Michigan power plant demolished

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Originally published at: Michigan power plant demolished | Boing Boing

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Came to see the tower break about 2/3 of the way down before hitting the ground, was not disappoint.

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The more coal-fired plants taken off-line and relegated to history, the better. Perhaps keep a few de-commissioned ones as museums and memorials to humanity’s reckless disregard for the global climate, but otherwise good riddance.

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I was curious what the “more efficient replacement” is, so I looked it up. They’re putting in natural gas “peaking” generators to handle spikes in load. A lot more efficient than coal, but still fossil fuel, lest anyone get too excited. No doubt this was chosen because natural gas is cheap as hell right now thanks to fracking. So… kind of a mixed win overall.

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towers

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That was me falling into bed last night, with considerable less dust though.

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Until we can get some combination of:

  • Storage
  • Smart grid
  • Continent-wide distribution of overcapacity renewables

we’re going to have to have peaking power generation for when the wind/solar/geothermal/etc supply is not up to demand. Gas is bad but the best current alternative. It’s also expensive, and getting more so the less it’s needed.

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When it comes to energy storage, it’s likely that we’re going to need to do all the things. And a few of these thermal plants will probably be needed to burn biogas and/or hydrogen to cover the intermittancy of some renewables.

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I didn’t say otherwise. The current energy landscape is difficult, no question.

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Power plant demolition…

v3-nazis

…or NAZI SUPERCANNON?

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This makes me feel as old as Croesus. Back in another life I worked at the USEPA, attached to the Michigan-Ohio District office. While I was mainly water quality enforcement, I was in plenty of coal-fired power plants. This plant was built well after I stopped working there.

(To be compliant it would have incorporated many then-new scrubber technologies, thought ultimately there’s nothing you can do to make coal power clean.)

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