Pacific Northwest Relying On Nuclear Energy During Cold Snap (forbes.com) 257
Slashdot reader Lije Baley writes: As the unusually long cold snap in the Pacific Northwest has both increased electric demand while decreasing snow melt and stream flows needed for hydroelectric generation, local power companies are asking their customers to conserve energy. Meanwhile, the region's last remaining nuclear plant has been a critical low-carbon resource for keeping the lights and heat on, as Forbes reports. "As reported by Annette Cary of the Tri-City Herald, the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets the electricity produced at the nuclear plant near Richland, asked Energy Northwest, the operator of the power plant, not to do anything that would prevent the plant from producing 100% power at all times during an unusually cold February across the state that increased the demand for electricity â" no maintenance activities, even on its turbine generator and in the transformer yard," reports Forbes. "Don't do anything that would stop the reliable and constant power output of nuclear."
"'No Touch' is requested by BPA when unusually hot or cold weather increases the demand for electricity, notes Mike Paoli, spokesman for Energy Northwest," the report adds. "Many regional transmission and system operators across the United States ask nuclear plants to keep running during extreme weather because nuclear plants are the least affected by bad weather. Columbia Generating Station has the capability to produce 1,207 MW, which is enough energy to power Seattle. And it is usually putting out all of this power at all times. Energy Northwest already has a diverse mix of non-fossil fuel generating systems that, in aggregate, produce over 10 billion kWhs of electricity each year while emitting less than 20 gCO2/kWh. The No Touch order at the Columbia Generating Station is expected to be lifted soon, although continued cold weather could require it to keep producing max power."
"'No Touch' is requested by BPA when unusually hot or cold weather increases the demand for electricity, notes Mike Paoli, spokesman for Energy Northwest," the report adds. "Many regional transmission and system operators across the United States ask nuclear plants to keep running during extreme weather because nuclear plants are the least affected by bad weather. Columbia Generating Station has the capability to produce 1,207 MW, which is enough energy to power Seattle. And it is usually putting out all of this power at all times. Energy Northwest already has a diverse mix of non-fossil fuel generating systems that, in aggregate, produce over 10 billion kWhs of electricity each year while emitting less than 20 gCO2/kWh. The No Touch order at the Columbia Generating Station is expected to be lifted soon, although continued cold weather could require it to keep producing max power."
1.21 jigawatts! (Score:4, Funny)
Is 1,207 megawatts sufficiently close to 1.21 to say
1.21 JIGGAWATTS!
?
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Came to the comment section just for this. Thanks!
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Kilowatt hours are a measure of energy, not power. Also, did you fail to recognise a Back to the Future reference?
Marty Gras (Score:2)
Also, did you fail to recognise a Back to the Future reference?
Particularly seeing as the story was posted on Marty Gras.
But now it's Ash Wednesday, and people have Pokémon and The Addams Family on the brain instead.
Nuclear power = clean power (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear power = clean power (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Nuclear power = clean power (Score:4, Interesting)
William Nordhaus won the 2018 Nobel in Economics for his model that includes the effects of externalities for CO2. His paper says [econlib.org] that doing much more than a small increase in taxes is actually a net loss and we'd be better of putting the money elsewhere (which is also something Bjorn Lomborg also espouses. Pushing for the 1.5 deg C, or Gore's 90% cut goals nearly double the cost of doing nothing - and that's factoring in all those supposed externalities from fossil fuels.
"supposed externalities from fossil fuels" ??? Nordhaus isn't saying that fossil fuels have no environmental effects and that the byproducts created by burning them disappear into an alternate dimension or something and thus burning fossil fuels has no effect. He's basically saying that a 2 degree increase in global temperatures is more or less guaranteed because idiot politicians hooked on money from the fossil fuel industry have been sitting with their finger up their butt for far too long. Nordhaus acknowledges the potentially catastrophic impacts of this climate change so it is not as if he is in full agreement with the Trumpian/Kochian/Conservative point of view that climate change is a Chines hoax, not even close.
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Right. But the thing is the price of natural gas fluctuates wildly not only on a seasonal level but also yearly. It is typically highly coupled with the price of oil. Currently the US has a lot of gas from fracking operations but who's to tell this will remain so in the long term? But yes, natural gas is presently the best option in economic terms.
