An eclectic mix of energy and climate news from around the world compiled by Roger Andrews.
In this week’s Blowout we feature China, where the central government’s edict to cancel over 100 planned coal plants is being ignored by local authorities who are continuing to build them anyway (the follow-up story shows satellite photos). Elsewhere in the world: Trump and OPEC go head-to-head; Nord Stream 2 and Germany; coal and hydro in the US; a last-minute reprieve for the Vogtle nuclear plant; possible blackouts in Belgium; the Puerto Rico grid; solar in France; Australia’s emissions increase; a “major” UK gas discovery; Corbyn to resurrect Swansea Bay tidal; US SEC sues Elon Musk for fraud; zinc-air batteries; Faraday exchangers and how global warming makes pigs thin and lethargic.
So fusion power viability is now down to being 15 years out from the perennial 20 years.
Wonder how long that’s going to be the quoted timeframe?
Considering that ITER is behind schedule and over budget, we’ll be waiting for some time to come. Even if that reactor actually does work, it might not demonstrate that the tokamak design is feasible.
One reason is that, as I understand it, it uses hydrogen (with, I assume, traces of deuterium) as its fuel. The reaction will produce neutrons, which will be adsorbed by the vessel liner. That liner will have to be replaced due to the expansion from the presence of those particles inside the material, causing the outer layers to crack and spall.
A better alternative is inertial electrostatic confinement fusion, also known as the polywell. Its feasibility was demonstrated over 10 years go, but research funding ran out before the concept could be developed much further.
One reaction inside the polywell that deserves consideration is proton-boron fusion as the byproducts are helium–no neutrons. The protons are simply ionized hydrogen atoms and boron is commonly available in the form of borax.
speaking of Chirer, according to the current Epoch Times (a virulent anti cumuuniiiiist paper) “Trump rebukes Chirer for election interference”.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-rebukes-china-for-election-interference_2671571.html
?
dis be de same wun the TURDoo “admires” (his phrase)?
hush now, Im waiting for outrage from the *other* side of Congress.
waiting . . .
waiting . . .
waiting . . . sound of crickets . . . . . . .
L-If this surprises you. You know little about how China actually works. When regional, or even city, governments want something done. They’re inclined to do it, regardless of what Bejing says.
Since the resultant electrical production increases favour economic growth. Bejing has no motivation to ‘go to war’ with a regional government over it.
Years ago, a story about a similar construction project of a dam made the news. The regional government built the dam, only halting construction periodically when a fed. official came by.
The history of regional warlords is still an aspect of modern China. For example, when the central government cracked down on dissident students around the time of Tianamen Square protests. Student dissidents, originally from other major cities, fled there for refuge. The central government armed forces were sent out to apprehend them. Upon arrival, they’d demand that the city government arrest the dissident students and turn them over.
Some regional/city governments simply refused, stating their city’s military forces would protect it’s residents from federal incursion. The fed. armed forces simply turned and left. The federal army/government was not willing to literally ‘go to war’ with a regional power over a few dissident students.
While the central government in Bejing may have seen some political reason to endorse “action on C02 pollution”. But a high rate of economic growth is it’s major/over riding strategy to ensure national stability.
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Chinese coal-fired power plants, thought to have been cancelled because of government edicts, are still being built and are threatening to “seriously undermine” global climate goals, researchers have warned.
Satellite photos taken in 2018 of locations in China reveal cooling towers and new buildings that were not present a year earlier at plants that were meant to stop operations or be postponed by orders from Beijing.
The projects are part of an “approaching tsunami” of coal plants that would boost China’s existing coal capacity by 25%, according to the research group Coalswarm.
The total capacity of the planned coal power stations is about 259GW, bigger than the American coal fleet and “wildly out of line” with the Paris climate agreement, the group said in a new report.
“This new evidence that China’s central government hasn’t been able to stop the runaway coal-fired power plant building is alarming – the planet can’t tolerate another US-sized block of plants to be built,” said Ted Nace, executive director of CoalSwarm, which is funded by international green groups and private donations…
Oh come on. The Chinese had no intention of observing the Paris agreement in the first place.
The whole point was to bring industrial development in the west to a screeching halt for want of safe, cheap energy, allowing China to overtake the west—and put her in a position to make war on decadent western powers, and win—decades sooner than would otherwise have been possible.
While useful western idiots drew up plans for windmills, Chinese generals drew up plans for the conquest of Japan, Taiwan, Australia and Siberia.
Reminder that all the efforts of the eco-kooks did not, in fact, put a dent in pollution. All they did was move the pollution to China, and along with it, the industrial base that allowed Europeans to conquer the world.
99% non-greenfrog (or is it bulldog?) scam
https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/15e034cc-557e-4882-8bc9-495bcda9681e.png
I knew it was bull something
https://www.bullfrogpower.com/