From the DAILY CALLER

Owen Klinsky
Contributor

A shuttered nuclear power plant with a checkered past will partially be coming back online after Microsoft obtained a deal to purchase energy from one of the plant’s reactors, according to a Friday press release.

The 20-year power purchase agreement, which the tech giant secured with Constellation Energy, would bring back the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania — the site of a 1979 meltdown that resulted in a large-scale evacuation of nearby pregnant women and school-age children. The project aims to provide power for Microsoft data centers as tech companies push to expand electricity production to support their artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud storage needs, the release says. (RELATED: Biden-Harris Admin’s Multi-Billion Dollar Electric School Bus Program Is A Huge Gift To China, House Report Finds)

“Powering industries critical to our nation’s global economic and technological competitiveness, including data centers, requires an abundance of energy that is carbon-free and reliable every hour of every day, and nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise,” Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation, stated in the release alongside Microsoft. “We look forward to bringing [the Three Mile Island plant] back with a new name and a renewed mission to serve as an economic engine for Pennsylvania.”

The agreement would bring back Unit 1 at Three Mile Island, which was shuttered in 2019 for “economic reasons,” according to Constellation’s statement. Unit 1 is adjacent to the Unit 2 reactor that caused the worst nuclear meltdown in U.S. history on March 28, 1979, which results in 40% of people evacuating the area.

The Three Mile Island power plant will have a capacity of 835 megawatts, enough to power more than 700,000 homes. It is expected to create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs, according to the press release.

The decision to reopen the Three Mile Island reactor comes as tech companies are increasingly looking to nuclear energy to power their AI and data center needs, with Amazon Web Services spending $650 million on a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania earlier this year. The trend could affect power grid reliability and affordability as it provides the businesses with “first dibs” on electricity, Pennsylvania Consumer Advocate Patrick Cicero told the WSJ in July.

Nuclear power has aroused public suspicion, largely due to incidents like Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl, in which reactor meltdowns caused radiation to flood areas surrounding nuclear power plants. However, it could be a viable pathway to reducing emissions and accomplishing the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of having the U.S. power sector reach net-zero emissions by 2035.

“This is a valuable opportunity to invest in clean, carbon-free and affordable power — on the heels of the hottest year in Earth’s history,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Tom Mehaffie said in the Constellation press release. “This will transform the local economy and presents a rare opportunity to power our economy with reliable clean energy that we can count on.”

Constellation and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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September 21, 2024 at 08:05AM

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

Electric cars are up to twice as expensive as petrol or diesel vehicles to run, new figures have suggested.

Running an electric vehicle (EV) can cost more than 24p per mile, while a diesel vehicle is 12.5p.

It costs as much as 80p per kilowatt hour to charge an EV using a rapid or ultra-rapid device on the roadside, according to data from the app ZapMap.

A typical electric car will travel 3.3 miles for every kWh of electricity used, meaning rapid and ultra-rapid chargers currently cost the equivalent of 24.1p per mile, calculations by The Times suggest.

Slower chargers cost 16.4p per mile.

This is about double the average diesel car, which will do 43 miles per gallon, resulting in a cost of 12.5p per mile at current prices. A typical petrol car costs 14.5p per mile, according to the analysis.

A return journey from London to Penzance would cost £148 in an electric car using rapid chargers, The Times said, compared with £77 in a diesel car and £89 using petrol.

It added that at-home charging is much cheaper, at less than a third of the price of the average rapid charger.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/20/electric-cars-cost-double-petrol-diesel-2024/

Once again the Telegraph ignores the issue of fuel duties, which make up nearly a half of the cost of filling up with petrol and diesel.

Sooner or later EV drivers will have to pay tax too. In effect this means that the real running cost of EVs, using public chargers, is four times as expensive.

Even home charging barely works out any cheaper.

But that is not the real issue. The millions of drivers without offstreet parking are going to be paying through the nose. Indeed, this cost, the cost of buying an EV, along with the sheer hassle of queuing up at chargers will probably make owning a car an impossibility for many people.

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September 21, 2024 at 05:37AM

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

Norwegian energy giant Equinor has scrapped plans to produce so-called blue hydrogen, citing high costs and insufficient demand.

The move will raise concerns over Equinor’s plans in the UK, where it is heavily involved in a number of hydrogen projects.

It had pledged to generate low-carbon hydrogen from natural gas, known as blue hydrogen, in combination with carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Norway. The hydrogen produced would then be exported to hydrogen-ready power plants in Germany.

