Maine displaces nuclear power with fossil fuels.

[NNadir]

In 1997 the Maine Yankee Nuclear Power plant, which produced in 1990 4.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity in 1990, was closed. At the time, this represented 30.5% of Maine's electricity.

In 1990, Maine obtained 22.4% of its energy from fossil fuels, primarily at that time petroleum.

In 2004, Maine obtained obtained 60.2% of its energy from fossil fuel sources, primarily natural gas.

In the period between 1990 and 2004, the use, in percentage terms, of renewable energy including wood, garbage burning, tidal, wind, solar PV and concentrator fell slightly from 21.4% to 20.4% of the electricity generated in Maine.

In this period the annual carbon dioxide emissions in Maine rose by two million metric tons.

Happily sulfur dioxide emissions fell by 32 thousand tons to 20 thousand tons, and nitrogen dioxide fell by 3 thousand tons to 11 thousand metric tons.

Electrical consumption in Maine rose by about 800,000 megawatt-hours from 1990 to 2004.

The data can be obtained here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/maine.pdf

[jpak]

1. Cherry picking nonsense and wrong

Maine did not "displace" the POS Maine Yankee nuclear power plant with fossil fuels.

The POS Maine Yankee nuclear power plant was shut down (several years before its license expired) because it became too costly to operate. The decision to shut the plant was made abruptly by the plant owners and was announced without warning.

When the plant shut down, the percentage contributions of fossil and renewable power plant capacity changed - even though the actual amounts of fossil fuel used and renewable electricity generated did not.

http://www.powerplantjobs.com/ppj.nsf/powerplants1?openform&cat=me&Count=500

Sorry to have to point out that little piece of simple math to you.

Maine has 627 MW of biomass and 691 MW of hydroelectric generating capacity (combined 1318 MW: compared to the 790 MW defunct POS Maine Yankee nuclear plant) that produces half the state's electricity. Maine is a net exporter of electricity to the NE power pool and produces 40% more electricity than it consumes.

There were two large gas-fired power plants (564 and 550 MW) under development at the time of the POS Maine Yankee nuclear power plant's *surprise* closure. The decision to build these plants had nothing to do with the closure of the POS-MY nuclear power plant whatsoever.

Three Maine paper mills did "replace" older dirty oil- and coal-fired thermal plants with clean efficient (>80%) gas-fired combined heat and power facilities. These plants reduced GHG and other emissions and husband existing gas supplies.

...and they were built or under construction before the decision to close the POS-MY nuclear plant was made.

http://www.eea-inc.com/chpdata/States/ME.html

and allowed the state to reduce its economic energy intensity by more than 50%...

http://www.eere.energy.gov/states/state_specific_statistics.cfm/state=ME

Maine will double its renewable power capacity in the next ten years.

15 MW of new wind capacity in Freedom

42 MW of new wind capacity in Mars Hill

90 MW of new wind capacity on Redington/Nubble Mountains

130-200 MW of new wind capacity at Kibby Mountain

500 MW of new wind capacity in Aroostook County (Linekin Bay project)

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/2957863.shtml

and ~100 MW of new wind capacity on Passamaquoddy land...

all told ~950 MW of new wind capacity.

And several hundred MW of tidal power capacity in the lower Penobscot, Kennebec and Piscataqua rivers.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13561656/

and cheaper than stupid nuclear power too.

So again - nice try...

and just for shits and giggles, maybe you should tell us all about New Jersey's greenhouse gas emissions over the same period...

[bananas]

8. A surprise closure years before the license expired? Very suspicious!

Usually they try to keep these things running as long as possible.
Sounds like they were trying to hide something.
I wonder what it was?

[jpak]

10. Expensive NRC-mandated safety upgrades did it in

The plant owners didn't want to spend the money, so they shut it down.

:)

[NNadir]

21. Many nuclear power plants have been shut by public stupidity.

Rancho Seco comes to mind.

Imagine this: At Rancho Seco, Greenpeace types tried to make a political statement by installing lots of solar cells outside the reactor.

