Prediction: Coal has fallen. Nuclear is next then Oil.

[mspohr]

British carbon tax leads to 93% drop in coal-fired electricity

A tax on carbon dioxide emissions in Great Britain, introduced in 2013, has led to the proportion of electricity generated from coal falling from 40% to 3% over six years, according to research led by UCL.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

That reminds me --

Shouldn't CF be a decimal in your table ?

The EIA publishes it as a percentage to 1dp.

For an example, see:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/xls/table_6_07_a.xlsx
Or any of the other tables.

EIA seems consistently to publish using MW, MWh and percentages to 1 decimal place.
For example, in their generation data they say it's "Thousand Megawatthours" instead of "Gigawatthours".
.

 

[SageBrush]

The EIA publishes it as a percentage to 1dp.

Oh, that is fine too; I thought I saw MW units in your table.

Addendum: It's the label

Capacity Factor (MW):

I understand your intent, it just caught my attention being the stickler for units that I am

 

[dgpcolorado]

‘Every Day Matters’: Guardian Stops Accepting Fossil Fuel Ads

LONDON — The Guardian newspaper said it would stop accepting advertisements from oil and gas companies, making it the latest institution to limit financial ties to fossil fuel businesses.

The announcement, the first of its kind for a British newspaper, highlights how the risk of climate change is increasingly recognized and discussed in the business world, just days after the subject took center stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland...

...The newspaper said in October that it would stop referring to “climate change” and use a term like “climate emergency” or “climate crisis” instead. “We need to tackle it now, and every day matters,” Katharine Viner, the editor in chief, said at the time...

 

[mspohr]

Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund just announced that it will exclude fossil fuel companies.

 

[mspohr]

Progress

The Momentum of an Amazing Beyond Coal January

 

[ReddyLeaf]

Progress

The Momentum of an Amazing Beyond Coal January

Unfortunately, the closures are “in the future,” not YESTERDAY. We need these things closed now, not 2025, 2030, or whenever.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

The idea that Arizona has any natural demand for coal power out to 2031 is absurd. You might as well say "We're gonna give these investors a handout for X years" because that's what it is when there's nothing but miles and miles of desert for cheap solar.

 

[nwdiver]

The longer we wait... the more painful the transition will be for everyone.

 

[mspohr]

The longer we wait... the more painful the transition will be for everyone.

They closed all their black coal mines and didn't sack any workers. Early retirement or retraining.
Brown coal will be a bigger challenge because it's so cheap.

 

[dgpcolorado]

Thought this article was interesting:
https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.1/nuc...ower-is-emissions-free-but-at-what-cost-waste
High Country News: "Nuclear power is clean – if you ignore all the waste"

As someone who lives in the Four Corners uranium mining country, the problem of cold war mine waste and cleanup is an ongoing concern. Most uranium comes from other countries nowadays but that just offshores the problem to other parts of the world. If you ever pass through Grants NM check out the mining museum there. They have a replica of a hard rock uranium mine to tour. Despite the emphasis on good ventilation, would you work in such a mine?

 

[nwdiver]

Thought this article was interesting:
High Country News: "Nuclear power is clean – if you ignore all the waste"

As someone who lives in the Four Corners uranium mining country, the problem of cold war mine waste and cleanup is an ongoing concern. Most uranium comes from other countries nowadays but that just offshores the problem to other parts of the world. If you ever pass through Grants NM check out the mining museum there. They have a replica of a hard rock uranium mine to tour. Despite the emphasis on good ventilation, would you work in such a mine?

The fact we're still mining Uranium makes ZERO sense to me. I worked in the fuel side for ~7 years. Essentially the way enrichment operates is you get 0.711% from natural feed and make it into ~4% enriched for fuel use. The 'Tails' material is generally ~0.2%. With a bit more effort you can actually take the tails and re-enrich it into feed. We have >400,000 tons of ~0.2% Tails material sitting in Kentucky. Instead of defiling more land to mine more Uranium we should be decreasing the waste material we have sitting in yards by enriching it into feed material.

 

[SageBrush]

The 'Tails' material is generally ~0.2%. With a bit more effort you can actually take the tails and re-enrich it into feed.

What is the percentage Uranium in the subsequent waste product ? Or perhaps the better question is, how much can be recovered ?

 

[nwdiver]

What is the percentage Uranium in the subsequent waste product ? Or perhaps the better question is, how much can be recovered ?

Generally ~0.1%. You can enrich that too but it would require more energy so it's a bit of diminishing returns.

Here's a handy SWU calculator. SWU is a unit to describe the 'work' required to enrich Uranium. Work being 'work' because there's no actual unit of energy or power involved. Think of it like a Tera-Flop. The amount of energy required depends on the technology used.

