Coal

It is a negative cost - for instance the pollution (heavy metals, other mining detritus) generated by the mining operations and pushed into "fill" in the valleys which buries streams and poisons the water table. Clearly this is not of value to the inhabitants.

Further, certain regions naturally have mesas, but those regions are not the coal bearing Appalachian region. If the flattened regions had any commercial value, they would been built upon and the reforestation efforts would not be necessary. As you can see from the video embedded in the article, that is simply not the case.

A negative cost is a gain, John. You are referring to positive costs. The cost of pollution can be assessed directly through rigorous enforcement of regulations that are in place to control surface and underground water pollution caused by surface mining.

I was never impressed by an argument that differentiated between geographic features on the basis of the mechanism by which they are arrived at. It would be difficult for me to take the assessment of an externality cost based on that differentiation. Any reforestration needed would be a direct cost, of course.

In summary, it would seem that the externality costs you refer to here are imaginary.

It could be "one or the other" rather than both at the same time. Try thinking out of the box.

Several years ago a friend, who was president of a midwestern university, was involved with a discussion with the EPA over funding of programs for their Department of Limnology. The EPA wanted research to be carried out that would provide data on the increasing levels of particulate pollution of Lake Superior, introduced by minimg activity adjacent to the lake. The department innocently reninded them that they could only carry out the research without preconditions as to the outcome. Moreover, there as already considerable data that showed a slight downward trend in contamination of the lake. The EPA team bruskly told them that they were aware of the existing data, and that was the point of the research.

The left the meeting to shop for another university - and a grant was soon announced.

I always love arguments that say "Scientists are bought by all this government money!" Who do you think funds the studies that reach the conclusions favoring industry? Is that money somehow incapable of tainting opinions?

I don't know who funds studies that reach conclusions that favor industry. Do you, guest? The study I referred to that produced the ambiguous results about ozone was funded by the NIH, and carried out by UCalBerk. How did the NIH money taint the results?

I have been associated with both academic and industrial research. The academic researcher is under much greater pressure to produce publishable research that pleases the supporter than the industrial researcher.

Pick asthma as the random variable

say there is no link between the two

therefore the pollution is ok!

Actually so2 has more to do with acid rain than asthma, but whatever.

Also lungs have very specific cellular salt pumps

The EPA did not justify the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) on the basis of acid rain. EPA's justification is based on the supposed public health dangers, especially for asthmatics, of inhaling fine particulate matter (sulfates and nitrates) that result from SO2 and NOX emissions.
My argument is that it is wrong for the EPA to mislead the public as to the benefits of a particular environmental regulation. Be honest with the people.
Just because I do not believe that the CSAPR can be justified on its supposed health benefits doesn't mean that I oppose all air pollution regulations. On the contrary, environmental regulations are necessary. But just because many environmental regulations are needed and provide a net benefit to society doesn't mean that all environmental regulations provide a net benefit to society.
My biggest complaint is with the EPA 'stacking the deck' and using very questionable assumptions to justify CSAPR.
As an asthmatic I am sick and tired of our government mandating the expenditure of billions and billions more dollars on a 'solution' that has been shown to be ineffective.
"The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results" Albert Einstein
Instead of wasting billions more on a 'solution' that doesn't work, what we should be doing is investing more money in the CDC to figure out the cause(s) for the asthma epidemic. Then spend money on dealing with the cause(s) once we know what they are.

The argument is different and more focused than the straw man you proposed, Nige:

If there is no link between asthma and SO2 pollution, then it is inapproriate to justify reduction in SO2 pollution in terms of a positive effect on asthma. The argument says nothing about whehter pollution is generally "OK".

bampbs, thanks, I appreciate the link. There are also viable wind projects in the (very windy) Great Plains. A Kansas-based multi-state grid co-op uses wind power as part of its mix.

It should be fairly inexpensive. The Chinese are building five Westinghouse ABW-1000 reactors at a cost of $2/W (continuous) and plan to drive the cost in half as they build more. Maybe we should ask them for help.

Southern Company received approval from the NRC today to operate and construct units 3 and 4 at Vogtle in Georgia. These two reactors will produce 2.2 GW of electricity; Southern lists a "certified" cost of $6.1 billion, which is $2.77/watt. This is roughly equal to the cost of large solar installations in the desert southwest, which many people refer to as giant white elephant projects that are deeply out of the money for rate payers.

"Roughly equal?? If a factor of 10 is roughly equal.

Note, guest, my qualifying adjective "continuous". You are comparing peak power to average power. Yes, at noon on a sunny day, a solar power plant will put out power at costs, measured in $/W comparable to $3/W. But solar plants run at those power levels almost never. They have a "capacity factor" in the desert southwest, an ideal location of 20%. That means they sit there, as useful as a box of rocks, effectively for 19 hours a day. You need to compare the capital cost for an equivalent amount of ENERGY delivered per year. The difference between nuclear energy and solar energy is about a factor of 10. PV solar energy is, by far, the most expensive eneryg we produce.
BTW, missing from that calculation is the additional cost of storing power for periods when solar power is not available. The present storage medium is primarily large piles of coal sitting next to coal-fired plants, underutilized while depending on solar panels. Solar energy supporters love to speculate about hypothetical alternatives (pumped storage, batteries, compressed air, flywheels,... but never seem to get around to determining the additional cost.

So, the actual cost is 10X+

Thanks, RobS. I was referring only to the installed cost of nameplate capacity. As you correctly, if condescendingly, point out, solar power is intermittent, and its effective capacity factor is much lower; even its nameplate cost, however, is triple that of the new Bear Garden combined cycle unit opened by Dominion (VA) Power in the summer of 2011 (a bit more than $1/watt, which obviously does not include the ongoing fuel cost). However, a much more important point is actually that my cost estimate for Vogtle was wrong: the $6.1 billions refers only to the contribution to the capital cost made by Southern Company. The all-in cost of the new units will actually exceed $14 billion, which pushes the all-in cost to nearly $7/watt. Maybe the Chinese can do it for 30% of the cost that the Americans can, but I find that to be a highly suspect cost calculation.

Yes you were referring to the nameplate cost for peak power and comparing it to the nameplate cost for continuous power. Parden the appearnce of being condenscending. It was more irritation with your use of a common but fallacious comparison. Equally irritating is the press release that states "this plant will provide the power needed by 100,000 homes". Yes, at noon on a sunny day, when the occupants are at work.

Gas-fired plants tend to have the lowest capital costs and, up to recently, high fuel costs. The drop in NG costs has changed that. The good news is that the cost of expensive peak power should be coming down - hopefully.

The total cost you quote is closer to what I would have expected for an American-sited nuclear power plant.

The cost of the Chinese plants are the contracted prices, agreed to by Westinghouse. Hopefully for them, they have done the arithmentic correctly. They are well on their way in the construction of the first two plants, and I haven't heard of overruns.

Operating costs of nuclear plants are not all that different, in terms of $/Mwh, from solar plants. In both cases capital costs overwhelm operating costs (fuel, spent fuel storage, repair, eventual shutdown costs for nuclear plants). A nuclear plant in the desert SW, Palo Verde, sells power to power companies for 3 c/kwh, covers operating and capital costs, and makes a decent profit for its owners. Its capacity factor has been running at about 95% for the last several years.