See, it’s not just that it’s a 1973 designed reactor on which construction was started in 1976 and finished in 1984, nor is it the fact that it had 4,000 safety violations, cost 2.4 billion $$$ and was finally paid off in 2004. No, it’s that it is inbetween an ocean and a bay, it’s on a fault line, and it’s in the flow path of a VOLCANO. One that is still ACTIVE. Everything about this screams “retard alert” or “danger will robinson danger”…
But it isn’t just one volcano it’s 2 in a chain of Volcanoes. Both Natib and Pinatubo Volcanoes are within 60 miles of the site.
While he was still at Phivolcs, Dr. Ronnie Torres, a foremost expert regarding pyroclastic flows who is now at the University of Hawaii, warned of volcanism and faulting at the site in a 1992 report, “The vulnerability of PNPP site to the hazards of Natib volcano” (Phivolcs Observer, Vol. 8 No. 3: 1-4).Quoting Dr. Torres: “Natib volcano does not erupt very often but could still erupt.” As a rough rule of thumb, the longer a volcano is in repose, the more time it has to store eruptive energy, and thus, the stronger the eventual eruption caldera on Mt. Pinatubo.
The Sonido-Umbal 2001 Report to the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority
Dr. Ernesto Sonido collaborated with Mr. Jesse Umbal to submit in 2000 an exhaustive, 38-page analysis for SBMA of the geology and geohazards of the Subic Bay area. Jess Umbal is one of the brightest, most competent volcanologists and geologists I know. Working with me during the Pinatubo eruption, he earned his Masters degree at the University of Illinois in 1993. Dr. Sonido is not a volcanologist, so we can assume that Umbal wrote those aspects in the report, which adjudged Natib as “potentially active.” The report documented two Natib eruptions that formed large calderas, one with a diameter more than twice as big as that of the new caldera on Mt. Pinatubo.
The Cabato et al. study
In 1997, Ms. Joan Cabato, Dr. Fernando Siringan and I of the National Institute of Geological Sciences of UP Diliman, collaborating with the Mines and Geosciences Bureau and the National Power Corp., initiated a geophysical study of the marine geology of Subic Bay. The study was supported as “due diligence” hazard evaluation by then SBMA Chairman Richard J. Gordon.
From a slowly moving boat or ship, we gathered 125 kilometers of “seismic reflection” data. That method puts powerful pulses of low-frequency sound into the water. The sound passes down through the water and into the layers of sediment below the sea floor. Some of the sound is reflected back upwards from the different sediment layers, and is collected by hydrophones trailing behind the boat. Much as if we took an X-ray, electronic equipment automatically uses the returned signals to make a detailed picture of the structure underlying the sea, in our case down to a depth of about 120 meters.
After we processed the data and prepared the manuscript, it underwent rigorous scrutiny by our geological peers in the Philippines and abroad, before it was published in the international Journal of Asian Earth Sciences. I am proud to have been part of that effort, which earned a Masters degree for Joan Cabato, a very bright young woman who recently earned her doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
Quite by accident, we discovered a massive deposit of sediment that can only be explained as originating as a large pyroclastic flow from the large Natib caldera, in an eruption that occurred sometime between 11,000 and 18,000 years ago. That date has wrongly been called Natib’s latest eruption. A systematic study of Natib itself could find evidence of even younger eruptions.
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So here is one of the BIG Questions what happens to a reactor when it washes out to sea. I have no answer but it sounds like a very bad idea. Some people would argue that it would just melt down and be encapsulated…but I got my doubts.
Mt.Natib is the highest summit in the entire Natib Caldera System in the Bataan Natural Park, a dormant volcano with an elevation of 1,253 meters above sea level (masl). It lies between the larger Old Caldera and the smaller Pasukulan Caldera and represents the latest of the volcanic edifice to develop in the area. The slope is characterized by very steep forested slope. Mossy forest characterized by small-stunted trees occurs approaching the peak. The peak is covered by a small patch of grassland. Also found are boulders with inscribed names of American expeditionary forces that climbed the peak way back the 1930s.
Mountain climbers and nature lovers will find the mountain exciting and interesting since the forest is home to many floral and faunal species. Migratory birds are also seen in the area. A trail shelter is available for overnight trekkers to pitch their tents and enjoy a breathtaking sunrise. However local guides should escort visitors.
While Scooters and Wind Turbines may be the future the past always tries to claw its way back into the picture. In the past week we have had news about ADM’s efforts to inject poison into Mother Earth, a letter to the SJR indicating that a Carbon Tax would create the End Of Civilization As We Know It, and a team of Lobbyists here in Springfield and Chicago drumming up support for the extension of a pipeline from Peoria to the Wood River Refinery to complete the Rape Of Northern Canada…
Thank God no one suggested a New Nuclear Powerplant or I would have run out of space on this blog.
DECATUR — A project to test carbon dioxide storage capacity deep below Archer Daniels Midland Co.’s campus is scheduled to begin this spring.
The company will announce today a partnership with the Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium, which is led by the Champaign-based Illinois State Geological Survey, to work on the $84.3-million project.
It will be one of seven projects the U.S. Department of Energy is funding to demonstrate carbon dioxide, or CO2, storage capacity in underground formations throughout the country. Researchers are looking for uses of carbon dioxide other than emitting it into the atmosphere.
