Thanks for another great article that changed my opinion by informing me. Your and Smil’s writing has a lot in common, and my favorite quality is the directness of it.
Greens don't support shale for the same reason they were sour on nukes. I'm an engineer and I have always been pro-nuclear and pro-gas. They aren't technically orientated, Neither are most of these Silicon Valley "engineers". I just read your review of Andreeson's Manifesto, which led me to read what he wrote. He is one of those idiots who seem to think "fusion" is somehow different from "nuclear" power.
I'm a big fan of gas because we need gas. We can replace coal with a combination of nukes, solar, and wind--as long was we have gas. What makes gas special? Internal combustion (IC) in optimized turbines. IC is what drives your car and trains. IC efficiency is low (unless you have a hybrid). The reason is IC engines in regular cars have to operate at a variety of speeds. In a hybrid (or a diesel locomotive, which have been hybrids from more than half a century) the engine runs as the constant rate (the most efficiency one) to charge a battery that drives electric motors to power the vehicle. (Hybrid cars are a bit more complicated in that the IC engine actually powers the car with the electric motors boosting power during acceleration. This is WAY harder than what trains do, which is why it took so long, but that is what real tech can do).
Getting back to my point, there is no need to speed up or slow down in electrical power generation. Here you have the most efficient IC engine (a turbine) burn a precise mix of gas and air to produce work (converted to power via a generator) at high efficiency. Gas IC turbines perform better than the steam turbines used for coal and nuke plants.
And they are lower cost, All three plants need turbines and generators. Thats all the gas plants need. The coal plants need a boiler to produce the steam. The nuke plant needs a heat exchanger to produce the steam, which then needs *another* exchanger that interfaces with the reactor core. This exchanger becomes radioactive, which is why IT, not the reactor core, plays the role of boiler in the coal plant. This is one reason nuke plants are pricey. And this same thing would be true for fusion plants.
Thanks for another great article that changed my opinion by informing me. Your and Smil’s writing has a lot in common, and my favorite quality is the directness of it.
Smil is one of my favorite authors. I am flattered that you put our two names in the same sentence.
H/t @Green Leap Forward @Michael Magoon
Great piece, we missed Michael.
Interesting. Is production in the Marcellus still growing faster than the Permian, or are we reading graph wrong?
I am not sure whether it is growing faster, but Marcellus produces more natural gas than Permian.
Greens don't support shale for the same reason they were sour on nukes. I'm an engineer and I have always been pro-nuclear and pro-gas. They aren't technically orientated, Neither are most of these Silicon Valley "engineers". I just read your review of Andreeson's Manifesto, which led me to read what he wrote. He is one of those idiots who seem to think "fusion" is somehow different from "nuclear" power.
I'm a big fan of gas because we need gas. We can replace coal with a combination of nukes, solar, and wind--as long was we have gas. What makes gas special? Internal combustion (IC) in optimized turbines. IC is what drives your car and trains. IC efficiency is low (unless you have a hybrid). The reason is IC engines in regular cars have to operate at a variety of speeds. In a hybrid (or a diesel locomotive, which have been hybrids from more than half a century) the engine runs as the constant rate (the most efficiency one) to charge a battery that drives electric motors to power the vehicle. (Hybrid cars are a bit more complicated in that the IC engine actually powers the car with the electric motors boosting power during acceleration. This is WAY harder than what trains do, which is why it took so long, but that is what real tech can do).
Getting back to my point, there is no need to speed up or slow down in electrical power generation. Here you have the most efficient IC engine (a turbine) burn a precise mix of gas and air to produce work (converted to power via a generator) at high efficiency. Gas IC turbines perform better than the steam turbines used for coal and nuke plants.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_01.html
And they are lower cost, All three plants need turbines and generators. Thats all the gas plants need. The coal plants need a boiler to produce the steam. The nuke plant needs a heat exchanger to produce the steam, which then needs *another* exchanger that interfaces with the reactor core. This exchanger becomes radioactive, which is why IT, not the reactor core, plays the role of boiler in the coal plant. This is one reason nuke plants are pricey. And this same thing would be true for fusion plants.