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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