The Public Utilities Commission is swamped with wind farm applications—isn’t this the problem South Dakota has long wanted to have?
Altogether there were five wind projects on the meeting agenda Tuesday.
The commission has several more applications pending.
“We have way too many wind farms to deal with simultaneously,” Gary Hanson, the commission chairman, said after the final 3-0 vote to grant a permit to Deuel Harvest North [Bob Mercer, “State Regulators Permit Wind Farm in Deuel County with Restrictions,” KELO-TV, 2019.05.15].
More wind farms than the PUC can process—well, at least wind farm apps are outnumbering tar sands pipeline apps!
But if the PUC can’t handle five wind farm apps at once, we’ll have trouble catching up with the rest of the country.
According to the Energy Information Administration’s latest report on wind energy production, eighteen states, including five of our neighbors, produced more wind energy than South Dakota in February 2019. With our current wind farms, South Dakota is producing 1.00% of the country’s wind power, compared with North Dakota’s 3.78% and Minnesota’s 3.85%:
| State | February 2019 Wind Energy Procued (gigawatt-hours) | % of US wind power production |
| U.S. Total | 23,047 | 100.00% |
| Texas | 6,615 | 28.70% |
| Oklahoma | 2,142 | 9.29% |
| Iowa | 1,905 | 8.27% |
| Kansas | 1,546 | 6.71% |
| California | 1,251 | 5.43% |
| Illinois | 1,220 | 5.29% |
| Minnesota | 887 | 3.85% |
| Colorado | 872 | 3.78% |
| North Dakota | 871 | 3.78% |
| New Mexico | 580 | 2.52% |
| Indiana | 545 | 2.36% |
| Nebraska | 518 | 2.25% |
| Washington | 482 | 2.09% |
| Michigan | 414 | 1.80% |
| New York | 358 | 1.55% |
| Oregon | 353 | 1.53% |
| Wyoming | 315 | 1.37% |
| Pennsylvania | 262 | 1.14% |
| South Dakota | 231 | 1.00% |
| Missouri | 223 | 0.97% |
| Maine | 208 | 0.90% |
| Idaho | 185 | 0.80% |
| Ohio | 184 | 0.80% |
| Montana | 177 | 0.77% |
| Wisconsin | 141 | 0.61% |
| West Virginia | 131 | 0.57% |
| Utah | 100 | 0.43% |
| Arizona | 54 | 0.23% |
| North Carolina | 47 | 0.20% |
| Hawaii | 46 | 0.20% |
| Maryland | 42 | 0.18% |
| Nevada | 32 | 0.14% |
| New Hampshire | 29 | 0.13% |
| Vermont | 28 | 0.12% |
| Rhode Island | 21 | 0.09% |
| Massachusetts | 18 | 0.08% |
| Delaware | 0.42 | 0.002% |
Well, at least we’re ahead of Mississippi.
Several years ago Germany and other countries fell victim to the Environmental Industrial Complex and embarked on a massive solar and wind energy projects. Many reliable coal fired plants were quickly shut down causing their heat chambers to collapse.
Because Green advocates were so extreme, the Germans lost reliable, consistent, efficient, and affordable energy through these green systems. Several years ago during a harsh winter in Germany the sun and wind did not produce the promised energy because of heavy overcast and calm winds for several weeks. Needed energy was shifted in order to maintain German manufacturing causing the people to suffer. Today the few conventional generators are operating at full capacity.
The German electrical consumer advocacy group NARB predicts Germany will have the highest electrical costs in Europe.
Solar will produce no energy at night. Solar will only produce name plate promised energy when the sun is directly overhead, on a clear, cloudless and haze free day. Wind energy will only produce name plate power within narrow parameters. Because the wind is not blowing at a constant force, Wind Energy is also unreliable and intermittent threatening the power grid.
Germany is now in bed with Russia and their Gas pipeline and must purchase conventional energy from Russia who can shut off the supply depending on the political winds. This forces Germany to support Russian policy, otherwise their population goes cold.
We see the same failures of green energy in S. Australia because of extreme green radicals. Brown outs and total grid collapse happened.
Many countries are returning to reliable clean coal fired plants. Japan is returning to coal to replace their collapsed nuclear plants. Many counties in Africa are building coal generators. We see a proliferation of coal trains on the tracks once again and the huge coal piles at power plants have returned.
Neo-Progressives and liberals must wake up and understand we have been jerked around by these greedy globalist corporations making up the Environmental Industrial Complex such as GE, Siemens, and Chinese companies. We must cut our support of them and cast out the running dogs of the corrupt political class who take political favors from them. We must learn from the mistakes of others.
I don’t have any sympathy for the PUC’s predicament. If it’s gold mines or waste dumps or pig feces factories, the state goes out of their way to accommodate them. It’s odd that the only time they scream about development is when it involves alternative energy.
I’m not sure what problem they have with the lineup of wind development. The PUC has for decades now had the ability to address many of these issues by using Environmental Impact Statements. They could have used a programmatic EIS to tee up the wind development issues, and then used an EIS to deal with regional and site-specific issues. Much of this should have been done in the late 1990s and early 2000s in anticipation of wind development. But, no, that was back when Hanson was pushing nuclear power, and coal plants, and doing his best to discourage alternative power.
