The good news is, TransCanada shut down the Keystone pipeline today!
The bad news is, they had to because their Indian-steel pipe sprang a leak and poured maybe 5,000 barrels of tar sands oil and toxic mystery solvents onto the western Marshall County prairie. TransCanada assures us everything is fine:
TransCanada (TSX, NYSE: TRP) crews safely shut down its Keystone pipeline at approximately 6 a.m. CST (5 a.m. MST) after a drop in pressure was detected in its operating system resulting from an oil leak that is under investigation. The estimated volume of the leak is approximately 5,000 barrels. The section of pipe along a right-of-way approximately 35 miles (56 kilometres) south of the Ludden pump station in Marshall County, South Dakota was completely isolated within 15 minutes and emergency response procedures were activated [TransCanada, statement to KSFY, 2017.11.16].
Thanks for including the stock ticker tag, TransCanada! We’re all happy to know that TransCanada stock has improved 9.6% since the beginning of this year. Update 17:38 CST: TransCanada closed the day up 18 cents.
The Marshall County spill beats last year’s Freeman spill by 4,600 barrels.
Hmm… what was I saying about wind power earlier today?
Wind is currently blowing through Amherst from the south-southeast at 23 miles per hour.
Update 16:57 CST: The DENR Spill Reports database locates the spill around 41690 116th Street, closest intersection 116th Street and 417th Avenue. The reported coordinates are 45°42’28” N 97°52’36” W, two miles south and two miles east of Amherst, or six miles south and six miles west of Britton.
Update 17:18 CST: The reported coordinates of the leak appear on the original PUC map of the pipeline route to be between mile 233 and 234 of the pipeline, near where the 2008 map shows the pipeline bending 15° west of south.
Update 17:52 CST: In 2006, TransCanada estimated the frequency of spills from the Keystone pipeline thus:
Based on probabilities generated from the study, the estimated occurrence intervals for a spill of 50 barrels or less occurring anywhere along the entire pipeline system is once every 65 years, a spill between 50 and 1,000 barrels might occur once in 12 years; a spill of 1,000 and 10,000 barrels might occur once in 39 years; and a spill containing more than 10,000 barrels might occur once in 50 years. Applying these statistics to a 1-mile section, the chances of a larger spill (greater than 10,000 barrels) would be less than once every 67,000 years [ENSR Corporation for TransCanada, “Pipeline Risk Assessment and Environmental Consequence Analysis,” Document No. 10623-004, June 2006].
How huge was the leak if it spit out approx. 5k bbls in 15 minutes? Someone is selling the general public wolf tickets.
Last spill was estimated a one or two drops per minute and I think it was calculated at that rate the pipeline was leaking decades before it was ever installed.
South Dakota got wingnutted again.
…And within days of the Nebraska PSC’s decision on KXL.
Hope they pay attention.
Sure would have been nice to have $500 million in indemnity right now, eh?
I wonder what Nelson, Johnston, Lederman and Rave have to say?
The Keystone XL approval meeting to which Rebecca refers is Monday in Lincoln at the PSC, just 4-5 blocks up from the Nebraska Capitol. I’m sure our friends at Bold Nebraska will make sure everyone at the meeting knows about today’s leak.
Displacing pipeline oil with wind power doesn’t make any sense unless you also replace gasoline-powered vehicles that use said oil with electric ones recharged by wind energy (or biofuel or bio-based products to replace petrochemicals that use electricity from wind in its processing).
If you keep building wind turbines instead of pipelines, then nobody will be able to drive to these meetings to protest the pipelines….
Most of the dilbit will be refined in Texas and sold on the open market overseas. But the price is still too low for dilbit to be feasible to produce.
I wouldn’t worry about not being able to drive to those protests just yet.
Sounds like we should be building wind turbines in Europe to recharge their electric cars instead of around here, because they would be using the pipeline oil.
a spill between 50 and 1,000 barrels might occur once in 12 years;
You have had 2 in the last couple years. So much for probabilities, eh?
It just occurred to me that these aren’t spills. For the purpose of these probabilities these are considered leaks. Now I feel better about this.
Disappointing day…,
This and Al
Start your clocks. 39 more years.
Trump said in China that Keystone XL has 42,000 employees, hope that is enough to clean up the mess.
Lincoln County and now this, wow. I wonder how much the PUC will get paid to look the other way some more. There is no other reason than corruption for them to be ignoring the facts that pipelines always always leak. Good racket these politicos have.
It is fair to demand effort to avoid spills (and leaks) and clean things up when they occur, as well as to have as good of a pipeline and a pipeline monitoring system as is feasible.
Tesla introduces its electric semi truck. https://livestream.tesla.com/ Is it fair to say that this even beats rail? Musk says so, check it out.
“Musk may suggest that the vehicles are best for fixed routes between two points where chargers can be installed, or where the truck can sit overnight. Hauling goods from a port to an inland distribution center would be an ideal use case. ”
https://www.wired.com/story/what-we-know-about-the-tesla-truck/
The big issue will be the batteries, of course.
We truck wind to the power plants just like we do coal. Wind spills are MORE dangerous than coal, oil and solar spills, but let’s not forget about how solar gas and sludge pollutes the land, air and water every-single-time a solar pipe burst. It happens all the time; it’s just that no one wants to talk about it.
And what about all that electricity it takes to spin those big wind turbines around? …And what about the wind that those big wind propellers produce: a.) wrecking the microclimate ecosystem in the area around and b.) increasing wind resistance against nearby cars driving down highways and thereby reducing gas milage for automobiles.
How come nobody ever talks about that?!?!
I get my power from my attitude, not my electric company. My car runs on burnt tires, and I can get 10 miles per tire if I lay off the ‘gas.’ It’s a good car for short commutes (usually in the city) rather than my custom baby seal skinned interior, Cadillac, with endangered rhino horn accents and elephant tusk knobs on my stereo, which I save for longer drives. I am working on converting this vehicle to ‘tire power’ as well, but driving either car is like heaven, to me.
Believe me; I understand business. Me sensible.
