than 166,000 new
claims, covering more than 3.5 million acres of public land.
...only a tiny fraction of all claims - usually less than a
tenth of one percent - are ever mined. But the scars of open-pit
mining are visible in many places on the Environmental Working
Group's Web site [http://www.ewg.org/], .... Still, said Mark
Kuchta, an associate professor of mining engineering at the
Colorado School of Mines, uranium mining in the future will
have far less impact than the mines and the associated mills
in the past. Increased cancer deaths have occurred near at
least one old uranium mining sites. "The environmental
laws have changed," Mr. Kuchta said. "In order to
build the mine, there's a plethora of permits" needed.
He added, "You can't just leave them on the surface and
walk away the way you used to do."
12 December 2006. Buffalo:
State Sues Over Nuclear Waste Site.
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS, NY Times. Excerpt:
In a lawsuit filed yesterday against the
federal government, the state is seeking
payment for the cleanup of a former nuclear
fuel reprocessing plant in western New York,
state officials said. The lawsuit... asks
the court to order the federal Department
of Energy to pay for the disposal of what
was originally 600,000 gallons of highly
radioactive nuclear waste, said David Munro,
an assistant attorney general. State officials
estimate that the cost of disposing of the
material at a planned federal waste depository
will be $228 million....
7 November 2006. Committed
to Coal, and in a Hurry, Too. By MATTHEW
L. WALD. NY Times. Excerpt:
FAIRFIELD, Tex. -
The TXU Corporation is embarking on its
next monumental task: the nation's single
largest coal-oriented construction campaign,
with a plan to add more than 9,000 megawatts
of new capacity, the equivalent of 3.5 percent
of the nation's current coal-fired capacity.
That is enough to power millions of homes.
For people who want to limit global warming
gases, the moves by TXU, which is based
in Dallas, are a reminder that outside the
laboratories and hearing rooms where scientists
and policy makers talk about limiting carbon
emissions, some power companies are racing
to build infrastructure that will put carbon
into the atmosphere into the middle of this
century or longer. Whatever the cost to
the ecosystem, it could be an immensely
profitable bet. Company executives say the
plants will provide cheap electricity for
Texas, make lots of money for shareholders,
conserve more valuable natural gas and reduce
the pollutants that make smog. Texas has
no goals for cutting carbon emissions. Nationally,
the [energy] industry expects 19 percent
growth over the next decade; in Texas, it
is 25 percent. The state's peak electric
demand grew 5 percent last summer, compared
with the summer before.
15 September 2006 Clamping
Down on Mercury Emissions BY DAN KROTZ,
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab News.
Someday,
those mercury warning labels posted
near the fish section of supermarkets
may join lead paint and asbestos
as relics of a bygone era. Berkeley
Lab scientists led by Shih-Ger
(Ted) Chang have developed a potentially
cheap and efficient way of removing
mercury from coal-fired power plant
emissions. ...As envisioned, his
technique involves injecting a
specially formulated gas into the
mercury-laden flue gas of a coal-fired
power plant, where it can convert
elemental mercury into oxidized
mercury, a form more easily captured
by existing pollution control devices.
...The problem is also global.
China's booming coal combustion
industry emits more than 200
tons of mercury per year into
the atmosphere, some of which
drifts to the U.S.
Over time, some of the mercury
released into the environment
by power plants changes to methylmercury,
which is a potent neurotoxin
that is known to be detrimental
to developing fetuses and young
children. It is passed from prey
to predator along the food chain,
building up in certain types
of fish and shellfish that people
love to eat. In fact, methylmercury
can accumulate in fish and marine
mammals in concentrations hundreds
of thousands times higher than
the levels in surrounding waters,
which is why state environmental
regulatory agencies often issue
fish consumption advisories....
9 September 2006. Interior
Department Rejects Interim Plan for Nuclear
Waste. By MARTIN STOLZ and MATTHEW L.
