as usual the slimes gets it wrong, it's to cut down on light pollution not save energy...
Posted on 01/31/2013 4:32:04 PM PST by Libloather
**SNIP**
Under the new law, the interior lights of nonresidential buildings will have to be turned off an hour after the last worker leaves, and lights on building facades and in shop windows will have to be extinguished by 1 a.m.
Ms. Batho also presented the decree as a matter of public health. Artificial lighting can damage sleep patterns, she said, and also “cause significant disruptions on ecosystems by changing communication between species, migrations, reproduction cycles or even the prey-predator relationships.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
FYI - France makes 90% of their electricity by nuclear power...
Paris. “City of Lights”. LOL!
I realize that this is WAY BEYOND the comprehension level of New York Times reporters and editors, most of whom absolutely HATED MATH (just like public school teachers, by the way), but France is something like 80% Nuclear, the highest in the world (and without any major safety incidents, I might add).
Nuke power is base load. It simply CANNOT be turned down when load goes down, it takes days, if not weeks to lower the output of a nuke plant. So what happens? All that power that they STILL produce from their reactants ends up as heat and gets rejected locally. No different than light, as far as saving the world is concerned...it’s power. So, this is TOTALLY SYMBOLIC in that country - but hopefully, it won’t result in increased rapes due to cover of darkness, but I’m not optimistic.
It sure is a good thing they don’t have any crime there at night.
The lights are literally going out in Europe.
Again.
Figuratively, Islam has been shutting off their intellectual, cultural and religious lights for years.
Insanity
France is a net exporter of power. All this will do is cause off peak electricity rates to go down for Spain. No less electricity will be consumed but the French will have to walk around in the dark.
It is true that Nuclear Power Plants are base load plants but it is not true that it takes days to lower out put. It can be lowered in a matter of minutes.
That being said Nuclear Power Plants are not good “Load Following” plants.
Varying power drastically over the course of a day makes it more difficult to control power.
On the bright side this will be a boon to the burglary business.
I won’t argue very hard with you...since you’re almost certainly right.
But answer this - does pulling back the rods actually “save energy” or do the reactants continue to decay anyway?
as usual the slimes gets it wrong, it's to cut down on light pollution not save energy...
France can sell extra power to Germany as Germany phases out their nukes.
And astronomers!
And astronomers!
And astronomers!
And astronomers!
sorry for the quaduple post
Interesting about nukes.
I just read a story that cheap nat gas in the US will likely cause the shutdown of a lot of older nuke plants rather than upgrade them for continued use.
By ‘reactants’ I assume you mean fission daughters which do decay and give off heat in the process.
The decay of fission daughter account for 5% or less of the reactors power out put.
Fuel can be conserved by reducing power. But as I said this is not the preferred way to operate a nuclear power plant. Besides complicating the operation of the plant raising and lowering reactor output places thermal stresses on the reactor vessel that can cause cracking in metal components and the reactor vessel itself.
Another problem with lowering reactor power to follow load is that it messes with the planned fuel burn up. Reactors are either on a 2 year fuel cycle or a 18 month fuel cycle. The burn plan has the plant running out of fuel in either the spring or fall when the electric grid is at its lowest demand. Mess with the burn out rate and the plant will shut down for refueling with unburned fuel. That means wasted money and higher cost for electricity for the consumer.
The best way to operate a nuclear power plant is to take the plant to 100% power and leave it there as much as possible.
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