Spehro Pefhany wrote:

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 11:47:54 -0700, the renowned "Richard Henry"
wrote:


"Spehro Pefhany" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 17:45:00 -0700, the renowned Jim Thompson
wrote:

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 00:35:15 GMT, Jan Panteltje
wrote:

On a sunny day (Sun, 18 Apr 2004 01:08:04 +0100) it happened
"Newsgroups"
wrote in hQjgc.160$Jc5.69@newsfe1-win:

....snip...

It's an unusual place- the wind just whistles through the canyons
there and there are dust stoms. A fair number of them seem to be down
for maintenance whenever I go through. I wonder if it is really more
cost effective than burning coal.

That depends to some degree what you consider the "costs" of burning coal
are.

I think, other than the pollution, the costs are included in the
overall running cost (dead miners, etc. etc.). The pollution is a bit
harder to figure, but modern plants are pretty clean. I live close to
a big thermal plant and the left-wing newspapers have been running
pictures of the stacks (usually with evil lighting) saying that
"smoke" is rising blah blah. They've dug up old pictures with all 4
stacks running, and it's usually running at 25%; never more than 50%.
Of course it's mostly steam and some CO2- on a clear day you can see
nothing in the air discoloring it, just the refraction from the heat
and steam trails that rapidly dissipate. The stupid new gov't has been
making noises about closing the thermal plants *AND* the nuclear
plants- I don't know where they think the power would come from (maybe
we can buy it all and export the problem to less "responsible"
people). Bleh. Even with conservation measures and some
deindustrialization, population is growing at a healthy rate, and so
is consumption.

I assume you are talking about coal fired plants? They release particles
as well as mercury and radioactivity. There is no clean power.

--
Jerry wa2rkn no email @ present