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Post by jeffolie on Mar 15, 2011 11:42:56 GMT -6
Low and declining Natural Gas prices will end the nuke energy industry. Fracturing hydraulics aka 'fracking' drilling techniques flourish in America and most likely will spread to other geographies. Pollution from 'fracking' is a problem but greed and corruption has overcome pollution issues in most parts of America and offer little resistence in many less ethical countries. Fracking oil resources have jumped available, reliable oil fields 'proven reserves'. Nuke energy will face an 'insurance' problem on many fronts as many Japanese insurers probably are technically bankrupt from the triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami, nuke fallout. Other worldwide insurers will jump premiums making nuke energy much more expensive and less likely to win approvals to build. Political horror, aversion and fear will turn politicians who run for election in Western countries away from nuke energy advocacy in the most part. Central planning China and oligarchy Russia will ignore their populations and continue to build nuke energy. =============================================================== America's Nuclear Dead End by Robert Bryce Info Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, recently published his fourth book, Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future. Obama and the GOP keep pushing nuclear power, but for all their money and rhetoric, their proposals were doomed even before Japan. Robert Bryce on how natural gas killed domestic reactors. President Barack Obama told a crowd in Prague two years ago that “we must harness the power of nuclear energy on behalf of our efforts to combat climate change.” In January, in his State of the Union address, and again in last month’s proposed budget for 2012, he backed up his rhetoric with some $36 billion in federal loan guarantees for a spate of new reactors. Republicans, led by Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, have been his partner, with Alexander giving speeches and writing numerous op-eds, declaring that the U.S. “can’t afford to ignore nuclear power.” During his post-earthquake press conference Friday, Obama reiterated his pro-nuclear stance, saying that the U.S. would, by 2035, be getting 80 percent of its electricity from "clean energy” which he described as "wind and solar and homegrown biofuels, along with natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear power." Here’s the truth, though: This much-ballyhooed nuclear renaissance was little more than a mirage. Love fission or hate it, the rebirth of America’s nuclear sector—with some 20 reactors reportedly planned for the next 15 to 20 years—was going nowhere fast. And this stillborn rebirth was readily apparent for months before the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan, damaging several of the country’s reactors and giving the world its worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. “How can you compete with natural gas when it’s priced at less than $4?”... Last year, U.S. gas production hit its highest level since 1973. And despite a very cold winter, natural-gas prices have generally stayed below $4 per thousand cubic feet, which is about half the level seen as recently as 2008....“you can’t.” Electric providers can build gas-fired generators much faster than new nuclear plants. Better still, they can do it for one-fifth the cost and avoid the nightmarish process of nuclear licensing and permitting. The myriad of utility regulators at the state level as well as the glacial pace of action at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, have helped prevent the startup of a new nuclear plant in the U.S. since 1996. ... As you might expect, even with government-backed loan guarantees, bankers aren’t rushing to finance bet-the-company-size construction projects with budgets of $10 billion to $14 billion for a plant with 2,000 megawatts of capacity that might not come online for a decade. www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-14/american-nuclear-power-was-doomed-even-before-japan/?cid=hp:mainpromo7
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Post by waltc on Mar 15, 2011 12:27:54 GMT -6
No the Greens and Lefties will kill any and all forms of nuclear energy.
They've hated it with a passion since the 1960's and even though most don't know shit about it, they have a pathological aversion to it.
Even the new forms of nuclear energy that are much safer and don't do melt-downs will go by the way because of this. Say bye bye to Pebble Bed Reactors, etc.
The fact remains Japan can't work without it, even if you put every tofu eating Greenie on a treadmill and fed the bugger meth, there is no way Green can produce the energy a modern society needs.
Neither can the U.S.
Tar Sands don't work. They require a nuclear power plant and enormous amounts of water to extract oil. Enough that it is a negative in terms of energy produced.
And what's this about increased oil resources? That's a half truth mixed with lies. What is left out, is easily extracted oil reserves. All the easy stuff has been gotten to already. What remains is much harder to access and very expensive to extract in terms of energy and money. And worse those fields don't produce anywhere near the barrels that say the North Sea or Saudi fields produce.
This is what the oil advocates leave out.
And this so-called abundance of Natural Gas. Where are the studies that state this? I don't want bullshit from corporate think tanks but hard data showing the discovery of new and large NG deposits.
So far all I've seen are a few shadowy fact free types like Bryce promoting his agenda and nothing else.
