Get all cars off the road because some leak oil

Oh no, the future cleanup is *never* considered. If you factor in future cleanup, the cost soars out of sight

 

Exactly. And that's why nuclear is not a viable option.

Why do we not apply long-term full-cost accounting to ALL of our decision making? We wouldn't be in nearly such a mess.

 

I'm not saying that nuke plants are causing a drought, but that there are clearly concerns during one. The NEI says that for closed loop plants, 16-26 gal/day/household is consumed. The NEI states that the typical household consumes about 300 gal/day for all purposes (of course, I'll wager the majority goes into the lawn, which is a form of irrigation, another of their categories). So it's a decent amount of water, but not as significant as watering lawns, by any means. Still, in the west, it's something that has to be considered. As temps rise, the cooling efficiency declines and plants have to use more water or cut their production.

 

Yeah, evaporative. When they say consumed I think it's synonymous with evap losses because they discuss how most of the water is returned and thus not "consumed".

Here the link I stumbled across:

Water Consumption at Nuclear Power Plants

It's not a technical paper, just a "fact sheet" so you might find it pretty light weight. It should explain the terminology for you though.

 

For the record, I'm not against nuclear power. It has some important issues that need to be addressed and from what I can tell, some of the newer reactor designs can help alleviate some of the storage issues.

Carz89, what do you know about pebble bed reactors? That concept is intriguing. The other approach that might be good here in the States is a breeder reactor design that can reuse the spent rods.

 

My impression was that the spent fuel could be stored on site. I forget the reason for this. Has something to do with the nature of the fuel.

 

As I said, I don't discount solar but do feel more R&D is necessary before it can be used on a large scale, primarily due to the land area required. Appropriate perhaps in the unoccupied deserts in the west, but where in the east could you afford to clear such large expanses of land? How could you construct the relatively fragile collector arrays in areas that are hurricane or tornado prone? My feeling is that we need to use everything available in the toolbox and minimize the use of those sources that are finite and that have other market demands.

With respect to Yucca and looking for absolute guarantees, I don't believe that such absolutes are either reasonable or practical. Much of the concern surrounding Yucca Mountain comes from the same source as the case for human affected global warming [surprise] - computer modeling. Unfortunately, as an engineer (doctorate) who works with computer models regularly, I know that if there are ANY assumptions included in a model to make it fit reality, it can be "tweaked" to give any answer the modeler desires. There is an old saying about assume, that they make an nice person/u/me!

 

I would simply suggest that nuclear facilities that were developed for weapons research and production are quite different from nuclear power plants. Hanford and Rocky Flats don't compare to Turkey Point. Mixing the two is one of the reasons for the emotional content of the issue and the inability to discuss the issue on a rational level.

 

Why do you have to put solar in the desert? Why not put the collectors on top of flat roof commercial buildings in the appropriate areas? In the Sacramento area, there must be thousands of commercial buildings that would be suitable for this. I'm sure this is true of most of the larger cities in the southwestern US. The advantage of this approach is that the power is generated right where it is being used. It can offset use from the grid, or can be sold back to the power company if it is surplus.

Also, they can be placed in parking lots, providing shade for cars while producing power. I am starting to see this implemented more and more in our area.

 

There are perfectly legitimate issues with nuclear power, and no need to be irrational about it.

 

I think that Bob is talking about CSP plants, which work at their best in places like the Mohave. CPS lends itself to the utility scale model, that's where the best effiiciencies are. Furthermore, I think that the performance of the systems is really poor if the conditions aren't optimal. That's why they get built in places like the desert SW and not in Germany. PV, while less efficient and more expensive (ATM) lends itself to a distributed design (those roof tops you're on about) and they also degrade more gracefully when the atmospheric conditions aren't the best.

 

Lets do both. If we supplement the CSP plants with the distributed rooftop PV panels, then we won't need as many CSP plants.

 

Agree. It's not an either or situation. I was just trying to clarify Bob's comments.

 

Tripp did a reasonably good of of clarifying my comment but let me go one step further. The idea that we can simply place solar collectors on rooftops or construct sunshades and satisfy a major portion of our power needs is simply wrong. A good idea in some cases and a nice adjunct to be sure, but solar simply requires too much raw area to produce the kind of power the grid demands if we are only dealing with these ad hoc opportunities. Keep in mind that the line loss associated with a lot of very small sources tends to degrade the contribution even further and the placement of solar collectors in areas subject to vandalism, accidents, safety, cleaning and other maintenance requirements etc. raises another set of questions. So if individual property owners want to add solar collectors to decrease their demand from the grid and decrease their costs of power, absolutely great and they should be applauded for doing so. But don't think for a minute that such small scale applications will make much of a dent in supplying overall demand.

