How Mike Sylvester plans on voting next week
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 10/30/08 @ 8:46 am - Filed Under 2008 Local Elections, 2008 National Elections
I have decided how I am going to vote next week.
President: Bobb Barr/Wayne Root, Libertarian. This race was simple, I cannot vote for McCain and I definitely cannot vote for Obama. With the addition of Palin I almost decided to vote for McCain.
Governor: MItch Daniels/Becky Skillman, Republican. This race was tough for me because I almost voted Libertarian; however, I voted for Mitch Daniels because he has guts and is willing to change things.
Attorney General: Greg Zoeller, Republican. This one was easy.
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Bennett, Republican. This one was easy.
3rd Congressional District: William Larsen. This one was easy as well. I cannot vote for Souder for reasons often posted on this blog. I cannot vote for Montagano because he has no experience, is afraid to take stands on the issue, and moved here just to run for Congress. I can vote for William Larsen because he is a small government type and a social conservative. William Larsen would be a Republican today if the Republican Party still stood for smaller Government.
County Treasurer: Sue Orth, Republican. I am impressed with Maria Parra’s willingness to stand up the the Wayne Township Board; however, I feel Sue Orth is more qualified.
County Council. Susan Hoot, Democrat. Paul Moss, Republican. This was the toughest race for me; in fact, I still have not decided if I will vote for a 3rd person or not. County Council has five candidates all of which have some strengths. Susan Hoot is a no-brainer for me. I have been impressed with Paul Moss in the past; however his recent desire to put public money into our zoo turned me off as has his stance on the Canyon Cliffs Development. That being said; I still think he stands for smaller Government in general.
There are a lot of other uncontested races and I do not see a reason to list them.
I became a Republican this year and certainly am voting for a majority of Republicans in contested races. In contested raced I am voting for:
- Two Libertarians
- One Democrat
- Five Republicans
Mike Sylvester
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32 Responses to “How Mike Sylvester plans on voting next week”
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Mike,
I would like to point out one mistake- Montagano did not move here to run. He is from the 3rd District. Interesting note….you do not have to live in a district to run for Congress.
Chocola ran for the 2nd district even though he lived in the 3rd.
I am planning on running for a congressional district in Hawaii!
;)
Kevin,
I am sure you are right about the legal requirements!
I feel that one should live in a Congressional District in order to get my vote!
Mike
Mike, I thought Barr had a chance, but I just dont think Root has given him the VP bounce that most people were expecting.
After seeing the embarrasing site yesterday of Joe the Plumber on stage signing autographs with Palin, Barr may now be my only option as well.
Mike,
I am sure I am right too! I think that the law stinks- you should have to live in the district. Period.
Mr. Green Jeans,
I never thought Barr had a chance; however, I will be voting for him.
In order to have a chance you have to have a large sum of money in order to get attention from the media.
Mike
Kevin,
I agree, you SHOULD have to live in the district.
Mike
Considering the arbitrary way that district lines are drawn, I would have to disagree with both Kevin and Mike. I think voters should be allowed to elect anybody they want.
The residency requirement is a red herring anyway. How long did Hillary Clinton have to live in New York before she could serve as that state’s Senator?
I think for Congress you have to live in the state where you are running, but not the district. Maybe that varies among different state’s laws.
I agree that a person should have to live in the district for which they are running - for any office. I also think candidates should only be allowed to accept money from people who also live in the same district. Why should someone from Florida be allowed to buy my Congressman. I think they should be restricted to just buying their own local Congressman.
Don’t underestimate the drawing power of a Wayne Root.
Keith, as I am sure you are aware, there is a lot of tension between the Barr and Root camps right now because apparently Root feels like he is kind of a “rock star” and he is simply setting himself up for 2012. His slogan of “Give a Hoot, vote for Root” is also starting to grate a little bit on the Barr staffers.
If only he could team with Susie Hoot and have a “Hoot-Root” ticket.
Perhaps the slogan is anticipation of a Susan Root victory for County Council, so that in four years she will meet the rigorous experience requirements to be the VP selection for the Libertarian party.
If you think about it, a Root/Hoot ticket would be nigh unstoppable.
I saw that Barr is polling at 2% in Indiana. I attribute at least .37% of that to Wayne Root.
Anon 3:46
There is no variation on state law regarding who can be elected to US Congress. In 1996, SCOTUS ruled that Iowa’s term limit law did not apply to US Representatives and US Senators. Theoretically, a felon could run for Congress in Indiana. But I believe that Matt Kelty is prohibited by the terms of his probation.
I see that Larsen is just like the democrats. Yesterday he stated that “wind power could provide more than enough power for U.S. needs, and the country should convert to wind power rather than costly nuclear or dirty and dangerous coal.”
That’s a ridiculous and false statement. I guess I should go get a windmill and mount it on my car and another one on my house?
He’s about as nutty as T. Boone Pickens.
Penny,
Wind can be stored as electricity. You don’t have to physically mount a windmill on your car to utilize wind energy any more than you have to pull an oil rig behind you while you drive…
Jeff,
I’m sure you know I was being facetious with that comment. I suppose Larsen was being totally jocular when he dismissed “clean coal” and “nuclear energy”, too.
We could take a lesson from France, France gets nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.
I’ll give him this, studies by the NREL predict we “could” see 30% of our energy coming from wind by 2030, but ignoring clean coal technology and nuclear energy is being short sighted.