WALD. NY Times. Excerpt:
SKULL VALLEY, Utah, Sept. 8 - The Interior
Department has moved to block a huge "interim" nuclear
waste storage plant on an Indian reservation
here, citing a lack of confidence that it
would truly be temporary because there is
so much doubt about completion of a permanent
repository, at Yucca Mountain, Nev. ...The
decision was hailed by many elected officials
in Utah, which has no reactors, and where
many non-Indians oppose the plan. But John
D. Parkyn, the chairman of the board of
Private Fuel Storage, the consortium, said
in a telephone interview on Friday that
the opinion about Yucca Mountain was contrary
to federal policy and that there were various
errors in the decision. One, Mr. Parkyn
said, is that the decision said development
on the reservation would require a tribal
police force. But in fact, he said, the
plant would have only about 20 employees,
and most of those would be guards. If tribal
police were somehow required, he said, the
project would pay for them. ...The tribe
is divided over the project. A proponent,
Garth Jerry Bear, said Friday at his home
on the reservation that the plant would
provide hope for the desperately poor members,
good-paying jobs and money for schools.
...Sammy Blackbear, an opponent of the storage
plan, said he was elated by the decision.
"It should have come a long time ago,'' Mr. Blackbear
said, "but this is better late than never."
September 2006. Winds
of Change. Catalyst Magazine,
Union of Concerned Scientists. By Jeff Deyette.
Excerpt: ...The
United States reached a wind energy milestone
earlier this year: 10,000 megawatts (MW)
of total generating capacity, or enough
to power more than 2.5 million homes. ...Though
the U.S. wind industry continues to expand
at a rapid pace, the cost of developing
a wind power project has actually increased
over the past 18 months, in some cases significantly.
The uncertainty of federal production incentives
has deterred manufacturers from building assembly
plants in the United States, requiring most
turbines to be imported, and foreign-made
turbines have become more expensive as the
value of the U.S. dollar has fallen. At the
same time, high global demand has caused most
turbine manufacturers to sell out through
2008, and the cost of steel and other materials
has risen sharply due mostly to higher fossil
fuel prices. Other factors include the difficulties
associated with using more sophisticated electronic
components and increased profit margins by
manufacturers.
Fortunately, none of these obstacles are insurmountable.
Higher fossil fuel prices have driven up the
cost of conventional power generation, enabling
wind power to remain cost-competitive.
...Two exciting new technologies hold out
the promise of consistent growth for the wind
industry in the coming decades: turbines that
can be set in deep offshore waters, and land-based
turbines that can operate cost-effectively
at lower wind speeds....
6 August 2006. Physics Today - LETTERS
- Tough questions about wind energy Excerpts:
Kenneth Perry - Boulder, Wyoming: In suggesting
that the US should turn to wind-generated
electric power (see PHYSICS TODAY, July
2005, page 34), Cristina Archer and Mark
Jacobson fail to discuss the visual impact
of wind farms.... Terry Goldman, Los Alamos,
New Mexico:
As a free-standing, reliable, and stable
source of energy, wind power is totally
inadequate; even as a secondary, supportive
source, it has serious limitations. Due
to the character of wind, power is not produced
in a steady stream over a long period but
in a succession of spikes between zero and
full power. The fluctuation makes reliable
management of the power grid very risky.
Moreover, wind power generation delivers
only a modest fraction (20% to 25%) of the
installed power capacity....
Archer and Jacobson comment: Kenneth Perry
suggests that wind turbines interfere with
nature's beauty. We believe, though, that
the correct comparison is not with nature's
beauty but with the visual, health, and
climate impacts of coal, natural gas, and
nuclear power plants (see, for example, http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/coal-burning-plant.html),
which is what wind turbines would be replacing.
...Frits de Wette contends that the intermittency
of wind makes power management of a wind-energy-dominated
grid risky. This is true when wind farms
are not linked together in an organized
manner through the transmission grid, but
not true if they are. We have shown in a
new study that interconnecting up to 19
wind farms several hundred kilometers apart
converts an intermittent wind resource to
one that produces about one-third of its
electric power at the same reliability as
the average US coal-fired power plant-which
has a 12.5% outage rate. Remaining electricity
can be firmed with hydroelectric, geothermal,
solar, or other power. The website for Red
Elˇctrica, which operates Spain's electric
power system (http://www.ree.es/ingles/i-index_de.html),
further shows, as an example, that linking
most of Spain's wind farms through a common
grid would eliminate minute-by-minute fluctuations
that occur at a single wind farm.
