Climate Solutions BS in Houston by AIChE

Subtitle: Still BS - Bad Science, No Solutions Needed

I attended a lunch presentation by Dr. Tom Rehm, 2019 Chair of STS-AIChE on October 18, 2019 on Climate Solutions, in LaPorte, Texas.   (STS is South Texas Section)

The main points are below in bold font, with my comments in parentheses.  These are based on my notes made at the time, and may not perfectly reflect what was said; any inaccuracies are due to what I believe I heard at the time. 

(Preface:  I believe that Tom Rehm is sincere in his beliefs about catastrophic, imminent global warming caused by CO2, however he has stated in public that even if it is not true, it is prudent to do something to prevent it.  (my paraphrase, probably not his exact words).  I suspect he is also sincere in his belief that nuclear power is the planet's saviour, and that all plastic production must end and rather soon.  It is disconcerting that the STS of AIChE has taken this approach, with those beliefs based on very bad science and not on the facts.  However, the chairmanship is for only one year, and Dr. Rehm will soon hand over the chair - January 1, 2010.  It seems, though, that the incoming Chair has similar views.   That is actually ok, though, since the solutions being advanced are not workable, will have outrageous impacts on all of society, require massive government support, and cannot be implemented in less than 5 decades anyway.  By then, the inevitable global cooling will be advanced and more than evident to everyone. -- End Preface) 

The main points:

UHI, urban heat island effect, is due to aerosols that cooled the air until approximately 1980, then cleaner air caused the cities to warm.  Clean air laws were enacted.  
(That is nice to see the effect of man-made aerosols mentioned, as that is one of the several causes of warmer temperatures that have nothing to do with increased CO2 in the atmosphere.  SLB has articles on the non-CO2 causes of warming, see link. )

Population decreased in a few urban areas but temperatures increased, therefore warming is not correlated to population growth. 
(This is an attempt to show that increased temperatures are not related to population growth, however I have asked Tom in the past how does he know the temperature increase in those few locations were not related to drought, El Nino, cleaner air, fewer clouds, more local humidity, and a host of other known causes of warming?   He made no answer then.)

USCRN, United States Climate Reference Network, has more than 100 pristine sites across the US, sites with no urban warming influence for the foreseeable future.   Mentioned Stovepipe Wells, CA (actually in Death Valley), and Alaska.    Showed a slight warming trend for these locations.  
(the misdirection here was to, again, make the point that warming occurs even where population is small.  As before, no mention of non-CO2 causes of warming, El Nino, droughts, etc.) 

Professor Monty Alger of Penn State called Tom to say he was fully behind the Climate Solutions initiative at AIChE.  Alger will be AIChE president for 2020. 
 (see  https://www.che.psu.edu/faculty/alger/ for a bio of Dr. Alger.  The incoming president of national AIChE is equally misguided on the bad science, BS, of man-made global warming.  However, as an academic, it is important for the national AIChE to support and assist the other academics who receive part of their grants and other funding from promoting man-made climate change.  It is obvious that more work for chemical engineers will occur in designing and building the various systems to capture CO2, remove some from the atmosphere.)

Tom said he was instrumental in getting AIChE to change their official stance on Global Warming with the 2019 statement on climate. 
(The previous statement on climate was essentially, "we don't take a position as the science is not settled," with the new, 2019 statement emphatically stating "Scientific analysis finds that non-natural climate change is occurring and has been strongly influenced by human-caused releases of greenhouse gases. . . . Adverse climate change poses threats to all of us, both individually and as a society. These threats fall squarely in the realm of the chemical engineer. . ."  It is certainly dismaying that so many in our society could be so badly fooled by the BS, the bad science.   What the current statement should say is "Some very bad scientific analysis finds that".... the causation should have mentioned the multiple known causes of warmer temperature, none of which are related to increased greenhouse gases.) 

Mentioned Hofmeister’s book “Why We Hate the Oil Companies.”  Former president, Shell Oil. 
(Not much to say here, having not read the book.  I suspect the theme is that oil companies have been hiding very bad facts for decades, have conspired to deceive the public and elected officials, the usual such things.   It is quite instructive that Shell is mentioned, as they are notorious for having lied to the Securities Exchange Commission about the extent of their oil reserves, and were fined for doing that.  Shell would do well in an era where oil is minimized in favor of natural gas consumption.  That appears to be a primary goal of those who espouse climate solutions. )

Said presenter Stephanie Thomas is a geologist.   Matthew Berg won best presentation award for SPTC in Sugar Land, 2019.
(I sat through both Thomas' and Berg's presentations at that conference.  Dr. Thomas is listed as having a PhD in Earth Sciences, not Geology.  Dr. Berg has a PhD in Hydrology.   I wrote on SLB on Dr. Thomas' presentation, see link.    I have not yet written an article on Dr. Berg's presentation, but it can be summarized as "flooding is getting worse, and global warming is the cause."  He claimed, with a straight face, that local temperatures are melting railroad rails.  Then, showed a slide of a distorted rail juncture.  I laughed at that one.)

Wants the world to be CO2-neutral by year 2030, and to do that we must make no more plastics.
(this one is quite incredible; I shook my head in disbelief.  The modern world depends far too much on plastics to stop production.  The disruption, increased costs, increased disease and illness, and increased energy consumption all are insurmountable factors that will make this one never happen.   For just a few examples, how will hospitals and medical practices function without plastic?  What will food packaging be made from, at what cost in product purity and increased discards, if not plastic?  What will sanitation piping be made from?  How will transportation vehicles maintain their current low weights (or mass) that allows excellent fuel economy?  This one is, to use the vernacular, a doozy.)

Renewables cannot do the job; 100 percent renewables is impossible.  Cited Austin, Texas as having grid stability problems at 20 percent renewables on the local grid.   Said that the local grid and amount of renewables is the critical issue.  
(on this minor point, we agree at least in part.  SLB has articles on the 100 Percent Renewables issue, I agree that the world will not likely ever be run entirely by renewables.   Where Rehm is wrong, though, is on the claim that 20 percent renewables causes instability on local grids.  The fact is that many locations in the US have much more than 20 percent renewable power that makes electricity.  The issue is not with the renewables, but with the flexibility of the other generating systems.  )

Mentioned the cost for renewables is prohibitively high, and the low capacity factor, 25 percent for solar and wind combined in Texas is a major obstacle. 
(this is a common talking point by the anti-renewables, pro-nuclear crowd.  The fact is, the renewable sources of wind and solar are very competitive in the areas where the wind is good and the solar energy is strong.  However, the economics of solar panels in high latitudes will continue to be very bad for many decades.  Solar does well, though, in sunny areas (not cloudy) in locations between 30 degrees north and south of the equator.  Wind is the most attractive generating source in many, many areas as thoroughly documented by the US Department of Energy and their annual Wind Technologies Market Reports.)

