California Shuts Down Edward Hyatt Hydroelectric Power Plant Due To Drought (latimes.com) 155
phalse phace shares a report from Los Angeles Times: In a sign of the region's worsening drought, state water officials announced Thursday the shutdown of a major hydroelectric power plant at Lake Oroville in Northern California, citing the lowest-ever recorded water level at the reservoir. It marks the first time that officials have been forced to close the Edward Hyatt Powerplant, which was completed in 1967, on account of low water at the lake. The loss of the hydroelectric power source at Lake Oroville, about 75 miles north of Sacramento, could contribute to rolling blackouts in the state during heat waves in coming months.
Officials had warned that once the water level in Lake Oroville fell to 640 feet above sea level, the plant could no longer produce power; at that level, the water cannot reach the intake pipes that flow toward the underground hydroelectric facility. On Thursday, Lake Oroville was at 641 feet with 863,516 acre-feet of storage, which is 24% of its overall capacity and 34% of its historical average for this time, according to the Department of Water Resources. The Hyatt plant is designed to produce up to 750 megawatts of power but has often generated 100 to 400 megawatts, or slightly less than 1% of the state's average daily peak usage.
Officials had warned that once the water level in Lake Oroville fell to 640 feet above sea level, the plant could no longer produce power; at that level, the water cannot reach the intake pipes that flow toward the underground hydroelectric facility. On Thursday, Lake Oroville was at 641 feet with 863,516 acre-feet of storage, which is 24% of its overall capacity and 34% of its historical average for this time, according to the Department of Water Resources. The Hyatt plant is designed to produce up to 750 megawatts of power but has often generated 100 to 400 megawatts, or slightly less than 1% of the state's average daily peak usage.
go live in a cave yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony of the RWNJs' frequently aired complaint that environmentalists want everyone to "go live in a cave". That's pretty much what their hones will be when the effects of climate change turn out the lights. But the irony will be lost on them since sarcasm is the limit of their wit.
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Yeah, those terrible accidents. Yearly hundreds of thousands of people get sick and die thanks to the fossil fuel industry, but nuclear plants are thought to be very dangerous because of the handful of deaths surrounding the few accidents that happened with it. Nuclear to me seems a great way to at least overcome the transfer period in which fossil fuels are phased out.
Re:go live in a cave yourself (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with nuclear power is partly this the risk of accident indeed. After Chernobyl, we had several years of radioactive sheep in Wales. Of course, you are correct that the overall damage caused by the fossil fuel industry is greater than that by nuclear, but that is because we see catastrophic damage as more important. It's the same reason that deaths caused by car accidents are more apparent than those by pollution caused by cars, although the latter are probably ten times greater. There are many reasons for this, perhaps, mostly because the cause from catastrophic damage is more obvious to attribute; the radioactivity in Welsh sheep were obviously caused by Chernobyl, while it took many years to convince the UK government that our coal was killing the trees in Sweden.
But that's not the only problem with nuclear power. The newest nuclear power station being built in the UK has a guaranteed price for energy which is about three times greater than the newest wind farm under construction. In addition, a new nuclear power plant takes at least five years till it produces any power at all; a wind turbine farm might take several years to complete, but will be producing power after a short period.
If nuclear is to be a serious contender for future power generation, then it needs to produce a step change in its cost. Maybe that will happen, but at the moment, it's hard to see. The only thing in it's favour is that it's produces a high predictable (but poor controllable) output. So, these days, I think, it's also in competition with grid-scale energy storage technology (molten salt, compressed air).
In short, the narrative that nuclear is not possible because of hippie greenies is wrong.
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In short, the narrative that nuclear is not possible because of hippie greenies is wrong.
It's not just because of them, but they have a big part in this. For example, Germany is replacing its nuclear power pans with renewables, but also building new gas power plants, because apparently, renewables alone are not enough. Instead, Germany could be first, replacing al coal power plants with renewables and only then phase out nuclear as well. This, I think is because of "hippie greenies" because it started after Fukushima, so it was a political decision and not one based on costs. .
The newest nuclear power station being built in the UK has a guaranteed price for energy which is about three times greater than the newest wind farm under construction.