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Post by jeffolie on Mar 26, 2011 10:40:28 GMT -6
Nuke energy waste expense shifted to the federal taxpayer because courts declared the fed government responsible. Pooling spent rods proved dangerous in Japan where Mother Nature made the low probability, chance dangers come true. The risk of Mother Nature resulting in dangers come true in America over hundreds of years may be ignored by politicans and greedy corporations. Insurance costs for nuke energy jumped and waste storage cost most likely will jump as safety fears impose higher standards. ==================================== U.S. Nuclear Waste Increasing With No Permanent Storage Available by Jonathan Fahey and Ray Henry - AP The nuclear crisis in Japan has laid bare an ever-growing problem for the United States – the enormous amounts of still-hot radioactive waste accumulating at commercial nuclear reactors in more than 30 states. The U.S. has 71,862 tons of the waste, according to state-by-state numbers obtained by The Associated Press. But the nation has no place to permanently store the material, which stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years. Plans to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain have been abandoned, but even if a facility had been built there, America already has more waste than it could have handled. Three-quarters of the waste sits in water-filled cooling pools like those at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex in Japan, outside the thick concrete-and-steel barriers meant to guard against a radioactive release from a nuclear reactor.Spent fuel at Dai-ichi overheated, possibly melting fuel-rod casings and spewing radiation into the air, after Japan's tsunami knocked out power to cooling systems at the plant. The rest of the spent fuel from commercial U.S. reactors has been put into dry cask storage, but regulators only envision those as a solution for about a century and the waste would eventually have to be deposited into a Yucca-like facility. The U.S. nuclear industry says the waste is being stored safely at power-plant sites, though it has long pushed for a long-term storage facility. Meanwhile, the industry's collective pile of waste is growing by about 2,200 tons a year; experts say some of the pools in the United States contain four times the amount of spent fuel that they were designed to handle. The AP analyzed a state-by-state summary of spent fuel data based on information that nuclear power plants voluntarily report every year to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry and lobbying group. The NEI would not make available the amount of spent fuel at individual power plants. While the U.S. Department of Energy previously reported figures on overall spent fuel storage, it no longer has updated information available. A spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees nuclear power plant safety, said the capacities of fuel pools are public record, but exact inventories of spent fuel are tracked in a government database kept confidential for security reasons. The U.S. has 104 operating nuclear reactors, situated on 65 sites in 31 states. There are another 15 permanently shut reactors that also house spent fuel. Four states have spent fuel even though they don't have operating commercial plants. Reactors in Colorado, Oregon and Maine are permanently shut; spent fuel from all three is stored in dry casks. Idaho never had a commercial reactor, but waste from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania is being stored at a federal facility there. Illinois has 9,301 tons of spent nuclear fuel at its power plants, the most of any state in the country, according to industry figures. It is followed by Pennsylvania with 6,446 tons; 4,290 in South Carolina and roughly 3,780 tons each for New York and North Carolina. Spent nuclear fuel is about 95 percent uranium. About 1 percent are other heavy elements such as curium, americium and plutonium-239, best known as fuel for nuclear weapons. Each has an extremely long half-life – some take hundreds of thousands of years to lose all of their radioactive potency. The rest, about 4 percent, is a cocktail of byproducts of fission that break down over much shorter time periods, such as cesium-137 and strontium-90, which break down completely in about 300 years. How dangerous these elements are depends on how easily can find their way into the body. Plutonium and uranium are heavy, and don't spread through the air well, but there is a concern that plutonium could leach into water supplies over thousands of years. Cesium-137 is easily transported by air. It is cesium-137 that can still be detected in a New Jersey-sized patch of land around the Chernobyl reactor that exploded in the Ukraine in 1986.Typically, waste must sit in pools at least five years before being moved to a cask or permanent storage, but much of the material in the pools of U.S. plants has been stored there far longer than that. Safety advocates have long urged the NRC to force utility operators to reduce the amount of spent fuel in their pools. The more tightly packed they are, the more quickly they can overheat and spew radiation into the environment in case of an accident, a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. Industry leaders say new technology has made fuel pools safer, and regulators have taken some steps since the 9/11 terror attacks to reduce fuel pool risks. Kevin Crowley, who directs the nuclear and radiation studies board at the National Academy of Sciences, says lessons will be learned from the crisis in Japan. And NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko says his agency will review how spent fuel is stored in the U.S. A 2004 report by the academy suggested that fresh spent fuel, which is radioactively hotter, be spread among older, cooler assemblies in the spent fuel pool. "You're buying yourself time, basically," says Crowley. "The cooler ones can act as a thermal buffer." First Energy, which runs two nuclear power stations in Ohio and one in Pennsylvania, was able to reconfigure the spent fuel rods in its pools to make more room. Still, the company is now running out of space, says spokesman Todd Schneider. Ohio has 1,136 tons of spent fuel in pools and 37 tons in dry casks. The casks in the U.S. are kept outdoors, generally on concrete pads, but industry officials insist they are safe. Unlike the pools, the casks don't need electricity; they are cooled by air circulation. One cask model, selling for $1.5 million, places spent fuel inside a stainless steel canister, which is placed inside an "overpack" – an outside shell composed of a layer of carbon steel, 27 inches of concrete and another layer of carbon steel. When in place, the system stands 20 feet tall and weighs 150,000 pounds, said Joy Russell, a spokeswoman for manufacturer Holtec International of Florida. Russell said engineers have designed the system to withstand a crash from an F-16 fighter jet and survive the resulting jet fuel fire. Plant operators in some states have moved aggressively to dry cask storage. Virginia has 1,533 tons of nuclear waste in dry storage and 1,105 tons in spent fuel pools. Maryland has 844 tons in dry storage and 588 tons in spent fuel pools. Utilities in Texas, though, have not. There are 2,178 tons kept in spent fuel pools at reactor sites there, and zero in dry casks. In New York, 3,345 tons are in spent fuel pools while only 454 tons are in dry storage. No cask is totally invulnerable, but the academy report found that radioactive releases from casks would be relatively low. "If you attacked a fuel cask and managed to put a hole in it, anything that came out, the consequences would be very local," Crowley said. Casks can be licensed for 20 years, with renewals, said Carrie Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based Southern Co., which has a dozen such casks at its two-reactor Joseph M. Farley plant near Columbia, Ala. She said officials have "every expectation" the casks could last "in excess of 100 years by design."