...Terry Goldman suggests that large-scale
wind farming will cause significant bird
loss. Statistics suggest otherwise. According
to the Bird Conservancy, the 15 000 existing
US wind turbines kill 10 000 to 40 000 birds
per year, which compares with 50 million
US bird deaths per year due to transmission
towers and 200 million worldwide due to
avian flu in 2005. Extrapolating to 5 million
5-MW turbines needed to satisfy all electric
power and energy needs worldwide gives 3
million to 13 million bird deaths per year,
much less than transmission towers in the
US alone. -Cristina Archer
(lozej{at}stanford.edu), Mark Z. Jacobson
(jacobson{at}stanford.edu), Stanford University
9 August 2006. Nevada
Loses Decision on Atomic Waste
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. Excerpt:
Nevada was set back in its effort to avoid
housing a radioactive waste dump as a federal
appeals court rejected arguments against transportation
plans. Nevada had said that the Energy Department
overstepped its authority and violated environmental
rules in deciding to rely mostly on trains
to carry 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel
from around the country to Yucca Mountain. "We
conclude that some of Nevada's claims are
unripe for review, and the remaining claims
are without merit," said a decision written
by Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson for a three-judge
panel of the United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit.
1 August 2006. LEBANESE
OIL SLICK - UN Warns of Environmental Disaster -
Spiegel Online - Excerpt:
While the war rages on, a huge environmental
disaster is threatening Lebanon's coast.
Up to 35,000 tons of oil have spilled into
the Mediterranean following Israeli air
strikes -- now it is a race against time
to prevent long-term damage and the destruction
of a fragile ecosystem. The Lebanese government
is calling it the biggest ecological catastrophe
in the country's history. Between July 13
and 15, Israeli jets bombed the Jiyyeh power
station, located 30 kilometers south of
Beirut, and caused up to 35,000 tons of
fuel oil to gush into the sea. The oil slick
has now spread along 80 kilometers of Lebanon's
225 kilometer coastline and has already
reached Syria. A clean up operation is badly
needed, but continuing hostilities between
the Israeli army and Hezbollah have made
this virtually impossible. Now, the catastrophe
is threatening to damage the environment
across many parts of the Mediterranean.
...As bad as the Exxon Valdez?
In an interview with the BBC, the ministry's
director general, Berj Hatjian, compared
the oil slick to that caused by the Exxon
Valdez tanker, "with 20,000 to 30,000
tons reaching the shoreline." When
the tanker sank off the coast of Alaska
in 1989, 40,000 tons of oil were released
into the sea. The result was the worst ever
maritime environmental disaster. Hundreds
of thousands of animals died, and because
the oil spill could not be completely cleaned
up animals are still being poisoned today.
The environmental impact of the current
oil slick is not confined to Lebanon and
risks spreading through the Mediterranean.
The Regional Marine Pollution Emergency
Response Center (Rempec), based in Malta,
has already recorded the first traces of
oil on the Syrian coast -- confirming reports
of contamination made by the port authority
at Syria's coastal town of Tartus....
16 July 2006. Atomic
Balm? A Nuclear Renaissance? By JON
GERTNER. NY Times. Excerpt:
... the Alvin W. Vogtle nuclear-power generating
station... (pronounced VOH-gull) was being
built in the 1970's and 80's, it ... was
one of the largest construction projects
in the history of Georgia. ...its total
cost, $8.87 billion, was so far overbudget
that Vogtle became yet another notorious
example of the evils of nuclear energy.
In the public mind, the issue was safety.
For the industry, the larger concern was
economics. ...Vogtle was intended to generate
a total of around 4,500 megawatts of electricity,
enough power to serve the needs of several
million homes. The grand plan was to have
four reactors. Instead, it was scaled back
to two, .... Today these reactors together
produce about 2,400 megawatts, satisfying
about 15 percent of the state's power needs.
