Oregon's Renewable Share Fell After Trojan Nuclear Plant Was Shut and Replaced With Fossil Fuels.

[NNadir]

Oregon, with its huge renewable resources, including deserts for solar, volcanoes for geothermal, seacoast for wind and wave power, and a huge lumber industry for biomass, shut the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in 1993 after years of ardent opposition by the public.

The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant - one of the worst performers in the US nuclear fleet - produced 12.1% of Oregon's power in 1993, the last year of its operation.

The opposition to the nuclear power plant was accompanied by vast evocations of the utility of renewable energy. Actually I didn't bother to research this contention at all, but I assert it anyway. How do I know? Because conversations about shutting "dangerous" nuclear plants are always accompanied by discussions of solar, wind, and biomass energy, even though solar and wind energy are, unlike nuclear or coal, not continuous forms of energy and thus are not competitors of nuclear energy at all.

Because of some of these irrational moves to shut nuclear power plants have actually succeeded in a gross demonstration of public ignorance, the contentions about whether nuclear energy will or can be replaced by renewable energy can be tested.

I have already shown that in Maine, the shutdown of a nuclear power plant led to it be replaced by fossil fuel burning.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=65437#65815

Today I was reminded that the nuclear power plant in Oregon had also been shut. So what replaced it?

The data is right here for anyone to read.

In 1990, when the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant operated, it provided 12.1% of Oregon's electricity as mentioned. Eighty-one point two percent of Oregon's electricity was provided by hydroelectric power in that year, and 1.8% was provided by "other" renewables, including geothermal, wind, and solar (as well as trash incineration), all of which were undoubtedly evoked as alternatives to the nuclear plant by the poor pixilated plant opponents. Fossil fuels at that point provided just 4.3% of Oregon's electrical power, lead by coal at 2.1%.

In 2004, ten years after the first year without the Trojan plant on line, the figures had changed. Nuclear produced 0%. Hydroelectric produced 64% and "other" renewables produced a still modest 2.3%, or just 0.5% more than it had when the plant was shut more than a decade earlier. Thus overall, hydroelectric + "other renewables," the renewable share fell to 66.7% from 83.6% Fossil fuels made up the balance, having increased to a whopping 33% of the power produced in Oregon. Coal use nearly tripled in percentage terms, rising to 6.9%. The balance was all natural gas, natural gas being a fuel that is unacceptably dangerous owing to the reality of global climate change.

The data is here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/sept05or.xls

It is always the case that when a nuclear power plant is shut, it is replaced by fossil fuels, irrespective of what nonsense about renewables is bandied around in the lead up to the shutting of the plant.

As for conservation, Oregon has been relatively successful. Electricity demand increased only by 6% in that period and has actually declined since 2000. In the same period overall US electricity demand rose by 77%.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/sept08or.xls

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table62.xls

[BeFree]

1. Good deal

That they closed down that dangerous nuke plant. Too bad that people are still using more energy, tho. The best thing we can do is to decrease the use of polluting energy sources, especially the long term nuke pollution sources.

[Dead_Parrot]

2. Yeah, every nuke plant shut down is huge leap forward.

BTW, let us know which planet you are living on, because when we've finished turning Earth into a giant fucking cinder all 6,500,000,000 of us are coming to crash out at your place.

[BeFree]

5. Yep. Nukes are the most dangerous

In fact if we were all nuke, we'd have probably destroyed the planet already. There is a reason only robots handle the nuke wastes, eh?

[Dead_Parrot]

8. Cool...

Guess I can stop worrying about the rising seas, dwindling freshwater, expanding deserts, dying oceans and the aussie farmers blowing their brains out because it hasn't rained for years. All of that pales into insignificance when you consider robots handling nuclear material!


Ahh!!! The horror!!!

Out of interest, which bit do you find more terrifying - the prospect of nuclear robots throwing off their shackles and taking over the world with thier radioactive death-rays, or the fact that nuclear waste is actually handled (as opposed to, let's say, just being dumped into the atmosphere to fuck the entire planet)?