Wired is correct! Musk showed that the idea is to move convoy vehicles to a destination point and so on, just like Amazon does and is seeking right now. Independently, John Deere is doing much the same with farm equipment in France and my guess, forest work equipment as well. I have found the same with a new Milwaukee system of battery power tools, holy schmooly they work good and last long.
Okay then, some writers on a blog post can clearly see the advantage of investing in renewable energy like Facebook is now doing in Nebraska. As far as I can see, we are not MIT graduates but we get the big picture. This oil in the pipelines violates all that is science as far as checks and balances. Any scientist should be able to tell you that any kind of heavy substance in a pipe line will eventually harden to the point that it will fail the line. Cory points out that there is an elbow that may well have been the problem currently, how many elbows are in the snake? How many risers are there? The list goes on and each one of those are problematic. As the flow goes as well as time and ground movement, there will be more, science tells us that.
Good grief—Transcanada blows another gasket, or maybe another bad weld, and poisons another plot of ground, and some want to argue we shouldn’t adopt cleaner transportation systems? Hmm… let’s (a) use less oil by conservation (protestors, press, try carpooling to the spill site) and (b) promote supply and demand for electric cars. The market can solve this problem and reduce the risk to our water.
Crikey, Cummins unveils its electric semi truck https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2017/08/29/take-that-tesla-diesel-engine-giant-cummins-unveils-heavy-duty-truck-powered-by-electricity/#2a90707478f1 500 to 600 miles of range, damn doc, that is a game changer for sure. Let oil stay in ground where needs to be. Bring on the wind power and the solar power like they are putting into Edgemont, South Dakota. Fire the crooks in Pierre and jump start our potential with simple safe renewable energy. Suddenly, it will be like new here and our educated children will want to hang around and work here. Economic development is what it is called, but the crooks in Pierre call it a death knell for there mode of thought.
So what is the solution to the existing pipelines that leak folks, any ideas? Or are we just going to watch as martial law is declared on these site and the bullcrap comes in on whatever the hell they want to tell us regarding the spill amount? We have a PUC that is content to look the other way and a legislature that is only interested in how much they can fleece the public for their own personal needs.
In my view, the Facebook fund me program makes sense to drive consumers and investors towards cleaner forms of transportation to take away the need for fossil fuels, all of them.
TransCanada provides its own update page on the Amherst spill, though so far the only update is yesterday afternoon’s post:
https://www.transcanada.com/amherst-incident
TransCanada also offers an aerial photo of the leak zone.
Wind is fine but the good Dr. McTaggart is right. Nuclear is the way to go and gasoline won’t go away whether you drive a big honking truck really fast or a VW bug really slow. I like big honking trucks. And the Sisseton Whapeton Oyate is concerned about wind pinwheels slapping migrating birds out of the air.
Yes Adam, you don’t see the issues with all the chemicals used in solar cell processing or the mining practices in China for the rare earths. And you don’t see what happens when the solar cells or wind turbine blades are thrown away. None of those things could impact clean water….could they?
Maybe oil, solar, and wind should have to go through the same safety checks and balances that the nuclear supply chain does. Layers of verification, traceability of where the part came from, regulation of waste disposal, continued monitoring of materials and who has access, etc.
Oops, that would make those things more expensive and less competitive with nuclear. My bad. But it would force them to be more reliable.
Today renewables generate a total of 10% of our energy consumed across all sectors (this includes biofuels and electricity and burning of wood for heat, hydro, geothermal, etc.).
The EIA reports that petroleum constitutes 36% of our total energy consumption, and coal is another 14%, so we’d like to replace 50% of our total energy right now. So if you could do this with renewables only, they would need to deliver a total of 60% of our energy today. Tomorrow it will be a larger energy pie, so the amount will grow.
And that 50% is also delivered whenever people demand it…the coal plant is always on and we can fill up the gas tank whenever we want. That is the primary challenge for market-based solutions from clean energy.
We are currently on a path of rejecting nuclear, not having energy storage available, and burning ever more natural gas as a result to make up for renewables. That satisfies the energy demand, but in the long term it will not solve the climate issue.
Now, the only thing that will solve the climate issue is for about 85% of earth’s inhabitants to give up the ghost. Until we decide who among us will take the plunge into Soylent Green https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf6bQ_5_q24
Doc- how feasible is it to replace that 50% if these renewables had not kept being sidelined by politics and campaign contributions from fossil fuel industries?
Nuclear has been asking the very same questions for decades. Nuclear and renewables have that in common.
We are beginning to replace coal with wind/solar/gas, probably about 50% wind/solar, and 50% gas. Those three are the easiest to build up front at the moment.
Alternative vehicles are really just now getting off the ground, and await the necessary recharging capacity to take off.
So I don’t know how long that process will take.
Wind and solar can be used to produce portable fuels such as methanol or anhydrous ammonia. New battery technology has already been developed and marketed.
We have squandered enough money on wars to protect fossil fuel resources and markets that we could have converted all energy use in the US to wind, solar, and improved hydro. Thorium nuclear plants might make more sense than Uranium based, but General Electric isn’t dumping millions into political ads and contributions to make their technology obsolete.
China will change the energy environment and beat the US to a pulp if we do not start doing research on renewable systems and we can’t wait until South Dakota can harvest tidal energy on east and west coasts of our state.
Households use a lot of energy that would not be necessary at all with better use of insulation and better siting for solar use. Giving tax breaks to the upper one half percent of the population won’t do anything to benefit economy or employment. Wind and solar and more efficiency and insulation can benefit employment and livable environment for us and our descendants. We are getting insanity from our legislators in Washington and Pierre. The opportunities are around us, and I don’t think we want Dr. McTaggert in charge of development
I’m not running for grand poo-bah of energy, but thanks for your due consideration.
I get it, you want more wind and solar. But that doesn’t mean wind and solar alone will generate the power that people actually use, when they want to use it…just because you like it.
And that wind/solar/gas combo can actually backfire, because commercial energy storage is not viable. Efficiency gains level off, we consume ever more natural gas as the world grows, and we wind up with more carbon emissions than today.
