Maybe the coal workers can get into a new line of work.
That’s what the buggy whip makers did.
Does that 6c/KW include the cost of treating illnesses due to the air pollution?
Thorium power would definitely be cheaper than solar; and maybe cheaper than the true cost of coal.
Did you know burning coal releases more radiation to the environment than an intact nuclear plant?
But what is the “true cost” of thorium? Do tons of earth have to be mined to extract a few grams of thorium? Does mining it subject workers to radioactive dust?
The incremental true cost of thorium is about zero. It is a byproduct of mining rare earth minerals in the USA and many other locations.
But at $230 dollars per kilogram, there is bound to be a lot of energy input in its extraction, not to mention a lot of earth moving. Even though it’s nearly as abundant as lead, it’s not concentrated anywhere, else it would be as cheap as lead.
Everything has “hidden” environmental costs. Even wind power. There’s over 1000 tons of concrete in the base of every 1.5 MW wind turbine. Also enough steel to make a locomotive. I wonder how long a wind turbine has to be on line before it pays back the energy debt created by building it.
No form of land transport is more energy efficient than a railroad train, but an airplane doesn’t need millions of tons of steel rail, a forest of railroad ties, and bridges connecting the airports. Makes me wonder if it’s really more efficient when you take into account everything. There’s a reason a train ticket across the U.S. is more expensive than air fare.
I agree with your comment and how there are additional costs to everything that is made and used.
But aren’t the rails sunk costs (like airports and runways that are already built)? So the efficiency of using them can be compared to air transport more evenly?
And rails are used to move an enormous amount of freight (particularly raw materials) in the US. Passenger rail travel costs are probably unrelated to the sunk costs of the steel rails or even the cost of maintaining them.
But that all changes when you start talking about “bullet trains”. They can’t be run on existing railroads.
But a kilogram of thorium can release the energy of millions of kilograms of coal or any other combusted fuel.
Thanks for clarifying what you are getting at. The NE Acela corridor makes a good profit and probably compares well against air, private car, and bus transportation as the alternatives.
Other “bullet train” projects would have to be similarly compared (with projections over time) to determine whether they make sense.
What tends to get ignored in these comparisons are costs like what goes out the tailpipes and other ‘waste’ that is thought to be ‘taken care of’ by something/someone else.
Just want to point out that thorium must be transmuted to U-233 (which can be used in a bomb) before fission can occur.
Funny: you wrote:
But I read:
Let them eat cake.
Suppose I ought to get my vision checked…
Maybe you should get your vision checked. I used to work in a large, integrated steel mill. It became apparent in the mid-1980s that the mill may not last until I retired. I decided to find a new line of work rather than ride it down. I know others that stayed in the steel business and moved to stay employed. I live in a large metro area and have marketable skills. Maybe I am different than the people that you are thinking about in that respect, although a cousin with a high school education and lived in Western PA moved to FL to work. His brother stayed and started a successful construction company.
Regardless what we do to screw things up everyting tends to settle back towards sustainable equilibrium eventually. But in the mean time who gets hurt?
Yup!
It’s absolutely incredible to me that otherwise intelligent people can look at a snow accumulation, and conclude that there isn’t a global trend toward excessive warming of the planet.
Weather and climate are indeed different concepts, even though they are related.
There may have been need to loosen certain regulations a half turn back. But when P45 and his team entirely remove all air regulations and stage 3 smog alerts return to major cities you might start rethinking that.
Related?
Climate is weather averaged over a 30+ year span.
“Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.”
What really surprises me is me is how some seemingly sensible folks can observe some fairly recent weather fluctuations and conclude the climate is changing rapidly, warming.
It’s not looking good for Global Warming in my neck of the woods. Annual average temperatures have been declining over the long haul, but it’s much too soon for any climate change conclusions.
Please do not panic.
At any rate, we’ll have to see what the long range trends do. Personally, I’d welcome some warming.
CSA
What? Please do not panic or start rumors. I have seen no information that anybody in the “P45 and team” have any desire to “entirely remove all air regulations”.
Do you have information to the contrary? Please provide it.
CSA
There’s been a lot or rain lately and it has provided a bumper crop of straw to build strawmen out of.
noun: strawman:
An intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument.
Almost as soon as North America was determined by Europeans to be as large as it is and not Asia, we have been looking for a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Starting in 2009, Arctic ice melts enough in the summer months to allow commercial shipping along this route. It is so reliably clear that Arctic pleasure cruises are offered. I believe that qualifies as undeniable evidence of global warming, as does the huge ice shelf loss in Antarctica. If President Trump isn’t careful, Mar-A-Lago will be a coral reef soon.
I’m having trouble keeping up though. Is California still in a major 5 year drought threatening life and limb? Or are they now in a flood disaster zone due to the rains? Will they be a fire disaster again this summer?
At any rate its good to hear the ice is melting a little up north. I was concerned that Minnesota might be at risk of another glacier covering it which would not be a good thing for me. Just wondering if I wanted to hedge my bet if Florida would be a warm climate yet or Minnesota a cold climate or visa versa. I know the weather has been warm down there but I’m worried about the climate.
Its obvious though some of these climate/weather/scientists have absolutely no sense of humor or is it humore.
“Taken literally, Trump’s proposal to abolish EPA is a recipe for dirty air and legal chaos. EPA doesn’t just invent its regulations out of thin air. It is the agency charged with implementing laws such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, which have been passed by Congress. It studies pollutants that are harmful to human health, writes rules to curb those pollutants, and monitors compliance. If Congress abolished EPA but did not repeal the laws that require the federal government to limit pollution, the result would be total incoherence. The government would have legal obligations it could not meet.”
Nothing is as simple as it sounds 