But not the needed tens of thousands of years. For long-term storage, the government had looked to Yucca Mountain. It was designed to hold 77,160 tons – 69,444 tons designated for commercial waste and 7,716 for military waste. That means the current inventory already exceeds Yucca's original planned capacity. A 1982 law gave the federal government responsibility for the long-term storage of nuclear waste and promised to start accepting waste in 1998. After 20 years of study, Congress passed a law in 2002 to build a nuclear waste repository deep in Yucca Mountain. The federal government spent $9 billion developing the project, but the Obama administration has cut funding and recalled the license application to build it. Nevadans have fiercely opposed Yucca Mountain, though a collection of state governments and others are taking legal action to reverse the decision. Despite his Yucca Mountain decision, President Barack Obama wants to expand nuclear power. He created a commission last year to come up with a long-term nuclear waste plan. Initial findings are expected this summer, with a final plan expected in January. "They are 13 years late," says Terry Pickens, Director of Nuclear Policy at Xcel Energy, the Minneapolis-based utility that operates three reactors in Minnesota. Xcel is building steel-and-concrete cask containers to hold old waste on site, and suing the government periodically to pay for them. "We would like them to get done with what they said they would get done." Some countries – such as France, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom – reprocess their spent fuel into new nuclear fuel to help reduce the amount of waste. The remaining waste is solidified into a glass. It needs to be stored in a long-term waste repository, but reprocessing reduces the volume of waste by three-quarters. Because reprocessing isolates plutonium, which can be used to make a nuclear weapon, Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter put a stop to it in the U.S. The ban was later overturned, but the country still does not reprocess.France produces 1,300 tons of nuclear waste per year, and reprocesses 940 tons. Still, fuel is only reprocessed once and then it, too, needs to be stored. France is expecting that engineers will eventually succeed in building a new type of nuclear reactor called a fast reactor that will use the waste it can't reprocess as fuel. "They've kicked the can down the road," says Frank von Hippel, a director of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Other countries, such as Germany, store spent fuel in casks. Finland is building a repository it says will store waste safely for 100,000 years. Even though there is no long-term storage in the U.S., utility customers and taxpayers have been paying for it – twice. Customers have paid $24 billion into a fund Congress established in 1982 to pay for such storage. The charge – a penny for every 10 kilowatt-hours – would typically add up to about $11 a year for a household that received all its electricity from nuclear plants. Users pay as taxpayers, too – for dry storage. Utilities that have run out of storage space in pools successfully sued the federal government for breach of contract, because it failed to keep to the 1998 deadline to establish long-term storage. By law, the money for dry casks cannot come from the nuclear waste fund, and must come from the federal budget.theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
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Post by waltc on Mar 26, 2011 11:31:58 GMT -6
Jeffolie
Please show us the stats that we have enough Natural gas to replace the 20% of electricity generated by nukes.
And how long that supply of natural gas lasts.
So far none of the promoters of this have put forth any sort of stats to show this.
Some countries – such as France, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom – reprocess their spent fuel into new nuclear fuel to help reduce the amount of waste. The remaining waste is solidified into a glass. It needs to be stored in a long-term waste repository, but reprocessing reduces the volume of waste by three-quarters. Because reprocessing isolates plutonium, which can be used to make a nuclear weapon, Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter put a stop to it in the U.S. The ban was later overturned, but the country still does not reprocess.
This is a failure of public and government policy. The problems we have storing SFR's would be gone if we reprocessed them with breeder reactors. Both here and in Japan.
The problem is, the Greenies and luddities have saddled us with excessive nuclear wastes because they're scared of Pu byproduct.
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Post by jeffolie on Mar 26, 2011 16:54:19 GMT -6
Nuke energy failed before in Japan when an earthquake sidelined another nuke energy plant. Japan will be desparate to get electrical energy production returned to its prior levels. For electrical production, Japan currently imports LNG liquid natural gas from many countries that have surpluses. Most likely nat gas will be Japan's choice instead of running out of toilet paper from hoarders because their paper processing industry lacks electricity. ============================== "...Meanwhile, paper factories in Tochigi were affected by the quake and forced to halt production of paper used in milk packaging. Problems in the paper factories have caused shortages of toilet paper and tissues, retailers say..." online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703696704576222332818052852.html================================== Rotating Power Rationing Plan Of Japanese Automakers Could Mean A Loss Of 1.3 Million Units March 26, 2011 After the Mach 11 earthquake and tsunami shut down a large number of power plants in Japan, rolling blackouts were instated in large parts of the country. Lack of power emerges more and more as the biggest impediment to a quick recovery.of the Japanese automotive industry. Most of the industry has been shut down. Power will remain scarce for many months in Japan. Come summer and A/C time, the situation will be worse. Japanese automakers are now considering running their factories in rotation to help cut the industry’s electricity consumption, The Nikkei writes today. Japan’s automakers could prepare for a production loss of well over a million units for the year.
The blackouts, which usually last three hours per day, take a big hit on plant efficiency. Metal-casting, for instance, is heavily affected. Smelting ovens need to be cleared and emptied before the shutdown and need a lot of time to come back up once power is restored. A three hour blackout often results in a nine hour downtime.
