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The proposed British Columbia policy, however, could have unintended consequences. John Thompson, director of the Coal Transition Program for the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit environmental consulting firm based in Boston, says that British Columbia's seemingly IGCC-friendly policy may be too ambitious because it would force IGCC operators to find a place to store their captured carbon dioxide. In Thompson's view, carbon-dioxide sequestration technology is not as mature as IGCC. "There's a tendency to think that geological sequestration from coal plants can emerge in one fell swoop. But [carbon capture and sequestration] are really two distinct technologies," argues Thompson. Sequestration is under way at several sites in Europe and the United States. (See "Carbon Dioxide for Sale.") Still, Thompson says that more testing is needed to see whether deep geologic formations are capable of absorbing the carbon dioxide from multiple power plants and safely holding it long term. "Who's liable if, God forbid, some of this carbon dioxide comes up?" he asks.
British Columbia's policy poses an immediate dilemma for the two coal-power projects currently pending in the Canadian province. Proponents of one project, a pulverized-coal plant proposed for Tumbler Ridge, are exploring the feasibility of adding carbon capture and storage, Neufeld says. The other project, in Princeton, has found an entirely different way around the new policy: dumping coal from its plan. The plant was originally designed to burn a fifty-fifty mix of wood waste and coal. Neufeld says the developers are now talking about burning 100 percent biomass.
The new plans for Princeton are a reminder of the coal-power industry's stake in IGCC technology. If it doesn't find a means of reducing coal's greenhouse-gas emissions, coal power may eventually be legislated out of existence. Neufeld says British Columbia will need 25 to 45 percent more electricity within 20 years, and that alternative forms of electricity such as wind power and new hydro power, which tend to be intermittent, can't completely replace baseline power sources such as coal-fired plants. "We need firm energy," says Neufeld, "hard, firm electricity ... to make sure that the lights stay on."
A carbon-emissions limit will raise energy prices unevenly.
Nuclear power is the safest cleanest type of viable electric power generation and yet almost all politicians run from it.This is not the 1960's ,we are willing to look I hope at this seriously rather then with the typical knee jerk reactions of the past!!
Guest (OtherDoug)
It's certainly a lot better than coal. If we can't bring renewables online fast enough in quantities to meet demand then nuclear is probably our best option. Coal is an awful choice because of air pollution & CO2 emissions from combustion, as well as air & water pollution, habitat destruction and landscape obliteration from mining.
Guest (OtherDoug)
That is one of the most critical points involved in this issue and it doesn't get much press. If the costs of sequestration are added in to the cost of coal then alternatives such as solar, small scale hydro, etc. become very close to competitive, if not beating out coal.
If only we could add in all the other external costs of coal. Then there'd be no economic argument against renewables at all.
The nuclear industry is heavily subsidized by the taxpayer, who provides sequestration for the radioactive waste in protected sites. 50,000 years is a long time to have to protect spent uranium from terrorists. Not all of the costs of nuclear have been discussed openly. You're not getting something for nothing. Admittedly the government gets the waste for defense purposes, but don't be fooled. There's no free lunch.
Oh for God's sake! Doesn't this 'science' service bother to research at all? There are MANY ways to store old nuke waste, the safest and most long-term being to sink vitrified canisters into deep-sea sediments in mid-ocean. A terrorist would have to dive three miles under the sea, and then dig through deep mud just hoping to find a small metal tube somewhere in a few thousand square miles.
But, the very terrorist nation of Iran proves that nuclear waste is not what we should be worrying about--they just mined their own Uranium. There are still calls to make small reactors for third world nations that can't possible guard them.
And, in true socialist fashion, the bloggers are calling to make all technology more, not less expensive, rather than letting technology and the market work out a solution. Putting penalties on coal plants will not make reactors more attractive since there are still all the old-school leftists and tree-huggers still do all they can to block the building of new nuclear plants. Reactors WERE an attractive financial investment before the usefull idiots were mobilized to attack them. As things are, large subsidies are required, just to combat the very people the clean power would help.
That's hard to overcome.
Re: nuke, coal, waste and whatnot
actually, the easiest and safest is to incorporate it into bricks made of industrial slag, and store the bricks in some convenient location. As long as they do not degrade easily (i.e., solid, glassy surface), the contained waste cannot get out into the ecosystem, and the value of such material for weapons construction would be extremely low, since the reclamation process would be time-consuming, difficult, and expensive.
