
Two of America's biggest coal plants closed this month - ph0rque
https://qz.com/1749023/two-of-americas-biggest-coal-plants-closed-this-month/
======
w0mbat
Coal is an environmental disaster. Burning it releases CO2, sulphur that
causes acid rain, and surprising amounts of radioactive uranium and thorium.

In fact, coal power plants cause more radioactive contamination than nuclear
power plants, and coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste, says
Scientific American.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-
more-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-
radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/)

Leave the coal in the ground.

~~~
dmurray
> coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste, says Scientific American.

This isn't true in any reasonable sense, and SA retract the claim in a
footnote. But nuclear plants produce so much less waste than coal plants that
overall, they release less radiation joule for joule.

~~~
virgilp
> This isn't true in any reasonable sense,

> overall, they release less radiation joule for joule.

How is that not a "reasonable sense"? Less radiation joule per joule seems to
me like a reasonable measure as "less radioactive overall"

~~~
dmurray
At the point where it's already waste, you don't really care about the energy
that was produced from it, possibly years or thousands of years ago.

~~~
yongjik
If one power plant creates 1000t of waste, and another creates 10000t of waste
while providing the same amount of electricity, I think we can reasonably say
that the second generates 10x more waste.

"Well, if you pick just one ton of waste from either plant it's the same
waste!" is technically true, but it's neither here nor there.

(Of course in case of nuclear vs. coal it's a bit more complicated because the
waste products are not the same, but I still think we can reasonably compare
waste per energy.)

~~~
philliphaydon
If bill gates venture into power pans out there won’t be nuclear waste at all
it seems.

~~~
soperj
There are already plants that can do what he's proposing, like the CANDU
reactor. It looks like they've taken some ideas directly from that reactor, so
it looks pretty conspicuous that they never mention it.

~~~
jabl
Wait, what, no!

CANDU is a thermal water moderated reactor, albeit moderated with heavy water
rather than light water, allowing it to use natural uranium instead of
enriched (as Canada didn't have enrichment capability and didn't want to
depend on other nations). And it's a pressure tube design, meaning the high
pressure water is kept in a bunch of tubes rather than having one big pressure
vessel like most light water reactors (again, because Canada didn't have heavy
forges required to produce traditional reactor vessels).

What Bill Gates funded is a company called Terrapower that is making a sodium
cooled fast breeder. Very different from CANDU. Fast breeders are a pretty
cool concept, but they and the reprocessing technology for closing the fuel
cycle isn't as mature as light water reactors.

~~~
soperj
I wasn't saying that they're the same, I was saying that they solve many of
the issues that they were talking about with nuclear power (ie: need to use
enriched uranium, no waste etc.). Candu reactors currently produce "waste",
but they were designed not to since Canada thought they had little uranium to
work with. Once it was found it was abundant in Canada, they stopped the
reprocessing step, and just used newly mined uranium.

------
ticmasta
>> It’s not climate regulations. It’s economics.

In a simplified view this is true, but they are also irreducible; We'll never
reach any meaningful action if we don't make it economically advantageous to
pursue alternatives that "just so happen" to be climate positive. That would
be akin to getting someone to exercise solely because "it's good for you".

This is largely if not almost entirely caused by natural gas prices that make
variable cost close to zero; it's essentially a waste product in producing oil
for much of the country. The challenge is getting it from wellhead to
consumer, but power plants are different than individual consumers. It powers
more than a 1/3 currently (vs < 10% wind/solar) and for much of current coal
is a very easy substitute. If we could ever get to on-site electricity
generation (with the byproduct of heating homes and businesses) we could make
huge reductions in pollution and gains in efficiency. Increased nuclear would
be a big win for the environment as well but is a social-political untouchable
for a variety of real and made-up reasons.

~~~
sampo
> Increased nuclear would be a big win for the environment as well but is a
> social-political untouchable for a variety of real and made-up reasons.

When more and more people will start to take the actuality of climate change
seriously, either through education or – increasingly – from personal
experience, nuclear will become more touchable.

~~~
munk-a
I think the touchability of nuclear energy was quite negatively impacted by
Fukushima, and it's just going to take a while to get reasonable people on
board with the idea that that model of reactor was far out of date.

