[HN Gopher] The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest sola...
___________________________________________________________________
The Ute Tribe will construct one of the largest solar farms in the
US
Author : namanyayg
Score : 305 points
Date : 2024-02-17 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ksut.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ksut.org)
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| >Officials are planning to break ground on the construction of
| the Sun Bear Solar Farm later in 2024, with the goal of producing
| electricity in 2026. Annual capacity is estimated to be about 756
| megawatts.
| loeg wrote:
| I wonder what kind of capacity factor they're using.
| dn3500 wrote:
| Yeah this is obviously wrong. They meant just capacity, not
| "annual capacity". Annual output should be around 1500 GWh.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| https://www.sunbearproject.com/
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Thanks for this link.
| Aachen wrote:
| European here. What kind of legal structure is tribe in this
| context?
|
| > "We, as the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, had been a fossil fuel
| tribe with oil and gas for a long time, probably over 50 years.
| Today, with the changes in legislation, global warming, and
| climate change, you can see the impact of what's happening to our
| world.
|
| I think I only ever heard tribe used to describe a group or maybe
| 10-30 hunter-gatherers, or perhaps the descendants of such a
| group, but this is clearly not that. It sounds more like it might
| be a municipality with jurisdiction over some city+-sized plot of
| land? Or is it like a church type of structure where anyone in
| the area can sign up to be a member? Or something completely
| different?
|
| I've tried looking up tribe but the definition I get is this
|
| > A unit of sociopolitical organization consisting of a number of
| families, clans, or other groups who share a common ancestry and
| culture and among whom leadership is typically neither formalized
| nor permanent.
|
| That doesn't sound like the type of structure to have a billion
| USD to invest. There's three definitions given but none of them
| fit the context here
| yCombLinks wrote:
| Native American groups were pushed onto reservations in the
| 1800s. They have political autonomy. The groups are called
| tribes.
| stenius wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ute_people#Reservations
| wizerdrobe wrote:
| They tend to work in a capacity similar to a US State, e.g.
| Utah itself but there is a lot of variation and nuance from
| tribe to tribe and state to state.
|
| You will run into confusing situations where a county law
| enforcement official might patrol on a reservation because
| there is overlap or nebulous boundaries with the blessing
| (cross deputizarion) from the tribal law enforcement. However
| some tribes defer more of their governance to a Federal Bureau
| of Indian Affairs.
|
| For a largely autonomous example, the Cherokee in North
| Carolina are interesting. Largely funded by their casinos and
| now marijuana which is legal on their reservation but not the
| encompassing state of North Carolina. They have fairly strict
| rules around membership, such that a Cherokee that was shipped
| off to Oklahoma is not eligible for membership. Land ownership
| is based on tribal membership, not quite following standard
| American rules. It's a fun deep dive to read up on their
| system.
| tired-turtle wrote:
| Within the context of the US, tribe can refer to a specific
| group of Native Americans. Group size is irrelevant, e.g. the
| Navajo Nation has the largest reservation and 165k members.
|
| Each tribe is free to determine its own legal structure, as it
| is a separate polity (a sovereign nation) from the US -- sort
| of. US federal law still applies on federal reservations.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United...
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| Does it matter if this group of people refers to itself as a
| "tribe" or a "nation" or something else? If they started
| referring to themselves as a "nation" for example, would
| anything change.
|
| In any case, it's quite common in the US for groups like this
| to be referred to as a "tribe". I guess today you're one of the
| lucky 10,000.
| solardev wrote:
| Some tribes were able to secure federal recognition, which
| grants them a more official diplomatic relationship in
| regards to their dealings with the federal and state
| governments of the United States:
| https://www.bia.gov/faqs/what-federally-recognized-tribe
|
| > Because the Constitution vested the Legislative Branch with
| plenary power over Indian Affairs, states have no authority
| over tribal governments unless expressly authorized by
| Congress. While federally recognized tribes generally are not
| subordinate to states, they can have a government-to-
| government relationship with these other sovereigns, as well.
|
| > Furthermore, federally recognized tribes possess both the
| right and the authority to regulate activities on their lands
| independently from state government control. They can enact
| and enforce stricter or more lenient laws and regulations
| than those of the surrounding or neighboring state(s) wherein
| they are located. Yet, tribes frequently collaborate and
| cooperate with states through compacts or other agreements on
| matters of mutual concern such as environmental protection
| and law enforcement.
|
| From https://www.bia.gov/frequently-asked-questions
|
| Unfortunately, this is just a continuation of the numerous
| betrayals the US and military units have inflicted on them
| for the past centuries. Our government and soldiers routinely
| violated the treaties we signed and forcibly relocated and
| murdered many people.
|
| Many tribes did not retain their federal recognition and just
| kinda exist in a no-man's land between states and the federal
| government, lacking much of the autonomy of the federally
| recognized tribes.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| This doesn't actually contradict anything I said (maybe you
| never intended to contradict me?). But yes you are in fact
| correct.
| solardev wrote:
| Sorry, I wasn't trying to contradict anything you said,
| just noting that it's not so much "what they call
| themselves" that determines their status, but whether
| they were able to secure federal recognition before the
| treaties stopped.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I see yes this was my original point (though you expanded
| a bit more than I did). The question of whether they call
| themselves a tribe or a nation or something else doesn't
| really have much bearing on things.
| solardev wrote:
| Gotcha. Sorry, didn't mean to make it seem like I was
| trying to correct anything. Apologies if it looked that
| way. Just wanted to share the info with people who might
| not be familiar with tribal governments in the US (it's
| super complicated!)
|
| But you're totally right, the name itself doesn't mean
| much.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| I might be wrong here, but I was under the impression that
| their sovereignty was something they possess of their own
| accord and not merely because the Federal government chose
| to recognize them?
|
| I seem to remember being taught in school that the native
| american reservations exist because of treaties signed by
| the united states government with sovereign nations (those
| nations being the native americans) and that the US
| government is obligated to respect their autonomy and
| sovereignty by the terms laid out in those treaties.
|
| i don't mean to contradict your claims that the Federal
| Government has a long history of violating these treaties,
| as that is undoubtedly true. i'm just curious because the
| way i interpreted your description makes it seem as if
| they're only autonomous because the federal government has
| chosen to recognize them.
| wizardwes wrote:
| Well, yes and no. Theoretically, I could create my own
| sovereign nation on whatever land I want. But if nobody
| recognizes that sovereignty and applies their laws to
| that land instead of mine, am I really sovereignty? These
| reservations exist on land that otherwise is part of the
| USA. If the government decides not to recognize their
| sovereignty and say the treaties are void as a result,
| unless they can mount a resistance, they aren't really
| sovereign at that point.
| argc wrote:
| In this context Tribe is a federally recognized sovereign yet
| dependent nation. They have the ability to govern themselves
| but are still subject to federal law, but while on reservations
| they not subject to state law, only federal and tribal law.
| It's complicated.
| solardev wrote:
| In the US, this is a general term for descendants of Native
| American peoples. Their degree of sovereignty unfortunately
| varies; some tribes are "federally recognized" and enjoy state-
| like recognition of their autonomy by the federal (central)
| government, while others have to bargain with the states
| surrounding their territories. More info here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_(Native_American)
|
| And a FAQ: https://www.bia.gov/frequently-asked-questions
|
| The land they directly control can be anywhere from tiny to
| gigantic, depending on the particulars:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Indian_L...
|
| Many people also live in surrounding areas:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_reservations_in...
|
| Much of the time the tribes have their own small governments,
| similar to municipal services, but also often with their own
| equivalents to "courts", "police", etc., who may utilize
| different corrective measures than the US ones. Often they will
| have an agreement with surrounding law enforcement (or the
| federal government) to partner up on certain categories of
| infractions, such as traffic violations or murders.
|
| Some tribes have some money thanks to casinos and other
| business activities, but most are unfortunately quite poor, and
| many of their communities must work very hard to survive.
|
| (This all is just my layman's understanding. I am not Native
| American, but I've lived near their communities. Please correct
| me if I'm wrong!)
|
| ---------
|
| Edit: The 2023 movie Killers of the Flower Moon is really worth
| watching:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killers_of_the_Flower_Moon_(fi...
| ddhhyy wrote:
| > A Native American tribe recognized by the United States
| government possesses tribal sovereignty, a "dependent sovereign
| nation" status with the Federal Government that is similar to
| that of a state in some situations, and that of a nation in
| others, holding a government-to-government relationship with
| the Federal government of the United States.
|
| The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe referenced in the article is one
| such Federally recognized tribe.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_(Native_American)
| https://www.bia.gov/service/tribal-leaders-directory
| loeg wrote:
| Recognized tribes in the US are their own legal entities, with
| similar theoretically legal status to US states. You're right
| that it seems unlikely they have $1B lying around to invest. I
| expect they'll need to finance the project in some way.
| nerdponx wrote:
| In this case I think the word "tribe" is referring to the Ute
| Mountain sub-group of the Ute people.
|
| But it's certainly nothing like the primitive society you are
| imagining, and that's partly why I think a lot of American
| Indian nations don't use that word to describe themselves.
|
| For example, the "Seneca tribe" calls themselves the Seneca
| Nation. That is, they were and are a group of people sharing
| common ethnicity, culture, language, and some kind of
| governmental organization across their territory, which at one
| point covered a large portion of what is now western New York
| state. They lived in towns with palisade walls and farmed
| several crops. They interacted with other nations in a
| complicated geopolitical system involving trade, alliance, and
| war. It's a far cry from the image of dumb savages in crude
| huts.
|
| In the USA today, American Indian nations are essentially
| sovereign nations, and have some of their own territory in
| areas called reservations. So that's what we are talking about
| here: the actions of a sovereign nation, with its own
| government and geographical territory.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| They could be raising the money from outside bankers or
| investors. Commonly, you can get away with stuff on tribal
| ground that you could not get away with in the surrounding
| area, since the tribal ground doesn't follow the state laws of
| the surrounding state.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| A) They're native americans. In the US Native Americans are
| often referred to as "tribes", "nations" or "reservations".
|
| B) its more like what would be referred to as a "semi
| autonomous region" in other countries. They have their own
| governments, police forces, etc.
|
| C) they probably secured some sort of outside investments,
| these native american reservations are by no means
| unsophisticated. Other reservations have been able to bring in
| revenue by using their autonomy to establish casinos and
| resorts on their lands, even in states where that would be
| illegal outside of the reservations (because the reservation's
| autonomy means that they aren't necessarily bound by the laws
| of whatever state they are in).