A nuclear reactor might take 6-8 years to build. So you can't ramp up the amount of reactors if you build it too late. Also, a lot of places in the US have diffic
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The price of natural gas dropped so low because fracking made it cheaper to extract a lot more of it.
Guess what the usual suspects think of fracking....
Re:Nuclear power = Socialism (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, just use the "waste" in lower-yield reactors.
It's "dangerous" because it's still active. It's "waste" because it's not fully utilized.
The concept of "nuclear waste" simply is not a problem for modern reactor designs.
Re:Nuclear power = Socialism (Score:5, Informative)
By the way, there's no long-term waste storage yet.
Still better that the long-term waste storage for fossil fuels, our atmosphere.
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By the way, there's no long-term waste storage yet.
Still better that the long-term waste storage for fossil fuels, our atmosphere.
For those who think Yucca Mountain isn't safe enough, take a look at what's already there.
Go to Google Earth. Search for "Sedan Crater". Scan south.
That's what's already there, has been there for decades, with no containment whatsoever, just (mostly) in a hole underground.
Re:Nuclear power = Clean power (Score:2)
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How about you just burn the fuel completely instead of chucking it at 90% capacity worrying about someone potentially building a nuke with it, as North Korea and Iran shows, fuel ain't hard to get but a functioning rocket program is.
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Re:Nuclear power = Socialism (Score:4, Informative)
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Those countries have mixed economies. In practice no country with pure socialism or pure free market capitalism has a decent economy.
There is a decent argument that natural monopolies are better off being owned by the state than being made private. Roads are one example.
Re:Nuclear power = Socialism (Score:4, Insightful)
Sweden also has huge income taxes and value added tax. With regards to wages, while there is no global minimum wage, wages are decided sector by sector between the trade unions and the corporate organizations. You know trade unions, that thing the US thinks is evil. Also, the employer has to pay nationally agreed upon wages between the unions and the corporations regardless if the worker is actually a union member of not.
Education is mandatory between ages 6 and 16. With regards to private, for profit, schools those only became a thing in 1992 and are controversial in Sweden. Like 10% of students attend these for profit schools and they are generally considered to offer poor quality education. Higher education (i.e. college) is tuition free of charge in Sweden since 2011.
Similar deal with Denmark.
But sure, continue eating what reason.com spouts out without criticism.
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No - a mixture of socialism and capitalism works best.
When north sea oil/gas production subsidizes your socialism.
WTF are you talking about?
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Norway. A country completely subsidized by the rest of the world, particularly the US, since it's industry mix is oil/gas, shipping, fishing, and various military supplies. They use all this money to fund immense social programs(they flirt with the line of nanny state), keep themselves fairly closed off to immigration, are rampant consumers(their labor is mostly Baltic imported), then put on an incredible air of superiority, even though they are essentially white Saudi Arabia.
They are a funny people.
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Norway. A country completely subsidized by the rest of the world, particularly the US, since it's industry mix is oil/gas, shipping, fishing, and various military supplies. They use all this money to fund immense social programs(they flirt with the line of nanny state), keep themselves fairly closed off to immigration, are rampant consumers(their labor is mostly Baltic imported), then put on an incredible air of superiority, even though they are essentially white Saudi Arabia.
They are a funny people.
For one thing, I don't think Norway is in the Pacific North West. For another, there are plenty of countries operating on a mixture of democratic socialist and centre right principles in the world that are doing just fine, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, The Baltic Republics, Germany, France, ... the list goes on and none of them are floating on an ocean of oil even if a few of them have some kind of fossil fuel mining industry. Germany and Denmark have swapped significant portions of their energ
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What socialist economy is working well? Certainly not the Nordic countries, given they are a free market, capitalist [wikipedia.org] economic system. The Government just happens to invest in a big social safety net as well. Perhaps Cuba? Venezuela? North Korea? Mao's China? Stalin's Russia?
When it comes to economic models, socialism is, in fact, always a bad thing. You can argue about how big a social net you wish to add around the market, but from an economic standpoint - capitalism, free market enterprise - always wins.