They installed 3.9 Mega"watts" of solar power that operated a few hours a day to "replace" a 937 MWe nuclear reactor?

Replace?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics

3.9 at 30% capacity is the same as 937MWe only in renewable lah-lah land speak.

Here is an interesting satellite picture of the land use issues. The vast tract in the lower part of the picture, criss crossed by lines is the solar "plant" that produces 0.39% as much at the nuclear plant, dominates the picture. The reactor is the small circle in the Northern portion.

But what really replaced the nuclear reactor's other 933MWe? Fossil fuels, that's what.

The percentage of power produced by "other renewable" means in California has fallen from 1990 from 14.4% to 12.4% as of 2004. The data - and of course you will deny the data since it makes you look absurd - is the same everywhere. If you are anti-nuclear you are pro-fossil fuels.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/california.pdf

If you had data about closed nuclear plants replaced by renewable energy, you would be trumpeting it all over the internet and pumping it up every damn day. We'd hear about it endlessly. But you don't have such a thing.

I have recently produced many cases where the shutting of nuclear power led to more use of fossil fuels.

You think people are stupid. They aren't though.

[jpak]

26. And what was Rancho Sucko's lifetime capacity factor???

39% - it was a lemon and deserved to be shut down...

http://www.nukeworker.com/nuke_facilities/North_America/usa/NRC_Facilities/Region_4/rancho_seco/index.shtml

[JohnWxy]

28. HOw much power has it been generating since 1989?

http://www.nukeworker.com/pictures/thumbnails-149.html


"The plant was shut down in June 1989. The SAFSTOR decommissioning plan was approved in March 1995. The owner has revised its decommissioning plan to use an incremental dismantlement approach. Currently, the owner is dismantling the secondary side of the plant. Wastes generated during decommissioning will be shipped to Envirocare. In July 1999 the owner decided to continue dismantlement activities with the goal of completing the decommissioning by 2008. On October 4, 1991, the owner submitted a site-specific Part 72 independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) application using the VECTRA NUHOMS-MP187 dual purpose cask design. The license was granted on June 30, 2000. The owner has loaded all of the spent fuel from the pool into transportable dry storage systems at an on-site interim storage facility."


The plant is still sucking up money and taking up space. How do you want to calculate "Lifetime Capacity Factor" from 1975 to 1989? or from 1975 to 2008. All depends on who defines it, A nuclear proponent or an economist.

THe nuclear proponent will say, "Hey you can't count decommissioning time!" - "that's not fair!" But the economist will say: "well, the site can't be used for anything else and you've been spending millions of dollars decomissioning the plant for what will be 19 yrs - assuming the operator hits his "goal" of 2008. What do you want, a free pass for those 19 yrs? We have to have some other source of power during those 19 years." When the solar panels need to be replaced it won't take 20 yrs to tear'em down and haul them away.

I suppose the nuclear proponent would say: "Well, you just don't understand!. You're just a dumb buttface!"

[NNadir]

30. Do you count the decommissioning time of coal strip mines?

The cost?

You don't?

What a surprise!

You don't give a fuck about coal strip mines because you wish to sweep them under the rug?

This is not a surprise either.

How about decommissioning the atmosphere from global climate change. What is the Johnny on the spot proposal for that?

If you are anti-nuclear you are pro-fossil fuel. Here's yet another exposition why:

Here is the operating output of every single nuclear power plant in the United States in 2005:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/usreact05.xls

Now, I know that to be anti-nuclear you have to pretend that mathematics doesn't exist, so I will calculate the numbers, with explanation:

In 2005, which ended 8 months ago, the nuclear capacity was 99,628 MWe. There are 86400 seconds in a day and 365.25 days in a year. Thus the nuclear energy output if the plants operated at 100% capacity, would be 3.144 exajoules = 99,268 X 10⁶ X 365.25 X 86400 = 3.14 X 10¹⁸ J. In the meantime, looking at something that anti-nuclear people find mysterious called data, we see that nuclear plants generated 780,464,675 Megawatt-hours.

An hour has 3600 seconds. Thus the amount of electrical energy generated is 2.80 exajoules or 3.14 X 10¹⁸ J.