The key number is the number of kilowatt-hours actually used by consumers. Those are the kilowatt-hours that are generating income for the utility and a return on investment.
The amount of carbon emitted by everything else but wind would be a good number to compare. If that increases as our wind output increases, that is a problem. But we’ll see if it is more important to build more wind turbines or emit less carbon. This would also test whether the other options (efficiency, a better grid, energy storage) can reduce that carbon or not.
At the end of the day, this should be about generating the electricity we use without emitting carbon….not building more wind farms for the sake of building more wind farms.
Sorry, I should have said that the total profit generated from the production of power matters. That includes the cost of construction and on-going expenses, as well as what monies are generated while producing power, as well as any waste management or decommissioning.
I don’t see any mention of energy storage facilities to go along with the proposed wind farms…are they embedded in the proposals somewhere?
There is probably a better argument for generating wind and sending it elsewhere than using it in-state at the moment.
Are the new wind farms being paired with new economic development that will consume more energy, or is there a plan for displacing the current use of fossil fuels in-state?
T. Camp must have a time machine or something if he lives in a world where most coal plants in Germany are shut down. Germany plans to shut down 30 percent of its coal plants by 2022. It may be wise to question all of the other information in his post above.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-23/german-coal-exit-to-trigger-wild-price-swings-in-energy-market
Terry Camp. Please post links to your assertions and statements. You’re new at DFP and your reliability hasn’t been established, yet.
Thanks and welcome
Be aware that Cunningham’s Law is strong here.
The wiki isn’t Mr. Cunningham’s only contribution to modern online life. He also gave his name to Cunningham’s Law, the idea that the best way to find the correct answer on the internet isn’t to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.
Wait just a minute, Camp. I’m a child of the Cold War and the only people that used the term “running dog” were Ruskies. Are you now or have you ever been a Russian influencer?
~The phrase running dog has been in use since the Qing Dynasty, and was often used in the 20th century by communists to refer to client states of the United States and other capitalist powers.-WikiPedia
Actually Germany has the same problem that South Dakota has, not enough civil servants to handle the permits.
““The development of new wind farms has almost ground to a halt. The main problem is permitting – it’s got much slower, more complex and there aren’t enough civil servants to process the applications. It seriously undermines Germany’s ability to meet its 2030 renewables target and contribute to the EU target. And it’s affecting Germany’s wind turbine industrial base. Half of Europe’s 300,000 wind energy jobs are in Germany. But 10,000 have gone in Germany in the last five years. And this could get worse: there hasn’t been a single turbine order recorded in Germany in Q1 this year.
“The German Government now needs to make clear how they’re going to reach their 65% renewables target for 2030. It needs an annual build-out of 5 GW of onshore wind – and urgent action to speed up the permitting process.” – Dickson https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/13/collapse-of-german-onshore-wind-is-jeopardizing-german-eu-renewable-targets/
Regarding Germany being in bed with Russia regarding gas delivery. Of course, it only makes sense to go with reliable gas supplies from Russia. What is so strange about that? We Americans are in bed with some pretty despicable characters as well, you have to go where there is energy supply.
If ya think wind is cool, check out solar in our United States!!
“here are now over 2 million solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in the U.S., according to new figures. The 2 million mark comes three years after installations hit 1 million, a figure it took the industry 40 years to reach.
The numbers, from Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), were released Thursday.
Solar power can be harnessed in several ways, including through photovoltaic and concentrated solar power systems. Photovoltaic refers to a way of directly converting light from the sun into electricity.
California was responsible for 51 percent of the first million installations and 43 percent of the second million, the SEIA said. It explained that this reduction was “in large part” down to a residential sector that was both growing and “rapidly diversifying across state markets.”
Other states including Texas, Rhode Island, Florida, Utah and Maryland had helped to drive growth, the SEIA added.
Abigail Ross-Hopper, the CEO of the SEIA, said that the organization believed “that the 2020s will be the decade that solar becomes the dominant new form of energy generation.” https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/09/solar-installations-in-us-exceed-2-million-and-could-double-by-2023.html
We’ll Sing in the Sunshine, sing it Gale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w9gb9ZEvMs
The situation in Germany shows that at the end of the day, we will find a way to produce the energy that people use….and we will emit carbon if we take alternatives off the table.
The reliance on natural gas is expected due to the moves away from coal and nuclear, and the absence of a suitable form of energy storage or carbon capture. So they will emit less than they would if they stayed on coal, and more than if they expanded nuclear (which would be with new designs, not the ones they have now).
Home solar is great to reduce what we pull from the grid. Community solar is probably better, as there are some efficiencies that occur in bulk (particularly with transmission or future storage). But California still has to send the excess energy somewhere else when there is too much, and even they will burn natural gas to make up the difference. They are increasing the natural gas that they are drilling in California.
Wonder if Al Novstrup or GNoem know that Aberdeen manufactures those wind turbines? Seriously, these people should be raising a stink with the PUC to get the necessary civil servants hired to get these turbines up and spinning. Wind turbines means more jobs, more taxes.
Are you sure that they are indeed being manufactured in Aberdeen?
But that is also a reason for the associated economic development that would use said wind energy to be occurring here. As the energy goes elsewhere, so do some of the jobs and taxes.