There are the folks that just shout "No nukes ever" and they can't be won
over, but we're got flat earthers and anti-vaxers, so not everybody can be
reasonable.

~~~
thephyber
Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. They are rare but high impact ("black
swan") events.

Just like terrorism, it causes a strong imprint on the minds of some people
which seemingly overpowers their ability to rationally weigh observed
statistics and make balanced choices.

I want to know why we can't even seem to build the few (2-3) which have
started construction, but the projects are so massive that they constantly run
over budget and behind timelines[1]. Until we fix that issue, I don't want the
precious resources of PG&E's corpse to make risky bets on massive nuclear
infra projects. It just seems like throwing lots of money at contractors who
no longer know how to make massive projects on time or built to architectural
spec.

I would, however, like to see a lot more R&D on small, lower-temperature
reactors, possibly ones that reuse spent fuel rods from larger traditional
nuclear power reactors.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/climate/nuclear-power-
pro...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/climate/nuclear-power-project-
canceled-in-south-carolina.html)

~~~
robocat
"black swan" events - avoid this term as it is super confusing.

Black swans were thought to be rare, then they discovered that they were
common in the Southern hemisphere.

Black swans are definitely _not_ rare (there are many hundreds within a few
kilometres of my home).

~~~
nl
The term "Black Swan" comes from the Taleb book and it refers to something
previously thought to be impossible.

Black swans were thought to be impossible (they had never been seen in the
northern hemisphere), then they were discovered. The fail-safes for nuclear
reactors were all thought to be invulnerable until they weren't.

------
makomk
I'm not sure it's climate regulations or economics that lead to this so much
as it is fracking. While fracking has brought down natural gas prices in the
US, as I understand it the big problem with switching from coal to gas absent
fracking and horizontal drilling isn't just the price but the fact that there
just wouldn't be enough of it.

~~~
adventured
That's essentially correct, regarding the necessity of fracking to make
natural gas able to have the impact that it has for the US.

US natural gas production had not net moved higher from 1976 to 2006.

Here's the boom from 2000 to 2013:

[https://i.imgur.com/S8Ky983.png](https://i.imgur.com/S8Ky983.png)

You can see that it doesn't really move until 2007, when the fracking lift-off
begins. Primarily Texas and Marcellus.

From mid 2000 to 2009, natural gas prices in the US averaged around 100% to
150% higher than they are now. From 2003 to 2009, prices were essentially a
minimum of 100% higher the entire time than they are right now. There simply
wasn't enough supply to tame the demand impact, so prices got really crazy
during the commodity bubble years in there.

The long-term global NG demand chart is remarkable:

[https://i.imgur.com/0KLGshU.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/0KLGshU.jpg)

Russian natural gas production is now well over twice what it was in the mid
1970s. And Middle East natural gas production is something like seven times
higher than it was just 25 years ago.

~~~
pfdietz
The efficiency of natural gas fired power plants gas also increased greatly
since 1976:

[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EUfITI3EGIE/UU-
FK6Ise0I/AAAAAAAAAW...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EUfITI3EGIE/UU-
FK6Ise0I/AAAAAAAAAWY/56do3BPzQt0/s1600/MIT_Gas_Turbine_Efficiency.png)

------
ranDOMscripts
Good riddance to the Navajo plant. While it may have been providing some
decent wage jobs on the reservation, it was otherwise despoiling the
environment around a remarkable corner of the world.[0]

[0][https://www.pagearizona.com/](https://www.pagearizona.com/)

~~~
fargle
So great and all that, but what about the jobs? And "despoiling", I've been
there, it was fine. Beautiful.

So was it really worth killing even more of our careers?

Bet the earth "as a whole" is better now that Chinese coal and hydro plants
are supplying the power to build our shiny new cheap solar panels.

~~~
adrianN
Are you seriously saying that burning coal to build solar panels is not better
than continuing to burn coal forever?

~~~
fargle
I'm seriously saying that burning coal isn't that much worse and not that much
difference. People who think that solar is better are just fooling themselves.
There is no free lunch and those solar panels are going to wear out, so it's
not "forever" at all. And big ugly solar farms in the desert are just a
different kind of "blight".

It takes conservatively 4 years for a panel to generate as much energy as it
took to manufacture. It takes even more for that container ship to move them
here. They're supposed to last 20 years, but really can be as poor as 15 and
they loose efficiency each year. So 1/3 to 1/2 of their lifetime is just plain
wasted already which means the stated efficiency and economics are grossly
overestimated.