“The whole idea is to understand what is going on in any given area to figure out whether this technique can be safe and effective,” said Robert Finley, director of the Illinois State Geological Survey. “Ultimately this is a technique that we are looking at very carefully to understand what the volume of the CO2 is that might actually be placed in the subsurface.”
The consortium will receive $66.7 million to test a part of the Mount Simon Sandstone, a saline-water-bearing rock formation that has increased in notoriety recently because the FutureGen plant in Mattoon also will test it. The formation runs below most of Illinois, Kentucky and Indiana and part of Ohio.
Beginning in late April, workers will drill more than 6,500 feet below the surface to the rock layer where the carbon dioxide will be stored. The drilling is expected to take about two months to complete, Finley said.
The energy department has awarded $4.2 million in funding for the drilling, Finley said. Another $5.24 million to cover the first year of the project is expected to be awarded within weeks, he said.
The project will inject 1,000 tons per day of carbon dioxide from ADM’s ethanol plant into the ground, Finley said. The layer where it will be injected is about 1,000 feet thick in the Decatur area, Finley said.
Injecting is scheduled to start in October 2009 and be completed in 2012. For two years after that, officials will monitor, take samples and make sure nothing is leaking from the formation.
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OK let us see – How can something be CERTAIN and yet Experimental? No one will answer that question. The Illinois EPA which is being investigated by the Federal EPA for Collusion with Polluters gave them a permit in a heartbeat..:
One Million Metric Tons of Carbon to be Sequesteres at Illinois Site
(Washington, D.C.) – Drilling nears completion for the first large-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) injection well in the United States for CO2 sequestration. This project will be used to demonstrate that CO2 emitted from industrial sources – such as coal-fired power plants – can be stored in deep geologic formations to mitigate large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) hosted an event April 6 for a CO2 injection test at their Decatur, Ill. ethanol facility. The injection well is being drilled into the Mount Simon Sandstone to a depth more than a mile beneath the surface. This is the first drilling into the sandstone geology since oil and gas exploratory drilling was conducted between 15 and 40 years ago. No wells within 50 miles have been drilled all the way to the bottom of the sandstone, which the storage well will do.
The project is funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
“This test represents an exciting step forward in the Department’s collaborative efforts to develop America’s carbon sequestration capabilities,” said Dr. Victor K. Der, Acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy. “In Decatur, we’re moving from theory to application.”
A collaboration between ADM and the Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC), the injection test is part of the development phase of the Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships program managed by the National Energy Laboratory (NETL) for the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE).
The project will obtain core samples of the Mount Simon Sandstone during drilling that will be used in analysis to help determine the best section for injection. The sandstone formation is approximately 2,000 feet thick in the test area.
From 2010 to 2013, up to one million metric tons of captured CO2 from ADM’s ethanol production facility in Decatur will be injected more than a mile beneath the surface into a deep saline formation. The amount of injected CO2 will roughly equal the annual emissions of 220,000 automobiles.
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What was it that Sarte said about Collaboraters, “shave the women’s heads and shoot the men”. There will be accidents and deaths from this process. THERE ALWAYS ARE in any industrial process. The worst case is explosions and deaths followed by contaminated ground water. If eventually successful, what else will they try to put down there? This is short term planning for short term gain (the hallmark of Corporate Capitolism) at its finest.
The $84.3 million project will be funded by $66.7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy over a period of seven years, supplemented by cofunding from ADM and other corporate and state resources.
Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) is the world leader in BioEnergy and has a premier position in the agricultural processing value chain. ADM is one of the world’s largest processors of soybeans, corn, wheat and cocoa. ADM is a leading manufacturer of biodiesel, ethanol, soybean oil and meal, corn sweeteners, flour and other value-added food and feed ingredients. Headquartered in Decatur, Illinois, ADM has over 27,000 employees, more than 240 processing plants and net sales for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2007 of $44 billion. Additional information can be found on ADM’s Web site at http://www.admworld.com/.
From:
Jessie McKinney
ADM Media Relations
217/424-5413
The Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC), lead by the Illinois State Geological Survey, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Schlumberger Carbon Services, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE) marked a milestone in one of the nation’s first large-scale studies intended to confirm that carbon dioxide emissions can be stored permanently in deep underground rock formations. At a ceremonial groundbreaking celebrating the imminent completion of an approximately 8,000-foot-deep injection well on ADM’s Decatur, Ill., property, officials noted the significance of the DOE funded Illinois Basin-Decatur study.
Buyers choosing the smallest cars for low price and high gas mileage could be endangering themselves and their passengers, says a major auto-safety researcher.
In new crash tests, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety rammed three automakers’ smallest cars into their midsize models. Although the small cars had passed other IIHS tests, they flunked in collisions with larger but still-fuel-efficient sedans. “The safety trade-offs are clear,” IIHS President Adrian Lund says. “There are healthier ways to save gas.”
IIHS, funded by auto insurers, usually crashes cars into stationary barriers at 40 miles per hour. This time, it was car into car, each going 40 mph.
Barrier tests, in effect, show how a car holds up crashing into one like itself, Lund says. These tests show colliding with a larger car at the same effective speed as the barrier test.
