Hot Weather Cuts French, German Nuclear Power Output (reuters.com) 249
AmiMoJo quotes Reuters:
Scorching temperatures across Europe coupled with prolonged dry weather has reduced French nuclear power generation by around 5.2 gigawatts (GW) or 8%, French power grid operator RTE's data showed on Thursday. Electricity output was curtailed at six reactors by 0840 GMT on Thursday, while two other reactors were offline, data showed. High water temperatures and sluggish flows limit the ability to use river water to cool reactors.
In Germany, PreussenElektra, the nuclear unit of utility E.ON, said it would take its Grohnde reactor offline on Friday due to high temperatures in the Weser river.
France's nuclear reactors supply more than 75% of its electricity, according to the article -- though their grid operator says they still have enough capacity left to meet demand.
In Germany, PreussenElektra, the nuclear unit of utility E.ON, said it would take its Grohnde reactor offline on Friday due to high temperatures in the Weser river.
France's nuclear reactors supply more than 75% of its electricity, according to the article -- though their grid operator says they still have enough capacity left to meet demand.
Hottest summer (Score:5, Funny)
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> more heat and killing the aquatic life
Would you say it is a smaller and more localized version of global warming?
You're right, better heat the whole earth, that way it is equal for everyone.
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Would you say it is a smaller and more localized version of global warming?
You're right, better heat the whole earth, that way it is equal for everyone.
Typical cynical and clueless response.
These reactors would work just fine in even hotter weather. For good environmental reasons the temperature of cooling water leaving the reactor is limited, for example to 28 degree Celsius. That's no problem 99% of the time, but once in a while when the incoming water is already warm, they have to either limit their electricity output to reduce the amount of cooling needed or stop producing energy altogether.
Shown in UK exports (Score:5, Informative)
There's a 2GW link between France and the UK and that's been showing that the UK is recently exporting power to France where they are normally importing it:
Gridwatch interconnector page [gridwatch.co.uk]
It's interesting to see the effects of such a shutdown on the balance of the European grid.
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The UK gets about 20% of their electricity from nuclear power. Did their nuclear power plants need to reduce power too? If not then why not?
Re:Shown in UK exports (Score:5, Informative)
The affected French and German plants use once-through cooling drawing water from rivers. Low flow rates and high water temperatures mean that outflows from the plant raise river temperatures downstream. Due to the high inflow temperatures, continued operation of the affected plants would result in excessive downstream water temperatures.
In France, coastal plants using once-through cooling, or riverside plants using cooling towers for evaporative cooling have not been significantly impacted.
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Indeed, when the last heatwave hit they dumped hot water into the rivers and killed a lot of fish and other wildlife, so this time they have shut down instead.
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That must have been decades ago.
France shuts down a few plants _every_ summer.
The effect is not that dramatic as they have nation wide holidays from mid July till roughly end of August. Hence many factories are either closed or work with reduced shifts.
That means during daytime they usually don't need to import much. However they import a lot of power at night to refill their pumped storages. That is the main reason why Germany is a net exporter to France in the long run.
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Only reason to cut output of a nuke plant in hot weather is if the plant is using a river for coolant, instead of cooling towers.
Perhaps the UK plants don't use a river as their heatsink?
Or maybe it's just a bit cooler there?
Nuclear output goes down 8% in bad weather... (Score:3, Informative)
while solar/wind output goes down 100% in bad weather.
Which should we be building our infrastructure around?
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while solar/wind output goes down 100% in bad weather.
Which should we be building our infrastructure around?
Why would available wind power stop in bad weather? If anything, it should increase up to 100%.
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Why would available wind power stop in bad weather?
Define bad weather. A wind free day is pretty bad weather for a wind farm.
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Modern turbines can be pitched to any angle, so they can be run in very high winds.
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Except they don't because there's no safe angle in turbulent winds. They stall them and apply a mechanical break for good measure.
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Some designs yes, other designs no.
