Drought is Stressing California's Power Grid (theverge.com) 266
Drought is putting pressure on California's already stressed-out grid. From a report: As water reservoirs run dry, there's been a significant drop in hydroelectric generation. Without enough water pressure to quickly turn turbine blades, there could be electricity shortages right when residents need it the most. Rolling blackouts have already become a new norm for the state as utilities shut down power lines in an attempt to avoid sparking fires during hot, dry weather. But summertime outages also occur when residents crank up their air conditioners to beat the heat and demand outpaces the available power supply.
"California relies on hydro for so much of its demand, so any drought can put the state in a tight position," said Lindsay Aramayo, an industry economist with the US Energy Information Administration. Hydropower is a significant source of energy for the state. In 2019, it made up about 17 percent of California's electricity mix. And while California is no stranger to drought, this is particularly bad. More than a third of the state is experiencing "exceptional drought," and more than 40 percent of its residents are living under a drought state of emergency.
"California relies on hydro for so much of its demand, so any drought can put the state in a tight position," said Lindsay Aramayo, an industry economist with the US Energy Information Administration. Hydropower is a significant source of energy for the state. In 2019, it made up about 17 percent of California's electricity mix. And while California is no stranger to drought, this is particularly bad. More than a third of the state is experiencing "exceptional drought," and more than 40 percent of its residents are living under a drought state of emergency.
Renewables (Score:5, Interesting)
Has California considered solar?
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Apparently they have hydro - sometimes.
Re:Renewables (Score:4, Insightful)
Has California considered solar?
Duh. Most of CA's electricity during the day is solar. Shit happens when the sun is gone.
Thanks to the greenies opposing new nuclear plants, we're depending on coal and gas powered energy at night.
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Honestly, I believe in nuclear power.
But it just seems fundamentally unwise to build nuclear reactors in a highly active fault zone.
There's "risk management", and then there's "dropping trou and shoving your ass in the fire".
Maybe micro-nuclear will be a safer option.
But it's SERIOUSLY going to depend on the tech behind it.
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Nuclear relies on water cooling as well.
And nuclear power generation plants have been shut down or run at reduced capacity many times during droughts and heat waves.
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Citation needed that any nuclear shutdowns were related to drought. Because California reactors have used sea water for cooling, and I think everyone would have noticed a drought bad enough to drop the Pacific Ocean more than a few feet.
Yes it's a bad idea to put reactors on fault lines, utilities stopped doing that decades ago. And it was really only like two nationwide, I think you're thinking of the hysteria over tsunami damage to nuke plants, which can't happen in CA for analogous reasons to why frozen
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No. I'm thinking specifically about California.
I'm not thinking about Fukushima.
Because Fukushima survived the quakes.
It failed due to corner-cutting and stupid design decisions.
- 1: Not raising the height of the sea wall to match historical wave records.
- 2: What idiot puts backup generators FOR A SEASIDE REACTOR...IN THE BASEMENT?
Had the seawall been of the proper height, the facility might still have flooded, but nowhere near tot he extent it did.
Had they located the backup generators in a more elevated
Re:Renewables (Score:4, Informative)
Which is why you use two coolant loops with a heat exchanger in between, like literally every pressurized water reactor built. The radiation never touches the seawater because seawater doesn't ever go into the reactor.
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Most of CA's electricity during the day is solar.
More like 15%.
Re:Renewables (Score:5, Informative)
Most of CA's electricity during the day is solar.
More like 15%.
"Most" is wrong. 15% is closer. As of this post, Cal ISO is showing renewables as 37% of the total supply, providing 14,000 MW. Solar is providing 64% of the renewable power, or 9,118 MW. Total demand is 38,371 MW. Solar is kicking in 23% of total demand.
https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOu... [caiso.com]
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Real time data is below, right now in the afternoon it is 35% solar, today at high noon renewables altogether made up more than 50% - even today when all the AC's are still running full blast.
When it's windy and cool and Sunny CO2 goes down to 0.010-0.050gCO2/kWh from the current 0.200gCO2/kWh.
http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOut... [caiso.com]
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Thanks to the greenies opposing new nuclear plants, we're depending on coal and gas powered energy at night.
