14,000,000 Potassium Iodide Pills Purchased by DHHS

[breakingcontact]

Easy? Yes.
Cost effective? No.

If the price of electricity remains the same, you'd pay out and break even in about 30 years.
Plus you'd likely have to give up air conditioning.

I ran a lot of numbers. I like solar and wind on a small scale in remote areas. Just going off grid full time is a major commitment of lifestyle and money.

Thats the thing. Its 100% doable but not how most of us live now.

 

[Shotgun Jeremy]

Damn!

 

[sonuvaTXgun]

Spent an hour reading about Chernobyl.
Wow.... Just wow....
So many regulations were disregarded. The attempted cover up was impressive... lol

And it's not over. The concrete and lead containment sarcophagus is so degraded it's causing major concern. If it collapses it could send all that radioactive debris into the atmosphere and cause panic and health issues all over again. It could be taken care of but nobody wants to foot the 1 billion dollar bill that comes with the construction project.

-TXG-

 

[sonuvaTXgun]

.

 

[breakingcontact]

And it's not over. The concrete and lead containment sarcophagus is so degraded it's causing major concern. If it collapses it could send all that radioactive debris into the atmosphere and cause panic and health issues all over again. It could be taken care of but nobody wants to foot the 1 billion dollar bill that comes with the construction project.

-TXG-

I thought the EU was building the worlds largest structure adjacent to it then they were going to slide it over the building on train tracks?

 

[azkcr]

Yep. That's what I read.
It's currently being built (supposedly).
Just a lot of concrete and metal. The hastily built one from the 80s is falling apart.

 

[mitchntx]

I'm surprised more power companies don't have more natural gas units that kick on during peak consumption.

What business model allows for a company to have multiple multi-million dollar resources on hot stand-by?
None in a deregulated environment.

And who can predict what the price of NG will be in 3 years ... 5 years ... 15 years ...

Many of the NG plants around were built in the 60s .... a 50 year life span.
In a deregulated environment, the biggest expenditure is fuel cost. A 1% change on this large of a scale could put a business under.


And yes ... Texas came this || close to power outages yesterday.

Some base-load plants were run back due to equipment issues, calm winds, cold temps and less than 10% rolling reserve made for a "perfect storm".

 

[breakingcontact]

mitchntx,

They built a peak NG plant near my birth city about 5 years ago. Different state though so who knows the economic considerations there.

I agree that it's a costly investment but rolling brown or blackouts must cost a lot of money too.

Do you think wind energy is worth it? Would it survive or make sense without the subsidies? Also, what is the life of those turbine units and generators? 20 years?

 

[Shotgun Jeremy]

Here's a GREAT link I found about the existing Sarcophagus and the new one coming. I've always been interested in architectural design, so when I heard about that, I just had to go look it up.

Inside the sarcophagus | The Chernobyl Gallery

 

[mitchntx]

I'm not up on all the recent builds. I know a coal burner came on line in central Texas near Buffalo several years ago. But small peakers spring up and go away all the time. There are several gas turbines near Sweetwater IIRC.

Texas has had it great for the last 50 years. The state has been immune to what the east and west costs have endured. But aging plants, ever tightening EPA regulations and a deregulated environment make that a thing of the past.

Texas will have to endure a few power outages before the cost of building makes sense. Only when the switch on the wall stops working will the cries for new power resources be heard. Sad, really.


Wind has it's niche and as technology moves forward, it will get better. It's just not reliable. Some days, the wind just doesn't blow very hard.

Something you might not've considered is the power produced is localized and unregulated. By that, it's like a portable electric generator you might take camping. Current is generated by a local, encapsulated, seperate generator. Ever try and run a PC or amp from one of those? The power is very dirty.

Now filter all those wind turbines to give a solid 60Hz AND syncronize all of them to the grid with the wind blowing a steady 20mph in Sweetwater, gusting winds at 30mph near Seymour and a steady 15mph on the coast. The infrastructure required to make that happen is daunting and expensive for a mere 1-1.5MWe. factor in 25% line loss in the heat of the summer and it gets worse.


Someone mentioned earlier solar ... great concept and at some point technology will allow a cell to be manufactured that can generate more power than it took to produce it. Till then ...

 

[Acera]

Still amazes me that they tore down the natural gas generating station on Hwy 146 between Kemah and Texas City at the same time they built a coal fired power plant on the Shell refinery grounds in Deer Park. That facility is expanding at a rapid rate. I was still under the assumption that natural gas was the way to go in this area.

 

[mitchntx]

It all boils down to efficiency. If the bean counters can't show the corporate lackeys that there is a profit for the blood-sucking shareholders, they'll lay some more of us off and close the plant.

But I'm not bitter ...

 

[sonuvaTXgun]

I thought the EU was building the worlds largest structure adjacent to it then they were going to slide it over the building on train tracks?

You're right. I read about it last year and the article must have been outdated.

-TXG-

 

[Mreed911]

Someone mentioned earlier solar ... great concept and at some point technology will allow a cell to be manufactured that can generate more power than it took to produce it. Till then ...

That's not the initial problem - even if we had to expend a lot of energy up front to produce, solar panels have relatively short lifetimes compared to structures and suffer from efficiency degradation over time. Assume we get more efficient at building panels - there's still an ongoing replacement/upgrade cost built in - they're going to fail at some point.

 

[RetArmySgt]

Solar seems to be working just fine for Arizona State University.
ASU Sustainability Tour: Solar Initiatives

 

[vmax]

updates possibly related to the radiation threat

even though officials admit radiation at the beach in the youtube video is 5 times higher than normal, they are certain it has nothing to do with Fukishima and they are puzzled as to why it is so high, but they declare the beaches are safe

http://rt.com/usa/fukushima-geiger-california-radiation-238/

in San Meteo County another test was done and found levels 14 times higher than normal
Experts say beach radiation unrelated to Fukushima - Half Moon Bay Review : News


After watching the clip, El Granada electrical engineer Steven Weiss grabbed his own radiation measurement equipment to test the radiation reports for himself.

On Monday, Weiss carried a Geiger counter in each hand for a second survey of Surfer's Beach. As he descended to the waterline, the readings on his gadgets climbed. He tested various spots: the side of the bluffs and the white sand closest to the waterline, both registering levels that were high but not suspiciously so as far as he was concerned. But when he placed the sensors down near a line of black silt along the back of the beach, the meters on both his gadgets spiked. The counters registered about 415 counts per minute. A cpm of 30 is considered the baseline for radioactivity typically found in the air.

“It's not normal. I've never seen 400 cpm when I just wave my Geiger around.” he said. “There has to be something radioactive for it to do that.”

many news organizations including CBS ran stories last year about the prediction of scientist that the radioactive materials would hit US beaches early in 2014
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/fukushimas-radioactive-ocean-plume-due-reach-us-waters-2014-8C11050755




also, while is has been going on Japans government passes a new law along the lines of our Patriot Act aimed at journalist who release state secrets and penalizing them with long prison terms. Basically this law will squash any investigative reporting in that country and it was reported that the Obama Administration was a strong supporter of Japan passing this law

Japan passes a democracy-muzzling Patriot Act | GlobalPost

 

[Vaquero]

Bikini atoll. What'd they expect?

 

[breakingcontact]

I read that they were finding radium on the beach. Not cesium. Unfortunately its probably from dumping military or medical waste in the ocean i would guess.

 

[mitchntx]

I read that they were finding radium on the beach. Not cesium. Unfortunately its probably from dumping military or medical waste in the ocean i would guess.

Or salt ...

 

[breakingcontact]

Or salt ...

Yes some radiation and relatively concentrated spots are natural.