Posted on 08/07/2015 11:29:14 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
At the very moment President Obama has decided to shutter America’s coal industry in favor of much more expensive and less efficient “renewable energy,” coal use is surging across the globe.
A new study by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences detects an unmistakable “coal renaissance” under way that shows this mineral of fossilized carbon has again become “the most important source of energy-related emissions on the global scale.”
Coal is expanding rapidly “not only in China and India but also across a broad range of developing countries — especially poor, fast-growing countries mainly in Asia,” the study finds. Why is coal such a popular energy source now? The NAS study explains that many nations are attracted to “(relatively) low coal prices . .. to satisfy their energy needs.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wattsupwiththat.com ...
If you drop the bucket, you can pick it up. It will stay good for a long time without special storage. If the train tips over, you can pick it up and put it back on. It is much less likely to evaporate or catch fire. There are many attractive things about it as a fuel.
The coal would be pulverized mixed with water in to a slurry at a lake front facility and then pumped from that facility inland to the generation facility dried there and burned.
At least some parts of the world will survive the next ice age. The US and Europe are toast.
Frozen toast?
I’ll believe that coal use is increasing after I do more research. The Chinese say they are cutting back on coal use because the air pollution is so bad. There may be some short term increase, but I think that solar will pick up especially in the tropics. Gas and oil are really cheap right now too.
Our coal companies should start exporting. or increase it, to stay in business.
I had to search the web, as last year China was on pace to build a new coal plant every ten days for the next 8 years or something.
But now I see that they ARE closing up some of their facilities. And it doesn’t look like just for short-term weather conditions either.
A friend said the smoky skies of the American West from all the forest fires remind him of China!
But in the longer, Indian and Chinese scientists are seriously looking at whether Alvin Weinberg's work on molten-salt nuclear reactors can be scaled up to commercial scale. If it works, suddenly thorium-232--an actinide series radioactive element as common in the soil as lead!--becomes the nuclear fuel of choice, and in one fell swoop permanently end the energy crisis. We know that not only on Earth, but on the Moon and possibly Mars, the amount of thorium-232 in the ground is enough to power Earth's energy needs for effectively tens of thousands of years at current power usage rates.
Our very own who are working for them are working against us to change the world power structure
There is a huge difference in burning coal and burning coal with scrubbers on line to clean up the emissions. However, pollution abatement equipment is very expensive and complex to operate. If the scrubber equipment goes down, the electric generating plant cannot generate without polluting.
Wonder how many plants in China are required to have operating pollution abatement equipment on line?
By the way, CO2 is not a pollutant, no matter what the EPA says.
Outstanding Ray...
I have been researching this arena with all the Iran talk. They don't need a Fusion program, they need to join a Thorium program. I found a ton of YouTube videos many over an hr in length of an organization interviewing the remaining liquid Florine cooled Reactor engineers and how they were cut off ( funding ) by Nixon who wanted Breeders ( in CA to garner jobs their ) and how they never made the next step to Thorium.
They want Electric Cars? Good, build a ton of Thorium Reactors to have a Thorium based economy,it works for me...
For starters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
1. Very high levels of safety. MSR's don't need dangerous pressurized reactor vessels, and since the fuel is already in liquid form, there is no such thing as meltdown. Shutting down the reactor quickly is just emptying the liquid fuel from the reactor vessel.
2. By using closed-loop Brayton turbines, we eliminate the need for expensive cooling towers or locating the reactor near a large source of cooling water (rivers, lakes or the ocean). That makes it possible to locate the reactor in more arid regions in the world.
3. The amount of radioactive waste generated is very small, and only have a half-life of under 300 years. That means the waste can be stored cheaply in disused salt mines--if the nuclear medicine industry doesn't grab it first!
4. MSR's can be scaled up and down easily in size and generating capacity. That means instead of a large central reactor, we can build a large number of smaller reactors to power a whole city. They're small enough that a whole factory or computer server farm could be powered by a 50 to 100 MW MSR--and unlike solar and wind power, the power generation can go on 24 hours a day.
5. With enough MSR's, we could do amazing things like getting rid of all coal-fired power plants, electrifying all our long-distance railroads, and even do large-scale seawater desalinization to turn large swaths of arid desert into productive farmland.
6. MSR's will make it possible to produce "synthetic" natural gas, gasoline and diesel fuel that are far cleaner-burning than today's petroleum-derived fuels.
Given that thorium-232 is as common as lead in the soil, the possibility that thorium-232 could be found in large quantities on the Moon, and Mars may have large quantities of this element, there is enough thorium-232 to effectively generate power at current power production levels for tens of thousands of years. In short, the whole idea of energy crisis will be eliminated for thousands of years starting now.
what are the hindrances to export?
logistics? facilities? legal?
Global coal demand to reach 9 billion tonnes per year by 2019
http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2014/december/global-coal-demand-to-reach-9-billion-tonnes-per-year-by-2019.html
Global demand for coal over the next five years will continue marching higher, breaking the 9-billion-tonne level by 2019, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its annual Medium-Term Coal Market Report released today. The report notes that despite China’s efforts to moderate its coal consumption, it will still account for three-fifths of demand growth during the outlook period. Moreover, China will be joined by India, ASEAN countries and other countries in Asia as the main engines of growth in coal consumption, offsetting declines in Europe and the United States.
Here are the facts about their CO2 production (due to coal and high inefficiency): http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=92&pid=46&aid=2 Between 2007 and 2011 they made zero progress in efficiency. They still created 3 times more CO2 per dollar of GDP than we did. That means anytime the idiots suggest moving more industry to China (mainly by raising energy prices here), you need to point out that the net result will be 3 times more CO2 worldwide.
Slower growth in world coal demand, lower international coal prices, and higher coal output in other coal-exporting countries have led to a two-year decline in U.S. coal exports. EIA projects coal exports will fall by 10 MMst, to 87 MMst, in 2015, but coal exports are expected to increase slightly in 2016. U.S. coal imports, which increased by more than 2 MMst in 2014 to 11 MMst, are expected to remain near that level over the next two years.
SHORT-TERM ENERGY OUTLOOK
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/coal.cfm
July 7, 2015
Frozen hippie statues eating burnt toast.
IIRC the coal slurry pipeline project was back in the ‘70s. I recall hearing about that.
We already export a lot of coal, so increasing the amount shouldn’t be a problem.
Barry wouldn’t object, would he?
He cares about jobs, right?
:-)
Ironically, we also import coal.
Our coal exports have been falling.
http://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/
**********
First quarter 2015 U.S. coal exports (22.0 million short tons) dropped 1.3% from fourth quarter 2014 and dropped 20.3% from first quarter 2014. Coal exports have declined for eight quarters in a row. The average price of U.S. coal exports during the first quarter 2015 was $82.31 per short ton.
The United States continued to import coal primarily from Colombia (76.4%), Indonesia (16.2%), and Canada (5.7%). U.S. coal imports in first quarter 2015 increased to 3.0 million short tons from 2.2 million short tons in fourth quarter 2014. The average price of U.S. coal imports during the first quarter 2015 was $69.95 per short ton, the lowest price in five years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.