June 2006. (from the ASEE International Engineering
Education Digest). Nuclear
power revival - Political interest in nuclear
power is reviving across the world, thanks
in part to concerns about global warming and
energy security. Currently some 441 commercial
reactors operate in 31 countries and provide
17% of the planet's electricity, according
to a US Department of Energy report cited
in the June 3rd The Economist. Until recently
the talk was of how to retire these reactors
gracefully, but now it is of how to extend
their lives. And in addition another 32 reactors
are being built, mostly in India, China and
their neighbors. The new 'third generation'
reactors are considered by their creators
to be safer than their predecessors. Further
into the future, engineers are developing
designs for so-called 'fourth generation'
plants that could be built between 2030 and
2040. Work on these designs is being undertaken
by a ten-nation research program whose members
include the US, Britain, China, France, Japan,
South Africa and South Korea. (See http://www.economist.com)
20 June 2006. THE
ENERGY CHALLENGE. Europe's Image Clashes
With Reliance on Coal. By MARK LANDLER
- NY Times. Excerpt:
SCHWARZE PUMPE, Germany - In the shadow
of two hulking boilers, which spew 10 million
tons of carbon dioxide a year into the air,
the Swedish owners of this coal-fired power
station recently broke ground on what is
to be the world's first carbon-free plant
fueled by coal. The German chancellor, Angela
Merkel, presided over the ceremony. ..."We
accept the problem of climate change," said
Reinhardt Hassa, a senior executive at Vattenfall,
which operates the plant. "If we want
a future for coal, we have to adopt new
technologies. It is not enough just to make
incremental improvements." But the
new plant, which will be just a demonstration
model, pales next to the eight coal-fired
power stations Germany plans to build for
commercial use between from now to 2011
- none of them carbon-free. "That is
really a disappointing track record," said
Stephan Singer, the director of climate
and energy policy at the World Wide Fund
for Nature in Brussels. "Just replacing
old coal plants with new coal plants won't
enable Germany to meet stricter carbon emission
targets." ...The recent spike in the
price of oil has thrown the spotlight back
on coal, even in places like Britain, where
the industry had been in a death spiral
for decades. Richard Budge, a longtime British
coal executive, ...noted [...coal] is not
a hostage to politics. When Russia abruptly
switched off its natural gas pipeline to
Ukraine in January over a pricing dispute,
gas supplies dwindled all over Western Europe.
..."Fifty-eight percent of the world's
gas is owned by Russia, Iran and Qatar," Mr.
Budge said. "Coal is on every continent." ...
in eastern Germany, ...So great is the demand
that the government allows companies to
forcibly resettle villages that lie in the
path of their excavators. The process is
costly and litigious and can take more than
a decade....
14 June 2006. Ontario
Revives Nuclear Power Plan By IAN AUSTEN.
NY Times. Excerpt:
OTTAWA, June 13 - In an effort to revive
a nuclear energy program that has been marred
by billions of dollars in debt, cost overruns
and disappointing performance, the province
of Ontario on Tuesday announced a plan to
spend about 20 billion Canadian dollars
($18 billion [US]) to build reactors and
refurbish some current units.
The plan also includes about 20 billion
Canadian dollars for renewable energy projects
and 6 billion Canadian dollars ($5.3 billion)
for power conservation. ...Vaughan Gilbert,
a spokesman for Westinghouse Nuclear, which
is based in Monroeville, Pa., and owned
by BNFL of Britain, said, "We've been
gearing up for this even though the market
for new plants in North America had dried
up." If completed as envisioned, the
plan will maintain the current level of
nuclear-generated power, which provides
about half of Ontario's electricity. The
other half is provided mainly by hydro-electric
dams and coal. ...3 of Ontario's 19 reactors
are not in use.
A Conservative government that preceded
Mr. Duncan and the Liberals restructured
the province's government-owned electrical
system as a prelude to privatization. But
a variety of problems, including a political
scandal tied to utility executives' salaries,
meant that the province never saw a major
influx of privately owned power-generating
companies.
Those issues recently forced Mr. Duncan
to back away from a campaign pledge to close
by 2009 the coal-fired generating stations.
...The project will initially involve at
least two units at a cost of about 2 billion
Canadian dollars each. ...Mark Winfield,
the director of environmental governance
at the Pembina Institute for Appropriate
Development, predicted that the province
would only experience further financial
grief by recommitting to nuclear generation. "It's
a very strange approach and a very high-risk
one as well," he said. Mr. Winfield
said he was skeptical that nuclear power
generation would succeed financially this
time around, and said the government was
underestimating the full potential of energy
conservation.