An unfortunate turn of events but installing batteries can power the grid at night. It's an investment but it will eliminate your dependence on coal and gas. Also, yes they are already installing grid scale batteries in various locations... just not enough fast enough.
Frankly, I don't think the politicians in your state did a sufficient job of ensuring the timely installation of batteries.
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According to CAISO, batteries make up 1GW or so at peak time, out of 40GW in summer.
That is up about 10X from last year I think.
CAISO also lets you see the power mix, down to 5 minutes resolution.
And CO2/kWh.
http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOut... [caiso.com]
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Depends on the people but I, for one, also use the bathroom during the day.
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Not because of evil government regulations but because of good old fashioned corruption.
Citation needed.
How was France able to generate 80% of their electricity from nuclear? Despite Germany's enormous efforts the French grid is still far less carbon intensive than Germany's.
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They should use solar to power water pumps during the day and turn the damn into a gravity battery. Pump that water from the Pacific up into the reservoir using solar. Then you have the hydro on demand.
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Ignoring the distance that the water needs to be pumped, pumping a bunch of salt water into fresh water reservoirs and then letting it out to go down a fresh water river might not be good for the environment, the farmers using that water and the people drinking that water.
The turbines likely aren't designed for corrosive salt water either.
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I was thinking more of creating a sealed system. But I didn't consider the turbine corrosion. I guess you could build salt water resistant turbines though.
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A sealed system might work if you could find the right location, a large canyon or such close to the ocean, not too remote for connecting to the grid and where ruining the native environment would be OK.
It does make me wonder why not find a long skinny inlet, dam it off and use the tidal difference to generate power. Might be hard to make it storm proof and I'm sure more knowledgeable people have considered it.
I'd think there is no reason that salt water resistant turbines couldn't be built, I was thinking
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I have an idea (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, let's. Then let's charge all the cars when demand is low and let them return power to the grid when demand is high.
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Often proposed as a technology that would solve a lot of problems. But not yet practical. For a start, no car on the market has that capability. It would need revised standards for chargers. Some type of standard for control. And there's the business side too - what incentive will let car-owners opt in to such a scheme?
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An natural incentive for car owners to opt in would be if they could buy cheap power at night and then supplement expensive power during the day for their own home, which would also mean you wouldn't have to worry about problems integrating it with the grid, beyond the kind of solar management systems we already have.
Every EV sold and supplementing a private home is reducing demand on the grid and the owner is financially benefitting. Heck, why even limit it to EVs? I have a hybrid in the driveway that's ju
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Informative)
An natural incentive for car owners to opt in would be if they could buy cheap power at night and then supplement expensive power during the day for their own home, which would also mean you wouldn't have to worry about problems integrating it with the grid, beyond the kind of solar management systems we already have.
You may want to refresh your knowledge on what peak hours are these days. In california, power delivery to the grid peaks at noon because of all the solar. The worst demand times are in the morning and afternoon, when people are waking up/coming home and the sun is rising/setting and the solar panels aren't producing much. These also happen to be the times when people need a full car battery to drive to work, and/or have just gotten home from work and have a low battery from the commute.
The other problem with this scheme is wear and tear on your cars battery. It's only good for so many charge and discharge cycles before it falls out of spec and needs replacing. Who's going to pay for that?
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These also happen to be the times when people need a full car battery to drive to work, and/or have just gotten home from work and have a low battery from the commute.
Puhlease. The average commute in CA is 35 miles (both ways). That's less than 15% of Tesla Model 3 battery. If you charge battery to 80% then you still have more than 50% of battery capacity to sell.
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An natural incentive for car owners to opt in would be if they could buy cheap power at night
Yes, but the real deal is sucking up surplus power for a negative price and get paid for charging - to balance the grid.
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And there's the business side too - what incentive will let car-owners opt in to such a scheme?
Earning money when they charge and balance the grid by sucking up surplus power.
Earning money when they supply power to the grid when there is high demand.
For a start, no car on the market has that capability. It would need revised standards for chargers.
Both wrong, both exist.
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Incorrect, the Nissan Leaf has had this capability for years. Here is a link to one utility called OVO actually doing it https://www.ovoenergy.com/guid... [ovoenergy.com] and here's link to a second one by Octopus Energy https://www.octopusev.com/powe... [octopusev.com]
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Think this Through a Little (Score:2)
Then let's charge all the cars when demand is low and let them return power to the grid when demand is high.
