https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/20/nuclear-plant-closure-carbon-emissions-new-york
When New York’s deteriorating and unloved Indian Point nuclear plant finally shuttered in 2021, its demise was met with delight from environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.
But there has been a sting in the tail – since the closure, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up.
Castigated for its impact upon the surrounding environment and feared for its potential to unleash disaster close to the heart of New York City, Indian Point nevertheless supplied a large chunk of the state’s carbon-free electricity.
Since the plant’s closure, it has been gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has filled the void, leaving New York City in the embarrassing situation of seeing its planet-heating emissions jump in recent years to the point its power grid is now dirtier than Texas’s, as well as the US average.
“From a climate change point of view it’s been a real step backwards and made it harder for New York City to decarbonize its electricity supply than it could’ve been,” said Ben Furnas, a climate and energy policy expert at Cornell University. “This has been a cautionary tale that has left New York in a really challenging spot.”
The closure of Indian Point raises sticky questions for the green movement and states such as New York that are looking to slash carbon pollution. Should long-held concerns about nuclear be shelved due to the overriding challenge of the climate crisis? If so, what should be done about the US’s fleet of ageing nuclear plants?
For those who spent decades fighting Indian Point, the power plant had few redeeming qualities even in an era of escalating global heating. Perched on the banks of the Hudson River about 25 miles north of Manhattan, the hulking facility started operation in the 1960s and its three reactors at one point contributed about a quarter of New York City’s power.
Who could possibly have known?
even the scarecrow knew
Nuclear generation needs to rebrand itself into Nuclean (Nu-Clean) Energy
Bryan, Beginning right now, in all my future blogs! Good one!
Absolutely anyone capable of logical reasoning. That excludes environmental activists by definition.
Well done, The Grauniad. A Dollar short and fifty years too late.
You reap as you sow, with compound interest.
O, the delicious irony. But what is a ‘planet-heating emission’?’.
Posted by Marc Morano, but did he write that? But yeah, “Planet heating emissions” is a load of crap.
No doubt Morano said that in the context of how enviros saw it, not himself.
“did he write that?”
Nope – it’s all a cut and paste from the Guardian. I read it to save you from stuff like:
“With the world barreling towards disastrous climate change impacts due to the dawdling pace of emissions cuts,….”
But, to be fair, the sentence ends:
“…some environmentalists have set aside reservations and accepted nuclear as an expedient power source.”
“Bill McKibben, author, activist and founder of 350.org, said that the position “of the people I know and trust” is that “if you have an existing nuke, keep it open if you can.”
Now that was a surprise!
No, but he didn’t claim to.
I posted a link to the same article in the New York Climate Plan Needs Publicly Funded Spin Doctor entry.Mark’s source is different (Climate Depot vs. google feed) and given the per piece reposting in today’s journalism, it’s no surprise how much cross posting/listing there is.
Even if they fielded MORE solar panels and wind mills (to make up for the lost nuke plant), there would be a surge in C02 to make such devices first before installing them.
I wonder how many acres of forest/farms would have been needed to cover with solar panels to equal the energy production of he nuclear plant? Or, likewise, how many bird choppers?
Plus the honking big battery for backup!
But those emissions would be somewhere outside New York, but, magically, don’t count.
This is so obvious to anybody with brain cells. Germany also demonstrated that closing nuclear increases emissions. France shows that lots of nuclear means fewer emissions.
I think this is a demonstration that the Green Blob are Luddites, not environmentalists.
The Guardian is the newspaper of ‘science’ that painted any anti-lockdown sentiment or thought as down right dangerous.
“The Guardian view on lifting lockdown: riskier than it needed to be” The reality wasn’t anything like their modelling predicted, of course. But Sweden then had a special place in their hearts for not doing as it was told.
“They are leading us to catastrophe’: Sweden’s coronavirus stoicism begins to jar” – Outraged Danes etc
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/catastrophe-sweden-coronavirus-stoicism-lockdown-europe
Now the Guardian has done a complete u-turn bemoaning all the societal ills that their devotion to lockdown – as per the (uncensored) science – has brought about. Self-awareness is a real hindrance at The Guardian. And it’s only lost ~£40 million this last year. Ever wonder why that might be?
I don’t recall the Graun being very pro nuclear, more a case of having the fence rammed up its anal slot, equidistantly. Small reactors are a real opportunity compared with the more – eternally activist held up – traditional reactor designs. But not at the Guardian. They will promote untested carbon capture and storage – even at commercial scale.
“Missed deadlines, squandered opportunities, spiralling costs and green protests have plagued the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology since Statoil proposed the concept more than two decades ago.
But in the face of desperate global warming projections the CCS dream still unites Canadian tar sands rollers with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Shell with some environmentalists.
“If you take climate change seriously, it is extremely dangerous not to enable this technology for use in refineries, steel, cement, gas and coal plants,” said Frederic Hauge, the founder of the Bellona Foundation, a key mover in Norway’s CCS project. “
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/23/carbon-capture-battle-stirs-hopes-dreams-and-grim-realities
Which contrasts with their view on SMRs
“There is a significant sticking point to the promotion of thorium as the ‘great green hope’ of clean energy production: it remains unproven on a commercial scale. “
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium
That is to say, if it actually works in practice, you can forget it.
The problem with news print is the opinion must change to pay the bills.
Otherwise, they go out of business if they have integrity.
A hoard of farting unicorns were due to show up just as the reactors shut down. Where can they be?
Today I scanned the news snippets Google puts on the home page it delivers me and one title lost me: ” Inverter undersizing not universally effective to reduce soiling losses ”
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/03/22/inverter-undersizing-not-universally-effective-to-reduce-soiling-losses/
I read the article, this may be a story tip for you. It seems that the PV industry accepts the practice of undersized DC to AC inverters so that some of the peak solar panel power output is discarded so that inverter AC peak power output stays the same as the panels degrade with dirt coating (or age I assume). Apparently this practice is not completely effective and occasional panel cleaning may be recommended.