[BeFree]

9. No, keep worrying

But banish the idea that nuclear power is gonna save the planet. It is not gonna help save the planet from man's degredation.

My point is that the nuke waste material is so dangerous that no wise man would dare touch the stuff. And it stays dengerous for how many thousands of years?

Now, if you want to attribute all climate ills to co2, go ahead, but realize there are many factors which make the rain fall.

You nukies seem to have this religion thing going with the nukes as your leader. Frankly, it is quite disturbing!

[NNadir]

3. The Nuke plant was dangerous?

By what criteria? Can you name one person injured by the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant?


They are burning more coal. Coal is more dangerous than nuclear power will ever be. It is a nonsense (and frankly deadly) assertion to claim otherwise.


Here, not that you will either believe it or give a shit or be able to muster a rational conclusion about it, is a description of the impact of fossil fueled power plants in Oregon: http://www.cleartheair.org/regional/or/

Some excerpts, not that you give a fuck:

Global warming is just one of the many public health and environmental problems caused by the country's old, dirty power plants. Today, the nation is facing a health crisis from power plant pollution. Every year power plants spew billions of tons of pollution into our air. Nationally, 50 percent of electricity comes from coal, but coal-fired power plants are responsible for the lion's share of dangerous pollution from the electric power industry. Within the electric power industry, these plants generate:

97 percent of deadly fine particle soot and sulfur dioxide emissions;
92 percent of smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions;
86 percent of emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary global warming pollutant; and
almost 100 percent of toxic mercury emissions.
Moreover, power plants are responsible for more than 68 percent of the total annual emissions of sulfur dioxide, the primary ingredient of deadly fine particle pollution, from all sources, including cars and trucks...

...

These people are now opposing the new natural gas plants with the same bullshit about solar and wind, because the natural gas is (surprise) dangerous:

http://www.oregontoxics.org/sov_plant_facts.html

HUMAN HEALTH CONCERNS



• Recent research has linked exposure to relatively low concentrations of particulate matter to premature death. Death rates increase 8% - 17% for every 100μ/m3 in particulate matter at the level of PM10 (New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 329, No. 24, 1993). WCE will add a potential 70μ/m3 of air particulates to the local airshed. The additional air particulate pollution from proposed plant could result in increased death rates in Lane County.


• Particles of this size can lodge deep in the lungs, aggravating asthma, heart disease, and other circulatory and respiratory conditions (DEQ Fact Sheet, May 2002). Health problems for sensitive people can get worse if they are exposed to high levels of PM for several days in a row. An increase in air particulates is associated with increased hospital admissions and emergency room visits for people with heart and lung disease.



• According to the Oregon Lung Association, 39,820 people in Lane County are already at-risk for suffering from lung diseases that are aggravated by poor air quality. 4,082 of these are children 14 years and younger with asthma.



• Nitrogen Oxide 401.2 tons/year


Nitrogen oxides can irritate the lungs and lower resistance to respiratory infections such as influenza. Nitrogen oxides are an important precursor to smog, ozone and acid rain.



• Sulphur Dioxide 51.8 tons/year


The major health concerns associated with exposure to high concentrations of SO2 include effects on breathing, respiratory...

So on and so on, not, again, that you give a fuck.

It doesn't matter that the "pretend" squad in now opposing the gas plant is muttering the same platitudes about wind, solar, blah, blah, blah that they offered when they shut the safe and clean Trojan Nuclear Power plant.

They are no less full of wishful thinking lies than they were in 1993. There was no replacement of the Trojan Plant with renewable energy and there will be no replacement of the natural gas with renewable energy. The contention that there would be such replacement was a fraud then and it is a fraud now. Renewable energy is losing ground in Oregon, not gaining it. Everybody loves the idea of renewable energy, but the fact is that a time comes when you have to put up or shut up. That time is long past. Predictions about the grand renewable future have been experimentally discredited. You may assert that the nuclear plant was "dangerous," but you are merely asserting that you are ignorant of what "dangerous" actually means and that you can't understand basic data. This is hardly a surprise. You have never shown the slightest ability whatsoever to comprehend data.

