Energy & Power Generation

Our Lost Competitiveness In Energy Construction

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Due to a failure of our “de-regulation” initiative (I put it in quotes because we just re-regulated differently) with energy the United States has basically ceased investing in base-load power plants, which are comprised of 1) nuclear 2) coal 3) large-scale hydroelectric.  Instead we have been generally just extending the lives of our existing assets and building natural gas fired peaking plants and letting our reserve margins erode.

While this has many impacts to the United States over the long term (in the short term we benefit from lower rates as we delay the reckoning of having to invest massive amounts in capital construction in the future rather than starting it now and spreading it out over many years) one other extremely bad negative element has not been adequately discussed.  The United States is frankly losing any ability to construct or build nuclear or coal plants efficiently while China is using their scale and continued capital investment to refine construction techniques and standardize processes to build an industry that will be miles ahead of their US equivalent.

The December, 2010 issue of the magazine “The Atlantic” has an article titled “Why the Future of Clean Energy is Dirty Coal”.  While I don’t share their focus on “clean” energy, they did have a section on the scale of investment in China that was staggering.  From the article:

China is preparing, by 2025, for 350 million people that don’t exist now.  They have to build the equivalent of the US electrical system, that is almost as much added capacity as the entire US grid – by 2025.  It took us 120 years…As China meets its capacity, it is likely that the best technologies will be commercialized and applied here faster than everywhere else.

In addition to the scale of their investment, their specific investments are also growing more advanced:

For the last 30 years we have not been able to build a coal-to-gas conversion plant in this country… China has done many.  That is what we need to learn from them, all that production and operating experience.

Why are they able to get so much done?  Well for one thing they don’t have a lawyer and regulation plagued “system” that adds billions (literally) to the cost of a plant without necessarily improving its efficiency or safety; and it punishes new designs that might be INHERENTLY safer than older, operating designs by limiting the ability to move forward in the first place.

In America, it takes a decade to get a permit for a plant… Here, they build the whole thing in 21 months.

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Annals of Energy Insanity

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Scotland is risking widespread blackouts, as nuclear, gas, and oil-fired power stations are shut down–without adequate replacement capacity coming on-line.

In Britain, economic and “climate change” concerns are driving the dimming or turning-off of large numbers of streetlights.

And in Massachussetts, a large solar (photovoltaic) facility is being installed, under the advertised belief that such facilities will eventually provide an economical replacement for the oil-burning furnaces now common in New England.

Are things like this merely a reflection of widespread technological and economic ignorance, coupled with dysfunctional politics? Or are we seeing a manifestation of a subconscious suicide instinct pervading Western civilization?

Powering Down

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Patrick Richardson:

Kansas is ranked second in the nation behind Montana for wind energy potential, a fact which should have environmentalists jumping for joy. Instead, they’re trying to block the construction of transmission lines to wind farms in south central Kansas and north central Oklahoma. Why? Well it all has to do with the lesser prairie chicken. According to a story by the Hutchinson News in February of this year, ranchers and wildlife officials in the area are teaming up with groups like the Sierra Club to block the construction of the lines, which would apparently run through prime breeding territory for the bird.

and

Environmental groups, which are as quick to fang each other as they are dirty polluters, are lining up in opposition to the lines and to wind farms in general. In fact, they’re lining up against most current sources of renewable power: the Audubon Society hates wind farms because the blades kill birds and bats; hydroelectric covers up large swaths of land and releases “greenhouse gasses” when decaying material is exposed to the air; the Sierra Club has opposed solar plants in the Mohave. Apparently, even geothermal creates toxic waste no one wants.

Environmentalists tend to favor new energy technologies such as wind and solar as long as they’re purely theoretical. Once they start to become real, it turns out that these technologies, like everything else in the world, have drawbacks, and hence, while the in-theory approval may continue, practical deployments are fought.

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Gig ’em

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I’m often critical of the big school – but where it is good, it is damn good. I always liked to hire e.t.s because they were generally a polite, hard working and practical lot. That was Hall’s major. But getting a copy job out on time isn’t the same as saving 33 miners; their “can do” does the little and it does the big. Here’s the story from a local perspective: Aggie Recalls. (Fox Interview, Old Ags)

First paragraph:
Gregory Hall fielded media interviews Wednesday, including one with CNN. He took a congratulatory call from Texas Gov. Rick Perry that began with “Howdy, Ag!” And he still had time for a three-hour class to help with his scheduled ordainment as a Catholic deacon in February.

These guys are spread around the world and a major reason American oil rigs and refineries are remarkably safe – remarkable to all but those who have no sense of how huge such a task is. And this is American pragmatism & idealism, blended at its best. It is the “west” Catton talks about when he contrasts Lee and Grant – seeing each as representative of a region’s best. And all the frontiers didn’t close, Turner aside, in 1890 – there’s the land, sea, and air.

Prestigious Physics Professor Protests Politicization

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(Sometimes I can’t resist the opportunity for a little alliteration, even when the subject matter is very serious)

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a former member of the Defense Science Board; a former member of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards and the President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; also co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; and a former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board.

Here is his letter of resignation from the American Physical Society. Excerpt:

The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare.

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