Can the grid handle electric cars?

There might be a nuclear plant replacing a coal plant in Wyoming some day. Opening will be delayed to 2030 because of the Ukraine war. Only Russia makes the particular type of fuel needed to make it work. The proposed plant is experimental but that's a bad idea. The U.S. is supposedly a super power and yet we depend on our potential enemies for vital things like fuel. The people who normally post here should remember the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s. A national 55 mph speed limit and year round daylight saving time. I don't remember the price of fuel.

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Reply to
Dean Hoffman
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The only real options are coal, natural gas, and these new nuclear small generators that don't melt down. And maybe something we have not thought of yet. Wind and solar is a joke.

Nuclear and natural gas are very clean. Coal is getting cleaner all the time. We have to get past the u7seful idiots that actually think CO2 is a pollutant and not part of the cycle of life on this planet and globaloney is real.

And Fusion is stupid. What exactly do the greens think is going happens to that extra neutron? We have nothing to contain it. Let just sterilize everything for 200 miles around the plant. Yup. Clean energy!

Reply to
T

Funny how the free market capitalists like to find vast conspiracies and claim it doesn't work when it suits their beliefs.

In the US under 60% comes from fossil fuels today and it's declining. Wind provides over 10% and it's increasing. We're looking to the future, not stuck in time.

Reply to
trader_4

Sounds exactly like the lies coming from Trump. When you're ignorant or lie about the most basic facts, you have no credibility. Coal accounts for just 19% of US electric production and it's rapidly declining. In 2008 it was two and a half times that.

You either ignore what you can see and hear or lie about it.

Reply to
trader_4

Ten percent of US electric is generated by wind today. Fifteen years ago it was near zero. That doesn't sound like a joke.

Natural gas isn't clean, it generates CO2 which is driving climate change.

CO2 is the direct result of burning fossil fuels. The only ways to remove it from coal are extremely expensive. That's the only reason electric companies are rapidly abandoning coal and not building new plants.

We have

In another post you claimed that most electric production comes from coal, while it's actually just 19%, so you might want to rethink who's the idiot. No climate scientists dispute that CO2 is part of the life cycle on the planet. That's irrelevant to the established science that shows too much CO2 is driving climate change. The CO2 present in the atmosphere has increased by a third in the last 100 years, as we greatly accelerated the burning of carbon that has been stored for millions of years. It's not higher than it's been in millions of years. Those natural high levels took hundreds of thousands of years to occur and also resulted in climate change. This manmade cycle took just 100 years and we're still making it worse. This BS is like claiming that water can't possibly be harmful, yet you can drown from it and also die if you force yourself to drink enough.

WTF? Particle physics nonsense now too? Did you get that from Trump? There are big techinical problems with fusion, I'm skeptical too, but this is the first time I've ever heard of a problem with an extra neutron. There is no problem with the basic nuclear physics.

It is clean, fusion produces minimal waste compared to fission, that's pretty much the whole reason the world has been pursuing it. Again, totally wrong on the science, as always.

Reply to
trader_4

What do you suggest?

Certain materials are only available in certain parts of the planet. We either do without, or, we buy from the people that control the land.

Oh, a third option it to invade and take over that country.

Reply to
Ed P

Thinking today it was not like cars replacing horse and buggy. EV's are anything but far superior and, if you do not believe the global warming scare used which makes little difference, you let the technology evolve and not have it forced on you.

Reply to
invalid unparseable

That's a big if, not believing the global warming science. We just had one resident expert tell us that coal is the major source for most of our electric. It's just 19%, that's an example of "science". It's amazing to me that Republicans believe in the stolen election lie, but don't believe the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists. The problem with both is the same. They start with a belief based on politics, then grasp for anything that somehow can be used to support it, while disregarding the best available science and facts that says otherwise.

Reply to
trader_4

Evolve like the Texas grid? Sometimes a little nudge helps.

Reply to
Ed P

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"Because of the lower grade, many uranium deposits in the United States became uneconomic when the price of uranium declined sharply in the late

1970s. By 2001, there were only three operating uranium mines (all in-situ leaching operations) in the United States. "

Ah, we're back to economics again. Even Florida has a million metric tons of uranium, but it is low grade and mining stopped in 1998. Can't beat that cheap Russian product.

So, having established that the continental US has the raw material, can the US enrich it? Seems so:

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Some background on the Zippe centrifuge:

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The Russians snapped him up while the US was grabbing rocket scientists.

Reply to
rbowman

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As US legislation made coal fired generation unattractive, coal mining didn't cease. The article is old and there have been changes in the coal market because of covid and Chinese attempts to control pollution but I've spend enough time at crossings waiting for the endless coal trains to rumble by headed west to have a suspicion it's going somewhere and it's not to a coal-fired plant in the Peoples Republic of Washington. I wonder how long it takes for CO2 produced in China to find its way home?

Reply to
rbowman
[snip]

One nudge came in the middle of February 2021, when it was unusually cold for that area. Some power plants became inoperable.

Reply to
Sam E

I do not believe the scare part. The earth may be warming and it has gone through climate cycles even before man and if you ask those that want these changes they will tell you the effect is insignificant. It is not a crisis and the scare is used to gain control.

Reply to
invalid unparseable

IIRC, you are a chemist? So, burning billions of tons of fossil fuels over the past 100+ years has no effect on anything? Clear cutting much of the rain forest?

The world burns more than 10 billion tons of fossil fuels each year. This accounts for about 80% of the world's energy needs. The burning of fossil fuels produces about 34 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) each year. About 45% of this CO2 comes from coal, 35% from oil, and 20% from gas

Reply to
Ed P

Comrade Trader got some number right for a change. I had some outdated information. This is the current usage:

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Fossil fuels (total) 2,554 60.2% Natural gas 1,689 39.8% Coal 828 19.5%

Reply to
T

Did not say that but do say what we do is insignificant to what Mother Nature does.

Reply to
invalid unparseable

Se my answer to Ed.

Reply to
invalid unparseable

And your expertise is what, exactly?

It's clear that the vast majority of the scientific community disagrees with that assessment.

Reply to
Scott Lurndal

Hi Frank,

Ya, one volcano and one California forest fire drafts what ever humans put into the air,

The alarmists also seem to think that CO2 just builds up and builds up in the atmosphere. They will not even look at CO2 being part of the cycle of life on this planet. Does not fit their narrative.

-T

Reply to
T
[snip of more umbdassy base 64 garbage, just so he could repeat the completely delusional and denialist stupidity refusing to understand the effects of the increased CO2, etc.]

Sad.

Reply to
danny burstein

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