Maybe you can make the argument that there will be more federal taxes collected elsewhere by using the energy elsewhere, and that could help South Dakota at some level. But it is unclear what that impact is to our bottom line.
400 belly buttons work there In Aberdeen, making wind chargers at MFG. So, let me get my shoes off to do some ciphering. 400 times 1.5 (family members) would be… like more than 400 people who buy stuff and pay taxes. That is how to make local economy work doc. Oh, regarding federal taxes, you simply don’t need to pay them anymore. Follow our leaders direction. Paying taxes are so yesterday.
But are they making the wind turbines for the wind farms being considered by the PUC?
I guess for the 400+ it doesn’t matter who buys the turbines, but politically it is a bit of an issue if none of the turbines are to come from Aberdeen. If you have to ship them from somewhere else, the carbon footprint goes up, doesn’t it?
You should call and ask them doc. Call Al too and find out what he is doing about keeping Aberdeen workers making wind turbines for South Dakota. Here is where we are today on the carbon tax, cool eh?
“A coalition of business and environmental groups, working with the support of some major oil companies, took a carbon pricing plan to the U.S. House’s main tax-writing committee on Wednesday. It was the Ways and Means Committee’s first climate-related hearing in a dozen years, and members of both parties treated the topic with kid gloves. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16052019/carbon-tax-fee-dividend-pricing-republican-plan-house-ways-means-committee-baker-shultz
Doesn’t the noise from these cause cancer? No wonder it’s taking so long with all the medical studies needed to determine how the noise from these cause cancer.
That would be fake noise
Growing up rural is a pre-existing mental health condition. Some people can overcome it, but not all.
“Our country is full – ain’t got no more room for wind farms – especially in South Dakota.”
doc, why rag on whether blades built in SD spin there? That’s like saying protestors should ride a horse, not drive to the protest. the big picture is pivot NOW from fossil fuels. if you can answer nukes’ difficulties now then we will stop ragging on nuke concerns. republican elected PUC commissioners make $100k annually plus staff. honest lobbyists likely do all the heavy lifts. lazy PUC? Political PUC?
Germany’s last coal, plants will be closed by 23038 along with nukular facilities.
Solar panels can work, at a reduced level, on cloudy days.
2038 not 23038 above. Blame worthless Drumpf for that error.
At least we can be confident no environmentalists will be raising any red flags about habitat disturbance caused by wind farms, most of which are being sited on coteaus and other hilly ground, home to some of the last extant native prairie in SD. Sprague’s pipit can just adapt or die.
The biggest issue probably for nuclear is dealing with the waste issue (in the near term that should be isolation, but hopefully that will leave an option for reprocessing). Once that is addressed, then more things can be done with nuclear, which is why such a resolution is opposed by the far left.
As you know, I am a proponent of using nuclear energy to complement renewables, either by ramping them up and down to back-up renewables, or to switch off their baseload contribution to asynchronous uses when there is too much energy on the grid. If you are truly interested in reducing carbon without waiting on carbon capture or energy storage to work as promised, nuclear can help now.
What the green new deal does not tell you is that without some combo of nuclear, energy storage, or carbon capture, you either will go without timely energy, or you will burn gas or coal to produce energy as you would like it delivered.
By the way, protestors do not have to ride a horse to get there. My point is that they could show everybody that solar and wind only (as envisioned by the far left) is viable to power the transportation back and forth. Perfect opportunity to highlight that alternative. Otherwise, using oil to drive to an oil or oil pipeline protest is not the greatest message to send. Likewise, not having any other economic impact from the wind farms is not the best message…if you like wind, then I guess more wind is better than less wind.
I’m solidly among the far left and I take umbrage to Dr. McTaggart speaking for us. The waste issue isn’t the biggest problem with nuclear power. Cancer is the biggest problem and overlooked because it renders nukes fully unacceptable. Also, there isn’t just one Green New Deal yet. For now, it’s a platform position that some candidates are taking to indicate that they want the American government to devote the country to preparing for climate change as fully as Franklin Delano Roosevelt once did to reinvigorating the economy after the Great Depression.
But, we far lefties are always happy to set far righties like “The Tags” on the right path concerning our platform. :o)
If cancer were the issue, you would worry about the similar issues from the processing of solar cells or the mining of rare earths for wind turbines or the waste management issues (like burning the waste products for energy and releasing emissions).
But you don’t. Cancer is cancer.
By themselves, solar and wind will not work in the practical delivery of energy and democrats (or other parties) will lose elections when access to abundant and timely energy goes away. So why push a plan of action that will remove your party from any chance at governing?
Renewables are a part of the solution, just not the entire solution. If you can’t power transportation to a protest, how can you serve the entire nation? The wind and the sun are free, but the delivery or storage of said energy is NOT free.
Cancer is part of the issue. I’m old and the other part of the issue is I don’t choose to be on my death bed thinking about other people’s Grandkids having been exposed to the silent killer with my blessing. In short, I don’t trust your assurances.
You actually get more radiation from flying in an airplane than you do from nuclear power. You get more radioactivity from cosmic rays and natural radioactivity than you do from nuclear power. Human biology is successful at dealing with those low levels of radiation.
It is when one is exposed to mega-doses of radiation that biology fails. Common sense things like reducing your time around those sources, increasing your distance from those sources, and shielding those sources will reduce those effects below background levels. That is what science and engineering is for.
