Busbar Electricity Prices at the Tehachapi Wind Farm This Evening.

[NNadir]

The "Busbar" price of electricity is the price paid more or less at the generation source where it connects to the grid. It is more or less equivalent to the Incoterm FOB.

The California ISO website has a map based report of pricing at all California Power plants. It is here: Real Time Electricity Pricing.

The Tehachapi "wind resources area" has a Wikipedia page, describing its size and capacity: Tehachapi Wind Resource Area

Here is some interesting text from that Wikipedia page:

It is the largest wind resource area in California, encompassing an area of approximately 800 sq mi (2,100 km2) and producing a combined 3,507 MW of renewable electricity between its 5 independent wind farms.

800 square miles...2,100 sq km, 3,507 MW. I accept these as "facts," but if someone would like to suggest, "alternate facts," feel free to do so.

On the pricing page linked, you have to move the cursor over the plant, whereupon pricing will pop-up at that plant. The five Tehachapi wind plants are located pretty much due East of Pismo Beach, near the town of Mohave. You can zoom in and out to isolate it using the + and - keys at the bottom of the map. The prices at power plants change with market flows and are tied to the load of the State of California. As of this writing, 19:30 PDT, 6:30 PM, the State of California is consuming 37,449 MW of electricity, down from the peak demand at 18:00 PDT (6:00 PM PDT) of 38,709 MW. As of 19:30 PDT, all of the wind facilities in the entire State of California, including but not limited to the Tehachapi wind resources area were producing 4,678 MW of power. At the low point today, which occurred at 12:10 PDT, (12:10 PM PDT), at which all of the wind facilities in the entire State of California, including but not limited to the Tehachapi wind resources area were producing 1,319 MW of power, or roughly 0.5 MW per square mile if we, without real justification, imagine that all of California's wind turbines were in the Tehachapi Wind Resource Area Industrial Park. Actually this stuff is spread over a much larger area of the State of California.

Here, by the way, is an aerial view of part of the marvelous wind plant:



Notice all those delicious service roads for diesel trucks. Delicious...

Some prices at the plants as of 17:40 PDT (6:40 PM):

ENCWND: $77.49/MWh.
North Wind $77.09/MWh
TOT162W4_7_N001 $77.51/MWh.
ALTAD2_7_N006 $77.94/MWh.
ARBWIND_6_N001 $77.73/MWh

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant operates as a physical plant, on 12 acres, (0.018 sq miles or 0.049 sq km) on a plot of around 700 acres (1.1 sq miles or 2.2 sq km), most of which is undisturbed marine chaparral. The plant has been producing between 2261 MW (low) and 2267 MW (high) consistently and reliably all day long, as of 18:30 PDT, July 12, 2021. In other words, the land footprint of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant is 0.1% that of the Tehachapi Wind Resources Area.

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant is located on the California coast, just north of Pismo Beach, and South of Morro Bay.

As of 20:05, the plant's busbar operating cost was:

DIABLOCN_2_N001: $82.68/MWh

This by the way is a lower price than is being observed at the nearby Dangerous Natural gas plants nearby in Pismo Beach

CALLENDR_1_N001 $85.06/MWh.

OCEANO_1_N004 $85.04

...and slightly higher than the price at the Morro Bay dangerous natural gas plant, $82.45/MWh.

At 18:30 PDT (6:30 PM PDT), dangerous natural gas plants in California were producing 21,133 MW of power.

Note that electricity prices swing wildly during the day, depending on load and supply for all power plants. These prices apply to an early evening on a hot day.

Note that the prices observed at Diablo Canyon do not include, as the wind plants should but don't, the costs associated with the necessary back up plants. It doesn't matter at Diablo Canyon if the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. The Diablo Canyon, unlike the gas plants, is able to contain all of its by products, the very valuable used nuclear fuel, on site, in contrast to the dangerous natural gas plants, which are allowed to dump the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide directly into the planetary atmosphere at no cost, except for the cost to all future generations and all living things as a result of extreme climate change.

The State of California is now tragically experiencing more wild fires, as it has done in several recent years with increasing regularity. To my mind this is a function of the fact that the half of century of jaw boning about how wind and solar energy would save the world didn't work, isn't working and won't work, if the goal is to address climate change.

If, on the other hand, the goal is to lace the desert with access roads, the "renewable energy" industry in California is doing just great.

Because of appeals to fear and ignorance and wishful thinking, the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant will begin closing in 2024, and will stop producing climate change gas free electricity for the California grid.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. What's nuke energy cost plus de-commisioning?

What's the employment opportunity?

[NNadir]

2. Well, let's look at it this way...

According to the Comprehensive Data Base Wind Turbines maintained by the Danish Energy Agency, in that offshore oil and gas drilling hellhole Denmark, according to my last analysis about a year ago, the average life time of the greasy steel intensive, plastic spewing wind turbine in Denmark is on the order of 18 years.

Anyone who gives a rat's ass - not that anyone does because the external costs of the wind industry are ignored and blithely assumed to be "green" - can find this database here: Master Register of Wind Turbines

It's an excel spreadsheet, and using Excel functions, one can precisely determine what the life time of every operating and "decommissioned" turbine is or was. The mean figure when I did this work about a year or so ago, was less than 18 years on average, although a very small subset actually made it 30 years, very small, 3 or 4 as I recall.

The Diablo Canyon nuclear plant has operated, reliably for 36 years, and when it is shut because of extreme wasteful ignorance and stupidity in 3 years, it will have operated 39 years. It could operate longer, saving lives from air pollution and climate change, but the same people who don't care about dangerous fossil fuel waste, and for that matter coal waste from making steel for wind turbine posts, are unafraid to destroy infrastructure if it fulfills their nonsensical fear.