The charging part is a great idea but what happens when you decide to get into your car to drive to the shops only to find that it has been drained because there was a surge in demand? Not only will power cycling your car's battery reduce its lifetime but it can take half an hour or more to charge it - possibly even longer with a home charger.
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But only if you park them vertically along the garage wall.
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Let's make all cars electric. None of those silly gas or fuel cell cars.
Yes we absolutely should.
Shock the power grid into working harder.
California has made some fundamental missteps in advancing toward renewable technology but that doesn't make it less of a good idea. What is means is that you cannot simply say what you do not want and ban it, you have to also allow things to be built. Politicians in California failed to ensure that more power generation was installed and as a result they have an constantly stressed power grid. If anything this should be a lesson in, "perfect is the enemy of good" because they tu
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If it's that easy, we could simply cross the wires at the power production plant - no need for cars.
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One argument used by coal loving dinosaurs here in Australia is that the energy grid can't cope with renewable load.
Today we have an article promising to fix the grid by 2025, removing at least that obstacle.
https://www.theage.com.au/poli... [theage.com.au]
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The chargers are smart enough to charge during off peak hours.
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The answer is NOT electric vehicles until the power grid is updated.
So you want to work 15 - 20 years on upgrading the grid, and then: allow EVs?
You must be a politician.
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The beauty of that plan is that you don't even need to upgrade the electric grid if there's not that many EVs!
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I believe Texans have more toll roads because they pay less in taxes. Not an awful trade as someone is going to have to take care of the road. If you want to fight about who runs things worse, a big corp bureaucracy or a big government bureaucracy then you'll have to look for someone with more time to waste than me. I'm from the land of potholes and would gladly pay some more money a year to anyone who could extend the life of my car battery, suspension, or tires. Or vote for anyone who could do it better.
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In texas, they really have taken on a quality of "royal roads". If you can pay $2.70 per day each way, you can bypass traffic in your own private lane with HOVehicles. Obviously this puts them out of reach of ordinary people except for emergencies.
To be fair, the HOV/Toll lane *is* next to up to *nine* fully loaded lanes.
Working remotely was the real solution to so many problems. We should keep it.
I'm retired and rarely use the roads any more so I don't have a personal stake in it.
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If that was feasible why isn't it in production yet?
Because Democrats.
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Too bad solar and wind are intermittent technologies that cannot power the grid by themselves. So they have to be backed up with either fossil fuels(bad but is your plan), batteries(extraordinary expensive and non-viable), or nuclear.
You also conveniently ignored the total systems costs of solar and wind.
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Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Informative)
Jimmy Carter put solar cells on the roof of the White House in the late 1970s. Conservative icon (and former California Governor) Ronald Reagan removed them immediately after becoming president, then promptly dropped to his knees to service the oil sheiks.
In today's episode of "How Are They Lying" we look at this claim by an anti-conservative triggered by the astute observation that campaigning to increase demand while there is inadequate infrastructure and supply, leads to rolling blackouts. [sandiegouniontribune.com]
Source: [yaleclimat...ctions.org]
The panels were primitive but serviceable. They heated water. They cost about $28,000* to install. * $215k in 2021 dollars
In 1986, the solar collectors were removed for the reason of roof repairs, and they were never re-installed. This was during Reagan's second term.
Reagan press secretary Dale Petroskey told the Associated Press: “Putting them back up would be very unwise, based on cost.”
"There is no easy way to get the truth – whether it was part of an anti-environment, anti-regulation, anti-Carter policy, or just prudent home repairs by Reagan’s groundskeepers as they fixed a roof leak. A few rumors assuming the worst about Reagan’s motives of course float on the Internet. No big deal. A scan of dozens of biographies and histories of the Reagan era sheds little light."
It is unclear whether or not Reagan actually provided fellatio to sheiks as this was outside the scope of the article, but I find this claim to also be questionable.
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Sorry about implying Reagan gave BJs. According to Peter Lawford, it's far more likely his wife provided that "foreign service".
