SPIN-TRONICS: Generating electricity generally involves spinning a turbine with steam, or burning gas or using wind.
Image: Courtesy of Alstom
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At the spinning heart of the modern electric grid lies what used to be called the dynamo—a generator composed of stacks of copper rotating in an electromagnetic field. But it's a turbine that spins the dynamo—and efforts to squeeze more efficiency and cut greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution from a smart grid may rest on improving this core technology.
"The best emissions are emissions you don't make in the first place," notes Charles Soothill, senior vice president for technology at Alstom Power, a maker of turbines.
Heating water into steam to spin a turbine is the basic principle behind most power generation. Today, for instance, the firebox of the Mountaineer power plant in New Haven, W.Va., consumes nearly 14,000 kilograms of coal a minute, enabling the plant to pump out 1,300 megawatts of power. Reaching temperatures of more than 500 degrees Celsius, the steam pours through pipes and around a turbine—a 200-metric-ton, 30-meter-long steel shaft outfitted with blades and vanes to help it spin as the steam expands and cools.
That mechanical spinning in turn rotates copper-filled tubes in a magnetic field. This induces current in the copper, which then courses through the modern electricity grid—a giant circuit—to your house.
"Steam turbines and gas turbines are a means of converting power in the form of either steam or gas into mechanical power and electricity," Soothill explains. "These machines have been around for a long time—more than 120 years."
In that time, the basic principles of a spinning turbine have not changed much. The majority of power plants—whether coal, natural gas, nuclear or even wind—rely on a turbine to spin the generator and produce vast quantities of electricity. Improving these turbines saves fuel and pollution. "You can save 9 billion pounds of CO2 per year from a one-point efficiency improvement," says engineer Eric Gebhardt, a general manager at General Electric (GE) Energy, another turbine maker.
Spin cycle
Fashioning a new steam turbine from a specially shaped hunk of steel takes roughly 18 months, and that includes making titanium blades as long as a person's arm. Ultimately, the turbine will spin at speeds up to 3,600 rotations per minute (1,800 rpm for the larger steam turbines required at a nuclear power plant). The turbines, designed to last at least 20 years, must withstand the nontrivial impacts from water droplets traveling at high speed as well as temperatures as high as 620 degrees C, among other challenges. "The hotter the equipment operates, the more efficient it becomes," Soothill notes.
Of course, metals such as steel tend to soften when exposed to high temperatures—and that can cause parts to wear out prematurely. Nickel alloys mixed with the steel improve the turbine's heat resistance and may enable operation at 700 degrees C by 2020, Soothill says. Such a temperature would enable coal plants to capture 50 percent of the energy released by coal burning, up from an average of roughly 40 percent today.
GE is exploring carbon fiber and ceramics from silicon carbide composites to permit higher temperature operation. Greg Corman of GE's Advanced Ceramics Lab notes that the company is now evaluating the ceramics on a test turbine in its Lynn, Mass., facility, although these new materials may see application in jet engine turbines before power plants. "It's 50-50 either way," he says.
The future is a (natural) gas
Even though a nuclear power revival may be under way—along with new turbines being retrofitted into existing plants that have had their license to operate extended by several decades—demand for steam turbines is not strong in the U.S., in large part because utility companies now want electricity-generating sources that can be stopped and started more flexibly and cleanly. "It's hard to start up a coal plant with a phone call," Gebhardt says. "In a carbon-constrained world, gas will play a larger and larger role."
In fact, "gas is filling the gap" given the slow start of the nuclear renaissance and the black reputation of coal, says Richard Pangrazzi, director of regional marketing for Alstom in North America. Natural gas not only offers a 40 percent saving in terms of CO2 emissions compared with coal burning, but also can reliably back up more variable—and increasingly popular—electricity-generation sources, such as wind turbines or solar panels, thanks to its ability to start up in minutes.
Gas turbines come in several varieties, ranging from basically a jet engine strapped to the ground to a combined-cycle unit that burns the gas in pressurized air to spin one turbine and then captures the heat from that process to make steam to spin a second turbine. But they work just like steam turbines: using hot, high-pressure gases—in this case the product of combusting natural gas—to create spin. "Combined-cycle gas turbines are just below 60 percent efficiency," Soothill notes, operating at temperatures up to 1,300 degrees C.