11 June 2006. THE ENERGY CHALLENGE. Pollution
From Chinese Coal Casts a Global Shadow. By
KEITH BRADSHER and DAVID BARBOZA. NY Times. Excerpt:
HANJING, China - One of China's lesser-known
exports is a dangerous brew of soot, toxic
chemicals and climate-changing gases from
the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants.
In early April, a dense cloud of pollutants
over Northern China sailed to nearby Seoul,
sweeping along dust and desert sand before
wafting across the Pacific. An American
satellite spotted the cloud as it crossed
the West Coast. Researchers in California,
Oregon and Washington noticed specks of
sulfur compounds, carbon and other byproducts
of coal combustion coating the silvery surfaces
of their mountaintop detectors. These microscopic
particles can work their way deep into the
lungs, contributing to respiratory damage,
heart disease and cancer. Filters near Lake
Tahoe in the mountains of eastern California "are
the darkest that we've seen" outside
smoggy urban areas, said Steven S. Cliff,
an atmospheric scientist at the University
of California at Davis.
Unless China finds a way to clean up its
coal plants and the thousands of factories
that burn coal, pollution will soar both
at home and abroad. The increase in global-warming
gases from China's coal use will probably
exceed that for all industrialized countries
combined over the next 25 years, surpassing
by five times the reduction in such emissions
that the Kyoto Protocol seeks.... Coal is
indeed China's double-edged sword - the
new economy's black gold and the fragile
environment's dark cloud. Already, China
uses more coal than the United States, the
European Union and Japan combined. ...Every
week to 10 days, another coal-fired power
plant opens somewhere in China that is big
enough to serve all the households in Dallas
or San Diego. To make matters worse, India
is right behind China in stepping up its
construction of coal-fired power plants
- and has a population expected to outstrip
China's by 2030. ...Two years ago, Datong,
long the nation's coal capital, was branded
one of the world's most-polluted cities.
Since then, the air quality has only grown
worse. Datong is so bad that last winter
the city's air quality monitors went on
red alert. Desert dust and particulate matter
in the city had been known to force the
pollution index into warning territory,
above 300, which means people should stay
indoors.
On Dec. 28, the index hit 350. ...The Chinese
are still far from achieving what has become
the basic standard in the West. Urban elites
who can afford condominiums are still a
tiny fraction of China's population. But
these urban elites are role models with
a lifestyle sought by hundreds of millions
of Chinese. Plush condos on sale in Shanghai
are just a step toward an Americanized lifestyle
that is becoming possible in the nation's
showcase city....
28 May 2006. Industry
Leaders Bet on Coal but Split on Cleaner
Approach. By SIMON ROMERO. NY Times. Excerpt:
WRIGHT, Wyo. - More than a century ago a
blustery Wyoming politician named Fenimore
Chatterton boasted that his state alone
had enough coal to "weld every tie
that binds, drive every wheel, change the
North Pole into a tropical region, or smelt
all hell!"...His words seem prophetic.
The future for American energy users is
playing out in coal-rich areas like northeastern
Wyoming, where dump trucks and bulldozers
swarm around 80-foot-thick seams at a Peabody
Energy strip mine here, one of the largest
in the world. Coal, the nation's favorite
fuel in much of the 19th century and early
20th century, could become so again in the
21st. The United States has enough to last
at least two centuries at current use rates
- reserves far greater than those of oil
or natural gas. ... The decisions being
made right now in industry and government
on how quickly to adopt any new but more
costly technologies will be monumental.
"Coal isn't going away, so you have
to think ahead," said Gavin A. Schmidt,
a climate modeler at the Goddard Institute
for Space Studies, part of NASA. "Many
of these power stations are built to last
50 years." ...Gregory Boyce... was
chairman of an advisory panel for the Energy
Department, organized by the National Coal
Council, that produced a controversial report
in March calling for exemptions to the Clean
Air Act to encourage greater consumption
of coal through 2025. The thrust of the
report, which Mr. Boyce outlined in an interview,
is that improvements in technology to limit
carbon dioxide emissions should be left
to the market instead of government regulation.