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Unfortunately, the inclination for the opposition of conservatives to spout drivel that takes all of a few seconds to disprove, makes it more difficult to oppose conservatives.
Likewise it is unfortunate that FUD propogated by these same pundits has contributed to the state of nuclear power in what it is today: a lack of breeder reactors and gen 5 pebble bed nuclear plants well suited to handle baseline load.
Extra ironic is the Chinese CO2 that will pass through the aluminum and steel blades of the same orig
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My dad had one of those early solar powered water heating systems, probably similar to the White House's ( though much smaller) The idea was cool- heat water for free, had a little house heater that worked off stored hot water. What they always leave out are the issues.
1) Never cold enough on a sunny day to get hot water AND need heating at night.
2) Heat in panels got so high we'd often have to cover them to keep them from overheating.
3) Water pumps that moved the water, and the hot
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Many water heaters (solar and otherwise) have insulated tanks. My hot water tank will keep water warm for 12 hours without any problems.
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during their morning shower/bath when the sun hasn't yet risen, so you are still having to rely on electric or gas heated water.
Even my old heater could keep hot water for 16 hours.
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And solar water heating is useless for most. When do most people use a majority of hot water? during their morning shower/bath when the sun hasn't yet risen,
The working fluid in the panels runs on a closed loop as a heating element in a water tank and heats the water over a period of time. It is not designed to provide instant hot water. The tank is heavily insulated and so water heated during the day is then available the next morning, providing a form of energy storage. It's also possible to run an electrical heating element into the same tank allowing off-peak excess wind to further heat it. Any additional temperature uplift (which might be small to none) ca
nuclear? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Don't know about that. But they recently ordered the shutdown (as of 2024) of their LAST nuke plant. I can't quite wish they'd keep on having power shortages, what with ordering the shutdown of all their 24/7 power generation (their privilege) but I'm close....
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But they recently ordered the shutdown (as of 2024) of their LAST nuke plant.
Don't know if "ordered" is the right verb here. From California's last nuclear plant is poised to shut down. What happens next? [utilitydive.com]:
In 2018, regulators allowed Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to close down the plant's two reactors when their licenses expire in 2024 and 2025.
Don't know why PG&E is going that way, but it does seem silly to offline a functional carbon-free power plant. Maybe the recertification process/work required, is too onerous or other factors -- like protests about its lifespan and/or being near a fault line -- are to blame? Looks like some people are trying to stop the plant's retirement in the wake of the current/ongoing po
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Because nuclear plants are money pits and can’t stay open without government subsidies.
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Several of those nuclear plants have serious safety issues, and all of them have enormous operating costs. Some of them could best be described as "semi functional".
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Several of those nuclear plants have serious safety issues, and all of them have enormous operating costs. Some of them could best be described as "semi functional".
Sounds like Congress. :-)
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Old style nuclear plants are not the perfect solution to power problems. They take forever to ramp up and forever to ramp down again, maintenance on them is very expensive and cannot be delayed or ignored. The owners of the power plants were the ones who requested that they be allowed to shut them down. Part of the San Onofre plant's problems came from discovering premature wear on two reactors making it unsafe to operate them, and that was the beginning of the end for that site.
We do need more nuclear po
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They take forever to ramp up and forever to ramp down again,
That is not really true. They are not much slower than an old style coal plant.
The problem is: if you ramp them down, you either have to rump them up again in relatively short timeframes, or you have to wait a very long time - days in worst case - to be able to ramp them up again.
It is the ping pong of down and up at which they are bad.
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In California we don't have old style coal plants, they're not really a thing out west given that all the cheap coal mines were traditionally on the east coast. Instead the fossil fuels tended to be natural gas for the most part here, and hydro is a big backbone. And hydro is indeed easy to turn a dynamo on and off as needed.
Re:nuclear? (Score:5, Informative)
didn't they just shut down a nuclear power station recently? That might have helped.
Leave it to someone on /. to mod that "Flamebait" (sigh) ... But, according to a quick Google search, it was 8 years ago. The two reactors at the last nuclear power plant in CA will go offline in 2024 and 2025. From California's last nuclear plant is poised to shut down. What happens next? [utilitydive.com]:
As California's last nuclear facility — the 2.2 GW Diablo Canyon power plant — approaches its scheduled retirement date, some energy experts worry that the state hasn't fully prepared for what comes next.