Standing in the way you have the tree-hugging liberals, that claim windmill farms rape the landscape and protest the building of them at the drop of a hat. They claim the vibrations affect the environment and they’re a visual eyesore.
http://tinyurl.com/63xd8v
Penny,
I wasn’t sure as it’s hard to discern one’s tone on the internet. I do disagree with the idea that wind energy will save us all.
I do believe that it’s cost efficient and could provide up to 10-20% of our energy needs. Right now we are nowhere near that…
I did this pretty fast, but since I truly believe in what I say, this is from me and not someone else. With that in mind I may have some grammar and spelling errors, so please, know that I am more attentive to detail normally than in this particular instance. I am an engineer. I have operated a 1200 psi steam propulsion plant in the Navy. I designed and built nuclear components naval nuclear reactors as well a commercial reactors. I worked on transferring, shipping and storage of radioactive fuel assemblies. I worked on space power. I understand energy very well. I have always been interested in energy. I have been to Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Sandia National Laboratories where I did some testing on a classified energy project. I seek out and read about energy as I find them. These are the primary sources for generating electricity;
Solar – 25 cents per Kw-hr
Nuclear – 12 cents per Kw-hr
Clean Coal - >8 cents per Kw-hr after billions of dollars in research. It has not yet been developed.
Coal - – 5-7 cents per Kw-hr
Natural Gas – 6 cents per Kw-hr
Wind Power – 3.8 cents per Kw-hr
Hydro Electric – 3.6 cents per Kw-hr
Geo Thermal - don’t know
Solar is great for remote locations where running a line is costly. I have ten years in nuclear reactors and high level radioactive waste. I worked on projects to store, ship and transfer nuclear fuel assemblies. I also built components for nuclear fuel assemblies. Not one fuel assembly has been moved off site from a commercial nuclear reactor to a permanent storage site. The spent fuel pools are nearly all filled to capacity and when they do reach full core reserve, they MUST SHUT DOWN! The Department of Energy was to begin taking these spent radioactive fuel assemblies in 1996. However, this has not begun because YUCCA Mountain has not opened. Five Nuclear reactors have shut down because they have reached full core reserve. The Utilities who own these reactors have filed suit against the DOE for breach of contract for not taking the spent radioactive fuel as agreed to and paid for by the utilities. 100 US reactors will be shutting down very soon because they reach full core reserve. Some utilities have spent millions to store for forty years spent fuel in dry storage above ground casks. These cost nearly a million dollars each, require security, radioactive monitoring, large amount land since land to keep it away from populations, and then must be moved to another storage container at the end of the containers 40 year life. Keep in mind this stuff is deadly radioactive material for hundreds of thousands of years!
The question everyone needs to ask Souder on Energy is why he supports the all you can get energy buffet at any cost? Why support nuclear when no spent radioactive fuel assemblies have ever been moved to a permanent storage site, it has the second highest cost and with storage of radioactive waste, the most expensive? Why support clean coal technology that will cost billions to develop and billions more to install when electrical costs from this source is the third costliest already? Natural Gas demand will drive costs up and could top Coal’s cost. Wind Power is the cheapest, renewable, environmentally clean proven and tested technology.
What we need is not the most expensive energy source, but the cheapest. Low cost energy is critical to manufacturing. Low cost energy is critical for a high standard of living. Low cost energy is critical for making products cheaper here than overseas. There are many factors in manufacturing: raw material, labor, taxes and energy to name a few.
Why wind power? In the Navy we use electricity to break the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen. This where the fresh air comes from that allows the submarine to stay submerged for months at a time. Hydrogen has three times the energy content of gasoline. A gasoline engine is 25% efficient while an electric motor is >90% efficient. Fuel cells have been around for decades. Recently an automaker began to test market a fuel cell car (1,000 units). It goes to 0-100 In seconds, 280 mile range, has a home conversion kit to make Hydrogen from natural gas, uses a 100 KW power supply (would supply all the electricity needed to heat, light your home). The vision is to use wind power to separate the hydrogen in water and use it to power cars. When a hydrogen atom combines with air or oxygen, an electrical charge is created. Using a fuel cell, we can use hydrogen to make electricity on demand. We need a compact energy source for transportation. Gasoline has 120,000 Btu’s, Ethanol has 87,300 Btu’s (takes >100,000 Btu’s to convert corn to one gallon of ethanol). Battery power is too heavy and not enough to move a car great distances on a charge. This leaves only hydrogen as the clean source of compact power. With this said, nearly every home uses electricity, which means we have an infrastructure already built (stoves, lights, TVs, homes, etc). We will need improved power distribution system.
The US has many times the potential wind power capacity than is currently produced and consumed. Wind Power is divided into six classifications. Each classification is defined by amount and duration. Today’s windmills use lasers to identify the correct pitch of the blade as the wind moves across it so as to extract the maximum amount of energy. In addition the blades are not flat but spiral as a pin wheel might to extract even more energy. Wind mills produce enough electricity to power 900 homes or more.
Though wind is low labor and provides few jobs after installation unlike nuclear, coal or natural gas, the advantage would be that low cost energy would make our manufacturing costs lower, increase exports, increase the standard of living in the US by making our Dollar go further and it is green.
T Bone Pickens purchased 4,400 Megawatts of wind power capacity for $2 Billion. A nuclear power plant is about 2,500 megawatts, costs over $5 billion, would take 10 years to design, get permits and build and then you would have to deal with radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years. The location of windmills can be nearly anywhere. The ideal location is the Midwest where the wind blows frequently. However, large wind farms need not be exclusive. Most farm land has several acres where agriculture is not possible and there is a large amount of pasture. Like a cell tower that are placed on farms paying farmers anywhere from $600 to $2000 a year for each small foot print, a windmill could provide tens of thousands of dollars to farmers who allowed erection of windmills on their properties. This could eliminate federal payments to farmers.