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Sounds like a nice, sustainable economic boom for the Ute Tribe
| once they bring it online.
|
| Reading the slides from the biological/archaeological impact
| studies from Canigou Group shows that someone didn't proofread
| their slide.
|
| The burrowing owl study states that it is "Threatened with the
| State of Colorado but not Federally".
|
| It was probably supposed to say "Threatened within..."
|
| Good luck to the Utes. There is not much industry other than oil
| and gas exploration in that region unless recent interest in
| nuclear power generation has restarted local mining operations
| shut down in the 1970's that used to be large employers (and
| polluters) out there.
|
| EDIT: Following the link posted by another comment shows that the
| slide in this article has been corrected. The same slide on that
| link says "in" instead of "with".
| EasyMark wrote:
| > Sounds like a nice, sustainable economic boom for the Ute
| Tribe once they bring it online.
|
| As long as they properly distribute the profits to tribe
| members. There have definitely been some boondoggles in the
| past that only help the 1% ers
| doodlebugging wrote:
| This is a problem with all tribes. Resource extraction on
| tribal land is not necessarily improving the living standards
| of all members of the tribe. It's the same story whether we
| look at oil and gas production, coal or mineral mining,
| hydroelectric power generation, timber production, or wind
| and solar energy production.
|
| Electing tribal leaders who will focus on improvements that
| spread the wealth and boost living standards can be as
| difficult for them as it is for other Americans to elect
| leaders who attempt to improve their constituent's lives and
| create opportunities for them.
|
| It is also a challenge, less so today than in the past, to
| find tribal members with the domain knowledge to be able to
| understand how all this can be put to best use for the
| benefit of all.
|
| Then you also need firewalls in place to prevent exploitation
| by multinational corporations with the domain expertise who
| use that to draft agreements that end up cheating the tribes
| out of profits that should go to the tribes.
|
| It's a hard problem since it is so endemic in the American
| business world and since many programs that are currently in
| place have no one conducting effective oversight to insure
| that business is conducted transparently and to the benefit
| of the ones owning the resources.
| doug_durham wrote:
| This is not a tribal problem this is a human problem. This
| is a universal situation. I think you agree with this.
| There is an ongoing problem of singling out "tribal" issues
| as though tribes are somehow specially deficient.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I do agree that it is a human problem that affects most
| of us to some extent due to corporate capture of
| regulatory processes by those who are supposed to be
| regulated. When you have (1) no oversight or (2)
| oversight with limited enforcement authority or (3)
| oversight with enforcement authority that does not
| function as an effective deterrent then you have created
| the situation we see today.
|
| Those who should be regulated end up writing the
| regulations that govern their activities and so they do
| this in a manner that offers the least friction to their
| operations at the lowest cost to them.
|
| It is definitely not just a tribal problem here in the
| US. It is endemic in the corporate world and in
| government. That's why I mentioned that part at the end
| of that post.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Seems to me like the 1%ers not handing down profits is a
| problem in Silicon Valley and beyond too...
| hinkley wrote:
| > Threatened with the State of Colorado
|
| If you don't eat your vegetables I'm sending you to live with
| your uncle Phil, in Colorado.
| hooo wrote:
| Does anyone have a breakdown of the materials required to create
| 2.2 million solar panels? I worry that we measure solar strictly
| on the carbon emissions and not the full environmental impact --
| such as that of land and mining of materials.
|
| Edit: I'm not advocating fossil fuels. I think solar makes a ton
| of sense, but it also seems crazy to think we could build enough
| solar + storage capacity for the world. Nuclear energy is the
| real future.
| mstipetic wrote:
| No one has ever thought of that and for sure can't be available
| through a basic Google search. Maybe I'm wrong but every time
| anything with renewables comes there's comments spreading doubt
| with basic questions
| shermantanktop wrote:
| We also get brilliant insights about how solar panels don't
| generate power at night.
| werdnapk wrote:
| What do you propose as an alternative? Coal has to mine their
| source material. Oil has to drill for their source material.
| One is much cleaner than the others. Nuclear is where I think
| we should moving in a perfect world, but the general population
| is fairly misinformed on modern day nuclear power generation.
| hooo wrote:
| I'm not against solar. I think a seriously massive nuclear
| build up makes sense. To the extent you get economies of
| scale and not every project is a bespoke effort.
| dangrossman wrote:
| That's financially and politically impossible on a relevant
| time scale, while solar can be built now.
| hooo wrote:
| It'll become politically inevitable as this climate
| catastrophe proceeds.
| tfourb wrote:
| I doubt that. A couple of reasons:
|
| 1) just based on real world observation. The country with
| the most ambitious nuclear power buildout program is
| China. It has the perfect combination of incentives:
| nuclear power is needed to maintain status as a nuclear
| weapons power, it needs to expand its energy production
| dramatically while at the same time limiting CO2
| emissions, nuclear fuel is a domestic resource and they
| have a domestic nuclear industry and a generally quite
| innovative tech sector. But even China only plans to
| produce 7.7% of its electricity output from nuclear in
| 2035, barely more than now, while renewables are slated
| to expand dramatically:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
|
| EDIT: China also doesn't need to worry about domestic
| political backlash to new nuclear construction.
|
| 2) cost and political risk. There is not a single
| privately owned or listed company in the world that is
| willing to take on the risk and cost of building a
| substantial nuclear reactor. And governments are not keen
| on spending billions of dollars on potential boondoggles
| either. In comparison, renewable power generation is
| already cost-effective and can be built out rapidly with
| available technologies. If you want more, you can simply
| spend more. Energy storage is somewhat unsolved, true,
| but you can probably get 90% of where you need to go in
| terms of climate change mitigation with existing energy
| storage technology, while nuclear has no viable financial
| or political path to your goal at all.
| jpgvm wrote:
| In America maybe. Lets see what the Chinese do with their
| nuclear rollout before calling it impossible yet.
|
| They might also abandon theirs on account of being able
| to make solar incredibly cheap domestically, but they
| also might not, we have to wait and see.
| npongratz wrote:
| China might also abandon their nuclear rollout in
| preference to coal -- consider their recent surge in
| building coal power plants, "despite climate pledges":
|
| https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/chinas-coal-
| country-f...
|
| Or, maybe they'll build out all-of-the-above electricity-
| generating options, depending on how their political
| leaders feel.
| adrianN wrote:
| China is rolling out a couple of orders of magnitude more
| renewables than nuclear though. I think every country
| that wants nuclear bombs also needs a civilian nuclear
| industry, then the economics of the nuclear plants are
| less important.
| jeffbee wrote:
| And since this is your position I assume you can tell us
| the mass of a nuclear power station.
| dangrossman wrote:
| Is a coal mine better for the land than a silica mine? Are a
| few mines worse for "land" than tens of thousands of square
| miles of it sinking into the ocean due to sea level rise,
| taking millions of homes with it? I think people generally
| value the coastlines more than piles of rock in an unpopulated
| area of West Virginia or what have you.
| hooo wrote:
| No one mentioned coal
| dangrossman wrote:
| I did. If you object to building solar farms, there will be
| more coal mined.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Before these recent solar projects, the generating capacity
| of this area was mostly coal and hydro. The hydro capacity
| is already exhausted, so the only room for growth is in
| fossil fuels.
| usrusr wrote:
| Certainly within an order of magnitude or two of any other 1bln
| project that isn't just shoving money at penpushers. Money that
| isn't frozen but circulating will cause materials to be mined
| from the earth and transformed into stuff and/or emissions.
| appplication wrote:
| I'm not suggesting you did this intentionally, because this
| sort of stuff is difficult to really know or find definitive
| answers to. But I think it's worth being aware that, in
| general, an over-focus on material cost for creating renewables
| etc is typically a conservative talking point and
| recommendation towards maintenance of the fossil fuel status
| quo. It appeals in particular to logical, skeptical folks like
| many of us here.
|
| The environmental impact of mining/refining is certainly
| significant and worthy of some concern. But it is worth noting
| that fossil fuels also require significant mining and refining.
| In general it is thought that solar panels would offset their
| environmental cost within 1-3 years, with an average lifetime
| of 15-30 years. So roughly, you could expect them to "recoup"
| about an order of magnitude more than it took to manufacture.
|
| It's actually a very good and smart question to ask. But I
| think sometimes it's perhaps a question over-asked by some
| groups in bad faith to sow doubt. Similarly you'll hear the
| same argument applied to plastic vs cloth shopping bags.
| thfuran wrote:
| But as I understand it, the cloth bags generally do lose out
| unless used hundreds of times, which is plausible but hardly
| a given. And the plastic bags are often re-used as small
| garbage bags, so eliminating them frequently just means
| someone is going to buy another plastic bag.
| jondwillis wrote:
| Hear me out-- maybe we shouldn't be using plastic for
| garbage either, despite the convenience of being able to
| dump your week-old chicken noodle soup into a plastic bag
| and throw it away versus recycling (composting) it.
|
| Either way, the plastic bags will be here as microplastic
| fragments long after the cloth bag has disintegrated and
| been recycled by microorganisms. The science isn't quite
| consensus-level, but it isn't looking good for
| microplastics, negative externality-wise.