In many elementary schools they teach a subject caused division, which can be used to calculate something called a percentage. Here's how you calculate the capacity factor, which is generally expressed in percentage for nuclear power plants: 100 x 2.80/3.14 = 89.4 %.

With the exception of a few dams, and maybe a geothermal plant here and there, there are no renewable facilities that operate at this capacity loading. Zero. Nada. Zip.

This is why wind, solar, blah, blah, blah, blah doesn't compete with nuclear power. None of these pretend-they're-big forms of energy can realize an 89.4% capacity factor. They are not as reliable as nuclear power.

This is why, in Maine, they did not replace the nuclear plant with renewable capacity. They replaced it with fossil fuels, because renewable plants don't have the same capacity factor as nuclear plants.

Now of course, there are individual nuclear plants that do not operate at 89.4%, but on average they do. People who know something about power plants know this, which is why the world has the anti-nuclear pro-coal crowd on "ignore."

Following the above calculation, which I know is probably over the head of the anti-nuclear pro-fossil fuel crowd, we can calculate the capacity loading of the entire state of Maine.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/maine.pdf

If you can manage data you can see that the total power summer capacity of Maine, according to table 1 or table 4, is 4,190 MWe. (The need to specify the season involves something mysterious called the "second law of thermodynamics" - don't trouble yourself with it: It's beyond you.) Following the calculation above, we see that this translates into 0.132 exajoules. Looking also at table 1, we see that Maine generated 19,098,885 MW-hours of electricity or 0.0688 exajoules. It follows that the entire State of Maine has a capacity loading of 51.8%. Thus Maine is less reliable than the average nuclear power plant. This figure, for the entire State, is very low compared to the average nuclear plant, but it is more than double what the average solar or wind plant provides. (I have shown what the capacity loading of solar and wind plants are too many times to mention.)

Now, if nuclear plants are considered by the anti-nuclear pro-fossil fuel crowd to be "unreliable" they obviously have a very selective interpretation of what reliability means.

If you don't know what you're talking about, make stuff up.

[jpak]

2. New Jersey's electric power CO2 emissions rose by 7.1 million metric tons

from 1990-2004 even though NJ generates ~50% of its electricity with nuclear power.

CO2 emissions from NJ coal fired power plants rose by 3.2 million metric tons.

New Jersey's coal CO2 emissions alone were 60% greater than Maine's total increase in power plant CO2 emissions.

The New Jersey nuclear climate control experiment is a failure.

QED

[IrateCitizen]

3. Sit back and enjoy the show...

:popcorn:

[jpak]

4. I don't think there will be one

:evilgrin:

[NNadir]

5. No show, I'm afraid. I'm sure that posts *deny* the EIA data...

...but I'm afraid I'm not going to actually read any of them.

The EIA data is very clear on what happened. I'm not certain how one might "debate" data, and in the old days, I might have engaged someone attempting to do it, but what is the point?

I'm sure that the cloture of the Yankee Maine Nuclear plant was accompanied with all sorts of photographs of windmills, great talk about solar cells, and so on. The cloture of nuclear plants is always accompanied with such balderdash to desguise obscure what is really going to happen - increased reliance on fossil fuels. When you shut nuclear plants they are not replaced with renewable energy in spite of all the precloture marketing that goes on. They are replaced with carbon generating plants.

If you are anti-nuclear, you are pro-fossil fuel. That is the point.

That is always the case too. Usually, the fossil fuel in question is coal, but I will say this for Maine: They were not quite as ugly as Germany, which after the much ballyhooed grand "nuclear phase out" decided to go with coal.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=57605

Instead in Maine chose the least obnoxious of the three fossil fuels: natural gas. Probably their new fossil fuel plants are highly efficient combined cycle plants, but they are still fossil fuel plants. In fact they displaced a small amount of a more obnoxious fossil fuel, petroleum. But let's be clear, no fossil fuel, even gas more efficiently burned, has as low a carbon dioxide profile as nuclear energy. Whatever windmills and solar cells they added to their wood waste and garbage burning did not keep up with their growth in electrical demand.