Gas Centrifuge plants use ~60kWh/SWU. There's also laser enrichment technology being developed that's supposed to be as much of an improvement over Gas Centrifuge as Centrifuges were over diffusion. Meaning laser enrichment could be <6kWh/SWU.

 

[BenBethel]

I agree on nuclear.... We have one of the world's largest plants in Phoenix... It is not near any body of water and uses 140,000 gallons of water a minute to cool the reactors... In the desert. It's a travesty. The cost is too high. But what people don't factor into the cost is the cost to decommission the plant which is coming soon... $120B. Who pays for that?

 

[ggr]

I agree on nuclear.... We have one of the world's largest plants in Phoenix... It is not near any body of water and uses 140,000 gallons of water a minute to cool the reactors... In the desert. It's a travesty. The cost is too high. But what people don't factor into the cost is the cost to decommission the plant which is coming soon... $120B. Who pays for that?

Speaking from San Onofre experience, the answer is obvious... you will.

(San Onofre plant in SoCal was repaired at consumer expense, then a couple of billion dollars went down the drain when the repairs failed, so the plant had to be prematurely shut down at a few more billion expense, but all the costs were passed on to consumers.)

 

[SVMike]

Speaking from San Onofre experience, the answer is obvious... you will.

(San Onofre plant in SoCal was repaired at consumer expense, then a couple of billion dollars went down the drain when the repairs failed, so the plant had to be prematurely shut down at a few more billion expense, but all the costs were passed on to consumers.)

That is partially true and a bit deceiving. But to start with, of course consumers will pay, who else is there?
As energy was produced a small decommissioning fee was added to bills, in the past. The company invested those funds in a dedicated trust.

Quote below from this link: Coastal Commission OKs permit to dismantle the San Onofre nuclear plant

The decommissioning will be paid for by $4.4 billion in existing trust funds, The money has been collected from SONGS customers and invested in dedicated trusts. According to Edison, customers have contributed about one-third of the trust funds while remaining two-thirds has come from investments by the company.

 

[nwdiver]

But to start with, of course consumers will pay, who else is there?

I guess it depends on how you define 'consumers'. If you define a 'consumer' as a rate payer for the utility operating the nuclear power plant that's not true. A large portion of subsidies for nuclear plants is federal.... paid by tax payers or simply added to the national debt.

 

[APD1080]

First the tailings are not waste they can be processed but at this time it is not cost effective to do so. As to the comment on the water usage at the nuclear plants in Arizona, what do you think the fossil plants use for cooling? (by the way the Arizona plant uses mostly grey water, The power plant evaporates the water from the treated sewage from several nearby cities and towns to provide the cooling of the steam that it produces. This water woudl not be used but would just be dumped into a river). A nuclear plant used the heat generated by fission to convert water to steam to run the turbine/generator. You need a HEAT SINK for the turbine/generator to condense the steam that passes through the turbine to reuse the water. So it does not matter if it is a nuclear plant or fossil plant you still need the WATER. While a fossil plant may be a little more efficient in the conversion process (heat to electricity), nuclear plants have NO CO2 of any other noxious emissions. So having worked in the commercial nuclear industry for 34 years AND seen the environmental impact of the fossile electric generating stations (coal fly ash. etc.) I think it woudl be more beneficial for one to thoroughly research an issue rather than rely on an obliviously anti-nuclear media article.

 

[nwdiver]

First the tailings are not waste they can be processed but at this time it is not cost effective to do so. As to the comment on the water usage at the nuclear plants in Arizona, what do you think the fossil plants use for cooling? (by the way the Arizona plant uses mostly grey water, The power plant evaporates the water from the treated sewage from several nearby cities and towns to provide the cooling of the steam that it produces. This water woudl not be used but would just be dumped into a river). A nuclear plant used the heat generated by fission to convert water to steam to run the turbine/generator. You need a HEAT SINK for the turbine/generator to condense the steam that passes through the turbine to reuse the water. So it does not matter if it is a nuclear plant or fossil plant you still need the WATER. While a fossil plant may be a little more efficient in the conversion process (heat to electricity), nuclear plants have NO CO2 of any other noxious emissions. So having worked in the commercial nuclear industry for 34 years AND seen the environmental impact of the fossile electric generating stations (coal fly ash. etc.) I think it woudl be more beneficial for one to thoroughly research an issue rather than rely on an obliviously anti-nuclear media article.

The tailings are treated as 'waste' for all intents and purposes. I would argue that it has become cost effective to use tails as feed material now that SWU prices are so low. It peaked at ~$160/SWU in 2010 and now hover around ~$30/SWU. The primary reason for the preference over 'fresh' UF6 over tails UF6 is corporate inertia. Like everything else in the nuclear industry change typically takes decades.

The alternative to obsolete thermal plants that need to dump 2 units of heat for every unit of useful energy is non-thermal generators like solar and wind. Using gas turbines (also non-thermal) or batteries for backup.