Rather than having power outages every day, the manufacturers want to secure stable electricity supplies for their factories in exchange for cutting the overall power consumption by rotating production. Under the plan, whole factories would be shut down on certain days of the week. Automakers will meet at the office of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) to come up with a rotation schedule.
Now run the numbers. If a car company works only 5 days instead of 6 a week, that translates into a reduction of output of 17 percent. If the plan will remain in effect for the whole year, Japan could lose 1.3 million cars by the end of the year. Extra shifts would be out of the question, because that would negate the whole idea of power savings.
The 1.3 million number may sound sensationalist, but it is conservative. “Lost production in the two weeks since an earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan tops a third of a million vehicles,” writes Reuters, “and it could be months, rather than weeks, before the country’s automakers get back on track.” If more than 330,000 vehicles remained unmade in just two weeks, it does not take huge math skills to estimate the damage caused by the loss of power alone.
According to an energy brief by The Institute of Energy Economics, Japan, “a power shortage is definitely anticipated for the summer cooling demand season as well as next winter.” The Tohoku and Tokyo power companies have lost approximately 15 percent of their capacity for “a longer duration.”
Likewise, approximately 14 percent of the Japanese refining capacity is lost and needs “to be repaired over a longer time,” says the energy brief. Large parts of petrochemical production are reported destroyed by earthquake and fire. “Recovery is considered to take time,” says the report.
www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/03/rotating-power-rationing-plan-of-japanese-automakers-could-mean-a-loss-of-1-3-million-units/#more-388793
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Post by waltc on Mar 26, 2011 18:02:57 GMT -6
That earthquake would have shut down any NG or coal fired power plant in a heartbeat. If that tidal wave hit a active coal fired plant, the thing would have went up like a bomb. The thing is they aren't anywhere damage resistant as a nuke plant.
And LNG is especially dangerous. No one wants either the fueling dock or plant itself anywhere near a populated area. Those plants and ships are literally bombs.
I remember when CA was proposing one and Greenies did a poopadoop and fought it like mad. Propose one and watch the Sierra Club go nuts on you.
BTW you can't build those plants and terminals overnight. It will take years. So toilet paper will still be in short supply.
With that said, I still don't see where is all this available natural gas coming from for Japan to get 33% of electricity from it or for the U.S. to get a additional 20% for that matter.
Our main supplier of LNG Trinadad and Tabago is rapidly running out.
Still no stats from the NG showing deposits and size thereof, etc.
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Post by graybeard on Mar 26, 2011 18:50:31 GMT -6
Waltc, you know Pickens knows Nat Gas, yet I doubt you are the single person to open the post below this one.
Never heard of fracking, I guess?
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Post by jeffolie on Mar 27, 2011 16:47:59 GMT -6
Nukes killing Merkel, Germany's lame duck potential Merkel's government controls the Euro. A Green Party German government may take a different path on the ECB, Euro, austerity. Nuke energy in Germany may become extinct, shutdown completely...I do not know, but if nuke energy disappears in Germany what about other countries. '....With the CDU poised to lose Baden-Wuerttemberg, “ Merkel may become a lame duck, nuclear power in Germany may become a memory,” Kit Juckes, head of foreign-exchange research in London Societe Generale SA, said yesterday in a note. “Sorting out Europe doesn’t get easier....” ======================================================= Merkel’s Nuclear Policy Under Fire as Greens Surge in Elections March 27, 2011, (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition was defeated in its southwestern heartland and failed to win control of a second state as the anti-nuclear Greens vote surged to a record, forcing her to reassess energy policy. The Greens were poised to enter the regional governments in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate after state elections yesterday conducted in the shadow of the nuclear disaster in Japan. In Baden-Wuerttemberg, the Greens were set to lead their first state administration, ejecting Merkel’s Christian Democrats from power in Stuttgart after 58 years. The shift would grant the Greens sway over policy affecting a state whose economy is bigger than Belgium and Luxembourg combined, driven by companies such as Porsche AG, SAP AG and Daimler AG. It would also hand them control of Germany’s third- biggest utility, EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG, and its four nuclear plants just as the Japanese crisis fans public fears over reactor safety. “Merkel’s coalition in Berlin must take a huge slice of the blame” after voters’ “complete rejection of her nuclear policy and her leadership,” Hans-Juergen Hoffmann, head of the Psephos polling company, said by phone. “That a booming economy in the land of Daimler and Porsche played a backseat role in the region’s election is a turning point in the fortunes of the federal coalition.” The Christian Democratic Union took 39 percent in Baden- Wuerttemberg, its worst result in the state since 1952, while its Free Democratic Party coalition partner won 5.3 percent, preliminary official results showed. That leaves the parties -- the same constellation as Merkel’s federal coalition -- short of a majority and may spell the end of CDU rule, uninterrupted since 1953. ‘Change of Politics’ The