Ceramics and air flow around the turbine itself help protect its metal components from temperatures that would otherwise melt them. "If you lose air flow, it's going to melt within seconds," Gebhardt notes.
Dry cooling all wet?
Cooling remains the major challenge for all turbines—and all power generation. Most power plants today rely on cooling water from nearby rivers or lakes—an option that may disappear as freshwater becomes more scarce or protected. For example, New York State recently required the Indian Point nuclear power plant to switch to air cooling if it wants to extend its operating life.
Unfortunately, air cooling means a big loss in efficiency. Water cooling allows for a bigger difference between the temperature of operation and the temperature of cooling, Soothill notes, which is crucial to the amount of power that can be captured. "The turbines become smaller with an air-cooled system," he says, "and you lose a bit of efficiency."
"To this day, no one has figured out a better-working fluid than water," says mechanical engineer Jaydeep Roy of GE's Structural Mechanics and Dynamics Lab. Simply put, it remains the most affordable way to spin a turbine and harvest heat. As the nation's thirst for electricity continues to grow, water may prove the sticking point—slowing the turbine's spin.
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33 Comments
Add CommentA "dynamo" is a DC generator that has copper wire coils that are spun in a magnetic field, not "stacks of copper". I know of no one (since T. Edison)that uses turbines to produce DC voltage. DC vlotage is just too expensive to transmit compared to AC.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...rotates copper-filled tubes in a magnetic field...induces current in the copper"...this is absolutely wrong. A tubro-generator rotates a coil of "wire" which has a DC current flowing in it. This current produces a rotating magnetic field which induces voltage (current is not induced) into the stator coils of stationary wire. I realize the article is about turbines but these errors are glaring and make me think your writers don't know what the hell they are talking about.
Maybe we can spin these generators with all the hot-air coming out of Washington Dc and various state capitols... ;)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm pretty ignorant about modern generators that produce electricity with the steam turbines we are talking about here. Is the electricity that goes through the generators (dynamos) at this level DC and then later converted to AC or have they now figured out how to generate AC initially?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are so used to technological development that it is quite astounding to realise that our energy-hungry society still mainly relies on steam engines to function. Progress sometimes has major constraints that are difficult to undo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are so used to technological development that it is quite astounding to realise that our energy-hungry society still mainly relies on steam engines to function. Progress sometimes has major constraints that are difficult to undo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisD. Biello
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice attempt at trying to quantify efficiencies, but your title was about turbine efficiencies, and then you strayed into generators. You did state that gas turbines have about a 60% efficiency, but failed to define if it was just the turbine, or gas to electricity efficiency. Moreover, when you talk about coal plants, you make no mention of the boiler when quoting the 40% to 50% range; although it is the lowest efficiency component in the energy string (boiler/steam turbine/generator) So you can see this is a large topic, which requires many definitions.
For example, when the wind industry claims that it has 80% efficient turbines, it really means it has turbines that can recover 80% of the theoretical maximum efficiency, which is the Betz coefficient (59.3%). In simpler terms, it is theoretically impossible in an open air wind plant to recover more than 59.3% of the kinetic energy contained in the wind. (Reference "Energy Primer" by Richard Merrill, et al , 1978, p.122) Therefore, the 80% turbine efficiency quoted by the wind manufacturer's is actually the "aerodynamic" efficiency of the turbine. This results in an estimated efficiency of the wind generator plant (wind to electricity) of around 45% (80% turbine eff. x 59.3% max. possible energy extracted x 95% generator eff. = 45%). However, you never hear the 45% efficiency number from the wind manufacturers because it sound too low.
In any case, this is an interesting subject that requires precise definitions when it is discussed. My compliments on attempting the discussion.