The Diablo Canyon plant is located on California's Central Coast and produces some 18,000 GWh of electricity annually — almost 10% of the state's energy portfolio. Since the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station eight years ago, it has been the sole operational nuclear power facility in California. In 2018, regulators allowed Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to close down the plant's two reactors when their licenses expire in 2024 and 2025. But as those dates draw nearer, experts are questioning what it will mean for California's reliability and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission goals.
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As California's last nuclear facility --- the 2.2 GW Diablo Canyon power plant --- approaches its scheduled retirement date, some energy experts worry that the state hasn't fully prepared for what comes next.
Incessant taxes, overcrowding, insane traffic, questionable leadership, the faint smell of human shit wafting over the city, and the best weather ever for welcoming massive homeless encampments in every downtown.
I wonder what gave the energy experts a clue that this state lacks preparedness...
Re:nuclear? (Score:5, Insightful)
Total for hydro generation is around 14 GW, the two plants in San Onofre, CA (SONGS) that were decommissioned in 2013 were 2,350 MW combined. Maybe it would have helped a bit to keep it around. But those two stations do not completely replace the our hydro generation. SONGS is perhaps a bad example, because its life was cut short and it was decommissioned earlier than the original design intended due to damage and a contained leak. But it's also a good example of the inherent risk in nuclear power, a risk you can manage but not avoid.
What would have helped for CA's power grid is replacing decommissioned nuclear plants with ones that produce significantly more. That's not the way of things today, especially given the difficulties we've seen in dealing with the waste and tear down of SONGS. There still is not a good strategy for decommissioning safely and cheaply, and it is still a multi-decade process. (footprint of the station is scheduled to be reduced in 2051 for example).
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The leak was part of the reason why it was shut down, the bigger issue was the steam generators. They were replaced with units that were not identical to the original ones, and they degraded fast. When the leak happened it was actually fortuitous, because without it they wouldn't have noticed the problems with the steam generators for some time.
They tried to argue that they could run the reactor at 70% for a while to see how the generators held up but the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board said that would co
Yup. The Party has been working to kill nukes (Score:2)
In the People's Republic of California, The Party leaders have been working feverishly to kill-off nuclear power and have succeeded in shuttering all but one of the state's zero-carbon-emissions nuke plants.
It took lots of tricks to do it. For example, when environmental activists lobbied them, Dem Senators Boxer and Feinstein urged the Obama admin to not give an answer as to when the operators of the San Onofre plant could expect to get re-certified after being down for repairs and maintenance. The plant o
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Seems like they shut down a plant about 8 years ago, and their last one is scheduled to be shut down in about 4 years. Since that single plant covers about 10% of California's needs, I wonder how they'll replace it.
Source: https://www.utilitydive.com/ne... [utilitydive.com]
This is California, so they'll use steam turbines and heat generated from burning the US flag.
When they run out of flags to burn, a new nuclear reactor will be ready. They will say that the reactor has been there this whole time and they were always pro-nuclear power, and that anyone who says otherwise needs to be banned from social media for spreading 'misinformation'.
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The cost of reactors is extremely high, both the building cost and the maintenance costs. These reactors aren't being shut down solely due ot political pressure, much of the reasons for these shutdown is the immense costs involved. We need better reactors, not reworking of old technologies.
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The rest of the world already has better reactor designs, but none of them have been approved by the AEC, because NIMBY. If nobody wants to build the plants, the new designs don't get approved, and we don't benefit from improvements in technology. And if nobody builds newer plants with better designs, the risk is higher, so the NIMBYs end up accidentally proving themselves right.
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One big advantage (Score:2)
The cost of reactors is extremely high, both the building cost and the maintenance costs.
True but they have the advantage that they still generate power without any CO2 emissions on a calm night in the middle of a drought.
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You don't need to generate much power at night. We have plenty of power for night when demand is relatively low. Power plants are turned on and off all the time as the demand shifts. Many of these plants tend to be high carbon fuel users, the "peaker" plants using coal to catch the 4pm surge in usage on hot days. But night is easy. Nuclear cannot be turned on and off easily, whereas hydro can be. A mix of power sources tends to work best, and it's the reason why solar and wind are\ great despite not w
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There are some other alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)
Wave power and offshore wind farms.