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Re:Nuclear output goes down 8% in bad weather... (Score:5, Informative)
The plants affected use "once through" cooling. They draw cold water from a river, pass it through heat exchangers and then return it. Typically, the outlet temperature is about 6-8 C warmer than the intake. This is potentially problematic for riverine life, especially if the intake water is already warm.
For example, one of the affected plants in France is restricted to an outlet water temperature of 28 C to protect wildlife, and if there is risk of exceeding this, then it must reduce power or shut down. With river water temperatures reaching 23 C in the recent heatwave, it is not feasible to maintain the outflow temperature below the required limit. In previous years, the French government has given waivers to plants to allow them to exceed environmental limits in the event of extreme weather; however, there was low demand this year and other power sources were available, hence there was no need for a waiver this time.
Once through cooling was the choice in many of the early French river-side plants, because it is cheaper than cooling towers. The need for periodic environmental restrictions was recognised, and the issue of 5-10 days of shutdown per decade during the period of minimum demand, was considered acceptable, and there was no business case for cooling towers.
More recent plants built at similar sites have been equipped with cooling towers because they have lower environmental impact (lower outflow temperatures, lower flow rates so less fish impingement on filters) and by reducing water temperatures below ambient can have greater cooling margin.
Re:Nuclear output goes down 8% in bad weather... (Score:5, Insightful)
Solar, wind, plus storage.
Nuclear is dead long term. It's the mainframe of the energy producing world. The moment other alternatives take off (and they already are), nuclear is doomed because it takes a very long time to build, it's expensive to build, is expensive to operate, it requires oversight, and it requires lots of government intervention.
Eventually it's going to lose to the brute force of just building a lot of cheap solar and wind everywhere will be the easiest and most economical option. Just like today we run computing on millions of commodity machines rather than special built, room sized mainframes.
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If nuclear power is too expensive then offshore wind should simply be out of the equation.
http://www.renewable-energysou... [renewable-...ources.com]
Power Plant Type Cost (LCOE) $/kW-hr
Coal with CCS $0.12-0.13
CC Natural Gas $0.043
CC with CCS $0.075
Nuclear $0.093
Wind onshore $0.037
Wind offshore $0.106
Solar PV $0.038
Solar Thermal $0.165
Geothermal $0.037
Biomass $0.092
Hydro $0.039
Also no more biomass or solar thermal.
Those prices in the table are from the US DOE, and they do not include the costs of batteries for storage. I'd like to see some numbers on what wind, solar, and batteries are expected to cost. If someone has them then please share.
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Offshore wind cost pr MW nameplate is falling more than 10% per year at the moment, and at the same time capacity factors are going up.
Nuclear power costs are steady or rising. If you commission a nuclear reactor in a coastal region now, it will have to compete with offshore wind at half the price you are listing when it is finally complete. That is, if it gets built exceptionally quickly and wind power costs fall slower than anticipated.
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Offshore wind cost pr MW nameplate is falling more than 10% per year at the moment, and at the same time capacity factors are going up.
Nuclear power costs are steady or rising. If you commission a nuclear reactor in a coastal region now, it will have to compete with offshore wind at half the price you are listing when it is finally complete. That is, if it gets built exceptionally quickly and wind power costs fall slower than anticipated.
Right, wind power sees a reduction in capital costs as they get experience, improved designs, and the infrastructure grows. But this is somehow impossible for nuclear power?
I expect the nuclear power industry will see lower costs as they get experience, improve designs, and see growth in infrastructure. All we need is a government willing to issue construction and operation licenses, maybe toss in a few bucks to cover some of the development costs, then sit back as prices fall year after year.
That's what
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Right, wind power sees a reduction in capital costs as they get experience, improved designs, and the infrastructure grows. But this is somehow impossible for nuclear power?
Nuclear power has had 60+ years to get the experience and improve the designs. In all that time cost has only gone up. Wind and solar have demonstrated cost improvements every year for at least the last 3 decades.