One solution is nuclear, with new designs as Professor Tsvetkov proposes.  Said nuclear has zero emissions,   New designs will not use water as the moderator.  
(Tsvetkov clarified that zero-emissions view in his earlier 2019 speech to AIChE, it is not true for the entire nuclear cycle.  see link to SLB article on Gen IV nuclear and Tsvetkov's presentation.  Gen IV nuclear plants are unproven, most have not been built, a few prototypes were abandoned as hopeless.  The increased safety and reduced costs claims are not true at all.  Nuclear is never the solution; it costs far too much and is far too dangerous. ) 

Favors a carbon tax as paramount importance. 
(A carbon tax, or tax on companies that produce CO2 in their operations, is favored by one segment and opposed by another.  Those in favor are typically oil and gas companies, the opposition are coal companies.  Burning coal produces much more CO2 per unit of energy released, typically 2 - 3 times as much as does burning natural gas.  So, a carbon tax is a perfect way to run coal companies out of business.  Is it any wonder that oil and gas companies favor that?  They get to sell more natural gas, usually as fuel to utilities.)  

Three steps to carbon neutrality: Mitigation, Adaptation, and Resiliency. 
The points on the slide for this statement included:
-Manufacturing Energy Efficiency - Mitigation
-Electricity Generation /Distribution  - Mitigation
-Transportation - Mitigation
-Urban Energy Efficiency - Mitigation
-Agricultural Practices - Mitigation
-Land Use Practices - Mitigation, Adaptation, Resiliency
-And, governmental policy solutions. 

(He did not discuss these points in detail, except for the next paragraph on Regenerative Agriculture.  My own experience over 40 years of engineering consulting and energy work as an employee in chemical manufacturing shows that none of the above are cost-effective, except for Transportation with electric battery-powered vehicles.  If one favors the Efficient Market Theory, radical changes must make any market more inefficient and thus more costly to operate.  The prospects of increased energy efficiency due to another world energy price shock, like the 1970s had, is virtually zero.  Oil is no longer subject to price increases, and in fact OPEC is in disarray and oil prices are decreasing.  There is a world-wide glut of natural gas, driving its prices down, and coal is on the decline except in a few isolated countries (India, China).  That leaves only a government-mandated carbon tax to force such decreased energy usage.  )

Favors Regenerative Agriculture – soil must increase carbon content to remove CO2 from the air. 
(with farming already a very slim profit endeavor, the costs to include carbon sequestration in soil must be subsidized to prevent bankruptcies.  This may be where the carbon tax comes in; a wealth transfer from CO2 producers to the farmers.  More on Regen Ag will be published shortly on SLB.  For now, it's just another scheme to transfer wealth and run the oil companies out of business.)

Electricity generation options he favors are nuclear and biomass.   Said nuclear has the best safety record of all types when calculated on fatalities per TWh/y produced.   
(I wonder if that includes the entire uranium mining and fuel preparation cycle, plant construction, generation, decommissioning, and spent fuel storage for centuries.  SLB has articles on the dubious safety record of nuclear power plants, see link to "Nuclear Radiation Injures People and Other Living Things,"  and link to "Near Misses on Meltdowns Occur Every 3 Weeks," and link to "US NRC Stops Study of Cancer Risks near Reactors."  As to biomass for power generation, there is too much power needed and not nearly enough biomass to burn.  These facts have been known for decades.  And, it gets worse.  No more biomass is produced each decade, but the power generation needed keeps increasing.)

(Next, Rehm really pushed nuclear, to end the talk) Nuclear is not presently used much due to unjustified public fear.    Said advanced nuclear plants are much safer 
("Unjustified fear" is a buzzword from nuclear proponents.  One must wonder how much fear was justified among the Russians, Europeans, and others when Chernobyl exploded and sent radiation around the planet?  How much fear was justified in Pennsylvania when Three Mile Island melted down and spewed radioactive steam into the skies?  Were the evacuated pregnant women supposed to remain calm, cool, and collected during those horrible few days?  How much fear was justified in Japan during and after the triple reactor meltdowns and explosions at Fukushima?   How much fear is justified among the entire population, now that nuclear plants are being built in third-world countries with earthquakes and other serious threats to the plants' integrity?   How much fear is justified now that cyber-security is a serious threat?  As to advanced nuclear plants being much safer, how could he possibly know?   None have been built except for a few tiny proof-of-concept plants.  SLB has articles on the safety of new nuclear designs, see link to "Thorium MSR No Better Than Uranium Process,"  and link to "High Temperature Gas Reactor Still A Dream" )

Advanced nuclear will recycle existing spent fuel and generate power from the recycled material, reducing toxic radioactive waste by a large amount. 
(Why bother?  Fuel is not the expensive part of running a nuclear plant.  Safety is not improved, either, as a previous article on SLB shows, see link to "Reprocessing Spent Fuel Is Not Safe."  )

Said SMR, small modular reactors, are the answer since they will be very low-cost to build in factories.  
(This is one of the same points made by Tsvetkov in his Gen IV speech to AIChE, and the same rebuttal applies: any cost reduction due to volume production requires millions of units, not hundreds as SMR would have.  Economy of scale overwhelms any production cost reductions.  NB, the wind energy business for WTG (wind turbine generators) has the same issue for blade manufacturing.  The US industry builds and installs approximately 8 GW per year, at an average of 2.4 MW per WTG, thus the average number of WTG installed was 3,333.  Number of blades made was 10,000 for 2018.  Even that 10,000 items does not give low cost, so the industry strives for cost reductions via economy of scale with ever-larger WTG per unit.  Offshore, size went from 2 to 4 to 8 and now 12 MW.   Onshore, size from 1 to 3 and now 5 MW per WTG.  See link to SLB article on SMR and all the many drawbacks, "No Benefits From Smaller Modular Nuclear Plants." )

End of speech.  

In the Q&A portion, I asked this Question:  how much will electricity prices increase if the proposed solutions are implemented?  He admitted it will be a big increase but did not give a number. 

