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.'"
"Clean Coal" (Score:5, Insightful)
Oxymoron of the century.
This is what happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
...ideology meets reality.
There's more to coal than just burning it (Score:4, Insightful)
Will "clean coal" provide health care for the miners? Will it eliminate those nasty, dangerous sludge ponds that occasionally break through their retaining walls? For some reason I doubt it.
Re:I'll believe it when I see it.. (Score:2, Insightful)
There's NO way this administration would ever actually do anything to support coal.
Nonsense. They follow the money, just like any other. What is there that's convinced you otherwise?
Re:There's more to coal than just burning it (Score:4, Insightful)
You could say the same about almost any energy capture technology we have right now. Dams destroy river ecosystems. Solar panel production requires nasty chemicals, and their disposal is even worse. Wind farms kill birds. The list could go on.
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:2, Insightful)
(Score:0, Troll)
The president of North American Coal has mod points today. Fine, let's put you downstream from the mine, and then you can tell me how "clean" your coal is.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:5, Insightful)
A major political figure completely reversing his stance a subject and is able to provide straightforward and logical explanations for the change? Maybe I'm used to the previous administrations policy of "what we say goes, no matter what" but, yeah, this does kind of surprise me.
Say what you will about clean coal, but he is right about one thing. China is going to keep burning coal until there's no coal left to burn or something cheaper is found. Why not research the hell out of the subject and sell it to them in 10 years when they realize that they're killing their population with pollution? And if they somehow work out a way to have truly clean coal (burning coal with no particulates and no release of CO2) then why shouldn't we use it here at home?
Personally, I like nuclear, solar, and wind for our energy needs. But I think we should be researching every possibility, including clean coal and biofuels. Having a diverse set of energy sources means that when when resource becomes scarce we can more easily shift our focus and continue on.
Re:This is what happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's going to happen when the reality of America's dependence fossil fuels meets the reality of climate change?
We'll fully commit ourselves to nuclear and finally have the ammo we need to silence the anti-nuclear crowd?
Reality hits (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, well. Some truth about energy! Amazing. Lets take this a bit further and say that if certain groups haven't scared the hell out of people about nuclear, we wouldn't have so many coal plants in the US. We could be selling the coal to other countries. :)
Re:This is what happens when... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not work harder to scrub it better and deliver more electricity for the plug in hybrids?
I don't think scrubbing the exhaust of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate emissions is the controversial part, it's the carbon. At the end of the day, coal is nearly pure carbon. As you likely know, burning carbon produces carbon dioxide. This is very alarming to those who are concerned about global warming.
Unfortunately, the coal industry only has one solution for the global warming crowd. They suggest we bury the carbon dioxide underground. [wikipedia.org] This in itself is controversial, because nobody knows if it will work on such a massive scale.
Personally, I don't see how they will store it underground without it leaking to the surface. If you are going to store carbon, it's best to store it as coal, or in some sort of plant matter.
Re:What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:5, Insightful)
One the problem with "clean" coal is the radioactive waste. For the amount of energy produced, coal created more radioactive waste then nuclear. The difference is it is mixed in with tons and tons of chemically toxic ash, so there is no way of ever disposing of it safely. For nuclear energy the waste is conveniently concentrated and small enough it can be disposed of safely in stable rock.
Perhaps if we mixed the waste from our reactors with coal ash, people won't be so worried about it.
Re:I'll believe it when I see it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't build nuclear plants that fast
Why can't we? Would it have anything to do with the fact that the enviro-nazis and NIMBY bastards successfully stymied the construction of new plants back in the 70s and 80s and in so doing left zero incentive for American industry to retain the plant and equipment to build reactors?
I read somewhere that there's only one steelworks in the world that's capable of forging the reactor containment walls and they have years of back orders on the books. Of course it didn't used to be that way but the various anti-nuclear movements drove down demand to the point that it wasn't profitable for other steelworks to retain the equipment to produce them. Other parts of the supply chain have been equally impacted.
Congratulations environmentalists -- you ripped the heart out of the only energy source that could have weaned us off carbon in our lifetimes. Seems a bit shortsighted in retrospect, doesn't it?
Jesus tapdancing christ (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop burning coal. This isn't the industrial revolution. It's 2009 for pete's sake. Breeder reactors. Pull your superstitions out of your brain and your heads out of your asses. B-R-E-E-D-E-R R-E-A-C-T-O-R-S!
Re:Global warming (Score:3, Insightful)
You're assuming that we Indians would want the carbon capture technology. Al Gore is not a huge box office draw in India.
Re:What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny you should mention that: linky [theoildrum.com]
Step 1: Mine coal
Step 2: After burning the coal, take the thorium from tailings
Step 3: Use liquid fluoride thorium nuclear reactors to provide energy for a few thousand years
Step 4: Profit...for everyone...
Re:Peak Oil (Score:2, Insightful)
That of course, would require that China give a damn about their population.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course they did. They wanted to get the electoral votes in swing states like OH and PA.
Your mistake is in thinking that it had anything to do with energy policy.
Re:Global warming (Score:5, Insightful)
See Carbon sequestration
I think the problem with carbon sequestration is that most of the schemes don't pass a sense check. Perhaps if someone were to present a detailed proposal about how it works, I might buy it. However, all of the proposals I've read don't make any sense.
