Posted on 05/20/2008 3:23:58 PM PDT by Delacon
That would kill any oversized radioactive mutant cockroaches too!!
You could simply use the excess power at off peak times to pressurize huge turbines with compressed air. Then during peak times you draw off this available stored energy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to solve this problem. Anyone raising this as an issue is hard core anti-nuke.
You point to a interesting item in the original article, where the author is lying by switching conceptual domains. Current nuclear power plants are designed for base load (constant full power), but there is no inherent reason that future nuclear power plants can't be so designed, or that nuclear plants used other than in the power industry aren't so designed now (submarines). It's an economic question, not an limit in physics.
It was a matter of tradeoffs, back when. Base load nukes are extremely capital intensive, and pay off better when run constantly. Coal plants are less capital intensive, and more of the cost is the coal, so that they are relatively cheaper to cycle. Gas turbines are even less capital intensive, but use more expensive fuel, and are used for peaking. (Peaking need is when the load grows too fast for coal plants to ramp up to met it, or when load exceeds the total nuke + coal output).
The engineers did a study, and concluded that the most cost-effective mix was nukes for base load, and coal for cyclic load, and gas for peaking.
The economics have changed, and it might be time to design a cycling nuke plant. And it would be strange indeed if nuke subs didn't already use such a design.
Even that is well over 50% of our energy demand
Nope! Not an issue. It behaves in a reactor about the same as uranium. Don't put myths like this around.
The issue is that plutonium in other countries could be diverted from their reactors to building nuclear weapons making undetectable proliferation much easier. That is an issue for treaties, controls and monitoring. Not impossible, just requires a lot of diplomatic jibber jabber.
That’s what they told me in license class.
Even that is well over 50% of our energy demand
Yup, and it's well past time to start building nukes. By the time we fill the base load need, the design for large cycling plants should be ready.
Well, what they told you in license class is wrong. In fact, the French use MOX fuel in light water reactors. It is an admisture of normal uranium fuel and plutonium, using plutonium recovered from spent reactor fuel.
Comparing Europe to America is like comparing a duck to a fly.
To begin with, the population densities are completely different. The entire country of France is the size of Texas. Their People mostly live in shoe boxes stacked on top of each other.
Add to that, the fact that it is much easier to use public transit than drive in that country, and the roads are barely two bicycles wide, it’s easy to see why closely contained Nuclear Power works so well there.
Our biggest problem is, that we are too spread out for it to be practical. We would require many more plants because of all the expansive distances we have to move electricity.
It may have an advantage in highly urbanized cities on the East and West Coast, but the bulk of the population lives in fly-over country.
As far as planning for daytime peak usage and having extra at night is concerned, that would be extremely useful for those who have electric cars or plug-in hybrids who want to take advantage of 'off peak' rates to juice up!
LOL!
Easy solution for this “excess power” problem - Since the electricity is going to be produced ANYWAY, then divert the available energy to the task that the “green” people think will be the solution to our problems, the economical production of hydrogen. By simple electrolysis of water, oxygen and hydrogen are both liberated from the bonds that form water molecules. The oxygen is simply released to the atmosphere, where the products of photosynthesis are augmented. The hydrogen is captured and cooled and liquified for storage, for use later on as power generation augmentation or as a motor vehicle fuel.
We don’t need hydrogen mines. With adequate electrical energy available, we can manufacture an endless supply. The recombinant water vapor formed by fuel cells is about as chemically pure water as you can get, even better than distillation. And the more of this relatively cheap fuel (hydrogen produced with the aid of nuclear power generation) we produce, the less we shall require importation of ever more precious petroleum.
Then we can run these nuclear power plants flat out, 24/7, pulsing out energy day and night, phasing in the power to produce the hydrogen as the daily peak demand slacks off.
Other than popular superstition causing the peasants to rise up with pitchforks and torches, I do not see a downside.
Two issues. First, the electric grid already transmits energy long distance, like Canadian hydro power, and power from almost anywhere in the US into California and New York metropolitan areas.
Second, most of our population and energy consumption are concentrated in key areas (the bright spots on the satellite maps of the US at nighttime).
The entire country of France is the size of Texas. Their People mostly live in shoe boxes stacked on top of each other.Add to that, the fact that it is much easier to use public transit
Obviously you have not spent time there. It is easier to use public transit because they built public transit that can be used. For NY, DC SF and a lot of other concentrated urban areas, a lot better use of public transportation could be made, and at a small fraction of the cost of operating all those automobiles. The capital and operating costs of a functioning rail system is a tiny fraction of the capital and operating costs of a three mile line of 6 lanes of bumper to bumper Mercedes Lexuses and BMWs averaging 5 mph.
You may have noticed I din't change my tagline because of this thread!!!
I like your tagline, except I can’t get behind Nader.
I won’t be getting behind McCain either though.
I just noticed how perpetually pist off the Dems have been since Nader robbed Algore in FL in 2000!!!
There was a whole PBS FRONTLINE docudrama about it and the Dems were STILL foaming at the mouth seven years later!!!
So if McMistake is trying to take the Republicans into terminal GANG-GREEN like Schwartzenegger has CA, wiping out my ability to vote for him for POTUS, then I'm voting for the one that makes the Dems most pist and who I knew all along was totally consumed with GANG-GREEN!!!
I am also doing it to fight against America'a real enemy, the Media Mobsters who were just as upset at Nader as their partners in Grand Larceny... The Democrats!!!
I know it's not perfect and that one should not squander their franchise of a secret ballot voting right that so many predecessors have died for, but it's not my fault! The Republican Party has victimised me with this terminally flawed candidate, Senator McMistake!!!
I’m just leaving my decision until November—that way I don’t need to agonize over it and
I can still hope for a miracle between now and then.
By the time our (early) primary came around in February, more than half my decisions were made for me.
I avoided all that agonizing, LOL.
i just opened my mail, and had a letter from McLame and the RNC explaining why I needed to send in a donation today. I put a note in the invelope that reads: “I will be voting conservative this year, which means switching to a 3rd party. Sorry, no money this year.”
Good sanity saving strategery!(grin)
I think I must have told them off too many times, earlier. They seem to have taken me off their mailing list. I’m disappointed... I miss all those opportunities to send their mail back to them, LOL.
This whole “rebranding” propaganda has to be exposed and denounced, IMO. The very people that have been ruining the party are the ones yelling that the “brand” is tarnished and therefore the GOP must change. It’s so dang obvious—it is the “change” that they themselves have influenced that needs to be rejected. And yet, the MSM is just happy as pie to fuel the new “rebrand” movement to help the GOP implode or move further to the left.
UGH!
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