The transition period will require decades, Shell says 50 years, he stated BP and ExxonMobil have similar time frames.  
(how does this square with the earlier statement of carbon-neutral by 2030?  That’s only 11 years away)

Q:  how will SMR reduce costs, when economy of scale is the major factor in nuclear plant costs?  He had no answer for that, either.  

Q:  On USCRN slides that showed a warming, how much of the measured warming was due to CO2 increase, and how much to other factors like cleaner air – he mentioned pollution laws cleaned the air around 1980 and temperatures immediately increased in those locations.   His response was to show a graph purporting to show IR gap in Earth’s radiated energy out to space, with CO2 responsible for the gap.   My rebuttal was, the gap is also exactly where water vapor H2O absorbs, so how do they know it is due to 300 – 400 ppm of CO2, and not due to several percent of water vapor? 

Conclusion

The points made in this speech are typical of the misinformation and Bad Science (BS) of many in the climate alarmism camp.   So much of what they know, just isn't so. (a quote from Ronald Reagan).   The good news is, almost none of this is ever going to happen.  Plastics are here to stay.  Nuclear plants are a dying breed, and the sober review process and high standards at the NRC will prohibit the approval of the Gen IV reactors.   Economics alone will kill off any other reactor designs, such as the NuScale small modular reactor system that is presently undergoing safety review at the NRC.  Low-price wind electricity and natural gas power have doomed nuclear power, which is a very good thing.   Wind energy is a booming business, and is here to stay.  Solar is also booming in those areas of the world, as stated above, not far from the Equator where the sunshine is strong.   The AIChE will likely see the Climate Solutions division, or initiative, whatever it is called, wither away in just a few short years.  

This website will have articles and updates on that, as they occur. 

Roger E. Sowell

Houston, Texas
copyright (c) 2019 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Topics and general links:

Nuclear Power Plants.......here
Climate Change................here, here,  and here
Fresh Water......................here
Engineering......................here  and here
Free Speech.................... here

Renewable Energy...........here  

Is 100 Percent Renewable Energy a Good Thing?

Subtitle: 100 Percent Will Not Happen on a National Basis

It has become increasingly clear that renewable energy forms, especially solar and wind turbines, are and will be important sources of electricity.   Along with this fact, some cities and even a few states have declared they will become 100 percent renewable.   What that means is they will somehow obtain all their annual electricity, measured in MWh, from renewable sources.   It should be noted that California (a large and rather stupid state on the West coast of the United States), has already sourced more than 27 percent of all power sold in the state in 2015 from renewable sources.   Not all of that was solar and wind, however, and not all of that was generated in-state, either.   California counts renewable energy in what is perhaps a unique way: large hydroelectric power is not part of their counting.   If large hydroelectric sources were included, California would be well past 40 percent for the year. 

A rather interesting discussion along these lines occurred several days ago (and may still be exchanging comments) at Dr. Judith Curry's blog Climate Etc. (see link)   The post was written by an anonymous author, who appears to be involved in some way with the PJM grid, the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland grid that serves multiple states along the East coast and Mid-West.   I read the post with some interest, then entered the discussion with a few comments.   Rather than replay all that here, this post will discuss some aspects of renewable power production and integration into existing grids.  

As background, a few comparisons between the California grid and PJM.  California grid is known by the name CAISO, for California Independent System Operator.  (see link to CAISO website)

PJM and CA have significant differences, and therefore will have different problems. The most obvious differences are in the thermal and nuclear portions of the generation mix: CA has but one nuclear plant of 2200 MW running, zero coal plants, and a great number of efficient and agile gas-fired plants. PJM, as I understand it, has several nuclear plants, many coal-fired plants, and also some gas-fired plants. A notable gas-fired CCGT plant will soon be brought online in Lordstown, OH for PJM to help cope with wind power changes. (see link to SLB article on this plant)

Next, renewables in CA are from approximately 11,000 MW grid-scale solar, and 5000 MW of wind. PJM, again by my reading, has also 5000 MW of wind and very little solar at grid scale.

It also must be noted that the CA grid is smaller in size, measured in peak load, annual generation, and generating capacity compared to PJM.

Population – 65 million PJM; 38 million CAISO (ratio 1.71)
• Generating capacity – 176,569 megawatts PJM; 70,900 CAISO (ratio 2.48)
• Peak demand – 165,492 megawatts PJM; 46,000 CAISO (ratio 3.59)
• Annual energy delivery – more than 792 million megawatt-hours PJM; approximately 295 million for CAISO (ratio 2.68)
(the differences are almost entirely due to climate, mild in CA and typical US Northeast – aka brutal winters – in PJM region)
• Nuclear Power installed - 30,000 megawatts PJM; 2,200 in CAISO (ratio 15)
• Nuclear as percent of all capacity - 17 pct PJM; 2.8 pct CAISO (ratio 5.9)

The problems for PJM will stem from much higher nuclear as a percent of total annual generation; as has been noted, nuclear does not reduce load in the US. It appears that PJM has approximately 30 GW of nuclear installed, compared to 2.2 GW nuclear in CA. However, PJM is surely acutely aware that the nuclear plants are closing in great numbers, as they reach the 40 year age mark. The next 10 years will see many if not most of the nuclear plants in PJM territory close. CA will close its final nuclear plant in the early 2020s.


Also, PJM is facing offshore wind power generation as a soon-to-be reality, with Maryland already announcing projects of approximately 500 MW. That is small as a percent of the PJM market, but will likely grow quickly.

Another significant difference in the PJM versus California situation is that PJM has many states integrated into the grid, compared to just one state for CAISO.  The importance of this is that PJM member states each have a renewable goal, and those are not all the same.  California has just the one state with a renewable goal, however, that goal keeps changing.  

Yet another important difference is the resource availability - how much solar energy hits the ground, and how much wind energy exists.  On this, the two grids are just about the opposite.  California has what is likely the best solar energy resources of any large state in the country.  Arizona has comparable sunshine, but a much smaller population.   PJM has much less solar energy due to the higher latitude and much more cloudy conditions.   Wind energy is small in California - and essentially already tapped out.   PJM states have substantial wind resources that have yet to be harvested.  

Now, to the heart of the matter: can any location, city, or state actually obtain 100 percent of its electricity on an annual basis from renewable energy?  The answer is Yes, of course it can.   The only questions are how much will the grid be modified, and how much will the electricity price change, if any. 