Implementation can begin with those uses that as their useful life ceases (fuel oil in the Northeast, natural gas heat) we replace them with not the same source, but electric. The useful life of utilities is about 60 years, furnaces about 20 years. This will allow the infrastructure to keep up with switch over.
What congress has done is artificially stimulated different forms of energy. They promoted Ethanol and now we pay more for Beef, poultry, pork and dairy products. Farmers switched from wheat to corn driving up bread prices to over $3 a loaf. This is an unintended consequence, but was a for seen outcome.
I wish I could find one recent study that somewhat agreed with T. Boone Pickens and to which I agree. We could hit about 18-20 percent max. generation of power. Wind has issues that man can not over come.
Here are some issues for wind power
1- Coastal wind areas are not a 24/7 in fixed flow of wind.
2- Plain winds ares of the US are not a 24/7 fixed flow of wind.
3- Ocean born turbines would need some type of security.
4- Ocean born turbines would be subject to damage to Cat 3+ hurricane type winds based on current designs.
5- Current US electric companies are not interested in massive windfarms because of having to build the several hundred billion dollar grid to link up to current grid. Even T. Boone Pickens is urging the taxpayers to pay for this grid, via the federal government.
The cost of return on investment is so high that rates would need to be increased far exciding the cost of new nuke power plant of offsetting price.
Should we walk away from windpower? No and it has it place in many remote/small areas of the lower 48 and Alaska. It could even assist in “peaking” of power demand across the US. But it is not full time full service source to generate electric power.
France, ah the lovely French. Framatone Gogema Fuels, the French company that builds, operates and reprocess the French Reactors. This company bought Babcock and Wilcox’s Commercial Nuclear Fuel unit (Three Mile Island). The operators at TMI should have gone home instead of attempting to over ride the safety backup systems. Human error, not believing what the data is telling you.
Back to the French. True they have lots of reactors and generate the most expensive electricity in Europe. So if you want expensive electricity move to France.
True - The French reprocess their nuclear waste and extract the good stuff and store the small amount of bad stuff. The good stuff they use to make new fuel. The US under Carter will not reprocess nuclear waste due to plutonium. Ah, that nasty stuff used to make bombs, a little bit goes a long way. So we intend to keep the byproduct sealed in the fuel assembly and bury at YUCCA Mountain in NV starting in 1996. Oh, wait it is 2008 and YUCCA mountain is not opened. NV governor will not allow radioactive waste to cross the state line so all that nuclear waste is still on site. How much is that costing the utilities and passed on to the customers? Oh, the utilities are suing the DOE for breach of contract.
If you want to pay three times what you are now for electricity, go nuclear or to get a taste of the cost move to Illinois.
Clean coal what is it? It is a conceptional idea only. Have they done it yet, no? Have they done feasibility tests, yes? Is there a process, no? Is there a cost estimate, no? Will it cost more than dirty coal now, yes?
Is wind power available, yes? Is the technology available, yes? Are windmills being built, yes? Is the electricity generated from windmills competitive, yes? Not only is it competitive, it is the second cheapest source.
100 nuclear plants provide 22% of the Electricity capacity of the US. Each nuke plant could be replaced by 1,000 windmills. 1,000 wind mills cost about $1 billion. The last nuke plant built in the early 80’s was $5 billion.
I know that wind power is not high tech and it is not exotic, but if that is what you want, then you must be willing to pay a lot for that exotic stuff and be willing to see your standard of living and most likely your jobs move off shore.
24/7 wind power is not needed. Hydro electric dams are not 24/7. During the night they use excess electrical energy from elsewhere (wind, coal and nuke in CA) to pump water back up behind the dam in WA an OR. This is one way they store energy to lower capacity needs.
We do not provide security for our oil platforms. Each oil platform has a worth and value a thousand times more than a windmill. Windmills are small power units, which make it great for maintenance. When you work on one, you take only a tiny fraction of the power off line. When you a nuke outage, the entire 2200 megawatts is unavailable (24/7). This means you have to have an excess capacity to meet peak demand in plant outages.
The cost of return is low? The problem with building wind farms now is that there is little data on maintenance cost, insurance cost and useful life unlike the data for coal and nuke plants. This means finance rates are 1 to 2 percentage points higher (bankers want assurance they will get the money bakc), but still cheaper. Payback is less than five years.
The reason why utilities do not like windmills is simple, it is called competition. Those who built the coal plants invested billions in them. They signed contracts with coal companies. Along comes a cheaper competitor and takes market share from you. It is no different than the auto industry. Can you imagine a company coming in with 3.8 cents to produce electricity while the cheapest coal plants if 4.5%? What happens to the depreciation cost? Whose burden is it, share holders? Do they close a plant after 30 years of life with a 60 useful life?
As for the electrical grid, it has needed reworked for decades. The question is do we patch as has been done for decades; create a new grid to handle a much higher load which is needed to handle new nuke and coal plants anyway? By the way utilities do not own the electric grid, the taxpayers do. Utilities own only the substations and power generation units.
That Larsen sure is wordy. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t advertise, there’s no such thing as a two hour soundbite.
William - This is my reply to your 2:20 PM post
(I sure hope the guys don’t blow this up for getting off the real subject of this post)
You Said
“France, ah the lovely French. Framatone Gogema Fuels, the French company that builds, operates and reprocess the French Reactors. This company bought Babcock and Wilcox’s Commercial Nuclear Fuel unit (Three Mile Island). The operators at TMI should have gone home instead of attempting to over ride the safety backup systems. Human error, not believing what the data is telling you.
