Month: July 2023

Below, one of my favorite covers from the “Playing for Change” project – “One Love”.

Welcome to the New World.

People, you have to do some due diligence before you buy a house, or in this case, condo, in Florida.
Did you think all those famously “woke” insurance companies were going to make an exception for you?

Sorry, all out of fucks to give.

Odds are, the Vogtle Nuclear Plant will produce mostly reliable and carbon free power for a long time, if it ever gets started.

There’s the rub. Like so many large nuclear projects around the world, it’s been extremely slow and terribly expensive to bring on line, and that streak has continued this summer, despite continued promises of imminent startup.
Yeah, I get it, nuclear waste. Well, we have a shit-ton of nuclear waste sitting on pads around the country, that we’re going to have to deal with somehow, so this is just more of the same. And yeah, that will be expensive.
That horse is out of the barn, and the barn’s on fire..

AP June 16 2023:

Commercial operation of a new reactor at a Georgia nuclear power plant has been delayed for at least another month.

Georgia Power Co. said Friday that Unit 3 at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta, has a problem in the hydrogen system that is used to cool its main electrical generator. The company now estimates the reactor will begin reliably sending electricity to the grid in July, missing the most recent deadline of June.

The generator is not part of the reactor itself. It’s located in a separate building, where steam from the heat created by fission in the nuclear reactor is piped to spin a turbine, generating up to 1,100 megawatts of electricity.

The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. said the problem was a degraded seal. The reactor has been shut down while repairs are made.

Georgia Public Radio July 24, 2023:

On Friday, Georgia Power announced that a new nuclear reactor at Plant Vogtle is on its way to becoming fully operational in the coming months, news that comes several days before the utility faces another showdown over the project’s ballooning costs brought on by years of delays.    

Georgia Power announced on Friday that the Waynesboro’s nuclear energy facility operators, Southern Nuclear, has turned over to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the 364 inspections, tests and analyses required for regulatory approval to assure that Vogtle’s final reactor meets strict nuclear safety and quality standards prior to completion. The development comes just weeks after Georgia Power revealed that Vogtle’s third reactor unit was delayed for another month before becoming the first new reactor to produce electricity in the country in 40 years when it came online in July. 

 Georgia Power is awaiting the nuclear commission’s formal approval to start loading fuel into Unit 4, which is expected to be completed by this fall or early 2024. It is the last planned expansion of the nuclear plant started in the late 1980s with the completion of two reactors.

“The new Vogtle units are an essential part of Georgia Power’s commitment to delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy to its 2.7 million customers,” the utility company said in a press release.  “Once operating, each of the new units can produce enough electricity to power an estimated 500,000 homes and businesses.”

Continue reading “We Need Carbon Free Power, but Georgia’s Giant Nuke Keeps Failing to Show Up”

Guardian:

In February, the floating sea ice around Antarctica hit a record low for the second year running. Since satellites started tracking the region’s ice in 1979, there had never been less ice.

As it does every year, as the temperatures around the continent plunged towards winter, the sea ice started to return.

But the moderate alarm from scientists at that record low – coming only a year after a previous record low – is now being overlaid with astonishment. Some are worried they could be witnessing the start of a slow collapse of Antarctica’s sea ice.

By now there would usually be about 16.4m square kilometres of Antarctic sea ice. But this week, there was just 14.1m sq km. An area bigger than Mexico has failed to freeze.

“There’s a sense that something weird is going on. It’s dropping way below anything we have seen in our record,” says Dr Walt Meier, a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado.

Meier’s job is to help collate and present data from US satellites that have been recording sea ice since November 1978.

It’s the same data that gets presented in Hobbs’ daily email and the same data that has been turned into charts and spread on social media around the world in recent weeks.

Continue reading “Antarctic Experts – Like the Rest of Us – Asking “What’s Going On?””

To repeat.
Climate change is not something that is happening somewhere else – the arctic, India Pakistan.
Or even California, Texas, or Arizona.

This summer’s brutal heat, choking smoke, and punishing storms have shown that there will be no place to take refuge and watch the world burn on TV.
There is no trouble with your reception. This is actually happening.

Reuters:

PJM Interconnection, the biggest U.S. electric grid operator, issued a level one emergency alert for Thursday as people crank up air conditioners to stave off the heat wave.

The operator issued an Energy Emergency Alert Level 1 late on Wednesday for Thursday, signaling that it had available resources to meet firm load and reserve commitments.

PJM oversees supply in a 13-state region, managing and paying on-call generators to keep power systems running.

Continue reading “Heat Dome Puts Pressure on Eastern Grid, Medical System”

Jeff Berardelli is Chief Meteorologist at WFLA in Tampa.

Jeff Berardelli on Twitter:

Think July was hot in the desert SW? Aug says hold my beer. A monster heat dome likely by next weekend – the most intense yet this summer. Magenta indicates where all-time record heights are forecast. This on top of PHX so far beating its hottest month on record by almost 4F!!

So far in July PHX avg temp is 102.9 Old record 98.9 in 2020. To beat your hottest month’s temp by ~4 degrees is remarkable. Enter August… This next heat dome is forecast to be around 4 sigma. These heat “ridges” measure the column heat by how high the 500mb pressure sfc is.

Continue reading “Think July was Hot? August says, “Hold my Beer””

Continuing to focus on how Fox Weather is covering this massively consequential El Nino Summer. Storms, they like – that gets clicks. As long as they don’t have to talk about why it’s so stormy.

I was in Herman, Minnesota for a presentation this week. Local farmers had just gotten hammered with straight line winds and a local insurance man told me that his phone had started ringing at 6 am with accounts of crop damage.

Below, heat to continue.

CNBC:

An influential oil producers’ alliance could collapse if unity dissolves around output policy, according to the managing partner of investing group Clean Energy Transition.

Speaking to CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” on Thursday, Per Lekander said waning oil demand growth and a lack of cooperation may facilitate the demise of OPEC+ — a group of 23 nations that produces roughly 40% of the world’s crude oil.

The breakup of OPEC+, Lekander said, could send oil prices careening to as low as $35 per barrel.

“In a growing market, time is your friend. You just need to wait a bit and things tighten up and improve,” Lekander said. “In a declining market, time is your enemy. You have to keep cutting, keep cutting, keep cutting.”

He added, “The more negative growth [there] is, and the less cooperation you have — and remember the last OPEC decision, it was really the Saudis doing it on their own … so I would say, if my forecast is correct, and I’m very sure it is … it is going to break.”

A spokesperson for OPEC was not immediately available to comment.

OPEC+ has been trimming oil production since November. Oil prices, which are down sharply year-to-date, were trading slightly higher on Thursday afternoon.

Brent crude futures with September expiry were up around 0.8% at $83.53 a barrel at around midday London time, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futureswith September delivery rose 1% to trade at $79.56 a barrel. Both contracts are up over 12% so far this month.

“There was a period in the 1990s and the 2000s where supply was so much, they couldn’t jack up the price, but for most of the time, the oil price since 1974 has been artificially too high,” Lekander said.

“If the cartel can’t operate, I would say short-term you go to $35 and mid-term probably $45,” he added.

The OPEC+ group has sought to distance itself from accusations of cartel behavior, saying its policies target global supply inventories, rather than specific fixed prices. Nevertheless, some Middle East nations in the coalition, which heavily depend on fossil fuel revenues, list oil price assumptions and forecasts in their national budget plans.

Continue reading “Will Clean Energy Break OPEC?”

Real, apparently.
Well, the market spots a need..