Examples:
Bury the CO2 - Why won't it leak back up to the surface?
Bury Plant Matter - Why not burn the plants instead of coal?
Convert CO2 into some other chemical, and bury that - The laws of thermodynamics would like to have a word with you.
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps if you understood what's "dirty" about coal power, the term "clean coal" would make more sense.
=Smidge=
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? By weight, 90% of the spent fuel is natural uranium, which can be used as fuel in fast reactors or other commercial purposes. 5% of the weight is high-level radioactive waste, which decays to safe levels in a few decades. The rest is trans-uranics, which can be recycled to use in new fuel.
The only reason why we have a "waste problem" in the US is because the government won't allow separating the dangerous-part-which-decays-quickly from the very-long-half-life-but-reusable-as-fuel parts. The reason why we can't do this separation is because we don't want to encourage rogue nations like Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:3, Insightful)
Obama's definition of Clean Coal = raise taxes on regular coal, and claim that selling carbon credits to non-producing third world countries somehow reduces overall pollution.
Re:I'll believe it when I see it.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations environmentalists -- you ripped the heart out of the only energy source that could have weaned us off carbon in our lifetimes. Seems a bit shortsighted in retrospect, doesn't it?
Yes, it's the environmentalists that got us into this mess. Back then, they were saying that nuclear will kill us all. The debate was over.
Now they are making the same arguments about carbon while adding "but THIS time, we are right!"
Re:Peak Oil (Score:5, Insightful)
In a nutshell. Just because you're pro-green, doesn't mean you're completely out of touch with reality. We use coal for a HUGE amount (it's the largest single source) of our national energy production, and it'll be decades before that can change in any meaningful way, so it only makes sense to see if you can make a virtue of necessity.
The thing I liked about Obama was that he wasn't batshit crazy. This is a perfectly sensible move, something he promised to look into during his campaign, and something worthy of study at the least. I am at a loss to explain all the crazy that's leaking out in this thread.
Re:I'll believe it when I see it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Would it have anything to do with the fact that the enviro-nazis and NIMBY bastards successfully stymied the construction of new plants back in the 70s and 80s and in so doing left zero incentive for American industry to retain the plant and equipment to build reactors?"
Nope. It's the cost thingy. It costs big bucks to build a nuclear plant. As a result the power is expensive. So you have to be sure you will need the energy and the price will be competitive in decades to come. And there still is that annoying waste issue.
It's cheaper to pay people to use less energy (efficiency), build coal plants or add wind or solar in small increments.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Peak Oil (Score:3, Insightful)
You fucking idiots are so fucking funny.
Coal technology is already clean [...]
About 525 million gallons of ash slurry [discovery.com] clean, yeah.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter what you do with the coal it's CO2-positive. Even if you capture the CO2 in algae and make biofuel out of it and burn it again you are still releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Part of the reason why the atmosphere is how it is (which is to say, how we like it) is that the CO2 is "sequestered", AKA buried. Possibly the best thing we could do at this point is grow a bunch of algae and bamboo and bury them.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:3, Insightful)
For permanant storage there is also things like Synrock - but anyone that suggests the entire waste problem has been solved is either lying to sell something or has been fooled. The answer is that instead of pretending that it all happens by magic and is perfect is to actually do some R&D into civilian nuclear research - a bit of funding and Synrock for example would have been ready twenty years ago since research had been almost completely on hold since then.
Loud advocates also forget that the fuel comes from a rock instead of some magic bean. Toxic runoff from Uranium mining is a frequent and apparently very difficult to solve problem in some mines, so forget about the "clean" label. In fact it's rather stupid to apply the "clean" label to a major industrial process anyway - it's a nasty PR trick whether it is nuclear or coal.
Re:This is what happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
that's great
now how much electricity and power was used by that "off-grid" home DAILY that you aren't taking into account.
you know, the power to run the pumps that supplied the water to it from the municipal water system.
the power to produce the food that the people inside consumed.
the power to do such simple things as create the paper they write on.
stop with the "off-grid" bullshit.
it's not real.
it's not accurate
and it's total bullshit.
the day someone really goes "off-grid" is the day they go back to doing EVERYTHING themselves and are totally self-sustaining without ANY outside interference.
producing your own needs for electricity is great
but its a VERY SMALL amount of the world's total energy consumption.
Re:I'll believe it when I see it.. (Score:3, Insightful)
My other point is it isn't worth blaming people that really had no power to influence matters no matter how loud and annoying you may have found them. The reality is two well informed nuclear power advocates, Carter and Thatcher, had to shoot the dead horse that civilian nuclear power had become in each of their respective countries instead of increasing the tax burden to expand it. Unfortunately in the USA instead of private enterprise stepping up to the plate and making something that would sell the nuclear lobby just stood there screaming to have their large handouts back while surviving on a smaller handout.
In a year or two those same hippies conveniently blamed for the failure of nuclear power will be loudly calling for it, and once again they will have no real influence and just be a group to blame by those looking for a convenient scapegoat.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:3, Insightful)
nobody is talking about making the earth too hot for all life.
we're talking about melting the ice caps flooding massively populated areas, destroying our economy, and generally ruining the usefulness of the ecosystem to HUMANS.