...Led by Peabody, dozens of energy companies
have embarked on the most ambitious construction
of coal-fired electricity plants since the
1950's. ...While Peabody supports some coal
gasification projects, it remains skeptical
about departing from traditional coal-burning
methods to produce electricity. The pulverized
coal plants it wants to build, which grind
coal into a dust before burning it to make
electricity, currently cost about $2 billion
each, or 15 percent to 20 percent less to
build than the cleaner "integrated
gasification combined cycle," or I.G.C.C.,
plants, which convert coal into a gas. ...Engineers
have known how to make gas from coal for
more than a century, using this method in
the gaslights that first illuminated many
American cities. A handful of coal gasification
plants are already in operation in the United
States, Spain and the Netherlands, ...As
they proceed with plans to build pulverized
coal plants, Peabody and other companies
often point to their support of the alternative
technology through their participation in
Futuregen, a $1 billion project started
three years ago by the Bush administration
to build a showcase 275-megawatt power station
that could sequester carbon dioxide and
reduce other pollutants....
13 May 2006. U.N.
Finds New Uranium Traces in Iran. By
WILLIAM J. BROAD. NYTimes. Exceprt:
Atomic inspectors have found traces of highly
enriched uranium on equipment linked to
an Iranian military base, raising new questions
about whether Iran harbors a clandestine
program to make nuclear bombs, diplomats
said yesterday. It is the second such discovery
in three years of United Nations inspections
in Iran. As the Security Council debates
how to handle the atomic impasse with Tehran,
the finding is likely to deepen skepticism
about Iran's claims that its program is
entirely peaceful...."There are still
lots of questions," a senior European
diplomat said. "So it's not a smoking
gun."
...Highly enriched uranium contains 20 percent
or more of a rare form of uranium, known
as its 235 isotope. Bomb-grade uranium is
usually defined as 80 percent or more, and
can be fashioned into the core of a nuclear
weapon. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima contained
140 pounds of highly enriched uranium. The
senior European diplomat said the samples
from Iran indicated the presence of highly
enriched, but not necessarily bomb-grade,
uranium. Iran says its atomic program is
meant to enrich uranium to the relatively
low grades needed for the production of
electrical power in nuclear reactors, about
3 or 4 percent, a level that the inspectors
recently confirmed. ...
May 2006. Energy
Secretary Sends Yucca Legislation to Congress. Physics
Today, page 25. Jim Dawson. Yucca Mountain,
Nevada. Excerpt:
Some 20 years and $8.6 billion after Yucca
Mountain in Nevada was first rated by the
US Department of Energy as the best site
in the country to permanently store tens
of thousands of tons of high-level nuclear
waste, the Bush administration is beginning
a new push to get the languishing project
moving. But the new initiative, a legislative
proposal DOE Secretary Samuel Bodman sent
to Congress in early April, faces a difficult
time on Capitol Hill. ...In a letter to
the Senate and House that accompanied the
legislative proposal, Bodman said the "existence
of a repository at Yucca Mountain is critical
to the expanded use of nuclear power." Even
with the administration's new proposal for
a global nuclear energy partnership, which
focuses on recycling nuclear waste instead
of storing it, Bodman said the Yucca repository "will
continue to be necessary to deal with the
spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive
waste that will be generated by those [recycling]
technologies." Currently about 55 000
metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level
radioactive waste are stored at more than
100 sites in 39 states, according to DOE
officials. An additional 2000 metric tons
of high-level nuclear waste is being generated
each year. The proposed legislation calls
for several specific actions by Congress
to make the development of the Yucca site
possible. DOE asks that 147 000 acres of
land surrounding Yucca Mountain, which is
located about 90 miles northwest of Las
Vegas, be withdrawn from public use. Possession
of the land by DOE is one of the NRC requirements
for granting a license to build the facility.
The legislation would also repeal the 70
000-metric-ton capacity limitation for waste
storage at the facility and allow the limit
to "be determined by the actual physical
capacity of the mountain." ... the
US Environmental Protection Agency is expected
to announce in the next several months a
new standard for limiting radiation exposure
at the Yucca repository for a one-million-year
period. The revised standard is needed since
the previous standard, based on the repository's
being safe for 10 000 years, was thrown
out in 2004 by the US Court of Appeals in
the District of Columbia because it was
not "based on and consistent with" an
earlier National Academy of Sciences radiation
peak-dose safety recommendation....