Even if energy storage were to pan out, and solar/wind efficiencies could increase, you will still need some nuclear to meet the needs of a growing population around the globe.
Extra energy will be necessary to pull carbon out of the air. Ultimately if we push wind/solar/gas only, that is what we will have to do. If only there were an energy source that could provide the intensity necessary without emitting carbon….hmmm.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16/us/keystone-pipeline-leak/index.html
Our friend in Puerto Rico, about one hour from San Juan, still has no power. She got water a week ago but no juice. They are living without it as American citizens. So we can do that.
Yes we could, and in the history of the U.S. we certainly did at one point. But do you believe that the American public today is going to go without air conditioning, refrigeration, TV, cell phones, or a car? Or vote for someone who pledges to take those away? I’d rather be delivering all of the energy people need without emitting carbon.
The only good news about Puerto Rico is that there is the opportunity to start from scratch. Probably solar and gas would be feasible right now, then maybe some geothermal down the road.
Wave and wind energy, state-hood, big time tourism, infrastructure and a couple of democratic senators too.
These reasonable discussions are going nowhere with Trump’s billionaire anti-science society supported by the uneducated and Thune/Rounds’s spineless greedy “me-too-ism” perpetually in office.
Doc, thanks for the recent response but I can’t find it.
Could be on another thread…they move down quickly sometimes.
Trump’s envoys at a climate change summit in Germany are pushing carbon capture for coal and some nuclear in their discussions. At the moment, cities and states tend to emphasize renewables more than the present administration in DC.
History, I am talking about a hurricane that just hit about 6 weeks ago. The Americans in Puerto Rico are getting by without much help from government, the republican dream of being a yeoman. Make it on your own is our new making America great again meme.
We have a serious several thousand barrels of oil spill and we go about our business. Kind of like mass shootings, you just get used to a corrupted government with no teeth. All bark and no bite for its people unless there is a profit for those who give the okay to the poison. So the PUC heard all kinds of testimony about oil leaks, drips and failures and yet they gave the go ahead nod to this bunch of crooks and proven liars. They took the word of the money of the words of the citizens they were elected to protect. How much was it worth to them?
Come on down off your high horse doc, poor folks right here in South Dakota, just got booted from cell phones and access. “But do you believe that the American public today is going to go without air conditioning, refrigeration, TV, cell phones, or a car?” Yeah, I believe it because I can see it. I see it each and every day, it is no secret, it is real.
These pipelines run through areas that are either very close or right over main sources of drinking water that traverse reservation lands right with complete disdain over their dangers to the public. The American public in Puerto Rico are right now and have for week after week been without the basic human needs you have in your ivory tower, power and water. What we need are investments into a renewable future. What we do not need is oil, coal and nukes and gas for our energy future.
While trump and the dotards are getting laughed at in Germany, here in New York there is a working relationship between state government and business https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/14/new-york-state-funding-ups-switchover-electric-trucks/ This investment will help to curb emissions and bring about even further economic development.
Sorry, here is the link https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/14/trump-climate-talks-germany-paris-244903
“What we need are investments into a renewable future. What we do not need is oil, coal and nukes and gas for our energy future.”
So you are not investing in either energy storage or natural gas? Neither of those are renewable, but they are necessary to make up for intermittent renewables if you avoid nuclear or do not tailor your energy consumption to match said intermittency.
Do you know whether the SD spill was due to a bad pipe yet, or something else?
George Olah advocated using reverse fuel cells to produce methanol which is a portable fuel which could be used much like gasoline and with the same infrastructure. The book he wrote on the methanol economy is available from Amazon. The Wikipedia link below presents a nearly too broad consideration of methanol noting current processes which can reduce CO2, but not necessarily. It is all worth reading however. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_economy .
The Danes are utilizing wind energy and storing the excess electricity generated at night to charge batteries on electric cars. This shifts the storage costs from utilities to car users. Dr. McTaggart chooses to make it appear as total conversion to wind and solar and improved hydro as being impossible thus making his special cow nuclear energy necessary. This Wikipedia link discusses so-called reverse fuel cells. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_fuel_cell
There is martial law there doc, maybe they just felt like turning on the spigot like they do on fire hydrants to clear the line. What is 5 to 10,000 barrels of oil among friends? Might have caused a shock in the oil future market, so there was money in it for sure. We are not investing into anything because we do not have the money to do so. That stock market is for the big boys to play with and lure the suckers into it thinking they might be onto something big.
Here is one thing I have a pretty good idea on, we are gonna be in big trouble if this tax bill goes through. Do you have health insurance? I hope you’re healthy. Here is the dream of Rounds and his insurance company and Thune who is just tall: “Senate Republicans’ proposed tax reform bill would increase Obamacare prices by an average of almost $2,000 per family in 2019, according to an analysis released Thursday.
And the tax bill would lead to 1.8 million more people lacking health insurance in California than currently, another 1 million people becoming uninsured in Texas, and more than 800,000 newly uninsured in New York and Florida each, the report said.”
We are not gonna be able to invest in anything but frybread and beans.
Yes nuclear is necessary because storage solutions have not been shown to replace the consumption of natural gas. If you are fine with more carbon, then you’ll be fine with no nuclear.
Wind energy is great for charging electric cars over night. You don’t need to burn gas if the energy is stored in a battery for later use.
Have they solved the corrosion issues with methanol or its lower energy density that have prevented more widespread application?
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16/us/keystone-pipeline-leak/index.html
CNN sez the state of SD is overseeing this mess-GUFFAW! They claim they don’t know of any groundwater contamination, yet. EPA is there for all the good they will do. Probably just making sure Trash-Can doesn’t incur any cleanup expenses to affect their bottom line.
It’s funny how a guy uses nuclear only to poopoo wind and solar – until he gets caught doing it, then he pays some minimal lip service to green energy before he goes right back to slamming it all over again.
Rural science is just opinion and the only physicists in South Dakota I trust, work in the Sanford Lab or SDSM&T. Those people never let me down like this Doc does on here.
