Energy Secretary Chu Endorses "Clean Coal" 464
DesScorp writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Energy Secretary Steven Chu is endorsing 'clean coal' technology and research, and is taking a pragmatic approach to coal as an energy supply. '"It absolutely is worthwhile to invest in carbon capture and storage because we are not in a vacuum," Mr. Chu told reporters Tuesday following an appearance at an Energy Information Administration conference. "Even if the United States or Europe turns its back on coal, India and China will not," he said. Mr. Chu added that "quite frankly I doubt if the United States will turn its back on coal. We are generating over 50% of our electrical energy from coal."' The United States has the world's largest reserves of coal. Secretary Chu has reversed his positions on coal and nuclear power, previously opposing them, and once calling coal 'My worst nightmare.'"
Cleaner than 30 years ago (Score:3, Informative)
By today's standards, anything they build will be cleaner than the 25+ year old plants. Cut some of the nuclear lawsuit shit and maybe we'd have options other than coal.
Radioactive too! (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=coal+radioactive+emissions [google.ca]
Re:Global warming (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:5, Informative)
The "Clean Coal" phrase as Chu used it in the article is very different than the "Clean Coal" phrase used by my local utility trying to build a new plant. I would not mind Chu's "Clean Coal", but I do not want what the utilities are currently calling "Clean Coal".
Clean coal doesn't seem that great. (Score:4, Informative)
From reading the Economist, I've the impression that clean coal isn't actually that great. Check out these two articles:
The illusion of clean coal [economist.com]
Trouble in store [economist.com]
Despite all this enthusiasm, however, there is not a single big power plant using CCS anywhere in the world. Utilities refuse to build any, since the technology is expensive and unproven. Advocates insist that the price will come down with time and experience, but it is hard to say by how much, or who should bear the extra cost in the meantime. Green pressure groups worry that captured carbon will eventually leak. In short, the world's leaders are counting on a fix for climate change that is at best uncertain and at worst unworkable.
Aside, the WSJ isn't really giving us any new information, is it? Obama was advocating CCS during the election, so is it really surprising that his secretary is now advocating it?
Re:There's more to coal than just burning it (Score:2, Informative)
There's more to solar [icneer.org] than photovoltaic. In fact, that form will be a niche market for a long time.
The bird thing is pure BS. Besides the turbines can be placed far offshore.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:5, Informative)
Who's reversing his position? Everyone talked up so-called clean coal during the election.
I agree however; even if we don't use the technology, we can make money selling it to other people.
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:5, Informative)
Just like there's no such thing as clean nuclear (gotta do something with that waste)
Actually, the French [wikipedia.org] have been recycling [wikipedia.org] their spent nuclear fuel for years.
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:5, Informative)
We've got tons of coal that's (relatively) easy to mine and (if not clean) not nearly as bad as it used to be and its environmental impact isn't all that much worse than a lot of the "green" sources.
Bullshit. [wikipedia.org]
Re:There's more to coal than just burning it (Score:3, Informative)
Industrial Solar Thermal as very little environmental impact..very little.
Modern Nuclear power generators such as IFRs produce very little waste. The waste it does create has a half life of 90 years. Meaning in about 200 years it's back to background radiation levels.
So we do have an answer available now.
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Peak Oil (Score:2, Informative)
You may have a valid point, but your fuck-off attitude in the first sentence made me gloss over most of it.
Re:What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:3, Informative)
Chu is not Anti-Nuke (Score:5, Informative)
Chu is not anti-nuke. I don't know where you got that idea, but Secretary Chu has long been a proponent of nuclear power. From a 2005 interview with UC Berkeley's Bonnie Azab Powell:
Question: Should fission-based nuclear power plants be made a bigger part of the energy-producing portfolio?
Chu: Absolutely. Right now about 20 percent of our power comes from nuclear; there have been no new nuclear plants built since the early '70s. The real rational fears against nuclear power are about the long-term waste problem and [nuclear] proliferation. The technology of separating [used fuel from still-viable fuel] and putting the good stuff back in to the reactor can also be used to make bomb material.
And then there's the waste problem: with future nuclear power plants, we've got to recycle the waste. Why? Because if you take all the waste we have now from our civilian and military nuclear operations, we'd fill up Yucca Mountain. ... So we need three or four Yucca Mountains. Well, we don't have three or four Yucca Mountains. The other thing is that storing the fuel at Yucca Mountain is supposed to be safe for 10,000 years. But the current best estimates - and these are really estimates, the Lab's in fact - is that the metal casings [containing the waste] will probably fail on a scale of 5,000 years, plus or minus 2. That's still a long time, and then after that the idea was that the very dense rock, very far away from the water table will contain it, so that by the time it finally leaks down to the water table and gets out the radioactivity will have mostly decayed.
Suppose instead that we can reduce the lifetime of the radioactive waste by a factor of 1,000. So it goes from a couple-hundred-thousand-year problem to a thousand-year problem. At a thousand years, even though that's still a long time, it's in the realm that we can monitor - we don't need Yucca Mountain.
Question: And all of a sudden the risk-benefit equation looks pretty good for nuclear.
Chu: Right now, compared to conventional coal, it looks good - what are the lesser of two evils? But if we can reduce the volume and the lifetime of the waste, that would tip it very much against conventional coal.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I did not get the information their ad.