Meanwhile, the lifetime for the cancer-causing nature of cadmium and arsenic used in solar panels is infinite. So if cancer was really the issue, you would be concerned with the other energy sources that dump their wastes or burn and release them instead of isolating them as nuclear must do.
You do NOT get more radiation from flying in an airplane than you’d get from exposure to a melted down nuclear power plant.
Regardless Mr. McTaggart’s last paragraph. I don’t recognize what aboutism as a valid argument. I live in the world of what is-ism.
So are you going to race into the nuclear core if it melts down? Worse yet, you will have to fly over there, so you will get a dose in the air and on the ground…
I view smoking in a house with high Radon levels and no mitigation to be a far greater risk for cancer than living next to a nuclear power plant that melts down. Smoke particles are a great Radon and Radon progeny delivery system.
I guess one man’s what-aboutism is another man’s hypocrisy on the cancer argument. Nuclear waste is smaller in volume and must be isolated by law. Wastes from other energy sources are larger in volume and are dumped or dispersed into the environment. There is some natural radioactivity in those wastes too, but largely it is the toxic chemistries that are of interest in this regard.
Forget about cancer! What about the dose in the air? What about smoking in a house full of radon? What about nuclear waste being smaller waste than other types of waste? What about the toxic chemistries? What about my hypocracy on the cancer argument?
..… SQUIRREL!!
So cancer is the most important item, and now you want to forget about it. Well played sir…well played.
I was repeating your call to ignore cancer because your “what aboutisms” are more pertinent.
My cynicism apparently flew over your head.
In conclusion for today …
My own view is that Dr. McTaggart has reached a different conclusion than I have. I respect him. I think defending nuclear energy is a courageous undertaking.
A 50 MW wind farm can be built and running in 6 months. The cancer causing nukes never get built.
For a city of 100,000 you could have wind power in about a year that would more than do the job.
“Roughly 10,000,000 megawatt hours per 1 million (yearly). 1 MW can power as many as 1000 homes in poor countries. And other studies suggest that 45 MW can power a small city of 80,000.”
Come on South Dakota PUC, hire some people to get the job done!
No…I am not as dense as a neutron star…I just responded differently.
With regard to cancer…you can’t eliminate risk, but you can acknowledge it and should try to reduce it, regardless of the energy source. And if that is worth doing, it is worth paying for.
jerry,
The total power consumed by those homes is not satisfied by wind or solar alone. The wind turbines don’t start turning when you flick the light switch on. On average about 30-35% of that maximum capacity is delivered during a day.
It is accurate to say that wind power can be used to help power those homes. It is not accurate to say that wind power provided all of the energy that they consumed.
Thus on average 2/3 of the daily power for those homes would come from somewhere else than that particular wind farm. And if excess energy is produced (as is likely the case overnight), it must be sent elsewhere or used for a dedicated purpose.
Weather forecasting is much better today, so we can do a better job at guessing how much energy they will produce in advance (say 24-48 hours), which is enough time to figure out how to ramp nuclear up and down as needed.
build more wind chargers!! That will make it all work, and safely. Wind and solar and graphene sponges!!
You can build more wind turbines…you just need to build other things to deliver the electricity that people use.
Right now that means burning natural gas.
Good for providing the energy we use when we want it. Good for reducing the carbon that would have been emitted by coal. Good because right now that is relatively cheap to do.
Not good because there is no carbon capture, so our carbon output will grow with any growth in energy consumption (which includes methane leaks).
Xcel Energy is planning on keeping their nuclear plants going, retiring coal, and boosting renewables and natural gas.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Xcel-to-seek-extension-of-Monticello-operation
”
The company believes it can reach its carbon-reduction goals outlined in the plan while keeping customer bills at or below the rate of inflation. “Retiring coal, adding renewables and extending the use of nuclear energy is the fastest way to deliver carbon reductions at the lowest cost,” it said.
“
I missed this part…
“Xcel also said it sees advanced reactors or small modular reactors playing a role in meeting its ultimate goal of providing zero-carbon electricity by 2050.”
Like I said…nuclear AND renewables.
Like I said Graphene sponges with wind and solar!! Who needs cancer? Not me, do you?
You mean cancer from inhaling the byproducts of burning wind and solar wastes to reduce their volume?
And how will you convince people to go without energy when they want it or when it is not available? Can you win elections that way?
Graphene sponges, look them up, energy 24/7, even on Xmass, with wind and solar. The PUC needs to hire more people to address this.. Yes, we can win elections with climate emergency.
His mind is closed, Jerry and that’s a disqualifying position for a teacher. McTaggart has lost the popularity of his life’s work. Nukes are about as popular as toe fungus. He’s allowed a negative national opionion to disproportionately influence his thinking. The pain of loss and rejection are felt more keenly and persistently than the fleeting gratification of pleasant things. We humans are primed for survival, and our aversion to loss can distort our judgement for a modern world.
Professor … Pro-and-Con lists, as well as thinking in terms of probabilities, can help you evaluate things more objectively than relying on your biased, cognitive impression.
Solve the following problem (as a teacher, I have the power to assign homework!).