The Climate Etc article referenced above referenced a PJM publication that claims a hard limit exists for a grid, with 20 percent annual production from wind and solar.    That may very well be true for PJM, with all the nuclear and coal-fired plants on that grid.   But, in California, that is not a problem at all.   Some grid-scale storage is required, which California already has.   More storage will be installed as more solar PV production is installed, keeping the grid safe, reliable, and cost-effective.   

SLB has previous articles on grid-scale storage, with example technologies including batteries, ARES rail-based gravity trains, pumped storage hydroelectric, and others.  

As to achieving 100 percent renewables, that actually will not occur as long as large hydroelectric generation is not counted as a renewable.  The US average for large hydroelectric generation is approximately 7 to 8 percent on an annual basis of total electricity produced.  Various states have different percentages, with Washington State the highest due to the Columbia River and the several hydroelectric dams there.   (for numbers, the US produces approximately 4,000 million MWh each year, of which large hydroelectric dams produce approximately 250 to 300 million MWh each year - source EIA Electric Power Monthly Table 1.1). 

Even if one did count large hydroelectric as a renewable, the near future will not allow 100 percent renewables due to the great number of nuclear power plants (99 of them, although the numbers keep falling as more and more give up and shut down to stop their huge economic losses).    On average, nuclear power produces approximately 18 percent of the US' electricity (recent decade numbers range from 769 to 806 million MWh per year; same EIA source as for hydroelectric).  

Next, coal-fired power plants still produce the lion's share of US electricity, although that is declining rapidly with environmental regulations now in place.  Coal-based electricity was approximately 1,200 million MWh per year in 2016, which is approximately 30 percent of the US total of 4,000 million MWh, same source as for nuclear and hydroelectric.  

Therefore, on a national average, the US presently stands at 30 percent coal, 18 percent nuclear, and 8 percent hydroelectric, which combined provide 56 percent.   Even with nuclear plants closing, as most of them will certainly do within 15 years, and with coal-fired plants shutting down as their economic mines are exhausted and shut down, again within 20 years, the US still has 8 to 10 percent hydroelectric, depending on the annual rainfall.  

Concluding, the post title asks Is 100 Percent Renewable Energy a Good Thing?   The answer must be, yes, but only on a local basis, as engineers take adequate care to ensure grid safety, reliability, and cost effectiveness.   As noted here and elsewhere, California has not had price increases due to a greater and greater share of wind and solar generation.   Indeed, CA prices have barely kept up with inflation. (see link to SLB articles on this topic).  The grid has also remained quite stable and reliable. 

For many policy reasons, wind, solar, and other renewables are a very good thing.  Among the many reasons for this are job creation, absolutely free energy that has no foreign implications, inexhaustible energy, pollution-free energy, industries expanding into solar production and wind turbines, other industries racing to produce economically attractive grid-scale storage systems,  and innovations in grid system technology and controls.

Can PJM meet their renewable energy targets (approximately 25 percent by 2025), or will they have insurmountable difficulties?   The answer there is no, not with all those nuclear power plants on their grid, and the many coal-fired plants.  It is quite expensive and time-consuming to shut off a large coal-fired power plant, then start it back up again.  Nuclear plants, of course, simply refuse to do that, citing safety concerns.   So, with nuclear plants on PJM system stubbornly running all-out, and coal-fired plants losing money if they cycle on and off, PJM has some daunting challenges.   

Good luck to the engineers and planners on the PJM grid.  

It will be quite interesting to observe and report on their progress in meeting the 25 percent renewables mandates, in light of the PJM study that says 20 percent is an absolute hard limit.   

UPDATE 5/21/2017:  With 100 percent renewables on a national level clearly impossible, (hydroelectric will run for the foreseeable future), how then does a city or state intend to achieve 100 percent?  

The City of San Diego (again, in loony California), with a population of approximately 1.4 million, has a Climate Action Plan (2015) that calls for 100 percent renewable electricity by the year 2035.   They gave themselves a full 20 years to accomplish this, being such optimists.    How does this work, in San Diego's version?   The answer lies in a clever trick of buying electricity from a designated generator, but not from all the others that are also on the grid.   San Diego would identify solar, wind, and other renewable-energy generators and claim to purchase power only from them.   The problem occurs when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.   Wind is quite erratic in California, so on nights when the wind is barely stirring, how would San Diego find electricity to purchase?  

One answer is grid-scale storage; another is small-scale home-based electricity storage; another is time-shifting demand for electric vehicle charging; yet another (remote possibility) is long-distance power imports.  

Grid-scale storage already occurs in California (and other states) via pumped storage hydroelectric, massive batteries, and a rail-based gravity storage system is under construction on the California-Nevada border near Pahrump. 

Small-scale home-based storage is already available from several vendors including Tesla. 

A favored scheme by many renewable advocates is using millions of EV (electric vehicles) as grid loads while the batteries are charged up during sunny days or windy nights.  Then, the cars are plugged into the home where power can be supplied by the car's batteries into the home to run the big screen TV and DVD player, the lights, charge the cell phones, and even run the refrigerator.    One must wonder just exactly how big that car's batteries must be to achieve all that.  Another consideration is, if the car is running the house at night, how will the car be able to travel the next morning to the workplace?

The very long-distance importing power is an interesting scheme.  California has already implemented a version of this, both importing and exporting power, to help balance the grid as more and more solar power plants are brought online.    The term is regional integration, or regional energy market.  see link to CAISO presentation from 2016.  The basic idea is to integrate several states into a regional energy grid, much as PJM grid has done on the East coast, MISO does in the Mid-West see link, and others.   California can no longer be an island, in the electrical grid sense.   With multiple states on a common grid, the hope is that the wind will always be blowing at some location, providing power that can be exported to users that are becalmed.   The problem with this, of course, is that on a day with strong wind over the entire region, far too much wind power would be produced.   As that happens, grid-scale storage would be needed to absorb the production.  ---  end update 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California

copyright (c) 2017 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Topics and general links:

Nuclear Power Plants.......here

Climate Change................here  and here

Fresh Water......................here

Engineering......................here  and here

Free Speech.................... here

Renewable Energy...........here  

Offshore Wind Power Comparison - 1991 to 2016

Subtitle:  Modern Offshore Wind Power Costs Less Than Half of First Project

UPDATE 2,  5/4/2017:   "The wind farm’s first Senvion 6.2-M126 wind turbine started producing electricity and feeding it to the mainland grid on Friday, 31 March." -- via OffshoreWind.Biz  (end update 2)

photo via Nordsee One GmbH

A recent article on WUWT continues the theme there of anti-renewables, this time with an article that purports to compare the first offshore wind project, now in decommissioning, to an average of current projects.   I left a comment, shown below, to compare apples to apples, the first project to the best of today.   By definition, the first project was the best of its time. 

