They need the water. Your baby will have to look elsewhere. STFU.
“I believe we’re at a point where we see light at the end of the tunnel,” Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said. Water samples had shown positive signs that traces of a coal-cleaning chemical were slowly fading from the supply for nine counties, he said.
There was still no timeline on when residents could use their water again, however, forcing residents and businesses to get creative on how they could safely cook, wash their hands and wash their clothes.
WITH so much focus on carbon emitted from the nation’s power plants, another environmental challenge related to electricity generation is sometimes overlooked: the enormous amount of water needed to cool the power-producing equipment
In the United States almost all electric power plants, 90 percent, are thermoelectric plants, which essentially create steam to generate electricity. To cool the plants, power suppliers take 40 percent of the fresh water withdrawn nationally, 136 billion gallons daily, the United States Geological Survey estimates. This matches the amount withdrawn by the agricultural sector and is nearly four times the amount for households.
Battles for water among these competing interests are becoming more common, and power plants are not always winning. A recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists revealed many examples from 2006 to 2012 of plants that had temporarily cut back or shut down because local water supplies were too low or too warm to cool the plant efficiently.
In a Friday statement, the group Appalachian Voices made a connection between the ongoing regional water crisis and the coal industry that went beyond just the chemical involved.
“An increasing number of private wells in southwestern and central West Virginia, where the spill occurred, have been contaminated by decades of coal mining and processing,” the group said. “One result has been an ongoing expansion of municipal water systems to rural communities that would otherwise rely on well water.”
At the same time, shrinking revenues and declining investments in public infrastructure have led more and more small communities to contract with private companies like West Virginia American Water to provide drinking water services.
“Driven by profit margins, companies have aggressively consolidated their businesses, leading them to serve ever larger distribution networks from only a handful of treatment plants and drinking water intakes,” Appalachian Voices said. That’s how, the group said, one chemical spill into one river cut off drinking water access to roughly 16 percent of West Virginia’s population.
Inner Mongolia’s rivers are feeding China’s coal industry, turning grasslands into desert. In India, thousands of farmers have protested diverting water to coal- fired power plants, some committing suicide.
The struggle to control the world’s water is intensifying around energy supply. China and India alone plan to build $720 billion of coal-burning plants in two decades, more than twice today’s total power capacity in the U.S., International Energy Agency data show. Water will be boiled away in the new steam turbines to make electricity and flush coal residue at utilities from China Shenhua Energy Co. (1088) to India’s Tata Power Co. (TPWR) that are favoring coal over nuclear because it’s cheaper.
With China set to vaporize water equal to what flows over Niagara Falls each year, and India’s industrial water demand growing at twice the pace of agricultural or municipal use, Asia’s most populous nations will have to reconsider energy projects to avoid conflict between cities, farmers and industry.
“You’re going to have a huge issue with the competition between water, energy and food,” said Vineet Mittal, managing director of Welspun Energy Ltd., the utility unit of Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management LLC-backed Welspun Group. “Water is something everyone should be probing every chief executive about,” he said in an interview.
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“Power is a very good example of the risk investors can potentially face,” Giulio Boccaletti, a partner heading McKinsey’s water resource economics practice, said in an Aug. 30 interview. “A problem with water can leave you with a stranded asset.”
China and India account for than 60 percent of the world’s coal-fired power plants on the drawing boards by 2035, capable of producing about 805 gigawatts. China’s alone will consume 82 billion cubic meters of water a year by 2030, second only to the nation’s farmers, McKinsey & Co. forecast.
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Coal is currently running more than 40 percent of the planet’s electricity generation plants, which consume on average three times as much water as natural gas-fired stations per unit of power produced, according to U.S. Department of Energy data. Nuclear plants use even more water than coal units.
Beside needing water to produce steam, it’s also used in condensing and to process waste deposited in ponds. Water is used in coal mining to remove impurities and transport the fuel through pipelines as slurry.
Some of the water can be recycled or discharged back to its source. However, a shortage can shut a plant or force it to compete for farming and drinking water.
Utilities “assume the water is there,” Peter C. Evans, director for global strategy and planning at General Electric Co. (GE), the biggest maker of power-plant turbines, told a conference in June in Tokyo. “They actually will not be able to build as many coal plants as the projections suggest.”
A government plan to boost the coal industry and build more power plants near mines will lift industrial demand for water in Inner Mongolia 141 percent by 2015 from 2010, causing aquifers to dry up and deserts to expand, according to Greenpeace and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources. About 28,000 rivers have vanished since 1990, according to the Ministry of Water Resources and National Bureau of Statistics.