IIHS picked three small cars that got its top rating of “good” in barrier tests. In these tests, they fell to “poor” The report comes as small cars take a larger share of U.S. new-vehicle sales. While R.L. Polk registrations show 13.8% of vehicles on the road are classed “small cars,” their share of new-car sales rose from 14.5% in 2006 to 18.1% last year, says Autodata.
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But wait later in the article:
Dave Schembri, president of Smart, says, “If you carry this to the nth degree, we’d all be driving 18-wheelers.” And, he says, fewer than 1% of crashes are as violent as the IIHS test.
Lund says the car vs. car tests are meant to mimic killer crashes, not fender benders. He also says that the only difference between the barrier test, in which Smart got a “good,” and the latest test is the size of the obstacle the Smart ran into.
Cynthia Sholander. of Fairfax, Va., praises Smart. She survived a horrific rear-end crash last October that sent her Smart sailing off Interstate 95, into trees, then bouncing back. Sholander says she suffered a concussion but no other injuries.
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The point here is they PUT THE CARS THROUGH TESTS THEY NEVER PERFORM.
Fact is roughly 37,000 people die in cars every year. This has been true since the mid 1960’s. Do you find this shocking? You should. That is again roughly 3,000 deaths a month. Even with the use of seat belts and airbags. Why? Because there are millions more drivers and cars then back then and the increase of large long and short haul trucks. But to slam a much larger vehicle into a much smaller vehicle head on and then “tut tut” that the smaller cars are more dangerous is just dumb. Top that off with Walter Williams and Robert Novak trembling on about the destruction they cause and you can tell the state of emotional alarmism echoing around the far right. That is until Novak ran over a pedestrian with his Corvette for God’s sake. The truth is:
Head-on collisions are an often fatal type of road traffic accident. U.S. statistics show that in 2005, head-on crashes were only 2.0% of all crashes, yet accounted for 10.1% of US fatal crashes. This over-representation is because the relative velocities of vehicles traveling in opposite directions is high. A head-on crash between two vehicles traveling at 50 mph is comparable to a vehicle traveling at 100 mph striking a stationary vehicle.
Head-on collisions, sideswipes, and run-off-road crashes all belong to a category of crashes called lane-departure or road-departure crashes. This is because they have similar causes, if different consequences. The driver of a vehicle fails to stay centered in their lane, and either leaves the roadway, or crosses the centerline, possibly resulting in a head-on or sideswipe collision, or, if the vehicle avoids oncoming traffic, a run-off-road crash on the far side of the road.
Preventive measures include traffic signs and road surface markings to help guide drivers through curves, as well as separating opposing lanes of traffic with wide central reservation (or median) and median barriers to prevent crossover incidents. Median barriers are physical barriers between the lanes of traffic, such as concrete barriers or wire rope safety barrier. These are actually roadside hazards in their own right, but on high speed roads, the severity of a collision with a median barrier is usually lower than the severity of a head-on crash.
The European Road Assessment Programme‘s Road Protection Score (RPS) is based on a schedule of detailed road design elements that correspond to each of the four main crash types, including head-on collisions. The Head-on Crash element of the RPS measures how well traffic lanes are separated. Motorways generally have crash protection features in harmony with the high speeds allowed. The Star Rating results show that motorways generally score well with a typical 4-star rating even though their permitted speeds are the highest on the network. But results from Star Rating research in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden have shown that there is a pressing need to find better median, run-off and junction protection at reasonable cost on single carriageway roads.
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So what are they afraid of and what are they spending billions to avoid? The “old car warrior”:
Published on Friday, August 9, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
The Quest for the Fuel Efficient Car
By Ralph Nader
Once again the Congressional toadies for the auto industry have beaten back efforts by legislators such as Democrat, Senator John Kerry and Republican John McCain to gradually increase fuel efficiency standards from the abysmally wasteful levels now inflicted on your pocketbook. Instead of choosing the path of reduced pollution, consumer savings, efficiency of engines and less reliance on imported oil, these indentured lawmakers turned their back on automotive engineers who know how to do the job but are not allowed by their bosses.
The Sierra Club has decided to stop spinning its wheels on Capitol Hill and go directly to the people. In surveys of likely voters in Missouri and South Dakota, 79 percent of the people wanted the auto industry to be required to increase fuel efficiency and that included light truck owners. The voters do not buy the auto company propaganda that more fuel efficient vehicles means less safety. Sixty percent of these voters say they would pay more for a higher mileage vehicle in return for its much larger dollar savings.
Long time car owners know that fuel efficiency overall is no better than what vehicles did in 1980! They are wary of the sudden spikes in gasoline prices. They also know that the companies spend lots of money on engine hyper-performance rather than on engine hyper-efficiency. Despite massive advertising by the auto companies to the contrary, they do not believe them.
Bolstered by public opinion, the Sierra Club announced a three year campaign to pressure automakers to improve fuel economy. Executive Director, Carl Pope, said “The technology exists today to allow the automakers to continue offering their most popular models, but with significantly improved fuel economy. These new safe, fuel-saving SUVs and pickups could be on the shelf very soon.” (see www.sierraclub.org for specific examples)
The Sierra Club is publicizing a “Freedom Option Package”, which is a set of fuel-saving components that could be added to most standard models and that, taken together, could put the fleets of the Big Three on the road to 40 miles per gallon.