Back to the French. True they have lots of reactors and generate the most expensive electricity in Europe. So if you want expensive electricity move to France.”
I Say:
The problem with a number of the French generating plants is that they can only generate power at 100%. Either fully on or off….. They can not trend with the needs of the power grid. Hence, they are not cost effective with regards to the kilowatt hours they generate.
With regards to Three Mile Island plant was a combination of human error and equipment failure with regards to one of the two units operating at the site. In spite of certain equipment failures and stupid moves by some employees the unit shut down. The leakage was minimum and caused no known health problems.
The unit was cleaned up but was never put back on line because the cost to repair it far exceeded what a new unit would cost. Besides the damage to the unit the other factor was new design standards by the URC made it impossible to rebuild the existing plant to the new rules.
You Said:
True - The French reprocess their nuclear waste and extract the good stuff and store the small amount of bad stuff. The good stuff they use to make new fuel. The US under Carter will not reprocess nuclear waste due to plutonium. Ah, that nasty stuff used to make bombs, a little bit goes a long way. So we intend to keep the byproduct sealed in the fuel assembly and bury at YUCCA Mountain in NV starting in 1996. Oh, wait it is 2008 and YUCCA mountain is not opened. NV governor will not allow radioactive waste to cross the state line so all that nuclear waste is still on site. How much is that costing the utilities and passed on to the customers? Oh, the utilities are suing the DOE for breach of contract.
If you want to pay three times what you are now for electricity, go nuclear or to get a taste of the cost move to Illinois.
I Say:
Most nuclear fuel being sold by Russia today is coming from warheads. Within 15-17 years this supply will be gone. Just some trivia for the readers.
If we build some new nuclear power plants that can use reprocessed rods the current “used” fuel assemblies being stored in our current nuclear power plants would be reprocessed. Thus reducing the future need for a massive long term storage place.
Currently several research projects are on going around the globe to use the spent parts of a fuel assembly to generate heat for industrial or community use. Security is the biggest issue facing rolling out the technology.
As for storage, currently some spent fuel assemblies from nuclear power plants have been moved to federal lands for storage. I am not sure where you got that 100’s of nuclear power plants are on the verge of shutting down because of a lack of storage. There are only 65 active nuclear power plants currently in the United States per Energy Information Administration Department.
As for the cost of electric power in Illinois one needs to study what happened because of the government did in locking in rates 10 years ago. The cost of generated nuclear generated power in Illinois is out of site but not because of cost of the plants.
You Said:
Clean coal what is it? It is a concept ional idea only. Have they done it yet, no? Have they done feasibility tests, yes? Is there a process, no? Is there a cost estimate, no? Will it cost more than dirty coal now, yes?
I Say:
Currently there is ten or more clean coal burning plants being designed, built, or running on reduced size based on a number of concepts as to their working. These projects are located in Europe.
A project by the name FutureGen was set to start in Southern Illinois this year. This was a test project for clean coal here in the United States. The Energy Department pulled the plug on supporting the project when estimated costs ran from about $700 million to now over $2 billion. The Energy Department wanted to fund four concepts over one as the best possible outcome for the United States.
In a congressional move by Illinois delegation, including Barack Obama, blocked the deal of being spread to four research projects. Obama has stated that if he wins the election the FutureGen project will go ahead. You can search FUTUREGEN on the internet and find their web site. If FUTUREGEN does not work the private investors can walk away with the taxpayers holding the bag for whatever is left or mess the project may cause.
You Said:
Is wind power available, yes? Is the technology available, yes? Are windmills being built, yes? Is the electricity generated from windmills competitive, yes? Not only is it competitive, it is the second cheapest source.
100 nuclear plants provide 22% of the Electricity capacity of the US. Each nuke plant could be replaced by 1,000 windmills. 1,000 wind mills cost about $1 billion. The last nuke plant built in the early 80’s was $5 billion.
I know that wind power is not high tech and it is not exotic, but if that is what you want, then you must be willing to pay a lot for that exotic stuff and be willing to see your standard of living and most likely your jobs move off shore
I Say:
Your math is wrong. It takes nearly 3000 windmills to replace one nuclear power plant. You used the face plate rating of wind turbines of 2 mega watts per unit. This is only true if the wind was of high enough speed for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Actual studies show the ideal land based wind fields in the United States produce quality winds only 35% of the time. This produces a number of 2857 needed turbines. However, breakdown and repair, based on a 95% uptime factor, an additional 124 wind turbines.
In 2006 an area very near where T. Boone Pickens wants to locate a new wind turbine field the wind was below minimum needed winds for 85 consecutive days during the summer. This came during a heat wave (which is normal) and hence air conditioning demands in nearby areas would have been even higher then normal. This would produce a compound problem of no power and higher demand.
Checking around, currently it costs between $2.25 and $3.5 million for fully setup wind turbine in the 2 mega watt size. This would mean the cost would be for the wind farm would be in the area of $6.7 and $10 billion.
This does not include the billions it would take to build a transmission system to deliver the power to a grid. Even T. Boone Pickens is not interested in using his own money to do such. He wants the taxpayers to pay for it.
Based on figures that current electric companies seeking AEC approval for new nuclear power plants here in the US are using a $7 billion cost figure. Part of the seven billion dollar costs is for interest on construction loans over four to five years it will now to take a plant to come on line.
