Parabolic cooling towers are used many places besides nuclear plants. They are capital intensive but cheap to operate – you choice between capital costs and operating costs.

In blowing up the photo it is difficult to see much difference between the columns of vapor but looking at the green countryside around the plant I would guess the emissions are not too much of a local problem.

I know what a cooling tower is. I know what steam is. I also know that Drax doesn't only emit steam. See that tower in the middle of the picture? Is that steam too, Dr. Science?

Throw water on anything hot and you'll get the same thing. Dihydrogen Monoxide. H2O. If only you and Al Gore had actually paid attention in fourth grade science class…

Here's a link to the picture showing it.
http://wikimapia.org/9577213/cooling-tower-Drax-P…

(It is a nuclear power plant on a cool, humid day and what's being spewed into the atmosphere is that oh-so-deadly dihydrogen monoxide.)

Cap and trade in and of itself does not save any energy or the environment(reducing the cap should), it only creates a new Wall Street opportunity for them to make money.

There is a lot of misinformation out there on energy savings and you would hope that a reporter would not be so irresponsible as to be the one to proliferate new half truths.

— IT WON'T REDUCE CO2 !!!

— IT WILL DO GREAT HARM TO THE ECONOMY

— IT WILL DESTROY MILLIONS OF JOBS

— IT WILL INCREASE ENERGY COSTS BY OVER $3OOO A YEAR THAT NO ONE CAN AFFORD

(ESPECIALLY CHILDREN WHO WILL SUFFER THE MOST).

— IT WILL LOWER EVERYONE's STANDARD OF LIVING (EXCEPT RICH PEOPLE LIKE NANCY

PELOSI)

— IT WILL CAUSE GREAT HARM TO THE ENVIRONMENT.

Question: Has anyone done and environmental impact study on the impact of wind

turbines and the harm to children when their parents can't afford to heat their

homes?

How anyone can sleep well at night and support the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill

is beyond me. Oppose the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill as it will not reduce co2 but will destroy the lives of millions of people.

P.S. Wind turbines and solar are enormously expensive and feeble sources of

energy that can't replace oil and coal. Plus wind turbines will decimate large

tracks of land and kill lots of birds.

The math comes down to this: how much would it cost to install sufficient renewable capacity to meet the 15% renewable portfolio standards prescribed in the current (6/23/09) iteration of HR 2454, aka Waxman-Markey.

In 2007, the US generated ~4,156,000,000 megawatt-hours ("MWhs") of electricity, of which 3.38% (140,000,000 MWhs) was generated from renewable sources.

To get this number up to 15%, we'd have to generate an additional 483,000,000 MWhs of renewable electricity per year. There are 8,760 hours in a standard year, so if wind generated at 23% of capacity (which it historically has in high velocity zones), that would be ~239,000 MW of capacity (because 239,000MW capacity * 8,760 hours * 23% capacity utilization = 483,000,000 MWhs).

Wind generation is by far the cheapest and most efficient source of renewable generation, costing ~2.2 million/MW in capacity. 239,000 kW * 2.2 million/MW = $527 billion. This country has ~300 million people in it, so that comes to somewhere around $1,750 per person, all to reduce CO2 emissions in the US by ~15% (assuming no load growth). Quite a bit of money for such a modest goal.

There are other problems:

There is no incentive under the RPS program to switch from the dirtiest most inefficient, coal plant to the cleanest, most efficienct combined-cycle natural gas plant (which would emit 40% the CO2 per MWh that coal would) because all “non-renewable” sources are treated the same under RPS.

Coal and nat gas together account for ~3/4 of our generation per year (1/2 coal, 1/4 gas). Gas plants currently fire way under capacity (because coal is slightly cheaper). Replacing coal generation with gas generation would–at a stroke–reduce CO2 emissions by 20% and would require no almost no new gas capacity to be built. You could incentivize this change in power dispatch behavior through a simple, direct, and not-very-onerous carbon tax.

Instead Harvey-Waxman uses the very clumsy bludgeon of RPS, which committees are wont to do.