Burning coal may cost the public of the United States up to half a trillion dollars in hidden damage

Burning coal may cost the United States public up to half a trillion dollars in hidden damages, each year

The Definition of External Costs

The scope of the ExternE Project is to value the external costs, i. e. the major impacts of economic activities, both referred to production and consumption. Up to now, valuations of external costs have mainly been applied to energy- related activities such as fuel cycles, and activities related to transport of persons and freight, but the focus is being broadened and the methodology extended to activities such as different industrial processes.

An external cost, also known as an externality, arises when the social or economic activities of one group of persons have an impact on another group and when that impact is not fully accounted, or compensated for, by the first group. Thus, a power station that generates emissions of SO2, causing damage to building materials or human health, imposes an external cost. This is because the impact on the owners of the buildings or on those who suffer damage to their health is not taken into account by the generator of the electricity when deciding on the activities causing the damage. In this example, the environmental costs are "external" because, although they are real costs to these members of society, the owner of the power station is not taking them into account when making decisions. Note that external costs are unintended and result from there being no property rights or markets for these environmental effects. The potential value of the ExternE project therefore lies in valuing external costs in order for those values to be included in the design of policy to correct for the present lack of such property rights and markets.

There are several ways of taking account of the cost to the environment and health, i.e. for 'internalising' external costs. One possibility would be via eco-taxes, i.e. by taxing damaging fuels and technologies according to the external costs caused. For example, if the external cost of producing electricity from coal were to be factored into electricity bills, between 2 and 7 cents per kWh would have to be added to the current price of electricity in the majority of EU Member States. Another solution would be to encourage or subsidise cleaner technologies thus avoiding socio-environmental costs. The Community guidelines on state aid for environmental protection explicitly foresee that EU member states may grant operating aid, calculated on the basis of the external costs avoided, to new plants producing renewable energy. Besides that, in many other widely accepted evaluation methods such as green accounting, life-cycle analysis and technology comparison, the quantitative results of external costs are an important contribution to the overall results.

www.externe.info...

Context

In 2005 the United States used about 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy, 40% of which came from oil, 23% from coal, 23% from natural gas, 8.4% from nuclear power, 7.3% from renewable sources. Approximately 40% of energy used the US is electricity, 50% of this electricity comes from burning coal in supersized coal boilers. The only reason it is widely used is because it is widely claimed that it is 'cheap', however it is only cheap to the business who owns the plant. However, when all costs are factored in, external costs, coal as one of the more expensive forms of energy. In other words, when energy is produced using coal, the only reason it is cheap is because they do not pay for the damages that result. When these are included, coal is actually very expensive. It is a great social injustice to allow this to occur, as it means that we are effectively subsidizing coal by allowing it to not have to pay for the damages it causes to our health and the environment. Instead the American public pays.

The study:

Each stage in the life cycle of coal—extraction, transport, processing, and combustion—generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and are thus often considered “externalities.” We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually. Many of these so-called externalities are, moreover, cumulative. Accounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated, making wind, solar, and other forms of nonfossil fuel power generation, along with investments in efficiency and electricity conservation methods, economically competitive.

Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal

How does this occur?

Mine collapses, or mine subsidence has a potential for major effects aboveground, which are especially devastating in built-up areas. German underground coal-mining, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia, has damaged thousands of houses, for example.

The mining and burning of coal leads to slag heaps and substantial fly ash sludge storage ponds. Thousands of these all over the world will remain a potential hazard essentially forever, and several failures of the containment of these have had a devastating impact on both the surroundings and water resources nearby.

Nor are the negative effects of coal limited to the environment. Every year, coal miners die from diseases brought on by breathing hazardous coal dust. Black lung disease, also known as coal workers’ lung pneumonoconiosis, is caused by breathing in coal mine dust. If inhaled over an extended period of time, this dust can collect in the lungs and create scar tissue that obstructs airflow to the lungs. Despite laws, miners continue to die from this disease. As well, as coal production increases in an area, so does the incidence of chronic illness in nearby communities among segments of the population not directly involved with the industry.

