Statewide nuclear summit gains energy in the fight for nuclear sanity (California)

[bananas]

http://www.prcsd.org/resources/must-read/statewide-nuclear-summitgai.html

STATEWIDE NUCLEAR SUMMIT GAINS ENERGY IN THE FIGHT FOR NUCLEAR SANITY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 27, 2012



CONTACT:

Gene Stone, Residents Organized for a Safe Environment -- 949-233-7724

Carol Jahnkow, San Diego Peace Resource Center – 760-390-0775

Ray Lutz, Citizens Oversight Projects (COPS) 619-820-5321



Representatives of more than 25 anti-nuclear activist and energy sustainability organizations gathered in San Clemente, California on Sunday, May 27, to discuss strategy and plan actions against nuclear power operations in California and to promote renewable energy sources and energy efficiency solutions. The coalition, meeting for the fifth time since Fukushima, is determined to continue the fight to stop San Onofre from operating this summer and beyond, with the understanding that excess energy already exists in the state to cover our needs.



Key among the issues discussed were the problems at the San Onofre nuclear power facility near San Clemente, which has been shut down since January 31 because of ongoing problems with the steam generators and safety issues. Other San Onofre issues include the facility having the worst safety record in the US, being located in an active earthquake/tsunami zone, lack of safe long term storage for high level nuclear waste, and no realistic evacuation plan.



A growing network of independent crowd-source radiation monitoring by concerned citizens around the state is being implemented to counteract the ongoing lack of information provided by California utilities about radiation levels. Gene Stone of Residents Organized for a Safe Environment, a San Clemente-area group, said, "Our work together is strengthening our bond and reinforcing our determination to see this issue through to end nuclear power in California once and for all, and make this state embrace the 21st Century solutions of clean, safe, renewable energy."



The activists, who came from locations from San Francisco to San Diego, heard from Barbara George of Women's Energy Matters a detailed breakdown on the opportunity for local communities to wrest control of their energy supply from the large utilities. Opportunities do exist for local cities to take control of their local energy supply and end the dominance of the major utilities: Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, and San Diego Gas & Electric.



Future plans by the network include: stepping up efforts against San Onofre, hosting visitors from Japan traveling throughout California to raise awareness of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster, and building alliances with national and international environmental groups.



The statewide meeting was hosted by Friends of the Earth, Residents Organized for a Safe Environment, and the Peace Resource Center of San Diego.



San Diego groups participating included the Peace Resource Center of San Diego, Citizens Oversight Projects (COPS), Women Occupy San Diego, Occupy Vista and San Diego Veterans for Peace.

[RobertEarl]

1. California brings good things to life

Has to be the coolest place on the planet.

I'm sure it has it's share of stupid nuke supporters, but they will overcome, and rid their state of these most dangerous and overly expensive ticking-time-bombs.

[XemaSab]

2. Excess energy?

A few years ago we had rolling blackouts.

Besides, I thought our grid was being strained from the shutdown of San Onofre.

[madokie]

3. Best I remember the rolling blackouts were the results of manipulation of the power grid

for the purpose of increasing profits, not so much because of a lack of power. Remember Ken Lay and Enron?

[XemaSab]

4. That's how I remember it too

[PamW]

5. If California had....

Remember Ken Lay and Enron?
===================

If California had enough power generating capacity to meet our needs; we wouldn't have needed Lay and Enron in the first place.

The truth of the matter is that California does NOT have enough electric generating capacity inside the State to meet the demands.

Therefore, the California ISO ( Independent System Operator, in Sacramento ) has to purchase electrical energy on the open market. That means you end up dealing with the Enrons of the world.

California is currently building transmission lines to Wyoming to get power. The residents of Wyoming have plenty of coal, and not only will they mine it for us, they will also burn it, and send the electricity to California. Of course, California will still hypocritically say that we are being "clean and green" and that we don't burn filthy coal. Other States like Wyoming are bad and do nasty things like burning coal. However, we Californians are as pure as the powdered snow on Squaw Mountain in Lake Tahoe.

PamW

[Kolesar]

6. The TWE Project will deliver enough clean, sustainable energy to power more than 1.8 million homes..

... in densely populated areas of the country, thereby reducing the need for these regions to depend on fossil-fuel electric generating sources.

http://www.transwestexpress.net/about/benefits.shtml

Among the environmental benefits of the TWE Project and the wind electricity it will carry:

Reduce greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to taking 1.5 million cars from the road.
Reduce greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to shutting down 1,062 MW of coal generation.

