Dominion Energy Going "Renewable" and Therefore Is Building 8 New Gas Plants.

[NNadir]

Last edited Sat May 5, 2018, 12:40 AM - Edit history (2)

This comes from the Electricity Trade Publication Power: More Gas, Renewables in Dominion’s Future

Dominion Energy plans to build eight new natural gas-fired power plants and speed the pace of its renewable energy efforts, according to the utility’s integrated resource plan (IRP) filed with Virginia regulators on May 1.

The company also said its future plans focus on regulations on carbon emissions in part because Virginia is considering joining the cap-and-trade Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which currently includes nine states in the Northeast. Dominion in a statement Tuesday said new carbon emissions rules are “virtually assured in the future” and laid out what it thinks joining the RGGI would cost customers in its service territory.

“Dominion Energy Virginia remains committed to its longstanding goal of responsible operations; a diverse, balanced generation fleet that avoids over-reliance on a single fuel type or technology; and providing reliable and affordable energy to its customers,” said Paul Koonce, CEO of Dominion Energy Power Generation Group, in a May 1 news release. “These goals guided development of the 2018 Plan and will guide the company in the future.” The IRP represents the company’s forecast of power generation to meet customer demand, and comply with expected regulations, in the next 15 years.

Dominion said its four nuclear units will remain in service even as it adds more gas-fired and renewable power generation. Though the utility’s IRP said its solar fleet “could expand by at least 4,720 megawatts of capacity in the next 15 years,” environmental groups quickly criticized the plan, particularly the addition of new gas plants.

Now, there are zero competent electrical engineers who don't know that 4,720 "megawatts" of "capacity" of solar energy is the equivalent of a continuously operating plant operating at less than 500 MW, since at best, the capacity utilization of the solar crap is lucky if its at 10% in Virginia, unless climate change changes the region into a desert, in which case the solar capacity might reach 20%.

Hence the gas plants.

However, as is the case all over the world with this kind of marketing the gas industry with "lipstick on the pig" rhetoric, I'm sure the MBAs in Dominion want to represent they are going "green."

Both the gas industry and its marketing arm, the so called "renewable energy" industry, benefit from the unchallenged right to dump 100% of the external costs on all future generations, in the gas case, the radioactive and chemical laced flowback water from the Marcellus Shale gas plants, and for the solar case, the toxic metals when the stuff is transformed in 20 to 30 years into highly toxic electronic waste.

At least Dominion is keeping its 4 nuclear reactors operating.

The Surry Nuclear Station, owned by Dominion, containing two nuclear reactors was built in four years, between 1968 and 1972 for a cost of 1.8 billion dollars (2007 currency). In 2018 currency, this transforms into about 2.2 billion dollars. Each reactor is rated to produce 800 MW.

The EIA reports on the output of every operating nuclear reactor in the United States and one can click on the provisional data for 2018, which is current up to February of this year. By use of simple arithmetic, accounting for 86,400 seconds in a day, 3600 seconds in an hour, 31 days in January and 28 in February, that the two reactors at Surry were operating respectively for unit 1 and unit two at 110% capacity for unit 1 (877 MW) and 108% (867 MW) capacity for unit two. The total is 1,743 MW.

The number of people killed by the plants in operation since the 1970's is zero, which is considerably different than the number of people killed by air pollution, which now stands at about 7 million people per year, about half from "renewable" biomass combustion and the other half from dangerous fossil fuel combustion.

The Danes maintain a database, the "Master Register of Wind Turbines" of every single wind turbine they have ever built, including the 6,138 that still are operating, and the 3,232 that have been decommissioned and are now rotting somewhere.

These tables also include the energy output of each operating turbine, with the data for January and February of 2018 included, as well as March 2018 which we cannot compare to the nuclear reactors at Surry.

Again using the fact that the Danish Database reports kWh for each turbine, and using the fact, again, of their being 59 days in February and January combined and 86,400 seconds in a day, we see that the total output of more than 6,000 wind turbines in Denmark was 1,785 MW. Thus it took 6,138 turbines scattered over an entire nation to produce 42 MW more than the Surry nuclear station produced in two buildings.

The Surry nuclear station is licensed up until 2053, but stupid people are sure to shut it down well before then, thus killing people because nuclear power plants save lives, not that the shit for brains types give a shit about human lives, because in their morally twisted universe, the nuclear power plants are "too dangerous," even though they have a spectacular record for saving human lives.

I encountered such a shit for brains recently, at what was billed as the "New Jersey March for Science" which proved to be the "New Jersey March for So Called 'Renewable Energy.'" This asshole, who clearly has no scientific training whatsoever and therefore muttered all during a presentation there about "Navajo" (Dine) miners who were "killed" by uranium mining in the 1950s.