The turbine operating temperatures for steam are apparently limited to about 620 degrees celcius. However when using a gas turbine where the burnt products touch the blades, the limitation is about 1,400 degrees. Surely it should be possible to use the same technology for the steam system as in the gas turbine blading. Please supply an explanation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIncidently the quoted theoretical value of Betz efficiency is 57.3% not 59.3% , but in the case of a wind turbine (windmill) one can more easily increase the diameter of the blades (or the number of stations), so efficiency is not so vital here.
Hydro power does not need to use super hot steam, or steam at all to turn a turbine and you do not loose fresh water. It makes you wonder where these peoples heads are located.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHydro uses centripetal force to generate power and if you use carbon fiber to make the blades, their life span greatly increases to decades instead of a few years.
Hydro power, and ocean wave power, makes more sense than any other form of power for cleaning up the environment since you can use any kind of water to power them...ocean water of fresh water.
Mr Biello seems rather poorly informed to be allowed to write an article for SA. Most generators are alternators and create electrical currents by moving conductors through magnetic fields. It does not matter which one of them does the moving ( the conductors or the field ) but it is more convenient for it to be the field, which is produced in large generators by a large rotating electro magnet, surrounded by coils of conductors.These coils come in sets of three to produce three phase ac electricity.The rotor turns at some multiple of the supply frequency (60Hz in the US, 50 Hz in Europe )
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDC generators are ac alternators who's output is rectified, either by a bridge circuit involving diodes, or mechanically with a commutator and brushes.
Steam and gas turbines, like all heat engines using the properties of gases, obey what some refer to as the carnot equation which is the maximum temperature of the working fluid minus the minimum temperature of the working fluid divided by the maximum temperature. These temperatures are in degrees absolute ( above absolute zero - minus 460degees fahrenheit )It follows that getting the temperature difference as high as possible is required for high efficiency, but the lowest temperature is just above the ambient temperature whereever the heat engine is operating.
Gas turbines in aero engines acheive sustained high temperatures at the blades by active cooling of the blades by pumping cool gases through passages in the blades. Without that cooling the blades would fail.
With steam turbines we are to an extent prisoners of history.
Much of the early development of steam turbines was as part of an arms race between the big powers prior to world war 1 building ever more powerful battleships. It made sense to develop the turbines axially to fit along near the keel of these large ships. If you were talking about turbine efficiency for blowing air an axial flow fan is more efficient than radial flow where there is a low pressure difference. But the radial flow comes into it's own with bigger pressure differences. Axial flows get round this by multi staging, but development of multi staged radial flow turbines has not been widely pursued. It might be one of the areas where greater turbine efficiency could be acheived.
Another area worth pursueing is combustion with oxygen instead of air. Accepting that there is an energy cost in separating oxygen from the air prior to combustion, still could give a net gain by better combustion and higher temperatures, and less pollution.
Macrocompassion
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've seen the Betz coefficient as 59.3% in numerous publications including the "Energy Primer" by Richard Merrill referenced in my previous comment, but also in the "Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers", 13th edition, Fink & Beatty, 1993, Section 11, Alternate Sources and Converters of Power, P. 11-15. The actual value quoted in both the aforementioned references is 59.26%, which I rounded to 59.3%. What references do you have that show the value of 57.3%?
James Davis - I agree with most of your comments. Hydroelectric plants have an overall efficiency of 85 - 90% (potential energy of the water to electricity). Present day hydro turbines are 95% efficient, the generators are over 98% efficient, and the penstock hydraulic losses (for the water running downhill thru a pipe from the reservoir to the turbine) are in the range of 5%. Therefore, the overall efficiency is (95% turbine) x (98% generator) = 93.1% minus the 5% penstock hydraulic loss = 88.1%. As I worked in the hydroelectric industry for over 20 years, I can tell you that all the aforementioned efficiencies are easily attainable at most hydro sites. Therefore, the hydroelectric energy conversion process, from falling water to electricity, is the most efficient "renewable" energy process.
I'm not sure about your comment concerning carbon fiber blades as I've never seen these used on any large plants (over 100 MW). Usually the reservoir/river water is analyzed for sand and mineral content before you determine the location of your hydro plant; and without these corrosive elements in the water flow, most stainless steel turbine blades last longer than 20 years. There have been instances on the Yellow River in China (very high silt/sand content) where the blades have worn out in 8 to 10 years, but this is a very rare situation.