Of course, there is no telling what Maine will do if natural gas becomes unavailable. Certainly the Mainers will not be happy about natural gas terminals and they'll probably have a great exercise in NIMBY if someone tries to build them. They'll prefer a poor community in Massachusetts probably, or pipelines from Canada. Maybe they'll start burning coal, or maybe they'll launch into an exercise in deforestation advertised as renewable energy, telling everyone great stories about how renewable forests are. Meanwhile they'll clear cut, misrepresenting that situation too.

[depakid]

6. there "no telling what Maine will do if natural gas becomes unavailable"

or more likely- exceptionally expensive.

Wind power is great- and I especially like the emerging "community based wind" model being developed and implemented in Oregon- but how much power can they generate?

I haven't been to Maine in awhile- but I imagine it's not all that different from Oregon in terms of ticky tack and highly inefficient new construction that relies heavily on natural gas for heating.

[jpak]

9. Not so

You would not live through a Maine winter in a house built with "ticky tack" and Maine has some pretty stringent energy codes for new construction.

Very few homes use natural gas. IIRC more than 50% of Maine homes use wood for some or all of their heating needs.

and Maine is 90% forested.

When the gas runs out, it'll be people in New Jersey freezing to death in the dark - not people in Maine.

[depakid]

11. That's good to hear

There's a swarth of new condos going up (on productive farmland) near my place. I ride by there all the time- and you would not believe how shoddy the construction is. Particle board and sheet rock- with very little insulation. All heated by natural gas. There aren't even any fireplaces.

The suckers who buy these things will be very sorry not far down the line.

I see this crap going up all over- even up by the Canadian border.

Granted, West Coast winters are nothing like Maine- but it still gets pretty cold- and trying to heat a 4-5,000 square foot house (seeming designed for inefficiency) will be- challenging, to say the least.

Could be I ought to be investing in winter clohing and blanket manufacterers...;-)

[jpak]

12. Depending on the glazing area % and window U-values (0.3-0.6)

Minimum R values for Franklin Co. Maine are...

Ceiling: 38-49

Wall: 16-29

Floor: 19-30

Basement Wall: 16-28

Slab Perimeter: 8-14

Crawl Space: 16-25

[AZCat]

24. You can trade-off between these values also.

The DOE produces some free software that can help calculate these trade-offs. The residential version is called REScheck and is available here.

Of course, you can always do a performance-based analysis, but that requires modeling the building according to ASHRAE 90.1 (for commercial) or ASHRAE 90.2 (for residential).

[NNadir]

13. Well it's clear they rely on natural gas for electricity.

The numbers are unambiguous on that score.

I support wind wherever it is installed, but the only contribution that wind can make is to reduce the capacity utilization of quick start and shut gas plants. You cannot eliminate the gas plants if you build wind plants, of course, unless you plant to shut everything down on calm days. This is a hidden cost of wind, the need for redundancy.

All nuclear plants are unsuited for quick start and restart because of physics effects, the problem of xenon poisoning and the radioactive equilibrium established with iodine-135 - which decays into xenon-135 - owing to neutron capture. Thus all nuclear plants are base load devices. The issue is also economic. Although their fuel cost is trivial, nuclear capital costs are high. Therefore they more or less demand high capacity use to recover the capital costs.

Thus if one is talking about replacing nuclear power, wind is irrelevant, since many people - though clearly not all - are in fact aware that the wind does not blow continuously.

It would appear that since Maine moved to natural gas, they are using at least some of that capacity for base load power. It is not true that natural gas is used only for peak demand. Probably their wood fired plants run at continuous loads, since it is energetically and economically expensive to cool and reheat boilers. Of course, with the exception of chain saws and logging trucks - neither of which are renewably powered - wood is more or less greenhouse gas neutral. It is undoubtedly true as well that many Mainers offset natural gas demand by wood burning in their homes for heating purposes. (We do that in New Jersey as well.) This involves a certain amount of increased soot, but unquestionably it's cheaper than natural gas is likely to be. Gas turbines can be started much more quickly than steam boilers, so if there is a type of plant that wind can replace, that would be it.