Does that include
Re:go live in a cave yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I am sure that you are correct that the green hippies had a part in the decline of nuclear power, but then they also had a big part in raising awareness of the environment over all. Over the last 30-40 years, it is clear that the green movement paid too much attention to the risks of nuclear, and too little attention to the risks of coal, oil and gas. But that they highlighted the risks at all puts them way ahead in my book.
Indeed, Dogger Bank will occasionally suffer from low wind, although being off the coast of the UK that's not very frequent. Likewise, Hinkley Point C will generate electricity when it's very windy and its costly electricity is not needed. The solution to both problems is energy storage that is grid scale and can last several days. Battery technology is orders of magnitude short here. Gravity batteries and compressed air exists in prototype but is not grid scale yet. This is the missing technology.
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Not all people who want to reduce pollution and global warming are the same. Probably a lot of them are quite reasonable and would be for nuclear power, or hydro power or wind power.
Just that some (probably a very small, but loud minority) are against everything because every power generation method can be viewed as harming the environment in some way.
Likewise, Hinkley Point C will generate electricity when it's very windy and its costly electricity is not needed.
The way I understand it, the cost of nuclear power is high because it is very expensive to build the power plant. Running costs (fuel etc) are quite low once
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The UK currently subsidises the nuclear output in order for it to compete on the open power market and that looks like it will continue. They are expensive to build and decommission (which always seems to fall on the tax payer again instead of the industry running the plant)
I'm curious, is that common in Europe? For the decommissioning costs to not be covered fully? I hear this a lot, but never see any examples given of commercial reactors in recent human memory where that was the case. Several reactors have been decommissioned in the US in the last decade and to date the funds utilities were required to set aside to cover those costs appear to be a surplus.
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The power operators in Germany had never any obligation to set funds aside to cover a decommissioning.
That is why EnBW e.g. is close to bankrupt since 20 years.
The nukes in France are basically run by the state. No idea about UK.
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The UK currently subsidises the nuclear output in order for it to compete on the open power market and that looks like it will continue. They are expensive to build and decommission (which always seems to fall on the tax payer again instead of the industry running the plant)
The UK government is subsidizing nuclear power because many very intelligent and educated people we paid a lot of money to tell them how to solve their energy problems. Their solutions always included nuclear power. It's nuclear power or the lights go out in London.
The British islands have too many people to too little land for wind, water, and sun to meet their energy needs. Going offshore for natural gas and wind is looking to cost more in the future compared to nuclear. Hinkley Point C is the not the
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I believe the problem with nuclear is that the plants can more or less run only at one level. I am not sure whether this is the nuclear physics -- the reaction has to go fast enough or it will stop, or engineering -- the reactor and associated stuff is big and hot, so even if the reaction slowed, it would still take ages to adjust. Some of the newer designs which use molten salt as a primary coolant circumvent this by having a thermal store which can modulate a constant reactor core.
The inability to change
Re:go live in a cave yourself (Score:4, Informative)
"I believe the problem with nuclear is that the plants can more or less run only at one level."
It's an engineering problem. The Navy has no problem building reactors that can operate at any given power level up to their rated maximum.
It's also economics to a large extent. If they run the plant at less than full power they make less than full profit. Also, running at full power all the time makes it easy to plan the next refueling outage. Variable power does not, and refueling being a big deal you just can't bring it ahead or push it back three months on a whim.
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The way I understand it, the cost of nuclear power is high because it is very expensive to build the power plant. Running costs (fuel etc) are quite low once the plant is built.
Then you are understanding it pretty wrong.
Running costs are fuel (plus maintenance, crew etc.): and those costs are high.
A wind plant has no fuel costs. And low maintenance costs.
Same for solar.
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For example, Germany is replacing its nuclear power pans with renewables, but also building new gas power plants, because apparently, renewables alone are not enough.
But because Germany has no newly exploitable baseload renewables (hydro, geothermal) it is replacing the nukes with Russian natural gas. It has even installed some new coal.
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But because Germany has no newly exploitable baseload renewables (hydro, geothermal) it is replacing the nukes with Russian natural gas. It has even installed some new coal.