(and there's more in the link)
Government intervention on fossil fuel pollution

Death and Disease from Power Plants

In 2000 and again in 2004, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force quantifying the deaths and other health affects attributable to the fine particle pollution from power plants. In this newly updated study, CATF examines the progress towards cleaning up one of the nation's leading sources of pollution. The report finds that over 13,000 deaths each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. power plants. This is almost half the impact that our 2004 study found and is reflective of the impact that state and federal actions have had in reducing power plant emissions by roughly half. However, much more still needs to be done.

The interactive map below allows you to learn of the risk in your state or county simply by clicking on the Google Map below. You can click on your state, zoom into your county, or click on a power plant to view a variety of health impacts and other data. A new tool also available is a downloadable Google Earth file, which once downloaded and launched in Google Earth, will allow you to explore a whole host of data and health impacts around the country.

www.catf.us...

*Note: While the above is for all power-plants, coal contributes the vast majority of of the fine particulate pollution from power-plants, as natural gas burns far cleaner than coal. (And oil is seldom used for electricity generation on a large scale).

How much does it cost?

The tabulation of the externalities in total and converted to 2008 US$ is given in Table 3 and normalized to cents per kWh of coal-generated electricity in Table 4. Our best estimate for the externalities related to coal is $345.3 billion (range: $175.2 bn to $523.3 bn). On a per-kWh basis this is 17.84¢/kWh, ranging from 9.42 ¢/kWh to 26.89 ¢/kWh.

Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal

Please note, this is not about global warming. Damages from carbon emissions make up a minority of the damages.


The true cost of electricity is made up by the internal cost and the external cost, added together. Given a new coal power plant will produce energy at an internal cost cost of between 4.5¢/kWh and 9.5¢/kWh depending on who you listen to, the total cost (internal plus external cost) of coal is between 14¢/kwh and 36¢/kwh ($140 per megawatt hour and $360 per megawatt hour). The average retail cost of electricity in the US for residential customers is around 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour or $115 per megawatt hour, just to give you some perspective. Remember, you are already paying these costs, just not through your electricity bill, instead you're paying it through your healthcare bill. The companies that own and operate coal power-stations are literally getting away with murder, and the public foots the bill.

These two studies show the internal cost of coal and various energy sources:

Levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) for baseload electricity generating technologies. Error bars represent 90% confidence intervals for the mean (bar height).

The arithmetic adds up to nuclear.
(wind isn't included on this graph, but it's usually slightly cheaper than FOAK (first of a kind) nuclear.

A different study:


This is a European study that compared the external costs of each generating source:



LWR = Light Water (Nuclear) Reactor
PWR = Pressurized Water Reactor
PV = Photo-voltaic
Cogen = Co-generation, making electricity and using the waste heat to heat homes and businesses.
Lignite = Brown coal
PFBC = Pressurized fluidized bed combustion

source


source: ExternE-pol.


If we add the Internal cost of electricity from Annual Energy Outlook 2011 to the ExternE data, then we get the total, true, cost of each energy generating technology.

Conventional Coal = $155 to 180 / megawatt hour
Natural Gas Combined Cycle = $80 / megawatt hour
Advanced Nuclear = $115 / megawatt hour
Wind = $100 / megawatt hour
Solar PV = $220 / megawatt hour
Hydro = $90 / megwatt hour
*note: that is first-of-a-kind nuclear, established nuclear will be much cheaper

So again the result is the same. When you add the external costs (from ExternE Project or 'Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal') to the internal cost, coal is always massively more expensive. The energy sources that are in actuality the cheapest are onshore wind, natural gas combined cycle, cogeneration, and nuclear as these have fairly cheaper internal costs and very-low to non-existant external costs. Coal is actually massively more expensive than any of those, the only reason why coal is used is because the companies are not paying for the damage it causes. Let me stress that these damages are getting payed by the public anyway.