Dan Becker, the Club’s Clean Energy director says that “Detroit wants to sell option packages featuring seat warmers and cup holders” instead. He is mobilizing the Club’s 700,000 members across the country to hold events at local auto dealers. Becker has enlisted a prominent Chevrolet dealer, Chuck Frank in support of this initiative.
The Sierra Club, once enthralled by Bill Ford’s environmental statements and assurances of major increases in Ford’s SUV’s is now so disappointed with his company’s joining the other auto giants to lobby against fuel-efficiency laws that it has singled him and Ford Motor Company for special pressure by motorists.
Soon to come (September 17th) is the most jolting book against the auto company executives since Unsafe at Any Speed came out in 1965. I am referring to New York Times reporter, Keith Bradsher’s devastating expose of the SUVs which he calls the world’s most dangerous vehicles and how they got that way. Titled The High and Mighty, this book explains how the auto industry’s grip on Congress got these SUVs (hoked-up, over-priced light truck) exempted form safety, fuel efficiency and pollution requirements that were imposed on automobiles. That was accomplished when these vehicles were a small percentage of overall sales. Now they are a large part of sales; they kill their occupants in roll overs three times the rate of cars; areuniquely dangerous to other motorists and will become more serious when drunks, teenagers, typically the worst drivers on the road, start buying the older used SUVs, Bradsher says.
With an impressive attention to detail and special documentation, Bradsher reports on the enormous advertising money ($10 billion spent since 1990) to deceive their customers and persuade Americans to switch from cars to the very profitable SUVs. While, he declares, “Gas-guzzling SUVs emit one-third more global-warming gases per mile than cars, and up to 5.5 times as much smog-causing nitrogen oxides per mile.”
If the media grasps the importance of this book, September will be a hot month for the high and mighty in Detroit’s executive suites. And long overdue.
Originally started in response to WWI fuel shortages and escalated during WWII for all the obvious reasons …ummm apartheid and the efforts to defeat the ANC and Nelsen Mandella.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s energy minister said on Thursday the country was still in the grip of a major power crisis despite being able to keep the lights on since a series of blackouts early last year.
Voluntary energy savings had failed to meet the required levels, and the country was risking new power cuts, the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Buyelwa Sonjica said in a statement.
State-owned utility Eskom, which provides 95 percent of the country’s power, has rationed electricity since early last year, but has not cut power since last April.
Sonjica said Africa’s biggest economy was suffering from a perilously low electricity reserve margin or spare capacity.
“The recent lack of blackouts has led to the assumption that our energy situation has been resolved,” Sonjica said.
“Unfortunately this is far from the truth. We are in trouble unless we all begin to take responsibility for our habits of energy wastage.”
Two years ago, Sonjica urged South Africans to save 10 percent of their electricity usage every year for the next five years but so far energy savings were way below that, she said.
Sonjica said a healthy electricity reserve margin was about 17 to 20 percent, to ensure that sudden changes in demand or supply and power-plant maintenance do not cause blackouts.
Eskom said in January the reserve margin was about 8 percent, and has said its long term target is 15 percent.
She said following the success of the Earth Hour over the weekend, and with winter fast approaching, she wanted South Africans to save power to ensure stable electricity supply.
Lights went out in homes across the globe on Saturday for Earth Hour 2009, a global event designed to highlight the threat from climate change.
Sonjica said the Earth Hour initiative would promote awareness that the country still faced a serious energy crisis because South Africa’s record on energy conservation was poor.
“South Africa is one of the least energy efficient nations in the world and the least efficient in Africa,” she said.
“We also hold the number 11 spot on the top 20 greenhouse gas emitters list and are responsible for 42 percent of Africa’s emissions. Every kilowatt of electricity you use produces 1 kg of carbon dioxide; one of the main greenhouse gases.”
Critics say the energy crisis that dented South Africa’s growth and investor-friendly image was caused by the government’s failure to invest in new power generation plants, coupled with surging demand led to the power crisis. Continued…
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I don’t think that sounds so good…SO KEEP TALKING CLEAN COAL BABY…it is a quick way to energy death.
Let us say that you had an operable form of cancer and your doctor offered you chemotherapy. What would you say to him? Let us imagine that you had a torn tendon and your doctor offered you aspirin as your main form of treatment. What would you say? Actually you would probably CHANGE doctors…
Drilling began this week for a carbon dioxide injection well as part of an $84.3 million project beneath Archer Daniels Midland Co. property.Workers have started constructing a well that will reach more than 6,500 feet underground. The drilling of the injection well is expected to be completed in late March or early April.
No objections were filed before a late January deadline for an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency permit approving the process. That clears the way for the drilling equipment to be moved into place, said Sallie Greenberg, Illinois Geological Survey communications coordinator. The project is intended to capture carbon dioxide from ADM’s ethanol plant, convert it into liquid and pump it underground for storage before it’s emitted into the atmosphere. The U.S. Department of Energy expects 1 million tons of carbon dioxide from the plant to be injected over a three-year period, beginning in early 2010. The project is intended to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming.
Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium receives Phase III funding Storage, Feb 21 2008 (Carbon Capture Journal)
– The Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC), and the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS) have been awarded a $66.7 million contract from the US DOE.
The funding is to conduct a Phase III large-scale sequestration demonstration project in the Mt. Simon Sandstone.