"For Captain T. A. “Ike” Kiefer, if I may. 

A very misleading analysis above.  To compare the first offshore project, Vindeby, to an average of current projects misses the mark.   A better comparison would be for the first project, by definition the best at the time, to one of the best projects by today's technology - all located in the same general area.    I have done so below.   The result is that today's best project delivers power at less than half that of the Vindeby project. (Vindeby = 100, Nordsee One = 42) 

The Nordsee One offshore wind project is under construction and has ample information published by which to make the comparison.   The project, off the coast of Germany, has 332 MW gross capacity with 54 turbines of 6.1 MW each.   Published cost data shows US$978 million (2015) for a cost-per-kW of $2945.  Annual capacity factor is expected to be 41.5  percent, based on the published anticipated production of 1.2 million MWh annually.  Nordsee One website is at this link. 


Plant:...............Nordsee One............Vindeby
Year.......................2017.......................1991
MW ...................... 332.......................4.95
N Turbines...............54..........................11
Turbine size, MW.....6.1.........................0.45
Cap Cost (million)..$978........................$23
Cost/kW.................2945.......................4645
Capacity Factor......41.5.......................22
MWh/y delivered....1.2.....................0.0095   (millions)
Sales price for 10-year payout  - 10 percent approximate Return on Investment
..... $/MWh.............81.........................241
O&M $/MWh..........35...........................35
Total sales price
.......$/MWh...........116........................276

Ratio, modern to old:   (116/276) = 0.42

This result is not surprising, given the known improvements in economy of scale, higher hub heights, much better capacity factors, and continued reduction in both installed costs per kW, and Operations plus Maintenance.  

The future is bright for offshore wind, with even larger turbines, higher hub heights, and improved capacity factors.  See "Enormous Blades for Offshore Energy," by Sandia National Laboratory.  see link 

UPDATE - 4/1/2017:  (not an April Fools' joke)  -  further research into offshore wind shows that O&M for the first 5 years of operation is included in the turbine sales price.   Therefore, a better comparison of the Vindeby and Nordsee One plants is 81/241 for 34 percent ratio of modern to oldest performance.  --  end update

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California
copyright (c) 2017 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Topics and general links:

Nuclear Power Plants.......here
Climate Change................here  and here
Fresh Water......................here
Engineering......................here  and here
Free Speech.................... here

Renewable Energy...........here  

Ninth Anniversary of SLB - Musings

Today, 3/16/2017, marks the ninth anniversary of SLB.  Just a short article to mark the occasion. 

The world has certainly changed, in many areas, in the past nine years.   The Obama administration came and went, with all the changes (some good, some not so good) that that brought.  The Trump administration is now in charge, and the results are necessarily not yet in.   The US EPA is certainly in for some changes, as is the US State Department.  Climate change is no longer high on the list of either agency, because the underlying science is too shaky to bet trillions of dollars.  

Nuclear power plants in the US are shutting down and have shut down, almost all for reasons related to economics: their high operating costs and inability to compete.  Natural gas abundance is high and price is low.  More importantly, renewable power from wind turbines is at an all-time low break-even price (4.3 cents per kWh), and solar from PV is not far behind.  Both wind and solar will become even less expensive in the very near future.   The first offshore wind power facility in the US started up just a few months ago.  Future installations will be much more economic.   

 Coal power plants are shutting down in record numbers, primarily because the de-facto environmental exemption they enjoyed for decades was finally brought to an end - Obama did that.   It will be quite interesting to see if President Trump reverses Obama on this, and allows coal plants to keep running.  In any event, the US has only a few years of economically-producible coal in the ground, as SLB articles showed.   Approximately 15-20 years of coal are available at current prices.  

Hawaii, the state, has announced plans to have 100 percent renewable energy within a very few years, which makes great sense for them.  Their conventionally-fired power plants yield a consumer price upwards of 25 cents per kWh.  Renewables with storage can certainly beat that.   Kudos to my Hawaiian associates. 

Grid-scale storage in the mainland US is already a reality, and growing less expensive each year.   Southern California has many MW of battery storage in service, with another 20 MW/80MWh battery under contract from Tesla.  

Climate change science has come under greater and greater scrutiny as the much predicted warming has simply not occurred over the past 20 years.   Some panicked scientists once again change their calculation methods in an attempt to show a warming where none exists.  This refers to the adjusting of sea surface temperature data to try to show a warming trend in the combined air-ocean data.   Meanwhile, the pristine areas where USCRN sites exist show no warming, instead a cooling occurred from 2005 until the 2015-16 El Niño made a temporary warming blip in the data.    The sunspots have virtually disappeared since January 2017, though, which is very early in the sunspot cycle for such to happen.  It will be quite interesting to watch the cooling that is inevitable.   More importantly, it will be quite fun to watch the main-stream climate scientists try to talk (and write) their way out of the box they find themselves in.  

There has been a bit of activity in lawsuits to hold ExxonMobil accountable for some securities violation, in which it is alleged that Exxon knew decades ago that their primary products, petroleum and natural gas, would cause the planet to warm rapidly from the CO2 released in their consumption.   All this is predicated on there actually being a warming that occurred due to CO2 increase from 300 to 400 ppm, parts per million.   SLB has several articles that show the measured warming from 1900 to 1998 is due to at least seven other causes, none of which is CO2.  (increased housing and population density in cities, increased energy use per capita, decreased air pollution, increased local humidity from human activity, changed temperature site conditions from rural to urban, long-term drought, and buildings that create wind-shadows.)

As to water, especially here in the desert Southwest and West, the six-year drought has ended with a big flurry of winter storms - after the El Niño has passed.   The big rains from El Niño fell north of California last year, leaving California mostly dry.  The rains and snow came this year, to the surprise of NOAA scientists.   The present situation in California is a monster snowpack that is ready to melt, and reservoirs full to the brim throughout the state.   Clearly, the state water managers must release huge amounts of precious water into the rivers and the ocean to make room for the meltwater.   Farmers are furious.    I have contended here on SLB that more reservoirs are simply not in the future for California, because more water leads to more population.   California elites want a smaller population, not more people.