I am not saying that it is impossible for nuclear to improve or impossible for solar and wind to suddenly hit some kind of wall. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. But damn, if you try to improve something for 60 years and it only gets worse, you are not getting my money for more a
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Nuclear power has had 60+ years to get the experience and improve the designs.
No, they didn't get 60 years of experience. Building them for 20 years and then sitting on their thumbs for the next 40 is not 60 years of experience. All the people that knew how to build these plants are retired, senile, or dead. With no industry for them to train the next generation there is only the old designs and a lot of theory to work from.
To get that experience back will take another 20 years of building. We'll probably start with something not all that different from what we had 40 years ago b
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The military never stopped building nuclear power reactors but those are very different from a civil design.
I just want to point out that they only do this where they have to, and they choose not to use their designs to power bases.
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So you are arguing that nuclear has a future because it wasn't properly explored the first time, and maybe if we start over we can spend 20 years getting good at building them. Even thought it did not work the first time around we did that. You want the taxpayer to finance it, because no one else will. Just to top it off, the money will have to be given to large non-innovative companies, because the small companies that create the innovation cannot handle building something as large as a nuclear power plant
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So you are arguing that nuclear has a future because it wasn't properly explored the first time,
It's not that the exploration was improper, I'd call the exploration incomplete. We had really just started to hit a stride on how to build large, safe, reliable, and inexpensive nuclear power right about the time we decided to stop. The industry was still exploring many options on how to do things right and hadn't shaken out all the little details just yet.
and maybe if we start over we can spend 20 years getting good at building them.
I didn't say it would take 20 years to get good at building nuclear power plants, I said it would take 20 years to get back to where we were 40 years
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No, they didn't get 60 years of experience. Building them for 20 years and then sitting on their thumbs for the next 40 is not 60 years of experience.
But they didn't stop for 40 years - they continued to be built across the world.
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Solar, wind, plus storage.
In Central Europe, solar power production during winter is about 5-10 % of summer values, so essentially nonexistent. You could have storage to cover evening and cloudy days, but definitely not for whole season.
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Plain wrong.
a) we still have about 8h daylight, or more.
B) we have many sunny days
C) even if it is cloudy, solar plants still produce 50% or more - and the indirect light lasts all day so the load curve is actually better
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Solar, wind, plus storage.
In northern Europe, for instance, the winters get dark, so solar output drops to less than 2 hours of sun per day in the 3 months of winter. How much wind and storage would we need ? I don't see batteries as a viable option for long term storage, and pumped storage requires suitable topography that not every place has.
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In north of Europe there is also a lot of water power plants Norway and Sweden has a large mountains and big rivers. In Sweden it snows in the winter. That snow melts during the summer and fill the dams. During winter the dams reserves are lowered and are used to generate electric power. In Sweden the reserves can hold about 1/5 of the electricity generated yearly in Sweden.
That's one really huge battery.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
Nuclear is the only energy source immune to all extreme weather events â" by design. Plants have steel-reinforced concrete containments with over 4-foot thick walls. The buildings housing the reactors, vital equipment and used fuel have steel-reinforced concrete walls up to 7 feet thick, which are built to withstand any category hurricane or tornado. They can even withstand a plane flying directly into them.
We need nuclear power in response to the increased severe weather events that will come with global warming. If someone says we can't have nuclear power then I have to wonder just how much of a threat this person believes that global warming poses.
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It would also depend on the bad weather. Droughts and heat waves could aid solar production.
Not due to bad weather (Score:2)
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Yeah, and who is removing the dead fish?
Who is paying the guys doing it?
Who is compensating fishers? Restaurants?
Re:Nuclear output goes down 8% in bad weather... (Score:5, Insightful)
while solar/wind output goes down 100% in bad weather.
Which should we be building our infrastructure around?
Both. Diversity provides maximum reliability.
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Both. Diversity provides maximum reliability.
And what if the maximum is not good enough?
