Tag Archives: Wind

Nuclear plant shut for two weeks in Connecticut due to heat

Ever heard of solar panels or windmills shutting down due to heat? Me, neither. Nuclear plants, yes, such as Millstone unit 2 in Connecticut, closed for two weeks.

AP wrote today, Conn. nuclear plant unit reopens with cooler water

Connecticut's nuclear power plant has returned to full service nearly two weeks after one of its two units was forced to shut down because seawater used to cool it down was too warm.

Millstone Power Station spokesman Ken Holt said Monday that Unit 2 returned to 100 percent power Saturday. It shuttered Aug. 12 after record heat in July contributed to overheated water from Long Island Sound.

Water is used to cool key components of the plant and is discharged back into the sound. The water's temperature was averaging 1.7 degrees above the 75-degree limit.

The temperature has since dropped to 72 degrees, Holt said.

"The water temperature cooled sufficiently to support operations and that, combined with the weather forecast, has given us the confidence to restart," he said.

Wait, wasn't the whole point of big distributed baseload power plants supposed to be reliable dependable power?

Millstone provides half of all power in Connecticut and 12 percent in New England.

Some scientists believe the partial Millstone shutdown was the first involving a nuclear plant pulling water from an open body of water. A few nuclear plants that draw water from inland sources have powered down because of excessively warm water.

Time to think again! Distributed solar and wind power doesn't have this problem, and a smart grid can get their power where it's needed.

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ALEC, private prisons, fossil fuels, and charter schools

It’s good to see someone trying a coordinated strategy for something good in multiple states, as Our Children’s Trust is doing for air as a public trust. We already knew going to multiple states at once works, because ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange, gets reactionary results that way.

How does ALEC do it? By

So once again, it’s refreshing to see somebody successfully try multiple states for something worthwhile!

The above ALEC projects are just some I’ve run across while researching local topics. It often seems as if every rock I turn over has the ALEC millipede scurrying around under it. Far more about ALEC is available through ALEC Exposed.

ALEC Exposed has a list of companies that have dumped ALEC recently. Georgia Power’s parent The Southern Company and UPS are still not on that list. You can help. Let them know you want them to dump ALEC!

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New research shows Natural Gas far more dangerous for climate stability —Seth Gunning

Received yesterday on U.S. CO2 emissions lowest in 20 years: that's good and bad: natural gas is methane, after all. -jsq

Yet another comprehensive article. I might also add that one of the major down-falls (if not the most significant) of large-scale conversions to natural gas is the resources lifecycle methane emissions.

As your readers likely know, Methane is about twenty times as 'potent' a greenhouse gas as Carbon Dioxide. That is to say, it is far more efficient at trapping heat then Co2. So, less methane has a far greater impact on climate disruption then more Co2.

Natural Gas, from the point of combustion, releases about half the amount of Co2 released from burning coal, and about 30% of what's released in burning oil. To keep the benefits of reduced Co2 levels when switching from coal to natural gas, natural gas wells and transport lines must leak less then 2% of methane into the atmosphere. Recent research from Cornell is showing that Fracking wells are regularly releasing more then 4%, and often as much as 8% —far exceeding the 2% threshold— and thus making Natural Gas a far more dangerous resource for climate stability.

Tom Zeller Jr. wrote for the NYTimes 11 April 2011, Studies Say Natural Gas Has Its Own Problems

-Seth Gunning

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U.S. CO2 emissions lowest in 20 years: that’s good and bad

The good news: because utilities such as Southern Company are switching away from coal U.S. emissions of CO2 are the lowest they’ve been in 20 years. The bad news: they’re switching to natural gas, which not only still emits carbon dioxide, it pollutes groundwater through fracking, requires a lot of groundwater to do the fracking in the first place, and then uses more groundwater for cooling. But the further good news is cheaper energy sources drive out expensive ones, and wind and solar are already cheaper than nuclear and coal, and solar is already cheaper than natural gas. Oh, and solar and wind emit no CO2.

Kevin Begos write for AP yesterday, AP IMPACT: CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low

“There’s a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado.

While conservation efforts, the lagging economy and greater use of renewable energy are factors in the CO2 decline, the drop-off is due mainly to low-priced natural gas, the agency said.

A frenzy of shale gas drilling in the Northeast’s Marcellus Shale and in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana has caused the wholesale price of natural gas to plummet from $7 or $8 per unit to about $3 over the past four years, making it cheaper to burn than coal for a given amount of energy produced. As a result, utilities are relying more than ever on gas-fired generating plants.

Both government and industry experts said the biggest surprise is how quickly the electric industry turned away from coal. In 2005, coal was used to produce about half of all the electricity generated in the U.S. The Energy Information Agency said that fell to 34 percent in March, the lowest level since it began keeping records nearly 40 years ago.

And that’s why Southern Company (SO) turned towards natural gas: it’s cheaper! SO still prefers nuclear and coal before gas, as SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning keeps reminding us. But even SO couldn’t ignore “the revolution in shale gas”, which is cheaper prices through fracking. Solar PV costs dropped 50% last year alone. How long can SO ignore that?

“Natural gas is not a long-term solution to the CO2 problem,” Pielke warned….