Did you just get pulled out of a cryogenics chamber where you were put to sleep in 1951 during some weird ass cold ware experiment? Stalin's Russia does not exist anymore, nor does Mao's China. As for Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea they are not that much more fucked up than some of the places where the US propped up homicidal dictators for the better part of the last century such as Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador to name but a few. In fact I'm pretty sure that Iraq for example has been every bit as fucke
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As for having success, modern India and modern China at their birth, at the beginning of the '50s were pretty equal (well, India was actually in a better position, with a somewhat greater gdp) and similar (very large pre-industrial, agricultural societies etc.). Nowadays it is clear that Communist China surpassed in every conceivable way Capitalist India.
That's
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" Ever seen how desparate people can become when the power goes out? " - Nope. I have solar panels and a backup propane system should shit blow up. Next?
And that means something to an entire grid how? Although your tiny little grid is a good microcosm of the CA grid. Solar for hope and natural gas for the actual power. Which is why in both CA and Germany, from 2010 till now despite a record amount of wind and solar deployed we have more CO2 emissions than before we deployed all those solar panels and wind turbines. That's because of all the natural gas plants kept fired up to provide power should a cloud or still period occur. So this wind and solar on
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Sounds like yours will be the first house looted next time there is a major power disruption.
Yeah, I can see the looters taking his power home.
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Nope not true (Score:2, Interesting)
Here in Seattle we have our own hydroelectric dam, and I get 100 percent green energy from wind turbines (near the Gorge) and from solar panels here in the city (I own six of them, at the Aquarium, the Zoo, and at Capitol Hill Low Income Housing).
It's the rest of the PNW that might be using nuclear. We export energy. Heck, our Governor just had his launch for President at a solar power manufacturing plant that I can see from my window. This county literally builds a lot of US solar and wind infrastructure
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Shows how little you know. Snow is easy to brush off solar panels, as most operating ski areas have proven, and mountain solar and wind tends to be fairly constant. Over a regional grid, the power curves of both tend to closely represent the actual demand use for power, which hydro can easily shape for a full power curve even in times of restriction.
The major problem is dust, which Seattle tends not to have much of. Except during summers when the entire region is on fire, so don't move here. Especially if
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Most of your California hydro comes from here (north of you). Literally. We sell the hydroelectric output of the Columbia River basin and BC sells the output of the Rocky mountain dams which is where your power comes from. Check your interstate grid compact for more details. You actually have a state commission that regulates that now.
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Re:Nope not true (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in California, hydro is not considered renewable.
That's just hippy-dippy politics. Hydro power IS solar power, collected by the hydrological cycle.
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And with snow on your panels, I'm sure they produced a LOT of solar power for you ...
Seattle is at latitude 47.6. That means solar panels are normally mounted more steeply than 45 degrees, and those that are adjusted from time to time to track the seasons or skewed in favor of winter generation are even steeper in the winter.
The angle of repose of (dry) snow is about 38 degrees. So when the panels are really cold (like on a bitter night) it will just fall off, no wind necessary.
When they're hot it will ei
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hydro is not considered renewable
Where does the water go? Just disappears, eh?
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How is it "not true"? It says "Pacific Northwest", not "Seattle". I don't know what you mean by "literally builds" a lot of US solar and wind infrastructure. That certainly isn't true. Most wind turbines not made in the US and none are from Seattle. You are really full of yourself.
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Again, Seattle owns the Tolt River watershed, and the hydroelectric dam that is on it. You're confusing the purchase and export of electric power from Seattle City Light to the other cities in this and nearby counties. The dam is literally ours, and so is the water, which we sell at cost to Seattle residents and at a surcharge to nearby areas.
If you cross Lake Washington, which you might incorrectly think is part of Seattle (it's not, ask Mercer Island, or Lake City), then your power mix includes a larger
Re:All my money sits in a drawer at my bank (Score:4, Interesting)
Seattle owns outright hydroelectric generating plants equivalent to about 75% of its peak demand. Here [wikipedia.org] and here [wikipedia.org] are two of their major hydroelectric projects. So, yeah. They do have, in a meaningful sense, their own hydroelectric dams.
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Puget Sound Energy sells energy primarily East of Seattle proper.
I think you don't get that Seattle owns it's own public energy utility.
You may be confused by PSE selling natural gas for heating within Seattle, but we were talking about electricity.
I stand by my true statements.
Think of it this way. To people outside of Washington State, you think Seattle is a vast area from the Cascade Mountains to the Olympic Mountains, from Snohomish to Tacoma. Seattle is a city built on a small portion of that.