[kristopher]

7. The power struggle for Wyoming's wind

FORTUNE -- The best wind in America is in Wyoming. It is a door-snapping, heart-pounding wind that barrels in from the west, chasing the truckers along Interstate 80 as they race to make Omaha by nightfall. It is sometimes described with words ordinarily associated with dark chocolate or exceptional pinot noir. It has been called dense, world-class, consistently extraordinary, special, and fabulous.

It is all these things and more. The best wind in America is also harsh and divisive. Across Wyoming, whose vast resources of coal and natural gas help keep state taxes low and the nation's lights on, there is a sprawling battle under way about the future of this renewable energy, how to develop it, and how to get it to market.

...

There's good wind across the nation's midsection, but Wyoming's wind is given an extra boost by a 100-mile stretch in the state's southern half, where the Continental Divide all but disappears and the wind gathers force as it pushes through from the west. Beyond power and speed, Wyoming has consistency -- what's known as capacity. At many places in the state, the wind blows more than 40% of the time.

...

"It's all about transmission," says Loyd Drain, executive director of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority, a little office tucked between a Quiznos and a bed-liner shop in downtown Cheyenne. "A lot of people will tell you it's all about wind. That's hogwash. If we don't get new transmission built, we're not going to build any type of generation."

...

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/14/the-power-struggle-for-wyomings-wind/

[Kolesar]

8. A plain at 6500 feet *would* have a lot of wind ... eom

[Nihil]

9. Excellent graphics.

Text was good too but I particularly liked the 1st image - thanks.

[kristopher]

10. Too bad that map stops at the shoreline

Although other problems present themselves, there is far less transmission needed.

[Nihil]

11. Also true.

Thanks (and see you all back on Wednesday - long weekend for me! )

[hunter]

13. They don't give a fuck about wind...

... they want to bring more coal generated electricity into California.

"Wyoming wind power" is the frosting on a shit cupcake.

[kristopher]

14. Do you have any evidence of that? They already have a highway system to transport coal...

...and coal plants are shutting down, so it isn't as if they lack capacity to burn the stuff.

Wind power from a region like this is also going to be significantly less expensive than new coal plants; but don't let reality get in the way of yet another anti-renewable fit.

[hunter]

16. Do you mean railroads, not highways?

I don't see many trucks full of coal on the interstates.

Building a coal power plant in California is practically impossible, but importing more coal generated electricity might be feasible if new power lines were built.

An HVDC line from Wyoming to California would not be viable without coal generated electricity filling in the gaps when the wind wasn't blowing.

It's that simple.

[kristopher]

27. Do you have any idea how much less wind from a site like Wyoming costs compared to a new coal plant?

Do you have any idea how much less wind from a site like Wyoming costs compared to a new coal plant?

Can you point to any independent information that supports your theory? You are long on claims but short on evidence.

[XemaSab]

28. I worked on the siting for a coal plant up there a few years ago

It was supposed to be a CCS pilot project.

It was super early in the planning, so I don't know what happened with it.

[hunter]

30. The coal industry is huge in Wyoming.

Do you trust them?

Wyoming coal mines cut production, jobs due to weak demand

May 01, 2012 11:45 pm • By JEREMY FUGLEBERG Casper Star-Tribune

CASPER, Wyo. -- Coal mines in Wyoming's Powder River Basin are paying the price for weakening demand due to a warm winter and utilities switching away from coal to cheap natural gas, according to companies with mines in the basin.

St. Louis-based Arch Coal Inc. said Tuesday it had idled some equipment and will idle more later this year. St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp. and Gilette-based Cloud Peak Energy Inc. say they've cut some temporary workers and contractors at their mines in the Powder River Basin.

Last year coal producers in Wyoming's portion of the basin produced 426 million tons of coal. Slow demand this year could cut 2012 production in the basin by 40 million tons "due to the low demand and coal to gas switching," said Colin Marshall, Cloud Peak president and chief executive, in a conference call with analysts.

Arch Coal, which produced 115 million tons from two mines in the basin last year, said Tuesday that "severe weakness" in the U.S. market for coal used to generate electricity cut sharply into its first-quarter earnings and forced it to further curtail production for the year.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/wyoming-coal-mines-cut-production-jobs-due-to-weak-demand/article_a1d27d9c-95f7-5435-9572-a75dce54bc53.html

[kristopher]

31. So what?

Wyoming has the best onshore wind site in the country. With transmission in place putting up a wind farm there is like a license to print money.

Now let me repeat the question you dodged, "Do you have any idea how much less wind from a site like Wyoming costs compared to a new coal plant?"

[hunter]

32. So what? Wyoming wants to export electricity...

Wind "blows more than 40% of the time..." which leaves the rest of the export capacity open for coal.

Imagine a fruit drink that advertised "up to 40% natural fruit juice!" It would be fair to say that such a drink was mostly sugar water.