Here is another study that compares the external costs of various forms of energy, it is from the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland::

Internalisation of external cost in the power generation sector: Analysis with Global Multi-regional MARKAL Model

How much money does clean energy save?

IGCC = Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle = Turning coal into a gas which is then burned.

The Scherrer numbers - which are not identical with the ExternE numbers - are the numbers I will use to estimate by calculation, the cost in destruction of health and the environment, what the cost of coal is. According to these numbers, conventional coal costs 7.5 - 13.6 eurocents/kwh for health and environmental distruction. Coal IGCC (CHP) without sequestration - these kinds of plants exist on a pilot, but not an industrial scale, cost 2.4 - 3.0 eurocents/kwh in environmental and health destruction. Coal IGCC (CHP) with CO2 scrubber is estimated to cost between 1.1 - 1.4 eurocents/kwh in environmental and health destruction, and nuclear costs 0.5 cents/kwh in destruction to the environment.

Note that the external costs for coal exceed the internal costs. If you are free to dump wastes like carbon dioxide and other noxious materials into the environment without charge, coal in the United States - ignoring any exchange rate differences between euros and dollars - runs between 2 cents/kwh and 4 cents/kwh in general.

For the purposes of these evaluations, I am going to choose, somewhat arbitrarily, a mid sized nuclear power plant, the Brunswick Nuclear Station in North Carolina Unit 2 as a "typical" nuclear power plant. Some nuclear stations are smaller and some are bigger. The Brunswick Nuclear Station came on line in 1974 and is licensed for a 40 year life span. It is an 811 MWe power plant. Unquestionably, as it is an excellent performer, as many other nuclear utilities are doing, the owners will apply and receive a 20 year extenstion on the plant's life, giving it a lifetime of 60 years.

In 2003 the Brunswick Nuclear station produced 7.0 million megawatt-hours or 7.0 billion kilowatt-hours. We are now in a posistion with the Scherrer numbers what the cost, in environmental and health destruction would be if we were to replace it with a magical theoretical IGCC coal plant with a sequestration plant, a IGCC plant without sequestration, and with conventional coal.

If the Brunswick Nuclear station is typical, it costs $35,000,000 per year in health and environmental destruction in a year of operation like 2003. A putative IGCC plant with sequestration on the other hand would do twice as much environmental and health damage, about $70,000,000 dollars worth. A putative IGCC plant without sequestration - the only kind that has ever been built - would incur charges of $275,000,000. Thus the cost in environmental destruction for replacing just one nuclear plant with an IGCC coal plant would be about $238,000,000 million dollars per year beyond the cost of the nuclear plant.

Over the sixty year lifetime of the nuclear station, these costs again for one plant to more than 16 billion dollars in environmental and health destruction..

The United States operates more than 100 nuclear plants. If the Brunswick station is typical of them, replacing them all with IGCC coal plants without sequestration would amount to and additional cost 1.4 trillion dollars over a sixty year plant life. With sequestration the additional cost would be "only" $210 billion dollars. Of course no one really knows where one might sequester 60 years worth of such carbon dioxide. The concept is pure wishful thinking.

The world operates 441 nuclear plants. If the Brunswick Station is typcial, the replacement of these plants would cost the world 7.2 trillion dollars in additional destruction of health and the environment over and beyond the cost of the nuclear stations.

www.dailykos.com...:-How-Many-Trillions-of-Dollars-of-Environmental-Damage-Will-IGCC-Coal-Cost

What should be done?

A means of internalizing all the costs of energy generation must be created, so the plant owner actually pays for the damages it causes, rather than the public. The end effect of this will mean that truly cheaper sources of energy such as wind, natural gas combined cycle, nuclear and cogeneration will take over, saving the US (or Europe for that matter) hundreds of billions of dollars in environmental remediation and health-care year.

