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The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

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Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#151

Post by alexpotato »

Whenever I see comments about how slow public projects are these days, I think about this documentary: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/race-under...

It's a PBS special about the history of the Boston subway (which was one of the first in the nation).

To give you an idea of what construction safety was like back then, they would routinely encounter gas lines, cut them WITHOUT turning off the gas, and keep working.

Obviously, this led to lots of explosions but also very quick construction. If you are optimizing for speed over safety/environmental/etc it's pretty surprising how quickly you can build something.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#152

Post by lambda »

Areading314 wrote: post #124
lambda wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an AP1000 reactor costs about $6.8 billion to build, and substantially higher operating costs. 68% of the power for 14% of the price seems like a pretty good deal to me, there's a reason people are investing more in solar than nuclear, it's just more cost effective. edit: Oh, and that $6.8 billion looks optimistic. This project with two AP1000s looks like it costs $30 billion. https://www.ans.org/news/article-394…

This doesnt take into account capacity factors. A "800MW" solar plant would be expected to actually product 10-25% of that after day/night and seasons are taken into account. Nuclear plants are more of a 90+% capacity factor.

Yes, it's an over-simplification. But this is an area of the country where capacity factors are in the 25-30% range: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39832 (the Ute Mountain Reservation is in the very Southwestern corner of Colorado, a little bit of New Mexico, and a little bit of Utah: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ute+Mountain+Reservation,+...)

So even if you discount the capacity by a 25% capacity factor, and use the lower cost per reactor that I originally quoted, this is still cheaper than nuclear. And that's just the up-front investment. Operating costs are much cheaper for solar as well, the majority of the cost is in the initial build.

Given that transmission isn't free, there are areas of the country where solar has a lower capacity factor than this, and solar and wind take more land, there are still cases where nuclear may be a better investment. I'm just pointing out that there are plenty of simple, economic reasons why solar and wind are growing at a much faster rate than nuclear; it's cheaper overall, it requires less up-front capital, etc. Nuclear is likely to fill niches for a long time, but investment in nuclear is not going to be the major way to decarbonize.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#153

Post by tfourb »

gotoeleven wrote: post #93
thinkcontext wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear energy is the real future At present in the US there's no reactor that anyone will build. No one will build any more big AP1000s after the unmitigated financial disasters that were its 2 initial projects. Everyone has put their faith in small reactors (SMRs) but the only one with an approved design (NuScale) had its initial project fail after a Utah utility coalition fell apart. The NuScale project that fai…

If your environmental regulations prevent you from saving the environment by making it too expensive to save the environment, maybe you have too many environmental regulations? The medium term future of energy in the US at least is california, ie ridiculously expensive and unreliable. Hopefully costs will eventually come down as we get enough batteries and grid infrastructure in place so everyone can have their india…

China has no environmental regulations to worry about when building out nuclear and has great incentives to do so, but their goal for 2035 is a meagre 7.7% of electricity generation from nuclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

So China, surely the best case scenario for nuclear power expansion anywhere in the world, will go from 5% nuclear power generation today to 7.7% by 2035. That is about all that you need to know about the potential contribution of current and near future nuclear power technology to solving the climate crisis.

As we need to be basically net 0 CO2 emissions by 2050 at the latest, there is simply no scenario in which nuclear can play more than a minor part in solving this. Meanwhile renewables are cost effective investments today, you simply need to improve the regulatory and infrastructure context (transmission lines). Yes, solving storage is required as well, but that seems vastly more feasible than somehow beating 80 years of real world experience telling you that putting it all on nuclear is not a politically or financially viable path forward.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#154

Post by latchkey »

tw04 wrote: post #145
latchkey wrote: post #121

> US is incredibly slow in building transmission lines, takes decades. A lot of bitcoin miners use stranded power, which would otherwise go to waste. People often respond to me on HN that the power could be easily/cheaply sent elsewhere for better uses [0]. Comments like this just re-enforce the fact that these people have literally no idea what they are talking about. Thanks, I'll favorite this one. =) [0] https://n…

> A lot of bitcoin miners use stranded power, which would otherwise go to waste. A lot of bitcoin miners are keeping fossil fuel spewing power plants from being retired because the regulations that keep power affordable for Americans haven’t caught up. There’s a reason China killed bitcoin mining and the US needs to follow suit. Literally killing the planet for imaginary coins that don’t solve any problems that weren…

I believe that the US should work to end coal plants regardless of who is buying power from them.