[kristopher]

33. Do you think it blows everywhere at the same time?

You are still not answering the question - price of electricity from new wind vs new coal (or nuclear since you are a nuclear supporter).

Next you'll be telling us that the offshore powerlines are also being built so that a new class of offshore coal plants can be built.

[XemaSab]

34. Are you saying that there are no new coal plants being built

anywhere in the country because wind is cheaper?

[diane in sf]

12. The California public managed to drop its power consumption by 10% in a very short time after being

affected by Ken Lay's rolling blackouts. The ISO was held captive by bushler's friends shutting down power plants to run the spot power prices up. California was led down this road by a bunch of inexperienced politicians who had no idea how our electrical system worked and allowed themselves to be led into bad legislation by Republican criminal elements. The politicians who knew what was going had been term-limited out of office.

The law in California is set up to reward public utilities for decreasing, not increasing consumption. So a typical consumer will get energy rebates for all sorts of things that decrease their power usage. The system works very well--California has the lowest per capita power consumption in the US.

We never needed or requested Ken Lay and his criminal friends to f*** around with our power supply.

[PamW]

15. BALONEY as per usual

California certainly did need energy from outside the State.

You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. California uses more energy than she has capacity to generate. That's why the ISO is always getting energy from other states.

Whether we got that energy from Ken Lay and Enron or someone else isn't material. California can't live on what is generated in State. Google and the other big computer companies are locating their server farms elsewhere.

Californians don't like power plants of any sort; and even want to get rid of some that we have; like hydroelectric dams. They want the reservoirs back as valleys. Those won't be beautiful valleys after spending decades underwater; but you can't argue science with the environmental wingnuts.

PamW

[hunter]

17. Proud "environmental wingnut" here.

I'm all for relocating California server farms and tearing down California dams.

Fiber optic cables are vastly more efficient and less of an environmental blight than high voltage power lines.

Server farms ought to be built where there's plenty of cold water to cool them, and plenty of inexpensive power to run them.

It's silly to build server farms in hot places with expensive electricity.

[PamW]

20. Two different uses...

Fiber optic cables are vastly more efficient and less of an environmental blight than high voltage power lines

You are talking two different uses...

Fiber optic cables are good for carrying information - computer signals. They don't carry power or energy.
There's a limit to the amount of energy you can put through a piece of glass. At the lab where I work, we have the world's most powerful laser, called NIF. The laser amplifiers are glass, and we are pushing the limits as to how much energy in the form of light you can put through glass. Our laser is a little under 2 megajoules. That's a lot for a laser, but a drop in the bucket in terms of a power plant.

High voltage power lines are used for transmitting energy not information.

It really doesn't take a lot of water to cool computers. Most computers now rely on air-cooling instead of water cooling. Even the big supercomputers have shifted from being water cooled to being rack after rack after rack of computer boards that are similar to the boards found in air-cooled desktops. Even then, any place has enough water to cool computers because the water cooling went to cooling towers where the heat is given up to the air, and the water is recirculated. Therefore, you don't need a big water source.

As I recall, California, like the rest of the nation, gets about 10% of its electricity from dams:

http://www.pge.com/microsite/pge_dgz/more/electricity_gen.html

I guess there's always somebody that doesn't like every form of energy generation. Many don't like nuclear power. We have those like the above poster that doesn't like dams. The Kennedys and others don't like windmills because they are unsightly. ( I live within sight of windmills, but I guess I'm not as good as the Kennedys ). Some don't like solar because its unsightly on houses, or it despoils the desert...

Is there an energy source that everyone likes? Probably not.

PamW

[hunter]

29. You put server farms where it's cold and energy is cheap.

That's more efficient than transmitting energy long distances to server farms in places that are hot.

Example of a server farm being built in Norway:

http://www.theworld.org/2012/05/data-centers-nordic-countries

[XemaSab]

18. Watch who you're calling an environmental wingnut

The only serious large dam removal proposal that I know of is Hetch Hetchy.

[PamW]

21. I was thinking of Hetch Hetchy; but it's not the only one...

I was thinking of Hetch Hetchy and all those that think if we just tore down O'Shaunessey Dam, that when the water drained, we would find another Yosemite Valley awaiting us.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

However, the assault on dams didn't start / end with Hetch Hetchy. In fact, when Bruce Babbit was President Clinton's Sec of the Interior, he led the charge on tearing down lots of dams.

We have to make decisions as to whether we are going to use a given valley for water power or keep it as a valley. However, once done; that's pretty much an irrevocable decision. It would be very difficult to restore the Hetch Hetchy valley.

Decades under water has had a permanent effect on that environment.