The quote is from Obama, interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.
FactCheck.org addressed the McCain-Palin ad(s).
They did not address the direct Obama quotes at all.
FactCheck.org directed you to Obama's energy policy on his web site, but did not address his words to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Maybe you should get your own facts straight and actually read what FactCheck.org stated and shows.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:5, Informative)
"As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America."
--Barak Obama, Acceptance Speech, Democratic National Convention. August 28, 2008. [nytimes.com]
Seriously man. Seriously. You cite the Drudge version of the Chronicle piece just like a conservative tool. Here's the whole quote:
"So, if somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can. It's just that, it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that I've said, with a respect to coal -- I haven't been some coal booster -- what I have said is, that, for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter, as opposed to saying, if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it. You know, that I think is the right approach." Barak Obama, SF Chronicle Interview, Jan 17, 2008 (emphasis mine)
How about you think for yourself just a tiny little bit, eh?
Re:Peak Oil (Score:4, Informative)
But if we have to burn the coal (and right now we do), why not see if there is some way we can lessen the environmental impact?
We have a way already, it was developed at Sandia national labs on the behalf of the USDOE, and you can read a bit about how to deal with the carbon [nrel.gov] here. We capture 80% of the CO2 and then at least get to use it again. And a percentage of the algae becomes fertilizer. Of course, that assumes that such an approach fits into our national agenda [about.com] — only time will tell. Is it as good as a complete "clean coal" solution? That very much depends on who you ask.
As for new coal-fired power plants, they are an aberration and should be avoided at all costs. If we must build new power plants which are not inherently sustainable, let us build plants to reprocess nuclear waste, and plants to run on the resulting fuel. Yes, the technology could be used to produce weapons-grade materials. No, this is not relevant, because we already have more of that than we could possibly need.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:3, Informative)
"The thing I liked about Obama was that he wasn't batshit crazy."
Endorsement of our democracy, really. You never know what's possible.
Re:Global warming (Score:3, Informative)
And can you point to anywhere in the world where they're actually doing that to a substantial degree? I know there's a few plants in China that are doing trapping some for use in soft drinks, but nobody is doing in on the scale that's necessary to make it clean. And even then the savings are mainly the amount that would be released creating the gas.
Other forms of power plant are doing so, but I'm not aware of any large scale trials, let alone actual use, of this particular technology. And I'd go so far to say that as long as it's not in use and not even being trialled that it doesn't exist. I'd put it in the same category as fusion power, sure it may happen, but not in the next few decades. Which in terms of coal makes it basically worthless to pursue as even at that point it's not particularly desirable anyways.
Re:Don't they use it for concrete. (Score:3, Informative)
The radiation hazard is negiligable. The amount of radioactive material per ton of coal is nearly 0. It's only a significant source of radioactive material when you burn a couple billion tons of it a year. Burn a couple billion tons of any solid and it will be a significant source of radioactive material. Coal does have more radioactive material per ton than most solids, but it's still a tiny amount per ton.
You get pretty much the same amount of radioactive material in blocks using fly ash as you would get from a block of stone.
nuclear power (Score:3, Informative)
Just like there's no such thing as clean nuclear (gotta do something with that waste)
Actually, the French [wikipedia.org] have been recycling [wikipedia.org] their spent nuclear fuel for years.
And "France Acknowledges Massive Radioactive Pollution at La Hague [naturalscience.com]".
Or "PRESS RELEASE" [ieer.org]
"Vice-President Cheney Wrong About French Nuclear Repository Program, Independent Institute Asserts"
"French Public's Opposition to Nuclear Waste Repositories as Deep as that in the United States"
Then there's the matter of whether nuclear power is profitable. The libertarian free market CATO Institute has this article: "Nuclear Energy: Risky Business [cato.org]". In it it says
"Given all of this, how do France, India, China, and Russia build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Government officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Either these governments build expensive plants and shove them down the market's throat-or they build shoddy plants and hope for the best."
Falcon
Re:This is what happens when... (Score:3, Informative)
I like how that article argues that nuclear plants are bad when it comes to greenhouse gases because you have to mine uranium, even though you have to mine coal as well. The difference of course is that afterward we burn the coal.
Then they say nuclear isn't sustainable because it's "seeing its role in the world's energy mix diminish". That's a prime example of begging the question, and they even spend the next seven paragraphs backing up this "argument".
Then there's this gem: "The nuclear industry argues that the problems in the former Soviet Union are different to those in developed countries, but the United States itself had a serious accident at Three Mile Island in 1979."
I expected the obligatory Chernobyl mention, but TMI and Chernobyl were night and day. Their transparent attempt to imply that the US has had its own "Chernobyl" despite the common knowledge that TMI-2 was contained is the most weasel-ish thing I've heard in a *long* time (and I watched an hour of Kent Hovind the other day). I'm inclined to view TMI's accident as an example of how far we've come and how much we learned from Chernobyl, and I'm far from unique in that assessment.
Friends of Earth (the authors) are dead-set against nuclear power. I'm not...I think we should go back to moving forward cautiously with it. It's not all "China Syndrome", there are benefits as well as risks. You can consider that my statement of my own bias. But even if I was as strongly against nuclear power as they were, I'd still hope to be intellectually honest enough to call that article out for being the complete mess that it is.