I still think wind power has its place but not as a replacement. It would be one more tool we could use in keeping our overall costs down for electrical energy
William with regards to your 2:39 comment
You Said:
24/7 wind power is not needed. Hydro electric dams are not 24/7. During the night they use excess electrical energy from elsewhere (wind, coal and nuke in CA) to pump water back up behind the dam in WA an OR. This is one way they store energy to lower capacity needs.
I Say:
While your concept is correct and is how it is currently done there is a flaw in the process. It is next to impossible to build a new hydro plant any place in the United States today. So it not something we can expand sadly.
Most hydro plants today, including those here in Indiana and Michigan can only draw down so inches of water from the pool. Laws have been passed over the years to protect the recreation use of the pools above the dams.
Most hydro plants where built to serve a certain area with the belief that the recharge rate of the pool would exceed the draw down caused by hydro power generation. That is not true and this results in water being pumped back into the pool. You can only do that so long. It is a little like a dog chasing its’ own tail.
California currently suffers from rolling power black outs during the summer be it San Francisco or Los Angles. This caused by their own decisions of not building enough generation capacity in their own state. That even their electrical grid has been limited to which outside power of sufficient quantiy can not be transferred into the state.
Even the anti-nuclear forces in California have admitted they are prepared to live with some new nuclear power plants. They agree that even with the new wind, ocean, and solar concepts will not be enough to meet the needs of the state. Let alone come available soon enough to offset current or new additional power needs.
You Said:
We do not provide security for our oil platforms. Each oil platform has a worth and value a thousand times more than a windmill. Windmills are small power units, which make it great for maintenance. When you work on one, you take only a tiny fraction of the power off line. When you a nuke outage, the entire 2200 megawatts is unavailable (24/7). This means you have to have an excess capacity to meet peak demand in plant outages.
I Say:
Oil platforms have people onboard all the time. That is outside of hurricanes. Even what they call “remote controlled” platforms have a small crew on board.
Unknown to many it is not wise to float a boat un to a platform and climb on board. You will be met with some crew members fully armed. Plus these platforms and oil companies have additional security systems to protect their assets.
Nuclear heating water heating systems for the water are hardly ever taken off line. The restart process is long and involved that takes weeks, to months to bring back on line. Scheduled shut downs are often scheduled a year or so ahead so other plants within the grid can supply power.
Emergency shutdown of a plant takes months to bring the unit back on line. I think if you do some research you can see how seldom this ever happens.
The turbines within a nuclear power plant are taken off line far more often and return to service within days or weeks. Again, this is normally scheduled and partners in the grid have power available to replace the lost capacity during this time.
What people do not understand far more people are killed by working in coal plants then have ever been killed in operating nuclear power plants.
You Said:
The cost of return is low? The problem with building wind farms now is that there is little data on maintenance cost, insurance cost and useful life unlike the data for coal and nuke plants. This means finance rates are 1 to 2 percentage points higher (bankers want assurance they will get the money bakc), but still cheaper. Payback is less than five years.
I Say:
I have no clue where you got your information for the above. Being an engineer I am sure you have worked with stressing and aging of materials. That this allows one to forecast the expected life of a given material or system.
If payback was less then five years every electric company would be building wind farms all over the place.
You Said:
The reason why utilities do not like windmills is simple, it is called competition. Those who built the coal plants invested billions in them. They signed contracts with coal companies. Along comes a cheaper competitor and takes market share from you. It is no different than the auto industry. Can you imagine a company coming in with 3.8 cents to produce electricity while the cheapest coal plants if 4.5%? What happens to the depreciation cost? Whose burden is it, share holders? Do they close a plant after 30 years of life with a 60 useful life?
I Say:
What your argument misses is you have no power grid to get your so called, but proven wrong, cheap power into the main grid system. What do you want a free ride? The power companies built that grid from their money and we customers have paid for it.
You also can not deliver wind power 24/7 and then you want the power companies to cover you when you fail to generate power. Hardly a fair deal. Maybe you would have to pay the utility a penalty for every hour you can not supply power to the grid and that they have to cover you.
You Said:
As for the electrical grid, it has needed reworked for decades. The question is do we patch as has been done for decades; create a new grid to handle a much higher load which is needed to handle new nuke and coal plants anyway? By the way utilities do not own the electric grid, the taxpayers do. Utilities own only the substations and power generation units.
I Say:
While the power grid needs work in only parts of the country is because some electric companies failed to keep their grid updated. They did this in part because state utility commissions would not give them increases in rates to pay for such.
Power grids running across state lines is controlled by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. They also control the wholesale power rates of the electric companies charging each other.
William, with all due respect your tax dollars do not own one foot of the electric grid. I have no clue where you ever learned such but I urge you to check it out for yourself. The interconnects are held by private companies in three major sub grids here in the United States.
The grid allows them to ship power to each other. This could be for off loading peak demands or having generating plants off line.
Here is a link to a DOE report on Wind power
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/
Objectives:
By 2012, reduce the cost of electricity from large wind systems in Class 4 winds to 3.6 cents/kWh for onshore systems.
By 2012, complete program activities addressing electric power market rules, interconnection impacts, operating strategies, and system planning needed for wind energy to compete without disadvantage to serve the Nation’s energy needs.
By 2014, reduce the cost of electricity from large wind systems in Class 6 winds to 5 cents/kWh for shallow water (depths up to 30 meters) offshore systems (from a baseline of 9.5 cents/kWh in 2005).
By 2016, reduce the cost of electricity from large wind systems in Class 6 winds to 5 cents/kWh for transitional (depths up to 60 meters) offshore systems.