I don't disagree that what you suggest is a good idea, but I am always concerned when folks begin to think of one or two small tools in the toolbox as "the answer." In Seattle, you could put solar collectors on every roof and in some months only be able to charge a C cell battery so there may be many areas where the economics simply don't work for the property owner (too long a payback period). In other areas, Phoenix, Tucson, Vegas for example, it may provide a very short payback (although in Vegas the demand at night is pretty high so the payback may not be there!).

 

There are many ways we can take advantage of solar power. Retrofitting panels to existing buildings to produce electricity is much different than designing buildings from the ground up with an energy-use perspective. There's lots of room for improvement in energy-storage systems that will vastly increase the efficiency, so that energy can be collected during the day for use at night, or even during the summer for use during the winter. The current state of the art may not be 'the answer', but developing solar's potential could well be.

 

Using nuclear power (fission) to generate electricity is like using a chainsaw to cut butter. It is messy and overkill for the benefit. No fission plants have been ordered for some time because they are not cost effective, even with subsidies and liability limits. Decentralized efficiency, conservation and sustainable & renewable energy is far more cost effective (small hydro, solar, wind, geothermal). Oil? You mean the Devil's excrement - the best place to drill first is Detroit.

We should be intensely investing in a national program of walking & bicycle routes, light & high speed rail, energy efficient houses, schools, churches & businesses. Germany has taken the lead on this. The US is 100 years behind Europe. We have a lot of work to do in a short time. The media and politicians don't understand the problem or cost effective solutions. Fission is not part of the solution. Watch: "A Crude Awakening, The Oil Crash" (2006, DVD, 85 minutes, docuramafilms). Both informative and frightening. Frightening at how we have allowed ourselves to be spendthrifts by throwing our fossil fuels to the wind and how vulnerable we are to other countries. Hints at a humbler way of life built around sustainability and renewable energy. Clearly illustrates, from knowledgeable political advisors, how we have blatantly ignored every signal and opportunity.

 

its hard to believe that a (not counting Alaska) country like ours that is still 89% rural, uninhabited, etc... open spaces, that land would be such a premium for use...take out the first 50 miles of our coast lines (including the great lakes) and you eliminate what?? 75% of the populated area??

sure, some areas of the country have a premium on land, but nearly everywhere has rural unused areas within 50 miles of urban sprawl. so to say that solar is not a good idea because we dont have the space... sorry, cant agree with that.

there is just too much upside to solar to not want to do it.

 

What is missing that requires more R&D (at least for CSP)? That's a simple thing to say, but 15 years of operation have got the science and operation of trough plants down high precision.

I say this with a wink of the eye since the number of approved solar plants being built in California is huge. Below is a sample.
245 MW - eSolar lands solar power plant deal | Green Tech - CNET News
900 MW - http://www.luz2.com/var/412/61889-PG%26E%20Announcement.pdf
1750 MW - Projects | SES Stirling Energy Systems

Next time you take a cross country flight from CA to TX, you will see lots of available land, all of it totally cleared to begin with. As for tornados, Kramers junction has already survived one with quite manageable damage. The plant was still able to operate afterwards. Mirrors are stowed in protected positions. What makes a big difference is for the edges of the mirror field to have a wind break. These are very easy to make. Note that the mirrors are more rugged than mobile homes by a huge factor. Again, 15 years of operation has shown that dust accumulation is the biggest issue by far. The breakage of the glass evacuated collectors is much more of an issue than mirror breakage (for those that care).

One point to think about. How much land is cleared and destroyed by road building in one day in the US? How much land does a solar power plant take up? If land use is a concern, then solar plants should not come to mind first. Parking lots are in a much, much bigger league.

I agree with using everything in the toolbox, but some tools are more useful than others.

Are you using this logic to justify Yucca?!? When I get on a flight, I am pretty much looking for that absolute engineering guarantee.

I should note that one of the Yucca engineering discoverys was that corrosion in the original container design was much faster than predicted. The corrosion was not uncovered by modeling but actual tests.