| novok wrote:
| The vast majority of garbage of most households is not
| compostable, and most recyclables are already not put in
| any specific bag due to a lack of fluids. On top of that,
| many places put recyclables in landfills also. Once you
| learn that your 30m of extra labor a week of 'doing it
| right' is literally being thrown in the trash for little
| benefit, people don't care anymore.
|
| This fixation on picking up plastic bag pennies on the
| ground while refusing to pick up the $100 bills like
| funding an electric train transit network and enforce the
| law on current transit systems so people feel safe to be
| on them makes it feel like there are no real adults in
| the room when it comes to these things. Nobody is
| building nuclear power plants in the desert running mass
| CO2 scrubbers either.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It depends on what your goal was in the first place. AFAICT
| most single use plastic bans were put in place to avoid the
| plastic ending up in waterways etc.
| aunetx wrote:
| If you can understand French or don't mind subtitles, I advise
| you very strongly to listen the interview Aurore Stephant gave
| on the Thinkerview some months ago.
|
| Contrary to what other might be saying, that's not a question
| we can avoid asking, as there is a physical realities behind
| the ideal of switching to a fully decarbonated and
| decentralised grid... Even though that's basically the only
| thing we can do to keep existing as a specie.
| tfourb wrote:
| Here is a great comparison of land use for different power
| sources, based on power output:
| https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source
|
| Solar is roughly on par with coal, depending on the exact type
| of solar technology used. Of course you can put solar on
| existing structures, in which case the land use is negligible
| and on par with nuclear.
|
| Regarding energy input, solar panels break even after about two
| years, I think (no source on hand currently). It would be quite
| easy to have solar panel production run entirely on renewable
| energy input.
|
| Regarding the other resources, you can't really compare energy
| sources to one another, as all are using vastly different
| inputs and have different challenges regarding disposal of
| waste and recycling. You'd have to make a judgement based on
| impact. I.e. coal is really bad, because it produces CO2 which
| has potentially society-ending consequences. Nuclear has
| challenges, because the waste remains radioactive for so long.
| My personal impression is that solar has some challenges, but
| those are manageable and likely can be mitigated by regulating
| disposal and recycling of old panels.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| International jet travel doubtless seemed like a crazy idea to
| people 100 years ago, but now it's a reality - and 100 years
| from now, it's a very good bet that solar will be providing the
| majority of human civilization's energy demand.
|
| Solar is already cheaper than nuclear in terms of cost per MWH,
| and while adding extensive storage tends to even the cost out,
| nuclear still has some disadvantages including: uncertain
| uranium fuel sources and costs, black swan catastrophe
| concerns, cooling water demands, and long-term waste disposal
| costs - all issues solar mostly avoids. Some niche nuclear uses
| are more promising, e.g. China's current attempt to make
| pebble-bed helium-cooled models work for industrial process use
| (500C steam).
|
| Look at France, they've got a big expensive mess on their hands
| after betting on nuclear: https://www.reuters.com/world/france-
| braces-uncertain-winter...
| solardev wrote:
| (Disclaimer: I often work in the solar industry, but am not
| currently. I'll try my best not to be biased.)
|
| > Does anyone have a breakdown of the materials required to
| create 2.2 million solar panels?
|
| In academia, these are called "lifecycle analyses" (or
| sometimes cradle-to-grave/cradle-to-cradle analyses). Here's
| one by the International Energy Agency, a NGO: https://iea-
| pvps.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IEA-PVPS-LCI...
|
| PDF page 21 has a detailed bill of materials for PV modules
| (solar panels), and pg 60 for li-ion batteries. There are also
| breakdowns for various parts of subcomponents.
|
| In general, as you noted, we're pretty good at analyzing the
| carbon impacts of PV manufacturing (TLDR: it's a net positive),
| but the land use question is much harder because it's not a
| mathematical equation that you can apply. How do you weigh X
| solar panels vs Y endangered tortoises or whatever? It's often
| just a case-by-case determination, and in the US that usually
| means an specialized environmental review under NEPA (National
| Environmental Policy Act) or similar state laws.
|
| It always boil down to a judgment call (and also local
| community sentiment, to some degree), the quality of the
| review, and maybe just plain dumb luck (whether the site
| surveys happen to notice any listed species at that particular
| time).
|
| ------
|
| Re: Land & mining...
|
| Climate change isn't great for many species either (it does
| help some plants and such), so even from a land use
| conservation point of view, the opportunity cost of not
| building more solar/nuclear often means increased
| desertification or flooding, etc., just because climate change
| will slowly affect big swaths of land and water. In a way,
| these renewables projects can be thought of a way to sacrifice
| small plots of land to try to protect the rest. With some
| exceptions (like old growth forests), I think in general we are
| better able to manage around localized disruptions in land area
| than global climate change, if only because most land is
| controlled (and thus permitted/reviewed) only by a few entities
| and maybe 1-3 governments (federal/state/tribal), vs anything
| climatic involving the whole damned world and all its
| politicians and protestors.
|
| The mining of materials, though, also causes a lot of human
| suffering that a lot of these academic analyses don't fully
| account for, or illustrate very well on a visceral level. Read:
| child labor in highly dangerous mines under terrible
| conditions, just so Joe American can feel a bit better about
| driving his Tesla with a few panels on his roof. But, to be
| fair, that system of exploitation is going to exist no matter
| our energy source. It's not always foreign kids, but coal
| mining is no easy life either.
|
| -------
|
| Re: Nuclear
|
| I'm pro-nuclear myself, but many people still aren't (for
| reasons not worth getting into here, which I'm sure you already
| know).
|
| I think PV has reached such a low price point (thanks, China)
| that nuclear just isn't really speed- or cost-competitive
| anymore.
|
| Realistically, though, we really need both (like a solar bridge
| to nuclear), much more than we have now, and much faster, and
| we're not going to get enough of either one in time =/
|
| I don't think it's really a "PV vs nuclear" but a "all of the
| above, and then some!"
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > Nuclear energy is the real future
|
| At present in the US there's no reactor that anyone will build.
| No one will build any more big AP1000s after the unmitigated
| financial disasters that were its 2 initial projects. Everyone
| has put their faith in small reactors (SMRs) but the only one
| with an approved design (NuScale) had its initial project fail
| after a Utah utility coalition fell apart.
|
| The NuScale project that failed was supposed to come online
| around 2030. Their other project was some sort of Bitcoin
| mining fiction, its not clear they will have a future. There
| are a bunch of SMR startups that are at various stages of
| development, however, none has an approved design. So, we're
| looking at after 2030 if we're lucky with speculative designs
| that may or may not work out.
|
| Not a very certain bet.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| If your environmental regulations prevent you from saving the
| environment by making it too expensive to save the
| environment, maybe you have too many environmental
| regulations?
|
| The medium term future of energy in the US at least is
| california, ie ridiculously expensive and unreliable.
| Hopefully costs will eventually come down as we get enough
| batteries and grid infrastructure in place so everyone can
| have their indian solar power energy--but a sane policy that
| would have been to have excess nuclear capacity in place and
| slowly transition to solar panels as the reliability
| improves.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| There's site in FL that has all approvals in place, no
| environmental issues are barriers. It was to be the next
| project after the first 2 AP1000 and was cancelled after
| their experience. The economics of such a project have
| improved substantially since then due to the IRA's nuclear
| production tax credit (thanks Biden).
|
| Yet no one has picked up this project. Why? Because the
| construction risk is too great, not because of
| environmental regulations.
| tfourb wrote:
| China has no environmental regulations to worry about when
| building out nuclear and has great incentives to do so, but
| their goal for 2035 is a meagre 7.7% of electricity
| generation from nuclear:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
|
| So China, surely the best case scenario for nuclear power
| expansion anywhere in the world, will go from 5% nuclear
| power generation today to 7.7% by 2035. That is about all
| that you need to know about the potential contribution of
| current and near future nuclear power technology to solving
| the climate crisis.
|
| As we need to be basically net 0 CO2 emissions by 2050 at
| the latest, there is simply no scenario in which nuclear
| can play more than a minor part in solving this. Meanwhile
| renewables are cost effective investments today, you simply
| need to improve the regulatory and infrastructure context
| (transmission lines). Yes, solving storage is required as
| well, but that seems vastly more feasible than somehow
| beating 80 years of real world experience telling you that
| putting it all on nuclear is not a politically or
| financially viable path forward.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| The materials will be insignificant. Its a one time material
| cost which yields energy for 25 - 30 years. And at EOL, it will
| still produce ~80% (which is really good!), the life is 25 -
| 30, but manufacturers won't provide longer warranty. I don't
| see any compelling reasons to decommission solar fields
| producing 80% after 30 years.
|
| Also, land usage can be minimal. Vertical panels can allow
| farming, and are also more efficient (allow heat to escape),
| cover the early mornings and evenings better.
|
| 40m acres (just in US!) are used for ethanol production to
| produce a small fraction of fuel. I'd imagine the material
| costs of these 40m acres over 25 - 50 years (fertilizer,
| harvesting, shipping, refining ....) would be a lot more than
| solar panels.
|
| Also, 40% of shipping is fossil fuels, we are mining, refining
| and shipping billions of tons every year.
|
| Also remember the fossil fuel plants and infrastructure are not
| material free. There is a one time cost of materials there just
| as much as solar panels. But for fuel, solar panels have zero
| input costs, zero processing costs, zero waste production.
| Solvency wrote:
| Imagine if the US enabled/supported native tribes in things like
| land management, sustainable bison management, solar farms, and
| things that actually seek to improve the national
| health/fertility/ecosystem instead of the gross complex they've
| created for them now.
| wavefunction wrote:
| There's been a larger focus during the Biden administration on
| supporting indigenous peoples and improving and reforming the
| relationship between the US Federal government and these
| peoples. His administration appointed Deb Haaland
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_Haaland) as the first Native
| American Secretary of the Interior. Interior is in charge of
| the Bureau of Indian Affairs and she's been leveraging her
| position to tackle some of those exact efforts you mentioned.