1. Make all the energy we use whenever we want to use it.
2. Make all of that energy carbon-free.
3. Reduce waste as much as possible.
An all renewable plan satisfies 2, but fails 1 and 3
Maybe some day you will finally open your mind and see nuclear as an asset. I believe that you will be able to have more renewables with nuclear than without it, because it can balance loads without emitting carbon to satisfy 1.
Finished my homework “On July 8th, 2016, Dongxu Optoelectronic Co., Ltd. held new product release conference at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse and launched G-KING, the world’s first graphene – based lithium – ion battery. In the conference, Dongxu Optoelectronic signed agreement with Taizhou Renewable Energy Industrial Park Administrative Committee for establishing the production line of G-KING, and Dongxu Optoelectronic and K2 Energy Solutions, Inc. signed that research and industrial cooperation agreement.
Wang Zhonghui, Director of Investment at Dongxu Optoelectronic, and Wang Yanfeng, vice Director of Department of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, unveiled the plaque together for the Graphene Research Center.
The new product, G-KING is featured in excellent performance. It can work under the condition of -30~80℃ and the cycle life reaches 3500 times, and can be fully charged in 15 minutes.” http://www.dong-xu.com/e_com/index.aspx?nodeid=101&page=ContentPage&contentid=718
Graphene, it’s the future with so many applications. Come on PUC, hire some folks to get South Dakota generating power!!
Here’s homework for you “This dome in the Pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it’s leaking
The Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands is a hulking legacy of years of US nuclear testing. Now locals and scientists are warning that rising sea levels caused by climate change could cause 111,000 cubic yards of debris to spill into the ocean.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste
I think we have had just about enough of this total disregard for safety. Here in South Dakota we have high rates of thyroid cancer along with other forms as well. We are downwind from the test sites that still blow that crap over our melons.
Those designs use lithium as the electrolyte, which requires mining because we are not recycling. So you can make all the graphene you want…the battery population for the foreseeable future is resource-limited by the amount of lithium that is available.
A good number to keep track of for storage is the energy capacity per kilogram of material, as well as the rate it can charge and discharge. Batteries will need a lot higher energy capacity than what is available today to get to utility-scale storage, and ultimately you would need a variety of batteries with different rates.
Renewables need help due to their intermittency, and batteries are not enough. Sorry.
So nothing has leaked yet. Got it.
Yes, let’s continue to dump wastes from wind and solar in the name of environmental safety. Who cares about generating timely and abundant energy for people or having carbon-free backup energy?
After all, the important thing is that we build more wind turbines…
And the Trump tariffs are not making your case any easier. Not your fault, but all of those critical elements that we import from China for both batteries and renewables will be more expensive.
You would think there would be bipartisan support for at least recycling these elements from our current waste streams.
https://www.dailycamera.com/2019/04/18/boulder-makes-68-5m-offer-to-acquire-xcel-energy-assets-as-it-works-toward-municipal-utility/
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/20/724921410/san-francisco-maneuvers-to-buy-local-grid-owned-by-pg-e
Sounds like they want to run their own grids. More power to them ;^).
It will be interesting to see how they will choose to address the intermittency issues of renewables (i.e. deficits and surpluses).
House panel advances $46 billion energy bill, defying Trump
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/444899-house-panel-advances-46-billion-energy-bill-defying-trump
“This bill rejects the President’s drastic and short-sighted proposed cuts to key energy and water programs, including a 12% decrease to the Department of Energy, a 31% decrease to the Army Corps of Engineers, and a 28% decrease to the Bureau of Reclamation,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who chairs the Subcommittee on Energy and Water.
It restores funding to nuclear security, but takes away funding for Yucca Mountain from what the President had proposed.
Buttigieg in favor of a carbon tax and investing in wind, solar, and carbon capture (which does not exist yet at scale).
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/444330-buttigieg-climate-plan-includes-a-carbon-tax
But apparently he is open to nuclear too.
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/04/06/pete-buttigieg-likes-green-new-deal-and-nuclear/
“To me, our priority when it comes to energy has to be carbon. And nuclear has problems but it has the advantage that it does not create carbon emissions, so if we got to choose our pros and cons I think that nuclear certainly is preferable to anything like coal. And while it might not be the best solution for the very long term, and I certainly prefer in the short to medium term doing everything that we can with renewables, I definitely think by the end of the day what we’ve got to care about most is cutting CO2 emissions and, at least for now, nuclear is part of that.”
You know, Robert, I don’t remember who the wag was that said decades ago that it was just a matter of time before a nuclear accident would render a country uninhabitable. Hasn’t happened yet but we have seen areas of country’s rendered uninhabitable. Fukushima is still leaking into the ocean.
40 years ago, I believe, that our current public utility’s commissioner was the guy I was dealing with when investigating the prospect of putting a 2 MW hydro plant on the flood control flume in Sioux Fall’s. He was no friendlier to renewable power then than he apparently is now. Hasn’t been done yet, Robert, why don’t you pick up the ball!
Though I am in favor of renewable power I don’t care for these giant eyesores of wind turbines.
40 years ago during our so called “Energy Crisis” I figured it would be no time at all before every farmer would be making power either with a wind turbine or biomass. Fast forward to now and what do we have? Well we have 90% fewer farmers and none of them are allowed to make power. The only people allowed in the wind, solar, biomass business are, like everything else, BIG business, They are the only ones with enough clout to go against folks like Gary Hanson and the people he represents. We know those people aren’t us.
