Posted on 02/16/2021 11:16:01 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Here in the state of Texas, we’re currently experiencing a freak chill with temperatures that dropped well below the southern part of Alaska. Many residents have fled their homes due to not having any power to heat, thanks to the fact that Texas has made around a quarter of its power source “green energy,” mostly in the form of wind farms.
As Tucker Carlson pointed out last night, Texas shouldn’t be having an energy problem at all. The state of Texas is the largest source of natural gas in the world. He likened running out of power in Texas to starving in a grocery store and pointed out that you can only do that on purpose.
But the overall point he was making is pretty clear, and has been clear for some time; green energy is unreliable at best and underperforms when the need calls.
Moreover, green energy comes with a myriad of other problems. For one, it’s expensive to build, and many of the rare-earth metals that are needed to make the fields of solar and wind farms come from China. Moving over to a primarily green energy-producing system will effectively have us owned by our enemies via the debt alone.
Also, this “green energy” is often very damaging to the environment. Not only do large swaths of land need to be cleared and made ready for these green energy farms, but they also damage the environment by their mere existence. From cadmium leaks, the deaths of millions of birds (many of them endangered), to toxic waste they become when they’ve run their course, green energy isn’t exactly something you would consider environmentally friendly.
(READ: The Expense and Destruction Caused by Renewable Energy)
However, if there’s one thing that the green energy worshiping, Church of Climate Change parishioners has right, it’s that we can’t rely on fossil fuels forever, mostly because at some point we will run out. So, if we can’t just stay on fossil fuels and green energy is the power-producing equivalent of the C-squad, then what’s next?
We already have the answer, and you likely already know it.
What about nuclear energy?
Nuclear energy is the only kind of energy that could rival, if not out-perform, oil and gas. It has a myriad of advantages as well.
For one, it releases no carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Its power is generated through fission, which produces steam that spins turbines, generating electricity. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the U.S. avoided emitting over 476 million metric tons of CO2 in 2019 via nuclear energy. Energy.gov notes that this is about the same as removing 100 million cars off the road.
It also has a much smaller land demand as well. A single nuclear facility may need only a square mile to operate, whereas a solar farm requires 75 times the amount of space. In order to rival the nuclear facility, you would need 3 million solar panels or 430 wind turbines, and that’s a lot of land that would have to be sacrificed as a result.
According to energy.gov, even the waste that nuclear energy produces is minimal:
Nuclear fuel is extremely dense.
It’s about 1 million times greater than that of other traditional energy sources and because of this, the amount of used nuclear fuel is not as big as you might think.
All of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards!
What’s holding us back from nuclear are two things we could do without. One is the irrational fear that every nuclear power plant will become a Chernobyl or Fukushima, but it needs to be understood that both incidents, while tragic, were educational in helping us further understand what to do and what not to do.
For one, Chernobyl was an issue that happened because of Soviet incompetence in both its construction and maintenance. Shortcuts were taken when putting it together in order to save the soviet government on costs, and it was administrative and bureaucratic idiocy that caused the plant to meltdown.
Fukushima is the first time that an external force actually caused a plant to release radiation after a 14-meter-high wave hit the plant, which was twice the height it was built to withstand. However, as Ernest Moniz at MIT wrote, this devastating occurrence can only improve how nuclear facilities are built:
The Fukushima disaster will cause nuclear regulators everywhere to reconsider safety requirements—in particular, those specifying which accidents plants must be designed to withstand. In the 40 years since the first Fukushima reactor was commissioned, seismology and the science of flood hazards have made tremendous progress, drawing on advances in sensors, modeling, and other new capabilities. This new knowledge needs to be brought to bear not only when designing new power plants but also when revisiting the requirements at older plants, as was happening at Fukushima before the tsunami. Outdated safety requirements should not be kept in place. In the United States, the NRC’s review led to a recommendation that nuclear power plant operators reevaluate seismic and flood hazards every ten years and alter the design of the plants and their operating procedures as appropriate. With few exceptions, the needed upgrades are likely to be modest, but such a step would help ensure that the designs of plants reflect up-to-date information.
There really aren’t a lot of reasons not to move to nuclear energy. Sure, there are risks, but they are incredibly minimal. Accidents are quite rare, the energy produced is bar-none, the waste it produces also is incredibly minimal and recyclable, it requires very little land to operate, and moreover, it’s cheap.
“Green energy” on the other hand, is destructive, expensive, and unreliable. Taking yourself out of the political argument for a second and looking at the issue on paper would make nuclear energy the obvious choice, but it’s not.
As I mentioned earlier, there are two issues getting in nuclear energy’s way, and the other is a fight to keep it from establishing itself as the main source of energy, primarily by the left who seem to be very invested in solar and wind. It’s an industry that China has a lot to benefit from, and the close relationship between the Biden administration and China can’t be overlooked.
It would seem to Xiden that Soylent Green is the best form of energy.
“You need to supplement them with NatGas, coal, etc...to meet sudden excess demand during cold snaps or very hot weather conditions where there is sudden widespread demand.”