But GRID! (Score:4, Funny)
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Weather is not climate! The entire state of CA being cold and wet for months on end does not mean a DAMN THING when talking about climate!!!
6 months from now: CA had the hottest August in the last 11 months! CLIMATE CHANGE!!!11!!
Re:But GRID! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Woosh.
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In 2017, hydro-produced electricity used by California totaled nearly 43,333 gigawatt-hours (GWh)
What about 2015? It was only 15,256 GWh. 2011? 43,623 GWh. The usable hydro power is swinging up and down by a factor of 300% over periods of just 2 years. What is making up such enormous differences in power production during the years of drought I wonder?
https://www.energy.ca.gov/alma... [ca.gov]
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Funny enough, we don't have the conservation messages. The only conservation messages we got were a few months ago when they asked to conserve natural gas because a pipeline exploded and was only running at 50% capacity.
So north of the border of the Pacific Northwest, we've got electricity. Yes, they've noted that power consumption has gone up (duh, it's cold) but well within system capacity.
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Look at how fragile this system is. It's on "no touch" at the moment, can't even maintain it, because if it goes down they instantly lose over a gigawatt.
For energy security you need greater distribution and some decent storage.
what about wind and solar? (Score:2)
Re:what about wind and solar? (Score:4, Informative)
Point of order: Nuclear reactors are actually notably very bad at "spooling up." They don't ramp more than a few percent per hour because it disrupts the balance of transient neutron poisons (esp Xe-135) in the reactor core which is bad for reactivity control authority (i.e. knowing exactly how much control you have to speed up or slow down the reactor).
Coal is pretty bad too, but nat gas turbines and hydro can both start/stop much, much faster. And Tesla's giant ass battery in Australia can do it close to instantly (within some msec), which makes it extremely valuable for grid levelling.
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Lawsuits will prevent large scale solar (Score:4, Interesting)
... a 256 sq mile desert solar facility, for single example. You lose.
Actually you lose. Try to build that and you will get tied up in lawsuits just like the nuke industry when they want to build. That desert terrain will be habitat to some endangered tortoise, squirrel, rat, etc.
I don't bother with 99% of "anonymous" posts (Score:2)
mr burns sun blocker 2.0! (Score:2)
mr burns sun blocker 2.0!
100% power (Score:2)
Somewhere, Scotty is saying "The engines canna take much more!"
it's negative 24 and the wind isn't blowinbgt (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.startribune.com/dee... [startribune.com]
The brutal cold gripping Minnesota made itself felt in tens of thousands of living rooms Wednesday as Xcel Energy resorted to asking customers to turn their thermostats down to 63 degrees to conserve natural gas.
https://www.americanexperiment... [americanexperiment.org]
The screenshot below is from Electricity Map. It’s a fun app that tells you how your electricity is being generated at any given moment in time. Turns out wind is producing only four percent of electricity in the MISO region, of which Minnesota is a part.
While that’s not good, what’s worse is wind is only utilizing 24 percent of it’s installed capacity, and who knows how this will fluctuate throughout the course of
It's a real shame that turning on the lights doesn't make the wind blow.
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Not bloody likely (Score:2)
"nuclear plants are the least affected by bad weather"
Unless the river they get their cooling water from is frozen in winter or in summer if it is too low or already too hot.
Cough (Score:2)
Consistency vs hypocrisy (Score:2)
Anyone who's protested nuclear power should be prohibited from receiving it.
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"'No Touch' is requested by BPA when unusually hot or cold weather increases the demand for electricity, notes Mike Paoli, spokesman for Energy Northwest," the report adds. "Many regional transmission and system operators across the United States ask nuclear plants to keep running during extreme weather because nuclear plants are the least affected by bad weather.
Erm...Europe’s heatwave is forcing nuclear power plants to shut down [qz.com]
US drought causes nuclear power station to shutdown [chinadialogue.net]
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"'No Touch' is requested by BPA when unusually hot or cold weather increases the demand for electricity, notes Mike Paoli, spokesman for Energy Northwest," the report adds. "Many regional transmission and system operators across the United States ask nuclear plants to keep running during extreme weather because nuclear plants are the least affected by bad weather.