The MGSC, ISGS, and Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) will work together on this carbon sequestration project, which will involve the capture and storage of CO2 from ADM’s ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois.
The $84.3 million project will be funded by $66.7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy over a period of seven years, supplemented by cofunding from ADM, Schlumberger Carbon Services, and other corporate and state resources.
The project is designed to confirm the ability of the Mt. Simon Sandstone, a major regional saline reservoir in Illinois, to accept and store 1 million metric tonnes of CO2 over a period of three years.
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Already they are a year behind..Why does this sound like a replay of NUCLEAR Power. Delays….Cost over runs….Accidents… All to avoid leaving the nasty stuff in the ground in the first place. Even Scientific America gets into the act:
OXYFUEL: In September 2007 the oxyfuel combustion chamber is lifted into place at the Schwarze Pumpe power plant in Germany–one of the first power plants in the world to capture carbon dioxide. Courtesy of Vattenfal
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of five features on carbon capture and storage, running daily from April 6 to April 10, 2009.
Like all big coal-fired power plants, the 1,600-megawatt-capacity Schwarze Pumpe plant in Spremberg, Germany, is undeniably dirty. Yet a small addition to the facility—a tiny boiler that pipes 30 MW worth of steam to local industrial customers—represents a hope for salvation from the global climate-changing consequences of burning fossil fuel.
To heat that boiler, the damp, crumbly brown coal known as lignite—which is even more polluting than the harder black anthracite variety—burns in the presence of pure oxygen, a process known as oxyfuel, releasing as waste both water vapor and that more notorious greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). By condensing the water in a simple pipe, Vattenfall, the Swedish utility that owns the power plant, captures and isolates nearly 95 percent of the CO2 in a 99.7 percent pure form.
That CO2 is then compressed into a liquid and given to another company, Linde, for sale; potential users range from the makers of carbonated beverages, such as Coca-Cola, to oil firms that use it to squeeze more petroleum out of declining deposits. In principle, however, the CO2 could also be pumped deep underground and locked safely away in specific rock formations for millennia.
From the International Energy Agency to the United Nations–sanctioned Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), such carbon capture and storage (CCS), particularly for coal-fired power plants, has been identified as a technology critical to enabling deep, rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. After all, coal burning is responsible for 40 percent of the 30 billion metric tons of CO2 emitted by human activity every year.
“There is the potential for the U.S. and other countries to continue to rely on coal as a source of energy while at the same time protecting the climate from the massive greenhouse gas emissions associated with coal,” says Steve Caldwell, coordinator for regional climate change policy at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
Even President Barack Obama has labeled the technology as important for “energy independence” and included $3.4 billion in the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for “clean coal” power.
Today three types of technology can capture CO2 at a power plant. One, as at Schwarze Pumpe, involves the oxyfuel process: burning coal in pure oxygen to produce a stream of CO2-rich emissions. The second uses various forms of chemistry—in the form of amine scrubbers, special membranes or ionic liquids—to pull carbon dioxide out of a more mixed set of exhaust gases. The third is gasification, in which liquid or solid fuels are first turned into synthetic natural gas; CO2 from the conversion of the gas can be siphoned off.
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Then there is this:
ckmapawatt at 10:27 PM on 04/06/09
NO, NO, NO. Carbon Capture and Storage is not the answer! It is treating the symptoms and not the disease.
I recently wrote a blog looking at this same issue:
http://blog.mapawatt.com/2009/03/13/carbon-capture-and-storage/Basically, we can take BILLIONS and spend it on burying something underground, or we can spend that money and put it to good use while taking the same amount of CO2 out of the air.
Carbon Capture is short term decision making and thinking that is mainly being promoted by the Coal Industry. Would you really call Carbon Capture a sustainable practice?
(Disclaimer: the below article is a thought experiment. I’m not suggesting it as a real solution, but rather a way to analyze two different carbon mitigating strategies. Enjoy!)
You might have seen the environmental articles recently related to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Basically, all CCS does is take the CO2 that coal plants produce, collect it, and pump it underground. Sounds like a good idea right? Well, on the surface it does, but let’s dig down into the actual numbers a little bit.
In order to better understand the proposed function of CCS, let’s walk through a comparison of a power generation plant with and without CCS. I’m going to look at two options:
Option 1: 500 MW (capacity before CCS) IGCC (type of coal plant) with Carbon Capture and Storage
Option 2: 500 MW IGCC plant with the money that would be used on CCS to be spent on a wind farm
In comparing our two options, pretend you’re the President of Power Generation Company for planet Earth (this is a made up company. The point is you base your decisions on what is best for the planet and the people buying your power. You don’t base your decisions on politics). In both options the 500 MW IGCC plant is already installed, you are just comparing whether to spend money on carbon capture and storage, or take the equivalent amount of money and use it for another purpose that would help the environment, in this case a wind farm.
You may ask: Why do I want to install a wind farm if my goal is to reduce CO2 (even though your real goal is to do what’s best for Earth)? Because you are all powerful, you are going to figure out how much energy the wind farm produces, then find an old dirty coal plant that produces the same amount of energy, and take that coal plant off line. Therefore, reducing the amount of CO2 that enters the atmosphere by enabling the old coal plant to be taken off line, and also helping wind power reach economies of scale.