So yeah, I wouldn't build more coal plants either. Natural gas is like 1/3 the
price of either solar or coal. But to applaud destroying existing
infrastructure? And to shore that up with propaganda like "blight the
landscape". That is naive and won't do anything to fix the basic problem.

If we choose to be wasteful materialistic energy hogs, then we have to pay for
it. So give up your house AC and your car and everything else that uses so
much electricity first - then play that moral high road card. The problem
isn't the supply source or even the choice of raw material. It's wanton greed
and wastefulness of the consumers.

------
OrangeMango
> And the coal plants still left in the US, many in places like Georgia and
> Indiana, have advantages ranging from a huge scale (a third larger than
> those shut down this month) to relatively recent design.

Where in Indiana?

[https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/10/26/nipsco-
announces-...](https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/10/26/nipsco-announces-
another-wind-farm-in-white-county/)

> The Northern Indiana Public Service Co. plans to help add another wind farm
> to White County as part of its plan to move off coal by 2028, the company
> said Thursday.

> It is the fourth wind farm NIPSCO announced this year.

> Last year, NIPSCO announced that plan to accelerate the retirement of its
> remaining coal-fired generating facilities and replace them with less costly
> renewable energy sources, a move that could result in up to $4 billion in
> savings, it said.

> It would also retire the R.M. Schahfer Generating Station (Units 14, 15, 17
> and 18) in Wheatfield by 2023 and its Michigan City Generating Station (Unit
> 12) by 2028. It plans to retire all coal within the next 9 years.

~~~
keanebean86
The coal plant near where I was raised is being phased out around 2030. To be
honest I've always been awed by it's size and presence. Such a huge chunk of
concrete and steam.

My grandpa helped built it back in the 80s. My grandma's front porch is
supposedly made from the excess concrete. I got to take a tour of the outside
20 years ago and I was amazed by how massive everything looked.

On the one hand I'm glad it won't be polluting anymore but it holds a special
place in my childhood.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Power_Plant](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Power_Plant)

------
rossdavidh
1) Surprising to the mainstream view even as recently as 2007, coal use
globally has actually decreased in recent years, and mostly not due to any
environmental regulation, but simply cost. 2) ...but surely, this cannot
continue, and further decrease in coal will require environmental regulation.

Uh, someone is not learning from what just happened. Renewables are on a
decades long, Moore's Law-like exponential decline in cost per kilowatt-hour.
Fracking has caused natural gas to decline in cost dramatically, and since the
drop in oil prices has shown an ability to continually improve its cost
structure; not so long ago it was thought that you needed $100/barrel oil for
fracking to continue.

There is no good reason to expect these trends to stop, especially the one for
wind and solar, which have been going on for decades. We have, globally,
passed Peak Coal, a few years back.

------
dwd
It does show how insignificant electric cars are in the mix of things, and
counter productive (unless recharged off-grid) compared to putting Gov rebates
and incentives into alternate generation that gets these plants offline as
quickly as possible.

Tesla (and other electric manufacturers) are years away from building 3.5
million cars for the US.

~~~
reitzensteinm
EVs (including PHEVs) provide an instantly switchable dynamic demand, along
the lines of 20% of total electricity use if the entire fleet were replaced.

Then if you add on V2G, all of a sudden you can swing electricity demand +/\-
20%. Combined with overprovisioning, this greatly mitigates the disadvantages
of intermittent renewables.

I don't really see how we get to 100% renewables without it, and it makes
sense to pursue both simultaneously.

~~~
maliker
I work with electric utilities, and every time we talk with car manufacturers
(including recently Tesla) they say vehicle-to-grid (v2g) isn't on the
roadmap.

On the other hand, almost all charging happens at night, which is a time of
low demand on the grid. And delayed charging (combined with time-of-use rates)
to move off of the 7 PM winter peaks is widely available. So even without v2g,
vehicle electrification has worked out great on the grid so far.

~~~
IAmEveryone
I worked on a software design project a year or two ago that was exploring the
user interface and incentive mechanisms for the consumer side of such a
scheme.

This was for one of the big-3 German automakers and the company running a
significant portion of Europe's energy grid.

