• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

NYT: Rick Perry’s Plan to Rescue Struggling Coal and Nuclear Plants Is Rejected

Yes, I understand... but that doesn't change what I said.

Regardless of how they vote, their jobs are going away at an increasing rate.
 
Regardless of how they vote, their jobs are going away at an increasing rate.

Sure, but they won't stop voting for a party that keeps promising to bring those jobs back.
 
Great idea, right up there with Fukushima, Chernobyl & Three Mile Island. What could possibly go wrong?

The Chinese are far ahead of us in replacing coal-burning power plants with renewables like solar. And Perry wants to subsidize failing industries? Good thing it got canned.

I still have a credit on my electric bill (Solar!). $20 for service charge is all I pay O&R. Next month a bit more and then we will be getting more sunlight and the monsters will be back in college!
 
Tidal has a lot of appeal: low R&D cost, low construction cost, fast deployment, non-hazardous, no waste.

The list of its appeals goes on and on. In fact, it's hard to find a downside, one that's a serious problem anyway.
For those of us near salt water. Or within a few thousand miles. Transmission lines have a radius where too much energy is lost for economic viability, but I don't know what that number is. I know that hydro power from where I live (British Columbia) is sold in California.
 
Sure, but they won't stop voting for a party that keeps promising to bring those jobs back.

Yeah, so they can stop trying to learn another trade and get back to working on their black lung and poisoning their groundwater.
 
I still have a credit on my electric bill (Solar!). $20 for service charge is all I pay O&R. Next month a bit more and then we will be getting more sunlight and the monsters will be back in college!

I recall hearing that a utility in I believe Florida was going to charge customers who installed solar arrays a surcharge. See
Florida's fight over future of solar power appears far from over | Miami Herald &
https://www.snopes.com/is-it-illegal-florida-power-home-solar-storm/ Is It Illegal in Florida to Power Your Home With Solar After a Storm Because of Lobbying? Kind of cynical.
 
I recall hearing that a utility in I believe Florida was going to charge customers who installed solar arrays a surcharge. See
Florida's fight over future of solar power appears far from over | Miami Herald &
https://www.snopes.com/is-it-illegal-florida-power-home-solar-storm/ Is It Illegal in Florida to Power Your Home With Solar After a Storm Because of Lobbying? Kind of cynical.

They are making it harder in some of the western states as well. Idiots. Its too bad I don't have forced air or I would have gotten a heat pump.
 
Yes, I understand... but that doesn't change what I said.

I don't disagree with you. I was curious about coal plant closings & posted it as relevant but not to challenge your assertion. I should have posted it as a reply to the thread instead.
 
They are making it harder in some of the western states as well. Idiots. Its too bad I don't have forced air or I would have gotten a heat pump.

I think their argument may be that they invested a lot of capital to install the network to get electricity to your home & by cutting them out you are tampering with their getting a full return on their investment. In other areas you can actually sell excess electricity to your utility which makes a lot more sense.

My former home in NJ was designed to be solar. The roof of the 3-car garage faced south within a few degrees. The different payment plans got very confusing & since we planned on selling the house anyway after my wife retired we decided that it was a bridge too far to try to sell the house + explain all the solar stuff to prospective buyers, so we dropped it. We don't have any kids so the savings we would have gotten required a very long term pay back on our out of pocket so it made no sense.
 
I think their argument may be that they invested a lot of capital to install the network to get electricity to your home & by cutting them out you are tampering with their getting a full return on their investment. In other areas you can actually sell excess electricity to your utility which makes a lot more sense.

My former home in NJ was designed to be solar. The roof of the 3-car garage faced south within a few degrees. The different payment plans got very confusing & since we planned on selling the house anyway after my wife retired we decided that it was a bridge too far to try to sell the house + explain all the solar stuff to prospective buyers, so we dropped it. We don't have any kids so the savings we would have gotten required a very long term pay back on our out of pocket so it made no sense.

That's how it works in NY, I sell my excess in the summer and create a nice credit which now lasts well into winter. I don't mind the $20 service charge. I also received a $5,000 credit from NY, $3000 of which I laid out for the lease the rest I get back as I use the electricity. A no brainer form a financial stand point. If nothing else it hedges against future increases. My house is in a good spot. The development was built on a former farm and my rear faces south and my garage faces west. I think it will add value when I sell. The pellet stove helps reduce my oil consumption as well.
 
We need to rescue all the plants that made 8 track tapes!

(coal....its your grandfather's energy source!)
 