Installing CCS or a Wind Farm that replaces old Coal:
A recent paper by David and Herzog at MIT estimated the future cost of CCS at $1,145/kw (estimated cost in 2012) of installed power. So, for the 500 MW IGCC plant, it would cost $572.5 million dollars to install CCS technology. Now, you have the option of taking this money and using it to buy a Wind Farm instead. The American Wind Energy Association states that it costs about $ 1 million to install 1 MW of generating capacity for a wind farm. Therefore, $572.5 million will enable you to install 572 MW of installed wind energy (with $500 k left over)!
In order to analyze how much CO2 will be kept out of the atmosphere by taking the old coal plant off line, we have to calculate the yearly power output of the wind farm. To do this, you need what is called a Capacity Factor. Basically, this is just the percentage of time during the year that a power producing facility produces power at its rated capacity. The organization National Wind Watch states that in 2003, the average capacity factor for US wind farms was 26.9%. Therefore, to calculate how much energy the wind farm produces (MWh) during the year:
Yearly Output (MWh) = (installed capacity)*(capacity factor)*(hours in a day)*(days in a year) =
Now we have to use this value to decide how big a coal plant this would replace. Using the wind farm yearly output and the average capacity factor for Coal plants in the US, which is 73.6%, we can use the above Yearly Energy Output equation to back-solve for the “installed capacity” the wind farm would replace:
Installed Capacity (MW) = (yearly output) ÷ (Capacity factor * hours in a day * days in a year) =
(1,347,884) ÷ (.736*24*365) = 209 MW
Therefore, if you use the $527.5 million dollars it would cost to install CCS on a 500 MW IGCC coal plant for a wind farm, the energy the wind farm produces is equivalent to a 209 MW pulverized coal plant!
See Dyson was a poseur. If you remember all of his stuff outside of his “specialty” of physics was as A Purposeful Heretic. A better name for it would have been obstreperous old penis….He demanded more “biological data” but he never once did any biological field work. He was originally worried about global warming. Wonder what changed his mind? Could it have been his work on JASON?
JASON is an independent scientific advisory group that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology. It was established in 1960.
JASON typically performs most of its work during an annual summer study, and has conducted studies under contract to the Department of Defense (frequently DARPA and the U.S. Navy), the Department of Energy, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and the FBI. Approximately half of the resulting JASON reports are unclassified.
A selection of recent JASON studies is offered below.
JASON was asked by staff at the National MASINT Committee of ODNI to evaluate the scientific, technological, and national security significance of high frequency gravitational waves (HFGW). Our main conclusions are that the proposed applications of the science of HFGW are fundamentally wrong; that there can be no security threat; and that independent scientific and technical vetting of such hypothetical threats is generally necessary.
The tasking for this study was to evaluate the potential for adversaries to exploit advances in Human Performance Modification, and thus create a threat to national security. In making this assessment, we were asked to evaluate long-term scenarios. We have thus considered the present state of the art in pharmaceutical intervention in cognition and in brain-computer interfaces, and considered how possible future developments might proceed and be used by adversaries.
JASON was asked by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to review the current status of the conflict between the ever-growing number of wind-turbine farms and air-security radars that are located within some tens of miles of a turbine farm.
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Could it be the high flying polluting US Air Force had a hand in Mr. Dyson’s transformation? The study, Wind Farms and Radar, though I can’t reproduce it here, had Dyson as one of it’s main investigators and Paul Horowitz as another. Michael Brenner was the lead investigator. The neocons were after wind power.
This article is about the US defense advisory group. For other uses, see Jason (disambiguation). For the data serialization format, see JSON.
JASON is an independent group of scientists which advises the United States Government on matters of science and technology. The group was first created as a way to get a younger generation of scientists — that is, not the older Los Alamos and MIT Radiation Laboratory alumni — involved in advising the government. It was established in 1960 and has somewhere between 30 and 60 members.
For administrative purposes, JASON’s activities are run through the MITRE Corporation, a non-profit corporation in McLean, Virginia, which contracts with the Defense Department.
JASON typically performs most of its work during an annual summer study. Its sponsors include the Department of Defense (frequently DARPA and the United States Navy), the Department of Energy, and the U.S. intelligence community. Most of the resulting JASON reports are classified.
The name “JASON” is sometimes explained as an acronym, standing either for “July-August-September-October-November”, the months in which the group would typically meet; or, tongue in cheek, for “Junior Achiever, Somewhat Older Now”. However, neither explanation is correct; in fact, the name is not an acronym at all. It is a reference to Jason, a character from Greek mythology. The wife of one of the founders (Mildred Goldberger [1]) thought the name given by the defense department, Project Sunrise, was unimaginative and suggested the group be named for a hero and his search.
JASON studies have included a now-mothballed system for communicating with submarines using extremely long radio waves (Project Seafarer, Project Sanguine); an astronomical technique for overcoming the atmosphere’s distortion (Adaptive optics); the many problems of missile defense; technologies for verifying compliance with treaties banning nuclear tests; a 1982 report predicting CO2-driven global warming; and, most controversially, a system of computer-linked sensors developed during the Vietnam War which became the precursor to the modern electronic battlefield.
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Anyway Data and Field Research always will out in the end:
I AM shocked, truly shocked,” says Katey Walter, an ecologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. “I was in Siberia a few weeks ago, and I am now just back in from the field in Alaska. The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling up out of them.”
