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82 comments on The State of the (Energy) Union (and a SOTU open thread)
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CO2 sequestration is an imaginary technology.
Even if you capture the CO2 effectively, there is currently no known reliable way of storing it for geophysical time, which is the requirement.
Not only that, any potential solution would depend intimately on local geology which may not
be compatible where the coal plants otherwise need to be.
Unfortunately, I see this as a total loser.
The mentions of 'sequestration' are a greenwashing of black coal, sort of like the "hydrogen car of the future" is a distraction to preclude having to increase efficiency standards now.
Let's compare this to a nuclear fission. If you write a cheque you will get a working plant with technology well-evolved through many decades, and you know that its operation will result in almost no greenhouse emissions versus coal.
The waste instead of being gaseous is small in volume and compact solid, and easily monitored.
And in future actinide-burning reactors that waste may be fuel of its own and be transmuted to a much lower half-life.
Mineral carbonation works forever.
I doubt fossil + CO2 capture will be price competitive with nuclear power though.
If it comes out slowly over a few thousand years it will be enough. Once we finsh burning the carbon in the coal and oil, makind's CO2 emmision will plumet.
1. you can certainly ship CO2 by pipeline over hundreds of miles it is already done. And you can move it by tanker.
2. you can certainly put CO2 back underground -- Weyburn in Saskatoon does so, as does Sleipnir in Norway (under the North Sea)
3. 'geologic' sequestration really means post 2200. After 2200, we don't have any more fossil fuels to burn (in significant quantities)-- just some biomass
4. building power plants at the mouths of coal plants, and moving the power very long distances is something we already do. Happens all the time in the UK. And we don't even us DC transmission to do it, which we could do.
So the questions of where to generate the power are not insuperable.
5. a bigger problem is safety, and more specifically, local concerns about safety. That disaster in Cameroon looms large.
Oddly, 5 is exactly the issue of the nuclear industry (fear of long term geologic waste).
My problem with nuclear is that, as a technology, it has never met its cost forecasts. Not by a country mile: 300-400% more expensive than forecast. Nor is its safety record entirely clean. It is a complex technology, and all the moving parts have to work, potentially for centuries, to keep it safe.
A lot of people have looked at CSS in great detail. There is real potential there, and the costs are not out of line with electricity provided by wind or nuclear (roughly a range of 5-10 cents/ kwhr for all of these technologies). And since coal is the cheapest energy we have, we are going to keep using coal.
There's no way, for example, that China could replace all its electricity demand with nuclear. So the challenge is to clean up the fuel it is using, coal.