Greens took a record 24.2 percent, while the Social Democrats, the main opposition party nationally, won 23.1 percent. The SPD, which also opposes nuclear power, said it is prepared to rule in coalition with the Greens. “There won’t just be a changing of the guard in Baden- Wuerttemberg, there will be a change of politics,” Greens national co-leader Claudia Roth said in Berlin. It will be “a historic watershed in 31 years of Green history when we vote in a Green premier” in the state. “Let the future begin.” In the neighboring state of Rhineland-Palatinate, the Social Democrats led by Kurt Beck took 35.7 percent, forcing them to search for a coalition partner after governing alone. While Merkel’s CDU pushed the SPD close, taking 35.2 percent, the Free Democrats with 4.2 percent failed to retain their seats in the state parliament in Mainz, leaving the CDU without a coalition ally. The Greens took 15.4 percent, more than triple their tally at the last election in 2006, putting them in a position to join the SPD in government. Euro Crisis The twin ballots, the biggest electoral test so far of Merkel’s second-term government, are the latest in a run of seven state elections this year that allow voters to rate her policies from stemming Europe’s debt turmoil to her response to war in Libya and explosions at the Fukushima reactors in Japan. With the CDU poised to lose Baden-Wuerttemberg, “Merkel may become a lame duck, nuclear power in Germany may become a memory,” Kit Juckes, head of foreign-exchange research in London Societe Generale SA, said yesterday in a note. “Sorting out Europe doesn’t get easier.” Nationally, support for the Greens has surged since Merkel, reacting to the disaster in Japan, closed Germany’s seven oldest reactors for three months and suspended an extension of plant lifespans she pushed through last year pending safety checks. ‘We Understood’ “At the end of those three months, we will have to present a new energy policy,” said Peter Altmaier, the CDU’s deputy floor leader in the national parliament. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, the FDP leader, said his party “understood” the message voters sent on nuclear policy. The issue is “something we really have to discuss” now, he said in Berlin. About 250,000 people took part in demonstrations across Germany on March 26 calling for an end to atomic power, in what organizers said were some of the biggest anti-nuclear protests the country has ever seen.A Greens-SPD win raises the chance of “an accelerated schedule for the permanent shutdown” of “some or all of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors,” Mark Lewis, a Deutsche Bank AG analyst in Paris, said before the votes. “I don’t think the market has really grasped how deep the potential implications of these elections go.” Merkel’s party suffered its worst defeat since World War II in Hamburg last month in the first of this year’s state elections. The CDU lost support in the second ballot, on March 20 in Saxony-Anhalt, as the Green vote unexpectedly doubled. Stuttgart 21 Project In Baden-Wuerttemberg, the Greens gained support last year as they tapped into public opposition to a high-speed rail project known as Stuttgart 21 that is backed by Merkel and the defeated CDU state premier, Stefan Mappus. The Greens also opposed the state government’s purchase of a 45.01 percent stake in utility EnBW from Electricite de France SA for 4.7 billion euros ($6.7 billion) in February. The state now controls 92.3 percent of the voting rights in the company. “Today, the final decision was made on ending nuclear power in Germany,” Sigmar Gabriel, national chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Party, said on ZDF. For Merkel, who is now under “enormous pressure, and making mistakes,” the results diminish her authority even if she lacks a direct challenger before the next federal elections due in 2013, Lothar Probst, a political scientist at the University of Bremen, said in a phone interview. “At some point, members of her party are going to start asking whether she can lead this party and hold it together,” Probst said. “ This could well be the beginning of the end of the Merkel era.” www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-27/merkel-s-nuclear-policy-under-fire-as-greens-surge-in-elections.html
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Post by graybeard on Mar 28, 2011 0:09:40 GMT -6
Many years ago, Germany decided to subsidize solar power, rather than spend the same amount on an additional nuke plant for future needs. Looks like that is paying off.
GB
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Post by waltc on Mar 28, 2011 10:37:47 GMT -6
Waltc, you know Pickens knows Nat Gas, yet I doubt you are the single person to open the post below this one.
Never heard of fracking, I guess?
Wow, argument by citing a speculator. Nice try but you, like Jeffolie are spouting hot air.
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Post by waltc on Mar 28, 2011 10:43:09 GMT -6
Many years ago, Germany decided to subsidize solar power, rather than spend the same amount on an additional nuke plant for future needs. Looks like that is paying off.
Oh really, so German Solar can provide a constant source of electricity 24 hours a day?
While ours only works in daylight hours. Amazing.
Physics must operate a bit differently in Germany.
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Post by waltc on Mar 28, 2011 11:59:53 GMT -6
Oh I'm familiar with fraking at least the oil variant that is used in the ME. The same tech that wrecked the Iraqi oil fields under Saddam.
But the NG variant is plain ass nasty and a environmental wrecking ball that hits long after the NG is extracted. There is nothing "green" about it.
Even a simple perusal of the topic via google demonstrates this. Enviros don't like it, hell ordinary people hate it.
Even Pickens won't address this issue. He's afraid people won't buy into his scam.
