On Tue, 02 Dec 2003 15:10:57 -0500, Greg <
[email protected]> wrote:
>Lloyd Parker wrote:
>
>> In article <[email protected]>, John S <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >z wrote:
>> >
>> >> [email protected] (Brent P) wrote in message
>> news:<O0Lyb.274685$ao4.944751@attbi_s51>...
>> >> > In article <[email protected]>, z wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > > They are going to move production of CO2 to China? All those
>> >> > > inefficient old coal-fired power plants are going to China?
>> >> >
>> >> > What is better? An old inefficient regulated to be as clean as feasiable
>> >> > coal power plant in the USA feeding a factory with electricity or a
>> >> > quick-and-dirty-old-tech-soviet-style coal plant in china feeding a
>> >> > factory? Which is better for the environment?
>> >> >
>> >> > And why do we have old coal plants in the USA? Because any new plants
>> >> > are opposed on environmental grounds. And new and better means of
>> >> > generation are opposed on environmental grounds. So what we get
>> >> > is the status quo. The status quo remains because change is not
>> >> > possible.
>> >>
>> >> Yeah, the old rightwing fantasy factory rides again. Do you recall the
>> >> Clean Air Act? Do you recall that the power companies piteously pled
>> >> for and were granted an exemption for their old coal and oil fuelled
>> >> plants, since the power companies promised that they were going to be
>> >> all mothballed soon anyway and it would be purely wasteful to upgrade
>> >> them for the short time they will be in operation? Well, it's thirty
>> >> years later now, and here in CT, half the electricity is still being
>> >> produced by those old 'soon to be mothballed' plants, known locally as
>> >> the Filthy Five. This is not because the utility companies are just
>> >> dying to build some expensive clean new plants and the
>> >> environmentalists just won't let them. It's purely because it's much
>> >> cheaper to run these monstrosities unmodified than it is to build new
>> >> plants, despite the environmentalists screaming to trade them for
>> >> clean new plants or else update them. The Reagan and Bush I
>> >> administrations refused to enforce the part of the Clean Air Act that
>> >> requires the companies to install upgraded pollution controls if they
>> >> were doing significant expansions to the plants, in contrast to
>> >> routine maintenance, allowing the Filthy Five to actually expand their
>> >> filthy emissions. The Clinton administration finally starts to enforce
>> >> this provision, and what happens? The Bush junta reverses the
>> >> enforcement decision. And in response to this boondoggle, the
>> >> utilities raise their rates 10%.
>> >
>> >That's not true at all. First of all, the Bush I administration SIGNED the
>> Clean Air Act
>> >amendments in 1990 into law, which strenghthened, not weakened the Clean Air
>> Act. Secondly, the
>> >act was and is being enforced. The act was designed to require NEW PLANTS
>> (new sources) to have
>> >much more stringent controls with updated technology. Older plants would be
>> initially exempted
>> >because of common sense economics. However pollution from these older palnts
>> would then be capped
>> >and traded, so plants pay for their negative externalities (pollution) and
>> production is shifted to
>> >the most efficient (by this I mean less polluting) plants because they are
>> cheaper to operate due
>> >to the cost of pollution credits. In this way all plants use the most
>> advanced pollution controls
>> >available to them. Eventually the older plants are shut down or upgraded
>> (when they WOULD be
>> >subject to New Source controls) because they are too expensive to operate or
>> they get too old to
>> >operate anyway.
>> >
>> >The problem is that the Clinton administration started treating routine
>> maintenance on plants as
>> >"new source" creation, which was contrary to the actual written law.
>>
>> Wrong. They started treating major modifications as new sources, which was
>> exactly what the law allowed (and required).
>
>MAJOR modifications. Not minor improvements which would INCREASE efficiency, such
>as a new version of wear items such as turbine blades.
>
>> If during 10 years of routine
>> maintenance you replace each part, you've got a new source, yet under your and
>> Bush's plan, it'd never trigger the latest pollution controls because you
>> replaced it one piece at a time, as part of each year's maintenance.
>
>No. The law clearly states that merely replacing parts is NOT new source. Try
>becoming familiar with what you talk about.
>
>>
>>
>> Treating it this way
>> >subjected the plants specifically exempted from the statue to the
>> requirements of new plants.
>>
>> But if the plants get modified instead of just "serviced and cleaned", that's
>> precisely what the law intended. That's why the EPA sued a number of utility
>> companies, why a number of them settled, and why the suits continued until
>> Bush decided to "reinterpet" the law just this year.;
>
>Actually all Bush did was interpret the law exactly as it was WRITTEN in the
>statue, and had been enforced pre Browner and friends.
>
>>
>>
>> ?This
>> >had the perverse incentive of indicating to plant owners that routine
>> maintenance is a BAD IDEA to
>> >do, because the Government will come after you for doing it. Better to defer
>> maintenance and not
>> >keep plants in the most effiicent manner they can be reasonably operated in.