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When does solar/wind go down in bad weather? That's a dumb thing Trump claimed on twitter and in rallies, but in reality that's why we have an electricity grid - because no power plant has 100% full output and uptime. When the wind/sun isn't blowing/shining - it likely is somewhere else on the grid.
A friend who works at a coal fired power plant in Wyoming told me they've reduced the output of their plant more than half because of the about of wind turbines they have (it really never stops being windy in Wyo
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because of the amount of wind turbines they have
That's just Banpei-kun flying a kite.
Nukes not closed due to issues on the nukes (Score:2)
We need to replace fossil fuel plants, but preferable with things like Wind, solar, but backed up by Nucl
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Enjoying the real cost of free sunlight and free wind power all over Germany AC?
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Too bad they don't (Score:2)
Thermal pollution laws (Score:2)
Design in cooling systems to cool the warm water.
Now the use of energy has to change due to laws and a lack of design.
A big cold river was always expected to take in an average amount of heat after energy production.
Green laws get passed and that cooling math fails.
Design something on site to cool the warm water first? A huge new cooling "tower"?
Germany pays more and more for its energy policy.
Any Nuclear engieers here? (Score:2)
I have always wondered this about plant cooling, why isnt it a closed loop? Surely having pre warmed coolant and running the reactor at a slightly lower temp is more efficient and gets rid of cooling towers/ waste hot water into the ocean?
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nevermind...
https://www.world-nuclear.org/... [world-nuclear.org]
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There is no reduction of power generation and consumption. Nuclear power generation was reduced. Other sources took up the slack.
This will soon be a non-problem as the falling price of solar will make nuclear power unnecessary during European summer.
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Wait, doesn't solar power lose output with increased heat?
https://www.solarquotes.com.au... [solarquotes.com.au]
So on a cool 25 C day where the panel is cooking at 50 C, you will be losing 10% of your solar power.
What happens when the air temperature gets to 50 C?
Solar power replacing nuclear power is a fantasy.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Re:Two sides to many coins (Score:5, Funny)
But it's cooler at night. Do I have to do all the thinking around here?
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But it's cooler at night. Do I have to do all the thinking around here?
Ah, yes, of course. That certainly clears things up for me.
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Wait, doesn't solar power lose output with increased heat?
Sure it does. However, solar is so cheap that it is or soon will be cost effective to size solar installation for production during European spring and autumn, where daily insolation is much lower. That will lead to overproduction during the long summer days. Sure, the overproduction might be cut by 30% due to heat, but it will still be higher than the production the panels were planned for.
It is already becoming popular to undersize the inverter. It saves a bit of money, and you only really lose out on pro
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I see. So these people are making an engineering decision to save on costs? I can buy that.
It's almost like a nuclear power plant using a slightly undersized heat sink for the reactor because they will only require a larger heat sink when the temperatures get real hot. Since these events last only a few days, means reducing output by maybe as much as 10%, then they can save costs the rest of the year while producing at the 100% of rated output of the reactor.
I can make that same point about every nuclear
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It seems like the anti-nuclear crowd here is using this small reduction in nuclear power output, as done on purpose during the design as a cost saving measure, to shit all over nuclear power. Then when this same effect is pointed out in solar power they can explain in detail how to engineer around this, and not see that this also applies to the nuclear power plants they just shit on.
Where is all the shitting on that you are talking about?
And if you include me in the anti-nuclear crowd, feel free, but if you can cut the cost of nuclear power down to the same cost as solar or on-shore wind, I will be out there with placards saying "BUILD SIZEWELL C NOW!!!". But at £0.092/kWh + inflation when offshore is €0.050/kWh and no inflation, the competition just isn't there. (The calculation is a bit different in the US because AFAIK there is not a similar huge low-depth non-cyclone alm
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If you want to see nuclear power prices come down then there needs to be construction of new nuclear. Half of the "research and development" cycle is development, meaning building things. As in full size operational units. This also applies to any other technology, such as wind power. It took a lot of really bad windmills to get to what we have today. The nice thing about nuclear power is we don't have to start from nothing, we can start from the designs we had 50 years ago, which with the lessons lear
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It's almost like a nuclear power plant using a slightly undersized heat sink for the reactor because they will only require a larger heat sink when the temperatures get real hot.