27 April 2006. G.E.,
Betting on the Future, Finances a Solar
Farm in Portugal. By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
, NY Times. Excerpt:
Next month the PowerLight Corporation, using
$75 million of the General Electric Company's
money, will begin installing the first of
what will be 52,000 solar panels, capable
of generating 11 megawatts of electricity
- enough to light and heat 8,000 homes.
..."It takes a huge amount of work
to develop these projects, to get the permits,
to find the modules, and solar energy still
costs more than fossil fuels or wind,"
Mr. Marsden said. "So we are only going
to invest in countries with supportive regimes." That
list does not yet include the United States.
Richard King, a team leader in the Energy
Department's photovoltaic research group,
said that many homeowners, particularly
in California, had installed rooftop panels,
as had some Wal-Mart stores and other businesses.
But Mr. King conceded that American economics
did not yet favor solar energy. He said
that people in Portugal and many other parts
of Europe were already accustomed to paying
25 cents to 30 cents a kilowatt hour for
electricity. In the United States, the cost
still averages 10 cents to 14 cents, "and
utilities are just not going to buy 25-cent
solar electricity,"
he said.
January 2006. Rush
to Bury High-Level Nuclear Waste Ignores
Flaws of Yucca Mountain Site. PSR
Reports - Physicians for Social Responsibility
http://www.psr.org. In its annual budget
for fiscal year (FY) 2007, the Department
of Energy (DOE) requested $544.5 million
in new spending for the proposed high-level
nuclear waste storage facility in the Yucca
Mountain range near Las Vegas, Nevada. This
request reflects an almost $100 million
increase in spending on Yucca mountain from
the $450 million that Congress appropriated
for FY 2006. ...U.S. nuclear power plants
have already generated more than 40,000
tons of high-level waste (a small portion
of this is a byproduct of U.S. nuclear weapons
production activities). This highly lethal
stockpile is currently stored around the
country at commercial and government facilities,
and it continues to grow rapidly, as current
nuclear power production adds 2,000 tons
of waste to the existing pile every year.
Industry pressure for a solution is mounting;
the federal government was scheduled to
assume responsibility for this waste nearly
a decade ago. If DOE fails to move the waste
to a federal repository, power plants that
run out of on-site storage space will be
forced to shut down. ...in April 2005, Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman publicly acknowledged
that water flow and quality assurance data
for the Yucca Mountain site could have been
falsified. DOE's own investigation and Congressional
inquiries into United States Geological
Service computer modeling of climate and
water infiltration at the site uncovered
numerous e-mail exchanges, dating back to
1998 and 2000, in which government scientists
discussed fabricating documentation for
a key scientific study about ground water
penetration into the repository and admitted
they made up data.
January 2006. Last
year, the state of Colorado implemented
incentives for promoting alternative, sustainable
sources for electrical power to Colorado
customers. The Xcel Energy company is electricity
provider that makes the Windsource program
(accredited by the Green-e
Renewable Energy Program) available
to customers who chose to pay slightly more
for electricity in order to encourage wind
powered electricity. The following text
appeared on a web page for Xcel Energy:
"Based on the electric rates effective January 1, 2006,
and monthly average usage of 625 kilowatt-hours (kWh), the
following table shows what typical Xcel Energy Colorado residential
customers would pay for monthly electricity service to purchase
500 kWh per month of Windsource.... The Windsource Adjustment
may be slightly higher for commercial & industrial customers.
| |
Residential
rates effective January 1, 2006 |
| Monthly
electricity cost |
$59.35 |
| Windsource
Adjustment (five 100 kWh blocks @ $0.072
credit/block) |
($0.36) |
| Total |
$58.99 |
Note that the "Adjustment" is
in parentheses, indicating negative quantity,
meaning that the cost of wind energy is now
LESS than the cost of other energy sources,
in particular, fossil fuel sources. There
is now a waiting list for the Windsource program
in Colorado. We could view this as a watershed
moment in the history of electrical energy
production: as fossil fuel costs continue
to increase in ever accelerating fashion,
costs of alternative electrical energy production
does not increase nearly fast. We knew that
inevitably, alternative sustainable energy
sources would be cheaper than fossil fuel
sources. We just did not know how soon that
would happen. But as the Colorado situation
shows, it's happening sooner than some people
expected. Next milestone to look for: when
cost of photovoltaic (solar) electricity undercuts
cost of fossil fuel electricity cost... ---Alan
Gould
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