You are either an asshole or an idiot. I suspect both:
https://energy-charts.info/?l=... [energy-charts.info]
Hint: there is somewhere a flag where you can switch to english.
Most baseload in Germany, btw, is WIND.
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Storage for several days is madness. Just distribute your wind turbines and set up some interconnects. Maybe keep the odd gasser around for those very rare occasions, but it's going to be a money pit.
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Over the last 30-40 years, it is clear that the green movement paid too much attention to the risks of nuclear, and too little attention to the risks of coal, oil and gas.
Sorry, that is simply just plain wrong.
The danger of CO2 is the main "platform" of Greens and Greenpeace since 50 years. Roughly as long as I'm old. Longer than Greenpeace is even founded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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In short, the narrative that nuclear is not possible because of hippie greenies is wrong.
It's not just because of them, but they have a big part in this. For example, Germany is replacing its nuclear power pans with renewables, but also building new gas power plants, because apparently, renewables alone are not enough.
Gas plays an important role in balancing power production and is also not the worst in terms of CO2, so more gas use is a reasonable short term development. It also may serve as a transitional technique to green gas. But that the nuclear exit caused a huge jump in power generation from gas in Germany is largely a myth:
net generation in Germany in TWh in 2010-2019:
gas 86.0 83.1 73.5 64.8 58.4 59.3 78.1 83.2 78.5 87.0
nuclear 133.0 102.2 94.2 92.1 91.8 86.8 80.0 72.2 71.9 71.0
renewables 101.4 120.0 138.5 147.
Re: go live in a cave yourself (Score:2)
I wonder why Merkel shut down nuclear. It's probably the biggest fuckup ever, along with the whole Energiewende thing. Germany could have been CO2 neutral today if they had taken the nuclear route instead of 'going green.' And they spent like 500 billion Euros?
Who benefited from Merkel's choice? The Russians?
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Germany had too few heroes like you who would offer their backyards for nuclear waste disposal.
Re: go live in a cave yourself (Score:2)
I do live in a county which stores nuclear waste. It's not a problem at all.
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The Energiewende is actually extremely successful. If you look at the numbers I posted this should be obvious. That Germany paid a lot is true, but the reason is that the started early and invested at a time renewables were still very expensive. This created an economy of scale brought down the price dramatically.
Why do you think the Russians did benefit? Germany was highly dependent on natural gas from Russia before (most of the gas is *not* used for electricity production) and gas use for electricity pr
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"Extremely successful"? The most expensive electricity in Europe [europa.eu] and twice the carbon emissions of nuclear-heavy European countries like France and Sweden [worldbank.org] and parroting Russian foreign policy due to reliance on Russian fossil fuels [foreignpolicy.com]? If that's extreme success then what would failure look like?
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You are completely miss-informed.
The greens and the left, "Die Grnen" and "SPD, Sozial Demokratische Partei" realized the wish of the German population to exit nuclear Energy in 1998.
One of the first actions was to abolish nuclear power. As wee Germans protested for since 1970.
Then came Merkel into power at 2005. She did not kick out the exit, but extended the runtime of the nuclear power plants. But basically: she reverted in USA style the previous governments decision to have a quick and clean exit And th
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Re:go live in a cave yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
We're likely to wind up with a lot of home storage plus flexible demand once electric cars become more common.
"So long as I have enough charge for my commute tomorrow, only charge further if there is excess power in the grid. Stop charging if there is a shortage of power in the grid so long as I can get to work and back. If there is a deficit of power in the grid and you have more than enough energy stored, drain your battery and sell it back to the grid."
Thermal capacity in homes is also a form of flexible demand, too.
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"So long as I have enough charge for my commute tomorrow, only charge further if there is excess power in the grid.
You could but who wants to live like that? I don't know if I'm just going to drive to and from work tomorrow: maybe something will come up and I'll wind up doing some side trips? Do I really want to watch my battery only charge to 90% today, 80% tomorrow, slowly grinding down until it's barely above zero?