- Criminalization: As with prostitution in some countries, addictive drugs, commercial fraud, and many types of environmental and public health laws.
- Civil Tort law: For example, class action by smokers, various product liability suits.
- Government provision: As with lighthouses, education, and national defense.
- Pigovian taxes or subsidies intended to redress economic injustices or imbalances.

A Pigovian tax is a tax imposed that is equal in value to the negative externality. The result is that the market outcome would be reduced to the efficient amount. A side effect is that revenue is raised for the government, reducing the amount of distortionary taxes that the government must impose elsewhere. Economists prefer Pigovian taxes and subsidies as being the least intrusive and most efficient method to resolve externalities.

en.wikipedia.org...

Recommendations

1. Comprehensive comparative analyses of life cycle costs of all electricity generation technologies and practices are needed to guide the development of future energy policies.
2. Begin phasing out coal and phasing in cleanly powered smart grids, using place-appropriate alternative energy sources.
3. A healthy energy future can include electric vehicles, plugged into cleanly powered smart grids; and healthy cities initiatives, including green buildings, roof-top gardens, public transport, and smart growth.
4. Alternative industrial and farming policies are needed for coal-field regions, to support the manufacture and installation of solar, wind, small-scale hydro, and smart grid technologies. Rural electric co-ops can help in meeting consumer demands.
5. We must end MTR mining, reclaim all MTR sites and abandoned mine lands, and ensure that local water sources are safe for consumption.
6. Funds are needed for clean enterprises, reclamation, and water treatment.
7. Fund-generating methods include:
a. maintaining revenues from the workers’ compensation coal tax;
b. increasing coal severance tax rates;
c. increasing fees on coal haul trucks and trains;
d. reforming the structure of credits and taxes to remove misaligned incentives;
e. reforming federal and state subsidies to incentivize clean technology infrastructure.
8. To transform our energy infrastructure, we must realign federal and state rules, regulations, and rewards to stimulate manufacturing of and markets for clean and efficient energy systems. Such a transformation would be beneficial for our health, for the environment, for sustained economic health, and would contribute to stabilizing the global climate.

Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. And remember, support clean energy.

They must have paid a consultant millions to come up with this . Geo-thermal , hydraulic and nuclear generations combined and averaged , average 6 cents per kilowatt hour to generate . Solar and wind combined and averaged , average 65 cents per kilowatt hour to generate or 10 times as much and solar nor wind will not get much cheaper so the leftist enviro-loons must make geo-thermal , hydraulic and nuclear much more expensive and this is the road map on how to do it . The scrubber and precipitator technology is here right now to make the burning of coal very clean but there is no mention of that and no mention of the valuable byproducts derived from burning mettalurgical coal . Ever though 70% of France is powered by nuclear and 255 nuclear power plants are under construction or on the planning boards right now the leftista Obamamnaut enviro-loons and struck the death blow for nuclear power generation in America by shutting the Yukka mountain storage facility that has been under construction for two decades . The cheapest most enviromentally safe energy production is nuclear at 4 cents per kilowatt hour . The world is building while Obama is killing . To equalize with solar and wind energy prices must increase by 10 times while the enviro impact is a total disaster with solar farms covering all of the deserts and windmills across every plain , along every sea shore and up the sides of every mountain . All based on theology and dogma along with projections instead of science .

reply to post by C0bzz


Well here we go again. The speculators will again drive up further the price of oil with civil unrest.
Let me present a sincere question. Is not the flow of oil and its price a concern of National Security?
If so, would it not be best to remove this control from enemies foreign and domestic.
After all our Army,Navy,Air Force, and Marines and our National Sovereignty are at issue here.


It is time to move beyond methods that are both draconian and archaic.

We chant and summon forth you Wizards of DARPA and the Department of Defense.

Sincerely, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,U.S.