That's how it works in NY, I sell my excess in the summer and create a nice credit which now lasts well into winter. I don't mind the $20 service charge. I also received a $5,000 credit from NY, $3000 of which I laid out for the lease the rest I get back as I use the electricity. A no brainer form a financial stand point. If nothing else it hedges against future increases. My house is in a good spot. The development was built on a former farm and my rear faces south and my garage faces west. I think it will add value when I sell. The pellet stove helps reduce my oil consumption as well.

My NJ house was a center hall colonial with the 4 bedrooms upstairs over the cathedral ceiling atrium downstairs. The hearth was in the center down stairs. We finally got a Vermont Castings wood-burning stove in the hearth. My neighbor on the shared driveway was in the tree business so I had an ample supply of cord-wood stacked on the side of my driveway. With a ceiling fan & a box fan blowing cold floor air horizontally against the stove, we heated the house comfortably for 5-6 years, going through 5-6 cords per season. When we were selling the house to move to much less expensive PA, I had to ask the oil company for a record of my oil consumption (forced hot air) for the last 2 years. It showed only 2 fillups in that period, so I added a note that oil was only used as a secondary heat source.

As I was very interested in having a house at the highest point in the county to suit my interest in radio monitoring, the location was only a few hundred feet short of the crest of a geological feature known as the Croton Plateau. Across the street was only a farmer's field with an unobstructed view to the west. It was also unobstructed as far as the weather was concerned, and living in that location presented a number of challenges, like high winds. This was something like 650 feet above sea level & a worker on my roof after we moved in said he could see the WTC 45 miles away
 
My NJ house was a center hall colonial with the 4 bedrooms upstairs over the cathedral ceiling atrium downstairs. The hearth was in the center down stairs. We finally got a Vermont Castings wood-burning stove in the hearth. My neighbor on the shared driveway was in the tree business so I had an ample supply of cord-wood stacked on the side of my driveway. With a ceiling fan & a box fan blowing cold floor air horizontally against the stove, we heated the house comfortably for 5-6 years, going through 5-6 cords per season. When we were selling the house to move to much less expensive PA, I had to ask the oil company for a record of my oil consumption (forced hot air) for the last 2 years. It showed only 2 fillups in that period, so I added a note that oil was only used as a secondary heat source.

As I was very interested in having a house at the highest point in the county to suit my interest in radio monitoring, the location was only a few hundred feet short of the crest of a geological feature known as the Croton Plateau. Across the street was only a farmer's field with an unobstructed view to the west. It was also unobstructed as far as the weather was concerned, and living in that location presented a number of challenges, like high winds. This was something like 650 feet above sea level & a worker on my roof after we moved in said he could see the WTC 45 miles away

That's one disadvantage of being high with no trees. Our wind can get bad as well. I lost 2 glass top patio tables because I would forget to take down the umbrella. The WTC was some sight. My dad worked on the 95th floor for a while. Took us up to see the old ships come through in 1976.

My first house was an old 49 cape I think but it had a huge brick fire place. We installed a wood stove. Plenty of heat but a pain to maintain. I'm not much for chopping wood.
 
Natural gas is an excellent replacement for coal. It burns more cleanly and is much cheaper to extract. It's the best abundant energy source we have until solar technology improves.

Not to say that there are no downsides - but hopefully the government can set up regulations to protect our water supplies, at a minimum.
 
Where are you going to store the still highly radioactive spent fuel? In your garage?

/sigh

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-power/

Newer plants are more efficient, can run off the lower heat of spent fuel (spent just means its no longer hot enough, but it's still hot), and then there is thorium. Which is much safer and produces a lot less waste.

And the only thing keeping us from solving the storage problem is politics. There are more than a few places in the country that are geologically and geographically suitable to store waste. But congress isn't spending the money to look anywhere but where their special interest backers want them to look. Which ended up being Yucca Mountain in a Screw Nevada somebody, not Nevada, is going to get rich off this deal, deal.

If we overhaul the plants we have, convert them to thorium efficient models, and develop the nuclear corridor. Not only will we be sittin pretty, we won't have to worry about meltdowns during the zombie apocalypse.
 
First off the demand for petrochemical products will be with us for decades.
Secondly do you understand the limitations with each of the sources listed?
Let's go through them.

Solar: Almost unlimited potential (and very likely the future) but only produces low density
power when the sun is shining. Requires energy storage to meet our on demand needs.

Wind: Provides good power density, but only when the wind is blowing.
The technology seems to only be viable when subsidized, and has higher maintenance costs than predicted.
Requires energy storage to meet our on demand needs.

Geothermal: Great where it is available, not available in most places.