A great video clip—-the reporter did a great job asking some pointed questions and making people squirm (he may soon be out of a job if some conservative owns the station).
Poor Senator Manchin—a nominal Democrat trapped in a state that has become a national “sacrifice zone” for the chemical and coal industries. I wonder what the chemical corporations will think about him talking about the “very dangerous” things the chemical companies make in WV? Woodshed time for the Senator.
I love the irony of the “Freedom” in the name of the company—-it reminds me of the handles you see on the right wing idiot sites—-“Freedom Fighter”, “Patriot”, “Real American”, etc.—-pure BS and LOL-inducing.
And this “don’t blame it on the coal industry” meme is interesting. Why has no one asked how much of this chemical has been used to “clean coal” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) down through time in WV and elsewhere? For how long? And where does it go after “cleaning” the coal? Has anyone studied the effects on the biosphere? If a lot of it at one time is bad now, aren’t small amounts over time bad also?
http://misleadinglaws.com/
One thing you notice about Charleston, WV is that chemical companies have set up shop along the Kanawha River for miles and miles and miles. https://maps.google.com/?ll=38.371035,-81.686118&spn=0.010094,0.01929&t=h&z=16
My high school girlfriend’s dad was a chemical engineer and we’d pick him up after work in Nitro or Poca (can’t remember; these are adjunctive cities/towns) at one of those companies and the air chronically stank horribly in and around the facility. Probably still does.
Every time i drive by the Bayer CropScience facility in Institute to visit a friend in St. Albans, it stinks to high heaven as well. I always turn my A/C and vents off at that point, because I don’t want that junk in the car. https://maps.google.com/?ll=38.386777,-81.795664&spn=0.003592,0.004823&t=h&z=18
There’s always something getting spilled. Here’s a mild chlorine release that happened a few months ago: http://www.wsaz.com/news/wvnews/headlines/Chemical-Leak-Reported-in-Kanawha-County-226124331.html
My uncle said he used to live in S. Charleston decades ago, on 4th avenue. He remembers a particular fog that rolled into the town one night that happened to be another chlorine release; made him sick for several days. Some folks use chlorine in chemical warfare. Other folks, like those in our chemical valley, use it as accidental air freshener.
I won’t bother trying to explain lawsuits generated from suppression of epidemiologically significant findings by company doctors regarding the carcinogenicity of the stuff workers dealt with on a daily basis, because I don’t have enough info to understand the details; though I’m confident I could summarize the deal with the mantra ‘privatize the profits, socialize the costs’.
And finally I’ll end on a little folklore that is probably derived from a historical chemical spill into the Kanawha River: Carbide, one of the major players in the region, began assembling ethylene glycol back in the 1920’s for the dynamite/explosives industry. The story goes, that some of the material spilled out (or was spilling out over a time period) into the river during the winter, and it was observed that such was preventing the regular river ice from forming in that particular spot where the spill was happening. From that observation came the idea of using the compound as antifreeze for cars and such. That first google map above was the historic sight of Union Carbide when i was a kid.
Great WV history. Here’s some from NJ. When I was a kid, we’d sometimes amuse ourselves by throwing rocks into the sludge pond at the site of a company that cleaned and recycled 55 gallon chemical and petroleum product drums. The pond was perhaps an acre in size and filled with water, on which floated several inches of multi-layered and multi-colored sludge. When you threw a rock high into the air, it would make a nice Yellowstone-style “fountain paint pot” type eruption when it came down, and leave colorful splashes on the surface. Great fun for 10-year-olds. The site later became a superfund cleanup site, and a rather expensive one for its size. One day, one of the kids slipped on the bank and put a leg shin-deep into the sludge—-I often wondered if the skin fell off that foot in later life.
We are going through water at an accelerating rate, and this will end badly for humanity. The West Virginia tragedy only shows that there’s an apparently infinite number of ways to trash the water supply, with little or no consequences for the trashers. Trashing the water supply so we can extract and burn more carbon is beyond suicidal, and that’s what fracking is doing to the aquifers.
But psychology tells us that today’s comfort trumps tomorrow’s pain, especially when the pain will be felt by others instead of by oneself. So the band plays on.
One trend of many, met with deafening silence.
We just gotta have our toys and jobs and money. Now. And more of it, please.
Yet another water problem stemming from coal is mountaintop removal. When all the soil is removed and the mountain is pulverized and turned upside down, all the water leeches through the rocks very quickly and all sorts of nasty stuff is inserted into the water supply, and it makes a lot of people’s water supply undrinkable, if not deadly.