| In March of 2023 last year she announced $25,000,000 for bison
| restoration efforts which admittedly is not enough but it's
| better than previous administrations have managed.
| (https://apnews.com/article/bison-restoration-tribes-
| haaland-...)
| loeg wrote:
| It's unclear how they will finance this $1B project or who they
| will sell the juice to. Is the tribe getting suckered into a bad
| deal?
| kitten_mittens_ wrote:
| > who...will they sell the juice to?
|
| Utah is already a power exporter. Utah generates about one-
| fifth more electricity than it consumes, and the state is a net
| supplier of power to other states.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=UT
| loeg wrote:
| This tribe is in Colorado, not Utah, despite the name.
|
| Transmission is expensive; you'd rather sell locally. Before
| you finance a $1B project it would be good to have a sense of
| how you expect to sell the outputs!
| nyrikki wrote:
| There is a star of WECC transmission lines going all around
| the region just south of the Colorado border near ShipRock
| NM.
|
| Part of what made this project viable IMHO was the
| adjacency to existing WECC Interface Paths.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WECC_Intertie_Paths#/media/Fi
| l...
| pixl97 wrote:
| Simply put, we're going to have to build transmission
| infrastructure in the US.
|
| Right now we get past a lot of that by bundling up coal and
| natural gas in trains and pipes and generating closer to
| the sink.
| justinwp wrote:
| Transmission lines are already there because of the nearby
| decommissioned coal plant:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan_Generating_Station
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The financial outfit behind it seems to have a decent track
| record with smaller projects around the world:
|
| https://energypeople.com/news/story/green-returns-for-green-...
|
| They also state that they're interested in developing hydrogen
| and ammonia production capability using the electricity
| produced, rather than selling it to the grid, but building such
| production facilities would increase up-front costs by several
| billion.
| loeg wrote:
| Thanks! I'd be interested in hearing more about the specific
| terms and sources of capital for this project, if you know.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| IIRC this tribe has a casino
| Matthew_Stevens wrote:
| Figured this out because I was curious- This would makeup about
| .17% of total US electricity consumption in 2022.
|
| Assuming 4 trillion kWh.
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect....
| loeg wrote:
| Also for context, the quoted 756MW figure is about 68% of a
| single AP1000 reactor.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Too bad no one wants to build AP1000s even though there is a
| site in FL with all approvals and the new Biden subsidy.
| That's how badly the two projects fucked up.
| lambda wrote:
| And an AP1000 reactor costs about $6.8 billion to build, and
| substantially higher operating costs. 68% of the power for
| 14% of the price seems like a pretty good deal to me, there's
| a reason people are investing more in solar than nuclear,
| it's just more cost effective.
|
| edit: Oh, and that $6.8 billion looks optimistic. This
| project with two AP1000s looks like it costs $30 billion.
| https://www.ans.org/news/article-3949/vogtle-project-
| update-...
| NegativeK wrote:
| Comparing just on W/$ feels like it's missing a bunch of
| additional problems with the power generation, such as
| nuclear risk or needing more than solar to cover a full
| year's electrical demand.
| lambda wrote:
| Yeah, it's definitely a simplification.
|
| A lot of the nuclear risk is already included in that
| cost; we have fairly robust nuclear regulation and safety
| engineering these days. I have pretty high confidence in
| the safety of modern nuclear reactors, because there has
| been the engineering needed to ensure it, and there's
| fairly strong regulatory oversight. Of course, that all
| gets factored into the price tag, which is part of why
| the price tag for nuclear is so high.
|
| I'm just saying that I see a lot of discussion of more
| nuclear investment as the solution to decarbonization,
| but it's hard to make the economics work out; nuclear has
| gotten more expensive over time, while renewables have
| been dropping in price dramatically.
|
| I'm sure there is some room for nuclear in the market,
| but it's hard to see it providing more than a fraction of
| what renewables do, just due to the massive cost
| difference.
| photonbeam wrote:
| You pay a higher price for power that works in darkness
| lambda wrote:
| Yeah, but even renewables + storage is likely to be
| cheaper than nuclear. Right now pumped hydro is one of
| the best for grid-scale storage, but with the the
| reduction in cost of batteries, it may be that grid-scale
| battery storage becomes viable not too far in the future.
|
| And remember, nuclear generally needs some form of
| storage or supplementation with on-demand generation
| (generally via fossil fuels). Nuclear reactors are very
| slow to increase or decrease their output; they're best
| providing a constant base power output, but to account
| for periodic changes in demand across the day, you need
| either grid-scale storage or to supplement them with
| things like gas turbines that can quickly spin up and
| down. Many of our existing grid-scale energy storage
| systems are there to support nuclear. For example:
| https://www.wbur.org/news/2016/12/02/northfield-mountain-
| hyd...
|
| But if you're already going to be building the grid-scale
| storage, supplying it with renewable energy can be a lot
| cheaper than supplying it with nuclear.
|
| I'm not saying that nuclear will have no place in the
| energy grid as we decarbonize. But the economics are hard
| to justify as renewables and storage become cheaper.
| adrianN wrote:
| Reactors can load follow reasonably quickly, but the
| economics look terrible when the utilization drops, so
| you don't want to load follow if you can about it. That's
| also why nuclear and renewables don't mix well.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| IIRC the French are more aggressive about using nuclear
| for load follow, which is also why a lot of their plants
| went down for maintenance, because it's harsher on them
| as well.
| tfourb wrote:
| Like wind turbines? ;-)
| op00to wrote:
| What about at night? Or when it's cloudy?
| lambda wrote:
| Wind, hydro, and storage. Pumped hydro has already
| existed for a long time for helping nuclear with load
| following
| https://www.wbur.org/news/2016/12/02/northfield-mountain-
| hyd... and as battery prices fall and production ramps
| up, even battery based storage is likely to become
| feasible for grid-scale storage.
| dralley wrote:
| Pumped hydro is very dependent on geography. Good luck
| doing pumped hydro in Kansas.
| lambda wrote:
| Sure. No solution is one size fits all. This particular
| solar installation happens to be in Colorado, very close
| to a lot of area where pumped hydro would be extremely
| cost effective.
|
| Somewhere like Kansas, wind power and battery based
| storage may be more effective.
|
| Here's a map of pumped storage hydro potential; note how
| dense the potential is throughout most of the Western US.
| https://maps.nrel.gov/psh
| op00to wrote:
| Pumped storage requires creating new lakes, destroying
| existing ecosystems.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| And creating new ones. Why are the existing ones more
| valuable?
| dralley wrote:
| The entire point of pumped hydro is that you're
| constantly draining and replacing the water. The
| reservoir is not an ecosystem.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Another graphic: https://hydrosource.ornl.gov/sites/defau
| lt/files/2021-08/hmr...
| op00to wrote:
| Not every day is a windy day. Battery storage is
| ridiculously bad for the environment and wasteful. As
| mentioned, not a lot of hydro storage in Kansas.
|
| Plus, when the hydro storage fails and floods a town,
| that's still pretty bad.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| In my experience of home solar cloudy isn't necessarily a
| problem. It doesn't reduce power much.
| chris222 wrote:
| It doesnt even seem like it will utilize that much more
| land either. How much land does a Nuclear site take with
| all of the zones around it?
| lambda wrote:
| It does require a lot more land; but we have a lot of
| land available.
|
| Nuclear will continue to be viable in denser areas, with
| lower solar resources, and when you want to get a lot of
| production closer to large population.
|
| There's a reason there are so many nuclear plants in the
| Northeast Corridor (Boston to Washington area), and so
| many fewer in the southwest, and I imagine that this
| trend will continue.
| Areading314 wrote:
| This doesnt take into account capacity factors. A "800MW"
| solar plant would be expected to actually product 10-25% of
| that after day/night and seasons are taken into account.
| Nuclear plants are more of a 90+% capacity factor.
| lambda wrote:
| Yes, it's an over-simplification. But this is an area of
| the country where capacity factors are in the 25-30%
| range:
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39832
| (the Ute Mountain Reservation is in the very Southwestern
| corner of Colorado, a little bit of New Mexico, and a
| little bit of Utah: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ute
| +Mountain+Reservation,+...)
|
| So even if you discount the capacity by a 25% capacity
| factor, and use the lower cost per reactor that I
| originally quoted, this is still cheaper than nuclear.
| And that's just the up-front investment. Operating costs
| are much cheaper for solar as well, the majority of the
| cost is in the initial build.
|
| Given that transmission isn't free, there are areas of
| the country where solar has a lower capacity factor than
| this, and solar and wind take more land, there are still
| cases where nuclear may be a better investment. I'm just
| pointing out that there are plenty of simple, economic
| reasons why solar and wind are growing at a much faster
| rate than nuclear; it's cheaper overall, it requires less
| up-front capital, etc. Nuclear is likely to fill niches
| for a long time, but investment in nuclear is not going
| to be the major way to decarbonize.
| belorn wrote:
| Building nuclear in a desert feel a bit like building
| hydropower dams in a desert. It does not really make
| sense and whatever the capacity factor is, being in a
| desert should increase it.
|
| The only real drawback to building solar power in a
| desert is sand storms. That means the capacity factor is
| less relevant but life span and repair costs is a
| different matter. It is a bit similar to ocean wind
| farms. The capacity naturally goes up, but the salt water
| and transportation (as well as increased risks to
| engineers) makes life span and repair a bit more of an
| issue (it should be noted that most ocean based wind
| farms tend to use shallows and nature reserves near large
| cities).
|
| But again, this project is built in a desert. The very
| definition of a place with consistent amount of sun. I
| hope the project works out.
| SoftwareMaven wrote:
| There is an ecological cost to miles and miles of solar
| panels. Desert ecosystems are extremely fragile, and
| these kinds of projects can be very damaging. It's not
| just wasteland. (Said as a desert Southwest denizen and
| lover who gets the impression that many people think,
| "oh, there's no trees? It's unimportant land.")
|
| I want the Utes to have success in this, but I don't want
| the general attitude to be "trash the desert because
| there is sun there".