PamW

[Egalitarian Thug]

19. That's funny because I lived in LA proper during that time and, as the only

municipality that didn't go along with the privatization scheme that the rest went along with, we had enough power to sell into the grid and our rates didn't skyrocket like those participating in the con-game.

No blackouts, no 300% rate increase and no multi-million dollar bonuses to the jackals. LADWP has room for improvement, but it's light years ahead of those private thieves and serves the community, not just the shareholders.

[PamW]

22. LADWP has a stake in the USA's largest nuclear power plant.

LADWP has a stake in the USA's largest nuclear power plant; the Palo Verdes nuclear power plant just west of Phoenix.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station

LADWP has a 5.7% stake in this largest of all the power plants in the USA; with 3 nuclear reactors.

Palo Verdes uses reclaimed sewage water from Phoenix to cool the Rankine steam cycle condensers. The reactor coolant and Rankine working fluid waters are closed loop. Palo Verde has 3 Combustion Engineering PWR reactors so the schematic looks like:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/animated-pwr.html

However, 52% of LADWP power comes from COAL plants located in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Department_of_Water_and_Power

So LADWP is part of the California HYPOCRISY with regard to electric power generation. LADWP relies on the absolute DIRTIEST form of electric generation for the majority of its energy; but the pollution is all foisted on the residents of OTHER states.

It may be a municipal utility; but in terms of its actions, LADWP is just as heinous as any corporate entity.

I wouldn't be smug about LADWP.

PamW

[Egalitarian Thug]

23. Not by a mile. That you would even try to compare an imperfect municipal utility

to the economy killing scumbags that are the "private energy industry" is laughable. And you completely avoid the fact that by not selling out and holding onto their assets they were able to bring us through a manufactured crisis unscathed.

False equivalency is a favorite strategy of the right to deflect criticisms for which they have no defense. I see it is making inroads here as well.

[PamW]

24. Must be that moral relativism again...

Must be that moral relativism again. A person likes municipal utilities, so anything the municipal utility does gets excused regardless of how heinous.

You can't escape the fact that LADWP gets the majority of its energy from the DIRTIEST form of energy generation, coal. Coal produces the CO2 which causes global warming. Coal puts all sort of crap into the air for people to breathe, including 100X as much radioactivity as a nuclear power:

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

All this is foisted on the residents of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, instead of the Californians that gain the benefit.

I guess if someone is for municipal utilities then they can put blinders on and totally excuse heinous immorality.

The crisis was manufactured; but NOT by the California utilities. It was manufactured by the STATE. Deregulation, California style; deregulated the supply side, but kept the consumer side controlled. Utilities like PG&E and SCE had to buy / generate energy at market rates. However, the consumers were protected. The utilities couldn't raise rates.

So the obvious happened. Consumers had ZERO incentive to conserve, and their prices were kept artificially low. When demand outstripped supply, the STATE PUC told the private companies that they could not raise rates, and could not institute brownouts or blackouts. They had to fulfill the demand by buying energy wherever they could get it, and cost be damned.

The Enrons didn't need to set up a crooked scheme, the State of California did it for them.

However, economics aside; the moral bankruptcy of excusing a municipal utility from making the residents of other States breathe their crap, and that gets excused just because they a municipal utility is an amazing demonstration of moral relativism to the detriment of the public.

I'm appalled that anyone here subscribes to such bankrupt morals

PamW

[Egalitarian Thug]

25. There you go again, mis-stating my arguement and attacking your own creation.

I know there's a word for that...

Is LADWP perfect? Of course not, and from my former position as a long term consultant for their emergency planning task force I'm sure I know where a lot more of their skeletons are buried than you do, but that has absolutely nothing to do with what was done to California by Evergreen, Enron, etc. While LADWP is certainly no angel, they do their job and do it better than anybody else in the state.

Hell, Beige Davis' refusal to stand up to these bandits and fight it out in court was more to blame for that debacle than LADWP.

[kristopher]

26. California gets a total of 7.7% of its electric power from coal

The table below is from this page: http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html




For amounts generated see:
http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html

And a word to the wise - anything PamW presents as a "fact" requires independent verification. Never accept anything from PamW, no matter how mundane, as accurate without checking it yourself. This is one example in a list so long it would make your head spin.

Claim: "However, 52% of LADWP power comes from COAL plants located in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada."

Actual data:
Eligible Renewables* 20%
Coal 39%
Large Hydroelectric 3%
Natural Gas 22%
Nuclear 11%
Unspecified Sources of Power 5%

https://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/faces/ladwp/aboutus/a-power/a-p-factandfigures?_adf.ctrl-state=ei2krwlgs_21&_afrLoop=398542351153000