Just to set the record straight on the Betz limit- according to Wiki it is the ratio 16 / 27 which is 59.25925 when expressed as a percentage
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLikewise you'll never see a coal or gas plant's efficiency stated in terms of the total energy in the mass of its fuel as given by E=mc2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe efficiencies of coal or gas vs wind are apples & oranges anyway. It's not like wind power burns fuel that we want to get more out of. The real comparison is much more complex. We have to compare how much power we're getting out of it, and how much land usage, fuel usage, construction & maintenance costs, and emissions we have to put up with in return.
It seems to me that if a rotor could be suspended and spatially stabilized by isolated superconducting magnetic fields it could be spun without energy loss due to friction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf such a device is possible to produce reliably, I think that it could significantly improve generator efficiency.
As usual more Big Oil sponsored claptrap from Biello, I'm wondering whether he is actually employed by Big Oil and not the magazine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn Australian study has shown that replacing windmills and their associated fast spooling low efficiency load balancing gas plants with high efficiency slow spooling CCGT gas plant actually produces less green house gases at a lower cost. Biello forgot to mention the low efficiency aspect of his wind balancing fast spoolers.
But as Biello and his pals at Big Oil know, pushing not so renewables like wind is a damn good way of selling a lot of natural gas.
Killing us more slowing with dangerous radon gas spewing NG plant producing a bit less GHG's than coal is not a global warming solution I'd buy into. An NG plant just killed 6 people back east.
Gen IV nuclear plants like the IFR , LFTR and Pebble bed produce high temperature gas suitable for running high efficiency gas turbines . In fact the first Molten Salt reactors were designed to run the jet turbines on nuclear bombers.
Because American nuclear power is crippled by inefficient private power and an insane regulatory process, costs today appear high but Energy Secretary Chu has promised to address that.
The real cost of nuclear power is reflected in Asian builds of American nukes are which are under 1.5 cents a kwh today and are dropping fast.
Even with today's NG fire sale prices, the cost of this odious product is over 5 cents a kilowatt hour. Better it be reserved for transportation fuel during the conversion from fossil fuel to nuclear power.
Current American nuclear cost according to the OECD is 3 cents a kwh.
sethdayal - I doubt it's significant, but I have to wonder how nuclear power plant real estate, construction and personnel costs compare between Asia and America?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBack to generator efficiency, It seems to me that if a rotor could be suspended and spatially stabilized by isolated superconducting magnetic fields it could be spun at low power, without energy loss due to friction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi Hootsydad - just to set your mind at ease, the free electrons in the conductors that the coils are made of get pushed bythe magnetic field of the rotor as it turns. Like all magnets it has paired north and south poles, which push the electrons in opposite directions, thus creating alternating current electricity. DC current is produced from this by rectifying , which is a circuit involving one way valves called diodes, or a mechanical device called a commutator which has a ring of contacts which switch the current through brushes which slide over it as it turns.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjtdwyer
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust to resolve your mind on generator efficiency. The large generators (over 100 MW) have an efficiency greater than 98%; the smaller generators (5 MW to 100 MW) are 96 to 97% efficient. So there is not too much variation on efficiency; and generator efficiencies are much higher than turbine or boiler efficiencies. The efficiency of the generator is determined by adding the following losses: 1) Copper winding losses 2) Stator core losses 3) Stray flux losses, and 4) Friction and Windage losses (these include the bearing losses) In the large generators, the Friction and Windage losses only amount to 10 to 15% of the total losses. The much greater losses are the copper winding I2R losses (40 to 50% of the total) and the Stator core losses (20 to 30% of the total losses).
If you had superconducting magnetic fields that could spatially stabilize a rotor, that would be fine. But the longevity, maintenance, reliability, etc. etc. of the extra components involved would have to verified first. And I'm not sure the higher marginal efficiency would pay for the additional cost related to the bearing losses. However, if you made the entire generator superconducting (astronomical cost), you would eliminate almost all the losses.