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The LCOE cost advantage of alternative energy vs ...
| everything ... at this point is well known and calculated
| in Lazard's yearly LCOE study.
|
| Nuke advocates do themselves no favors playing shell
| games and weasel words with the economics. Nuclear is
| expensive. The nuclear industry needs to figure out how
| to make it a lot cheaper. And no, it's not just the NIMBY
| regulation.
|
| The legacy nuke industry has a ton of deeply embedded
| lobbying and relationships with the regulatory agencies
| and congress, including ancillary groups that do fuel rod
| reprocessing and waste transport, cushy high-cost
| satellite industries.
|
| Nuclear is stuck in a rut. Economically viable nuclear
| needs a clean-slate redesign and all the old players need
| to be thrown out. Computer designs, modern software and
| sensors, materials, etc. Research LFTR to the wazoo.
|
| One of the big pushes IMO should be the US Navy, which
| should start using nuclear power for all its fleet ships
| not just subs/carriers.
| cornholio wrote:
| Solar is cheaper when you have a flexible and well
| interconnected grid capable of smoothing out, say, a
| cloud passing over Ute nation land and abruptly pulling
| 1GW out of the grid. That kind of grid costs money and we
| have no idea how much and how achievable it is. The
| alternative, grid scale storage for the full rated power,
| is still insanely expensive and makes renewables
| completely uncompetitive.
|
| Yes, nuclear is getting buried on price, but you make out
| the total cost of solar much lower and much more certain
| than it is in reality. Nobody really knows how much will
| renewables end up costing when they start to make up the
| majority of production.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Australian research on this suggests renewables will
| still be cheapest as the grid moves to fully carbon free,
| includin the cost to integrate with the grid:
|
| https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/articles/2023/october/ge
| nco...
|
| > Even with this extra VRE cost in 2030, the answer to
| whether renewables are the cheapest form of energy is
| still yes. And it remains so when VRE is at 90 percent of
| the energy system
| worik wrote:
| > The nuclear industry needs to figure out how to make it
| a lot cheaper. And no, it's not just the NIMBY
| regulation.
|
| It is very expensive, there is no way around the extreme
| engineering costs of nuclear reactors. Even before trying
| to make then safe from threats extant and possible.
|
| That is before the unknown costs of handling long term
| waste using technology that has not been proven, or
| invented, yet
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| When comparing solar to nuclear we also need to include
| storage and dimensioning to get an equivalent 24/7 output.
|
| This might still make solar cheaper but difference will be
| smaller than headline numbers.
| lambda wrote:
| True. This happens to be in a region of the country that
| gets a 25-30% capacity factor on solar; in the northeast
| or northwest, you'd see much worse results.
|
| The basic point is that nuclear is just really, really
| expensive, and it has been getting more expensive over
| time, while solar and wind have been getting cheaper.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electrici
| ty
| cesarb wrote:
| > When comparing solar to nuclear we also need to include
| storage and dimensioning to get an equivalent 24/7
| output.
|
| No, that is a red herring. That exact comparison would be
| only for greenfield projects disconnected from everything
| else. When connecting to an existing network, the
| existing (and future) generation on it is also important.
| For instance, if the network already has a high enough
| amount of gas generation, 10MW of solar or 10MW of
| nuclear would reduce the use of fossil fuel by the same
| amount; the same applies to reducing the use of water
| stored in hydroelectric dams.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| When comparing solar to nuclear we also need to include
| storage and dimensioning to get an equivalent guaranteed
| 24/7 output.
|
| This might still make solar cheaper but difference will be
| smaller than headline numbers (and you might retort that
| for nuclear we then need to include dismantling costs as
| well).
| tfourb wrote:
| In that case you'd also need to model how the cost
| changes if you combine solar with wind and other
| renewables. Wind and solar are to some extend
| complementary (there is statistically more wind when
| there is little sun and vice versa). You'd also need to
| account for distributing solar and wind across large
| geographic areas (i.e. the U.S. is so wide that there are
| a few hours difference between the sun setting on the
| east coast and on the west coast, somewhere wind is
| always blowing, etc.)
|
| There are probably studies that have done an analysis of
| this kind for the entire U.S. and calculated various
| scenarios. I know that these have been done for Germany
| and other European countries. A 100% renewable system
| usually comes out cheaper than including nuclear in the
| mix to any large extend (though Germany has no remaining
| old reactors which could get their lifetime enhanced
| relatively cheaply).
| XorNot wrote:
| Thats still building 2x the power generation (and you've
| got storage in there too). Those wind turbines aren't
| free. They have different maintenance costs too.
|
| You don't get to say "oh well it'll be 1GW of solar _if_
| we also build 1GW of wind " because that's not the
| project.
|
| This is all an excuse to talk around Solar's god awful
| capacity factors which take the shine off those $/MW
| headlines.
| samatman wrote:
| That's a serious overestimate. Figuring a 90% capacity factor
| for the reactor and 20% for the solar installation, it's
| 1005MW delivered power for the former and 151MW delivered for
| the latter. That's 15% of one reactor, or put another way, it
| would take about six and a half of these solar installations
| to provide the same power as one reactor.
| loeg wrote:
| My impression (trying to read charitably) was that the
| 756MW figure included some capacity factor, if an extremely
| optimistic one. (For the nuke, a reasonable capacity factor
| of 95% of 1100W is still more or less 1100W.) Of course you
| are correct if the stated figure is maximum output of the
| solar farm.
| samatman wrote:
| I've never seen solar installations reported as anything
| other than nameplate.
|
| I don't like it. I do like renewable power, but this kind
| of puffery makes people think that we're right on the
| verge of building an all-renewable electrical grid. Which
| we are not.
|
| We could have a zero-emissions electrical grid in ten
| years, by embracing a nuclear baseline, putting in a
| bunch of solar and wind where it makes sense, and adding
| some battery storage to soak up the intermittency of the
| latter. But when people read solar by the nameplate, they
| think it's 7x cheaper than it is, and try to compare that
| number to nuclear, rather than the actual one.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The financial backer of the project (London-based Canigou Group)
| says they're looking into using the electricity for water ->
| hydrogen -> ammonia pathways, which is a way around the energy
| transport problem (the best places for solar are often not co-
| located with human populations).
|
| https://www.canigougroup.com/news/evaluation-of-green-hydrog...
|
| Methanol is another valuable endpoint, the Chinese version of
| this (CEEC Songyuan) is using the same approach but intends to
| make both ammonia and methanol.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Largest in US, but pretty small compared to whats coming up.
| Todays news, ~$12B in Philippines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39408076
|
| Edit: 3.58B, not 12 from another comment. Still, pretty large
| investment for Philippines.
| 38 wrote:
| Isn't the actual size important, and not the money involved?
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Yes, actual size, but also relative to the size of their
| economy. Considering Philippines GDP, this is significant.
| throwboatyface wrote:
| What's the GDP of the Ute nation? It's probably quite a
| significant investment for them as well.
| deaddodo wrote:
| 2.96bln USD
|
| So 35% of the Ute Nation's GDP vs 1.3% of the
| Phillipines. OP is clearly either uninformed or biased.
| Or just doesn't understand Tribal Sovereignty status in
| the US.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Worth noting GDP is per year. Where the project cost is
| over the 30 year life[1] of the project. Through the
| magic of finance 35% becomes 1.17%.
|
| [1] One feels that 30 life for something where components
| can be constantly replaced as they wear out is a
| misnomer.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Doing the same to the Filipino project drops it down to
| .35%, so the total impact is still 1/3 that of the Ute
| project.
|
| Additionally, the Ute will need to weather that impact
| for a full 30 years, while the Filipinos will only need
| to for a few.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| spectacular public works history in the Phillipines !
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edifice_complex
| huytersd wrote:
| Bhadla Solar park in India. 7 miles long and 3.5 miles wide. If
| I'm not mistaken, it's currently the largest in the world.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park?wprov=sfti1#...
| nharada wrote:
| Dang they went out and found 400+ of a rare cactus and avoided
| building on them? Anyone know how they actually did that survey?
| Like someone just goes out for days at a time and looks?
| tfourb wrote:
| Not sure how it went in that specific case but yes, these type
| of impact studies are usually hands on, you go out into the
| field with a bunch of people and comb an area completely.
|
| In case of a chip factory currently developed by Intel in
| Germany, they went out onto the 200ha (roughly 280 football
| fields) and found and resettled 7 rare hamsters. 2 of those had
| to be dug out: https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen-
| anhalt/magdeburg/magd...
| nharada wrote:
| That's pretty wild. Do you much about this? It's kinda
| related to a project I'm working on and I'd be interested in
| chatting if so!
| tfourb wrote:
| Not really. I've done academic fieldwork before but not
| specifically this type of environmental impact study.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| For what it is worth, a lot of environmental work is very
| hands on. I have a friend who's full time job was to walk
| in front of tractors and make sure they don't run over
| snakes. Another who's job was part of a large team with the
| job walk power lines under construction and make sure birds
| don't nest in them. If they did nest, the construction
| project would be on hold for a year.
| araes wrote:
| That story is one of the weirder stories I've read on Hacker
| News recently. Cute though:
|
| "The last hamster of the fields gave a timid crow when
| Alexander Resetaritz drew it out of the construction on his
| paw and pushed it into the transport box."
| tfourb wrote:
| This type of environmental mitigation is pretty common here
| in Germany. I'm currently working with a local organization
| that wants to revitalize an old water mill barn from the
| 1700s (I think). It's currently in a really bad shape but
| to even start the permitting process to put a new roof on
| it, we need a qualified person doing an environmental
| impact study, making sure that there are no rare bats or
| owls hanging out in the rafters. It's actually not that big
| of a deal, they basically go in, look closely for any signs
| of these animals and make a few photos, the actual report
| is only a page or so. But if there were any of those
| animals, they'd have to be professionally removed and
| resettled elsewhere and the new construction would likely
| have to be adapted to continue to offer habitats.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I wonder how much identification of different floria could be
| done by hi-def drone capture of an area then image
| identification of different species could be done these days?