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Post by jeffolie on Mar 28, 2011 12:06:28 GMT -6
Oh I'm familiar with fraking at least the oil variant that is used in the ME. The same tech that wrecked the Iraqi oil fields under Saddam. But the NG variant is plain ass nasty and a environmental wrecking ball that hits long after the NG is extracted. There is nothing "green" about it. Even a simple perusal of the topic via google demonstrates this. Enviros don't like it, hell ordinary people hate it. Even Pickens won't address this issue. He's afraid people won't buy into his scam. I agree But... "...Pollution from 'fracking' is a problem but greed and corruption has overcome pollution issues in most parts of America and offer little resistence in many less ethical countries...." Read more: unlawflcombatnt.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=oil&action=display&thread=8819#ixzz1Hv17bzoT
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Post by fredorbob on Apr 1, 2011 6:05:44 GMT -6
Natural gas is the only realistic alternative to liquid hydrocarbons (transportation fuel), it only costs slightly higher to operate a gas-gas car compared to costing over three times as much to operate a hydrogen or electric car; it would be a shame to piss it all away turning electric turbines. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas#UsesAnd that's with very mild subsidies or no government subsidies at all. Compare this to hydrogen or electric vehicles which subsidies run way over 100% of operation/purchasing cost. I know the irony of posting a Honda product on this forum but: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_GXHonda Civic GX (natural gas) $25,000 (only about $4,000 more expensive then normal Honda Civic) -Accelerates like a normal car, has AC, heater and radio which would drain an electric car. -250 mile range -standard costs to run, comparable to gasoline. (and the price of compressed natural gas is 1/3rd to 1/4th of gasoline these days) -You can frigging refuel at home, whoah. Compare that to an electric car like the Volt: -Range 25-50 miles -Run heater, radio, AC and you have an even shorter range and probably very bad acceleration too -twice as expensive -Take forever to recharge -Lithium battery may explode Or look at Hydrogen Cars.....Uh oh, none exist for sale because its so damn EXPENSIVE it's still in the "concept" prototype phase. And for anyone who thinks it's cause of a conspiracy or because we just need to throw billions more at GM think again. Fuel cells were invented in 1959 and the first internal combustion hydrogen engine was invented in 1807. 1807!!!! And that wraps up my rant against Green Fascism.
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Post by jeffolie on Apr 1, 2011 13:35:45 GMT -6
Nat gas cars are not new.
In 1975 a friend converted his mid size car to nat gas with tanks in the trunk of his car.
This worked well until a big, semi truck ran over his nat gas car's rear end...he got screwed by his insurance company's refusal to pay for his upgraded nat gas conversion and next bought a VW diesel Rabbit that eventually got so noisy his family made his sell it in 1977.
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Post by jeffolie on Apr 1, 2011 13:48:19 GMT -6
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Post by waltc on Apr 3, 2011 12:07:46 GMT -6
NG for vehicles makes sense only and only if it fulfills these requirements.
- Do we have enough NG to replace the 378 million gallons of gasoline we consume every year.
- That with this additional draw on NG do we still have enough to power our electrical power plants for the next 50 years?
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Post by graybeard on Apr 3, 2011 18:45:43 GMT -6
NG won't replace gas in cars, due to its low energy density. Full sized pickups and larger is the market. NG takes up about five times the space of gas. The Orange County busses have their ng tanks on top. Liquid NG makes sense for long haul trucks.
Look how the price of NG is staying low, while oil is soaring.
GB
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Post by jeffolie on Apr 6, 2011 12:20:17 GMT -6
Energy Fact of the Week: America’s Natural Gas Revolution Brings Prices Down to Nine-Year LowsBy Mark J. Perry April 6, 2011, 9:56 am While rising oil and gas prices have captured all of the media attention lately, there’s another energy story about falling prices that has gone largely unreported. According to data released last week by the Department of Energy, natural gas prices for residential consumers fell to a seven-year low in January of $9.80 per 1,000 cubic feet. When adjusted for inflation, American consumers haven’t had cheaper natural gas since December 2002, more than nine years ago (see top chart below, data here). The bottom chart below shows a similar price decline for commercial customers, who paid less for natural gas in January this year (adjusted for inflation) than in any month since November 2002 (data here). The recent rise in oil and gas prices at the same time that natural gas prices have fallen to nine-year lows represents a significant departure from the situation in 2008, when the prices of both energy sources were rising to record levels. And that significant departure in energy prices can probably best be explained by the recent developments in shale gas technologies that have help to create an “unconventional-natural-gas revolution.” In Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, energy expert Daniel Yergin documented how the natural gas revolution has “turned a shortage into a large surplus and transformed the natural-gas business. Estimates of the entire natural-gas resource base, taking shale gas into account, are now as high as 2,500 trillion cubic feet, with a further 500 trillion cubic feet in Canada. That amounts to a more than 100-year supply of natural gas.” America is now the world’s largest producer of natural gas, and it’s predicted that the United States will produce so much in the coming years that it will soon become a gas exporter. In that case, we can look forward to natural gas prices falling even further in the future, as we take advantage of our 100-year supply of natural gas. And, hopefully, the recent “pain at the pump” from higher gasoline prices will be partly offset by lower heating costs this winter for the millions of Americans who use gas to heat their homes. Natural gas is a great story of energy success that has brought prices to their lowest levels in almost a decade—and it’s a story that deserves much greater attention. blog.american.com/?p=29590
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Post by fredorbob on Apr 7, 2011 7:15:05 GMT -6
NG won't replace gas in cars, due to its low energy density. Full sized pickups and larger is the market. NG takes up about five times the space of gas. The Orange County busses have their ng tanks on top. Liquid NG makes sense for long haul trucks. Look how the price of NG is staying low, while oil is soaring. GB Diesel is good for trucking/training because of high torque, I think natural gas is more analogous to gasoline engines then diesel. Not sure though.