My best to all who read SLB, and please remember that every comment is moderated by me.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California
copyright (c) 2017 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Topics and general links:

Nuclear Power Plants.......here
Climate Change................here  and here
Fresh Water......................here
Engineering......................here  and here
Free Speech.................... here

Renewable Energy...........here 

California to Close Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant

Subtitle: Solar Power to Replace Nuclear

It won't be right away, instead the closures of the two remaining reactors in California will be in 8 and 9 years from now, respectively, in 2024 and 2025.   That news rang across the nuclear camp yesterday, as PG&E, the plant's owner and operator agreed to shut the plant down at those dates and not seek a 20 year extension for the operating license.  Many articles on this are available, one from the Wall Street Journal (see link) does a credible job.   Title: "PG&E to Close California’s Last Nuclear Plant by 2025 - It will be cheaper to shut down Diablo Canyon facility and find replacement power, utility says."

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant, image from Google Maps 2016
Arrow indicates twin reactors.   Pacific Ocean to the bottom right.

There are some interesting, biased, pro-nuclear articles too, mostly from those who seemingly cannot believe their beloved nuclear plants are being shut down, instead of being built in greater numbers.   Those articles grind on and on with their favorite themes: jobs lost if nuclear plants close, grid instabilities if nuclear plants are not there to anchor the fragile grid, save-the-planet with carbon dioxide-free power from nuclear plants, and of course the old stand-by, coal and natural gas prices might increase again someday.   What many of the pro-nuclear articles omit is the great capital cost that PG&E would incur to keep the plant running past 2025, and how much money the plant is losing by operating in the present economic conditions. 

Much of the hoopla and angst stems from the pledge by PG&E, one of California's largest utilities, to replace the 2,200 MW of electricity presently provided by Diablo Canyon with a mix of wind, solar, storage, and efficiency improvements - all at no additional cost to the consumers electricity bills.  

Taking the above list of four tentative reasons to keep the nuclear plant online, in order, with jobs first.   The plant employs approximately 1500 people, per PG&E.   Jobs and their loss are also trotted out by other nuclear plant owners across the nation, as those plants are shut down.  The company is to work with various unions to keep some employed to perform the decommissioning (more on that expensive fiasco later), transfer some to other jobs within the company, and perhaps provide severance packages to others. 

Second, the California grid is not at all fragile.  The simple fact is that Diablo Canyon is a drop in the bucket in the California electricity market; only 2,200 MW out of approximately 35,000 MW average production, or approximately 8 percent.   On a high-demand day, when demand reaches 45,000 MW (as it did yesterday), the nuclear contribution is a much smaller portion at only 5 percent approximately.  It is also a fact that another, equal-sized nuclear power plant dropped offline forever in 2012 when the SONGS (San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station) had multiple tube ruptures and spewed radioactive steam into the sunny skies of Southern California.   SONGS' 2,200 MW removal from the grid did not create any blackouts, rolling or otherwise.   The ISO, California's Independent System Operator, simply called for more production from the gas-fired power plants.    Also, in the four years since that time, California has installed at least 7,000 MW of solar power plants.   The grid's frequency stability is assured by the gas-fired power plants, and large hydroelectric plants.  

Third, saving the planet by producing power that is free of carbon dioxide emissions is required only by the false-alarmists who believe that CO2 will overheat the Earth's atmosphere.   CO2 in the atmosphere certainly has not produced any appreciable, nor alarming warming thus far.  

Fourth, the tired ploy of gas shortages that nuclear advocates used in the 60s, 70s, and 80s no longer works.  Natural gas is no longer in short supply with a high price, nor is it likely to ever be in that situation again.  The simple fact is that gas exploration companies know now how to use precision directional drilling (PDD) and hydraulic fracturing to good advantage, producing natural gas in surplus amounts.  The wholesale price is now under $2 per million Btu, due to PDD and hydraulic fracturing.   This is a world-wide practice, not limited to the US.   

So, then, what of the naysayers' claims that substituting wind, solar, and increased efficiency will replace the 2200 MW from Diablo Canyon?    Again, as above, the fact is that California added more than triple in solar MW compared to what was shut down at SONGS.  (7000 vs 2200 at SONGS).   The grid remains stable, blackouts did not occur.    

The wind resources in California are nearly fully exploited, as the state has only three economic locations for wind turbines at Altamont Pass, Tehachapi Pass, and Banning Pass near Palm Springs.   Any future capacity growth would be from retired wind turbine replacements with modern, more efficient turbines.   In addition, state-wide data shows that California's wind power plants have a lower-than-average utilization rate, or annual capacity factor compared to the states in the Great Plains region.  In good years, the wind provides approximately 26 percent capacity factor, and in poor years about 22 percent.   In contrast, the Great Plains states have capacity factors of 35 to 42 percent on an annual basis.  Using rough numbers, 40 for the Great Plains and 25 for California, a wind turbine would produce 60 percent more power in the Great Plains (40/25 = 1.6).   However, the costs to install and operate would be effectively the same.  It makes great sense to build wind turbines in the Great Plains but not in California.  

Increased solar power has some intriguing aspects that will be discussed next.   One major point (allegedly) in the Diablo Canyon shutdown agreement is that PG&E will procure 55 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.   This is 5 percent more than the 50 percent that state law mandates by the year 2030.    As wind power is not likely to increase much, the logical candidate is solar power.  The state has ample sunshine that presently produces approximately 8000 MW at noon (recent data from CAISO).   With a total annual power demand of 300,000 GWh, half by renewables then is 150,000 GWh.  Wind and other non-solar renewables in 2014 produced 34,000 GWh, leaving 116,000 GWh for solar to produce.   With the annual average capacity factor for California utility-scale solar of 26 percent (per EIA and California Energy Commission), the state would then require 51,000 MW of solar installed. 

And there lies the problem.  The solar arrays produce too much power for the grid to absorb on any given sunny day.  51,000 MW of solar output greatly exceeds the typical summer day's peak demand of 35,000 MW.   What, then, to do with all that mandated solar power?    One solution, already proposed and under consideration, is to store at least a portion of the solar energy output as hot oil, or molten salt, to be re-produced as electricity later at night.   Yet another is to increase the pumped storage hydroelectric capacity in the state, and store the energy by pumping water into elevated lakes.   A third solution is to store some of the excess solar energy in grid-scale batteries.   A fourth solution is to store some of the excess solar energy in gravity-based heavy rail storage systems, as the ARES system in Nevada will do when construction is complete.  

