OT: The Power Grid Will Fail within 36 Months

Government usually tries to maximize its tax revenue, and usually does it wrong. What government should do is maximize the public good, which is an entirely different problem.

Making life difficult for business is a sure way to kill jobs. Do you remember "jobs"?

In fact, the

Most utilities in the USA are regulated monopolies, who get a fixed return on capital and pass costs onto consumers. The coal-based ones who do face competitive pressures can always switch to natural gas, thereby increasing the cost of gas for everyone. Economics adjusts that way.

Obama is an astonishing idiot, who has surrounded himself with idiots. Many are bailing, but there's an adequate, even generous, supply of replacements.

John

innews: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Like Sloman.

John

Good grief, you plan to be an engineer some day? Creepy.

John

Sloman passed his 'Best used by' date long ago.

-- Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is enough left over to pay them.

I watch the output from a coal plant near me. Etimates may be overly high. 10-20 years ago the output pollution from my plant was 7 times higher. ( I didn't live there then) Somewhere there is technology to get something like 95 % particulate removal.

greg

Sometimes I drive by the Clairton, Pa. coke plant in the early morning and its like back in 1960. The sulfur emitted is really bad.

With my power plant at 86% removal rate, I can smell it on certain days when the conditions are right. Maybe 3-4 days out of the year. I got a post office and power plant fairly close to me, and I get service from neither. Figure greg

I guess he's never seen a stack filter?

Or doesn't think that a 30:1 improvement matters.

John

You would have to include nuclear accidents in the output waste.

I read they are trying to develope a anti nuclear damage drug.

greg

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Thanks Martin, I like that the end of the Sci-Am article points out that the ~2 millirem from living near a coal plant is much less than your 'natural' yearly dose of 360 mrem. Joe Public is way to afraid of radiation.

I had an apartment near the train tracks in Nashville TN and use to watch all the coal cars roll by. Electricity sure was cheap down there though! ~$0.06 a KWH in the late 90's.

George H.

It sure did where I lived. They replaced the original coke ovens, and built a new hot strip to replace the original ARMCO mill. The original blast furnace spewed rust particles that could be seen several states away, and the coke plant emitted a cloud of acidic dust that ate aluminum siding and other metals with a thin finish.

Before the days of scrubbers, Sudbury, Ontario was something of a moonscape.

"During the Apollo manned lunar exploration program, NASA astronauts trained in Sudbury to become familiar with shatter cones, a rare rock formation connected with meteorite impacts. However, the popular misconception that they were visiting Sudbury because it purportedly resembled the lifeless surface of the moon dogged the city for years..."

The city is green again, after building the superstack, adding scrubbers, and spreading lime over the countryside. The superstack article says the scrubbers are 90% effective. Combined with the dilution from such a tall stack, it seems to be doing a fine job.

Anyway, you people are bizarre. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to get struck by 3% of a lightning bolt. 3% of a 1GV or 100kA is still an awful lot. If you're selling lightning protection systems that offer only 17dB attenuation, I'm buying from someone else.

Tim

Actually, it's an adverb.

Cheers! Rich

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Bill, you surprise me by stumbling right into Bastiat's Broken Window fallacy, just like Pelosi.

The problem is they only count the people who benefit--the recipient, and the people downstream who receive the money the recipient spends.

But there's a similar chain of harm that spreads backwards, which they never count.

That is, every dollar to food stamps is taken from someone who works. That person now has less money (first order harm), and less to buy books and shoes and other things he wanted to buy, so the people who sell those things for a living suffer, etc (2nd and higher order harms).

Worse, it puts some people over the edge, into bankruptcy or gets them laid off, driving them from paying taxes and onto the dole. Keynes' multiplier works a chain of harm backwards too.

Otherwise, Newt's right, we should all go on food stamps, and we'd all be prosperous. 82% return on investment!

-- Cheers, James Arthur

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It's kind of shocking, isn't it? His chief of staff, economic team, defense advisor...all the main staff members, gone.

He had big support from big business getting elected, but no more...

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Home heating from burning fuels at home gets a lot more efficient than that. There are 95% efficient oil and gas home heaing units on the market.

The efficiency problem with generating electricity from fuels is converting heat energy to mechanical or electrical energy. A 50% efficient engine is a fairly tall order.

One thing about engines: The ratio of absolute temperature of the exhaust or heat outlet to absolute temperature where heat goes in is the theoretical minimum ratio of energy exiting the engine as heat to heat energy input. This principle is so fundamental that it is not afected by presence or absence of working fluids or moving parts.

HMMMMM radiation. I estimate my winter radon level hits 40. I think thats about 5 packs of cigarettes a day equivalance.

They say more people die from radon than car accidents.

I just finished installing my permanant radon waste removal system. I'm going to see how efficient it is in a couple days.

I was curious what was under my basement slab. I was expecting to see gravel. I just get a sany mixture and it goes way down. I I did not find dirt at 12 inches. I wonder if that was some kind of mill crud they put in there.

greg

snipped-for-privacy@zekfrivolous.com (GregS) wrote in news:i8vbr1$52c$ snipped-for-privacy@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu:

older plants may not have the newest technologies.