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Post by waltc on Apr 7, 2011 12:25:40 GMT -6
Mr Perry isn't telling the whole truth on NG. Typical of a WSJ hack.
Canada's NG supply peaked in the late 1983s and has been declining ever since.
That 2500 trillion number is highly misleading. Even the shills in the NG field openly admit this number includes undiscovered, unproved, and unconventional natural gas. They make up half the estimate.
The National Petroleum Council OTOH estimates 1451 trillion cubic feet.
The Potential Gas Committee estimates 1836 trillion cf.
We currently consumer 22 trillion cubic feet per year. That means at current rates 65 years worth not a hundred years.
Start selling it abroad, replacing nuclear with NG and using in long haul trucking and you'll cut that number down real fast.
We could cut our time in half if we listen to the greens.
It's no panacea when you examine the details.
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Post by jeffolie on Apr 14, 2011 11:09:19 GMT -6
Natural Gas prices will end the nuke energy industry Germany will stop much of its nuke energy under the political domination of the Greens. Japan went for nat. gas as I expected, dumping coal 72%. ============================================== Thu Apr 14, 2011 3:34am EDT * Burns 8 pct more LNG in March yr/yr * Coal burn tumbles 72 pct in March after plant damaged (Adds 2010/11 data) By Osamu Tsukimori TOKYO, April 14 (Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) bought a record 2.138 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) last month as it tried to ramp up supplies ahead of the peak summer season, after the massive March 11 quake knocked out two of its nuclear power plants and a number of thermal power stations. The purchase surpassed the previous record of 2.132 million tonnes in August 2010, according to company data. The company said on Wednesday it has procured gas oil and LNG for use in gas turbines in April and May as the operator of the crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima, northeast Japan, needs to boost thermal generation. TEPCO has said it will need LNG the most among the fossil fuel mix to boost power generation in the summer. All the gas-fired plants operated by TEPCO are located in the Tokyo Bay area and received no significant impact from the quake compared with some of its oil and coal-fired plants in the northeastern Japan. Four gas-fired power units at four plants, which were shut down after the March 11 quake, all restarted within two weeks after the quake. The company's coal burn last month fell 72 percent from a year earlier, as the coal-fired 1,000 megawatts Hitachinaka plant, damaged by the quake, remained offline. The company aims to restart the Hitachinaka plant by the end of July. www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/14/tepco-lng-idUSL3E7FE08320110414
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Post by waltc on Apr 14, 2011 11:22:24 GMT -6
And everyone going to NG will jack up it's prices and drain the reserves at a much faster rate.
Real stupid.
Then again the Greens aren't very smart. Most I suspect are misanthropic SOB's with pol sci degrees.
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Post by jeffolie on Apr 16, 2011 8:42:29 GMT -6
Nat gas is killing nuke energy. Japan dumped coal. Japan now buying nat gas in a spectacular fashion. Japan is keeping 30 of its nuke energy plants offline. =================================================================== Qatargas boosts gas shipments to Japan post quake DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A Qatari state-controlled gas producer said Saturday it has agreed to send Japan more than 60 extra tanker shipments of liquefied natural gas to help power the Asian nation in the wake of its tsunami disaster. Qatargas Operating Company said Saturday the shipments represent about 4 million tons of the super-cooled fuel, or enough to provide electricity to five million Japanese homes. It didn't say how much it would charge for the gas, which will be shipped over the next 12 months. Qatargas CEO Khalid Bin Khalifa Al Thani said the first additional shipment left Qatar while he was on a visit to Japan last week. Japan, the world's largest importer of LNG, needs additional supplies of conventional fuel for its power plants because several of its 54 nuclear reactors were shut down after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Nuclear power typically accounts for about 30 percent of Japan's power supply. Japan currently has 24 reactors running. The country's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says operations at 14 other have been suspended, while 16 are undergoing maintenance or testing. news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110416/ap_on_bi_ge/ml_qatar_japan_gas
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Post by jeffolie on Apr 18, 2011 8:02:25 GMT -6
Natural Gas prices will end the nuke energy industry Japan now buys new record amounts of nat gas. Japan ended its nuke energy building program, while Japan shuttered more than 50% of its existing nuke energy reactors. ================================================================================= "....Japan will freeze plans to build new atomic facilities and carry out a thorough review of its nuclear energy policy... "....Radiation levels inside the quake-hit Nos.1 and 3 reactor buildings at the plant was up to about 57 millisieverts per hour, data obtained by remote-controlled robots...contaminated water in the tunnel of the No. 2 reactor continues to rise..." timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Japan-to-put-on-hold-plans-to-build-new-nuclear-plants-PM-Naoto-Kan/articleshow/8018520.cms
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Post by waltc on Apr 18, 2011 12:04:41 GMT -6
Bullshit about NG prices killing nuclear energy.
Canada has been a downward slope for decades. Worse the Chinese have bought vast amounts of tar sands in Canada and use NG to convert it into oil. Not good.
Mexico is in the same boat. BTW their oil output has dropped as well.
Yeah let the U.S. and Japan go all NG and watch prices skyrocket and reserves shrink at a fantastic rate.
Again NG is no panacea but no one wants to do due diligence on it before promoting to the heavens.