It reminds me of nothing so much as cars in Cuba. Sure, when imports shut down after the revolution, people probably thought "it's fine, I can make this '57 Chevy last a few more years." Here we are 60 year
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If you wind up wanting to make a trip and your battery is too low, you'll just use a quick charger along the way. This is already possible along some major corridors near the coasts, and is gradually coming to a cross-country route near you.
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You could but who wants to live like that? Everyone who is charging at home.
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We'll end up with Tesla's Virtual Power Plant. [youtu.be]
Not Fukushima, but Green Peace (Score:5, Interesting)
You're a couple decades off, though you've got the flavor right.
In the 1970s, there were two groups of activists. There were the environmentalists, and there was a group of people concerned about nuclear weapons development in particular and war in general. So, there were the "green" folks, and there were the "peace" folks.
The people who were against nuclear testing, the "peace" people, formed an organization called the Don't Make a Wave Committee. Some members of the Don't Make a Wave were also concerned about the environment. They discovered that the environmentalists were a good source of resources - people who would show up to protests and such, money, etc. So it was politically useful to pitch anti nuclear-testing around environmentalists circles. On the other hand, environmentalist groups like Sierra Club saw that clean energy would be GOOD for the environment.
When one of the founders of Don't Make a Wave died in 1975, other members renamed it to "Greenpeace" and pitched the group to the environmentalists. I was a member of Greenpeace.
Greenpeace of course became larger and more visible through what we called "direct action". It became influential in the environmentalist movement. It was still run by the earliest members whose main concern was nuclear weapons, not the environment. Their main concern was stopping nuclear research; the environmentalists were useful tools for them.
Greenpeace would hardly promote nuclear power research when the entire purpose for which the organization was founded was to oppose nuclear research!
They made a point of consistently using a particular technique that they discovered was quite effective. They'd say "nuclear waste can last for hundreds of years" and "nuclear waste is very dangerous ...". Both true statements, that can be combined to give a gigantic lie. They carefully conflate the long half-life waste that releases energy very slowly like a hand warmer with the short half-life waste that releases it very quickly, like a firecracker. They make similar statements that carefully mix/conflate a statement about beta particles with one about alpha in order to please the reader with a false impression.
Occasionally, even making statements about "man-made radiation", obviously not pointing out the "radiation" they are measuring is mostly radio waves, TV and AM/FM radio. Yeah, TV signals are radiation. But when they say "radiation can kill you; the government granted 102 licenses for companies to spread radiation across cities this year", the reader doesn't realize that's licenses for AM radio stations, not deadly whatever.
So that's how the greens got mixed in the anti-nuclear folks - anti-nuclear was originally peace people, anti nuclear WEAPONS testing. The peace in Greenpeace.
That's also why I'm no longer a member, and some early members of the Don't Make a Wave Committee, like Roger Moore, are no longer members. Because we don't care for the lying.
Similar reasoning for Sierra Club (Score:2, Informative)
Sadly, the Sierra Club has likewise been corrupted to extremism instead of supporting 'reasonable solutions'
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Greenpeace got to a point of being just plain anti-science. They tried to ban chlorine. This is just stupid on so many levels, including that chlorine as a means to keep city water supplies free from disease has to have been one of the greatest advances in public health and sanitation.
And I believe you mean Dr. Patrick Moore. He has a website with articles about how Greenpeace is acting more on feelings than facts, and on other topics of energy and environmental protection.
http://ecosense.me/category/in. [ecosense.me]
Yes, thank you. I said that wrong. (Score:3)
> And I believe you mean Dr. Patrick Moore. He has a website with articles about how Greenpeace is acting more on feelings than facts, and on other topics of energy and environmental protection.
> He's a "greenie" and advocate for nuclear power.
Yes, thank you. I was writing somewhat stream of consciousness and got his first name incorrect.
Commercials don't have facts bc facts don't sell (Score:2)
> He has a website with articles about how Greenpeace is acting more on feelings than facts
Have you ever noticed that TV commercials never give you the facts about a product? They have people having fun in the sun, enjoying friends, which may or may not have any relevance to the product whatsoever. Or they have sex appeal or they make you laugh (insurance). Commercials are emotional appeal, because emotions, feelings, sell. Facts don't sell.