Maybe not enough to offset hydro, but there are always waves.
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there are always waves.
Challenge excepted, my evil challenged friend! MUHAHAHAHAHAaaa *cough* *cough* *cough* oh this better not be covid.
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Wave and offshore wind power costs more than nuclear fission. If the problem is rising energy costs then that is not the solution. Wind and wave power is intermittent, so if the problem is unreliable supply then this only makes things worse.
California needs nuclear fission power. Their energy problems will remain until they build more nuclear fission power plants.
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Wave and offshore wind power costs more than nuclear fission.
It does not.
Why spreading this stupid lie constantly?
And you do not need offshore anyway: you can put them on shore - at the coast. Simple.
California needs nuclear fission power.
California needs two things:
* power
* water
Where that comes from is their business.
What it definitely not needs are idiots like you.
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Why spreading this stupid lie constantly?
Because you won't provide a link to show it is a lie.
Here's IEA projections on costs: https://www.iea.org/reports/pr... [iea.org]
Here's costs from US EIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If it's a lie then you can show it is a lie. If you can't show it is a lie then it is not a lie. It may be an opinion, speculation, but not a lie.
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Wave power and offshore wind farms.
Wave or tidal power are negligibly small to be useful anywhere in CA. Offshore wind is also problematic, because there aren't many places to put the offshore turbines due to very steep dropoff.
Shit like this is why we need DIVERSIFICATION (Score:2)
Fuck "consumable vs renewables".
IDEALLY, we want diversity in power sources.
This way, if we run into a failure scenario for one, we have others to fall back on.
Additionally we need to make sure the infrastructure needed to MOVE that power is both robust and redundant.
Trying to label any one form of generation "good" or "bad" is totally missing the point, and is just going to get people killed.
There's a short term option for California (Score:4, Funny)
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On, and you can eat the birds.
Spotted owls taste like chicken.
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grab all the unemployed people, hand them chainsaws
That sounds like a seriously bad idea. For many reasons [youtube.com].
Save Diablo Canyon (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Great weather" (Score:2)
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You'd have to pump the water to some elevation, so no, it's not a solution. Tidal may be a solution, but water in the ocean is, by definition, at sea level, so it would take more energy to pull it out and put it in a reservoir than you'd get out of it. Thermodynamics fucks us over again.
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Pumped storage hydro is a good technology, surprisingly efficient, but expensive to construct and only viable in a very few sites. You need rare natural conditions - somewhere you can have two reservoirs, nearby horizontally but separated by elevation. Not many mountaintop lakes around.
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Does it have to be be natural?
The 1.08 GW Northfield Mountain site has a 5.6 billion gallon reservoir, which is only about 17,000 acre-feet. So basically, that's a 200-acre hole in the ground that's 85 feet deep. That's about one eighth the size of the quarry nearest me (about the same number of acres, just nowhere near as deep).
Assuming the rock you're pulling out is something that's actually useful, you could kill two birds with one stone. You let a mining company build a quarry and remove material
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Of course it is. You use solar power during the day to pump water into the upper reservoir, then at night hydro keeps base load solid. You can pump quite a lot of water with surprising little actual power. Doing this at an industrial level is entirely within our means and vastly both simpler and cheaper than a fission plant although it probably would produce less electricity.
I would like to see more discussion of nuclear plants, the main concern is that it has to be government subsidized but frankly I don'
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You use solar power during the day to pump water into the upper reservoir, then at night hydro keeps base load solid.
Solar doesn't produce enough power to make that feasible. Plus, highest demand is during the day.
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Solar doesn't produce enough power to make that feasible.
Which is an super easy solvable problem by: installing more solar power. (* facepalm *).
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by definition, at sea level, so it would take more energy to pull it out and put it in a reservoir than you'd get out of it. That is unfortunately true for every pumped storage plant. Has absolutely nothing to do with sea levels
Thermodynamics fucks us over again.
Typical American again. Thermodynamics are not involved in a pumped storage plant, or any water plant. Perhaps you want at least try to comprehend what the word thermo actually means.