I've been to Maine only once, on a tourist trip a few years ago when I drove to Bar Harbor and wondered whether I should actually eat the Lobster Ice Cream at "Cool as a Moose," just to say I did it.

I did drive through some back country there, where I was impressed by the size of the moose. I do remember seeing clear cuts there, with moose grazing. As for Oregon, I remember seeing clear cuts in Oregon - lots of them - as well the last time I was there. I don't recall ever seeing wind plants in either place, but it's been some time, and certainly I have not visited all of the areas. I'm sure both states have added wind energy. Why wouldn't they? It is the case, though, that in neither state the growth of wind power in particular and renewable energy in general, is keeping pace with the growth of electricity demand. That's a problem, unless, of course, you are building new greenhouse free capacity other than those renewable forms that cannot keep pace.

I've sort of fallen out of touch with the only person I personally knew from Maine. I do recall that he was almost hysterical about the loss of the natural gas platforms in the Gulf after Katrina - and maybe Maine's vulnerability on this score had something to do with it; I don't know. In any case, he didn't seem very bright, and to be perfectly honest, I haven't spoken with him for some time. He was sort of a provincial as I recall. He thought that Maine was the whole world.

[jpak]

14. I lost touch with the only guy I knew from New Jersey

He didn't know that Maine's natural gas comes from the Canadian Maritimes.

Or that NE ISO was predicting a severe power crisis if we had had a cold winter like they had in Europe last year...(since MA, CT and RI get their gas from "down South")

Winter may bring rolling blackouts

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/11/16/winter_may_bring_rolling_blackouts/

Electricity officials are bracing for unprecedented rolling blackouts if New England faces a severe cold snap that overtaxes supplies of natural gas used for both heating homes and generating power.

If the winter is mild, officials foresee few problems maintaining adequate electric supplies, according to a forecast to be issued today. But officials at Independent System Operator New England, the Holyoke organization that manages the six-state electric grid, fear a repeat of brutally cold weather like that of January 2004 that could force them to shut off power to hundreds of thousands of people and businesses for one or two hours at a time to conserve available electricity.

New England set records for wintertime electric and gas demand -- and came close to rolling blackouts -- in January 2004 when temperatures stayed below 10 degrees on three separate days in a single week and hit a 24-year low of 7 below zero at Logan International Airport in Boston.

If a similar cold snap grips the region this winter, especially with gas supplies still restricted because of Hurricane Katrina, ISO New England officials fear they could face a situation where gas demand soars along with wholesale prices. That could lead owners of gas-fired power plants to shut down operations either because the price of gas is too high for them to be able to make money buying it to generate electricity, or because they can make more money reselling gas supplies they have already purchased. Neither move is illegal.

<more>

and more...

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/051219/19energy_4.htm

http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?A=1779&Q=284506

But since he has a super secret molten salt breeder reactor in his basement, he should be OK.

:evilgrin:

[jpak]

7. More nonsense and BS

Let us use data to test this hypothesis:

"That is always the case too. Usually, the fossil fuel in question is coal, but I will say this for Maine: They were not quite as ugly as Germany, which after the much ballyhooed grand "nuclear phase out" decided to go with coal."

Maine generates ~50% of its electricity from renewable sources and 0% from nuclear power.

New Jersey generates ~50% of its electricity from nuclear power and 2.3% from renewable sources.

Maine Yankee was shut down in 1997.

If this hypothesis is correct, Maine should have increased its production of coal-fired electricity, and New Jersey should have reduced its production of coal-fired electricity over the interval 1997 to 2004.


the EIA data please...


From 1997 to 2004 New Jersey increased the amount of electricity it produced from coal - from 8 to 10.3 million MWh (an increase from 17.7% to 18.5% of its total electrical production).

From 1997 to 2004 Maine decreased the amount of electricity it produced from coal - from 0.61 to 0.37 million MWh (a decrease from 2.8% to 1.9% of its total electrical production).

The evidence is clear. The hypothesis has been falsified and falsehood exposed!!!!

Science will not be denied.