I am fine without nuke. I will take whatever is available to avoid these oil spills and nuke disasters, the coal miners getting the black lung, the fish dying, our planet destroying itself. I can go without because I have the will to do it. Here in South Dakota, I have seen a couple of weeks go by without power, you just abide, the dude abides. My grandparents used to have 6 volt batteries under the windcharger (I still have it) for storing juice and a smaller one for use in the barn in real time. It was not the best, but what the hey, it was what it was, available.
Mr. Wiken is correct when he stated that we need to improve the insulation in our homes. We need to improve our windows and their coverings. We can do a lot if we have the will to do it. Jimmy Carter once came on the tee vee with a sweater and told folks to turn down the thermostat and they did. Saved a lot of fuel. We do not have a government that is adult about giving adult decisions. We had a great one in the White House not so long ago. President Obama proposed this for energy reduction https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/19/weatherisation-energy-efficiency-us-recovery-plan Man, that would have been so great for America but we have the republicans that decided to make America not so great and they killed it. Doc, the first thing you have to do to get any kind of energy package that will work is to eliminate republicans from government. With them, the only thing you get is corruption and nothing done. Look around and tell me that is not so.
You cannot use wind and solar the way they are used today and say that you are reducing carbon, Adam. You are still emitting carbon due to the natural gas that is required to back it up.
If you dedicate wind/solar to uses immediately, then that gets around my objection. If you provide the back-up with carbon-free nuclear, that gets around my objection. If you provide energy storage that actually works, that gets around my objection.
By the way, I like the folks at SDSMT and work with them regularly. So no argument from me that they are good physicists and engineers.
https://in.reuters.com/article/us-transcanada-keystone-spill/keystone-pipeline-spill-pushes-oil-higher-fuels-transcanada-opponents-idINKBN1DH24O
US crude goes up, tarsands comes down, Trash-Can stock comes down.
Dr. McTaggart won’t pat himself on the back (ala Mr. Nelson) but there are some darned good physicists at SDSU, too. grudznick knows, for he worked with some back in the day.
This new microgrid saves this island nearly 110,000 gallons of diesel fuel each year, which amounts to about 2.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.
No one, who matters, actually believes that is unsustainable or adds more carbon to the atmosphere then it prevents.
There are so many islands, like this one, in the world that have converted to 100% renewable energy (some are even 100% wind powered) because not only is it possible, it is also waaay more practical hauling in combustible fuel.
It takes a delusional and antiquated understanding of energy to think anyone needs nuclear.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/24/this-island-is-now-powered-almost-entirely-by-solar-energy/
Jerry- the electrical grid in PR the Montana 2-man outfit fixed crashed again.
Every living breathing investigative outfit is wondering how this stateside company with 2 employees and close friendships with Ryan Zinke ever got chosen for that contract.
mfi- What we have done nationally to Puerto Rico by corruption is exactly what Trans Canada and the PUC/legislature of South Dakota has been doing to our state. We have all have looked the other way for energy companies and those that peddle the likes of EB5 projects to flourish like acceptable mobsters because of the money, no jobs, just money.
Impeach the PUC to investigate how they heard the arguments from the people and then completely ignored facts for the inevitable. Obviously that will not happen with Jackley looking in the mirror of a corrupted party apparatus that he will need to place himself in the drivers seat or so he thinks. Elect Billie Sutton to start making the changes this state desperately needs.
What you fail to recognize (repeatedly) is when there is an oversupply and/or an underdemand, one must push the excess from a “100% renewable” grid elsewhere today. It is not used in local industry nor for intermittent heating and cooling. So that half of the intermittency problem doesn’t get solved at all…it just gets pushed on somebody else. When there is an undersupply and/or an overdemand, we burn fossil fuels (natural gas) to make up the difference because batteries are not ready.
You may think that we can just get the electricity from somewhere else when the wind blows or the sun shines elsewhere. Even if you really overbuild (which will be expensive), you have to be lucky that the supply is in phase with your demand, and that there is not enough demand at that other location as well. Thus you will still need back-up power, and overbuilding just means the peaks and valleys of that back-up power are greater.
The big problem is not replacing coal and nuclear with wind/solar/gas….right now. It is what happens a few decades from now, when the growth of electricity inevitably comes back after efficiency gains plateau and the economy is better. A wind/solar/gas combo may be OK as a temporary fix to replace coal in electricity and oil for transportation, but in the long term we will end up emitting more carbon than today, not less.
As I look around for alternatives to natural gas in the long term, nuclear is feasible, batteries are not feasible (so far), 24/7 solar power from space is too expensive, and we don’t like the boreholes that are necessary for neo-geothermal.
So Adam, that is not an argument for not doing wind and solar. It is an argument for having partners for wind and solar that do not emit carbon, of which I believe nuclear is the best of the lot.
I should have added carbon capture to the list of alternatives, but that isn’t working well either right now.
Planned rolling blackouts worked out so well for Enron and California’s budget back in the day.
I, for one, am a big fan of The Borehole, and frankly any other boreholes for geothermal power as well. There is one other alternative many of these anti-nuclear-fellows might be pinning their hopes on. Magic.
We have geothermal flowing artesian in Midland, Philip, Eagle Butte, Belvidere all along the Cheyenne River as a few examples, so saying you need a borehole for that is boring. A simple well is all it takes. Philip still heats the school, courthouse and main street businesses with geothermal as I remember being told. We do not need nukes in our future, been there, done that. We repeatedly know that getting rid of the waste is impossible so there is that, what you use, you are stuck with. Take it out of the equation and let it rot like we are doing now.
We need to nationalize our transportation in a partnership with the private world. Passenger trains do not make money, that is a known. So then, we do like Europe, like Japan and China, government subsidized private companies. Kind of like agriculture, healthcare and everything and I mean everything else, subsidize it to make it work..
Do you know what drilling a well is? It is a borehole.
In Midland where you can bathe in borehole water, they call them boreholes.
Nope, it is called well drilling for water. Oil drilling for oil and boreholes for the boring.
At the Stoppel Hotel it is called baths. At about 2.18 Mr. grudzick, there is a photo of you and three of your buddies https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/11/19/actualidad/1511112485_977295.html Great photo, you might try smiling next time around.