Ever wondered how Donald Trump took over the Republican party?
Re: Not Fukushima, but Green Peace (Score:2)
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It's not just because of them, but they have a big part in this. For example, Germany is replacing its nuclear power pans with renewables, but also building new gas power plants, because apparently, renewables alone are not enough. Instead, Germany could be first, replacing al coal power plants with renewables and only then phase out nuclear as well. This, I think is because of "hippie greenies" because it started after Fukushima, so it was a political decision and not one based on costs. .
The green hippies were certainly part of it (and IIRC USSR might've supported them back in the day? I recall reading about this but can't find a source now so take it with a grain of salt) but generally nobody gives much of a shit about what they think. Germany has a pretty big hardon for coal due to the local mines and natural gas from Russia, thanks to the lobbying of the former chancellor Gerhard SchrÃder who's shilling or Russia and also just happens to be on the board of Nordstream 2 project.
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Germany has a pretty big hardon for coal due to the local mines and natural gas from Russia, thanks to the lobbying of the former chancellor Gerhard SchrÃfder
Both wrong, and one double wrong:
a) the gas we get from Russia is (still) mostly payment for the gas pipelines we sold them in the late 1970s - early 1980s.
b) most gas we get is for house holds heating and industrial use. Electricity production did not change much, and certainly did not really get up. At least not for domestic use. There are new g
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Instead, Germany could be first, replacing al coal power plants with renewables and only then phase out nuclear as well.
Germany is a country. The "country" or the "government" is doing nothing about nuclear energy. It is the people.
The people of Germany voted for the exit around 1995.
And protested to get rid of nuclear power since 1970 or more early.
This, I think is because of "hippie greenies" because it started after Fukushima, so it was a political decision and not one based on costs. .
Nope. Completely w
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Home solar energy is pretty much free (once the panels are installed), but there is zero power at night.
Well, I live in a civilized country.
At night I can simply use the power from the grid.
My laptop uses something like 35Wh, my two LEDs 6Wh, and my fridge jumps on roughly every 45 minutes and works for 5 or 7.
No idea why you think solar power is a problem at night. Oh, and after a certain time: I'm sleeping. Yes, even I am sleeping. And then only the fridge needs power. Everything else is obviously switche
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I was talking about it in a sense that even if the power is free (after the initial costs of installation), it is not available all the time and when it is not available, I (or you) need a different power source that is more expensive. So, on average it may be more expensive than a power source that always costs money to operate, but works all the time.
I mentioned home solar as an example, because it does not really cost anything to operate it, but I would think that commercial solar installations still cos
Re: go live in a cave yourself (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: go live in a cave yourself (Score:4, Insightful)
We can solve this. We have the technology and even the economic advantages of going carbon free. It's just all the FUD from the fossil fools and their bleeting sheep that read/see/hear their press releases holding us back.
What makes you so sure? If we could make cheap, efficient energy storage, don't you think there would be a hundred Elon Musks out there trying to make a buck off it? I strongly suspect the problem is a lot harder to solve at a reasonable price than you make out.
Take hydro storage, for example. Build a reservoir like the thousands we already have. "Just" put a pump to suck water out of a river and store it, then run a generator when you need it. That's got to be the simplest, most robust energy storage system out there. I've been reading about it since the '70s. And yet we see very few deployed, even though it sure seems useful and practical. Why do you suppose that is?
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The issue is that we really don't need that much battery storage at all. With offshore wind being fairly constant and a bit if demand shaping there just isn't a need for massive batteries.
Before someone complains about the electricity company turning off their AC, how would you feel about the company turning it ON half an hour early? Thermal mass is a great way to store energy.
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Before someone complains about the electricity company turning off their AC, how would you feel about the company turning it ON half an hour early? Thermal mass is a great way to store energy.
Depends on where that AC is. If it's in my room with the servers, it has to run all the time, or the room gets pretty hot pretty fast. I also prefer colder temperatures, so, while I guess, it would be OK to cool that room down even more at night and then save a bit of power during the day, my AC does not go that low.