(and don't fuck with the jpak)

:evilgrin:

[Dead_Parrot]

15. Just to be annoying...

While inventory levels are projected to remain adequate to support current harvest
levels over the next fifty years, the current mix of forest management techniques
results in a long-term imbalance between growth and harvest. A projected 14
percent annual deficit between growth and harvest will result in a decline in total
inventory.

http://www.maine.gov/doc/mfs/pubs/pdf/sofjun12.PDF

So not all that biomass is actually being renewed, just used...

:P

(Like I said, I'm just being annoying. This is - or should be - easily fixable: Maine are doing a pretty good job overall... :hi:)

[jpak]

17. Maine harvests ~ 6 million cords of timber per year

Only 0.5 million cords of wood waste are consumed each year by Maine's power biomass plants.

Maine's domestic firewood consumption varies from 0.4-1.0 million cords per year (depends on the price of oil - note: Maine firewood ain't "cheap" - it's up to $245 a cord right now).

Fuel wood consumption is <<25% of Maine's total current timber harvest.

The reason Maine has a timber growth deficit isn't because of fuel wood consumption.

It's due to assholes like these folks...

http://www.meepi.org/files05/pa021005.htm

http://www.meepi.org/files02/pa061202.htm

http://www.maineenvironment.org/moosehead_videos.asp

Wood stoves and biomass power plants aren't the threat to Maine's forests.

Cut-and-run liquidators and quick-buck land speculators building McMansions for Massholes are...

[Dead_Parrot]

19. Out of interest...

Would I be right in assuming the sawmills are paid for the waste used? If so, a bit of legislation to only buy waste from sustained forest would be a nice thing to work towards...

[jpak]

22. The forest products industry sells waste wood to the biomass plants.

The biomass plants actually solved a serious solid waste problem.

Back in the 60's and 70's, sawmills were banned from burning waste wood, or dumping it into municipal land fills and rivers.

When Maine deregulated its electricity, several biomass plants shut down which caused some concern within the forest products industry (no problems now though).

[IrateCitizen]

25. Perhaps this is something the FSC could get involved in, too...

I didn't realize fully the scope of how wood products are licensed as "sustainably produced and harvested" by the Forest Stewardship Council until I read the book Collapse. It seems to me that it wouldn't be that much of a stretch for them to start attaching such labels to wood waste products used for biomass. A good niche to start might be the pellets for pellet stoves.

While legislation would certainly help, I don't know how government would certify the products without initiating a massive inspection process.

[NNadir]

27. Like the little stickers on the "dolphin safe" Tuna cans?

One wonders how many trees would need to be cut down to make the stickers, and how many trees would go to the certification paperwork. I'll bet the amendments to the bills submitted to congress for enabling legislation would take out at least 10 hundred year old pines alone.

Also would we need to certify that the logging trucks all had up to date emissions systems?

Lots of things sound good - just as lots of things sound bad. To tell what is workable and what is not workable we need to employ critical thinking skills. We live in dishonest times. It is very easy to slap stickers on anything, just as it is very easy to place your used platic bottle in a recycling bin. In the last case, nobody really follows up to see what actually happens to the soda bottle.

We need to think carefully, very carefully, in this emergency about not only about what we do and why we do it but also about the likely outcome. Some things work and other things are designed to help us avoid the question of what we need to do.

[jpak]

18. Also forgot, the up and coming biofuel in Maine is locally produced corn

for pellet stoves and furnaces

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/2468985.shtml

<snip>

We can grow for our own energy needs right here," York said. "Corn is a clean fuel, it is up to 85 percent efficient and burns with no smoke, no odor, no creosote, no fire danger and produces very little ash. And you can grow a crop in 180 days."

A bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds and can replace 3.6 gallons of heating oil, York said. At the current price of $2.41 per bushel of corn and over $2 a gallon for heating oil, he calculates oil costs three times more than corn.

York said he has an order for 5,000 bushels of his shell corn this summer from a Fort Kent couple opening up the first corn-packaging facility in the state that he expects will be increased in coming seasons.

