5 ms·

Did you read the article? It's entirely dedicated to explaining how they reluctantly arrived at this conclusion.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Was closing the university explored? (the article doesn’t mention it) Would we have as much compassion for a school opening on a pacific island where everything needed to be transported in...when you could instead move people to civilization instead? Total enrollment is 10k students. We’re firing up a replacement coal plant, which is not paying for its CO2, mercury, and uranium emission externalities, for 10k students.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  > "Would we have as much compassion for a school opening on a pacific island where everything needed to be transported in...when you could instead move people to civilization instead?" Weird example, I would expect more compassion from most people for that scenario. Criticizing coal plants is common but criticizing people for living on Hawaii seems.. unusual.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Hawaii is years ahead of its targets to move to renewables, which is why I didn’t use them as an example. I meant somewhere like the Marshall Islands, where there’s nothing.
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      Your example was shipping to Pacific Islands... Have you seen the price of typical consumer goods in Hawaii? Damn near everything is shipped in and that's neither cheap nor environmentally friendly. Particularly due to economic consequences of the Jones Act. Anyway, criticism for living somewhere like the Marshall Islands, while perhaps rationally warranted, is very rare to actually see compared to criticism for coal plants. So this is still a bizarre example.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        [deleted] Edit: I take no issue with the people of Hawaii, and that was not the example I intended.
        darkpuma 8y ago
        It was not my intention to address, much less defend, that. I'm addressing your assertion that people have less sympathy for island dwellers.
- scarmig 8y ago
  I think environmentalists picking a fight over this, particularly because of the unique circumstances, isn't really worth the trouble, regardless of how well- or ill-advised it was. Something to ponder, though: how much CO2 would be emitted if you shut down the university, and had to build the infrastructure to house and educate those 10k students elsewhere? Building a campus of that size would likely cost >$1 billion and would itself involve lots of emissions from concrete and power generation. And even once constructed, base power generation would still likely use fossil fuels. Natural gas is a far sight better than coal, but it still emits CO2 when burned. My gut, given these considerations, is that it's much more environmentally friendly to use existing infrastructure and replace this coal-fueled plant with a more efficient coal-fueled plant, which is exactly what the university is doing.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Why should they consider closing the university? It's obviously in a place where there is no better alternative for those students, or they wouldn't go there. 10,000 people is a non-trivial number. Constructing a new 10,000-student-sized university somewhere is also going to need some surrounding infrastructure to support it, which Fairbanks already has, and which (presumably) the new place doesn't have. If you want to just ship them somewhere else, I doubt that there are openings for 10,000 students in all the universities in the western half of the US. And if you want to just have those 10,000 students not get an education in preference to building a power plant, feel free to get lost.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    There are 5300 colleges in the US. Assume a third (~1700) are alternatives for these students, that’s 6 students per college. Assume only 500 are desirable, and it’s still only 20 students per school. At no point did I say these students shouldn’t receive an education. I’m arguing about the wasteful use of resources to be educated in a specific (edit: clean, renewable) energy resource poor location.
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      It's not an energy resource poor location. There's coal within 100 miles. It's just poor in energy resources that aren't out of favor.
e1ven 8y ago
I'd love to hear more details about why they didn't work out than the article goes into. I'm guessing it's because of the combined heat and electric?
- wahern 8y ago
  https://www.uaf.edu/heatandpower/background.php https://www.uaf.edu/heatandpower/background.php
  - e1ven 8y ago
    Thanks! It looks like the driving factors are that it's a combined plant, and gas is too expensive on site. We did examine both the operating and fuel costs of a gas option. It costs less to build a gas plant; however, gas is a more expensive fuel than coal. All our models are just that -- models -- because there is currently not a reliable source of gas. Using today's prices, our fuel costs with the new boiler would be about $5.3 million each year. Fuel costs at current gas prices would be about $20 million a year. Until a low-cost, reliable supply of gas becomes a reality in Fairbanks, a gas option is not viable.
phs318u 8y ago
From the article it’s not clear that they considered geothermal [0] (though perhaps they did and it was discounted; the article doesn’t say either way). I’d also suggest that this could have been the posterboy for modern nuclear. [0] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a2540/4245896/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a2540/42...
- philipkglass 8y ago
  It's a combined heat and power plant, meaning that they use the waste heat from the electrical generation cycle to provide localized heating. The Chena site mentioned in your linked article is 56 miles from Fairbanks itself, so they'd only be able to get electricity (via wire) from geothermal; there's no way to transport waste heat over that distance. It certainly could be more environmentally beneficial to use electrical heating with geothermal electricity instead of a coal CHP plant. When they say in the article that the numbers didn't pencil out for alternatives, I presume they mean financial numbers. This sort of application is where one of the smallest Small Modular Reactor designs would theoretically be great, but nobody is offering a commercial SMR yet. All SMR designs are still in the R&D phase. The smallest commercially available power reactor designs start at hundreds of megawatts, which is far larger than the 17 MW the campus needed.
  - wbl 8y ago
    They could upscale a research design.
    - thomasmeeks 8y ago
      Do you really think it is that simple?
      - wbl 8y ago
        TRIGA thermal power goes up to the area they are thinking about.
    - 8y ago