David M. Clemen - Thanks for the perspective on generators. I guess the extreme efficiencies are the result of constant operational speeds?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, would a frictionless turbine significantly improve efficiencies?
Scots Engineer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for that clear , concise and informative
post that was far better than the article.
An engineer on an engineering subject is worth
reading.
elderlybloke - thanks for the comments. If you think this article is flawed, check out the one on vertical farming in the November issue. - I await your observations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisscots engineer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI recall that article on vertical farming .
I thought is was very imaginative but unrealistic.
Others have done sums about it and the idea does not hold water.
Hi elderlybloke - If I was writing a piece on what could be done to get more power from hydrocarbons and / or coal this is how it might go. The carnot equation , like the Betz limit for turbines in a free stream sets the theoetical limit. From this, we need to get the temperature from the burning of the fuel as high as possible, and the source of cooling as cold as possible. Diesel engines burn at high temperatures and pressures and can continue to do so because the peaks are brief , and away from the walls of the combustion chamber. Thus a diesel engine made from high temperature resistant material can work at higher temperatures than a gas turbine made from the same material. However there is usually a lot of useful energy left in the gases after the cylinder has reached it's maximum expansion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese gases can then be expanded through turbines that do not need to be made of special materials. The combination of a large two stroke diesel engine and a multi stage exhaust turbine could well exceed other systems in efficiency. Burning with a gas mixture that is primarily carbon dioxide and oxygen has quite a few benefits over over air burning. Even a small increase in the oxygen ratio could have big effects on the temperature and completeness of combustion. Nitrogen in the air combines with oxygen at high temperatures and pressures and has three bad effects. It cools the gaseous mixture by asorbing energy,reduces the oxygen available to burn the fuel, and produces pollutants which require to be treated before venting to the atmosphere. CO2 has a slightly higher specific heat than nitrogen, so at a given temperature will have more energy to push the piston, or turn the turbine. Without nitrogen to dilute the process most of the combustion products are co2 and water which are then relatively easy to separate for further use or disposal. It takes energy to separate oxygen from air, but as a large part of the energy budget from air separating plant goes into liquifaction and pressurising for distribution, an on site separator would not have this cost.A lot of heat from the burning of the fuel goes up the smoke stack as warm nitrogen and co2. Another advantage of the diesel engine turbine hybrid is that it has a quick start up time.
Domestic waste contains a lot of carbon and if that were treated with hydrogen produced to store energy from other renewables, synthetic fuels could be derived and the oxygen from the electrolysis used for the diesel engine(s )
scots engineer suggests using oxygen instead of air. This would cause an increase in combustion temperature which would probably damage the turbine blades.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan anyone please explain why the steam has to be cooled by passing through cooling towers? Surely this 'waste' heat could be used to reheat the water that will be turned into steam again?
Hi kitemanmusic - yes it would damage the blades if no improvements were made to either the material of the blades, or blade cooling or both.That is the whole point,higher temperatures gives a bigger energy gap to exploit. In the UK the steam is not fed to the cooling towers. Cooling water cools the steam at the end of the turbine so that it condenses, giving the biggest pressure drop across the turbine. The vapour pressure inside the condenser can be below atmospheric pressure, which means that the pipes in the condenser have to be strong enough to withstand pressure.The water that cools the condenser is what is cooled in the cooling tower by spraying it into the updraft in the tower. In this way the water can transfer the maximum amount of heat, without requiring huge areas of expensive radiators which might block without regular cleaning. The cooled water is then collected at the base of the tower and fed to the condenser.The condensed steam, which operates in a closed cycle is fed back to the boiler to produce more steam.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks, scots engineer, for replying. My point about cooling towers was that the cool water used to condense the steam after it had passed through the turbine, is then itself cooled by spraying it inside the cooling tower. Why is this heat wasted? Can't it go through a heat exchanger to help reheat the water which will be turned into steam for the turbine?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi kitemanmusic - your idea would be great if it were not for an inconvenient fact of nature - heat only flows from hot to cold. The water temperature of the condensed steam is still at a temperature just above that of the cooling water when it leaves to go to the cooling tower. If you arrange things so that the steam is condensed at a higher temperature you may have a useful source of heat ( as they do in combined heat and power stations ) but it comes at the cost of less electricity generated per unit of fuel burnt. If you are struggling to grasp why things should be this way - take the analogy of a water wheel. A water wheel runs by the loss of gravitational, or height potential of the water, but the water it uses has to retain enough energy to run away from the water wheel at the bottom or there would soon be nowhere left for it to fall. Similarly things at normal temperatures contain heat energy, but that energy can only be converted to work if it can flow to somewhere even colder and the amount available when the mechanism used is an engine operating on the properties of gases is theoretically limited by the carnot equation which is the temperature drop divided by the highest temperature all in degrees absolute. From this the only possible 100% efficient heat engine would have the cold end at absolute zero. Even the coldest parts of our dear planet are a lot warmer , thank goodness
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisscots engineer, thanks again for your response. I still don't quite understand. Why can't you just reheat steam that has just been through the turbine. Why do you have to cool it down before heating it up again?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as the waste heat going up the cooling tower, could this not be used for domestic heating, or is it not hot enough?