Erm...Europe’s heatwave is forcing nuclear power plants to shut down [qz.com]
US drought causes nuclear power station to shutdown [chinadialogue.net]
Those shutdowns were because of a lack of water to cool the plant. Also, all power plants, nuclear or not have to use water for dumping excess heat. Its why power plants of all types are so often put by large bodies of water. Those heatwave shutdowns had nothing to do with the nuclear aspect of those plants.
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"'No Touch' is requested by BPA when unusually hot or cold weather increases the demand for electricity,
Those shutdowns were because of a lack of water to cool the plant. Also, all power plants, nuclear or not have to use water for dumping excess heat. Its why power plants of all types are so often put by large bodies of water. Those heatwave shutdowns had nothing to do with the nuclear aspect of those plants.
That's exactly his point: when NPPs are just as susceptible to shutdowns during extremely cold or hot weather as other plants, they are just as useless to rely on to provide emergency power under those conditions. Just more costly.
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When your nuclear plant is situated along the Columbia River, which drains about 1/4 of North America into the Pacific, you aren't likely to run out of water any time soon.
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It's almost like there's an inverse correlation between water availability and operation of an industrial facility built to generate shitloads of heat for boiling water.
Re: Huh, I have an idea to reduce their electric b (Score:4, Insightful)
CFCs reduce Ozone, not cloud cover. Nor do they fix the tilt of the earth to reduce that pesky little thing called "winter".
Nuclear power is fantastic. We're just too obsessed with spent fuel and fear-mongoring to do it right. Nuclear power plants now-a-days are built with a positive coefficient. The nuclear power plants you have to worry about at night are the plants built with 50+ year old designs with negative coefficient properties.
The bigger challenge is the overly difficult task of licensing them. It costs billions to license a plant, and the licenses expire. If you can't guarantee you can operate your plant in year 21, it's not worth the investment. SONGS was shut down and dismantled because the repair costs of a mal/formed component exceeded the potential profit on the remaining license (energy prices are regulated), and the state wouldn't grant a license extension if the repairs were made.
We need to build better, newer plants. We need to make them more cost-effective to operate, and we need to do it now. What electric cars will do to the grid in the next decade will exasperate the problem. Imagine all the energy in petroleum to cars having to be shifted onto our grid. There isn't enough power.
Re: Huh, I have an idea to reduce their electric b (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear power plants now-a-days are built with a positive coefficient. The nuclear power plants you have to worry about at night are the plants built with 50+ year old designs with negative coefficient properties.
One quibble...you mean newer plants have negative void coefficients. The older ones (like CANDU reactors in Canada and the RBMKs in Russia) have positive void coefficients and that's what you have to worry about. Also, licensing isn't really that hard and there is no real reason it should cost billions to license a plant, you just have to actually do it and its the politics that fucks that up. Otherwise I completely agree...
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Crap you are right, I totally switch-arooo'd that. Brain fart. My bad. Yes, negative = x; positive = negative, b = positive. Thanks for the correction.
I think the licensure is mis-guided today. I'll elaborate.
Making sure the plants are safe is obviously a goal. But licensing them at the costs of billions, and making the licenses hard to get only increases the price, and stunts growth.
The right solution in my opinion is for power companies with loads of assets to be the direct owner of the power station. Tha
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A small positive void coefficient like what you see in the CANDU plants is fine when paired with passive safety systems. The reaction build-up is slow and small enough that it'll never present a significant threat. The issue with the RBMK design was that it had a huge positive void coefficient coupled with virtually no passive safety mechanism. Everything had to be turned on and operating correctly or the reaction would very quickly run out of control. The obvious difference being that with a CANDU plant (a
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The RBMK was also designed in an idiotic manner -- the control rods were designed so they increased reactivity at first when inserted... kind of like a brake pedal in a car making a car accelerate for a minute before it starts slowing down.
The test they ran on the day of the Chernobyl accident was the equivalent of driving a car full throttle with stuck brakes, then wondering why the car suddenly accelerates and hits a tree when the stuck brakes burn up.
Stupidity all around.
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CFCs reduce Ozone, not cloud cover.
They are also highly potent greenhouse gases.
Re: Huh, I have an idea to reduce their electric (Score:3, Funny)
Hey neighbor, plug in your Leaf so I can charge my Tesla. Thanks.