The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling out of them
Back in 2006, in a paper in Nature, Walter warned that as the permafrost in Siberia melted, growing methane emissions could accelerate climate change. But even she was not expecting such a rapid change. “Lakes in Siberia are five times bigger than when I measured them in 2006. It’s unprecedented. This is a global event now, and the inertia for more permafrost melt is increasing.”
No summer ice
The dramatic changes in the Arctic Ocean have often been in the news in the past two years. There has been a huge increase in the amount of sea ice melting each summer, and some are now predicting that as early as 2030 there will be no summer ice in the Arctic at all.
Discussions about the consequences of the vanishing ice usually focus either on the opening up of new frontiers for shipping and mineral exploitation, or on the plight of polar bears, which rely on sea ice for hunting. The bigger picture has got much less attention: a warmer Arctic will change the entire planet, and some of the potential consequences are nothing short of catastrophic.
Changes in ocean currents, for instance, could disrupt the Asian monsoon, and nearly two billion people rely on those rains to grow their food. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it is also possible that positive feedback from the release of methane from melting permafrost could lead to runaway warming……
…….Locked away
The real worry, though, is that permafrost contains organic carbon in the form of long-dead plants and animals. Some of it, including the odd mammoth, has remained frozen for tens of thousands of years. When the permafrost melts, much of this carbon is likely to be released into the atmosphere.
No one knows for sure how much carbon is locked away in permafrost, but it seems there is much more than we thought. An international study headed by Edward Schuur of the University of Florida last year doubled previous estimates of the carbon content of permafrost to about 1600 billion tonnes – roughly a third of all the carbon in the world’s soils and twice as much as is in the atmosphere……
……….Potent greenhouse gas
What’s more, if summer melting depth exceeds the winter refreezing level then a layer of permanently unfrozen soil known as a talik forms, sandwiched between the permafrost below and the winter-freezing surface layer. “A talik allows heat to build more quickly in the soil, hastening the long-term thaw of permafrost,” says Lawrence.
The carbon in melting permafrost can enter the atmosphere either as carbon dioxide or methane, which is a far more potent greenhouse gas, molecule-for-molecule. If organic matter decomposes in the low-oxygen conditions typical of the boggy soils and lakes in these regions, more methane forms.
Researchers have been monitoring the Stordalen mire in northern Sweden for decades. The permafrost there is melting fast and, as conditions become wetter, it is releasing ever more methane into the air, says Torben Christensen of Lund University in Sweden. This is the future for most of the northern hemisphere’s permafrost, he says.
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Please read more but caution is required. It could make you ill.
Well that depends on your perspective. Americans are so used to not calculating the energy that goes into making things that they act like they appear “by magic”. But they require a lot of energy to make and presented with that evidence people might forgo a bunch of “stuff”, objectives, the old material accumulations, valuable possessions and all that.
1. Coal produces what percentage of America’s electricity?
50%. Coal is a dirty 19th century technology, yet still produces half of our electricity. France, in comparison, produces more than 80% of its electricity from carbon-free nuclear power.
After visiting the border we were taken to the site of an abandoned open pit iron mine. With prices increasing, several companies are considering reopening the mine.
Today, 1984, most of the steel mills in the United States have either phased out or merged with foreign steel mills. — A very sad state of affairs, and leaving millions of steel workers unemployed. — The steel mills exploited the immigrants when they came to this country. — The steel mills made their fortunes and failed to modernize their plants. — They phased them out and invested in foreign plants — exploited those workers and then dumped their steel into this country, and making another fortune. — Yes, I know that this is a free country, and corporations can do what they want with their money, but I always felt that there was a moral obligation on the part of the steel mills, (and other corporations) to re-invest in America.
of the hot garbage they produce, the quicker we get rid of them. Geologic storage is the only hope. I know I am supposed to be posting about gardening…but somethings I just gotta get off my chest..!
for used radioactive fuel rods piling up near power plants
By Michael Hawthorne |Tribune reporter
March 11, 2009
In a pool of water just a football field away from Lake Michigan, about 1,000 tons of highly radioactive fuel from the scuttled Zion Nuclear Power Station is waiting for someplace else to spend a few thousand years.
The wait just got longer.
President Barack Obama‘s proposed budget all but kills the Yucca Mountain project, the controversial site where the U.S. nuclear industry’s spent fuel rods were supposed to end up in permanent storage deep below the Nevada desert. There are no other plans in the works, meaning the waste for now will remain next to Zion and 104 other reactors scattered across the country.
Obama has said too many questions remain about whether storing waste at Yucca Mountain is safe, and his decision fulfills a campaign promise. But it also renews nagging questions about what to do with the radioactive waste steadily accumulating in 35 states.
With seven nuclear plant sites, Illinois relies more heavily on nuclear power and has a larger stockpile of spent fuel than any other state. Besides Zion near Lake Michigan, plants storing waste are sited along the Illinois, Rock and Mississippi Rivers.Customers of ComEd and other nuclear utilities have shelled out $10 billion to develop the Yucca Mountain site in spare-change-size charges tacked on to electric bills. Most of that money will have been wasted, and experts forecast that billions more will be spent on damage suits from utilities that counted on the federal government to come up with a burial ground
The American public has been told for 100 years that prices are controlled by supply and demand. What if that is not true? The implications for how we treat the rich are enormous. Yet the energy market, one of our largest ever, is pointing to the idea that there is no relation between supply and demand.