Dan and Lynn Beaulieu, the owners of Corn King USA in Fort Kent, are converting a potato barn into their new corn stove shop business. When they open in May, they will sell stoves and corn by the bag or in bulk and will deliver to dealers throughout the Northeast.

<snip>

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/3029311.shtml

<snip>

Agri-Energy of Maine will share commercial space with Cornerstone Plumbing & Heating at 442 Farmington Falls Road, also known as U.S. Route 2, the former Strawberry Field garden center. York, chairman of the Farmington Planning Board, said after the board meeting Monday that his site review application permit was approved by Code Enforcement Officer Steve Kaiser.

The building's owner, Craig Jordan, another Board member, said he is so impressed with corn stoves that he plans to install a 150,000 BTU corn-powered furnace on the premises.

"This is really a great thing. Just think how much it could save the environment and we would not have to be so dependent on foreign oil," Jordan said of the corn stove concept. "The biggest thing about corn is that you get a new crop each year and you can grow it on the same ground."

York, Franklin County's major corn producer, said he will also buy corn from area farmers. He will sell both in bulk for larger users and is installing a bagging system that will fill 40-pound bags for residential use. The business is also buying a corn-cleaning machine and he is putting in another corn storage area on his farm to store the corn after it is dried and cleaned.

<snip>

Local corn to fuel furnace to heat SAD 58 bus garage

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/2797871.shtml

SALEM -- A corn furnace will be heating the bus garage in School Administrative District 58 this winter, bought through a local farmer and new franchise dealer and fueled with his own Farmington-grown feed corn.

SAD 58 is the first school district and possibly the first public entity in Maine to explore heating with corn, an alternative fuel used for years throughout the Corn Belt in the Midwest.

"We have to do something to get off oil. Since there is no national plan, we have to be be innovative," Superintendent Quenten Clark said in an interview.

He expects the furnace to use 618 bushels of corn. At $2.40 a bushel, the cost will be $1,854 compared to $5,040 for 2,100 gallons of fuel oil at $2.40 a gallon. The furnace will pay for itself in 4.7 years but Clark believes it will more likely take only three years. Members of the SAD 58 School Board last week last week approved Clark's request for $15,000 for the project, with $8,000 to purchase the Minnesota-made furnace, $2,500 for installation and hook-up and $4,500 for the corn, a 22-ton silo and an automatic-feed auger system. Clark said the garage's existing forced air furnace will remain as a back-up.

<snip>

When real Maine Yankees see an opportunity to save a penny, watch out. This is going places...

[NickB79]

16. Coal or natural gas, both produce CO2 in huge quantities

The title of this thread is "Maine displaces nuclear power with fossil fuels", not "Maine displaces nuclear power with coal." NNadir even stated that Maine is doing so, in his quote below. Looking at the EIA data, Maine has indeed increased it's use of natural gas from 0.3% to 51.4% in MWh from 1990-2004.

From NNadir: "That is always the case too. Usually, the fossil fuel in question is coal, but I will say this for Maine: They were not quite as ugly as Germany, which after the much ballyhooed grand "nuclear phase out" decided to go with coal."

"From 1997 to 2004 New Jersey increased the amount of electricity it produced from coal - from 8 to 10.3 million MWh (an increase from 17.7% to 18.5% of its total electrical production)."

Not surprising, as their MWh production of electricity from nuclear plants fell from 1990-2004, from 59.5% to 48.5%. As New Jersey reduced percentage of electricity produced with nuclear reactors, they increased their dependence on fossil fuels, just as Germany is now doing with their nuclear phase-out. If nuclear plants had been built to keep up with increased power demands, the percentage of electricity generated by coal or natural gas would not have had to increase.

[NNadir]

20. I have consistently stated that I favor more nuclear plants in New Jersey.

I believe that as victims of the continuous rain of coal based mercury and soot - much of which wafts in from the midwest, as a State with lots of low lying coastland endangered by rising seas, a state with vast agricultural interests, as a State with high population density and as a state which has had vast success with nuclear energy, we would best be served by eliminating fossil fuels in our state.