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For the hard-earned money you pay for something that costs us practically nothing.. you're welcome, ass-hat.
Re: Huh, I have an idea to reduce their electric b (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear power is great! Right up until it goes Fukushima on you. Then it sucks ass. Unwipable ass at that.
Electric cars have the potential to solve problems. They are just giant batteries, you know. If they were allowed to back feed into the grid during high demand periods like right now, it would smooth out demand quite nicely. Wind and solar can become much more useful when there is sufficient energy storage capacity available.
The reactors the GP refers to can't meltdown (like Chernobyl) and don't use water as a coolants so they don't make Hydrogen gas like Fukushima or 3 mi Island. Also, the entire world's output of Li-ion batteries couldn't backup even the CA grid for 4 hours, so the world's entire supply for 20 years is enough to backups CA's grid but Li-ion batteries don't last 20 years so you couldn't even make just CA 100% renewable. Also CA's grid is about 1% of the size of global energy usage. I like EVs and have 2 of them but please don't get confused. We haven't even dented CO2 production and continuing to ignore nuclear is only making the problem worse while we wait for folks like you to figure out solar and wind aren't a real solution.
Re: Huh, I have an idea to reduce their electric b (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks for the info. I like when people have a good grasp of the big picture and put things in perspective. A huge problem in today's society is partial information, including (maybe especially) by the news media. I think wind and solar are helping, but I trust you that they won't solve all energy needs. I've put in a few PV systems and I know a reasonably sized system makes as much power as a typical house uses, so in my mind if we put PV on houses and shopping centers, we can cover a lot of the need, but big industries will use more than PV can reasonably generate, and skyscrapers might be difficult to achieve anything close to net zero.
I've been a huge proponent of nuclear power for a very long time, but with the provision that 1) it's done well with true safety thought out, and 2) much better design and efficiency. I'm not a nuclear engineer but I've been working on a project that deals with system safety and monitoring and that's all I'll say for now, and that it's cool and I'm proud to help / contribute to better and safer nuclear power.
Re: Huh, I have an idea to reduce their electric (Score:5, Insightful)
If you like Big picture stuff, think about how much coal power the six reactors of fukushima displaced. Gigawatts over your, for about fifty years... 8,000+ hours per year...
That's 400,000 GWH each. Now consider how much toxic filth, heavy metals and radioactive material goes into the coal ash ponds, or even up the smokestack.
Coal caused more cancer over the last seventy odd years, _just from radiation related sources_ than every man made nuclear accident plus the two atomic bombs (including instakills) put together.
Coal ash is just nasty, nasty stuff, and it leaks into our drinking water and food chain whenever it rains a half inch more than expected.
Re: Huh, I have an idea to reduce their electric (Score:2, Informative)
https://transmission.bpa.gov/b... [bpa.gov]
If you look at the web page, you will see the wind hasn't blown in several days. And although we are almost back to 12 hours of sunlight it has been quite cloudy lately. So, your batteries would now be completely discharged.
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When there are a group of 10 smaller nuke plants with 4 reactors each, one doesn't need to worry when one takes "MONTHS" (omgchickenlittlebutt!!) to get back online.
And, with an interconnected grid with (OMGFREAKYOUT) nice robust long distance transmission lines to other areas exist, you can help one another out.
Don't you want to help one another out?
You are right, NIMBYs aren't the problem, YOU are the problem.
Re: Huh, I have an idea to reduce their electric b (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose you would have called for an end to all airplanes when Thomas Selfridge [wikipedia.org] died in the first fatal airline crash in 1908. Or, perhaps you would have called for an end to all heavier than air transport back in 1896 when Otto Lilienthal [wikipedia.org] died piloting a glider?
And I assume you would have eliminated all software or hardware control of medical treatment devices after the Therac-25 [wikipedia.org] radiation therapy device killed three patients back in the mid 80's?
I assume you also, personally, eschew all forms of motorized transport as they are not yet perfect and kill tens of thousands of people in the US alone every year?
Fukushima was a very expensive accident. However, it was not a very dangerous one in terms of human life.
Nothing is completely safe, but we learn from each failure and improve, rather than abandon, technology.
Nuclear power is almost essential if we are going to provide reliable power without spewing CO2 into the air that our ancestors will curse us for.