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Instead of using AC to cool a server room (how can a private person have so many servers that it needs cooling?) you should consider to get cold air in. Obviously only works if you have the space.
Dig a tunnel, one yard deep, 10 yards long or longer. Put a stainless steel pipe down their and suck in ambient air. Depending on how much air you need, the pipe needs a bit longer or can be shorter. In rare cases, you need it deeper.
The underground pipe, will cool the air to roughly 10C.
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The problem with hydro storage is that you need an unusual bit of geology: two large lakes close to each other, but at very different elevations. AIU a large percentage of the places that have that geology are already in use for pumped hydro storage.
If we want more pumped hydro, we need to start making artificial lakes, which is expensive at the required scale. Maybe dust off Project Plowshare...
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AIU a large percentage of the places that have that geology are already in use for pumped hydro storage. ...
That percentage is probably not even 1%
If we want more pumped hydro, we need to start making artificial lakes,
One of the two lakes (the lower bound does not need to be a lake, can be a river, or the ocean), is always artificial. At least the dam damming it up, is.
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I strongly suspect the problem is a lot harder to solve at a reasonable price than you make out.
Technically? Certainly not.
The only problem are legislations that forbid solar home (potentially + battery) owners to feed back into the grid.
For some absurd reason USA is full with states where that is the case.
In Germany it is the norm: 90% of all solar home owners have no battery, and simply feed into the grid. And even get paid for it.
Legislations changed, though. Regarding cheap loans etc. you now get only
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It's just all the FUD from the fossil fools and their bleeting sheep that read/see/hear their press releases holding us back.
The pro-nuclear group doesn't want renewable to succeed either. It's competition. A misdirection of effort and assets to what they want.
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Hinkley Point C is not a new reactor design. It's already a copy of a pre-exisiting plant. So I am unconvinced by the idea that the next one would be cheaper dramatically. And, as for off-shore wind being more expensive, Hinkley Point C has a spike price of >£90 while Dogger Bank is somewhat over £30.
We have to see what the ROI is for Hinkley Point C. At one point they were predicting 30% suggesting that the price the government agreed was pretty daft. But who knows. The projected costs were
Re:go live in a cave yourself (Score:4, Informative)
Nuclear has a bunch of problems.
First, because the consequences for failure are so dire, we require (and rightly so) that nuclear power plants be made as safe as we reasonably can make them. Very few other small-scale human activities can have as drastic a long-term impact as a nuclear disaster, and minimizing the chance of needing to write off entire swaths of land for the foreseeable future is important.
Second, waste is a problem. It's not an unsolvable problem - we know there are ways to vastly reduce the amount of waste we produce - but it isn't a problem we've solved *yet.* As such, we still have to cope with spent fuel storage, and like the nuclear accident problem, it's a long term issue.
Third, it's expensive. Between safety regulations, initial investment costs, staff requirements, fuel refinement requirements, supply chain logistics, security, and the like, it's not cheap to operate a nuclear power plant. They're great when you need a lot of power in a localized area, but the whole myth of "power too cheap to measure" is just that.
Fission power has a place as a transitional energy source, but it's not where we should be looking for large scale electricity generation going forward. Maybe if we ever figure out aneutronic fusion things will be different, but fission is a complicated fiddly mess.
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And, oddly enough, we've had three "nuclear disasters" in all of history. One of them killed zero (0) people. Another killed one (1) person (it took him seven years to die). And the third (the worst in history) killed rather fewer people than will die in traffic this morning. NUmber on that last is indeterminate, since the Russians won't tell, and
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Why I agree that nuclear is pretty safe, this is just nuclear fanboy nonsense...
First, why would a fire fighter dying while putting out a normal fire while dealing with a nuclear accident not count as a death due to nuclear power?
Also your numbers are very far from the scientific consensus. While cancer deaths from released radiation are very difficult to estimate, they are certainly not zero.
And even ignoring the melt down accidents, there are also many smaller accidents during construction and operation (
Re: go live in a cave yourself (Score:2)
I've read that burning coal releases way more radioactive material than nuclears, accidents excluded I assume.
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Excluding accidents is a good idea, because accidents just in coal production, not counting emissions produced, have killed thousands of times more workers than nuclear accidents.