These are examples of how business as usual is impossible. Notice we keep finding the limits. The first limits are pollution. Energy sources switched from dirty wood and coal to cleaner oil and gas in response to pollution limits. Auto pollution resulted in catalytic reactors. Ozone resulted in CFCs banned. At every stage, the resumption of unlimited growth was business as usual. Its no longer possible. The whiplash is swift and hard. Its not just AGW. Its resource depletion and global ecosystem impacts. The bubble has burst. Its good that there is some feedback. We just need to pay attention and respond. So far, so bad. Growth, growth, growth. How can a world economy that predicates growth deal with limits?
As always, it depends. B&W was thinking about problems just like this, and offers an air-cooled condenser for the mPower. It cuts the rated electrical output from 180 MW down to 155, but being able to operate without any evaporative losses in the cooling system may clinch the deal for some customers.
In weather like the recent cold snap, I suspect that even the air-cooled condenser would be sufficient to allow the mPower to develop a full 180 MW of electric output.
“In weather like the recent cold snap, I suspect that even the air-cooled condenser would be sufficient…..”
And what would be “sufficient” during the “heat snaps” that will be occurring ever more frequently as the planet heats up? I can recall driving across the Mojave at 80+ mph in mid-afternoon in 115 degree heat with the heater on full blast and all the windows open. Barely kept the temp gauge below boiling. An analogous situation?
Yes. Further, air cooling reduces efficiency. Between downtime due to heat ( during critical air conditioning caused summer peak demand) and reduced efficiency, output is reduced and costs are higher. Water for thermal PP is avoided at a cost. All this was discussed before.
http://climatecrocks.com/2013/10/30/water-green-energys-ace-the-achilles-heel-of-conventional-power/
It amuses me when combative clowns like DOG come up with bogus objections like this. If you want to keep your output up and you have water, you can always use mist-cooling of condensers. If you don’t have water, at least you still have some power.
Know what, DOGgie? If you look on page 13 you’ll see your gas turbines lose power in extreme temperatures too. Even PV loses power as temperatures increase, with the exact coefficient depending on the cell type. They’re rated at a standard 25°C and you have to apply corrections to get the rated (warranted) output under actual conditions.
Dealing with curtailed peak-temperature power generation doesn’t take miracles. You can cut back lighting, turn up thermostats, or invest in ice storage to use power generated at night to meet those hot-day demands. If we converted all our electric generation to nuclear and drove electric cars, we’d be dumping a whole lot less of the carbon that is making those heat waves. Isn’t that what this site is supposed to be about?
IMO, projection of coal plant and even gas plant builds are wrong. The electricity demand trends are toward reduced demand. All thermal PP have and increasingly, will see heat curtailment. Texas comes to mind. Considering recent EPA rules and the imminent CSAPR ruling the future looks less promising for coal. Excessive gas depletion will lead to increasingly volatile gas market in the next 5 to 10 years, and the trend to gas PP will diminish. The largest US electric coal market, the Midwest, is already seeing a downward trend.
http://climatecrocks.com/2014/01/03/in-the-midwest-wind-up-coal-down/
This trend will continue as the ” Saudi Arabia” of wind gets developed further and coal costs escalate. Look for states like Iowa and North Dakota to exceed 30% penetration. The big surprise? The growth of rooftop solar. That will reduce demand further.
http://www.southernstudies.org/2014/01/wv-water-contamination-exposes-chemical-hazards-of.html
more on the impacts of coal.
What this site is supposed to be about is the topics at hand, Ewwwwww-Pot, not self-admiration by people like you who will make foolish arguments all over the lot about anything just so they can admire their own brilliance. It’s all about the WATER, fool. Come away from the mirror and stop trying to distract us with “if you have water”, when the whole point is that we don’t (or won’t at some point in the future).
And I’m sure you don’t visit neighborhood bars, Ewwwww-Pot, probably because they don’t carry your favorite exotic imported wine and are populated by perhaps smelly people who actually work for a living. If you did, and ran your “oh-so-superior” mouth there, some “combative clown” would probably “amuse” you by rearranging your face. Did you serve? Doubt it, because if you had, one of the “combative clowns” you would have met in the service likely would have taught you lessons that you would have never forgotten, and perhaps spared us the task here on Crock.
Perhaps it’s not too late? Are you young enough? Run down to your nearest USMC recruiter and sign up—-meet a DI and “amuse” him. I would reup just to be able to watch.
The argument of the leftoid: “Agree with me or be physically crushed.”
My counter-argument is a Browning loaded with hollowpoints. Which is one of the reasons I don’t hang out in bars; can’t carry there.