It is a disgrace that with our experience on this matter we have not built enough nuclear power plants to assure a clean and safe future for our citizens. Our approximately 50% from nuclear is good, but not good enough. Unlike a renewable only advocate, I don't think a statement about 5% in 40 years if acceptable. We could easily build 3 or 4 nuclear power plants and be 100% fossil fuel free in electricity five to seven years.

Recently the tide of new nuclear power plants announced is accelerating. I hope we will be on the list.

Who knows? With new in situ leaching technology, we may be able to tap into the uranium in the Reading Pronge, the huge uranium bearing geological formation under Eastern PA and Western NJ that thus far has only meant radon in our basements.

[jpak]

23. Polluting ground water with sulfuric acid or ammonium is a good thing??

http://www.wise-uranium.org/uisl.html

<snip>

In USA, the Pawnee, Lamprecht, and Zamzow ISL Sites in Texas were restored using steps 1 and 2 of the above listed treatment scheme . Relaxed groundwater restoration standards have been granted at these and other sites, since the restoration criteria could not be met (see details).

For the Königstein (Germany) in-situ leaching mine, there are still no large-scale proven methods to remove the remaining leaching liquid from the deposit and to inhibit continued leaching of uranium and other contaminants. The impact is rather severe, as the mining activities damaged an aquifer used for the drinking water supply in the Dresden area.
At present, it is planned to flood the Königstein mine (which is an underground mine converted to in-situ leaching in some areas), up to a certain groundwater level, to wash the leaching blocs. The flooding should be halted and the flooding waters be contained and treated, until their contaminant concentrations would only be marginal. It must be anticipated, though, that this procedure might take long periods of time, as the leaching zone is no longer washed under pressure, unlike during the leaching action.

The situation is even more difficult in the Czech in-situ leaching facility of Stráz pod Ralskem: the goal of restoring groundwater quality in the leaching zone to background has been abandoned as unrealistic.
The restoration goal for the upper aquifer above the leaching zone (used for potable water supply), however, is the drinking water standard, to be achieved by pumping of contaminated waters. The goal seems to be attainable for this aquifer, although some contaminants, as aluminium, exceed the standard up to 1000-fold.
But, for the leaching zone and its surroundings, the goal of reaching the potable water standard is regarded as absolutely unrealistic. For this aquifer, the goal is defined that anticipated contaminant migration to the upper aquifer shall not worsen the water quality in this aquifer beyond potable water standards. But it is still unclear, which contaminant level in the lower aquifer is sufficient to achieve this goal. According to modeling results, a level of total dissolved solids of 10 g/l will be reached in the year 2014, and a level of 1 g/l in 2032, after continuous pumping.
> View details on Stráz groundwater restoration project.

In Bulgaria, a restoration attempt using recirculation of the solution without addition of acid failed: the tubes and filters of the sorption columns plugged, and all restoration attempts were stopped . In some cases, heavy metals and rare earth elements (V, W, Mo, La) were detected in groundwater due to the recycling of solution . At present, the installations at the surface of the ISL sites are being decommissioned, and all pipes are being removed. But, there is no groundwater restoration: the ISL wells are being plugged; and the groundwater is submitted to "natural restoration".

<more>

I'll remember this the next time someone complains about acid rain.

[lakeguy]

29. don't want to "f" with the mighty jpak but i think the

original hypothesis said fossil fuels, not just coal. got any figures on other sources of fossil fuel used in Maine after the nuke plant was shut down or is coal the only one you want to talk about?

[NNadir]

31. Really?

You're shitting me!

It said fossil fuels in the title of this thread?

Who knew?

Well, if I were trying to divert attention from the facts, I might be inspired to change the subject.

Actually, I might bear some responsibility for the case. I often say that to be anti-nuclear you have to be pro-coal. Generally this is true. It is certainly the case in Germany for instance.

However in Maine, a very special place in the universe, to be anti-nuclear you just have to be pro-fossil fuel, at least until the natural gas runs out.

Fossil fuels are associated with a very high risk situation known as global climate change. If you really look hard into the matter, you can find all about this relationship between fossil fuels and global climate change. Natural gas is a fossil fuel.