As it turns out, elsewhere, I appealed to a 2009 paper which evaluated the health of all of the 779 "non-white" uranium miners who apparently the only human beings he cares about who have died as a result of energy technology: Radon Exposure and Mortality Among White and American Indian Uranium Miners: An Update of the Colorado Plateau Cohort. (Schubauer-Berigan, Am J Epidemiol 2009 ;169 18–730)

Quoth I then:

...Of the 779 “non-white” we are told that 99% of them were “American Indians,” i.e. Native Americans. We may also read that the median year of birth for these miners, white and Native American, was 1922, meaning that a miner born in the median year would have been 83 years old in 2005, the year to which the follow up was conducted. (The oldest miner in the data set was born in 1913; the youngest was born in 1931.) Of the miners who were evaluated, 2,428 of them had died at the time the study was conducted, 826 of whom died after 1990, when the median subject would have been 68 years old.

Let’s ignore the “white” people; they are irrelevant in these accounts.

Of the Native American miners, 536 died before 1990, and 280 died in the period between 1991 and 2005, meaning that in 2005, only 13 survived. Of course, if none of the Native Americans had ever been in a mine of any kind, never mind uranium mines, this would have not rendered them immortal. (Let’s be clear no one writes pathos inspiring books about the Native American miners in the Kayenta or Black Mesa coal mines, both of which were operated on Native American reservations in the same general area as the uranium mines.) Thirty-two of the Native American uranium miners died in car crashes, 8 were murdered, 8 committed suicide, and 10 died from things like falling into a hole, or collision with an “object.” Fifty-four of the Native American uranium miners died from cancers that were not lung cancer. The “Standard Mortality Ratio,” or SMR for this number of cancer deaths that were not lung cancer was 0.85, with the 95% confidence level extending from 0.64 to 1.11. The “Standard Mortality Ratio” is the ratio, of course, the ratio between the number of deaths observed in the study population (in this case Native American Uranium Miners) to the number of deaths that would have been expected in a control population. At an SMR of 0.85, thus 54 deaths is (54/.085) – 54 = -10. Ten fewer Native American uranium miners died from “cancers other than lung cancer” than would have been expected in a population of that size. At the lower 95% confidence limit SMR, 0.64, the number would be 31 fewer deaths from “cancers other than lung cancer,” whereas at the higher limit SMR, 1.11, 5 additional deaths would have been recorded, compared with the general population.

Lung cancer, of course, tells a very different story. Ninety-two Native American uranium miners died of lung cancer. Sixty-three of these died before 1990; twenty-nine died after 1990. The SMR for the population that died in the former case was 3.18, for the former 3.27. This means the expected number of deaths would have been expected in the former case was 20, in the latter case, 9. Thus the excess lung cancer deaths among Native American uranium miners was 92 – (20 +9) = 63.

By the way, in the period between 1950 and the present day, according to statistics from the US Department of Labor, 10,914 coal miners died.

One of the big industrial uses for coal - and one which has nothing to do with power plants - is to make steel. According to a commentary published in Nature Geoscience solar and wind facilities require 15 times more concrete, 90 times more aluminum, and 50 times more iron, copper and glass than equivalent scale nuclear or dangerous fossil fuel facilities.

Every ton of concrete manufactured is responsible for the release of 0.9 tons of carbon dioxide; aluminum production consumes about 3% of the world's electricity, and iron is reduced by coal, not that 10,000 coal deaths would matter as much as 63 "Navajo" (Dine) uranium miners from the 1950's.

Of course, you can get lots of shit for brains types who will come here to announce that what took place over a four year period between 1968 to 1972 is now impossible.

Therefore we must now pour concrete on the continental shelf and send dangerous fossil fuel powered ships carrying coal based steel and God knows what else out to destroyed benthic ecosystems to serve the wind God, with the real purpose being nothing more than to make the gas industry continue until the last molecule of methane is crunched out of the earth, burned and converted into atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Nuclear power plants are "too expensive." We are too stupid, too ignorant, too - well, I wish I knew - something or other to build nuclear plants at the same cost with which we built more than 100 of them in this country while providing the cheapest electricity in the world. We are dead sure that what has already happened is impossible.

I once heard from an ignoramus here who called up one of my old posts to note that a tunnel collapsed at the Hanford nuclear reservation and thus proved, at least to his tiny mind, that nuclear power is "unsafe."

I used to confront ignorance like that. No more. I'm too old to waste time on ignorance and stupidity.

I suspect the real reason that nuclear power plants are "too expensive" is this kind of thinking, the thinking that is perfectly OK to kill any number of tens of thousands, tens of millions people because someone somewhere might die from something involving a nuclear power plant.

Maybe its thinking like that, the thinking that 63 uranium related lung cancer deaths among miners - many of whom actually lived to be old men anyway - matters more than 70 million air pollution deaths every decade, 10,000 coal mining deaths - and that a collapsed tunnel at an old weapons plant "proves" something.

If we're going to calculate costs so assiduously we might include the cost of deaths from lung cancer and heart disease caused by air pollution. In this country, every year we spend 80 billion dollars on cancer alone, never mind COPD and heart disease, to both of which air pollution is a also contributor. And let's be clear on something, OK, the number of people who have died from cancers related to air pollution outstrips the number of people who have died from radiation related cancers by many orders of magnitude. It's not even close.