| I could see things like hamsters being more difficult as
| small mammals tend to hide to avoid being prey.
| tfourb wrote:
| The problem as you say likely being that the drone shares
| properties with predatory birds that make hamsters scurry
| away ;-). Many endangered plants won't be visible from
| above due to other, larger plants and you'd need millimeter
| resolution or better.
|
| I wouldn't underestimate how effective experienced and
| qualified humans can be in finding and interpreting signs
| of the presence of a small number of specific species in a
| large area. Drones and AI will probably get there at some
| point, but I doubt that its close.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Back in the day I worked on seismic field crews in that region.
|
| Each crew had field archaeologists and biologists and
| representatives from the tribes and Bureau of Land Management
| working closely with us to insure that we followed all
| procedures to protect sensitive areas from disturbance.
|
| That meant in practice that local or BLM archaeologists and
| biologists led the way across the area where we intended to
| acquire data. Just as you see in the photos in the linked
| presentation (user 1970-01-01), teams of experts surveyed the
| land looking for sensitive or threatened plants and animals and
| archaeologists identified areas with cultural artifacts. These
| areas were flagged and that flagging placed them off limits to
| our operations. They were No-Go areas. We had permission to
| operate within a fairly narrow easement across the landscape
| with strict guidelines about vehicle access, allowable damage
| to existing vegetation and the landscape, trash removal, etc
| since that region is very arid and small things like orange
| peels become items that are recognizable centuries after they
| are discarded.
|
| For this survey I expect that they staked the potential
| affected area and walked every bit of it using pin flags to
| mark things that are not to be disturbed. The area is only
| about 8 square miles so it shouldn't take that long.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Satellite/aerial imagery followed by more accurate surveying
| where necessary.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| I wonder if the tribes have enough autonomy to build transmission
| lines quickly. Just the Navajo Nation can build enough solar/wind
| and transmission lines within their reservation and probably
| connect to the grids in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona.
| US is incredibly slow in building transmission lines, takes
| decades.
|
| And, if they have enough autonomy to import Chinese panels (50%
| cheaper), a network of these nations can blanket the entire
| country with renewables.
| xeonmc wrote:
| This would greatly enhance the usefulness of tribal-
| electricity.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I know it took my local utility about 5 years just to run about
| 30 miles of HV wire from me seeing "announcment of public
| commentary" -> studies -> "final notice of commentary on route"
| -> building starts. The building itself took about 6 months, as
| it ran along a road I travel a lot. That's a long time for 30
| miles of HV towers.
| adrianN wrote:
| Oh, I thought you wanted to tell an anecdote about a fast
| project. Five years sound very quick to me.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| Five years is light speed in terms of public works! I felt
| the same way.
| 10u152 wrote:
| A freeway bypass/overpass is being built on a road I
| travel a lot.
|
| Funding and consultation started in 2004. Expected
| completion date 2029. Quarter of a century to build 8km
| of road.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I'm ignorant of how this works, but aren't tribal nations
| exempt from at least state and local regs?
| deaddodo wrote:
| _Sovereign_ (as not all are considered such) tribal lands
| are dictated solely by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (and
| Congress, obviously, as the institution granting that
| authority). In practice, unless something goes heavily
| against Federal interests (illicit drug production /trade,
| for instance), it is regulated by the nation ("tribe")
| alone.
| sterlind wrote:
| so there are reservations that don't have tribal
| sovereignty? or did you mean off-rez holdings, or
| federally unrecognized tribes?
| deaddodo wrote:
| There are recognized tribes without recognized lands.
| There are federally unrecognized tribes. And there are
| properties of tribal institutions that do not fall on
| sovereign land.
|
| So the easiest answer is: "yes"/"all of the above"
| njarboe wrote:
| I would imagine that inside the land they control building
| lines could be quick but if they are exporting power (which I
| think is the main idea) they are not going to be able to have
| the autonomy to build the external lines they need.
| huytersd wrote:
| I like the idea of native Americans being the solar barons.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Related.
|
| Even as energy production prices from solar trend towards zero,
| end user energy costs is still going to be lower bounded by
| transmission costs.
|
| California in particular is getting a nasty taste of this, with
| many customer's bill being mostly transmission costs. However,
| this is largely because they're paying for PG&E's lawsuit
| payouts and regulatory required upgrades.
|
| Energy can be free, but reliable and safe transmission will
| likely always be expensive.
| sciencesama wrote:
| May be start the manufacturing facility here and start panel
| manufacturing here itself !!
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Panels are a commodity at this point. I hate to say it but
| mineral extraction, processing and panel manufacturing will
| be way more expensive than importing from China.
|
| Prerequisites for manufacturing panels here at an even
| remotely competitive price includes reducing labor costs and
| extracting/refining minerals at scale.
|
| I absolutely agree we should onshore solar production but
| simply onshoring manufacturing isnt the first step. Frankly
| im not even sure the labor cost is even solvable. Will
| probably always have to utilize low foreign wages
| bobthepanda wrote:
| most of the onshoring is not dictated by cost but the
| realization that something that looks like COVID lockdowns
| of Chinese factories and ports makes just-in-time
| untenable.
|
| Most likely, you will see a lot of made in
| Mexico/Caribbean/Canada
| r00fus wrote:
| Aka "friend-shoring". Honestly I struggle to see why we
| can't start bootstrapping some tech build here in the US.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Is that really cheaper though taking into account that the
| cheap ones (and perhaps the expensive ones too) have a
| lifetime of about 50 years and cannot be recycled at all?
|
| That doesn't sound sustainable at all to me.
| XorNot wrote:
| Recycling is not a magic word for "cheap". Landfilling a
| bunch of panels every 50 years is fine: they're "just"
| sintered sand.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| > Will probably always have to utilize low foreign wages
|
| This mindset lies at the center of neoliberalism and should
| be examined with nuance and perspective, since the quality
| of each individual's experience can vary wildly in a market
| which accepts such inequalities as necessary for the health
| of the overall system.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's hard to know what you're saying. Everything should
| be examined carefully (although you can't examine
| something "with nuance" - nuance is not an examination
| tool). What are you actually saying? If $1 buys a good
| meal somewhere, but it costs $15 for the same meal
| somewhere else, paying someone less in the former
| location is not a moral failing.
| visarga wrote:
| A meal might be 15x cheaper, but a phone, laptop, car or
| anything imported will surely not be cheaper.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > A meal might be 15x cheaper, but a phone, laptop, car
| or anything imported will surely not be cheaper.
|
| Im not sure I understand what you're saying because it
| absolutely is orders of magnitude to import phones and
| laptops. Cars have more tariffs to protect the domestic
| market so Im unsure about that one.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I think you're missing the price competitive constraint.
| I said it would need low foreign wages to be price
| competitive with China. Under what non-neoliberal mindset
| is this false? I can only think of one and I dont think
| its what you have in mind: reduce labor rights and
| eliminate the minimum wage.
| justinwp wrote:
| Transmission lines are already there because of the nearby
| decommissioned coal plant:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan_Generating_Station
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > But also, it makes sense not to transmit power too far from
| where you are
|
| yep, they'll waste the energy trying to transmit it
|
| sounds like they're going to be attracting bitcoin miners.
| they're the only use case that's able to be in the middle of
| nowhere without needing other infrastructure, like robust
| internet.
|
| any other use cases you all know of?
| aorloff wrote:
| Powering a casino
| yieldcrv wrote:
| People have to commute to, well maybe. If more infrastructure
| comes up around there and people live there then its a nice
| long game.
| sunshinesnacks wrote:
| > they'll waste the energy trying to transmit it
|
| High voltage transmission lines are very efficient. On the
| order of 1-2% loses per 100 miles for 500 kV carrying 1000 MW
| [0].
|
| [0]
| https://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/grady/_13_EE392J_2_Spring...
| theptip wrote:
| Datacenter for AI training workloads.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Thats pretty good if the data is already there, other data
| centers rely on heavier internet infrastructure
| novok wrote:
| Fiber lines have less power transmission loss than the
| equivalent power lines themselves. In this hypothetical
| build out I'm guessing the huge fiber runs would be part of
| it.
| toast0 wrote:
| Cabling in robust internet wouldn't be too hard, if that were
| the only factor. Pull fiber from Salt Lake City and
| Albuquerque, maybe Denver and Phoenix and boom. There's US
| highways in all directions, so you can pull along the road,
| most likely. You'd get at least two way redundancy going North
| and South, maybe three way if you take different paths to get
| to Phoenix and Albuquerque.
|
| But you also need/want robust power delivery to run a
| datacenter, and a single local solar project isn't robust power
| delivery. If you had robust power delivery, those transmission
| lines could be used to export the solar, and it wouldn't make
| sense to put a datacenter there anymore.
| justinwp wrote:
| Transmission lines are already there because of the nearby
| decommissioned coal plant:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan_Generating_Station
| throwaway420690 wrote:
| They should definitely mine bitcoin. No transmission lines
| needed. Can use all of their excess power.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Most tribal governments have more respect for nature than that.
| tfourb wrote:
| Possibly the worst idea for what you can do with excess power.
| lukan wrote:
| "Having said that, we're going to be producing a large amount of
| power. So I'm not sure that all of it will be able to be consumed
| within Colorado."
|
| Hopefully they can attract further industry, that will consume
| that cheap energy close to production. Metal smelting ones for
| example.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Refining lithium
| latchkey wrote:
| Metal smelting has the often frowned upon side effect of
| generating super fund sites.
| adrianN wrote:
| Hm? What kind of dangerous chemicals do you need to turn for
| example bauxite into aluminium?