Large areas around Fukushima are inhabitable….whether people want to move there or not is another question. Chernobyl was much worse in terms of an accident, and wildlife is better there today than it was before (primarily because the people are not there any more).
The key question many neglect is whether radiation levels are below natural background levels. Naturally-occurring radioactivity is, well, natural. If they are below those levels, any related impacts will get lost in the noise.
I would not go into the reactor cores however where most of the damage occurred, those are not below background levels. So let the robots work in there instead.
They sample seafood and other food items on a daily basis to check things out. In fact, agricultural exports from Fukushima Prefecture are at record levels now, from just over 2 tons right after the incident, to 218 tons now.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/23/business/agriculture-exports-fukushima-bounce-back-nuclear-disaster-hit-record-high/
Alaskan seafood has been measured for radioactivity, and they do not find any Fukushima-related activity. Besides the leaks being small, the ocean is big, and any radionuclides decay (so the numbers decrease over time).
https://wildalaskancompany.com/blog/fukushima-radiation-is-wild-alaskan-seafood-safe-to-eat
“Early last year, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed that no traces of Fukushima-related radionuclides Iodine-131, Cesium-134 or Cesium-137 have been found in samples of Alaskan salmon including king, chum, sockeye and pink. ”
“The testing has been going on periodically from 2014-present and no detectable amounts have ever been found in any Alaskan seafood.”
With regard to hydro, there is probably more room to grow for small hydro to complement other energy storage efforts.
In principle you could run your existing nuclear power plant in baseload fashion, and then when there is too much energy on the grid, push the water up and store it for later. Likewise you if there is no demand on the grid and wind and solar are too much, that could be done also.
There are environmental impacts that need to be worked through, maintenance issues, and you don’t get the energy out that you put in due to inefficiencies. So there would need to be an economic study to figure out some things.
Doc is for Iran setting up nuclear power stations as well as Saudi Arabia because there so safe and sound. Mike Flynn agrees, so there ya go doc. Who needs environmental impacts when you can just have an impact.
Well, Sioux Falls would be a run of the river development since there is no water impound. It does have a fairly high head so equipment cost / output would be low. When I dealt with the fellow in Sioux Falls I was looking at an easement. I was informed not a chance that a lease would be possible but not with a fixed long term rate. No hydro project is short term. Didn’t matter since the buy back rate was minuscule. Still is unless you are a BIG company.
Seriously, Robert, push for something that would do the environment some good and not be controversial. Push for a generator on the bypass flume.
Just saw something on a new potential energy source. Geothermal on abandoned oil wells. Seems that for every kilometer one drills into the earth the temperature goes up 50 to 100 degrees. If you were to circulate water through those old abandoned wells you could run a generator off them. There are 2.5 M of them in the US. Unfortunately each would be a small generator and we know how the energy industry treats little people.
Jerry,
I am for America taking leadership in the global nuclear industry. That is so our better rules for nuclear security and nuclear safety are implemented.
That also means more jobs…not just for nuclear, but also for the renewables that can go along with them. We should be the one-stop shop for clean energy.
I am absolutely and unequivocally for nations that buy our tech for peaceful nuclear power to completely adhere to the non-nuclear proliferation treaty. Medical physics and nuclear energy are fine, but there must be oversight regarding the use of nuclear technologies which could have a dual use.
Clyde,
I think everybody, including nuclear proponents, would like energy storage to increase. It would help everybody. However, I don’t think we can count on those technologies completely if we are to fix the climate in the near term, and we do not have the end of life cycle issues worked out ahead of time.
Let’s work on it and improve it, but we can solve the climate change issue without it.
We could be drilling deep wells (or current wells deeper) to extract geothermal energy. That is clean energy, but there are those that will resist any drilling (particularly regarding borehole storage). However, geothermal drilling would occur over hot spots, and would therefore be unsuitable for any borehole storage of radioactive material (or future wastes from solar and wind for that matter).
From Wayne B., great link, another one.
“As leaders of the Global Carbon Project, we’ve spent our careers working to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Today, we’re making what may seem like a counter intuitive proposal: temporarily increasing carbon dioxide emissions in order to cleanse the atmosphere of a much more potent greenhouse gas.
We want to remove methane from the atmosphere and then use porous materials called zeolites to turn it into carbon dioxide. Zeolites can trap copper, iron and other metals that can act as catalysts to replace methane’s four hydrogen atoms with two oxygen’s. Because a methane molecule holds more energy than carbon dioxide, the reaction typically runs to completion if you can jump-start it. Furthermore, by releasing the carbon dioxide back into the air instead of capturing it, you make the process less expensive and lengthen the life of the zeolites.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-broke-the-atmosphere-heres-a-way-we-can-start-to-fix-it/
Looks like we need carbon more than cancer.
If you believe Buttigieg, and there is likely a better chance of you believing him than me despite my efforts, the problem is carbon.
Methane by the way is 25 times worse a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. And if the temperature increases, some of the methane stored underground may be released (like in Alaska and Siberia), so reducing all carbon is of interest. Reducing leaks from natural gas extraction is of interest.
So…zeolites for cow farts?