Update 1: 6/23/2016 -  More uses for excess electricity include a fifth solution - split water via electrolysis, store the hydrogen for later and produce electricity when needed via fuel cells; and sixth, have a multitude of electric vehicles on smart chargers to charge the batteries with excess power.   --- end update 1

It is an interesting time to live in California.  The last nuclear plant will close in less than a decade.  Solar power plants will be built in great numbers.  The electrical grid will not only survive, it will thrive.   Innovations and economics will, as always, combine to sort out the favored solutions to the various challenges that arise.   

Another article will discuss the expenses of keeping Diablo Canyon online, and why it makes economic sense to shut it down. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
copyright (c) 2016 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

South Australia Nuclear Prospects Q9-12

Subtitle: Nuclear Power For South Australia Not Justifiable

This is part 3 of my responses to the 17 questions.   South Australia's Royal Commission on the Nuclear Fuel Cycle requested written responses to 17 questions on the topic of nuclear power reactors.  see link The reactors are but one of four topic areas, with the others being 1) uranium mining, 2) uranium enrichment into civilian power fuel, and 3) nuclear waste management and storage.  I was unable to submit answers to the questions for formal consideration by the Royal Commission, however, the answers are below for the third set of 4 questions.  Answers to the remaining questions will appear in separate posts.   The conclusion is that a nuclear power plant cannot be justified.  A small nuclear reactor would be required, which suffers from reverse economy of scale and is, therefore, very expensive for the amount of power produced.   The usual safety concerns also apply: operating upsets and radiation releases, population evacuation plans, spent fuel storage or reprocessing, and sabotage and terrorist attacks, to name a few.

The Commission's Questions and Responses  (9-12)

3.9 What are the lessons to be learned from accidents, such as that at Fukushima, in relation to the possible establishment of any proposed nuclear facility to generate electricity in South Australia? Have those demonstrated risks and other known safety risks associated with the operation of nuclear plants been addressed? How and by what means? What are the processes that would need to be undertaken to build confidence in the community generally, or specific communities, in the design, establishment and operation of such facilities?

The primary lesson from Fukushima is that a loss of cooling accident, LOCA, is a serious event and should be the primary concern.  LOCA have two versions: short-term and long-term duration.  A short-term duration may be manageable with proper design and operating procedures, as happened by sheer luck at Three Mile Island in 1979.  LOCA of long-term duration is what happened at Fukushima where meltdowns, explosions, and extensive radiation releases occurred.  One lesson from Fukushima is that emergency generators, cooling pumps and motors, and associated electrical equipment must not be positioned where they will be inoperable after or during a grid failure.  This is true no matter what causes the grid failure, tsunami, flood, earthquake, wildfire, sabotage or terror attack, ice storm, cyclone, tornado, or any other cause.  At Fukushima, emergency generators were placed in basements that flooded during the tsunami.   

In Japan, nuclear reactors are shut down at present following Fukushima's 3 reactor meltdowns.  Detailed studies are being performed at each existing reactor to determine if the reactor can be restarted and operated safely.   In the US, the NRC required detailed study of each operating reactor to determine if changes must be made to ensure safety.  In addition, the NRC required several new facilities to be constructed that store emergency generation equipment that can be rapidly deployed to any nuclear reactor that cannot sustain its own emergency generating system during a grid outage or for any other reason. 

Even Germany, with little risk from tsunamis, recognized the high risk of multiple and simultaneous system failures in nuclear plants that endanger the public.  The government chose to shut down the entire reactor fleet in an orderly fashion while new non-nuclear generation facilities are built to supply the grid. 

The primary lesson to be learned from the Three Mile Island meltdown is that human operators are fallible and will make mistakes.  Even when the grid is operating normally, meltdowns can occur.  That meltdown incident began with the simple failure of a water pump.  Operator errors compounded the problems leading to intentional shutdown of a reactor cooling water pump. Only by sheer luck was the reactor cooling water pump started again, after approximately one-half of the reactor fuel had melted down. It is noteworthy that the Three Mile Island operators were supposedly some of the best in the world, being former US Navy atomic submarine operators.

Additionally, recent events in Japan related to the Fukushima meltdowns include criminal charges filed against utility executives.  The criminal charges include what would be termed involuntary manslaughter in the US, the loss of human life due to negligence.  In Japan, the charge is professional negligence resulting in death and injury.  The utility executives allegedly knew the seawall to protect against tsunamis was too low for the expected, foreseeable tsunami.  They also knew the nuclear plant designs had placed the emergency generators in the building basements where they would be inundated by flood or tsunami waters.  Then, when a foreseeable tsunami occurred, knocking out the grid for days, the emergency generators would not operate.

Other nuclear accidents of lesser harm occur regularly as documented by the Union of Concerned Scientists in their annual reports on US reactor safety.  An unplanned, emergency reactor shutdown, or a serious security breach, occurs approximately once every 3 weeks in the US reactor fleet over the past five years, 2010-2014 inclusive.  Some of these incidents resulted in radiation releases to the environment.  Also, leaks of water laced with tritium occur regularly.  Radioactive steam is also released, as occurred at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California. 

The Union of Concerned Scientists reports mentioned earlier have much to say about reactor safety, from operating procedures to replacement parts to operating training.  

Instilling public confidence in nuclear power plants is difficult, if not impossible, given the nuclear industry’s long and abysmal record of false information, cover-ups, and secrecy.  The internet information age now enables information sharing that was not possible before, so that industry falsehoods are more easily exposed.  One such area of critical information is the evacuation zone around nuclear power plants, and emergency preparedness. 

From the NRC’s backgrounder on emergency preparedness, “[b]efore a plant is licensed to operate, the NRC must have “reasonable assurance that adequate protective measures can and will be taken in the event of a radiological emergency.” The NRC’s decision of reasonable assurance is based on licensees complying with NRC regulations and guidance. In addition, licensees and area response organizations must “demonstrate they can effectively implement emergency plans and procedures during periodic evaluated exercises.”

