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Solar Energy Doesn't Need an Atomic Backup
https://www.newsmax.com/paulfdelespinasse/solar-atomic-energy/2021/03/30/id/1015700/ ^

Posted on 03/30/2021 7:13:55 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET

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To: rktman

There goes Vegas. It probably uses more electricity than NK all by itself. Solar ain’t gonna power the strip and the AC.


41 posted on 03/30/2021 8:55:13 AM PDT by redangus
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To: Wuli
Detroit and other democrat run cities had a meltdown.
ping
42 posted on 03/30/2021 9:03:03 AM PDT by minnesota_bound (I need more money. )
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To: DIRTYSECRET

Possibly one of the stupidest articles I’ve read in a while.

Start here: “The film, however, depicts the tremendous dangers when something goes wrong.” Yeah, because HBO films are based on science and not pushing a political agenda. /sarcasm

Modern nuclear reactors are nothing like Chernobyl. That kind of accident simply cannot happen anymore.

Also, you’d have to cover an area over 300 km by 300 km, or 90,000 square km, with solar panels to provide enough power to replace every other power source. And that’s ignoring transmission losses, some areas not getting full sunlight, little things like night, etc. The actual area needed is probably closer to 250,000 square km. Doing so would in itself consume a massive amount of power and other resources. Solar panels don’t magically appear.

And that’s just for starters.

PS Yup, this guy clearly isn’t a real scientist.


43 posted on 03/30/2021 9:04:37 AM PDT by piytar (Do NOT forget Ashli Babbit!)
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To: Dave Wright

Chernobyl was caused by an experimental reactor with a high positive void coefficient (i.e. unsafe by design) being pushed too far. Nobody in the world runs reactors like that anymore (all existing RBMK-1000 reactors have been retrofitted to make them passively safe). Any newly built nuclear reactors are designed to be passively safe.

Fukushima was an example of an irresponsible company with a regulator asleep at the wheel. The cooling system design was known to have major design issues, but nobody made TEPCO fix it. They had all sorts of other regulatory non-compliance issues that nobody made them fix either. The culture in their nuclear regulatory space is extremely lax, from what I understand. They’re all pals hanging out together, rather than anyone providing real oversight.

I’m generally against a lot of regulation, but there are a few places where I see its value. Nuclear power can absolutely be done very safely and effectively, but there needs to be real motivation to do it correctly on the part of the plant designers and operators and there needs to be real ongoing oversight to ensure things are continuing down a safe path. If the design is good at the start, there’s not much you can do to screw it up down the road from a safety standpoint, but you can definitely have availability problems.


44 posted on 03/30/2021 9:06:29 AM PDT by 2aProtectsTheRest (The media is banging the fear drum enough. Don't help them do it.)
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To: minnesota_bound

Building it in a tsunami area is fine if your design is built correctly (Fukushima had well known and documented design flaws) and if your regulator is ensuring you’re fixing problems (TEPCO had/has a very cozy relationship with Japanese nuclear regulators essentially giving them a free pass).


45 posted on 03/30/2021 9:08:26 AM PDT by 2aProtectsTheRest (The media is banging the fear drum enough. Don't help them do it.)
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To: redangus

Well they better figure it out since our legislators put it in the NevaDUH Revised Statutes. SMDH! I’d like to know who THE guy that managed to sell this BS to so many people is. One can be a good steward without having to live in a mud or stone hut.


46 posted on 03/30/2021 9:09:33 AM PDT by rktman (Destroy America from within? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this?)
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To: 2aProtectsTheRest

A brother-in-law built the wall. The one that was to protect the power plant and the one built too short that the water went right over.


47 posted on 03/30/2021 9:09:55 AM PDT by minnesota_bound (I need more money. )
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To: piytar

I suppose they could simply have said they watched the movie “The China Syndrome” and made the same finding. For the folks that “TRULY” care, I suggest they divest themselves of any and all items that were produced or contain anything related in anyway to petroleum products. EVERYTHNG! Double dog dare them. Or they could be dropped naked and afraid in the middle of the Amazon. No, not THAT ‘amazon’, the other one.


48 posted on 03/30/2021 9:14:45 AM PDT by rktman (Destroy America from within? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this?)
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To: minnesota_bound

Flooding isn’t a safety issue in a passively safe nuclear reactor design. Their ancient and flawed GE design had many problems with it. The emergency cooling system was known to be flawed. Nobody made TEPCO fix that. Any number of other known issues contributed to it.