No, that's not how it works. The cooling is designed to cool things down at highest production. If you do that, the outgoing water will be say 5 degrees hotter than the incoming water. Whether it's freezing cold or boiing hot outside, the outgoing water will always be 5 degrees hotter than the incoming.
So if you don't care about lots of dead fish in the river, they can run that power plant at any temperature.
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If you are smart you don't face them due south anyway but place your peak either around 10:00AM or 4:00PM, if you want to sell most of your power.
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What happens when the air temperature gets to 50 C?
Since it doesn't currently get anywhere near that hot in terms of air temperature then climate change would have got so extreme that you'd need to worry more about whether you could swim rather than what will power your air con.
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The reduction in power generation is not voluntary, and was not done for the sake of the environment, so that's a bad thing.
Power output was reduced because surface waters required to sink the waste heat from the power plants have become too warm to do the task adequately. The waters are warmer than ever because of climate change.
So the scenario you outlined is *incredibly* moronic, just for lack of understanding the problem.
=Smidge=
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And neither will it be voluntary under Left directives (cf. the "Green New Deal"), just that it will be involuntary on a vastly greater scale.
In my view, you are being manipulated by having absolutely every weather-related event tied to "Climate Change", as a fearmongering political strategy preying on people's psychological weakness toward confirmation bias. This is not an intellectually honest attempt to soberly determine probabilities and mitigation
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Power output was reduced because surface waters required to sink the waste heat from the power plants have become too warm to do the task adequately.
This is not strictly true, at least not for all of the reactors. River temperatures are high enough that they are stressing the fish living in the rivers, and therefore it is not permitted to raise them even further with the gigawatts of heat that typical nuclear power plants produce. Nuclear power in France has been trying for years to get rid of these restrictions, with the (not entirely unreasonable) argument that the rivers are so polluted anyway that a bit of heat won't make a difference.
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with the (not entirely unreasonable) argument that the rivers are so polluted anyway that a bit of heat won't make a difference.
That is complete nonsense. Most rivers are not polluted at all. Many close to quality of drinking water. Especially in France with its many broad but shallow rivers where no ship goes and basically no industries reside.
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More like reduction of power generation is a necessary response to an objectively measurable present condition.
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supposedly due to Climate Change
I can haz cheeseburder?
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So, is reduction of power generation and consumption, supposedly due to Climate Change, a good thing, or a bad thing?
There is no reduction in power generation. Whatever reduction you have in one plant, is matched by an increase elsewhere. There is no reduction in consumption except for the reduction that happens every year in the summer when people switch their central heating off and use less power.
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Are you claiming not to be a denier? You accept that climate change is happening and it is largely caused by human activity?
If you are not a denier, then what's your plan to address climate change? What have you personally done to reduce your CO2 footprint?
Or do you think that climate change is manageable with more air conditioning and perhaps a few sea walls?
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I'll take your avoidance of my question as an affirmation that you are a climate change denier.
You just want to wrap up your denial in bogus claims of authoritarianism.
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Ridiculous. Learn how logic works.
That one acknowledges an idea, like, say, car accidents exist, is not contingent on him actively having a plan to fix this and and be actively engaged in doing so worldwide. Your rhetoric is paper thin and absurd.
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I asked several questions. You are making bogus claims about how they relate.
Answer the first question or GTFO.
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I'm going nowhere.
I have several times I do not deny climate change exists. I have further clarified the issue for me is in close evaluation of the tradeoffs in how we address it.
You, in actuality, contribute nothing to helping with the issue. You expect some sort of vague credit merely for talking about it and labeling people deniers. A worthless endeavor that accomplishes nothing.
Here's the issue.
