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The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

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Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#81

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #72
ben_w wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your witty retort made me laugh, unless you are suggesting that coal power stations are weapons designed to kill people living near them, I think you are missing the point.

I'm suggesting that, pretty much by definition, externalized costs do not get factored into economic decisions.

Unfortunately for coal, not all of its problems are externalities as much as they used to be. If your customer is paying for it, even if not directly in the price you charge, that can alter their behaviour, as we are seeing around the world.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#82

Post by Animats »

mirko22 wrote: post #5

More and more people are turning to Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors, like Liquid Fluoride Thorium Breeders, If Kirk Sorensen and others are right this will revolutionize energy (and probably not just energy but mining, water desalination etc.) as we know it unlike wind or solar ever could. Natural gas and coal should die once and for all as they are as dirty as it gets. I strongly believe we are ready for truly nuclear…

Molten salt reactors require an external chemical plant processing radioactive materials. Radioactive chemical plants are a huge headache. If anything goes wrong, there's a huge mess and another long-term toxic waste site. Hanford (a PUREX plant) and Pantex (in Texas) are both now toxic waste sites.

Every nuclear reactor design that has something complicated going on in the radioactive section has had serious problems. Gas-cooled reactors leak. (Ft. St. Vrain was so promising.) Pebble bed reactors jam. (The one in Germany is permanently jammed and can't be disassembled.) Sodium reactors have sodium fires. Ones with attached chemical plants have problems with handling of hazardous materials. It's discouraging.

Ordinary water-based reactors have a simple radioactive section. All the complexity is outside. Yet even those have problems.

Hyman Rickover on this subject:

An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose ("omnibus reactor"). (7) Very little development is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now.

On the other hand, a practical reactor plant can be distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) It is being built now. (2) It is behind schedule. (3) It is requiring an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items. Corrosion, in particular, is a problem. (4) It is very expensive. (5) It takes a long time to build because of the engineering development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is heavy. (8) It is complicated.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#83

Post by matty22 »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #7
arnon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how anyone would even think that it's possible to bring back coal.

You should talk to some folks involved in economic development who have experience with politics and attitudes in W. Virginia. What I've heard is the coal lobby still has the most money and power and politicians are behaving in a short sighted manner in order to appease coal and protect themselves. It would take a lot of courage and political capital to burn (no pun intended) to tell the truth to the state about the…

I grew up in West Virginia. You could not get elected in that state if you told the truth about coal jobs never coming back. So our politicians continue to pay lip service to the idea that "if we just de-regulate the coal industry, we can put WV miners back to work".

I didn't grow up in the coal mining regions of the state and I've since moved away, but it is depressing watching the citizens of my home state consistently vote against their own interests due to outright fabrications and lip service paid to them by gutless politicians who lack the backbone to tell them the truth.

West Virginia has a lot to offer and I do believe the people there could pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they accepted the fact that coal is the past and the state needs to move forward into new industries/the future.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#84

Post by dangerlibrary »

jartelt wrote: post #79
dangerlibrary wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind and solar are non-starters. They're more expensive than coal and they can't cover base load. Nuclear could cover base load but is orders of magnitude more expensive (up-front) than coal. Huge investment, huge regulatory burden, huge political risk. Until recently, we hadn't built a new nuclear plant in the country for decades. [0] Coal is cheap and reliable. Always has been. What's killing coal is low, non-volat…

If coal is so great and cheap, then why is no one building new coal plants? Over the past few years wind and solar account for ~40% of new generation capacity and natural gas makes up the rest. Based on your comment, one would expect to either see only natural gas capacity being built out or some mix of natural gas and coal. That is not what is happening and it's because wind and solar are cheaper than coal in severa…

I feel like you and I don't disagree, but for some reason you think we do. Natural gas is replacing coal for base load generation because it is cheaper.

from wind-watch.org:

> "How does wind power affect base load? Wind power has no effect on base load.

https://www.wind-watch.org/faq-electricity.php

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#85

Post by keebEz »

enraged_camel wrote: post #62
philipkglass wrote: post #54

Trump can slow the decline of coal consumption but he can't reverse it. Investors in new generating plants expect them to operate for decades. The regulatory pendulum is going to swing back against coal within a decade. The optimal thing to do if you own an old coal plant is to run it as much as you profitably can right now, don't invest in major upgrades for the future, and be ready to scrap it whenever the EPA resu…

>>Trump can slow the decline of coal consumption but he can't reverse it. He doesn't want to reverse it. He doesn't give a shit about coal. He only wants their votes, and the votes of similar industries who will view him as a defender of old-school industry.