Or we need to build some really big batteries.... don’t even need to be electrical batteries. We could pump water uphill to a reservoir when there is low demand, then let it run back through a hydro dam when demand spikes.
Nukes are the only real green energy.
And some of the new generation of reactors safe, and don’t generate much waste - they burn it!
We have enough nuclear energy on earth to last for millennia. By that time, we will certainly got the handle on the controlled thermonuclear fusion (the hydrogen bomb) which has the energy potential of a lot more than even that.
Other energy sources will be found by then!
The irrational fear of nuclear energy is totally unscientific. There were less than 100 people killed at Chernobyl, about the same amount of people killed that day on US roads!
Radioactivity is not that bad, actually lower doses seems to be goo to you! The present day safety standards (developed from extrapolation of Hiroshima research) are overly conservative, the safety factors build in are just extreme, but everybody is in fear of lawsuits if they ever relax them.
Places with high level of natural radiation are known for being healthy spas with lower than average cancer case.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Mazandaran
Ramsar, the most radioactive place on Earth is famous spa, where Shah of Iran used to have his summer palace. That place has natural radioactivity about 10x more than considered safe by present day science, yet people live there happily for millennia.
On the flip side, places with very low natural radiation are known for high occurrence of cancer.
That suggest that we really need some level of radiation for healthy life!
The natural radiation on Earth is (very!) slowly decaying, life on Earth developed under at least 10x radiation levels and everything was OK then. This decay of radiation is linked to decaying vulcanism on Earth and decaying levels of CO2! (Most CO2 on Earth comes from volcanoes.)
That seems to be one (main) reason for overall cooling trend of the Earth and the ice ages, as well as explaining why Earth is not hotter, than it should be, given that Sun output has risen at least 10% over last billion of years and continues to rise.
Just to clarify, the decaying of CO2 levels are on million years scale! Co2 levels were substantially higher in time of dinosaurs (like 5x) then they are even now.
On the scale of last 6000 years, as Earth rebounds from the last ice age, CO2 levels rose.
You have the same reclamation costs for any strip mine. Wyoming has sub bituminous, not bituminous. The benefit of Wyomng Powder River Basin subbituinous is low sulfur and nowhere near as much furnace slagging as lignite.
You can deal with slagging — it’s been done successfully for decades. Cyclone burners were a slag-lined high-temperature vortex burner. High temperatures leading to high NOx were problems.
“They are constant output generators”
Yes, it takes awhile to start and stop them. Also, coal and natural gas steam circuits need to slowly warmed and cooled because of thermal stresses on the large, thick pipes and casings.
Those gas turbine generators, basically built out of sheet metal, can be stopped and started quickly.
These solar and wind generators — how much does the government help pay for them?
That was God’s way of telling you that green energy is BS.
And how much fuel is that helicopter burning and what’s happening to the propylene glycol that’s dripping onto the ground?
“And how much fuel is that helicopter burning and what’s happening to the propylene glycol that’s dripping onto the ground?
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Not to worry...perhaps the De-icer is falling on the snow which is melting so that the solar panel will work, and the helicopter will blow away the fumes so everyone will be green again. Now, what will we do about those Cow-farts???
Years before 3 Mile Island and the “China Syndrome” movie, Dr Petr Beckmann wrote a small but pertinent book, “The Health Hazards of (NOT) Going Nuclear”. I read it then and from my memories now it is probably more true than ever! But you have the dedicated and more than slightly fanatical anti-nuke crowd. They will kill you before they allow this Frankenstein-ian monster to be resurrected!
The main reason for the end of lignite mining in Texas was the vast reserves of natural gas that have been found, thus making lignite-fired plants non-competitive. That is why you see long coal trains headed down from Amarillo with “sub-bituminous” coal in them to take the place of the lignite. From what I have heard, many of the plants have switched over to natural gas.
California built many gas-fired combined cycle plants because they were cheap, gas was cheap, and (when they were built) “clean” and low-carbon.
The green kooks changed their minds and decided CH4 has too much C in it and they have shut down a lot of the gas plants.
Frankly, the whole situation is criminal. You should use coal and lignite to make electricity and save natural gas for high-value uses like home and commercial heating, making fertilizer, etc.
That is true but the commies have convinced everyone through the media that coal is “dirty”. It is probably one of the most regulated entities in America. They like to show stacks belching out thick columns of “pollution,” which mostly is water vapor. Why West Virginia still has any democrats that govern in their state is beyond me.
I’m still reading with interest the observations, science and hypotheses behind gamma ray bursts and its atmospheric effects.
Fascinating.
Texas shut down several coal and lignite power plants during the Obama years. Bet they wish they had them back now.
When we started up our 450 MW coal fired Power Plant, the locals were terrified it would blow up and wipe out the local area, as Three Mile Island was in the news. We were a coal Plant! It still scared them.
Stupidity in action.
It was the fear of Three Mile Island that got the Black Fox nuke plant in Oklahoma then under construction, shut down.
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