Why did some Ohio utilities extend the life of their coal-fired plants? What were the consequences of this extension?
What will be an ideal response?
Utilities have invested huge sums in building energy production facilities. The
economic justification was made by assigning a lifetime to the facility and amortizing the
cost over that time. After that time, the capital expenses have been paid off, the plant retired,
and a new plant built at great expense. If instead of closing a plant, spending a relatively
small amount of money will lead to many more years of production, the incremental cost of
production is very small, and the profits correspondingly large. There is an economic
incentive to extend the life of such plants.
Generally, older plants are greater polluters than newer plants. Adding years to a plant's life
can also add years of heightened emissions compared to today's state of the art generators.
To help "even the playing field," the EPA instituted "New Source Review," which
basically caught utilities making more expensive modifications and made them use some of
the renovation money to pay for pollution reduction when it exceeded a certain proportion
of the cost of a generator.
Given the economics of the situation, Ohio utilities attempted to evade the constraints
imposed by regulators. They hid expensive renovations as minor repairs, for example.
Ohioans and residents of other states paid a price in greater exposure to pollutants than they
would otherwise have had.
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An oil film floats on a water surface. The indices of refraction for water and oil, respectively, are 1.333 and 1.466 . If a ray of light is incident on the air-to-oil surface at an angle of 44.3° with the normal, what is the angle of the refracted ray in the water?
a. 28.5° b. 39.4° c. 31.6° d. 35.3° e. 44.3°
Electric forces within an atomic nucleus tend to
A) hold it together. B) push it apart. C) neither of these
In beta minus decay, the number of protons in the nucleus is
A) decreased by 1. B) decreased by 2. C) increased by 1. D) increased by 2. E) remains unchanged.
How does the theory of planetary migration in disks possibly account for the highly eccentric orbits discovered for some extrasolar planets?
A) When migrating planets collide, they would move onto more eccentric orbits. B) When migrating planets pass close enough for a gravitational encounter, one may be flung from the system while the other is shifted to a highly elliptical orbit. C) A migrating planet would create waves in the planet forming disk, which would in turn lead to the formation of planets on highly elliptical orbits. D) When a planet migrates onto the surface of the star, the additional stellar mass would disrupt the orbits of the remaining planets.