Excellent post and Research........S&F

That is why the UFOs are coming here, to steal our coal. They don`t burn it, they eat it!
Minch, munch

I am sorry but I believe that part of the reason for the economy being in it's current condition is due to too much regulation. Until TPTB allow something differnet to hit the market, then I say burn it. It is already regulated to death. I live in Illinois and I know that we could use the jobs. We have the reserves, but not the jobs, due to all of the regulation.

Coal underlies 37,000 square miles of Illinois --
about 65 percent of the state's surface. Estimated
recoverable coal reserves in Illinois (38 billion tons)
account for almost one-eighth of total U.S. coal
reserves and one-quarter of the nation's bituminous
coal reserves. Illinois' coal reserves contain more Btu
than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

www.commerce.state.il.us/NR/rdonlyres/EA15E8A9-E0 BD-468A-A308-BE58E93D0C03/0/CoalinIllinois.pdf


I love the environment and I spend the whole summer camping. I leave the lake more clean than when I got there. I do care about the environment but I believe that people are missing a piece of the puzzle here. If there are no jobs and my kids are starving because daddy can't work, because all of the government regulation ran all of the businesses to China or wherever, I think that the well being of our planet will be the last thing on my mind.

Anyways, not trying to start a war on your thread. This is just a little bit of my thoughts living in a economically depressed region with reserves of useful resources and a lack of jobs.

S&F, Thank you for the information.

reply to post by exroyalnavy


La De Da .......Yummy Yummy,

If that were only the case.

Pass The "Creme Brulee"

How Quaint.

I wanted to add to the support clean enrgy comment.

I am slowly collecting solar panels and cells. I will one day be energy dependant from the unfair energy market. I do not aprove of 450 dollar a month power bill to try to survive the winter. My plans are for solar panels and a few wind turbines. Before I croak, this entity known as Liejunkie will be dependant from the energy tyrants.

My statement above reflects the economic aspects of more government regulation. Any law change will mean higher prices for the consumer almost guaranteed.

these charts were obviously created by 'green' energy advocates, since wind power kills a lot of birds and is a source of high levels of noise, which affects wildlife just as much if not more than humans. worse yet, birds of prey are disproportionally at risk, which strongly affects ecological balance, since there are quite few to begin with and replacement rates are intrinsically low.

PV is ridiculous, too, due to land use, focal towers are of course better.


Nuclear power has to win any 'footprint' based comparison by default, after all it's millions times more energetic than anything chemical.

reply to post by C0bzz


Thanks for the great info as usual, CObzz.

A means of internalizing all the costs of energy generation must be created, so the plant owner actually pays for the damages it causes, rather than the public. The end effect of this will mean that truly cheaper sources of energy such as wind, natural gas combined cycle, nuclear and cogeneration will take over, saving the US (or Europe for that matter) hundreds of billions of dollars in environmental remediation and health-care year.

Absolutely. I also think the banksters should be forced to lend money at absolute bare-minimum interest rates for projects that involve switching to clean energy and/or minimizing emissions - i.e. retrofitting your home to meet upgraded efficiency standards.

Really when we talk about any of these things being too expensive or economically unfeasible it's pretty ridiculous, because when you spend money on something - you don't just dissolve it into thin air. It goes into somebody's pocket.

But instead of actually investing in things that improve our standard of living, our entire BS economy is rigged to transfer as much of that wealth up the conveyor belt into the hands of the oligarchs who run this Ponzi scheme. Producing dirty energy on the cheap while the public pays for all the hidden costs is just another element to this giant scam.

The adverse health, environmental and economic impacts of fossil fuels should be pretty obvious to anyone with even the slightest shred of common sense. But of course instead out come the pre-programmed right wing trolls on this thread to just shriek and throw stones at anything that threatens their backwards brainwashed ideology.