I’m talking about accessing geothermal energy where there isn’t a hot spring, which means drilling deeper. I’m also talking about generating electricity, not just heat.
Chemical wastes from wind and solar have an infinite half-life, unless you convert them into other elements (say in a nuclear reactor?).
And we could reduce both the radioactivity and the total amount of nuclear waste. Part of why we don’t is because it would be more expensive, but part of it is that it would help nuclear be more successful.
Sorry Mr. grudznick, that first one was on Russian interference in Spain and NATO/EU, kind of the same but oddly different. Here is the one for you sir https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJq9gHg_urQ Still at 2.18
Mr. jerry, I learned long ago not to click the tricky blue links posted by people like you or my old friend Lar. Lar burned my eyes with some of his blue links.
Heat is a good thing here in South Dakota and when you put loops in a closed system like the housing at the hospital in Rosebud, South Dakota if pumps the heat in the winter and reverses it in the summer to cool the homes.
Winner South Dakota also has a closed loop system as I remember that. They work well. We can get many things done on a small scale without a nuke in the midst.
In those wacky 70’s we worked on developing cluster homes of around 20 to 30 as starters. The sewage was first prepped into a holding tank and then the methane would be drained off the top for use like the gas that comes off artesian like in Pierre. As long as you put an enhancer like substance in it to create the propane like smell, you can pretty much tell its presence. Many things can be done if we have the will to do it.
I don’t think you build a reactor for one home, you build them for cities. The smaller ones may eventually be right-sized to power towns.
It’s not like you couldn’t design a nuclear battery for a single home (i.e. provide some stand-alone heat and/or power via radioactive decay)…we just choose not to do that. The Soviets used to do that to power their weather equipment in rough environments where no grid was accessible. And we have done that to power satellites where solar is too weak.
Take my word for it Mr. grudznick, you are sitting with some fine fellers. Now, what are we gonna do with our bankrupting demands for the poison that is seeping into our soils and waters? We have the energy right here in the state of South Dakota to more than accommodate all of our citizens and the proven reserves to satisfy our neighbors to the east and south of us. We just need the leadership in Pierre to get this all done.
If you don’t like pipelines, reduce demand for the crude in the pipeline. Simply building wind turbines by themselves won’t do that.
Ironically the one thing building more wind turbines here will do is increase the demand for natural gas as a back-up, which would result in more pipelines.
McTaggart has a very skewed view of the energy world. Wind and solar can already be used to produce fuel which can provide stable output from the systems. No gas or uranium needed and they pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. We have Uranium-based systems because Admiral Rickover wanted the waste from them for his submarines. Thorium-based systems worked, but his demands pretty much killed that research. Thorium salt systems can be sized smaller without the inordinate complexity required by Uranium-based systems. The link below is an ad for a new type of battery which seems to have a lot of potential. https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/its-big-and-longlived-and-it-wont-catch-fire-the-vanadium-redoxflow-battery
So, when you go to the pump, the fuel has been prepared by wind and solar? I didn’t think so.
If you use wind and solar to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and make a fuel (say methanol), the issue really is how much fuel you produce per day, compared with how much we really use per day. Plus, if the fuel is less energy intensive than gasoline, you have to make more.
So I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, because it certainly bypasses my objections on the intermittency, but just don’t be surprised when there is a mismatch between supply and demand from a less energy-intensive source than nuclear.
And by the way, not only could nuclear provide the electricity for that carbon capture process, and separation of hydrogen for fuel cells, it could also generate the heat needed by biomass-based biofuel production too.
The vanadium-based batteries are one of a family of batteries called flow batteries. Still a lot of research into their behavior today. For instance, will they work at extreme temperatures? Do you need petrochemicals to make the electrolyte or the battery contacts? How much energy do you lose in transferring or storing energy? Good questions.
It’s amazing how Tesla batteries have made it possible for public utilities to serve solar power when the sun isn’t shinning and wind power when the wind isn’t blowing.
It’s also amazing how all you need is elevation in your geography to build water reservoirs that act as batteries for larger populations to become 100% renewable.
It’s nearly mind blowing how cheap solar has gotten in the past few years, while antiquated thinkers like McTaggert are still focused on nuclear like we’re all stuck in the 1980s and Reagan is still President.
And Tesla just overcam the human need for diesel fuel in the freight industry – with great batteries and electric motors – Walmart got in on it early. Soon enough, when we all drive, gas power will be outlawed and smart grids will eliminate the temptation to think about expanding nuclear power.
It’s amazing that Tesla is still in business given their financial state at the moment. Do you have a Tesla car? Didn’t think so.
Water-based energy storage systems rely upon gravity for them to work, and you lose some of the energy just due to the fluid mechanics of pushing water around.
Certainly they can be a part of the solution, but it’s response rate and energy losses mean that it cannot match the demand curve. For quicker response you need other storage tech and other means of generating on-demand energy (natural gas or nuclear).
Soon we’ll be using electric cars, and find that the 100% renewable grid actually relies upon natural gas that emits carbon! Then we’ll do more nuclear to avoid carbon and produce the amount of electricity that we will actually use.
https://www.axios.com/the-lefts-nuclear-problem-2510379389.html
Mr. Wiken, that was a most informative link. Kind of puts to bed doc’s ramblings about storage and nuke is the answer to acne and all. That Admiral Rickover portion was intriguing as well. That guy had the power to do damned near anything he wanted to do with money that was unending. Thanks for the link and thanks for bringing back up the Admiral and the military industrial complex. Good stuff.
Good news doc, read the link Mr. Wiken put forth. Any lefty who thinks nuke is the answer is really a righty. Batteries are the question and that question is being answered not only here but in China as well.
I was thinking about the size of this factory in China and thought as these batteries are modulized, they could be used for those container ships that are crisscrossing the ocean hauling cardboard to China and returning with ugly slobber iron works for your wall for Hobby Lobby.