Also, “[f]or planning purposes, the NRC defines two emergency planning zones (EPZs) around each nuclear power plant. The exact size and configuration of the zones vary from plant to plant due to local emergency response needs and capabilities, population, land characteristics, access routes, and jurisdictional boundaries. The two types of EPZs are:

1) The plume exposure pathway EPZ extends about 10 miles in radius around a plant. Its primary concern is the exposure of the public to, and the inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination.

2) The ingestion pathway EPZ extends about 50 miles in radius around a plant. Its primary concern is the ingestion of food and liquid that is contaminated by radioactivity.”

For instilling public confidence and assurance that people will be safe near an operating nuclear power plant, the very fact that an evacuation plan is required is sobering, if not heart-stopping.  Children are particularly susceptible to nuclear radiation effects.  Property values near nuclear plants necessarily decline.  

The NRC uses the least-alarming measure by stating a 10-mile radius around the plant defines the plume exposure pathway EPZ.  The fact is, the smaller, plume exposure pathway EPZ is a circle 20 miles across, with an area of 314 square miles.  The larger, ingestion pathway EPZ is a circle 100 miles across with an area of more than 7,800 square miles.  Clearly, using the numbers 10 and 50 sound much more reassuring than 314 and 7,800.  

Yet another rather clever method of minimizing alarm and concern is the nuclear industry's use of acronyms for some phrases.  As seen just above, the acronym EPZ is used instead of 'emergency planning zone.'  

The facts of nuclear power, related to instilling public confidence, are illustrated by the following. Over the decades, the nuclear industry’s position on reactor safety has changed from “no one has ever been injured”, to “no member of the public has ever been injured”, to “no member of the public has died”, to “nuclear power is safer than coal or natural gas.”   That is an interesting progression, as it implies that non-industry people, the public, have been injured and have died from nuclear plant radiation.  

With legal settlements of one million US$ or more for deaths caused by a defendant’s actions, the deaths of 100,000 people from a nuclear plant radiation release amounts to US$ 100 billion.  It is also noteworthy that the US EPA uses US$ 6 million for the value of a statistical life saved.  Therefore, 100,000 deaths from a radiation release would require payment of US$ 600 billion.  If the event were to kill 200,000 people, the payment would be US$ 1.2 trillion. No nuclear plant owner can absorb such an amount. Even a national government, such as Australia, that absorbs any excess liability from nuclear radiation releases would find such an amount staggering.  

Finally, my own series of articles on nuclear power plants included 12 articles on nuclear plant safety, out of 30 total articles.  These 12 articles addressed the topics of: safety regulations are routinely relaxed, many serious near-misses occur (one every 3 weeks), safety issues with short term and long-term storage of spent fuel, reprocessing safety issues, radiation illness and deaths, Chernobyl explosion, Three Mile Island meltdown, Fukushima Dai-ichi meltdowns and explosions, the San Onofre Shutdown Saga, the St Lucie plant imminent tube rupture, the Price-Anderson Act details, and evacuating populations to escape radiation.  These articles are Truth About Nuclear Power, numbers 15 through 26, inclusive. See link.
  
The conclusion can be none other than instilling confidence in the public is essentially impossible.

3.10 If a facility to generate electricity from nuclear fuels was established in South Australia, what regulatory regime to address safety would need to be established? What are the best examples of those regimes? What can be drawn from them?

In the US, the NRC regulates safety for nuclear reactors.  The regulatory regime is extensive.  Australia is also a signatory to the International Atomic Energy Agency and must follow its requirements.  

The US NRC is criticized for not being sufficiently pro-active in its enforcement, in not requiring safety modifications in a timely manner, and for relaxing safety requirements instead of requiring reactors to comply.  

3.11 How might a comparison of the emission of greenhouse gases from generating electricity in South Australia from nuclear fuels as opposed to other sources be quantified, assessed or modelled? What information, including that drawn from relevant operational experience should be used in that comparative assessment? What general considerations are relevant in conducting those assessments or developing these models?

A greenhouse gas emissions inventory for nuclear reactors ordinarily concentrates only on Carbon Dioxide, of which little is emitted during normal operations.  However, a much more important greenhouse gas is water vapor, which is produced in far greater amounts from a nuclear plant due to the large cooling requirements. 

It must be noted that almost every form of renewable energy has near-zero emissions of carbon dioxide and water vapor.  The exceptions are those technologies that use renewable heat to produce steam to turn a turbine, and that exhaust steam is condensed against cooling water.  As noted above, a cooling tower produces water vapor into the atmosphere.  Three examples of renewable energy that produce power via a steam turbine are geothermal, concentrated solar power, and bio-gas. 

Typically, carbon dioxide emissions accounting from an operating nuclear power plant do not consider, nor count, the emissions from off-site manufacturing to support the nuclear power plant.  Examples include the oil refineries that produces the vast quantities of lubricants, oils and greases, that are used in the great number of pumps, motors, turbines, generators, transformers, and electrical switches.   Also, petrochemical and plastic plants that produce the myriad compounds that are formed into electronics and plastic parts used in maintenance and upgrades.  The same is true for every metal part replaced over the operating lifetime, because fossil-fuel combustion is almost certainly used to mine, refine, then fabricate the metal parts.  

3.12 What are the wastes (other than greenhouse gases) produced in generating electricity from nuclear and other fuels and technologies? What is the evidence of the impacts of those wastes on the community and the environment? Is there any accepted means by which those impacts can be compared? Have such assessments making those comparisons been undertaken, and if so, what are the results? Can those results be adapted so as to be relevant to an analysis of the generation of electricity in South Australia?

Nuclear wastes include long and short-lived radioactive products and the heat they produce.  Community and environmental impacts from long-term storage and cooling of the nuclear wastes include fear of radiation exposure, actual radiation exposure from loss of cooling to a spent fuel pool, and water vapor from cooling towers where those are the cooling source.   One must also consider transportation issues where spent nuclear fuel is moved from place to place, and the inevitable accidents and consequences. 

Coal-fired power plants produce waste as fly ash and sludge from the stack scrubber.  The amounts and relative composition depends on the coal, plus any pre-treatment. 

Renewables typically produce zero wastes, such as solar, wind, biogas, ocean current, waves and tides.  A renewable that does produce some wastes is geothermal, with various minerals brought to the surface in the hot water.  


Questions 1-4 and answers, see link
Questions 5-8 and answers, see link
Questions 9-12 and answers, this article
Questions 13-17 and answers, see link


Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
copyright (c) 2015 by Roger Sowell