Hi kitemanmusic- think about it this way, if it helps. If the steam was at the same temperature at both ends of the turbine, there would be no pressure difference to cause the steam to flow and run the turbine. To get that pressure difference the cold end has to be cooled and this means putting it ( some of the heat- the turbine does some of the cooling by converting heat energy into kinetic energy ) into something else other than the steam. When that steam( the stuff that turned the turbine) is condensed it is used again and again as feed water to the boiler which heats it up using the high temperature gases produced by burning fuel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs you hoped ,sometimes the waste heat that would have been disposed of via the cooling tower is used for heating greenhouses ,or district heating systems. These are costly to install and are more economically viable in colder regions, such as Scandinavia, where there is a demand for domestic heating most of the year. You may still be wondering why the turbine itself cannot do all the cooling and leave no waste heat. That is down to the law of nature called the second law of thermodynamics which some have quoted as " there aint no such thing as a free lunch", It's a while now since I've seen the formal version,but it essentially means that ordered arrangements can move naturally to disordered but not the other way round. It was easy to tip humpty dumpty off the wall and cause him to break, but impossible to restore him exactly.It is easy to let the heat from burning fuel spread out into the environment, but impossible to collect it all back again without using more energy ( a lot ) to do so. Look it up in Wiki, they probably explain it better.
Thanks again, Scots engineer. I get the point about pressure differences, but I still think that the cooling water that gets warm or hot, could still give up that heat to re-heat the closed circuit water/steam.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour point: "ordered arrangements can move naturally to disordered but not the other way round" seems to contradict Evolution, and also the theory of how life began. What do you reckon?
Hi kitemanmusic - probably some of the heat exchanged in the condenser will go to warming the feed water for the boiler ( especially if it is a contra flow system where the lowest temperature that the steam reaches is below the temperature of the cooling water leaving the condenser ) However we are only talking about a few tens of degrees above ambient at most, so while that can warm the feed water a little, it is small compared with the heat supplied by the boiler. Life is quite consistent withthe laws of thermodynamics because though it operates to increase the order in biological systems it requires to consume and degrade the order in energy systems it relies on. Light is a high order energy source ( low entropy ), but even the most efficient photosynthesisers cannot convert more than about 11% of solar energy into chemical energy for further use by the plant.Evolution has and will increase the chances of the more efficient life forms of surviving and passing on their genetic inheritance,but as far as my limited (very ) knowledge goes, the detailed circumstances and steps required for life to get started and how much of a fluke or exact balance of the physical constants is required, is beyond me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA device that makes AC naively is called an alternator. When it is in an electric plant it is called a turbo-alternator.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a former nuclear Quality Control inspector, nuclear should be OFF the table. Indian Point should have been closed thirty years ago. It was built with substandard material by the Mafia and has to be about to have a major accident. Being as it is down wind to New York City, this would be a crippling blow to the financial center of the US and make the area unlivable for centuries.
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