If you stuck a CANDU power plant at the same address at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, it would have been fine. It would have shut down and stayed that way until somebody showed back up to turn it on again. There may be some damage to the fuel rods during that time, but you simply swap them out (you can recycle the old ones, but they have to be rebuilt), run through the restart checklist, and bring the plant back online.

It all begins with plant design. And one of the consequences of the stupid environmentalist movement blocking all new nuclear plant construction (either by injunction or by making it too expensive to litigate out in court) is that none of the existing plants can be shut down and replaced with newer designs.


49 posted on 03/30/2021 9:15:26 AM PDT by 2aProtectsTheRest (The media is banging the fear drum enough. Don't help them do it.)
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To: RideForever
single tower 'wind power'

To augment the supply for one house, fine. How many to power a city, or even a decent size factory?
Even though there is a lot of energy in the wind it's spread over a vast volume and only a small portion of it can be harvested by each windmill.
And of course availability is intermittent.

50 posted on 03/30/2021 9:31:48 AM PDT by BitWielder1 (I'd rather have Unequal Wealth than Equal Poverty.)
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To: DIRTYSECRET

I’m a survivor of the recent Texas wind farm failure. I’m one of the lucky ones. More people were by this than were killed in the Chernobyl disaster. There are a lot of fools writing about green energy schemes. This one is in the winner’s circle (of fools).


51 posted on 03/30/2021 9:57:56 AM PDT by norwaypinesavage (The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones.)
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To: DIRTYSECRET

Is this guy naive?


Yep. And for those transmission lines to work like that requires technology we don’t have - while doing better design than Chernobyl safety-wise was doable decades before back then.


52 posted on 03/30/2021 10:02:31 AM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: BitWielder1
Even though there is a lot of energy in the wind it's spread over a vast volume and only a small portion of it can be harvested by each windmill. And of course availability is intermittent.

True, but consider using it to convert water to hydrogen to power your vehicles. Link to FR story -

link to FR story

53 posted on 03/30/2021 10:12:58 AM PDT by RideForever (Know Islam, No Peace; Know Peace, No Islam ...)
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To: backwoods-engineer

Coal and nuclear are dead.

Over the past 15 years virtually all new base load power plants are natural gas. Gas fired plants are much cheaper both to build and operate than nuclear and substantially cheaper than coal. Building a coal plant costs more than 4 times what a gas plant costs. For nuclear its 12 times.

One built, the gas plants are cheaper to run. They need less operations and maintnenace A 1000 megawatt gas plant needs 30 employees, coal needs 150 employees, nuclear needs 500. The fuel costs is generally cheaper the same, largely because gas plants are so much more efficient, at 60 percent versus 40 percent for coal and 34% for nuclear..


54 posted on 03/30/2021 10:14:26 AM PDT by OVERTIME
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To: Olog-hai
Newsmax has been publishing stuff like this for a number of years.

BINGO! Newsmax is 90% clickbait. Why anybody pays any attention to them baffles me.

55 posted on 03/30/2021 10:43:11 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan (Deplorably Neanderthal)
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To: DIRTYSECRET

Nuclear is clean and safe. We are dictating the future on two incredibly rare events. A poorly run Russian plant and Fukashima which was hit with a once in millennia event. We are all still alive. People live around them still. We do what we always do. Adapt and change the technology. Isn’t it convenient how much waste and toxic sludge is produced in the manufacture of windmills and solar panels?


56 posted on 03/30/2021 10:51:26 AM PDT by Organic Panic (Democrats. Memories as short as Joe Biden's eyes.)
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To: DIRTYSECRET

The best path to the future is decentralized power generation, and small modular reactors (SMRs) are a definite part of that future. The idea of a global grid, with the devastation of the world environment to produce the power this fool is describing, would be a catastrophic nightmare.


57 posted on 03/30/2021 11:13:49 AM PDT by hinckley buzzard (resist the narrative)
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To: isthisnickcool

1. “But that’s not the play here, to make abundant and cheap energy.” It isn’t? Because?

2. Nuscale is not the only design in production or in contention. There are others in the manner of downsizing with also improving safety.


58 posted on 03/30/2021 11:33:32 AM PDT by Wuli
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To: hinckley buzzard

I’m fine with decentralized generation with those evil “fossil” fuels.


59 posted on 03/30/2021 11:33:43 AM PDT by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: OVERTIME

Nope; neither are dead. Opus?


60 posted on 03/30/2021 11:37:49 AM PDT by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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