Same could be said for solar? The sunbelt is/was heavy on coal for energy production. Solar is a great fit for the sunbelt. The federal government subsidizing solar adoption is a direct transfer of money to southern states as well as a direct negative on WV/WY economies.

What is the relative value of marginal votes from those different areas...

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#87

Post by ZeroGravitas »

philipkglass wrote: post #54

Trump can slow the decline of coal consumption but he can't reverse it. Investors in new generating plants expect them to operate for decades. The regulatory pendulum is going to swing back against coal within a decade. The optimal thing to do if you own an old coal plant is to run it as much as you profitably can right now, don't invest in major upgrades for the future, and be ready to scrap it whenever the EPA resu…

I used to hear that electric vehicles would help to absorb the excess solar and wind that need to be overbuilt because that's cheaper/easier/better than burning gas or building batteries.

I seem to recall reading a study that suggested that surprisingly few electric bus or delivery van fleets would be required to soak up this cheap electricity and tame demand fluctuations but more recently I heard people saying that it's going to be a problem/disaster.

I'm not sure if there's new knowledge or it's just become a popular talking point.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#88

Post by FussyZeus »

iamatworknow wrote: post #46
FussyZeus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean one could make a very similar argument between the displaced coal miners and the people who still work for a failing startup. You want to believe the good times are coming again and that desire to believe can override a lot of really good logical thinking. Americans are hopeful, it's our single greatest strength and the source of our most disastrous failings.

I think that comparison is a little weak. Most startups fail but some still succeed, and those working for the startups that are failing can look at the success stories and aspire to that, and it's not completely unreasonable for them to do so. Meanwhile there's no coal mining company that's booming while others flounder. The whole industry is shrinking. It'd be more like if cell phones were becoming obsolete in favo…

Well I mean staying at that specific startup. Obviously the industry is fine. Maybe you really like the company, maybe you really like the coworkers, maybe the coffee's real good, maybe you just hate change. Whatever the reason that attachment can keep you at a place long after you know you should've left.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#89

Post by acchow »

cagenut wrote: post #74
Animats wrote: post #71

Well over 40% of US electricity is still from coal. Despite all the hype, renewables other than hydroelectric are only 3% in the US. What's driving energy prices is cheap natural gas. Natural gas is cheap to extract and can be extracted fast. But after a while, it's all gone. Britain's North Sea Gas boom is over.[1] Gas fields also drop off faster than oil fields. The cheap natural gas boom won't last forever. It's c…

Sorry if this is nitpicky but fyi, coal in 2016 was almost exactly 40%, not 'well over': https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf... But you are absolutely right that its entirely due to natgas and that will maybe last us a decade or two but certainly not three. In fact its just enough time to build a fleet of nuclear plants, but as you also point out, fear rules that decision far more than physic…

> Sorry if this is nitpicky but fyi, coal in 2016 was almost exactly 40%, not 'well over'

Grandparent post was just missing a comma:

"Well, over 40% of US electricity is still from coal"

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#90

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

strictnein wrote: post #19

I'm glad we're leaving a lot of coal in the ground, but for different reasons. If society as a whole ever slides backwards (due to global war, horrific disease, etc), it leaves a lot of fairly easily extractable energy for the future generation that survives. Dark way of looking at it, I know.

Hear hear! Ive always thought that in the case of a not quite extinction level event amd society/knowledge slides backwards, having easily accessible fossil fuels would help kickstart a new industrial revolution.
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