Was closing the university explored? (the article doesn’t mention it) Would we have as much compassion for a school opening on a pacific island where everything needed to be transported in...when you could instead move people to civilization instead? Total enrollment is 10k students. We’re firing up a replacement coal plant, which is not paying for its CO2, mercury, and uranium emission externalities, for 10k students.

darkpuma 8y ago
> "Would we have as much compassion for a school opening on a pacific island where everything needed to be transported in...when you could instead move people to civilization instead?" Weird example, I would expect more compassion from most people for that scenario. Criticizing coal plants is common but criticizing people for living on Hawaii seems.. unusual.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Hawaii is years ahead of its targets to move to renewables, which is why I didn’t use them as an example. I meant somewhere like the Marshall Islands, where there’s nothing.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    Your example was shipping to Pacific Islands... Have you seen the price of typical consumer goods in Hawaii? Damn near everything is shipped in and that's neither cheap nor environmentally friendly. Particularly due to economic consequences of the Jones Act. Anyway, criticism for living somewhere like the Marshall Islands, while perhaps rationally warranted, is very rare to actually see compared to criticism for coal plants. So this is still a bizarre example.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      [deleted] Edit: I take no issue with the people of Hawaii, and that was not the example I intended.
      - darkpuma 8y ago
        It was not my intention to address, much less defend, that. I'm addressing your assertion that people have less sympathy for island dwellers.
scarmig 8y ago
I think environmentalists picking a fight over this, particularly because of the unique circumstances, isn't really worth the trouble, regardless of how well- or ill-advised it was. Something to ponder, though: how much CO2 would be emitted if you shut down the university, and had to build the infrastructure to house and educate those 10k students elsewhere? Building a campus of that size would likely cost >$1 billion and would itself involve lots of emissions from concrete and power generation. And even once constructed, base power generation would still likely use fossil fuels. Natural gas is a far sight better than coal, but it still emits CO2 when burned. My gut, given these considerations, is that it's much more environmentally friendly to use existing infrastructure and replace this coal-fueled plant with a more efficient coal-fueled plant, which is exactly what the university is doing.
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Why should they consider closing the university? It's obviously in a place where there is no better alternative for those students, or they wouldn't go there. 10,000 people is a non-trivial number. Constructing a new 10,000-student-sized university somewhere is also going to need some surrounding infrastructure to support it, which Fairbanks already has, and which (presumably) the new place doesn't have. If you want to just ship them somewhere else, I doubt that there are openings for 10,000 students in all the universities in the western half of the US. And if you want to just have those 10,000 students not get an education in preference to building a power plant, feel free to get lost.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  There are 5300 colleges in the US. Assume a third (~1700) are alternatives for these students, that’s 6 students per college. Assume only 500 are desirable, and it’s still only 20 students per school. At no point did I say these students shouldn’t receive an education. I’m arguing about the wasteful use of resources to be educated in a specific (edit: clean, renewable) energy resource poor location.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    It's not an energy resource poor location. There's coal within 100 miles. It's just poor in energy resources that aren't out of favor.

e1ven 8y ago

I'd love to hear more details about why they didn't work out than the article goes into. I'm guessing it's because of the combined heat and electric?

wahern 8y ago
https://www.uaf.edu/heatandpower/background.php https://www.uaf.edu/heatandpower/background.php
- e1ven 8y ago
  Thanks! It looks like the driving factors are that it's a combined plant, and gas is too expensive on site. We did examine both the operating and fuel costs of a gas option. It costs less to build a gas plant; however, gas is a more expensive fuel than coal. All our models are just that -- models -- because there is currently not a reliable source of gas. Using today's prices, our fuel costs with the new boiler would be about $5.3 million each year. Fuel costs at current gas prices would be about $20 million a year. Until a low-cost, reliable supply of gas becomes a reality in Fairbanks, a gas option is not viable.

phs318u 8y ago

From the article it’s not clear that they considered geothermal [0] (though perhaps they did and it was discounted; the article doesn’t say either way). I’d also suggest that this could have been the posterboy for modern nuclear. [0] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a2540/4245896/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a2540/42...

philipkglass 8y ago
It's a combined heat and power plant, meaning that they use the waste heat from the electrical generation cycle to provide localized heating. The Chena site mentioned in your linked article is 56 miles from Fairbanks itself, so they'd only be able to get electricity (via wire) from geothermal; there's no way to transport waste heat over that distance. It certainly could be more environmentally beneficial to use electrical heating with geothermal electricity instead of a coal CHP plant. When they say in the article that the numbers didn't pencil out for alternatives, I presume they mean financial numbers. This sort of application is where one of the smallest Small Modular Reactor designs would theoretically be great, but nobody is offering a commercial SMR yet. All SMR designs are still in the R&D phase. The smallest commercially available power reactor designs start at hundreds of megawatts, which is far larger than the 17 MW the campus needed.
- wbl 8y ago
  They could upscale a research design.
  - thomasmeeks 8y ago
    Do you really think it is that simple?
    - wbl 8y ago
      TRIGA thermal power goes up to the area they are thinking about.
  - 8y ago