“Zeolites can trap copper, iron and other metals that can act as catalysts to replace methane’s four hydrogen atoms with two oxygen’s.” Of course!!
Now, PUC get on the stick and listen to Buttigieg, hire more people to help solve the climate destruction and bring jobs jobs jobs!!
On the subject of Methane…..Every giant hog house is pumping as much methane into the atmosphere as a small town. Manure digester technology has been around for a long time and will almost pay, according to pilot projects, but that would mean you would have to pay little people once again. Something not allowed in the upper midwest.
On geothermal from old oil well’s….the holes are already there. Boring new ones are the biggest expense for geothermal. Makes sense to me but then you have to get the power company’s to pay you a fair price.
If the hole doesn’t have the right temperature difference, you do not convert water into steam, and you don’t generate electricity. That drives what the efficiencies will be, and whether it is cost-effective or not.
You may be able to break methane apart with UV, but that may lead to other chemicals being produced.
“The grid can’t be 100% renewable”
http://www.startribune.com/ceo-xcel-will-likely-need-gas-or-nuclear-power-to-reach-carbon-free-goals/510298362/
Here’s the big deal…if they want to get to carbon-zero by 2050, they can’t use natural gas the same as today (i.e. with no carbon capture). Small nuclear, batteries, and carbon capture are not available or mature yet, but would help them reach their goals.
Well, Robert, it’s not necessary to produce steam from the bore hole. All that is necessary is enough of a temperature differential to make it viable. Plenty of gases that can produce a pressure differential to power a piston or turbine power unit at a temperature considerably below the boiling point of water. Sort of a heat pump in reverse.
Of course not every oil well bore hole will be viable but there are two and a half MILLION of them. Plenty would be.
Of course the grid isn’t going to be 100% renewable but it sure won’t get anywhere near if the country doesn’t try. I see so much potential in the midwest and nothing being done except giant wind farms. Again, just to remind the readers, nuclear is lousy at accomplishing peaking power production. It’s only really good at base load. The country is going to need peaking production.
True, we have chosen to use nuclear as baseload because it is more efficient that way. This is primarily due to the generation of fission by-products that inhibit the ability to generate future neutrons for additional fissions. Also, natural gas has been doing that cheaper at the moment.
But Europe does use nuclear reactors in what I call a “flexible manner”. And the Navy does not use them just in baseload fashion either. The newer reactors will do this better, which is a good reason to build them!
The good news is that weather forecasting is much better, so utilities have a better idea when it will be windy or not, and when it will be sunny or not. So we can use today’s reactors better so that we have to build fewer gas plants (which would cost consumers more money).
One can still use reactors in a baseload fashion, and then switch off to secondary uses as needed if ramping up and down is not your cup of tea.
The reactor designs that use a fuel that is more like a slurpee, or the new fuels that are more resistant to higher temperatures, will be better at load-following. The current reactors can’t do the former, but they can do the latter.
More so if in situ reprocessing is done at the same time.
A bill introduced in Congress would prioritize the removal of nuclear waste from areas of high population and seismic activity, in this case from California.
https://www.ocregister.com/2019/05/23/nuclear-waste-from-san-onofre-would-get-first-dibs-for-relocation-under-new-bill/
The hope is that the wastes would be moved to temporary storage sites in Texas or New Mexico.
There seems to be more bipartisan agreement about the need for temporary centralized facilities, but permanent storage is very tough to solve at the moment from a political standpoint.
nobody is going to realistically oppose appropriate deep geothermal energy wells. Years ago we considered pushing hydro water above Gregory to milk more electricity or for energy storage. These are as old as ideas putting off solving the nuke waste danger. Economic feasibility is required in EVERY plan. This is not difficult.
RED HERRING (phrase used by my kiwi professor at tech back in the day): “let’s continue to dump wastes from wind and solar in the name of environmental safety”
politics baloney. appropriate permanent deep nuclear storage boreholes are VERY difficult to locate, geographically, with sub and surface concerns. Environment is not political. GOP obstructs and creates the disruptive politics of the age.
who isn’t for appropriate nuke power too?
definitions? Carbon free. 100% renewable. Targets: 12 years? 2050? End of life cycle? America taking leadership in the global nuclear industry-well, in terms of global oil producer, that is not such a great idea as we see now. We are already the global nuke tech leader and you guys never figured out waste dangers.
Get to the point Doc!
State your full position in ONE understandable lay sentence pls. But you are not the only doctor here. Otherwise you are gonna get scatter-gun responses.
Methane not a problem? Of course carbon is.
nuclear/peak baseload?? citation?
reducing just leaks? you mean flare offs that light the sky larger than Chicago in western, otherwise black, ND skies.
Sorry leslie, you guys have already opposed deep borehole techniques for geothermal wells. You could have done the test drilling just for geothermal purposes only and agreed to not do anything with nuclear waste at all at the test sites. So no, I do not believe you.
Why build exponentially more wind and solar without worrying about the waste management? Please tell me how that is environmentally sound. It certainly is cheaper!
We should be delivering the energy that people use, when they want to use it, with as much clean energy as possible. Let’s do renewables, but let’s do something else to balance supply and demand that reduces carbon over the next 100 years.
