A good friend of mine worked at TMI near Harrisburg before the idiots up there decided not to renew any of the subsidies and forcing Exelon to decommission it…This was precisely his worry as more and more things were drawing power off the grid, where are we going to get more power from? My area of PA isn’t ideal for Wind generation, I doubt the Susquehanna is deep enough or runs fast enough on the border of my county for hydroelectric, there are some solar farms, though I doubt they contribute a significant amount of power. Exelon already TMI isn’t suitable to convert to a natural gas burning power plant…As much as Nuclear is a huge NIMBY issue, realistically it’s likely the only “clean” option we’re going to have short of massive solar farms in the southwest in the desert areas (and what about the battery capability to store that much excess power to cover night time when the sun isn’t out?).
My uncle has a country place that none knows about
He says it used to be a farm before the motor law
And now on sundays I elude the (California authorities)eyes
I read an article about Amazon’s delivery fleet in the newspaper this morning. They are buying 1800 eSprinters and 600 eVitos, presumably for use in Europe. Their big buy is 100,000 delivery trucks from Rivian, with delivery between now and 2030. There are seven fulfillment centers in the Baltimore/DC area, and e-vans seem to be well matched to this type of service. I see their delivery vans in my neighborhood almost every day.
I do not consider dealing with nuclear waste a clean option for powering electronic cars.
Would you rather live next to a coal plant belching huge amounts Carbon Dioxide, Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, Mercury and particulates into the air? Or the heavy metal leaching into the local water supply? Natural Gas plants still put out a significant amount of CO2 and you also have Methane leaks if there is a gas leak. Per Wiki as of 2019 very few plants utilized carbon capturing. Nuclear waste is absolutely a huge problem that needs to be dealt with, no doubt, but I’d prefer it to the massive immediate pollution impact from fossil fuel power plants. Newer reactor designs are safer, more efficient, and produce less waste.
I think nuclear has a future in small self contained reactors and thorium reactors that produce 10X less waste than uranium reactors.
The Chinese are doing more thorium research than US.
There may be a few pipelines above ground but the vast majority are buried. Pipelines are all over the place here but you would never know it as most are unseen.
The company running a new one here a few years ago stopped when they discovered wooly mammoth remains. A nearby university was called in to excavate it.
What I expect to happen with the wind farms in the future is that they will be abandoned. The electric company has already said (through the gentler word “decommissioned”) that they will be scrapped at the end of their service life which is claimed to be 20 to 25 years. The taxpayers will be left with the cleanup costs; much like the now ghost town of Picher, OK which was flat out declared uninhabitable. Population in 2000 about 1600. Population now 0.
The wind farm here is owned by the Italians and i doubt that the Italians are concerned about the long term; only the short term 1.2 million in subsidy per tower. The Italian government owns about 24% of the company.
Unless it has been settled recently the company doing the concrete work for the foundations was getting stiffed for (conveniently…) 1.2 million per foundation. The concrete company is or was suing them for 1.2 million X 140 towers.
When you say “vast majority” . . . are you talking about the USA only, or also the rest of the world?
Pipelines decay and get leaky.
No panacea.
In the US for sure, don’t know about everywhere else. And pipelines are 2X to 8X safer than other modes, like rail, depending on what you measure.
There are about 250,000 miles of oil and natural gas pipelines in the US, excluding local natural gas distribution (1,300,000 miles).
Oh no, Fiat wind farms?? Say it ain’t so.
The wind farms located off the coast of NJ are owned by a Danish corporation.
One would think that an American company–like GE–would have secured these contracts.
Last I saw, GE was pretty much broke after years of mis-management and stupidity.
Yeah, they are just a shell of their former shell.
A classic case of a major corporation that began circling the drain as a result of really bad management over the span of a couple of decades.
The US actually looked at Thorium reactors decades ago. The reason the abandoned it was because Thorium reactors don’t produce radioactive material that can be used in making bombs. Back then we needed (really just wanted) bombs.
Thorium reactors do produce a lot less radioactive material, but it’s also has a much shorter life. Hundreds of years instead of thousands.
And I am supposed to be worried about the coal plant near me with scrubbers removing particulate matter mercury etc. because you have a great idea how to deal with nuclear waste? the upside it only lasts hundreds of years, AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON! got to play with mercury 60 years ago, never radioactive waste. @MikeInNH
I didn’t say it was great…just better. Nuclear waste no matter how long a life is still bad.
I guess I’m more concerned with the potential expanded use and disposal of precious materials with all those batteries. Phones and computers are one thing, but if we’re talking millions of cars . . .
Plastic waste is one of thee most environmental problems we have today. It can easily be argued that it’s at the top of the list (and I won’t disagree). I’m not too concerned about metals. There’s always a need for metals. Very easy to recycle. And lets not forget the over packaging with plastic. We need to REDUCE our dependence on plastic. How?? I have no idea.