Oil Prices

[SHOCKvalue]

This allows NCRA to get a waiver around a LOT of EPA standards, as it is viewed by the government as 'refurbishing of existing structure' as opposed to 'new construction'.

There's a large aluminum processing facility in Rockdale (about an hour east of the Austin area) that emits so much CO2 that it creates ozone issues (and causes clean-air act failures in Dallas during the summer). It was 'refitted' and expanded when it was refitted, which allowed Alcoa to get around clean-air standards.

The handsomely paid government eco-nutties have threatened to throw Wichita under the regulatory bus due to a few days a year Flint Hills range-burning smoke rolls into town.

True story. I couldn't make up something so asinine.

[shocka khan]

Whomever did the color selection on this map did is wrong it seems. The colors red and blue should clearly be swapped.

Actually I would have redone the whole color scheme - Texas, Alaska (below .40/gallon in blue (and I would change that to green)); Kansas, Georgia, Arkansas in yellow (.40 to .50) and left the red alone so it would look like a heat map. Easier for the casual viewer to grasp.

[Kung Wu]

Nothing any one oil company can do to change the price of oil. Oil is a global issue, the US free markets can't do much to change the power of OPEC.

Lack of nuclear plants would sure seem to make us more reliant on the global oil markets, would it not?

[SHOCKvalue]

Lack of nuclear plants would sure seem to make us more reliant on the global oil markets, would it not?

Gosh, we can't have those when there are free handouts to be made defacing the planet with aesthetic cancers like wind farms and solar arrays. What sense would that make? Plus, nuclear waste scares the hell out of my pet unicorn.

[shocka khan]

The handsomely paid government eco-nutties have threatened to throw Wichita under the regulatory bus due to a few days a year Flint Hills range-burning smoke rolls into town.

True story. I couldn't make up something so asinine.

Heck, we just ignore it when the smoke from farmers burning their maize crops in Mexico drifts up to Kansas (I know someone's going to make a crack about that one in 3....2....1).

It is pretty asinine. But it's also pretty asinine for the TCEQ and the EPA to knowingly allow a manufacturer to change their smelter to allow them to modernize and increase output while throwing their pollutants toward Dallas.

Failing EPA monitoring standards has a financial impact for cities. The EPA/TCEQ granted a permanent subsidy to Alcoa by way of the non-attainment dollars Dallas has taken away every year that this smelter is allowed to belch ginormous amounts of CO2. Stated another way, Alcoa should have been forced to install more CO2 scrubbers in the smelter stacks so that Dallas doesn't have to suffer the consequences of having federal transportation dollars taken away.

[shocka khan]

Lack of nuclear plants would sure seem to make us more reliant on the global oil markets, would it not?

I dunno, might want to go ask the people in Fukushima, Japan. If you can build a fusion reactor, I'm with you. If you're talking about current technology fission reactors, not so much. Catastrophic accidents have consequences and make people glow in the dark.

[SHOCKvalue]

I dunno, might want to go ask the people in Fukushima, Japan. If you can build a fusion reactor, I'm with you. If you're talking about current technology fission reactors, not so much. Catastrophic accidents have consequences and make people glow in the dark.

Alternatively, you can just chose not to build them on seismic faults, or in corrupt and inefficient communist countries.

You do recall Wichita's electricity comes from a nuclear source, right?

[shocka khan]

Alternatively, you can just chose not to build them on seismic faults, or in corrupt and inefficient communist countries.

You do recall Wichita's electricity comes from a nuclear source, right?

I did not, but I am aware that some of Houston's power comes from the South Texas Nuclear Project (STNP), which at one time had an abysmal safety record.

The reason it had an abysmal safety record is our corrupt and inefficient regulators in Texas who really don't care whether an earthquake or weld failure would make you glow in the dark, just that glowing in the dark is a very-American thing to do.

At one time, the STNP had the worst regulatory record in the US. I haven't heard near as much bad press on them as I did when they were building/starting the plants.

One of the plants (or supporting facilities) had a real issue with sub-standard welds. There were cracks in exchangers for the reactor, IIRC, and the Atomic Energy Commission made them go back and re-do all the welds.

I don't have a problem with nuclear power if it is not in an area prone to earthquakes or tidal waves, but would prefer we develop the technology that allows us to build fusion and not fission reactors. I also don't think you can have enough safety protocols in them either, as I don't believe in single points of failure when it comes to something like that.

[Kung Wu]

I dunno, might want to go ask the people in Fukushima, Japan. If you can build a fusion reactor, I'm with you. If you're talking about current technology fission reactors, not so much. Catastrophic accidents have consequences and make people glow in the dark.

That was pretty much the worst case scenario, where TWO natural disasters would knock out a nookyalur plant .... and NOBODY died from radiation. That's ZERO deaths from radiation at Fukushima. Projections by eggheads puts the number of potential future deaths from cancer caused by the radiation leakage anywhere from ZERO to 100.

From my perspective, if you can have a nookyalur power plant get hit by an earthquake + tsunami combination and have zero deaths from radiation leakage, then nuclear power is a GO!

[Kung Wu]

Now I wonder, in comparison, how many people died from:

Oil drilling, oil rigs, oil tankers (whether operational or the whole darn ship sinking), oil truck accidents, oil refineries, oil pipeline accidents, etc?

[Dave Stalwart]

That was pretty much the worst case scenario, where TWO natural disasters would knock out a nookyalur plant .... and NOBODY died from radiation. That's ZERO deaths from radiation at Fukushima. Projections by eggheads puts the number of potential future deaths from cancer caused by the radiation leakage anywhere from ZERO to 100.

From my perspective, if you can have a nookyalur power plant get hit by an earthquake + tsunami combination and have zero deaths from radiation leakage, then nuclear power is a GO!

Well, when you put it THAT way...

[shocka khan]

Now I wonder, in comparison, how many people died from:

Oil drilling, oil rigs, oil tankers (whether operational or the whole darn ship sinking), oil truck accidents, oil refineries, oil pipeline accidents, etc?

They had a passenger train collide with a tanker truck of hot crude in Marland, Oklahoma a BUNCH of years ago. I talked to the conductor and he told me after hosing the locomotive down for 2 hours to cool it off, someone tried to remove the engineer/fireman (can't remember which) from the cab of the locomotive and he looked perfectly fine and appeared to be sitting in the cab, but was actually burned to a crisp below his waist. By the way, the person referenced in the article I linked to (below), Walter Hinkle, was the one who told me about that. Also ironic to note that Koch oil owned the truck.

http://www3.gendisasters.com/oklahoma/22765/marland-ok-amtrak-truck-collision-dec-1976

[Dan]

I guess they could always build them in Detroit. Cheap land, plenty of skilled labor.

[shocka khan]

That was pretty much the worst case scenario, where TWO natural disasters would knock out a nookyalur plant .... and NOBODY died from radiation. That's ZERO deaths from radiation at Fukushima. Projections by eggheads puts the number of potential future deaths from cancer caused by the radiation leakage anywhere from ZERO to 100.

From my perspective, if you can have a nookyalur power plant get hit by an earthquake + tsunami combination and have zero deaths from radiation leakage, then nuclear power is a GO!

I did not realize that, but isn't Fukushima going to be uninhabitable for a few years? Sort of like Chernobyl?

I think it's great that no one died, but I'm wondering what the 'loss of use' damages from being forced to move to a new house, losing your farmland and so forth was.

[Kung Wu]

I did not realize that, but isn't Fukushima going to be uninhabitable for a few years? Sort of like Chernobyl?

I don't know, but 2000 years from now they will probably discover some sweet new species that cures cancer right where this happened!!