If one says that they disagree that climate change exists, you call them a "denier".
If one says they agree
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OK, you agree that climate change exists.
Now, do you accept that it is primarily caused by humans?
If you reply no to the question above, do you accept that it is partially caused by humans?
If it is partially caused by humans, do you believe that no one should be forced to take any actions to mitigate climate change?
As for contributing nothing: I have used my own money to reduce my CO2 footprint.
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"Climate Change" is not a quantifiable metric by which to evaluate whether it is "primarily" caused by humans. The climate is changing all the time, there is no "percentage" of that caused by humans that can be calculated.
A rise in temperature is contributed to by humans. That needs to be evaluated in mitigated in the same manner as any other complex issue, such as "the rise in nuclear weapons and risk of annihilation is caused by humans". There is no pat answer to that like "do less of it" that will res
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Looks like I skipped one.
No, no one should be forced to do anything about climate change. Nobody owes others their lives to further conjecture about how they think their future will be changed by forcing others.
That's wholly immoral to pursue, but in line with your disingenuous weasel-word usage of "denier" (oh, let's just make up a word that at once says our position is unarguable and anyone arguing it is immoral, packed into one word to bypass all logic, like, say, the utterly meaningless "collusion" usa
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OK, you just outed yourself as a denier, and you make a pathetic attempt to justify this as "because of authoritarianism".
You clearly don't intend that you or anyone should spend money to mitigate climate change, which makes you a denier. Now please go and collect your check from the Koch
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I'm done with your idiocy.
Have you spent money on helping the victims of the holocaust, even if you fully agree the holocaust happened? Well then, you're a holocaust denier!
Tool. Idiot tool. Bye.
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You don't really understand logic, do you.
I am not surprised you are a denier. You are clearly driven by stupidity and, if you are not too old, the ideas that you espouse now will lead to you being poorer when you are older.
You completely failed in this argument. All you did was throw out unsupported accusations while attempting to dodge questions.
Your final sign
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No, I answered everything substantively, you know it, your weasel-words were all refuted, and you know it, and you evaded every question posted to you, including why you haven't killed yourself. After being asked twice. And you know it.
I'm not sure if you're best at disingenuously, irrationality, or outright lying, but you consistently do all of the above.
Now I see why the term "libtard" is such a defensive issue for you that you had to make it part of your sig.
Anyway, farewell to the rest of the readers,
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Either you're a transparent liar, or you don't know the meaning of basic words.
Probably both.
Re:Just another cost of climate change... (Score:5, Informative)
This is yet another cost of climate change. We're going to have to increase capacity as unusual weather events become more frequent and hydro, wind, solar and nuclear power plants are hindered due to the severe weather.
The nuclear power plants did not cut power because of severe weather, they cut power to prevent damage to the environment.
From the fine article...
EDF's use of water from rivers as a coolant is regulated by law to protect plant and animal life and it is obliged to cut output in hot weather when water temperatures rise, or when river levels and flow rates are low.
If they used an artificial pool of water, or a larger body of water (like the ocean) then the concerns of raising the water temperature to where it could kill the fish would go away.
Would this addition of cooling raise the capital expense of the power plant? Yes, it would raise the cost. It would also increase the generation capacity and reduce impact on the environment, which would likely make it worth the expense. They had to know this when they built the plant. They certainly became aware of this the last time this came up on Slashdot. This is just another example of anti-nuclear power slant of this forum. There's certainly good news on nuclear power, and it's not all that hard to find. For a website that seems so concerned about global warming, and the technology that might come to avert it, it would seem logical to get more balanced reporting on nuclear power.
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If they used an artificial pool of water, or a larger body of water (like the ocean) then the concerns of raising the water temperature to where it could kill the fish would go away.
It would, but they'll most likely still have to reduce power. Reactors are limited by a maximum thermal output, both physically/technically, and also legally in terms of their safety cases. If sea water temperatures rise, condenser back pressure increases and the turbines produce less power. This causes the governors to increase steam to the turbines, which feeds back to the reactor causing reactor power to increase.