Closing the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant cost lives, and that's not even counting what global climate change will do. Nuclear power saves lives almost everywhere it operates because nuclear power is a success at displacing fossil fuels, all of which are widely understood to be unacceptably dangerous. Within a decade, mostly because the world doesn't give a fuck what the morally and intellectually discredited anti-nuclear movement thinks, the world will be producing half as much energy by nuclear means as it does by coal. More than 230 new nuclear power plants are on the horizon and there is nothing you can do about it. The fact remains that every nuclear plant that has been shut without being replaced by another nuclear plant has been replaced with fossil fuels, one hundred percent of the time. When a nuclear power plant is shut, more people die than would have happened otherwise.

[BeFree]

4. I can tell, can't you?

We disagree. In fact, you disagree with probably 99% of the people.

The nuclear waste that would be produced would be the worst pollution ever foisted on the planet. If we were to use the same amount of resources to figure out how to make solar work that we have building nukes, we'd all be wired into the sun by now. And a lot safer.

[stevedeshazer]

6. Your argument would perhaps be better received with a more civil tone.

What's your stake in Trojan?

[NNadir]

7. You are making an assumption that contrasts with my experience.

There is no merit whatsoever in my opinion in addressing foolishness with civility. I've been at this for many decades and I am fully aware of what does and does not work on this issue. I am satisfied by my personal and public conversations that many people have, in fact, been convinced by my arguments.

I have no stake in Trojan, since Trojan has been mindlessly destroyed. There is no Trojan and therefore no one has a stake in it.

My stake in climate change is different however. Climate change involves all humanity. I point out the case about Trojan to prevent such stupidity from being repeated, since the events like Trojan have made it less likely that humanity - which includes by the way my children - will survive. I am arguing - and I see no reason to reverse my position - that before the reactor was mindlessly destroyed, all of humanity had a stake in Trojan, just as all of humanity has a stake in the 30 exajoule of primary energy that nuclear power produces with a trivial greenhouse gas impact.

[BeFree]

11. Climate change

You don't care about climate change, you just want more nukes.

You have hardly addressed the airplane factor involved in high atmosphere co2. When I posted a link from your reaganite friends over at DOE concerning transportation involvement in co2 depositions you turned and ran away.

You don't understand, or even want to know, it seems, half of the environmental variables.... all you do is wail for more nukes.

A blind, religious like longing for nukes is all I see. Sad.

[NNadir]

12. I am not interested in your theories about aircraft.

Your familiarity with scientific concepts is next to zero in my opinion and I feel no compunction whatsoever to address points you raise. They, like everything else you say and everything you have said over the years you wander in here, are silly.

As is typical, you present no data, and if you did, it would come most likely from silly website put on the internet by pathetic rubes who also lack a scientific education and who also spectacularly incompetent to interpret the data. Invariably the puerile assertions of the anti-nuclear crowd are presented as fiat and do not stand up to critical examination of even the most cursory sort. For a time this enjoyed a bye from a credulous public fed by a credulous media, but no more.

Serious environmentalists are building many hundreds of reactors.

[BeFree]

13. Yeah, just ignore it

The very fact that airplanes in the upper atmosphere spew co2 where there never was any spewed before and there are no environmental agents to clean up the co2 so it just increases, is enough to make anyone who really cares about global warming to raise alarms. But what do you do? Ignore it. Some scientist you are, eh?

[NNadir]

14. Again, no data, no intellectual heft.

I am always amused when people who know no science, you and JohnWxy come to mind, make stuff up and then expect me to respond.