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Post by jeffolie on Apr 21, 2011 8:54:21 GMT -6
nuke energy smackdown Big write off ...2 advanced nuke energy projects killed... ========================================= NRG Drops Plan for Texas Reactors "two nuclear reactors in Texas....The company had one of the most advanced nuclear projects in the U.S. and was negotiating a federal loan guarantee to help finance the reactors. But the project was hurt by the fact that NRG needed regulatory certainty ....NRG will take a first-quarter charge of $481 million... " online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704740204576273382937659512.html
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Post by waltc on Apr 21, 2011 10:07:22 GMT -6
We shouldn't be building those mega reactors anyway. Money should be put in Thorium and breeder reactors as part of a national energy program that is based on a spectrum of energy sources.
That said, what happens when NG spikes like mad after consumption skyrockets, which it will.
Remember we have a 65 year supply at current usage rates. Replace our nuke reactors with NG plants and the supply drops to 30+ years.
See Nuke and NG supply roughly the same of electricity, so to replace nuke reactors would double consumption and halve the supply.
And world NG supply gets even worse with country like Japan if they convert.
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Post by jeffolie on May 21, 2011 16:57:41 GMT -6
Germany and Japan respond politically to end nuke energy. Japan will not build more nuke energy plan - no 50% coming Rejected and reversed...Japan reversed yesterday's claim it was committed to build more nuke energy In an anything but new nuke energy new policy...Japan ends plan to almost double its nuke energy from 30% to go to 50%...the new plan is nothing more than a 'we will not build more nuke energy plan'..."...Japan will have to compile Japan's new energy policy in a report for submission to the International Atomic Energy Agency in June. He didn't give any numerical estimates for each source of energy..." In prior threads, I showed that Japan now is dumping coal and jumping to new record imports of nat gas to power electrical generation. Merkel caved into the Greens anti nuke energy successful political wins in Germany's regional elections...or else Merkel would lose power ============================= Merkel backs proposal to end nuclear power in 2022May 21, ANDECHS, Germany (AFP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday that 2022 was "a good time" for Germany to end nuclear power, backing a proposal by the Bavarian wing of her party. She described as "an important contribution" the scenario set out by the Christian Social Union at a meeting in the southern town of Andechs. The centre-right government is to set out its strategy by the beginning of June and agree draft legislation at a cabinet meeting on June 7 or 15. Following the earthquake and tsunami which wrecked the Japanese nuclear plant of Fukushima in March, Merkel ordered the closure for three months of Germany's seven oldest reactors. She also announced a moratorium for the same period of an earlier decision by her government to extend the lifetime of Germany's 17 reactors by an average of 12 years. news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110521/bs ... 0521151423
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Post by jeffolie on May 22, 2011 17:08:44 GMT -6
Nuke energy is killing Merkel's political power. Greens now dominate Germany's continuing round of regional elections. Merkel's party declined all the way to 3rd in today's election. Before Japan's nuke energy problem Germany and Japan were seen destined to a nuke energy dominated future...now the opposite: Merkel declared all nuke energy must end but this policy change is too late to save her political power =============================== May 22, 2011 Greens thump Merkel's party in historic state vote Juergen Baetz Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party slipped behind the environmentalist Greens to third place in a state election Sunday, its worst result in Bremen in over 50 years, exit polls showed. The governing Social Democrats in northern Bremen state extended their lead from 36.7 percent to 38.8 percent of the vote, and their junior partner, the Greens, surged by almost 6 percent to 22 percent, according to calculations based on partial results. Merkel's Christian Democrats lost about 6 percent, getting only 20 percent of the vote for the state legislature, the party's worst result there since 1959. The Greens' surge, if confirmed by final results, would also mark the first time in decades that the conservative Christian Democrats were reduced to being the third-strongest party behind the Social Democrats and the Greens in German state or federal elections. While the Greens' victory in the smallest of Germany's 16 states won't directly affect the chancellor's hold on the federal government, it's another symbolic blow to Merkel's party. In Baden-Wuerttemberg's state election in March, the Christian Democrats were voted out of the power for the first time in five decades. The anti-nuclear Greens _ riding on a wave of broad support in the wake of Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant disaster _ became the strongest party there, eventually entitling them to Germany's first Green governor. Merkel's junior partner in the federal government, the pro-business Free Democrats, won only 2.5 percent of the vote in Bremen, according to the partial results presented by state election commissioner Juergen Wayand. The Free Democrats thereby failed to re-enter the state parliament, as the minimum threshold is five percent. The Left party won 6.4 percent of the Bremen vote, down from over 8 percent in 2007, the poll said. The Greens' rise was also echoed in a new national poll, that saw their support at 23 percent, closely trailing the Social Democrats' 26 percent. The poll commissioned by public broadcaster ARD and released on Sunday showed Merkel's Christian Democrats at 33 percent, but its coalition partner, the Free Democrats, down to 4 percent. Merkel's conservatives won Germany's last general election in 2009 with 33.8 percent and joined forces with the liberals, who had then secured 14.6 percent of the vote About 1,000 people were surveyed for the poll that had a margin of error of up to 3.1 percent. Sunday's vote in Bremen marked the first time in Germany's history that people between 16 and 18 years old were allowed to vote for their state legislature. Despite that effort to boost the vote, ARD estimated a turnout of only 54 percent, down from 57 percent four years earlier. www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2011/May/22/greens_thump_merkel_s_party_in_historic_state_vote.html
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