Glut caused by world slowdown leaves the world awash in crude
NEW YORK – Supertankers that once raced around the world to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for oil are now parked offshore, fully loaded, anchors down, their crews killing time. In the United States, vast storage farms for oil are almost out of room.
As demand for crude has plummeted, the world suddenly finds itself awash in oil that has nowhere to go.
It’s been less than a year since oil prices hit record highs. But now producers and traders are struggling with the new reality: The world wants less oil, not more. And turning off the spigot is about as easy as turning around one of those tankers.
So oil companies and investors are stashing crude, waiting for demand to rise and the bear market to end so they can turn a profit later.
Meanwhile, oil-producing countries such as Iran have pumped millions of barrels of their own crude into idle tankers, effectively taking crude off the market to halt declining prices that are devastating their economies.
Traders have always played a game of store and sell, bringing oil to market when it can fetch the best price. They say this time is different because of how fast the bottom fell out of the oil market.
“Nobody expected this,” said Antoine Halff, an analyst with Newedge. “The majority of people out there thought the market would keep rising to $200, even $250, a barrel. They were tripping over each other to pick a higher forecast.”
Now the strategy is storage. Anyone who can buy cheap oil and store it might be able to sell it at a premium later, when the global economy ramps up again.
The oil tanks that surround Cushing, Okla., in a sprawling network that holds 10 percent of the nation’s oil, have been swelling for months. Exactly how close they are to full is a closely guarded secret, but analysts who cover the industry say Cushing is approaching capacity.
There are other storage tanks in the country with plenty of extra room to take on oil, but Cushing is the delivery point for the oil traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange. So the closer Cushing gets to full, the lower the price of oil goes.
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YET the price of gasoline continues to go up…How is that possible? Prices in Springfield went from $1.75 to current price of $1.99 in a day. This article is a month old BUT:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Average gasoline prices rose 1.7 cents Friday, according to a daily survey of gas station credit card swipes.
The price of gas rose to a national average of $1.816 a gallon from $1.799 a day earlier, according to motorist group AAA. Prices were higher than the $1.667 a gallon reported a month ago, but lower than the $3.044 a gallon gas was selling for on the same day last year.
Gas prices have risen for the past three days, according to AAA data, and are nearly 20 cents higher than they were on Jan. 1.
Gas prices initially rose last year, following a resurgence in the price of crude oil, gas’s main ingredient. But as concern about falling demand for oil sent crude prices down more than $6 a barrel this week, the drivers may be in for a decline in gas prices as well.
“The American consumer is still staying home,” said Geoff Sundstrom, fuel price analyst at AAA.
“There’s absolutely no reason why the price of gasoline should be as high as it is,” he said.
In Victoria the temperature has been above 44 degrees all week and they are forecasting another week of 40+ temperatures. Power is failing, trains have stopped running because tracks are buckling under the heat . It’s just scorching. And it seems that the people are not the only ones suffering. Check out these photos of a little Koala which just walked onto a back porch looking for a bit of heat relief. The woman filled up a bucket for it and this is what happened!
Kinda dark but:
Getting better:
About right:
But see this is actually the effects of Global Warming. We are burning the animals and plants off this planet UP.
For those who track their local temperatures using the Celsius scale, 40 degrees is a daunting number. In early February 2009, residents of southeastern Australia were cringing at their weather forecasts, as predictions of temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) meant that a blistering heat wave was continuing.
This map of Australia shows how the land surface temperature from January 25 to February 1 compared to the average mid-summer temperatures the continent experienced between 2000-2008. Places where temperatures were warmer than average are red, places experiencing near-normal temperatures are white, and places where temperatures were cooler than average are blue. The data were collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. While southern Australia was scorching, a similarly large area of northern and central Australia was several degrees cooler than it was in the previous nine years. The cool anomaly across that region is probably linked to the above-average rainfall the area has received during this year’s wet season.
Land surface temperature is how hot the surface of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location. From a satellite’s point of view, the “surface” is whatever it sees when it looks through the atmosphere to the ground. That could be the sand on a beach, the grass on a lawn, the roof of a building, or a paved road. Thus, daytime land surface temperature is often much higher than the air temperature that is included in the daily weather report—a fact that anyone who has walked barefoot across a parking lot on a summer afternoon could verify.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) called this heat wave “exceptional,” not only for the high temperatures but for their duration. One-day records were broken in multiple cities, with temperatures in the mid-40s. In Kyancutta, South Australia, the temperature reached 48.2 degrees Celsius (118.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Many places also set records for the number of consecutive days with record-breaking heat.
Mt.Natib is the highest summit in the entire Natib Caldera System in the Bataan Natural Park, a dormant volcano with an elevation of 1,253 meters above sea level (masl). It lies between the larger Old Caldera and the smaller Pasukulan Caldera and represents the latest of the volcanic edifice to develop in the area. The slope is characterized by very steep forested slope. Mossy forest characterized by small-stunted trees occurs approaching the peak. The peak is covered by a small patch of grassland. Also found are boulders with inscribed names of American expeditionary forces that climbed the peak way back the 1930s.