>> But the effect of
>> >this is that when routine maintenance and minor upgrades become to expensive
>> because of overzealous
>> >regulation, the effect is that nothing is done and instead the most polluting
>> plants are left in
>> >operation as is, with no improvements all. The WSJ has reported extensively
>> on this, and
>>
>> The WSJ never met an environmental reg it liked, because it never met a
>> corporate profit it didn't want increased.
>
>What on earth are you babbling about? You can't make your argument with actual
>facts, so you attack/smear the messenger. Try actually reading the WSJ for once
>in your life and you would know that you are wrong as when you said that Daimler
>Chrysler was the only foreign company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, as if
>Sony of Japan (NYSE:SNE) or Deutsch Bank AG (NYSE: DB) and others didn't even
>exist!
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> >specifically about how the Clinton EPA chief was upset that plants were TOO
>> CLEAN because they
>> >needed something to rail against to publicity. This was all recorded in
>> memos.
>>
>> It was not.
>
> Wrong, the Wall Street Journal printed some of these memos not too long ago. And
>those were the ones that did not get quietly destroyed by Browner on the last full
>day of the Clinton adminstration. ABC News reported on April 30 2001 that Clinton
>EPA Administrator Browner had ordered her records and hard drives destroyed,
>against US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth's order. I guess the Clinton
>Administration is good in your eyes for Enron style shredding. The philosophy of
>the Clinton EPA was to do grandstanding rulemaking, without required legislation
>or even sound policies. Let me guess, now you're going to start saying how ABC
>News is really just a shill. too. Ha!
>
>>
>>
>> >
>> >The Bush plan restores the EPA's mandated New Source Review. But it's easier
>> for people to make
>> >silly attacks on Bush, because they cannot comprehend the actual laws, the
>> reason why they were
>> >written, the actual effects that they have, the effect of enforcing non-laws,
>> or what is going on
>> >in general.
>>
>> Next you'll be telling us how good Bush is for the environment! LOL!
>
>A lot better than his predecessor, who created perverse incentives for plants NOT
>to get cleaner, and HALTED dead brush cleanup in forests so that they could become
>tinderboxes for massive fires. Bush is giving us low sulfur diesel fuel, the low
>arsenic water standard which Clinton denied drinkers in 1996, and Bush's EPA is
>forcing General Electric to clean up PCBs for the entire Hudson River. Thanks for
>all those fires, Mr. Clinton. Thanks for conveniently destroying the government
>records on the way out too. Glad you were so proud of your record that you needed
>to erase it.
>
>I'll repost that story that was posted before, because you conveniently forgot to
>comment on it!
>
> "In one famous case, DTE Energy Corp., parent of Detroit Edison Co., tried to
>replace older, less efficient propeller blades in several steam turbines at its
>biggest coal-fired plant. The new blades were 15% more efficient than the old,
>meaning they could generate 15% more power using the same amount of energy--more
>power, less pollution. But the Clinton EPA threatened to invoke New Source Review
>anyway, so the plan was scrapped.
When you make a turbine more efficient ( and they are called turbine
blades, turbines do not have propellers) by 15%, which is radical by
the way , DOES NOT mean that you will output 15% more power. It means
that you will output the same megawatts for 15% less fuel burned in
the boiler.
You cannot upgrade a turbine and force the generator to have a higher
output. The whole thing, turbine and generator is called a gen set.
Get it? 135 meg. gen. will only put 135 megs. out.
By the way do you know the cost to reblade a 135 megawatt turbine?
A 135 is a baby turbine think about the cost of a 1000 megawatt
reblade.
I know that the inner, high pressure shell for a 135 G.E. turbine (19
stages) was $2,000,000 and two years wait ten yrs.ago.
In order to reblade a complete turbine maybe 44-48 stages, all the
diaphragms, nozzle block, steam packings ,etc. would need to be
replaced. At this point you would have a more efficient turbine but
that old ass boiler would still puke crap into the air because it was
not made any cleaner and you would still be limited in your output by
the generator.
Power companies do not make turbines more efficient to be good guys
they do it to save FUEL costs.
Reblading a turbine is a thing not normally done.
Would you be so kind as to post where I could read this "one famous
case" as I was a turbine machinist for 15 yrs. and would like to see
what in gods' name they did to achieve this kind of gain.
Has to be more than reblading the wheel.
thanx
> Not that Detroit Edison and others are avoiding heavy pollution-fighting
>expenses. At the very same plant, Detroit Edison is spending $650 million to meet
>new nitrogen oxide standards--an expense that won't generate a single new kilowatt
>of electricity.
>
> Bureaucrats, of course, interpret such a rational response to perverse rules as a
>sign of corporate greed. So when the Clinton administration found that at least
>80% of the nation's utilities were violating its New Source Review guidelines, it
>didn't bother to ask whether something might be wrong with its policies. It simply
>filed an avalanche of lawsuits demanding huge fines.
>
>Yet EPA data clearly show that emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, the
>two main industrial pollutants, have declined substantially despite a tripling of
>coal usage. Future Clean Air targets will reduce emissions a further 50%." -WSJ
>11/26/02
>
>