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I've read that burning coal releases way more radioactive material than nuclears, accidents excluded I assume.
Yeah, and that is a 7. myth - or american myth.
i) Most coal does not contain anything radioactive.
ii) The coal that contains Thorium - that is the part we are talking about - worst case releases ashes that are on the grade of low concentrated uranium ore.
iii) In civilized countries - and is in this case actually most of the west, including the USA - the exhausting air (smoke) is scrubbed. There is h
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One of the lessons we should have learned from Fukushima and Chernobyl is that the managerial performance of the organization running a nuclear plant is a critical factor in running that plant *safely*. Even the very primitive reactors involved *should* have been possible to run safely; ultimately the cause of the accidents was a failure to let *facts* drive decisions in the face of managerial pressure. So while nuclear can be valuable asset in addressing climate change, it's reasonable to be dubious abou
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And the third (the worst in history) killed rather fewer people than will die in traffic this morning
True, but one of the reasons why it didn't kill more people was that the Soviets abandoned thousands of square kilometers of their landscape for decades. You don't want to do that very often, since now that you haven't actually killed the people that used to live there, you have to relocate them en masse.
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If it had happened in a German plant.
Half of west Europe would be uninhabitable ...
The closest plant to me was Phillipsburg. Roughly 20km north. Dismantled by now.
The greater region, around Karlsruhe, where I am at the moment, in a range of 75km has a population of about 8milion people. (1/10th of Germany population)
That does not count France, next biggest city, is 70km south, Strasbourg. Which has about 275,000 inhabitants (Karlsruhe is a bit above 300,000).
Of course a similar accident is impossible in Ger
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You could simply google how many died.
Instead of making up your own numbers. E.g.: Chernobyl, 2/3rd of the roughly 600k "regulators" are dead. Those were guys around age of 18, 1986 when it happened. Can hardly be not be cased by the accident and their cleaning up work. On top of that Russian researchers estimate to total death count in the USSR: up to 2 million.
And your number off accidents is slightly off ... double it and you get a bit closer. Hint: we just had one last year, were we "officially" do not
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"power too cheap to measure"
Actually this quote came from someone discussing fusion. And it still does.
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> Actually this quote came from someone discussing fusion. And it still does.
Hmmm nope. It was in reference to fission;
https://public-blog.nrc-gatewa... [nrc-gateway.gov]
=Smidge=
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we know there are ways to vastly reduce the amount of waste we produce - but it isn't a problem we've solved *yet.*
No we don't. But if you know one, publish your papers, and farm in your Nobel Prize.
Re: go live in a cave yourself (Score:2)
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Nuclear is nice, but also not completely independent of location. For nuclear you need some readily available coolant and also something that produces steam that pushes the turbines. That something is usually water that is readily available, which is not given everywhere.
Nuclear power also doesn't scale easily. It's not a furnace you can dump some more coal into if you need more power, which makes it more suited to provide s
Nuclear coolant (Score:2)
As a note, it'd be completely possible to run a nuclear plant off a trivial amount of water use; you'd just need to go closed cycle with the coolant loops.
Right now we evaporate water and release it, or cycle water to and from the coolant to whatever source it is, just a bit hotter on the return, because that's substantially cheaper.
If necessary, it could be 100% air cooled, and you'd only need extra water to top it off.
As for reacting fast enough to be used for peaking, you have a point, but that's where I
Re:Nuclear coolant (Score:5, Informative)
Closed loop cooling? Nuclear power plants already have closed loop cooling. The external cooling water is used to cool the closed loop water!
Of course, you could make the second loop closed as well. But you'd need a lot of water. Hinkley Point C, for example, will use 120,000 litres a second, raising its temperature by two degrees. You need a far few cooling towers to disappate that much heat. Even then, the evaporation would be significant enough that you'd still need a non trivial water supply to make up for it.
Or you could build it next to a major river. That's what they did.
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But I can only assume that this particular kind of district heating is not popular with a lot of people who believe that the steam is being 'irradiated' and harmful.
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But I can only assume that this particular kind of district heating is not popular with a lot of people who believe that the steam is being 'irradiated' and harmful.
