Posted on 11/28/2021 11:00:16 PM PST by blueplum
When the coal-fired power plant just outside the tiny town of Nucla, Colorado, closed in 2019, it had the makings of a disaster.
The plant, which opened in 1959, shut down three years ahead of schedule when it ran out of coal, leaving the town shocked and facing the loss of its largest employer. The facility provided nearly half the tax revenue to the region...
....The huge Navajo Generating Station in northern Arizona, within the Navajo Nation, also shut down in 2019. Local leaders complained that plant operators closed the facility decades ahead of schedule, although the region did have two years to prepare after the announcement. Little planning appears to have preceded the closure...Coconino county has lost $40m a year in property taxes since the plant, just outside the town of Page, closed, Fowler said. Families have been separated as one parent left for a job at another power plant, and there are concerns the Navajo Nation could cut essential services because of the tax losses....
...Cultural and regional differences have a huge bearing on how communities prepare and recover from a coal plant closure. Secluded towns that have relied on coal for decades – including power plant jobs that pay an average of $90,000 or more – can be reluctant to talk about a coal-free future. And don’t even bring up solar or wind power in some places....
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
As a wise man once said about Democrat policies, and the Democrat voters:
Embrace the suck, chumps.
Lights out.
.
How many midwestern and southern small communities and counties were economically devastated during the last 30 years when a large manufacturing plant closed down, the hundreds of jobs went to China, and the tax base crumbled?
How many small communities across America are experiencing infrastructure, economic and societal collapse due to large numbers of refugees and illegal immigrants being dumped to overwhelm education, legal, law enforcement, sanitation, health care and social service programs?
The real impact of government policies is much greater when one looks at the big picture.
My brother retired from a coal fired plant. He’s going in once a week or so to write manuals to help train any new employees. Only, there’s not much luck finding any new employees.
They’re not running out of coal, but workers.
Same big government policies, same end result.
I get some of the cheapest electricity in the world living amongst the coal fired generating plants here on the Ohio River. Obama regulated two of six of these plants within 50 miles of me out of business. The loss of jobs and tax base for the tiny river communities dependent upon this industry has been devastating. Rural white towns, who cares? They’re probably all white supremists anyway.
Even If you have a brand new coal plant, it doesnt run on its own and simple mistakes or lack of experience dealing with day to day operation will be expensive. IE a boiler can quickly get out of hand a 2000 psi when someone hits the wrong button or shorts the control power to the condensate pumps by accident and boiler feed is lost.
None of this would have to hurt or happen if we would just build nuclear.
Wind and solar are just supplemental feel good theater.
“Increasingly outpaced by cheaper alternatives, including renewables ...”
And ‘cleaner’ conventional such natural gas.
Isn’t that a legitimate reason for shutting down a power plant? I expected to read that due to the shutdowns people weren’t getting their electricity.
I recently read a WWII novel based on Midway. The author spent several chapters describing the utter complexity of refiring a boiler to make steam to move an aircraft carrier.
Bingo.
I had a nightmare the other night. I was back in a coal fired power plant when all of a sudden everything went wrong.
I retired in 2008 and still have nightmares of that place.
I share those nightmares.
“White” is code for Republican. Which is why “you ain’t black” - spoken by a Democrat who isn’t African-American to one who plainly is - can make sense to journalists and other Democrats.
Hermann Melville?
(Exhaustive Moby Dick descriptions reference)
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