Ray -
If PNM runs all plants at maximum capacity (up to the percentage that
PNM owns - some are shared), then the two coal plants produce around
900 megawatts while the rest of the plants (nuclear, wind, natural
gas) produce 1100 megawatts. That would only happen at the hottest
day of summer, however. The natural gas plants are peakers with some
alternating to the spot market - that's up to 576 megawatts. One
major reason New Mexico doesn't use more of its own natural gas in
power plants is that there are no natural gas processing plants in the
state - all of our gas is collected and piped to Texas for processing.
That's why we had the natural gas problem a few winters ago - the
plants in west Texas lost power and GasCo wasn't getting any gas.
From reading PNM's site, I see that (all?) the coal comes from the 4
corners area, split between the San Juan and the Four Corners plants.
I didn't appreciate how hard it was to process Natural Gas... seems
like a shame to have to pump it all the way from the (many?) fields in
the 4 corners and Grants/Gallup area all the way to TX just to run it
back properly "processed"? Seems like Gary Johnson would have fixed
that problem when he was in office... maybe if he makes it to President
;^) ?!
The 136 turbine wind-farm near Ft Sumner sounds like it generates about
1/2 of PNM's portion of the Palo Verde nuclear plant (385MW) at 200 MW...
It looks like PNM owns 10% of the Palo Verde/Tonopah 3,850 MW
capacity. It is an interesting factoid presented on their page:
/If all the electricity used throughout one person's life was
produced by nuclear power, that person's share of waste from nuclear
facilities would fit in a soda can./
I'm guessing that if one owned a Tesla (or any EV), the lifetime
"nuclear waste footprint" would be more like a Big Gulp... or that of a
cremation urn. Perhaps a good argument/strategy for nuclear power
would be to allow/require every person to take responsibility for their
own waste. Maybe the cemetary/mausoleum business could take care of
this? "The solution to pollution is dilution" suggests that mixing
one's cremains with one's nuclear waste and spreading them as many
people do might be a solution? Probably not. But it is kind of
poetic. 7 Billion people alive today... 7 Billion Soda Cans, 84 Billion
oz, a mere 87 Million Cubic feet (Arlo, can you figure the buttloads for
me?) or just over 10E-5 cubic miles?
I wonder how large of a volume of dead birds (anecdotally a problem with
wind turbines?) one would be responsible for in their lifetime? How big
of a diamond would one have to bury with their dead if we captured
(how?) and compressed (how?) our Carbon footprint to it's smallest
physical state? Would the O and H and N and S molecules just squeeze
out? What to do with them? Sounds like a perpetual motion (chemical)
machine.
<morbid twist> When we spread my father's ashes (illegally) on Forest
Service land (he had been a career Forest Service professional), there
was a twinge of guilt (after all, it is *illegal*) and a twinge of "go
fuck yerself bureaucrats, there is no problem here, move along!" Later
that year, the Silver Fire burned through the area, pretty much making
his miniscule 5 lbs of "cremains" irrelevant by nearly any measure. I
suppose a soda-can sized slug of depleted uranium (or whatever the waste
actually is?) would not have been fazed by the fire, however, surely
setting off gieger counters and increasing the rate of cancers in hikers
making the mistake of camping on his ashes.
</morbid twist>
- Steve
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