I am quite surprised that you and Adam are so in favor of energy storage, because it would benefit nuclear. Just run all out and dump the excess into storage for later. But don’t worry, if energy storage doesn’t work out, nuclear can be a little more flexible to accommodate renewables.
Thorium designs would have many benefits, but currently suffers from one primary factor. There is an isotope called Protactinium-233 that occurs between thorium-232 at the start and uranium-233 at the end. It eats up neutrons so that they cannot fission in U-233.
“Righties” have issues with budget math.
“Lefties” have issues with carbon math.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/254692-new-molten-salt-thorium-reactor-first-time-decades
Thorium cycles have fewer issues with a once-through cycle, namely you don’t see the plutonium content that you do in the U-235 stream, and the duration of radioactivity may not be as long. But it will be different (that is both good and bad news).
And yes, the corrosion chemistry of the molten salts is also a challenge, and harder gamma rays from thorium as opposed to uranium-235 are an issue.
And yet another great link from Mr. Wiken, thanks for the information. If we really invested a tiny fraction of what we have wasted on dirty oil and dangerous nukes, we would be buzzing with the bees as we would not be loosing them to climate change.
Nebraska Puc voted 3-2 to allow Keystone XL. % member board consists of 4 wingnuts and a Lib. They were bound by law to not include recent Keystone spill in their deliberations.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449026/solar-panel-waste-environmental-threat-clean-energy
“A new study by Environmental Progress (EP) warns that toxic waste from used solar panels now poses a global environmental threat. The Berkeley-based group found that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear power plants.”
“from 2007 to 2011, the manufacture of solar panels in California “produced 46.5 million pounds of sludge and contaminated water…”
I think there is more interest in recycling for solar now that we could have a lot more of it, but wow. And the volume of solar waste is a whole lot more than nuclear’s.
From the same article….
“one renewable-energy analyst quoted by the AP estimated it would take “one to three months of generating electricity [from the solar panels] to pay off the energy invested in driving those hazardous waste emissions out of state.” “
Mr. Wiken’s links trumps your’s and still we dance around the poison that has been put into our soils from Canada of all places. Not like we do not generate our own sewage here, but now we have to import the crap and deposit it in our water supply.
Sewage is not the same as toxic waste.
And I guess you won’t want to bury the solar waste here, so you’ll need to truck it to another state. So you will need those pipelines to fuel the trucks….
News Flash: every study says that nuclear waste is exceptionally toxic and solar and wind are the cleanest forms of electricity.
With the new storage systems, on the market today, we don’t need natural gas unless they built wind turbines where the wind doesn’t blow and put solar panels where the Sun don’t shine.
News flash: Nuclear waste is isolated by law. The volume of waste is smaller.
Breaking news: The carbon emitted from the total nuclear life cycle is on par with wind and hydro. Solar emits 4 times as much!
So solar emits more carbon per kilowatt-hour, and its waste is 300 times as toxic per kilowatt-hour. Thus you conclude that solar is cleaner than nuclear?
The best sites for wind and solar have already been taken. We went after the lowest-hanging fruit first. And now the 100% renewable crowd must work with less efficient sites to produce all that extra power.
VX gas, ricin, and plutonium all take up very small space, but no one uses low volume to trivialize toxicity – except very bad (perhaps phony) doctors.
Nobody justifies throwing away toxic waste that is 300 times as toxic just because it “must” be clean either.
And that toxicity is not trivialized at all. Once a puff is detected, things are shut down. Solar and wind keep on loading up those oil-powered trucks to deliver all that waste to the dump.
If you want to say solar is cleaner than coal, that’s OK. If you want to argue for making the most of what we have, and that there are benefits in a diverse energy mix, that’s OK too. But if you think using solar or wind today doesn’t come with carbon and generates no toxic waste, that is not true.
Solar and wind produce far more preferable environmental consequences to every other type of fuel – and with minimal carbon output.
Funny how Doc pretends to assume peeps think solar and wind power are ‘perfectly’ clean when we all know power generation has always been about the lesser of all evils. Doc must have zero intellectual liberal friends.
Mr. Adam, I, too, wish Reagan was still president. Don’t you?
But arguing with Dr. McT on things related to energy is futile. He knows more than all of us combined.
Funny how you say you are for clean energy, when you just want more solar and wind regardless of the inevitable environmental consequences :
(1.) more carbon. Ironically, we will emit more than today due to our natural gas back-up and economic growth, particularly if electric cars take over.
(2.) more toxic waste. If you generate more kilowatt-hours while producing more toxic waste per kilowatt-hour, how will the total toxicity go down?
Or, you can do wind/solar/nuclear, and apply nuclear-style rules for isolating toxicity. That would force wind and solar to do better to avoid as much the toxicity in the first place and recycle as much as possible.
If McTaggart knows so much, perhaps he can explain why solar and wind products have such incredibly terrible salvage or waste problems. I don’t know, but solar panels look like mostly glass surrounded by aluminum or other metal. Wind generators seem to be mostly steel and fiberglass. Why is disposing of that particularly toxic?
The toxicity is in the solar cells themselves, and in all of the acids used to process the solar cells. A lot of the glass and steel can be recycled. However, the glass will become aged due to UV radiation, so you cannot keep using the same glass.
The wind turbine blades made out of composite is not recycled today.
http://earth911.com/business-policy/wind-turbines-recycle/
Wind also needs to recycle the rare earth content in its turbines. Without rare earth magnets, the wind turbines would be heavier and use more materials. There are also mining issues of the rare earths that must be included in the formula.
There is some interest in using biodegradable plastics to help wind in its recycling efforts, but the bad news is that such blades are biodegradable…i.e. they will degrade over time when subject to wind/sun/rain/cold.
But the transport of waste is not being factored into solar companies’ carbon footprint scores, which can lead to inaccurate life cycle analyses of the global warming pollution that goes into solar production. According to a researcher AP interviewed, transporting 6.2 million pounds of waste by heavy-duty tractor-trailer from Fremont, Calif., in the Bay Area, to a site 1,800 miles away could add 5 percent to a particular product’s carbon footprint. After installing a solar panel, it takes one to three months of generating electricity to pay off the energy invested in driving hazardous waste emissions out of state.