Hey, is this my old friend Garry? It has been along time. If it is then you know as well as I do that there were ~105 commercial nuke plants when we worked on the Millstone project to disassemble a fuel assembly and free up storage space in the spent fuel pool. You also know as well as I do that all the people who built the current reactors were let go a long time ago. Is anyone hiring and where are they coming from? You know this is a small club.
The list of nuke plants (103) had a total generating capacity of 98,564 megawatts or an average of 956 megawatts (far smaller than your 6,000 value). Based on 2003 to 2005 data the average output from these 103 plants was 723 megawatts. I know I have been away from the industry since 96′, but there were no nuke plants even approaching 6,000 megawatts. There are 65 reactor sites, but many have multiple reactors. So now I know you are not my old buddy Garry.
The Russian Plutonium project that was being discussed was a concept to dilute the material for use in a commercial plant. The problem with this was the same faced with Carter’s 77′ executive order. I have not heard that this has moved forward. Based on the information I knew in 96, your stated 15-17 year supply from this source is understated by a lot. Maybe the Russians did not have as much as we were told.
The face plate I used was 2.2 Megawatts and not the new ones being designed that are up to 5 megawatts (really big ones). The 35% wind up time is the average from all six wind classifications. There is no need at this time to even contemplate the lower three classifications. We should focus on the highest wind areas first and move down the scale. As with any new industry, improvements will be made and with each improvement comes diminished returns. As for hurricanes, I believe the only concern is the tower. In high winds, the blades rotate providing minimum cross section (lowest force on tower) and the turbine is in free sping. Because the tower is circular, it presents the optimum strength to surface area in high winds. you may be right about land based units, but the last data I saw was they were good up to 150 mph.
Transmission lines will have to be run for a nuke plant or clean coal. As I stated before, all transmission lines are owned by the public and paid by the public. A new grid that uses windmills will be less susceptible to blackouts and outages caused by a cascaging affect because of many small units where as large units shutting down causes severe shocks to the grid.
As I said before, clean coal has feasibility studies taking place. You identified the cost of this at $2 billion. You say it was canceled due to cost. This should say something about moving in this direction. We will probably see the coal industry and utilities that use coal lobby congress to get this moving again. They want to use our money to develop a product they want to sell us. I say let them invest their own money, present their product to the market and let the market choose what they want instead of a politician.
If you are looking at a 6,000 megawatt nuke plant, I would really be surprised if it could even be built for $7 billion. Even if you are thinking of the “pebble” reactor design (inherently safe), the cost is in the steam turbines that turn generators to convert the steam to electrical energy is well into the billions and this does not include the cost of the NDT inspection of each and every weld on the primary side.
Pickens is reported to have bought 4400 megawatts of capacity (2000 turbines) for $2 Billion from GE. These windmills are designed to operate in 10 mph winds. The wind speed 100 feet above the ground is higher and is more constant. I am not familiar with the wind speed where Pickens is planning. However, I have seen PBS specials on wind power in the same general area and they currently have the largest farms around. From this and looking at wind surveys of the US, I would say that they are located in the highest classification for wind.
Here is my list of nuke plants, summer capacity and %up time.
Arkansas Nuclear One 1 -841-72.6%, Arkansas Nuclear One 2 -996-81.6%, Beaver Valley 1 -821-66.7%, Beaver Valley 2 -831-80.7%, Braidwood 1 -1178-80%, Braidwood 2 -1152-86.6%, Browns Ferry 2 -1118-58.6%, Browns Ferry 3 -1114-47.8%, Brunswick 1 -938-68.2%, Brunswick 2 -900-66.3%, Byron 1 -1164-82.3%, Byron 2 -1136-87.1%, Callaway 1 -1137-86.5%, Calvert Cliffs 1 -873-75.6%, Calvert Cliffs 2 -862-78.2%, Catawba 1 -1129-82%, Catawba 2 -1129-83.9%, Clinton 1 -1043-66.3%, Columbia 1 -1122-68.9%, Comanche Peak 1 -1150-82.4%, Comanche Peak 2 -1150-85.4%, Cooper 1 -756-69.1%, Crystal River 3 -838-68.2%, D.C. Cook 1 -1016-64.3%, D.C. Cook 2 -1077-61.7%, Davis-Besse 1 -873-62.2%, Diablo Canyon 1 -1087-81.9%, Diablo Canyon 2 -1087-85%, Dresden 2 -867-62%, Dresden 3 -867-59.8%, Duane Arnold 1 -563-70.7%, Edwin I. Hatch 1 -869-75.5%, Edwin I. Hatch 2 -883-74.2%, Fermi 2 -1111-72.5%, Fort Calhoun 1 -476-74.6%, Ginna 1 -498-81.1%, Grand Gulf 1 -1270-83.8%, H.B. Robinson 2 -710-75.3%, Hope Creek 1 -1049-81.7%, Indian Point 2 -979-65.9%, Indian Point 3 -991-61.6%, James Fitzpatrick 1 -844-71%, Joseph M. Farley 1 -851-80.1%, Joseph M. Farley 2 -860-84.1%, Kewaunee 1 -560-80%, LaSalle 1 -1118-66.9%, LaSalle 2 -1120-68.6%, Limerick 1 -1134-83.4%, Limerick 2 -1134-90.7%, McGuire 1 -1100-75.1%, McGuire 2 -1100-82.1%, Millstone 2 -882-61.7%, Millstone 3 -1155-69.4%, Monticello 1 -569-79.6%, Nine Mile Point 1 -621-69.1%, Nine Mile Point 2 -1135-76.7%, North Anna 1 -925-77.5%, North Anna 2 -917-81.7%, Oconee 1 -846-75.4%, Oconee 2 -846-77.5%, Oconee 3 -846-76.9%, Oyster Creek 1 -619-65.6%, Palisades -767-62.5%, Palo Verde 1 -1243-75.1%, Palo Verde 2 -1314-78.6%, Palo Verde 3 -1247-82.3%, Peach Bottom 2 -1112-68%, Peach Bottom 3 -1112-69.1%, Perry 1 -1235-75.8%, Pilgrim 1 -685-63.2%, Point Beach 1 -512-78.1%, Point Beach 2 -514-81.6%, Prairie Island 1 -522-84.4%, Prairie Island 2 -522-87.2%, Quad Cities 1 -867-69.6%, Quad Cities 2 -867-67.6%, River Bend 1 -968-78.8%, Salem 1 -1174-60.6%, Salem 2 -1130-61.7%, San Onofre 2 -1070-79.9%, San Onofre 3 -1080-81.4%, Seabrook 1 -1159-84.3%, Sequoyah 1 -1150-65%, Sequoyah 2 -1127-68.5%, Shearon Harris 1 -900-85.5%, South Texas Project 1 -1280-76.7%, South Texas Project 2 -1280-78.7%, St Lucie 1 -839-80.6%, St Lucie 2 -839-85.3%, Summer 1 -966-79.2%, Surry 1 -799-71.6%, Surry 2 -799-71.5%, Susquehanna 1 -1135-78.8%, Susquehanna 2 -1140-84.3%, Three Mile Island 1 -810-68.6%, Turkey Point 3 -693-70.6%, Turkey Point 4 -693-72.7%, Vermont Yankee 1 -506-81.9%, Vogtle 1 -1152-89%, Vogtle 2 -1149-89%, Waterford 3 -1087-85.7%, Watts Bar 1 -1121-91.1%, Wolf Creek 1 -1166-84.6%
Since its beginning, nuclear power has cost this country over $492,000,000,000 — nearly twice the cost of the Viet Nam War and the Apollo Moon Missions combined. In return for this investment, we have an energy source that, until the mid-1980’s, gave us less energy in this country than did the burning of firewood! In the U.S., nuclear power contributes only 20-22% of our electricity, and only 8-10% of our total energy consumption. In Illinois these percentages are much greater due to Commonwealth Edison’s over-reliance on nuclear power.
Since 1950, nuclear power has received over $97,000,000,000 in direct and indirect subsidies from the federal government, such as deferred taxes, artificially low limits on liability in case of nuclear accidents, and fuel fabrication write-offs. No other industry has enjoyed such privilege.
According to a recent study conducted by the Citizens Utility Board, Commonwealth Edison’s customers now pay the highest electric bills in the Midwest, due primarily to the over-reliance on nuclear power plants.
Many costs for nuclear power have been deliberately underestimated by government and industry such as the costs for the permanent disposal of nuclear wastes, the “decommissioning” (shutting-down and cleaning-up) of retired nuclear power plants, and nuclear accident consequences. In January, 1994, Commonwealth Edison acknowledged that it had to nearly double its estimate for reactor decommissioning — from $2.3 billion to as much as $4.1 billion!
I was wrong, there are now 14 Power Reactor Sites Undergoing Decommissioning and that rate will increase very quickly as the remaining sites reach full core reserve and must shut down operations. that means there are no longer 103, but under 90 left.
There are 17 new reactors seeking licenses.
Design Certification Application Review -
U.S. Evolutionary Power Reactor (U.S. EPR)
The U.S. Evolutionary Power Reactor (U.S. EPR) is an evolutionary pressurized-water reactor (PWR), designed by AREVA Nuclear Power. It is a four-loop plant with a rated thermal output of 4,500 MWt. The U.S. EPR design features four redundant trains of emergency cooling equipment, and a containment and shield building for added protection.
It appears the new designs are in the 4500 megawatt range, GE is going with natural circulation (no pumps). It also appears the other designs identified as passive may be natural circulation as well.
Decommsioning a nuke plant http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/decommissioning.html
Link to the NRC http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/decommissioning.html
List of nukes http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/list-power-reactor-units.html
I like energy so please give me a little le-way. here are some cost estimates. It is always changing .
high range is $7,000 kw. A 2.2 megawatt windmill would cost $14 million.
Two reactors in Japan are over budget by 25% and 2 years behind schedule.
On April 9, 2008, Georgia Power Company reached a contract agreement for two AP1000 reactors to be built at Vogtle, at an estimated final cost of $14 billion plus $3 billion for necessary transmission upgrades. The AP reactor is a Westinghouse design with a capacity of 4,500 megawatts. Then you need to buy nuclear fuel assemblies to power it up (300 at $75K each? changed out in 36 months), higher 700 people to run it, billions to decomission, and billions more to store the fuel consumed over 40 years.
William your 12:36AM Post
1- The DOE is trying to target pricing and currently they are not even near that. It also does not include the required grid to ship the power. Also the DOE has ASSUMED a lower cost of wind turbines which may or may not happen.
IN FAIRNESS TO YOUR FRIEND GARY, I AM NOT HIM.
2- The number you used is nuclear units and not nuclear plants. When they are referred to they are callled out like Fort Wayne Unit 1 or Unit 2. So if you want to talk total units you are close.