Tidal: It sounds good but has limited geography where it can be utilized.

Hydroelectric: Is almost fully developed, with very limited growth potential.

None of those things are intended or expected to be silver bullets. They're supplementary.
 
The logical reason is votes. Aging coal miners and people working in petro industries vote overwhelmingly for the GOP.

Except that there are only 60,000 coal miners in the entire country. There are ten times more solar workers. Petro industries are at odds with coal, since fracking has made coal less competitive.
 
But all of them combined beat coal & nuclear.

Nuclear works in France because it is mostly state owned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France But the French are great at coming up with magnificent ideas, like the Maginot line, which fail when put to the test. I worked for the largest chemical company in France & I've studied this cultural phenomenon.

I disagree with your putting down tidal due to 'limited geography'. The shoreline of this country measures 95,471 miles. Even if only a few percent were suitable for tidal power development, that's still thousands of miles. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/shorelength.html

And geothermal has huge potential in a number of western states: United States - Geothermal Education Office

And you are selling hydroelectric power short. See https://energy.gov/articles/energy-...otential-grow-clean-sustainable-us-hydropower
You need to understand that electricity is an on demand resource, it must be available when needed, and in the quantity needed.
One their own, wind and solar cannot do that, they must have a storage/accumulation component to fill in the gaps in supply.
Tidal, While the US has lots of coast line, much of it has only minimal tides, and many other areas are environmentally sensitive.
It may be suitable in some areas, but not all.
Geothermal is limited to areas that it is available.
 
Where are you going to store the still highly radioactive spent fuel? In your garage?
Considering that some of the designs use the spent fuel as fuel, that is where it should go.
I do not see nuclear as a long term solution, it is currently the best solution to fill the gaps.
It is fine to explore the other options, but we need a solid supply of base load power.
 
One of the exciting things about the future potential for both wind & solar is multi-faceted. It involves batteries for storing energy when it is not being produced & a tie-in to the nationwide power grid. https://www.solar-energy-at-home.com/how-is-solar-energy-stored.html
We are a long way from utility level batteries being able to load shift capacity the 6 months or so necessary to
be able to shift seasonal surpluses to seasonal demands.
Gravity water storage, where possible is an available technology.
 
None of those things are intended or expected to be silver bullets. They're supplementary.
I was pointing out that for baseload power, they all have some type of limitation.
I do think with storage, solar has the capability to do it all, but the best solution (I think)
will require people to change some preconceived notions.
I think with enough solar, the refineries can store all the surpluses as carbon neutral fuels and eventually natural gas.
those fuels can first run transport, and as natural supplies run down, supply baseload power also.
 
Great idea, right up there with Fukushima, Chernobyl & Three Mile Island. What could possibly go wrong?

The Chinese are far ahead of us in replacing coal-burning power plants with renewables like solar. And Perry wants to subsidize failing industries? Good thing it got canned.

Take all the pollution from those 3 and combine them, and you still don't have the pollution and environmental degradation of just one year of worldwide coal mining and burning.
 
/sigh

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-power/

Newer plants are more efficient, can run off the lower heat of spent fuel (spent just means its no longer hot enough, but it's still hot), and then there is thorium. Which is much safer and produces a lot less waste.

And the only thing keeping us from solving the storage problem is politics. There are more than a few places in the country that are geologically and geographically suitable to store waste. But congress isn't spending the money to look anywhere but where their special interest backers want them to look. Which ended up being Yucca Mountain in a Screw Nevada somebody, not Nevada, is going to get rich off this deal, deal.

If we overhaul the plants we have, convert them to thorium efficient models, and develop the nuclear corridor. Not only will we be sittin pretty, we won't have to worry about meltdowns during the zombie apocalypse.

Yucca Mtn got shot down when John McCain found out that the trains transporting the highly radioactive spent fuel rods would be mostly going through Phoenix. Too close to his home.
 
Natural gas is an excellent replacement for coal. It burns more cleanly and is much cheaper to extract. It's the best abundant energy source we have until solar technology improves.

Not to say that there are no downsides - but hopefully the government can set up regulations to protect our water supplies, at a minimum.

Unfortunately it is not available in most rural areas where the gas utilities haven't installed the infrastructure because of the thin population. And then there are the weekly TV News spots of houses blowing up because of gas leaks.

The house across from me has natural gas but my street does not. The gas company wants something like $200/foot to make the connection ($40,000). Since we just installed a new oil boiler & propane-powered whole-house generator, it makes no sense to convert. We're not going to be living here long enough to pay back that investment anyway.
 
Back
Top Bottom