It's still a while off, but it is a serious project with the intend to get to
market. I'm no expert on the grid side, but if I'm not mistaken, the need just
isn't quite there yet because the grid have been able to accommodate current
renewable production levels.

------
starik36
I keep hearing about the impending demise of coal. How does anyone explain
this.

[https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t1p01p1.pd...](https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t1p01p1.pdf)

The production is actually slightly up.

~~~
selectodude
Exports.

[https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/imports-and-
exports...](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/imports-and-exports.php)

~~~
reaperducer
Yep. California stopped buying the electricity generated by the coal mines and
coal power plants owned by the Navajo Nation in Arizona and New Mexico. The
power plant shut down, but it's actually expanding its financial dependence on
coal. It recently bought two huge coal companies in Wyoming to send the coal
to Asia.

~~~
sriram_sun
> It recently bought two huge coal companies in Wyoming to send the coal to
> Asia.

Wow! Fascinating. What has any of this got to do with governing the state of
California?

------
reaperducer
While I think it's great that these big coal-fired power plants are going
away, i never see anyone talking about the millions of homes in the United
States (mostly in the northeast) that are heated by individual coal stoves and
coal and oil furnaces.

Individual coal burning is a huge problem because homes don't have the same
environmental regulations or efficiency of a coal power plant. One of the
environmental advantages of electric cars and other machines is a reduction in
"point source" pollution. You can put huge scrubbers on a power plant that you
can't on a million stoves or lawn mowers or whatever.

Even when all of the coal power plants are gone, there's still another huge
coal burning problem waiting to be tackled.

~~~
H8crilA
This is not a problem in a rich country, in fact I don't understand why
America is still on coal. Perhaps fund some modern-age infrastructure
improvements as a part of fiscal stimulus in the next economic downturn?

Think about developing countries where people could not afford to improve
their infrastructure. That's the real deal.

~~~
javagram
Germany is still on coal too. They’re planning to shut them down by 2038...

Rich country or not, people want cheap electricity and until fracking unlocked
cheap natural gas in the US, coal was the cheap option.

~~~
makomk
Germany is using brown coal or lignite, too, which is a lot nastier in every
respect than the black coal we more usually think of. It produces more air
pollution of every kind including CO2 to generate the same amount of power.
They're also gradually destroying one of their few remaining ancient forests
to strip-mine the land beneath it for lignite.

------
roenxi
Ironically outcomes like this mostly vindicate the regressives. Any society
who listened to the environmentalists; phased out fossil fuels and committed
to renewables in the late 90s or 2000s would have shot themselves in the foot
for nothing. The further renewables prices drop, the more foolish committing
to them early looks.

Gas prices is a different issue to that though.

~~~
ohples
Wrong. People commiting to renewables early drive and support the market,
which overtime drives down prices due to more and more people improving the
tech and manufacturing process, which is what leads to the prices to come
down.

~~~
roenxi
Possibly that could have been done in a controlled and experimental fashion
rather than condemning the infrastructure of entire countries to costing
twice, thrice or more?

Anyway the point stands. It isn't fair but the people who avoided being
involved are going to be much, much better off than those that did.

~~~
D_Alex
>infrastructure of entire countries to costing twice, thrice or more

Citation needed.

>the people who avoided being involved are going to be much, much better off
than those that did

Even if this was true, it does not "vindicate the regressives". We can't all
expect to be able to mooch off someone else all the time.

It does vindicate those people who were calling for a tax on the externalities
of fossil fuels though.

~~~
roenxi
This was on the front page of HN just the other day -
[https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/11/france-spent-less-
on-n...](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/11/france-spent-less-on-nuclear-
to-get-about-double-what-germany-gets-from-renewables.html) . And nuclear
isn't even as cheap to set up as a fossil fuel supply chain.

> We can't all expect to be able to mooch off someone else all the time.

For technological improvements we actually can. In a way it is the norm. Most
technologies start small somewhere, get economic, then scale up (albeit
because they had no other choice).

> It does vindicate those people who were calling for a tax on the
> externalities of fossil fuels though.

Are these plants closing because of a tax on externalities? The article
suggests the alternatives are cheaper in their own right. If coal plants
become uneconomic without a somewhat artificial sin tax then the sin tax
proponents aren't vindicated. They would be making an inevitable transition
more expensive.