All I am asking is that those questions be addressed. That will make renewables more sustainable (and no, throwing broken wind turbines in the dump is not sustainable). This requires you have to get some combo of energy storage, gas with carbon capture, or nuclear to provide the something else. Nuclear is the one we are best at today.
The nuclear waste issue is a political one, not a technical one. Oil and gas techniques have been shown to deliver an inert canister far below the ground, and then they successfully retrieved it.
http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-company-demonstrates-innovative-waste-disposal
And by the way, if solar and wind need to isolate a final toxic waste form from the environment to protect our clean water, do you think these techniques for nuclear would be considered?
You asked for a linky about load following with nuclear. I am happy to provide you with one!
https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power-plants-ramps-up/
“A widespread misconception persists that nuclear plants can only function as inflexible baseload sources of power—and it’s hurting prospects for the nuclear sector’s role in the world’s future power mix, which will increasingly be crowded by intermittent renewable energy forms, several experts say.”
Largely we run our plants in a baseload capacity, but our reactors have the capability to run flexibly. This has been done in Europe for years, but some engineering and economics must be contemplated here in the US.
You can’t argue with science. Yet the innumerate do.
Getting to you, eh? Keep dancing, G.
Thx for the reply Doc. Will spend some time with powermag.
When we do decommission coal mines, oil refineries and other fossil fuel sites, we can follow Germany’s lead in repurposing them. They’re often delightful money makers.
https://short1.link/NXNtxs
Debbo,
Is siting a wind farm on a site used for mountain top coal removal a good use of the site? Yes. That is being done to a small extent in West Virginia.
Should we build a lot of wind turbines willy-nilly without considering their decommissioning, what is done when there is extra power, and what is done when there isn’t enough power? No.
The goal is to deliver the power we use while reducing total annual carbon emissions. Natural gas back-up will eventually fail without any carbon capture as we use more power.
Robert, did you read the link? There’s no paywall. Your comment doesn’t seem responsive to it.
Sorry, no I didn’t. CBS News just had a story on people in West Virginia who were building solar and wind in coal country, so that was on my mind.
Conversion into public spaces and green spaces is fine. I guess the money goes where the beer flows.
I’m afraid that Robert will get his wish if you listen to some of the current crop of Dem candidates for Pres.
Anything we do will have to only benefit the biggest. Big nuke, big wind, big solar and a national grid so that independents will always be offered only the cheapest wholesale price for power. . Oh and we had better get on it right away cause we might be facing a problem!
Well, folks, we are already too late. You think the spring planting season in South Dakota is a fluke? Climate change is going to make springs like this one the norm.
Even if we stopped emitting any green house gases TODAY. Its too late. The US produces only about 15% of the global CO2 so we should be not only be trying to greatly reduce that but should be moving full speed to mitigate the damage caused by climate change. Its here.
Maybe that idea about making South Dakota the “Buffalo Commons” that was mentioned a few years ago makes sense again. Plug those tile lines and bring back the prairie pot holes to raise duck’s. You aren’t going to be raising crop’s.
Re-wild the west with “Buffalo Commons” Indeed, we could make more money with the tourist industry riding in on horseback to see this area like Debbo shows of German closed mines. Open it only when the grass is lush and then, close it down and give it back to nature. Debbo and Clyde are visionaries.
Because much of the world is going to burn coal (because it is cheap and abundant), there will be interest in carbon capture. It may be the case that we have to capture the carbon and monetize it ourselves instead of waiting for China and India to implement it….but it is likely to be more efficiently done near the source where the concentrations are higher.
Regardless, it will be essential to power carbon capture with carbon-free energy.
Wind and solar are not as energy intense as nuclear for this purpose, but carbon capture could do OK as an intermittent consumer of energy (i.e. pull carbon from the atmosphere whenever the wind and sun are available). That gets around the typical supply and demand issues that come up with renewables.
Likewise, I have also argued previously that instead of shutting down nuclear plants that are otherwise operational, you continue to use them to power carbon capture.
The problem is that climate change is here, but commercially viable carbon capture has not arrived yet.
And burying the carbon is a mistake. There are a lot of applications of fossil fuels outside the power sector that could be displaced with such a carbon resource.
Well, Robert, the “Buffalo Commons” sounds like it would be a great way to capture carbon. Especially if someone is going to pay for it! If we can’t grow a crop here in South Dakota anyway because of climate change. A win-win!
I guess you could try rotating buffalo herds and planting different crops to generate some income from the carbon one captures.
And by the way, a buffalo does emit methane…so you would have to take those emissions into account as well as carbon from the rest of the operations.
Robert, we may not need those nukes after all. Here is yet another way to handle that nasty problem of intermittent power production from renewable power sources!
https://www.apnews.com/Business%20Wire/4cd173038f674c1793a55180fbe3ab7b
Good news, you could run everything with nuclear energy and a viable energy storage technology. Otherwise, we can do renewables and nuclear if energy storage doesn’t work out.
One must consume energy to separate the hydrogen from whatever the initial source is. “Renewable hydrogen” appears to mean you are separating hydrogen whenever the wind/sun are available…perhaps the hydrogen is coming from biomass as well. Nuclear can do that 24/7, and the process heat from nuclear could be used to combine hydrogen with captured CO2 to produce syngas (which means you could have renewable natural gas too).
You need nuclear for this additional functionality, if not just for making the total amount of energy we will consume.