The project would have included building the world’s first offshore hydrogen pipeline.

The problem for Equinor’s German project was that it could not find enough customers to buy the hydrogen it proposed to produce.

Mr Eidsvold said Equinor also couldn’t continue maturing the projects without firm long-term commitments from European buyers to import hydrogen.

He said: “We are not able to make this kind of investment when we don’t have long-term agreements and the markets in place.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/21/norwegian-oil-giant-equinor-abandons-blue-hydrogen-plans/

It’s the old, vicious circle!

There is no natural market for bulk hydrogen because it is far more expensive than natural gas.

Hence Equinor can only sell it if customers in Germany receive massive govt subsidies to do so.

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September 21, 2024 at 05:26AM

Nettlecombe Field Studies Council (above) 51.13076 -3.35005 Met Office assessed CIMO Class 5 & Satisfactory Installed 1/1/1968 {Image courtesy Peter Stevens from Google Street view.}

Nettlecombe Birds Hill 51.11779 -3.34946 Met Office assessments not known. Installed 1/1/1968 closed 10/7/2012 but still apparently in situ.

There are multiple issues with the current “Nettlecombe Field Studies Council” site which become further confused by the Met Office simultaneously opening a second weather station known as “Netllecombe Birds Hill” approximately 1,400 metres away and their dual operation for 44 years.

Analysis of the current Field Studies Council (FSC) site is an object lesson in how not to run a reliable recording station.

Here is the aerial image of the FSC site.

Accurate monitoring of weather recording sites is imperative to ensure extraneous heat sources liable to distort readings are kept well away from the Stevenson Screen. This manual reporting site has readings taken by the staff at the FSC – So why on earth do staff of the responsible body choose to park multiple vehicles by the screen?

This vehicle parking is not a one off situation, of the 8 historic aerial images since 2001 shown on Google Earth Pro, 6 show vehicles parked in the vicinity of the Screen. Such regular parking naturally leaves marks, ruts and indicators on the grass verge which would be clearly visible during any site inspection. Why are the Met office inspectors not noticing this and taking action. The vehicles may well be static warming up engines and passenger compartments for considerable periods in colder weather and similarly in hot weather to activate the air conditioning to cool the cabins. Two of the above vehicles shown are 12 seater “minibuses”. The close exhaust emissions will unquestionably have a significant effect on temperature readings as per the Motherwell Strathclyde Park fiasco.

This leads on to the observing standards and site’s record keeping in general. The “Remarks” section of the CEDA archive indicates 50 entries of “Missing DATA” variously where “STAFF TOO BUSY”, “: No trained staff available to take readings”, “no one available” , ” Staff away” , etc. This is definitely not an indication of dedicated staff and devotion to duty. I personally find it hard to accept given this “track record” that when readings are actually taken these can be guaranteed as “reliable” and taken by adequately trained and committed staff. This site is Class 5 by siting and unsatisfactory by operation.

Moving on to Nettlecombe Birds Hill, the most recent aerial image from google indicates the site is still there despite “closure” twelve years ago.

The site is surrounded by woodland but at least considerably distant from extraneous artificial heat sources, however, a clue to a problem lies in the site name of “Birds HILL”. Weather stations should, wherever possible, be located on flat land. This site most certainly is not flat at all as can be seen from the Ordnance Survey map of the area. The station is on an unacceptably steep slope.

This was also a manually recording site and though I have not been able to ascertain exactly by whom there is a remarkable similarity to the FSC site i.e. “STAFF TOO BUSY”

Remarks such as “DUE TO THE SCREEN DOOR BEING LEFT OPEN ALL AIR TEMP VALUES HAVE BEEN DELETED” really do not fill me with confidence in the quality of the observing staff’s competence.

N.B. this issue of leaving Screens open is remarkably common, this street view image below is of Threave weather station in Kirkcudbrightshire and there are other examples. Given street view images are not taken that frequently it seems quite surprising for them to catch images of open screens…but they do.

Thus the Met Office chose to simultaneously site two new manually reporting stations within 1,400 metres of each other, both of highly questionable siting, subject to poor reporting standards and yet continued to run them simultaneously for 44 years. One still operates and the other (Birds Hill) probably still could. This just seems an expensive way to produce unreliable and often unusable data for no obvious benefit – certainly not value for taxpayer money. Again I feel I have to ask….why?

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September 21, 2024 at 04:25AM