| latchkey wrote:
| https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=
| 0...
|
| https://massena-environmental-health-and-
| justice.org/superfu...
| adrianN wrote:
| To save others a click
|
| > Alcoa released hazardous substances, including
| polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), onto the facility
| property as well as into the Grasse River through four
| industrial outfalls
|
| I wonder for what you need PCBs in sufficient quantities
| to cause a superfund site.
| hinkley wrote:
| Are the PCBs an input or the result of the chemistry?
| lukan wrote:
| I suppose recycling existing aluminium is more hazard
| free.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Luckily the indian reservation has plenty of empty land to
| pollute.
| ayk3 wrote:
| Contrast this news with that of LPEA from neighboring Durango
| area putting a stop to new solar installation due to maxing out
| energy needs
|
| https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/la-plata-electric-put...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Promote electric vehicles, heat pumps, inductive cooktops, and
| other decarbonization that would increase electricity demand
| since you've got a plethora of electricity? Nope.
|
| Incentivize home energy storage and invest in grid level energy
| storage and encourage purchasing EVs that can be used as grid
| batteries? Nope.
|
| Invest in better grid-level interconnects to export
| electricity? Nope.
|
| Work with the community to attract industry that uses lots of
| electricity and approach commercial/industrial users to find
| ways to decarbonize? Nope.
|
| Ban customers from new grid-intertied solar: YES.
|
| Engage in scare-mongering about solar causing fires and being
| dangerous or causing grid instability when grid-intertie
| systems have a slew of safety mechanisms? YES.
|
| Absolute morons.
|
| Also buried in that article: they signed a contract with their
| wholesale provider mandating that they can only generate 5% of
| their own electricity. The article claims, but does not
| explain, how this doesn't limit solar generation - there's a
| bunch of hand-waiving about how "it doesn't prohibit homeowners
| from generating solar power."
|
| That contract _goes until 2050_. Who looked at the electricity
| market and said "you know what? Let's sign a multi-decade
| contract, that seems smart!"?
| Jgrubb wrote:
| I doubt they're morons, more likely perfectly intelligent and
| know exactly what they're doing and for whom.
| tfourb wrote:
| "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately
| explained by stupidity."
| worik wrote:
| Incentives explain a lot more than ethier
| usefulcat wrote:
| > A proposed solar farm on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation will
| have 2.2 million solar panels
|
| > Annual capacity is estimated to be about 756 megawatts.
|
| 756 MW/year = ~2 MW/day = less than 1 watt per day per panel?
|
| I get that the sun doesn't shine 24/7, but even so that seems way
| off. What am I missing? Maybe the 756 MW figure is daily instead
| of annual?
| newyankee wrote:
| MW is power, MWh is energy. So annual should be 756 _4.5_ 365
| MWh
| sp332 wrote:
| You can escape your * with a \\.
| titzer wrote:
| Watts are a rate (energy/time), you don't need to divide them
| by time again.
| patricklorio wrote:
| 756 MW is the peak power rate, not accumulated amount of power
| that will be generated per year.
| dgacmu wrote:
| The article is bad, as so often happens with units... The
| project site: https://www.sunbearproject.com/
|
| 971MW, producing up to 1700 to 2400 GWh/year.
|
| That puts it at 2471 hours/year of full-power production
| equivalent, or 28%. That's good - it's a nice area for solar.
| g8oz wrote:
| The average solar power purchase agreement is $49 per
| megawatt hour1. That is $49,000 per GWh. So if this plant can
| produce 1700 gigawatt hours per year then they would be able
| to earn on the order of $83,000,000 annually. Not too shabby.
|
| (1)- https://www.utilitydive.com/news/solar-wind-renewable-
| energy...
| angm128 wrote:
| Should be more like 756 GWh
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| 756MW of capacity will produce ~3,024 MWH per day
|
| "756MW of annual capacity" doesn't make sense, given that MW is
| a measure of instantaneous power. They might mean that the
| average daily peak output over the whole year is 756MW?
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| Off topic, but does anyone know if Ute tribes share money with
| each other for big projects like this?
|
| I'm pretty sure this tribe has a casino on their reservation, but
| I know the one in Utah doesn't, both get money from oil
| extraction, but I'm not sure if they are totally independent from
| each other?
| latchkey wrote:
| > US is incredibly slow in building transmission lines, takes
| decades.
|
| A lot of bitcoin miners use stranded power, which would otherwise
| go to waste. People often respond to me on HN that the power
| could be easily/cheaply sent elsewhere for better uses [0].
| Comments like this just re-enforce the fact that these people
| have literally no idea what they are talking about. Thanks, I'll
| favorite this one. =)
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39317583
| nextaccountic wrote:
| There is no law of nature that says that the pace of US
| infrastructure improvements should be like that. It's a matter
| of policy. The US has built impressive projects before at a
| staggering rate, and they could do so in the future. (currently
| China is doing the same but on a larger scale. It shows it is
| possible if you have the political will)
|
| When people say that the power "could" be sent elsewhere, they
| are right, you just need to build the damn transmission lines.
| It's not rocket science.
| latchkey wrote:
| I'm referring to the whole picture not just platitudes.
|
| The reality of the situation is that certainly a lot of stuff
| "could" happen, like Fusion and Nuclear power too.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Had fusion power recived a fraction of the funds that went
| to blockchain stuff over the past decade, we would be much
| closer indeed.
| latchkey wrote:
| Had fusion power received a fraction of the funds that
| went to military wars over the past decade, we would be
| much closer indeed.
|
| My point is that whataboutism, is probably a bad take
| here.
| hmottestad wrote:
| I think that "just need to" can be said about a lot of
| things. And even space x can build rockets, it's not exactly
| brain surgery!
| hannob wrote:
| > A lot of bitcoin miners use stranded power, which would
| otherwise go to waste.
|
| Often claimed, rarely supported by evidence or numbers.
|
| It's also unlikely to be very practical, because that'd
| essentially mean running bitcoin miners in load-balancing mode,
| and not running them most of the time. Given that bitcoin
| hardware tends to loose value quickly, as the next generation
| of mining hardware comes to the market, this is unlikely to be
| a feasible model.
| latchkey wrote:
| I have evidence and numbers.
|
| Update: I got downvoted for not posting them. I did in the
| link above though.
|
| https://www.coinmint.one/ is the data center. They have about
| 500MW of power going to them from the Moses-Saunders dam.
|
| They don't need to shut down cause it is hydro and 24/7. They
| actually help keep the dam running cause they balance the
| load coming from it. Just like the aluminum smelter before it
| did. The location of the facility and dam are near the border
| of Canada and the US. It is very remote and in the middle of
| nowhere with enough population to consume the 500MW. There
| are main grid lines going past them, but it would likely need
| new infrastructure to connect to it at that much power.
|
| I've seen their power costs (including transmission), I can't
| post that, obviously. But, a large chunk of their costs, is
| transmission, which pays for the install and maintenance of
| the lines running the few miles from the dam. These are large
| / tall physical towers.
|
| Disclosure: I'm a former very large scale
| bitcoin/litecoin/ethereum miner and now building an AI bare
| metal gpu service.
| sirspacey wrote:
| Would you be willing to post them?
| rainsford wrote:
| That's actually an interesting situation, but it doesn't
| support the assertion that the power would "otherwise go to
| waste" or that this is something a lot of bitcoin miners
| do. The argument that it's non-trivial to just transmit the
| power elsewhere is a persuasive one, the argument that
| bitcoin mining is somehow uniquely able to take advantage
| of that power is not as persuasive.
|
| Even if the argument is that compute heavy data centers are
| the only use-case that makes sense, there's lots of compute
| use cases other than bitcoin. And obviously the former
| presence of the aluminum shelter suggests data centers are
| _not_ the only good use-cases. I understand the appeal of
| the argument that bitcoin mining has less energy impact
| than people think because it can uniquely take advantage of
| weird edge cases, but it doesn 't make sense to me.
| latchkey wrote:
| You're trying to apply persuasive logic to something that
| doesn't need persuasive logic. It is what it is.
|
| The fact that the smelter shut down and literally nobody
| picked it up and put it to use, speaks volumes. Heck,
| Alcoa was so desperate to unload it, they let those
| "dirty" bitcoin miners move in, over any other business
| potential.
|
| Here is another one... the Quincy/Wenatchee area of WA
| state. Also sparsely populated, but more hydro power than
| anyone knows what to do with. This is where a huge number
| of data centers are, including bitcoin miners.
| tw04 wrote:
| > A lot of bitcoin miners use stranded power, which would
| otherwise go to waste.
|
| A lot of bitcoin miners are keeping fossil fuel spewing power
| plants from being retired because the regulations that keep
| power affordable for Americans haven't caught up. There's a
| reason China killed bitcoin mining and the US needs to follow
| suit. Literally killing the planet for imaginary coins that
| don't solve any problems that weren't already solved. Well,
| besides the whole anonymous ransom thing.
| latchkey wrote:
| I believe that the US should work to end coal plants
| regardless of who is buying power from them.
|
| Oh and I'm more of a fan of Ethereum. They've now moved to
| PoS, which consumes a fraction of the power, and there is
| actual utility on that chain. Moved my bitcoin to wbtc too,
| but looking forward to more decentralized versions of it
| eventually.
| anonporridge wrote:
| > There's a reason China killed bitcoin mining and the US
| needs to follow suit.
|
| According to this data, China tried, but failed to kill
| bitcoin mining. As of the last update in Jan 2022, China
| currently has 55% of the hashrate it had before the ban.
| https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci/mining_map
|
| Also, mining is a global industry. Banning it in one country
| is like grabbing a fist full of water. It just oozes out
| elsewhere. It looks like the China ban mostly oozed into the
| US and Kazakhstan, before rebounding back into China. The
| effective reduced total energy use from the China ban barely
| lasted 6 months before it surpassed previous levels.
