Ugh, what violation of local law can't be excused by specious "national security" claims?
> resulting in a corresponding increase in three major air pollutants:
Sometimes I wonder how valuable it would be to go to vulnerable areas (ecologically or socio-economically) and record baseline pollution, noise, etc. readings, simply to give future residents some statistical ammunition against some New Thing ruins the old implicit standard of safety and comfort.
I guess the problem is you don't always know what to measure until it's nearly too late, such as if the problem is a new chemical that needs a particular test to measure, or noise that isn't about raw decibels but causes problems with particular frequencies and harmonics, etc.
The national security and defense arguments are fortunately the only things that protect any forward progress. Without DoD cover, every Starlink launch would be governed by the California Coastal Commission and friends. Frankly, living in the Bay Area, where people use anti-pollution laws to prevent student housing, I think I understand a little the law structure of the United States. It is perhaps analogous to the way Jewish people treat the halakha. The idea being that if you can find a way around the law, it is meant to be operated that way. So students are noise pollution, bike lanes need environmental impact reports while highways don't, solar power is polluting while gas isn't, endangered species genetically identical to common species are discovered when they would block dams, and 50 years of having a Nuclear Regulatory Commission means exactly one reactor approved by them built.
So there's outrage and all that, but this is the fundamental law of the USA: the law is the Word; and all bugs in it are features.
For the most part, I get why this helps the USA. But boy does it feel like there's going to be a reckoning one day.
> ORNL’s award-winning ultraclean condensing high-efficiency natural gas furnace features an affordable add-on technology that can remove more than 99.9% of acidic gases and other emissions. The technology can also be added to other natural gas-driven equipment.
Develop an AGR Acidic Gas Reduction add-on part for methane turbines?
Would (Solar Turbines,) consider selling an AGR emissions limiting product or add-on?
It's too bad that AI is only going to solve climate change and cure cancer, it would have been great if it could also cure asthma and solve rampant corruption.
Anyway, now that half of HN readers are SpaceX shareholder, directly or indirectly, how do we exercise the supreme power over the company, granted to us by capitalism, to ask the board to replace the turbines by another form of energy production in line with science ?
I can assure HN that they want to be on the grid as quickly as possible. Burning half a million dollars per day in single cycle turbines will eventually cause trouble for accounting.
Running on exactly one kind of fuel is also a bit risky for a few reasons. The grid offers a significantly more diverse fuel mix. It might occasionally be more expensive, but it is also much more reliable.
The grid also offers significantly better fault handling & inertia. An order of magnitude better or more. All those aeroderivative turbines together don't make for much of a brick wall. They are quite fragile compared to what you would find in the turbine hall of a combined cycle plant. GPU load tends to be non-linear and coordinated. To the other side of a circuit it could look like a fault condition when a large cluster fires up a training batch.
there is NO excess grid capacity or excess production capacity for alternative power generation that does not need permiting and enviromental studies.The one company that makes fuel cells that can power data centers is 100% booked, and debating if the long expensive process of doubling production will find a market in 3~5 years.
Solar and batteries needs multiple review and perming processes, but for "temporary" power needs the process is almost guaranteed, and with the fix in from DOJ ,they can give a shoot to kill order to protect the countrys vital assets.
Personaly I beleive that AI/big data will do nothing but blow hot air anyway,and it sucks for people who have these things close by, but all they can do is move, which might suck even more.
The only things that would provide significant noise reduction would be earth berms a lot higher than the turbines that could block and reflect the sound upwards, the berms would have to be continious with no breaks, and possibly "helmholtz resonators/tuned resinators" built from modified shipping cans embeded in the berms to reduce SPL at the worst frequencies.
Courts could order remediation efforts to sound proof affected resedents with tripple glazed windows, and other full acoustical sealing methods , and perhaps subsidised air conditioning for the heat, as it's not like they dont have 1.5 trillion dollars laying around.
A renewable source would be much better, but aren't natural gas turbines less polluting than coal power plants? There might also be some benefit from no transmission loss.
22 comments
[ 59.5 ms ] story [ 357 ms ] thread> resulting in a corresponding increase in three major air pollutants:
Sometimes I wonder how valuable it would be to go to vulnerable areas (ecologically or socio-economically) and record baseline pollution, noise, etc. readings, simply to give future residents some statistical ammunition against some New Thing ruins the old implicit standard of safety and comfort.
I guess the problem is you don't always know what to measure until it's nearly too late, such as if the problem is a new chemical that needs a particular test to measure, or noise that isn't about raw decibels but causes problems with particular frequencies and harmonics, etc.
So there's outrage and all that, but this is the fundamental law of the USA: the law is the Word; and all bugs in it are features.
For the most part, I get why this helps the USA. But boy does it feel like there's going to be a reckoning one day.
That probably one of the reasons of such a glorious success there.
Shouldn't all methane-powered equipment have this AGR (or similar) new emission reduction technology?
From https://www.ornl.gov/news/add-device-makes-home-furnaces-cle... :
> ORNL’s award-winning ultraclean condensing high-efficiency natural gas furnace features an affordable add-on technology that can remove more than 99.9% of acidic gases and other emissions. The technology can also be added to other natural gas-driven equipment.
Develop an AGR Acidic Gas Reduction add-on part for methane turbines?
Would (Solar Turbines,) consider selling an AGR emissions limiting product or add-on?
ScholarlyArticle: "Nondestructive neutron imaging diagnosis of acidic gas reduction catalyst after 400-Hour operation in natural gas furnace" (2023) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13858...
FWIU basically no generators have a catalytic converter, because catalytic converters require computer-controlled fuel ignition.
There's also turquoise hydrogen; H Hydrogen from Methane CH4.
Anyway, now that half of HN readers are SpaceX shareholder, directly or indirectly, how do we exercise the supreme power over the company, granted to us by capitalism, to ask the board to replace the turbines by another form of energy production in line with science ?
Running on exactly one kind of fuel is also a bit risky for a few reasons. The grid offers a significantly more diverse fuel mix. It might occasionally be more expensive, but it is also much more reliable.
The grid also offers significantly better fault handling & inertia. An order of magnitude better or more. All those aeroderivative turbines together don't make for much of a brick wall. They are quite fragile compared to what you would find in the turbine hall of a combined cycle plant. GPU load tends to be non-linear and coordinated. To the other side of a circuit it could look like a fault condition when a large cluster fires up a training batch.