Oh and I'm more of a fan of Ethereum. They've now moved to PoS, which consumes a fraction of the power, and there is actual utility on that chain. Moved my bitcoin to wbtc too, but looking forward to more decentralized versions of it eventually.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#155

Post by doodlebugging »

doug_durham wrote: post #141
doodlebugging wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem with all tribes. Resource extraction on tribal land is not necessarily improving the living standards of all members of the tribe. It's the same story whether we look at oil and gas production, coal or mineral mining, hydroelectric power generation, timber production, or wind and solar energy production. Electing tribal leaders who will focus on improvements that spread the wealth and boost living s…

This is not a tribal problem this is a human problem. This is a universal situation. I think you agree with this. There is an ongoing problem of singling out "tribal" issues as though tribes are somehow specially deficient.

I do agree that it is a human problem that affects most of us to some extent due to corporate capture of regulatory processes by those who are supposed to be regulated. When you have (1) no oversight or (2) oversight with limited enforcement authority or (3) oversight with enforcement authority that does not function as an effective deterrent then you have created the situation we see today.

Those who should be regulated end up writing the regulations that govern their activities and so they do this in a manner that offers the least friction to their operations at the lowest cost to them.

It is definitely not just a tribal problem here in the US. It is endemic in the corporate world and in government. That's why I mentioned that part at the end of that post.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#156

Post by adrianN »

latchkey wrote: post #142
lukan wrote: post #76

"Having said that, we're going to be producing a large amount of power. So I'm not sure that all of it will be able to be consumed within Colorado." Hopefully they can attract further industry, that will consume that cheap energy close to production. Metal smelting ones for example.

Metal smelting has the often frowned upon side effect of generating super fund sites.

Hm? What kind of dangerous chemicals do you need to turn for example bauxite into aluminium?

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#157

Post by huytersd »

thelastgallon wrote: post #53

I wonder if the tribes have enough autonomy to build transmission lines quickly. Just the Navajo Nation can build enough solar/wind and transmission lines within their reservation and probably connect to the grids in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. US is incredibly slow in building transmission lines, takes decades. And, if they have enough autonomy to import Chinese panels (50% cheaper), a network of these n…

I like the idea of native Americans being the solar barons.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#159

Post by lambda »

chris222 wrote: post #91
lambda wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an AP1000 reactor costs about $6.8 billion to build, and substantially higher operating costs. 68% of the power for 14% of the price seems like a pretty good deal to me, there's a reason people are investing more in solar than nuclear, it's just more cost effective. edit: Oh, and that $6.8 billion looks optimistic. This project with two AP1000s looks like it costs $30 billion. https://www.ans.org/news/article-394…

It doesnt even seem like it will utilize that much more land either. How much land does a Nuclear site take with all of the zones around it?

It does require a lot more land; but we have a lot of land available.

Nuclear will continue to be viable in denser areas, with lower solar resources, and when you want to get a lot of production closer to large population.

There's a reason there are so many nuclear plants in the Northeast Corridor (Boston to Washington area), and so many fewer in the southwest, and I imagine that this trend will continue.

Re: The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the US

#160

Post by latchkey »

adrianN wrote: post #156
latchkey wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal smelting has the often frowned upon side effect of generating super fund sites.

Hm? What kind of dangerous chemicals do you need to turn for example bauxite into aluminium?

https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0...

https://massena-environmental-health-and-justice.org/superfu...

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