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More concerned about feeding cars than the hungry? —Michael G. Noll

Received Tuesday on Georgia EPD to suspend consideration of some new farm water permit applications 07/30/2012. -jsq

And Southern Company/Georgia Power are still pushing for power plants that waste hundreds of thousands of gallons of water daily (nuclear, biomass)? Water for cooling purposes instead of agriculture? That's about as insane as corn for the production of ethanol instead of feeding people. And how much water do wind mills or solar panels need once they have been installed? About as much as they create problems with air pollution and radioactive waste: zero!

Please note a recent article by George Monbiot on a global crisis caused by investments made in biofuels (e.g. ethanol from corn). To quote from the article (13 August 2012, Hunger Games):

"Already, 40% of US corn (maize) production is used to feed cars(6). The proportion will rise this year as a result of the smaller harvest. Though the market for biodiesel is largely confined to the European Union, it has already captured seven per cent of the world's output of vegetable oil(7). The European Commission admits that its target (10% of transport fuels by 2020) will raise world cereal prices by between 3 and 6%(8). Oxfam estimates that with every 1% increase in the price of food, another 16 million people go hungry."

Where does this leave our "Christian" values as we are obviously more concerned about feeding cars than the hungry?

-Michael G. Noll

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Another home with wind power

When we arrived, the wind company was tuning the stay wires on the windmill at the home of Karl and Clare Kuntz in western New York State.

Another home with wind power
Karl and Clare Kuntz, Pavillion, Genesee County, New York
Videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

Clare said the wind company is Sustainable Energy Developments. She added,

Sign You can put your money in the mattress or in the bank, and get about the same appreciation. Or you can put it in wind or solar and feel good about it.

Karl said it would take about fifteen years to pay back the wind investment, and meanwhile they get more power than they use, and still will after it’s all paid for. He remarked that the wind company has also started doing solar energy, because solar now costs half as much as wind. And that’s in windy western New York, 1000 miles north of sunny south Georgia.

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Windmills near Wales NY 11 August 2012

So many they need their own power substation. And there’s corn growing in the same fields.

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Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 August 2012.

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Vermont protests against wind vs. nuclear

Compare 6 arrested of about 25 demonstrators against Green Mountain Power’s wind energy project on Lowell Mountain vs. 130 arrested of a thousand protesting in March against the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

Also notice what they were protesting. The location on Lowell Mountain, as damaging the mountain top and being unsightly, plus:

“I feel like they [GMP] only went through the public process to a point, and the process is flawed,” said Young, a self-employed logger and farmer from Westfield. “Community members don’t have the resources to have a strong voice. It’s complex, expensive, and lawyers don’t want to do it.”

At Vermont Yankee, the protests were against radioactive leaks, nuclear waste, and this:

Yankee’s initial 40-year license expired Wednesday. The plant is still running, under a 20-year extension from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission—despite a vote by the state senate not to allow the plant to continue operating in Vermont.

A common theme is lack of democratic oversight, although even that seems greater in degree for Vermont Yankee. We are familiar with that issue in Georgia, where there’s an election going on for Public Service Commissioners and legislators.

Another common theme is that it’s complex and expensive, which is indeed an issue for big wind projects. Power companies like them as big as they can build them because that fits their corporate bureaucracy. They can instead be smaller and distributed. Nuclear power plants, on the other hand, are always big, bureaucratic, and expensive.

While I thoroughly sympathize with the Lowell Mountain protesters about the mountain top issues, I don’t see anything about them protesting the risk of a wind spill. Risks of nuclear radioactive contamination are very real, and are among the Vermont Yankee protesters’ main issues. Wind off the coast of Georgia would not have that problem.

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Plant Vogtle water use

Apparently the nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle will use more water than the City of Savannah, and more than agricultural uses for the middle Savannah River watershed. Much of the water (3/4?) is evaporated, leaving less for drinking, farming, and everything else. What goes back in the river is rest warmer than it came out, affecting everything that lives in the river. Remind me: why are we building those nukes instead of solar and wind generators, which use no water while producing power?

Plant Vogtle currently uses 43.2 million gallons of water a day, and with all 4 units, is planned to use 86.4 million gallons of water a day, or 2% of the *average* flow of the Savannah River, according to UNC’s Powering A Nation journalism team, 9 June 2010.

That’s more than the City of Savannah, according to the City of Savannah.

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Wind for Georgia jobs and electricity?

Georgia is already benefiting by jobs from wind manufacturing. What if we increased that, and generated wind energy, too?

Kristi E. Swartz wrote for the AJC 2 June 2012, Ga. blown away by wind’s potential,

The state already is home to more than a dozen companies that make components that either go into wind turbines or that assist in building them. Such development has been a way for Georgia and the Southeast to capitalize on the wind energy industry even though the state lacks a steady wind needed for the giant turbines to spin constantly and create electricity.

“It’s … to have some visibility in the industry and to let those industry players know that this is an industry that’s important to Georgia, that it is on our radar screen, and it’s one of our targeted industries,” said Tom Croteau, director of the Economic Development Department’s food, energy, logistics and agribusiness projects division.

That’s good, let’s do more of it. Except that part about “lacks a steady wind”: we know Georgia does have wind offshore.

Here’s why we’re not generating wind electricity in Georgia. Hint: the answer is Continue reading →