These people are insane.
Someone should tell them that it doesn’t matter either way.
CO2 is essential to life on Earth. If CO2 levels drop below 150 ppm photosynthesis stops plants die, no oxygen is produced, and animals, including humans, die.
In the last Glacial Period which ended about 12,000 years ago, CO2 levels dropped to 180 ppm as the cold caused the oceans to absorb more CO2
That is only 30 ppm above the 150 ppm end of plant and animal life on Earth limit.
The CO2 levels during the preceding Glacial Periods have been dropping as well
The interglacial periods between glacial periods usually last around 10,000 years, another glacial period may start at any time.
The Grand Solar Minimum the Sun has entered may be the catalyst for another glacial period, and if the CO2 level is too low, the end of life as we know it.
https://pioga.org/publication_file/Just-the-Facts-CO2-is-Good.pdf
story tip
These days climate “scientists” would no doubt diagnose 180 ppm levels a “Planetary Carbon Anemia Pandemic” and prescribe massive releases of iron into the skies.
(Accompanied of course by warnings that people and pets should wear hard hats when outdoors, and generally “Don’t Look Up”)
Story Tip
Meanwhile in what is the Guardian’s home country, though one it rarely ever visits…
[From the UK Telegraph]
You see that now the Conservatives are planning, by 2030, 70GW of solar, which will generate absolutely nothing at 4pm on a January afternoon, along with about 100GW of wind, which, during the usual winter dead calm will generate around 10GW for a week or ten days. And that’s on average – there will be drops of several hours of during that week or ten days which will be even lower.
This is supposed to cover a projected 100GW peak demand. Where is the extra 90GW going to come from during the peaks? No-one in politics either knows or cares.
You are wondering whether to vote Labour in the Autumn, but your problem is that their only issue with this plan is they want to see it brought forward by five years. OK, maybe you vote SNP? Plaid? Liberals? Greens? No, all of them are in favor, many think Labour is actually too timid, why not bring it still further forward?
Like the Guardian, they too should try visiting the UK sometime. But they won’t.
Vote Reform, guys! Its your last chance before blackouts. The only people prepared to call this nonsense what it is.
And by the way, if you are in Scotland this spring, don’t comment approvingly on this post, don’t echo its sentiments. Under the new legislation it will be deemed hate speech, and you will be risking a 7 year jail sentence. The Hate and Public Order (Scotland) Act – comes into force on 1 April.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-68624949
In fact, even to say what the BBC piece says about this legislation is probably itself a hate crime under it.
Its not just that men go mad in groups, its also that when they go mad, they go madder than anyone would have believed possible, and keep on with their madness until they are actually over the cliff and falling on the hordes who they have urged on over it.
“Under the new legislation it will be deemed hate speech, and you will be risking a 7 year jail sentence. The Hate and Public Order (Scotland) Act”
Rapidly moving closer to 1930s Germany
No-one in politics either knows or cares.
While these folks might not believe in a god, they expect a mysterious salvation.
Search-up: Deus ex machina [wikipedia]
” … a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly or abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.”
Once or twice a week I check the Gridwatch(.org.uk) website to see if anything “interesting” has happened to the “island of Great Britain (GB)” electricity grid.
This Tuesday, the 19th of March, had a very sharp drop in “Wind”, which prompted me to do my standard “download BM Reports + ESO (30-minute resolution) data and check it out”.
Your post led me to “tweak” my standard plot. The end result is attached to the end of this post.
Notes
This “first draft” is much too “crowded / busy”, but I can’t see how to improve it …
The solid lines are actual “Solar”, “Total wind” and “Total demand” power measurements (30-minute averages, in GW) over the last 8 days.
The dashed lines are a simple “linear scaling” assuming future “nominal / nameplate / faceplate” capacities of 70GW of solar + 100GW of wind.
NB : To get “a projected 100GW peak demand” I just “eyeballed it” …
The ESO datafile’s latest “SOLAR_CAPACITY” value is 15905 MW. I multiplied this by 4.4 to get (roughly) 70 GW instead of the Telegraph’s “fourfold expansion of UK solar power … from 18 gigawatts now to 70 gigawatts by 2035″.
Not quite that bad, but check out the 12 hours or so around midnight on the 19th/20th of March …
How many of us here could say they toured Indian point power plant. Well I did and it was quite impressive. The steam turbine driving the street car sized generator looked so small, wrapped in asbestos insulation (I believe). Oil was used for superheating the steam to increase efficiency There was a viewing gallery for one to see the layout below. I believe the timeframe was around 1965 or thereabouts. The Montrose yacht club to which I belonged to leased the future site of the 3rd reactor which obviously was never built.
… leased the future site of the 3rd reactor …
I’ve wondered why yachting folks glow! 🙂
Good! Serves them right for being so single-mindedly dumb.
France now has re-boarded the nuclear bandwagon, promising to open new plants. It might be said that the anti-nuclear forces caused the current rising CO2 emissions “crisis’ [ in some minds, at least ]. If they had not fought nuclear back in the 60s and 70s onward, most of our electricity would be from hydro and nuclear today.
Looks like a perfect opportunity to build a new nuclear plant on that spot.
Of course it will. That is a consequence of the problem with the unsoundness of climate science.
Duh?
The Left will take this as proof for the necessity to quickly and quantitatively add Gigawatts of offshore wind. Let the government guaranteed loans begin (with full awareness they will never be repaid).
Not to mention the couple of thousand jobs lost.
Imagine if they laid off a couple of thousand government workers.