Usually when sea water temperatures go up, turbine load is reduced to keep reactor power
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The nuclear power plants did not cut power because of severe weather, they cut power to prevent damage to the environment.
I would also like to note here that all thermal power plants require somewhere to dump the excess heat.
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I would also like to note here that all thermal power plants require somewhere to dump the excess heat.
This is true, but misleading.
Modern coal or natural gas plants are over 50% efficient, meaning that the cooling needs are similar to the amount of electrical power they produce. They run at very high temperatures, around 600C. If they choose to lower their efficiency a bit they can run the "cold" side of the circuit at say 80C, which means they can use district heating for their cooling without needing a river at all.
A modern nuclear reactor is typically stuck with 300C steam temperature, which translates t
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Modern coal or natural gas plants are over 50% efficient,
Combined cycle gas plants are around 60% efficient. IGCC plants can get closeish but there aren't very many of the and they've not on the whole been very successful. Normal coal powerplants have thermal efficiencies in the low thirties.
A modern nuclear reactor is typically stuck with 300C steam temperature, which translates to maybe 30% efficiency. That is, they have to cool away twice as much heat away as they produce electrical power.
A modern PWR
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Above the melting point of the steam turbines. Obviously not above the melting point of the gas turbine ...
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Obviously not above the melting point of the gas turbine ...
No it is above the melting point of gas turbine blades. So "not" is obvious, but as it turns out wrong.
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They had to know this when they built the plant.
You mean during those record breaking global warming temperatures 40 years ago?
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Nuclear reactor's steam cooling systems need a large pool of hot water (heated by cooling tubes from the steam turbine exhaust steam) in the base of those huge venturi towers to create a rise of water vapor to cool the system's main cooling tubes inside the towers. This water, taken in huge amounts, can potentially deplete the streams in summer when flow is at it's lowest.
No nation with access to the sea will have a lack of cooling water for nuclear power.
This design, as efficient as power engineers can make it, argues all the more strongly for an infrastructure less reliant on nuclear power. A future with more power demand and less snow-melt run-off forces the politicians to think green.
Less nuclear power? Then replace that with what? Solar power? An energy source with a 60% downtime every day? These nuclear power plants didn't fall over and sink into the swamp because it got a little warm outside. They had to dial back output 5% to 10% to account for the higher temperatures in the water, and not because they couldn't handle the higher temperatures but because the fish in the streams could be killed f
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Think about it.
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German production lines need 24/7 low cost power AC.
Do VW, etc., really run 24-7? Higher wages have to be offered for night shifts so it's unlikely it does. If buildings are well insulated then they can stay cool overnight when no one is there if that is what you mean by 'AC' rather than Anonymous Coward.
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And you think when building something _this_ extremely expensive, they have not tried pretty hard to find an optimal placement? Well, obviously, _you_ must know better than all these experts.
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Demand shaping is already done via various mechanisms, primarily price and more can be done. Large organisations already sign deals with power company to shed load when the demand is high by doing things like turning off air con to a hotel for 20 minutes. Spread over dozens of hotels it means that sufficient demand can be shed to avoid starting up a peaking gas turbine, for example. Some demand is harder to shed, and so that is not shed.
In terms of some of the items you mention, well-insulated fridges can s
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Demand shaping at the moment mostly works opposite around. You have a peak of wind power and you signal cooling houses that are ideling at the moment to come online. And in future you signal electric cars to charge.
Education, do you have one? (Score:3)
Every year it's way hotter here in the USA {...} It's called weather.
No, you uneducated troll. It's called latitude .
France and Germany are spread over latitude where the most northern States and Canada are.
USA is spread over the latitude where southern Europe (like Spain) and northern Africa (like Morocco) are.
Of course, it's going to be hotter.
Deal with it, Frenchy.
Education, Redneck, try to get one, instead of being busy organizing lynching of people accused of being the wrong colour.