Edit for the sake of T&C and politeness: I'm just so sick of seeing the same ole brainwashed political talking points regurgitated over and over. Some of you really need to get your facts straight on clean energy and stop getting all your information from FOX News and Koch Industries:

No you don't need to cover the world in solar panels to get enough energy out of them. In fact:

If solar radiation is converted to electricity at an efficiency of 10% (already exceeded today in commercial modules), then a mere 0.7% of the world’s desert area (84,300 km2) would be required to generate the total 2005 world electricity consumption of about 18,500 TWh

And no wind turbines do not destroy bird populations and cause excess noise. I know, I live next to one.

It is sometimes claimed that wind turbines are noisy or pose a large hazard to birds. Neither claim is true, as can be seen from the indicative noise levels for wind turbines and various activities given in Table 3.23, and from the estimated mortality rates for birds in the US due to various human-related causes given in Table 3.24. The noise from a wind turbine at a distance of 350 m is similar to the background noise in a typical home. Estimated mortality rates due to modern wind turbines are well below one bird per turbine per year (modern turbines have a solid rather than lattice support structure, and so are unattractive as nesting sites, while the rotation rate is smaller the larger the turbine). By contrast, domesticated cats, road vehicles and telecommunication towers are each estimated to kill several 10s of millions of birds per year in the US, and estimates of the bird mortality due to collisions with buildings in the US are as high as 1 billion per year.

Source on both of those quotes is Energy and the New Reality 2 - Carbon-free Energy Supply

An actual textbook used in actual classrooms - so you know, "green" propaganda...blah blah

these charts were obviously created by 'green' energy advocates,

All of the charts I used comparing the external costs of various energy sources were from ExternE project series, you can find the methodology here , as well as the major teams that have participated in the series. What you have done is make a blind accusation with a bunch of claims without actually pointing to any fallacies in the report itself.

Nuclear power has to win any 'footprint' based comparison by default, after all it's millions times more energetic than anything chemical.

The majority of the external cost from nuclear power comes from the radiation emissions. However this assumes that the radiation has any effect at all, which may not be the case if the Linear No-Thresthold (LNT) isn't true, which is debatable. In other words, the report shows that existing nuclear power has an extremely low external cost, slightly higher than that of wind, lower than that of solar, higher than that of alpine hydro, but if the radiation emissions are excluded (which might be the reality), nuclear will have, by far, the lowest external cost.

Liquid Metal Fast Reactors also have radiation emissions that are massively lower than Light Water Reactors, and can also eliminate the possibility of an accident, eliminate mining and enrichment. In other words, the LMFBR should have external costs way lower than Light Water Reactor technology. I'm not sure about Thorium Molten Salt Technologies in terms of radiation emissions, but they have most of the advantages the LMFBR does (and some more like lower fissile inventory).

I am sorry but I believe that part of the reason for the economy being in it's current condition is due to too much regulation. Until TPTB allow something differnet to hit the market, then I say burn it. It is already regulated to death. I live in Illinois and I know that we could use the jobs. We have the reserves, but not the jobs, due to all of the regulation.

Given the external cost of coal without scrubbers is often higher than the internal cost of coal, the evidence points to the opposite. To reduce the overall cost to the public, some mechanism to force coal to add and improve emissions regulation must be added.

Until TPTB allow something differnet to hit the market,

They have. It's called wind, nuclear, natural gas, biomass, and cogeneration.

reply to post by bandito

They must have paid a consultant millions to come up with this .

A blind accusation with no basis or evidence. You haven't demonstrated a thing.

Geo-thermal , hydraulic and nuclear generations combined and averaged , average 6 cents per kilowatt hour to generate

The levelized cost of electricity of each of those energy sources varies depending on many factors such as overnight cost, discount rate, transmission cost, fuel cost and operations and maintenance cost. The cost of electricity from an existing powerplant also varies depending on whether it is depreciated or not. If I recall correctly, a hydroelectric dam in the US provides power at less than 1 cent per kilowatt hour for example. I already posted new estimates for each energy source.

