
Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought - sergeant3
https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/story/navajo-generating-station-colorado-river-drought
======
anigbrowl
_The Navajo station’s infernos gobble 15 tons of coal each minute, 24 hours
each day, every day._

The mind boggles. I've got to the point where I think subsidies for nuclear
power are entirely justifiable.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> The mind boggles. I've got to the point where I think subsidies for nuclear
> power are entirely justifiable.

You mean wind, solar, geothermal, (existing) hydro, and utility scale battery
storage.

~~~
aftbit
Do any of those work on the gigawatt scale? The largest 15 plants in the world
are hydro or nuclear.[1] The largest solar plant is only 550MW.[2] Wind might
be able to handle that load, but the environmental cost of wind energy is
still poorly studied.

Also, unlike coal, nuclear, hydro (to some extent), and natural gas, wind and
solar are intermittant - on cloudy or calm days, they do not produce peak
power. If we want to replace a stable constant base load plant, we need
something that can offer the same guarantees.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations_in_the_world)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm)

[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_Wind_Energy_Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_Wind_Energy_Center)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Wind might be able to handle that load, but the environmental cost of wind
> energy is still poorly studied.

Wind generation has minimal environmental costs (it requires no fuel, kills
less birds than buildings and cats each year, and also requires no water as
opposed to coal and nuclear plants):

[http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-
choices/renewa...](http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-
choices/renewable-energy/environmental-impacts-wind-power.html)

[http://energy.gov/eere/wind/environmental-impacts-and-
siting...](http://energy.gov/eere/wind/environmental-impacts-and-siting-wind-
projects)

> If we want to replace a stable constant base load plant, we need something
> that can offer the same guarantees.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricity)

[http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/eos-utility-scale-battery-
st...](http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/eos-utility-scale-battery-storage-
competitive-with-gas-36444) (utility scale battery storage already cost
competitive with natural gas _in 2013_ )

~~~
bryanbuckley
I think the environmental cost people wonder about for wind is regarding
Newton's third law. If we harness the wind, what is the effect on the rest of
the system?

~~~
MaysonL
Do the math: how deep is the atmosphere, and how much of it does wind power
generation affect? Most likely substantially less than skyscrapers alone, let
alone the rest of cities.

~~~
bryanbuckley
yes, someone should in fact do the math!

e.g. I vaguely remember some factoid about how some significant amount of top-
soil in the Amazon rain forest is attributed to top-soil/sand from Africa?
Also, I just googled "deforestation affect wind" and got some interesting
results.

------
aftbit
"It consumes 22,000 tons of coal and emits 44,000 tons of carbon daily."

How does that work out? Shouldn't mass be conserved?

~~~
mikeash
I assume "carbon" is short for carbon dioxide here, so you get mass
contribution from the air consumed in the process.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The 'O' in 'CO2'. C is 12; O is 16. I'm surprised its only 2:1 instead of 3:1
(or more accurately 44:12)

~~~
danmaz74
Probably because carbon isn't actually pure carbon

------
noonespecial
_...the Navajo Generating Station keeps grinding away, consuming 22,000 tons
of coal and emitting 44,000 tons of carbon each day._

Help me out. Where does the extra carbon come from? (or did they mean CO2...
in that case wow, burning the coal doubles its weight with collected oxygen!)

~~~
sp332
They probably meant CO2. Carbon has an atomic mass of 12 and each oxygen
weighs 16. So if it's only emitting double the mass of CO2, then the rest is
other kinds of gasses, or solid waste.

------
coldcode
The future of the western US will be determined by who has water and who does
not and how it will be determined who belongs to what category.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Ironically, we'll be inundated by water once the ice caps melt.

~~~
snoldak924
Yet that water will be turned into salt water, making it pretty much useless.

------
AnimalMuppet
Holy alarmist hyperbole, Batman!

~~~
Mithaldu
Which part is exaggerated?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Alone, it accounts for 29 percent of Arizona’s emissions from energy
> generation. The Navajo station’s infernos gobble 15 tons of coal each
> minute, 24 hours each day, every day.

> At sunrise, a reddish-brown snake slithers across the sky as the burned coal
> sends out plumes of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, lead and other
> metals. That malignant plume — containing 16 million tons of carbon dioxide
> every year — contributes to causing the very overheated weather, drought and
> dwindling flows of water the plant’s power is intended to relieve.

First, of all, words like "infernos", "gobble", "slithers", and "malignant"
are clearly designed to provoke emotion, not just inform.

Then, the plant causes 29 percent of Arizona's pollution? How much of
Arizona's power does it generate? Does it pollute more than the average _for
the amount of power it produces?_

Then there's lumping in carbon dioxide with mercury and lead. Even if you
consider carbon dioxide as a pollutant (as the EPA does), it's in a bit
different class than mercury.

Then there's the connection of CO2 to the drought. That's suspected, perhaps
even strongly suspected, but it's not proven. Anthropogenic climate change can
cause a bunch of effects, from heat to cold to drought to flooding, but it's
problematic to prove that any one effect _is caused_ by CO2, when so many
possible different effects _could be caused_ by it.

That's just in two paragraphs of the article. That's enough for me to call
both hyperbole and alarmism.

Look, the reality may be alarming. But creating an alarmist tone serves no
useful purpose. For some people, it trips their propaganda detectors. For
others, it creates alarm burnout. "Yeah, the world is ending from yet one more
cause. Yawn. What happened on Game Of Thrones?"

~~~
MaysonL
Please tell the same to the fossil fuel advocates who constantly shout that
shifting our dependence on feeding their wallets will wreck the economy (when
many argue that it will actually cost very little, and for many will be net
positive).

~~~
AnimalMuppet
When I see such stuff, and see the same weaknesses in it, and the same
borderline propagandistic style, then yes, hopefully I will say the same.

But _this_ article is the one we're discussing here, so _this_ article is the
one I'm criticizing here.