If you knew any science, and you don't, you would be able to do a simple Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution calculate which would obviate the absurdity of your "concern," such as it is. Maybe you think the CO₂ molecules are hauled into the ionsphere by little strings attached to the ex-planet Pluto?

You weren't, by the way, involved in the movement to prevent contrails from controlling our brain waves, were you? :rofl: It wouldn't surprise me to see that you are.

[BeFree]

15. I don't claim to be a *scientist*

But you do. And from where I sit your kind of science is what I call *tech-no-logic*. Your kind of science is what has gotten us into this mess. Your kind of science is what has produced the environmental ills facing the planet and now you just ignore that reality and insist on more of your science to get out from under the burden.

Its like some kind of religion, this science of your's.

It is discouraging to note -- given that you resort to personal attacks to further your cause, the similarity to bushco's way of politics. Or you could call it nuclear-nazism, take your pick.

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. A reduction in the use of hydropower was not due to shutting down trojan

I don't disagree with your main point, but this is something that needs to be clarified.

Hydropower production was decreased in the 90's because of concern about salmon egress. This, not closing trojan, is the primary causal factor of a shift to fossil fuels.

[depakid]

16. Trojan was a disaster

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission considered the plant unsafe, and in fact it leaked from cracked steam pipes on at least one occasion. It was a boondoggle from the outset, poorly sited and it cost the ratepayers plenty.

Good riddance to that piece of crap.

[NNadir]

17. Of course, rational people consider the replacement unsafe.

The gas plants that replaced it continuously leaks carbon dioxide into the air and, given that natural gas is an unacceptably dangerous fuel, has been a boondoggle from the start.

In fact the coal industry, which has also replaced part the Trojan Nuclear Power plant's output has been a boondoggle from the start, up to the present and far into the future.

It is an exceptionalist argument to say that the Trojan Nuclear Power plant, with all of its faults - and there were many - was worse than what has replaced it. Unlike the Trojan plant, what has replaced it has not lead to theoretical loss of life but to actual loss of life.

It is stunning, absolutely stunning, how often this obvious reality is missed. In fact there is a rather dubious to attempt to view all events involving nuclear energy in isolation. The fatal question never asked is "dangerous compared to what?" I don't know that the nuclear regulatory commission asked that question. It is almost certain that they didn't ask the question, since the public irrationally demands that standards that would never be applied to any other energy industry be applied only to the nuclear industry.

The statement that steam pipes leaked only has meaning if someone was as badly injured by that event. It would still be an exceptionalist argument if the person killed by said leak was killed because of something unique to steam generated at nuclear facilities. If of course, the leak at Trojan had killed someone - and it didn't - there would be millions of websites all over the internet discussing it endlessly as evidence for the morally and intellecutally absurd position that nuclear power is worse than coal. There are steam leaks all over the world in natural gas plants and coal plants, but nobody has a routine familiarity with them, so that they can recall the event instaneously. A single death there at the Trojan Nuclear Power plant would have generated as many websites as are devoted to Karen Silkwood, maybe more. One can read all sorts of information about Three Mile Island's accident, for instance, and nobody was injured. On the other hand, you can't find a single person to give a shit if ten thousand people drop dead in Oregon from air pollution. If you wish to deny that the air pollution in Oregon generated by the increased reliance on fossil fuels was somehow worse than the leaky pipes at the nuclear plant, you are being purely ridiculous and arbitrary. This is not very surprising. All anti-nuclear arguments are exceptionalist and arbitrary. All claim that it is morally justifiable to view nuclear power plants - including Trojan - in isolation from their alternatives.

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy. This is why the world has rejected the antinuclear argument wholesale. It is irrational and based on the exclusion of all negative information except information about nuclear plants. That was true in Oregon in 1993 just as it is true around the world today. The shutting of the Trojan Nuclear Power plant killed human beings who would otherwise be alive today. That is my point. Every statement made by the opponents about safety - including the statement that the plant's energy would be replaced by renewable energy - has been proved wrong by events.