I'll just post it again:



My opinion is that the nuclear costs and could be a lot lower than they were assumed to be in AEO2011. They were assumed to be $5400/kw excluding financing. The first new nuclear plant in the US will cost $6200/kilowatt including financing, the second will cost $4200/kilowatt. They are also First-Of--A-Kind cost, and don't count the cost reductions that e.g. Korea had when they produced many standardized plants at the same time. On the other hands, since these plants are not completed, the cost could also be a lot higher.

In any case, the cost of neither wind or solar come close to what you're saying, so you're wrong in that regard. Wind comes close to the economics of coal in the US at the moment, according to them, cheaper than nuclear. And solar is getting cheaper. Relying on solar would in my opinion at the moment as it may or may not get cheap enough, soon enough.

The scrubber and precipitator technology is here right now to make the burning of coal very clean but there is no mention of that and no mention of the valuable byproducts derived from burning mettalurgical coal .

The study considered the current state of coal in the US. The ExternE project series, if I recall correctly, did consider scrubbers although it wasn't in any of the charts I posted.

Ever though 70% of France is powered by nuclear and 255 nuclear power plants are under construction or on the planning boards r

The actual figure is closer to 80%.

ow the leftista Obamamnaut enviro-loons

It seems to me like anything that is not laissez faire is considered left-wing in the US. You also made an accusation with pretty much no evidence.

struck the death blow for nuclear power generation in America by shutting the Yukka mountain storage facility that has been under construction for two decades

While Yucca was killed, it was hardly a 'death blow' to nuclear power. I've heard many pro-nuclear advocates criticize Yucca, claiming that once we've dug ourselves into a hole we should stop digging. Without Yucca, spent nuclear fuel can just be stored at the plant, like we have done for the past four decades. With that said, secretary of energy (or ex-secretary of energy?) Steven Chu was pro-nuclear, as was the Obama administration. They awarded the first loan guarantee to Vogtle Units 3 and 4, and also tried to increase the amount of loan guarantees from 18 billion to 54 billion. That's pro-nuke, not anti.

To equalize with solar and wind energy prices must increase by 10 times while the enviro impact is a total disaster with solar farms covering all of the deserts and windmills across every plain

Show me one respected study that indicates this. The only way one could possibly come to this conclusion is if they were talking about scaling wind or solar to 100% of our energy supply which incurs integration costs due to winds unreliability. This will not what will happen any time soon so it's irrelevant but I agree that we probably cannot scale wind that far.

all you teens and people in your twenties can laugh but YOU WILL NOT SEE MY AGE OF 55. your world will be gone, you will be living in a wasteland soon-laugh at global warming, gmo food, poullution all you dummies want, i laugh at you .-HA HA HA HA!!! We protested viet-nam in my day and stopped that ugly war. What have you young people today fighting for???? Nothing-so you will die simple as that if you dont get off you butts and change the corporate america. go protest like us wisconsinites-- take back control of your country and world or DIE HORRIBLE DEATHS-

reply to post by mc_squared


so,

www.abcbirds.org...

www.usatoday.com...

etc..

got it all wrong then? the point wrt cats and other predators is ludicrous, because i've never seen them catching eagles . likewise, noise at 400m is nice for one windmill, what about several hundred of them spaced out over a large area? don't know how wildlife will react but airfoils create noise and blinking warning lights at night (depending on regulation) will have an effect, too.

reply to post by Long Lance


From your own link:

American Bird Conservancy supports wind power when it is bird-smart, and believes that birds and wind power can co-exist if the industry is held to mandatory standards that protect birds. ABC has established a petition for concerned members of the public to lend their support to the campaign for bird-smart wind.

There are plenty of ways to get around the bird issue, not the least of which is building more offshore wind farms. And in any case, the amount of bird deaths that occur from wind farms is still minuscule compared to what happens from plain old buildings. Nonetheless real environmentalists care about these issues and wouldn't just plop them down anywhere.