Re: nuke, coal, waste and whatnot
Why not reinrich the waste so it can be used as feul again
When that bunch of so called enlightened scientists, at the behest of the American military/industrial complex, let the nuclear genie out of the bottle some fifty years ago, they did so without figuring out how to get it back in again. For all those of you out there who think that you know more about the technology behind it than they did, then please volunteer to lead us once again into the nuclear promised land.
We just don't have time for nuclear
We only have about 10 years to avert climate catastrophe.
Nuclear power stations have always taken at least 20 years from the ok to being online.
The delays are because it always takes about 15 - 20 years to explain to its proponents that jumping out of the frying pan into the fire is not our only option here.
Nuclear is the answer - The correct Nuclear
Many pundits show complete ignorance of the technological potential for countering global warming. They speak of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050. This is a disastrous approach. Reduction by 80% will only push the time of melting of all the ice out a short time. To save the earth from our excess we must completely stop emitting carbon dioxide. The path to total elimination of carbon dioxide is straight forward: encourage conservation, harvest all renewable energy possible, using the Apollo program as a model, develop nuclear fusion in a timely manner, and finally develop a hydrogen based energy distribution system. The barriers to this approach are the reluctance of all to sacrifice, resistance from current energy suppliers, and puny leadership from politicians.
There is a clear example of the proper method of curing this type of challenge. An instructive example is found in the logistics of supplying goods in New York City. In 1900 large cities depended on horses for transport of both people and goods. The horses, of course, created massive amounts of waste (a proxy for carbon dioxide). By 1900, New York had 1,250 tons of horse manure and 60,000 gallons of urine dumped on its streets every day. Each year 15,000 horses were killed in accidents and were removed. This situation was limiting the continued grow of large cities. Control was not achieved by passing laws concerning the use and/or behavior of horses (a proxy for addicting how many miles per gallon new car fleets must get), Control was achieved by replacing that horse based transportation with a new technology that was better than the old. The new transportation technology was the fossil fuel powered vehicle. Cars and trucks were built. Governments at all levels subsidized building of roads for the vehicles. Within about 10 years, the problem of horse waste was dwindling and in 30 years it was eliminated.
Large cities had to eliminate horse waste and the planet earth must eliminate the waste from the combustion of fossil fuels. Renewable energy sources are useful and should be harvested, but are unlikely to provide the quantity of energy needed. Sir David King, the chief science advisor for the United Kingdom, recommends that fusion (not uranium fission) is the answer to future energy needs (King, David, ‘Fast Forward to Fusion’ New Scientist, Issue 2442, 10 April 2004). Fusion reactors use hydrogen isotopes and/or boron as fuels and cannot be used to make bombs. A fusion reactor produced positive energy in 1992 prompting an international program titled the “International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor” (ITER) program (http://www.iter.org or, http://www.efda.org)
The deniers will proclaim that we have been examining fusion for 50 years and still do not have a reactor. This is true, but fake, there has never been an Apollo type push for success; the past projects have been treated as class rooms for training future physics PhDs and not, as Sir David King suggests, humanity’s hope for abundant clean energy.
In support of success within a decade, see the 1976 report, FUSION POWER BY MAGNETIC CONFINEMENT, ERDA-76/110/1, UC-20, Page 8. (ERDA is the United States Energy Research and Development Administration, a precursor to the current DOE). This 1976 ERDA report states that building a pilot fusion reactor would take 10 to 13 years with a Maximum Effective Effort (using 1976 computers and technology). Using what we have learned in the last 31 years combined with the improvements in computer aided design hardware and software we should be able to start the production of utility fusion reactors within a decade. Renewable energy sources and fusion energy sources can produce energy. The energy will be used to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen will be distributed to all customers by buried pipe lines. This will yield the Renewable, Fusion, Hydrogen (RFH) energy system.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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sagema
4 Comments
Lake Nyos - 1986
Whoever decides to pump CO2 underground better make sure it doesn't come back up again. We may too easily forget what can happen when it does but I bet the people around Lake Nyos haven't forgotten and that was a natures doing - not mans. See http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Nyos.html
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Guest (OtherDoug)
Re: Lake Nyos - 1986
CO2 can be safely stored in underground reservoirs that were formerly filled with natural gas or oil. The reservoirs are sound or the oil and natural gas would have leaked out before we found it. Other geological formations would work as well. Trouble is there are limited volumes of such reservoirs available.
Ocean bed storage of CO2 is where the Lake Nyos sort of disaster would come into play. Few people are pushing ocean bed storage, thankfully.
Conversion of CO2 into some sort of useable product would be a great boon for IGCC, but so far there aren't many ideas that I've run across.
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