It’s important to note that although much of the waste produced is considered toxic (in the form of carcinogenic cadmium-contaminated water), there is no evidence it has harmed human health. Conversely, energy derived from natural gas and coal-fired power plants creates more than 10 times more hazardous waste than the same energy created by a solar panel. Although the U.S. solar industry has been dutiful about reporting its waste and sending it to approved storage facilities, coal-fired power plants send mercury, cadmium and other toxins directly into the air, which pollutes water and land around the facility. https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/10/08/dark-side-solar-waste-concerns-abound
It appears, but not be the actual case, that concerns about solar waste relates primarily to primitive societies where disposal of waste primarily means burning it. That is not the case in the US or developed countries.
Right now the volume of wastes from solar/wind is not as bad because the percentage of our energy from them is still relatively small, but that will change in the next few decades.
Nevertheless, I agree that solar is better than coal in this regard, and more recently there is more awareness of the solar waste issue.
http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-headed-for-a-solar-waste-crisis
The graph at the bottom of this page shows that solar is the most material-intensive application per kilowatt-hour. You need to cover a lot more land to extract that kilowatt-hour.
Interesting, but more interesting are the comments following the article. There appear to be problems with presentation, explanation, definitions of terms, relative toxity, time for waste to become non-toxic, and uses of materials without need for recycling.
Environmental Progress is a well-known astro-turf pro-nuclear organization that shills for nuclear power. It particularly has a problem with utilities, who have decided not to invest in nuclear.
“Solar waste crisis” seems a little hyberbolic, and, compared to what we’re facing with nuclear waste, it is ridiculous over-hyping of the problem. I’ll take the wastes for solar over the nuclear waste problem that the nuclear industry hasn’t solved in over 60 years.
Environmental Progress aim their propaganda at nerdy contrarians and students suckered into the nuclear field, which faces death in the market place, and no jobs. The group attacks any and all other forms of energy production except nuclear power, depending on what is political expedient at the moment. They have been lobbying heavily for major rate-payer subsidies to keep nuclear power plants open, rather than closing them and going to renewable sources.
Right now, by the way, Russian-owned uranium from Uranium One, is being used in fuel assemblies at nuclear power plants in the United States. Trump refuses to shut down Uranium One.
Right now it is cheaper for solar to operate under a once-through cycle (build them and then throw them away as hazardous or solid waste when done).
Hopefully there will be a push by consumers to buy solar panels that are more sustainable, and a push to buy from companies that take the panels back for recycling.
Would you be open to siting a hazardous waste site next door that takes in solar waste with mercury and cadmium?
Mr. Pay, it’s possible that young Mr. Sutton has plans cooking to put a solar waste site near Edgemont, SD, but nobody down there will care or even know. And even if they do figure it out, the solar wastes cannot be as bad as the uranium sand and dirty water with soda bubbles in it that will come out of the Dewey Burdock diggings.
Those scoundrels actually want us to deliver carbon-free emissions as well as power whenever we want it. Just terrible.
For the time being, keeping the current nuclear fleet operating will help reduce carbon. Cheaper than building a new nuclear plant of the same size. Keeping nuclear going is your hedge against energy storage never working.
Any nuclear replacement plan will emit more carbon, because you need coal or gas to back up renewables. In either case, we eventually emit more carbon than today as our energy demands grow.
The only real way we are ever going to significantly cut down on our carbon in missions is for certain people to stop voting Republican. That’s really what it comes down to. Republicans ain’t never going to change and all they ever were were progress obstructionists with an obsolete view of the world.
There is no other solution to the problem.
Want to go to Mars? It has to be with nuclear. Chemical rockets take too long to go there and come back before you hit space radiation limits.
Want to live on other planets? You need nuclear. Mars is on the threshold of solar vs. nuclear for some devices, but human habitation will require the energy density of nuclear.
There is this country called North Korea…you may need some nuclear know-how to figure out what they are doing.
The same methods for health physics/radiation safety at power plants get used in medical imaging and radiation therapy.
Yeah, no future in nuclear.
Believe it or not, there are Democrats who like nuclear power, and Republicans who like renewables, and others who like both.
Solar energy somehow reminds me of a show called “the night of the flying pie plate.”
Somebody, perhaps Mr. Evans, said:
Exceptional instances exist in every statistical probability, but wow, to think Republicans aren’t backwards thinking idiots on renewables is just naïve.
So what about the oil spill of 15,000 barrels of oil in South Dakota water systems? How are we going to address the fact that with the Nebraska sellout by a republican PUC, sounds familiar, we will have an even bigger change of 3 times that much of even dirtier oil spilled into out drinking water?
Mars? the only Mars we will ever see is a candy bar.
How much of the oil that has been spilled has gotten into any drinking water? Are there any measurements of that?
China is pushing nuclear propulsion at the moment to go mine asteroids for critical elements, as well as to go to Mars. Shouldn’t we be doing that first?
Besides carbon-free back-up power and electricity to help charge electric cars, nuclear can complement renewables by providing a brand-new source of rare earth metals (although difficult to extract from the waste), and a source of heat for processing hydrogen or biofuels (much easier to do).
If you are betting everything on energy storage to save the day, wouldn’t it be wise to at least hedge your bets in case energy storage doesn’t work out…so you can still solve climate change regardless?
Clearly about half of it will never be recovered as it was already in water. As at least 15,000 barrels of oil were released then 7,500 or so has entered into the water supply.
Wouldn’t you think someone is measuring water supplies and wells, etc.?
Perhaps, Dr. McT. But our friend Mr. Pay would know more about how these someones operate. Even if they all work for the heinous Utility Commission or the more heinous Environmental Agency it is possible someone is monitoring the water. Mr. H should do a public request and get that data. Mr. Sibby could analyze it. Because Satan knows, by God, that there are no scientists involved in this project.
#4Science
https://www.gowatertown.net/2017/11/21/transcanada-testing-water-near-oil-spill-site-in-marshall-county/
“Officials don’t believe it has polluted any surface water bodies or drinking water systems.”