But to try and paint it black and white or write it all off as some hypocritical "green agenda" is just more typical right wing rhetoric. It does nothing to advance a constructive discussion. All it does is show how brainwashed people are for repeating and embellishing these polemic mantras that are spoonfed to them by dirty energy oligarchs who only care about protecting their own agendas, not birds.

Originally posted by itsawild1
all you teens and people in your twenties can laugh but YOU WILL NOT SEE MY AGE OF 55. your world will be gone, you will be living in a wasteland soon-laugh at global warming, gmo food, poullution all you dummies want, i laugh at you .-HA HA HA HA!!! We protested viet-nam in my day and stopped that ugly war. What have you young people today fighting for???? Nothing-so you will die simple as that if you dont get off you butts and change the corporate america. go protest like us wisconsinites-- take back control of your country and world or DIE HORRIBLE DEATHS-

Thank you for your umm.... incredibly insightful post to my thread.

I have been wondering how they plan to tax all the volcanoes popping up in last 6 years or so and beating out what all the coal burning furnaces have done since the dinosaur age.. I wonder if this study took this into account.. No? Ahh maybe next time..

reply to post by mc_squared


currently, these windfarms are operating on exemptions, ie. they don't need to conform to the same standards like everybody else. they support improvements which have yet to be implemented. selectivity against larger birds is a problem, no matter how many other factors (like destruction of food sources and habitats) are simultaneously at play, because these species are already under pressure in many parts of the world.


PS: offshore wind (just different species getting the shaft i guess) won't mean existing installations on land will be removed, so something should be done preferably in time.

Originally posted by alienreality
I have been wondering how they plan to tax all the volcanoes popping up in last 6 years or so and beating out what all the coal burning furnaces have done since the dinosaur age..

I don't think you understand what any of the three studies I linked said. They calculated the external costs of coal combustion (and two studies did so for other forms of energy), these external costs are already being payed by the public, they are by their nature 'external' which means that the polluters don't pay for it. Volcanoes do create massive economic damage, which is why we should not be replicating volcanoes.


Human-related sources are responsible for 96% of nitrous oxide
www.whatsyourimpact.eu.org...


Natural sources, such as volcanoes, are responsible for approximately half of atmospheric mercury emissions. The human-generated half can be divided into the following estimated percentages
65% from stationary combustion, of which coal-fired power plants are the largest aggregate source (40% of U.S. mercury emissions in 1999).
en.wikipedia.org...(element)
(there were three sources, including one from the EPA)

SO2:
www.fossweb.com...
(not centered around volcanoes)

If you go into a city you'll find that volcanoes are not causing the particulates in the air,
www.nature.com...


CO2:
www.realclimate.org...


In other words, what you were hinting at, is completely incorrect.




reply to post by Long Lance


Problem with offshore-wind is that it will always be more expensive than onshore-wind.

My opinion is that trading black carbon emissions, Sulfur Dioxide emissions, nitrous oxide emissions, CO2 emissions and Mercury emissions for killing some birds and some issues with increased land use is an acceptable trade-off. It's not a LFTR / LMFBR, but it will have to do for now.

reply to post by C0bzz


My power bill was 450 dollars last month. I conserve as much as I can. I feel that carbon credits would make the energy companies raise rates even more. If you do not mind me asking?

What is your imput on the higher energy fees that is sure to be placed on the people because the company had to purchase these carbon credits and these credits ate into their all mighty profits?

I think that it is absurd that I had a 450 dollar power bill just to heat my house. Like I said, I love nature and I have now about 30 watts of solar power(I know that it is not much, but hey, Im working on it), and I do want to be energy independant, but the prices of solar are way outragous.

For the record. I am not trying to troll your thread. I even S&F you from my first post.

I am really concerned about more energy regulation affecting my pocket book because I can barely afford to make it as it is.