|
| This was the result of one of the strongest authoritarian
| surveillance states in the world. What makes you think anyone
| else can do better?
| anonporridge wrote:
| Bitcoin mining is a pioneer species, proving out the tapping of
| novel and remote energy sources and laying the initial
| infrastructure for more investment.
|
| https://medium.com/the-bitcoin-times/bitcoin-is-a-pioneer-sp...
| latchkey wrote:
| As much as I appreciate articles like this, you're not going
| to win over the HN crowd with them. Especially now that
| Ethereum has been so successful with PoS and decimating power
| usage, not just on that chain, but all GPU based PoW chains.
| anonporridge wrote:
| There was only ever going to be one PoW chain that
| dominates the world.
|
| Ethereum abandoning it just cements bitcoin as the winner.
| It might have some great utility, but bitcoin is now the
| standard for immutability that all other solutions will be
| measured against.
| latchkey wrote:
| > There was only ever going to be one PoW chain that
| dominates the world.
|
| Only because there is only one chip that can be produced
| in mass, asic's.
|
| > Ethereum abandoning it
|
| Ethereum didn't abandon it, it was part of the plan all
| along. Bootstrap on PoW, move to PoS. I agree with you
| about immutability, but that is going to be an issue
| moving forward, as I believe strongly that human nature
| favors utility.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please make your substantive points without being
| snarky or a jerk? If you know more than others, that's great--
| please share some of what you know, so the rest of us can
| learn. But please _don 't_ post putdowns or shame other people
| for being wrong. We're all mostly wrong about most everything,
| after all.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| (We detached this offtopic subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39411064.)
| doodlebugging wrote:
| It would be more useful if that was the way that all
| (b)/(sh)itcoin miners operated. It is not like that here in
| Texas [0]. The state has even paid them multimillions of
| dollars to cut energy consumption during extreme weather
| periods. [1]
|
| That money came straight from Texas citizens who gain nothing
| from the operations of these coin miners and who have already
| had to pay for the near collapse of the power grid back in Feb.
| 2021 which occurred because utilities are largely unregulated
| and can ignore requirements that they upgrade facilities or
| worse, just whine about the costs of bringing power generation
| plants into compliance with modern air quality standards like a
| bunch of rich spoiled toddlers. Many of these plants were
| grandfathered in when standards were established even though
| they would have been easy to upgrade at the time.
|
| It is about time that the feds do what the Chinese did a few
| years ago and take a hard look at all the energy waste in
| shitcoin mining. [2]
|
| In addition to energy consumption, this facility in Granbury,
| TX is already under fire for being a huge noise nuisance from
| the cooling fans that operate 24/7. [3]
|
| [0] https://theweek.com/in-depth/1022698/how-voracious-
| bitcoin-m...
|
| [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-
| cryptocurrency-r...
|
| [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/large-
| cryptocurr...
|
| [3] https://time.com/6590155/bitcoin-mining-noise-texas/
|
| I understand from your replies that you had a personal stake in
| shitcoin mining and you're pivoting to something else. Maybe
| for you the handwriting is on the wall.
| latchkey wrote:
| If you're so upset at what happened in Texas, then you should
| speak up to your representatives there. To me, it sounds like
| a larger systemic issue than just Bitcoin mining.
|
| > I understand from your replies that you had a personal
| stake in shitcoin mining and you're pivoting to something
| else. Maybe for you the handwriting is on the wall.
|
| This feels like a personal attack, which as I understand it,
| is against the guidelines. But, to explain... I worked for
| businesses with stakes. I didn't have it myself. That would
| be like blaming someone who works for SpaceX, for Elon's bad
| takes.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| It was not intended as a personal attack. It was an
| observation that you may have been involved in the industry
| long enough to sense that changes were coming in near
| future and that it might be a good time to think about
| other ways to earn an income.
|
| As far as the Texas political situation goes, I do what I
| can. I'm only one vote and experience has demonstrated that
| when you contact one of your elected reps here, the best
| that you can hope for is that they forget to add your
| contact information to their list of Texas residents who
| might support the election or re-election of people just
| like them. I made the mistake once of correcting one of my
| reps during a community phone roundtable discussion and
| later followed up with an email. Since then I have been
| trying (with some success) to remove my contact info from
| their call and email lists. The simple fact that they spam
| your contact accounts from every state-wide and national
| candidate in spite of the fact that they should know that
| they will never have your support tells me that they are
| trying to discourage people who will vote against them from
| participating in the process. It won't work with me but it
| might with others.
|
| This is as far off of the topic of solar panels in the Four
| Corners region as I think I need to go today. Good luck in
| your new ventures.
| latchkey wrote:
| > it might be a good time to think about other ways to
| earn an income.
|
| Ethereum switched from PoW to PoS. GPU mining stopped.
| The company I was working for wound down. So, yea... way
| ahead of you.
|
| Bitcoin is about to halve its emissions. I expect a lot
| of miners to shut down (or at least continue to
| concentrate into the larger corporations).
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > Having said that, we're going to be producing a large amount of
| power. So I'm not sure that all of it will be able to be consumed
| within Colorado."
|
| That's a surprisingly vague statement on a billion dollar
| project. I'd expect there would be spreadsheets and models
| estimating production/consumption locations for decades out and
| the company would be quoting a percentage figure even if that was
| a guesstimate.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'd note that in 2024 $1bb isn't THAT much money. Further the
| constraints will likely have more to do with distribution
| infrastructure outside their control.
| sitkack wrote:
| This could power data centers, then the only outside link needed
| is fiber optic lines.
| latchkey wrote:
| Correct. Data centers over casinos.
|
| But then again, those data centers could have bitcoin miners,
| at which point, we'd be back to the casino. =)
| alexpotato wrote:
| Whenever I see comments about how slow public projects are these
| days, I think about this documentary:
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/race-under...
|
| It's a PBS special about the history of the Boston subway (which
| was one of the first in the nation).
|
| To give you an idea of what construction safety was like back
| then, they would routinely encounter gas lines, cut them WITHOUT
| turning off the gas, and keep working.
|
| Obviously, this led to lots of explosions but also very quick
| construction. If you are optimizing for speed over
| safety/environmental/etc it's pretty surprising how quickly you
| can build something.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Safety usually isn't the problem. It's the public notice
| periods, feedback collection, final notices, environmental
| impact studies, lawsuits over whether the environmental impact
| studies were sufficient, possible need to get the government to
| invoke eminent domain, studies over which potential version of
| a project needs the least disruption, and so forth.
|
| Near where I live is a bridge over a river that needs
| replacing. The county had to study three different ways to do
| it, weighing environmental impact, traffic disruption, total
| cost of each option, and so forth.
|
| The planning and regulatory portion of the project is easily
| 75% of the timeline, and that's for a fast one due to the
| condition of the bridge itself. If it were less urgent, it
| would have likely taken even longer.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Meanwhile collapsed Minneapolis I-35W bridge (remember that?
| Gusset plates, etc?) got replaced in something like 7 months,
| they picked a colorado company and started construction very
| quickly. Of course a half dozen local construction companies
| filed suit but the bridge was built really fast.
|
| Right next door to that bridge are three other projects: a
| cliff/dirt collapse/erosion/retaining project that kept the
| river parkway closed for like 4 years, and two bridges being
| reconditioned that have been closed for 3. Those went through
| the "normal" channels.
| zdragnar wrote:
| A friend of mine was on I35W, about a half mile or mile
| before where the bridge collapsed, and had to take an exit
| to get off the freeway. Lots of small quirks of fate slowed
| down his trip that day just enough that he wasn't over the
| portion that collapsed when it went down.
|
| I think a part of the difference is that the federal
| government provides funds for maintenance of the
| interstates, and the sheer volume of traffic that was being
| re-routed down other roads that weren't really intended for
| the extra traffic (adding lanes to 94 certainly helped
| some).
|
| Shame that it requires a catastrophe to see what we can
| really do when it needs doing.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _they would routinely encounter gas lines, cut them WITHOUT
| turning off the gas, and keep working_
|
| That's still done today, evidently! A few months back, there
| was a small gas leak in my neighborhood. When they knocked on
| my door to say they'd be working in the area, the repair crew
| leader was kind enough to indulge my questions.
|
| I asked them if my gas would be shut off. They said no, they do
| the work while the gas is still on!
|
| And they must have been cutting into the gas line because they
| replaced a section that ran under the street. They used a
| backhoe to dig huge holes on both sides of the street and then
| fed a flexible pipe through.
|
| Here's a video about something kind of similar:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCMs__ZnOfA
|
| I'm sure today's techniques are different and much safer, so I
| don't think it negates your point that they used to do risky
| stuff.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| part of the issue in 2024 is that the ground is a lot fuller
| than it used to be, so it takes more time. In some cases, like
| in New York, step one is figuring out where any of that stuff
| even _is_ , because for privately owned infrastructure the maps
| are not public or even shared with government, and in some
| cases the infrastructure is so old that the maps are not
| accurate, if they are even available.
|
| we now build projects to relocate utilities (so that you don't
| have to shut down a subway line to replace an adjacent water
| pipe) but that stuff is costly and everyone is prepared to sue
| the other in case of a mess-up. but there is a lot of the
| physical version of tech debt; New York is still replacing wood
| and lead piping, for example.
| 0xGod wrote:
| Incredible news and momentum. The entire land will have an
| advanced smart renewable grid that scales to any size and is very
| fault-tolerant and self-recovering. It is beautiful to observe
| the Melting Pot producing great ideas and vast installations of
| great systems. Great job all around and it's encouraging to
| observe communities joining forces and brains to work on planet-
| scale problems. Godspeed, USA! The Melting Pot will continue to
| lead the world in producing cultural exchange and elevation for
| all communities.
|
| We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
| equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
| unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
| pursuit of Happiness.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Lol a Ute in Australia means a pickup truck. I first thought it
| meant that lol.
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