Someone though, somewhere, should look into the question of why what has already happened - the citizens of 1968-1972 provided life saving infrastructure that is still operating at peak performance in 2018 - is now impossible. Why are nuclear power plants "too expensive" now when it was possible to build more than 100 in this country in 25 years while providing the lowest cost electricity in the world?

When the gas runs out - and it will - and all that's left is the chemicals and toxic materials leached from the abandoned gas fields, our generation will not be forgiven by history, nor should it be. And when that gas runs out, and it will, we are going to find out what it's like to live in those parts of the world where the power gets turned on - if your lucky - two or three hours a day. That's our "gift" to future generations, very much unlike the gift given to our generation by the people who built the Surrey nuclear plant.

Have a great weekend.

[Eko]

1. At no point in that article did Dominion

say they were going renewable. Now you are just making stuff up.

[S.E. TN Liberal]

2. Long term storage of nuclear waste is going to cost someone a lot of money.

The companies that are currently profiting by building nuclear power plants and by selling electricity from them are going to go out of business someday long before the storage of the waste can end.

If the companies that profited from the production of the waste go out of business, guess who gets to pay the bills for the next few thousand years to store that waste? Taxpayers will. Many of whom could use those tax dollars instead to keep a roof over their family's' head, or put food on the table.

Every dime of profit should go towards the long term costs of the nuclear industry. Even at that, taxpayers will get hit covering huge expenses.

[Eko]

3. Nuclear waste storage

is already costing a lot of money and it is piling up. NNadir wont mention that.

[NNadir]

5. Used nuclear fuel is one of the most valuable materials in the world.

It's only "waste" to people who are too uneducated to understand exactly how valuable it is.

If it were not for fear and ignorance, we would be using these materials to solve some very intractable problems. I've written and researched this extensively for more than 30 years.

People always ask the very stupid question, "would you keep (so called) "nuclear waste" in your back yard.

It can be shown that a person utilizing 5000 Watts of average continuous power (about twice the world wide per capita figure) living for a lifetime of 100 years would need to fission less than 100 grams of plutonium, about a gram a year. Of this, the majority would involve fission products that decay in the reactor, releasing heat.

By solving the Bateman Equation, one can calculate the amount of, for instance, cesium-137, this material would contain, a considerably less than 10 grams, an amount that would fit in one or two thimbles. It would be easy to store this material in a backyard.

I would challenge anyone carrying on mindlessly about so called "nuclear waste" where he or she would put the dangerous fossil fuel waste from burning about 28 tons of petroleum - the average per capita energy equivalent of an American in a single year in such a place that it will not harm anyone for centuries. Note that a hundred year lifetime would require the storage of 2,800 tons of carbon dioxide, never mind the highly toxic benzopyrans, benzofurans, asphaltenes, polyaromatic hydrocarbons.

Of course, right now, people routinely dump this stuff directly into the atmosphere and they don't give a rat's ass who it kills.

The difference between what people who know zero about the chemistry of fission products call "nuclear waste" and the dangerous fossil fuel waste which is literally destroying this planet rapidly, is that commercial so called "nuclear waste" hasn't killed anyone in this country in half a century while dangerous fossil fuel waste never stops killing people, never, ever; fossil fuel waste kills people continuously.

The selective attention is therefore morally appalling, since this kind of ignorance literally kills people.

Nuclear materials need not be without risk, need not be perfectly safe under all imaginable conditions to be infinitely easier to handle than fossil fuel wastes - and for that matter solar (electronic) waste and wind waste products.

I have yet to hear of a single person who carries on about so called "nuclear waste" who actually knows a damned thing about it.

Let me tell you something though: Right now on this planet, not 50 years from now, not 100 years from now, not two thousand years from now, but right now, dangerous fossil fuel waste is KILLING people in vast numbers.

Today, March 4, 2018, more than 19,000 people died from air pollution.

A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (Lancet 2012, 380, 2224–60: For air pollution mortality figures see Table 3, page 2238 and the text on page 2240.)

Most people couldn't care less, which is why they prattle on about so called "nuclear waste."

Someday, at some point, after the shit hits the fan, the best and brightest, the equivalent of the Nobel Laureates and outstanding scientists who built the nuclear industry, will be looking at that used nuclear fuel and understand its value. It's clear that ignorance rules this generation of mindless twits, but having had occasion to meet some very fine and very bright young students, I'm sure a better day will come.

I know what I'd do with used nuclear fuel if I owned it; and I'm sure that many people in the future will be less contemptuous of education and science will ultimately understand this kind of thing as well.

Opposing nuclear energy is mindless.

[Eko]

6. Its so valuable

that nuclear reactors are just stockpiling the stuff lol.

[underpants]

4. Lots of info there

Bookmarking for a full read.