Homestead mailing list

[ted <music AT thenightshades.com>]

on 5/30/05 8:56 PM, homestead-request AT lists.ibiblio.org at
homestead-request AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> A decomissioned plant simply doesn't supply electricity to anything.  They
> still have to have staff to keep the whatsits from doing whatever.  However,
> the plant is emitting far less now than it did when they were up and
> running.  It's been decomissioned for years and years and they still haven't
> gotten rid of the spent material or finished closing it down.

I don't understand the details, and would like to learn more, but it seems
like a decommisioned reactor is a 24/7 project- but for how long? Is it ever
really safe to walk away and leave it unattended?
> They tried bringing in a coal plant but voters stopped it.

I read a few years back that hundreds of dirty coal plants were being put
into action nationwide. Looking at the Schwarzenegger plan, they don't think
they can push a coal plant in CA past the voters there so they intend to
muscle many into nearby states (not OR as far as I can see). Just like they
diverted the Colorado.

The reason I'm calling them dirty coal plants is because, according to the
SF Chronicle lead story, if it's credible, they could make ones that turn
the exhaust into a gas that have virtually no particulate emissions. I
wonder is that coal gas, a useful fuel I believe? Or if it's a slight of
hand like the electric car where there's no emissions there but emissions as
usual somewhere else? The story was the front page lead story and entitled
"Importing Power, Exporting Pollution". This was in mid-May. It was pretty
rough on the plan. Ominously, the article stated that the only thing that
would convince CA voters to approve in-state coal plants was more rolling
blackouts. No mention was made in this article that the rolling blackouts
were a contrived scam by Enron to raise prices exponentially, but that has
been made clear in the paper in the past.

I also noticed an article in the business section where some CA city was
paying enron $40,000,000 to avoid the possibility of going to court and
losing $80,000,000 that Enron was suing for breach of contract. The city
cancelled their contract when it turned out Enron was a bunch of crooks.
Apparently, that is not entirely safe legal ground for cancelling a
contract, if it wasn't you that they ripped off! Or who knows what the
shenanigens are, but I was shocked to see that the city (a good sized, one,
Santa Clara maybe?) was capitulating to Enron even now- Enron must be in
pretty good shape to force such a situation. Amazing.

> What we need is what happened in the 70s when businesses were forced, along
> with everyone else, to reduce power use.  Try going into some of these
> businesses that have enough lights going to light a whole city.
> Lynda

The trouble is, if we were energy efficient, we couldn't hog the whole world
supply of energy and burn it up so the Russians and Chinese can't get more.
Our whole strategy is based on rampant waste.
Ted