I don't think anyone believes that.
And in Germany nuclear plants are to far away from areas that could use the heat.
And: in Germany we had only use for that heat in winter (more and more rarely as winters are basically history).
On top of that: when those plants were build no one was thinking about district heating. But in modern times, this is t
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but it seems to me that if the system needs to dispose of *that much* waste heat, we ought to be finding ways to use it?
Some countries do that. But mostly with conventional plants.
And: in summer - what actually would you do with the waste heat? Probably there are ways to use it in chemical plants. However guess what: most chemical factories (lets call them factories and reserve plants for power plants) have their own power plants. Because they do the reverse: they produce heat for their processes, and use t
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Those are all strawmen cherry-picked from news stories that are anecdotal. Come back when you have real data.
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The problem with (some) environmentalists is that they really want everyone to live in a cave
Citation please. Otherwise I'm calling "straw man".
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4. Solar power - I do not remember seeing any arguments against it, but some people probably whine that it takes up space from the animals or whatever.
There was Green opposition to the Ivanpah plant, also in California, on grounds that it represented "Big Solar." Anything that is Big has to be evil somehow.
https://e360.yale.edu/features... [yale.edu]
This is why the left can't do anything about the greenhouse gas problem because every one of the possible fixes involves going big.
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4. Solar power - I do not remember seeing any arguments against
it, but some people probably whine that it takes up space from the animals
or whatever.
Interestingly, it was right wing conservatives who came up with a reason
to whine about solar:
Solar panels collect energy from the sun, so increase the amount of energy
accumulated on Earth.
This, of course, ignores the reductions in CO2 and
other greenhouse gasses, resulting in a net decrease.
Also interesting to note: Much of the wind power built in the US was
built by conservatives wanting to pay less for power. It also gives
them cover when the power does go out: "See! Those damn greenie hippies
screwed up our
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The problem with (some) environmentalists is that they really want everyone to live in a cave
I know a lot of environmentalists, and none want that. There are a few that may want to live in yurts, but it's vanishingly rare.
Cancel culture strikes again! (Score:2)
Re:Turn up the carbon-free power generation (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Turn up the carbon-free power generation (Score:4, Informative)
Offshore Wind is the only reliable source that doesn't emit CO2 during generation. The wind never stops blowing offshore.
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Give us a date of when the wind stopped blowing in the North Sea. Just one day when at say 100m above sea-level it was too calm to generate any energy.
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Maybe you can share that little trick with the rest of the world.
Re:Turn up the carbon-free power generation (Score:4, Insightful)
Building a nuclear plant in an earthquake threatened zone isn't a wise decision.
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Really? Even a 9.0 earthquake in Japan didn't damage any of the nuclear plants. Fukushima was destroyed by the tsunami not the earthquake (and the tsunami damage could have been prevented simply by building at a higher altitude or with a higher seawall).
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You read like right wing moron. I should think shutting down certain powerlines being cheaper would get all your Ayn Rand bits tingling.
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I wouldn’t exactly consider Texas a shining example of a state with a superior power grid.
Of course, I shouldn’t be talking. Where I live in Florida, the power goes out every time Florida Man eats Taco Bell and goes outside to fart.
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Climate change can also cause floods. So the money spent on dams/spillways is unlikely to be ill-spent.
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The irony if the situation is astounding. How we could go from an emergency discharge to not enough water to operate is incredible.
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That's funny. Almost every source I can find shows that nuclear power is really very, very expensive. Or by BS fees do you mean the construction and decommissioning costs?
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Most nuclear plants end up costing triple their initial budget and then they still need government subsidies to stay profitable. Not worth it.
Nuclear is a cult (Score:2)
For you guys its not just a source of power. It's a fundamentalist religion.
By far the most expensive power source ever invented by man. And that's before you get to decommissioning old plants, much less storing your toxic waste for millions of years.
Can't top the zero deaths from wind and solar power generation. Is it fair to count a uranium mining accident or electrician falling off a cooling tower towards the deaths caused by nuclear power generation? Of course not. Same goes for
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They're finding tar [youtu.be] at least.