Rural conservatives (80% of rural people) don’t even know what pollution is, nor why it is a real concern for Americans. These folks get their daily inspiration from ‘the tears of libtards.’
If McTaggart wants to get SD on board with nuclear, all he has to do is make it look like liberals hate it so that this rural culture could then grip on to his nuclear vision like they do guns and Bible.
I am starting to think that America might want to relocate all of its pollution risks into rural states so that it can spare the vast majority of its smartest most motivated citizens from the productivity killing health care problems which rural folks are naturally strong enough to endure – ie. Rural folks naturally prefer drinking Ag waste, and their own sewage, from their 10 foot water wells located next to their leaking septic system. It’s common knowledge. Like a bunch of dirty animals, they actually like it and you can’t convince them they are wrong.
My old uncle Willard (out in Hoven SD) had big flakes of nitrates in his tap water. He owned a lot of land, so he must have been smart.
When my mom (a biochemist) tried to tell him what those visible solids in his water are, and why it was there, he just yelled, “my water never hurt nobody and I’m not changing anything” [because farmers know best about caring for health]. LOFL
Interesting approach Adam, but I don’t think hate works in the long run….
Rural and urban alike have an interest in reducing carbon…that gets spread all over and does not recognize any boundaries.
Getting on-board with nuclear can also mean support of the manufacturing, finance, quality assurance, and safety aspects of nuclear energy, not just power.
For decades now, rural folk would rather vote for a child molester than a Democrat – because hate is the only thing that works for them in the longest run.
If they had known during the primary, they probably would have chosen the other guy favored by Trump.
http://kelofm.com/news/articles/2017/nov/21/listen-thune-wants-keystone-spill-answers/
“We’re going to needs some answers from these guys about how they intend that this doesn’t happen again,” Thune said.
“Because it’s going to make it hard in the future for folks who want to build these pipelines, to make the argument for why we need do them if they can’t assure us that they’re going to be done safely,” Thune said.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/361573-judge-allows-lawsuit-over-keystone-xl-pipeline-to-move-forward
“The Indigenous Environmental Network, North Coast River Alliance and others challenged the presidential permit issued by the Trump administration in March allowing the pipeline to cross the U.S.-Canada border.
The permit was issued using older environmental assessments that opponents say need to be updated before a cross-border permit can be issued.”
“” “South Australia is now leading the world in dispatchable renewable energy, delivered to homes and businesses 24/7,” Weatherill said in a statement about the installation.”” https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/01/567710447/worlds-largest-battery-is-turned-on-in-australia-as-tesla-ties-into-power-grid
Instead of turning our state into a dump, we could actually start to be a “dispatchable renewable energy” driver. We could bring jobs to our state, good ones that actually pay money. We could use Mitchell, Sioux Falls, Rapid City and a new tech school in Kyle to teach our youngsters how to operate renewable wind energy. Tesla has delivered the holy grail to Australia that can keep up demand when the wind dies down! Damn impressive.
Follow the consumption of energy to find the economic activity. The question is how much carbon will we generate in the process.
If the U.S. energy consumption grew by 2% per year over 100 years, which it roughly did between 1950 and 2005, we would consume over 7 times what we did in 2016. That is just (1.02)^100.
If it were possible to cover all of that with wind and solar, we would consume 268 times the energy that we did from wind and solar in 2016 (which was 2.7% of all of our energy).
That gives you an idea of the scale of resources and infrastructure that would be necessary, and assumes that energy storage will work.
Besides making the energy in the first place, it would also be great to keep more of the economic multiplier from the end use of said energy around here. But right now any excess is going to be sent somewhere else.
https://pgjonline.com/2017/12/13/why-is-canadian-oil-so-cheap/
Canadian crude is about half the cost of US stocks. Why aren’t we taking it out of the Keystone and refining it here and bringning gas prices down?
Pepsico ordered 100 Tesla electric semis.
Are you sure those weren’t Diet Teslas?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pepsico-tesla-orders/pepsico-makes-biggest-public-pre-order-of-tesla-semis-100-trucks-idUSKBN1E61FB
Maybe Mountain Dew. Hit’ll tickle yer innards.
Longer trips for snacks, shorter trips for heavier items are being considered by Pepsico. Gotta get those snacks out to the people.
Pepsico gets it products from its water source of Worland, Wyoming so Tesla trucks would do very well here for most of South Dakota. Frito Lay has more than 30 manufacturing plants across the US so Tesla trucks will do very well in that regard too. That 350 to 500 mile radius from plant to distributing centers are perfect for Tesla. Great news for the planet as here in South Dakota, at least 75 square miles of the Black Hills have been blackened with a huge out of control wild fire.
Yeah, thanks a lot Tesla….
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/tesla-responsible-slide-u-home-131500771.html
“After years of double-digit growth, home solar installations in the United States are poised to fall for the first time this year, according to a report released on Thursday by GTM Research.
The reason? An analysis of installation data suggests that most of the slowdown is traceable to a single company: Tesla, which acquired sister company SolarCity about a year ago.”
As an investor, one has to look at the tea leaves to see that the middle class were the key purchasers of solar panels. It is always the economy that drives as well as these little gadgets https://www.investopedia.com/news/solarcity-versus-first-solar-tsla-fslr/ Not to worry though, as municipalities are now in the process of installs on their local government buildings.
Thanks a lot Tesla indeed for taking these diesel spewing behemoths off the roads of our cities.
I don’t think they have displaced any diesel vehicles yet…just that they intend to.
There are some issues in the solar market with importing solar cells from China at the moment that need to be worked out for domestic solar to take off. It is not the super-efficient solar cells that you read about in journals…the price of the silicon-based panels have come down.
And like magic, the way to make sure solar power is put out of business. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/15/trump-solar-power-china-trade-barriers-230854
The United States needs ways in which to increase unemployment as we are now at or very near full employment and wages are starting to rise. Where have we seen this before? Hint, not that long ago when the last big dumb tax cuts came into effect. Regular Americans are finally starting to figure this out and that is why you see them not supporting this latest attempt at highway robbery.