3 I have no idea how you got to 6000 mega watts that you claim I stated. Most units produce in the neighborhood of 1000 mega watts. Cook nuclear plant, owned by AEP via I&M in Southern Michigan is two such units. In fact both of the units can and do exced the rated power output. The plant has total capacity of slightly over 2000 mega watts. These plants can run at 100% output for months or even years on end. They also can cut back from the 100% to match lower load requirements. WIND JUST FLAT CAN NOT DO SUCH.
Here is the math for wind turbines match the Cook output.
A- 1000 wind turbines at 2 mega watts will only produce that much power if the wind is 24/7 in the range to produce such power.
B- Reasearch has shown that acceptable wind fields exist only 35% of the time. Which means the 2000 mega watts of wind power would produce 700 mega watts day in and day out.
C- Hence a person would need to install additional wind turbines in various locations to make up for the 35%. This means you would need 2.85 times as many units. This puts you at 2,850 wind turbines.
D- Allowing for the down time of only 5% at any given time would require an additional 142 units. that I rounded up to 150. Hence, you end up with 3,000 units. Yes the face plate rating would be 6,000 mega watts but seldom will there ever be a condisiton that you will be generating at full power.
The $7 billion dollar number comes from the proposed project in North Carolina that is composed of two units at $14 billion.
As for winds the new generations of turbines have blade pitch control, much like a prop on a plane. However, there is a point that the surface loading on the blade over drag of free spinning blade gets to the point that they turn the unit and lock it in place by huge pins. The point is when they put the turbine blade in a free spinning mode it does not produce one watt of power. It might as well be a still day out side.
Hurricane damage, unless a class five, will not be to the tower. It will be to the gear drive system and so forth in the turbine.
In promoting your idea you want to throw out facts and go with numbers that only fit your arguement. Government is good at this and you doing so robs your points of standing.
With regards to Pickens and the turbines is true but not included in that tax rebate. So GE will see a far greater dollar value then Pickens is paying them. We are picking up the rest of the price tag. Also Pickens is getting a favorable discount from GE as they are trying to get into this market in a large scale.
I agree with your list of units but you stated before over 100 are about to be shut down. That would mean only a 1/2 dozen or so plants would be still be running. The facts do not support your position.
The amount Russia is believed to hold that can be mixed down is based on what Russia has told countries that have been considering purchasing nuclear plants from them. Could they be telling a story? I have no clue. Our own government has stated over the years that the yield of their nuclear weapons was based on what our war heads would provide. So maybe they never has a pure of material in their war heads…
Your post of 1:12 AM
I forgot in the previous post but again I want you to site me any place that us taxpayers who the power grid. I am sure I&M would like to submitt a bill to recover the billions that have spent on grid building. You maintaining that statement if plain wrong.
Illinois problem also comes from years of forced lower rates then cost of production. Chicago is rate payers are getting messed over because of the forced holding of cost of retail power to what actual costs where. Also Comm Ed also has a plant up by Chicago that got shut down because of BS construction that was allowed to happen. Then when they had the second minor shut down the AEC told them they where not going to restart it.
Conn Ed has riped off the people in Illinois for years in all kinds of way. Keep in mind, if you do not know that Bill Ayres father was the president of Conn Ed. He is the one who hired the lawyers that got him off. He is the one, as being the God Father of Chicago Politics, made a place for William to come back to Chicago. But that is an entire other subject.
Nuclear power was never advertised as being cheaper then coal. It was the answer to the grabage dumped out by coal plants. However, the tree huggers put a halt to that and the electric companies stopped building power plants. The last plants took 3-5 years to build but took up to 15 years to fight through lawsuits and get permits from the federal government. Part of the federal government problems where laws put in place by the tree huggers. So costing numbers you site are nice on a stump speach but have little to do with the real facts.
The new generation of GE systems appear to be the wave of the future. They are much simplier but are safter. They are quicker to be built. China has purchased 100 of these from GE.
I hate to disappoint you that our federal government has moved spent nuclear fuel assemblies from power plants. The assemblies are stored at various federal places around the United States.
A number of the plants being decommissioned have worn out and they can not be upgraded to the current standards. However, years ago (I think in the early 90’s) Cook unit was taken off line for several years as it was rebuilt and upgraded. Also some of the spent assemblies where moved out of the plant. Currently the Cook operation has a permits to go far beyond how long I will be on this earth.
Most all of the spent assemblies can be recycled if we build new plants.
Let see…. We are going to put Carbon Cap taxes on existing coal fired plants. This will drive up the cost of power to everyone of us. The only person who wins is the federal government.
Even the people of California have agreed the for the near term nuclear is the only way to go. That clean coal in high volume units is 25 years away, if it can even be done on a huge scale. They also agree that solar and wind are not a full time answer period. That either would require massive unknown storage of electric power that no one has a clue about.
Again you need to get past the fact we own the power grid. We don’t.
Nuclear power is not ideal in cost. However, for massive amounts of power there is nothing out there.
Keep in mind Pickens is not in this for just being a nice guy. He sees a huge payday with his wind farm if he can get us taxpayers to pay the interconnect grid and provide additional tax breaks. He also supports building power plants using natural gas… Guess who owns huge reserves of natural gas? Pickens did not become a billionaire by worrying about you and me.
The point you miss is if the electric generation companies saw they could make money going to wind over nuclear they would be there in a heartbeat. To think otherwise just does not make sense. They are out to make a profit and they could care less if it was from wind farms or nuclear.
Ofcourse,we know clean coal is more expensive,it is billions of cost to install,but u have to take conclusion that clean coal technology is very useful for environment.