Doesn’t surprise me that you would carry, Eeeeeuuuuwww-Pot. I know lots of “small” people who do. And a semi-auto pistol loaded with hollow-points, no less, so you’d be sure to hurt innocent bystanders as you used it in ignorance! I wonder how you’d do with a rifle over open sights at 300 yards in an open field?
But enough distraction—-what about WATER? The topic of this post? Tell us, E-Pot, is there some attachment that we can put on nuclear power plants that will create it “out of thin air”?
If you’re so concerned about water, why did you even mention bars, wine, smelly people (one of which I’ve been on factory floors and out in fields in my time… a condition I remedied with water as soon as I got home), and Marines?
It’s because you don’t actually have anything to say, but you won’t let that stop you; you have to do something for attention. IOW, a narcissist. Which is part of what makes you so funny.
I’m still waiting for you to talk about water, Ewwwwww-Pot. As this post points out, it’s a global issue with many ramifications that you chose to ignore because YOU want to talk about nuclear power. You did your usual thing of injecting nuclear power anywhere and everywhere, and we are tired of it. You did your usual condescension thing with “amuses” and “clowns”, and we are tired of that also. Hence my “combativeness”.
I don’t believe for a minute you spent any significant time in “factories or fields”, and if you did spend some limited time there, I suspect you were not too popular with those you met. The folks you meet there do not take well to pomposity and pretentiousness.
I mentioned Marines because that’s my branch, E-Pot, and I truly would reup (means “go back in”) just to watch you in boot camp.
I actually DO have something to say. I did, after all, make the first comment on this thread, and several of us did have a conversation starting until your obsession with NUCLEAR POWER intruded. YOU are the attention seeker, here E-Pot, and if you understood narcissism at all, you would understand that narcissists like you are NEVER funny. Have you forgotten me asking you way back when if you had a sense of humor? I asked because you don’t.
We’ve already established that you don’t think very well, and that complaint proves that you don’t read very well either.
And the hypocrisy… really, do you come here INTENDING to be comic relief?
I’m STILL waiting for you to talk about water, E-Pot. As this post points out, it’s a global issue with many ramifications that you choose to ignore because you are too busy displaying typically narcissistic behavior for all to see by focusing on me
Narcissists typically react VERY badly to criticism of any kind. Since they are unable to examine their behavior (because it is perfect in their eyes), they focus on vigorously attacking anyone who dares to question them.
Your “you don’t think very well”, “you don’t read very well”, “hypocrisy” and “comic relief” comments make up the ENTIRE body of this message. In your typically narcissistic “legend in your own mind” fashion, you simply state that your opinion about me takes precedence over all others. I won’t ask other Crock visitors to waste their time commenting, but it’s quite obvious that I’m not alone in recognizing you for what you are, I’m just more “combative”. SBAN, E-Pot Actually, it would be more correct to say “stop proving that you are one”—cures are very difficult, and “self-healing” is virtually impossible, but it IS possible for narcissists to demonstrate a little restraint. I suggest you try.
My very first comment in this thread was about water, specifically how the claim that nuclear plants use more water than coal plants was not generally true, because water-free condensers for nuclear plants were on offer.
But, with senility piled on top of your admitted dumbth, you rail on and on that what is indubitably there does not exist.
I guess E-Pot doesn’t understand the meaning of “restraint”, because he is right back here demonstrating how strongly his NPD controls him.
Along with making the obligatory personal attack on a detractor with “senility” and “dumbth” (whatever that is), he goes back to the very obscure and very minimally significant point he made when he injected nuclear power plant condensers into a thread that is more concerned with all the OTHER uses of water and the problems we face there
I’m still waiting for you to talk about THAT water, E-Pot. But, in the meantime, thank you for giving all the Crockers a “living demonstration” of what it means to be a narcissist. You are giving O-Log a run for his money for the title of “The NPD King of Crock”.
I can’t help it if you can’t see the talk about water that’s right in front of your face, and I’m certainly not going to stop humiliating you for it as long as you keep using ad-hominems and otherwise being a flaming hypocrite.
And as long as you (a self-described Dumb Old Guy) need to have implications explained to you, I’ll just spell out that nuclear energy nearly eliminates GHG emissions and would be a huge step to ameliorating and even reversing the climate-change-related shifts in evaporation and precipitation which are causing much of our water woes.
Yes, as little as you may like it, an air-cooled nuclear powerplant does have relevance to water. Now stop behing a hypocrite and diverting threads with hysterical attacks. There’s no such thing as blasphemy here unless environmentalism is a religion.
A classic narcissist attack on a detractor. E-Pot humiliates only himself.
SBAN, E-Pot!