The site of the first nuclear plant that was ever built in the United States, Shippenport, built by a generation far less stupid than ours, is now a public park. So is the site of the Rancho Seco nuclear plant in California, which was destroyed by incompetence, to the wild cheering of crowds who have been spectacularly disinterested in the cost of decommissioning the planetary atmosphere because we just spent half a century waiting for, and predicting with ever more delusional certainty, a renewable energy nirvana that did not come, is not here, and will not come.

One can look up the costs of decommissioning various nuclear plants, this to a standard that no other energy source can be or is required to match. No one is going to decommission the gas fracking fields that are still being drilled because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't blow, but these fields are part of the external costs of so called "renewable energy's" unreliability.

The lanthanide mines at Baotou will not be cleaned up to the standard that the Rancho Seco plant was, even though these mines, something of a well understood international tragedy, are critical for putting magnets in wind turbines that do not continuously operate, but have something like a 30% to 40% capacity utilization depending where they are. (The capacity utilization of Danish wind turbines can be calculated using the Master Register. It's less than 30%.)

Of course, the same people who nickel and dime with selective attention focused on nuclear energy and don't give a rat's ass about the costs of anything else, will not bother to ask about the cost of driving thousands of diesel trucks over 800 square miles of the Tehachapi pass every 18 to 20 years. And of course, they will remain, as ever, completely indifferent to the destroyed desert ecosystem.

Making jobs that do not produce economic value - in this case energy - efficiently is destructive to the future of humanity. California could completely eliminate the gas requirements it is experiencing today if it built just 9 nuclear plants, on 9 (largely undisturbed) square miles of land if it built plants exactly equivalent to Diablo Canyon, using technology now almost half a century old. If, on the other hand, they employed modern engineering knowledge, including the use of heat networks that appear in regular discussions in scientific and engineering journals, they might eliminate all other forms of energy in the entire state with less than 10 plants, while desalinating water as a side product.

But rather than have a sensible discussion about energy and climate change, which has set California literally on fire, I am asked to give an answer to a nickel and dime "what if," "gotcha" question about decommissioning.

Come back and ask me this question when you have some figures on how much it might cost to restore the planetary atmosphere because solar and wind energy have proved, at the cost of trillions of squandered dollars, unable to do a damn thing to slow down the use of dangerous fossil fuels.

Have a nice evening.

[OAITW r.2.0]

3. 3 sentences max please.

Too much BS to plow through.

[RussellCattle]

5. I've always found Mr. Nadir's Information on point and very useful. Please rethink.....

......your characterization of it as “BS” and try again.

[NNadir]

8. No. If you want laziness, on a matter of critical importance to humanity, climate change...

...you won't get it from me.

Over the years, I have observed, however, that many of the planet's problems are involved, in energy as well as many other issues, are reduced by people who can't be bothered to think, to sound bites.

In fact, we've reduced all issues to this, tweet twitticsms. No wonder the planet is collapsing.

I read. I learn. I think. Short enough for you?

[roamer65]

4. Keep Diablo Canyon open.

But it should be renamed to Ventana.

[NNadir]

9. One of the dumbest movies ever made.

[hunter]

10. Hollywood makes lots of informative documentaries about gun fights and car chases as well...

[NNadir]

11. The physics of "The China Syndrome" is even more absurd...

...than the physics of "The Titanic." (Jack and his girlfriend would have died from hypothermia before completing much of that tedious dialog.)

The core of the Chernobyl reactor did not emerge just Northeast of South Georgia Island.

The problem is that we take cartoons more seriously than reality. Hence huge stretches of California are aflame.

[womanofthehills]

6. All that fucking radioactive waste is getting shipped to NM

It sucks!

[hunter]

7. Woman of these hills?

Hybrid natural gas / wind turbine power generation is vile.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_hydraulic_fracturing

Natural gas is killing people and causing immense property damage today.

Solar and wind power will not displace it, these "renewable" energy sources are, in fact, not viable without natural gas "backup" power, which isn't actually backup power at all but the primary energy source.

[Happy Hoosier]

13. Why not wind and solar with nuclear back-up power?

I'm not sure why you have this vendetta against wind and solar. But while I am an advocate of modern nuclear power, it would make sense to use wind and solar as much as possible, with the safest, cleanest back-up available.

FWIW, I think windmills are pretty beautiful.... and I'll put solar on my house as soon as it is practical for me.

[Act_of_Reparation]

19. I think they did a good job of explaining this already.

Nuclear is big energy in a small geographic footprint. To get the output of a nuclear power station from wind or solar, you need to cover a very large geographic area with panels or turbines. This means producing a whole lot of panels and turbines, which is not a clean process. It also means building access roads and laying miles of cable, which are not clean processes, either.

When you consider how much energy goes into producing and maintaining solar and wind farms, nuclear could be the cleaner option.

[Happy Hoosier]

28. But it is still centralized, and not very flexible, yes?

We need to move away from centralized power production for the most part, IMO. It makes us vulnerable, and it doesn't expand easily.

We should embrace models that are modular, networked, and easily expandable.

Honestly, SPACE is not an issue in a very large portion of the country. Perhaps in the East, concentrated power production has some advantage, but I doubt that applies to 2/3 of the geography in this country. Where I live is miles and miles of corn and soy... no reason you can't put wind mills here, and there is wind a good 90% of the time.

Like I said, I am advocate of modern nuclear... especially innovative designs that user smaller, more localized production, but there is no reason to put all our eggs into one basket, IMO.

[Act_of_Reparation]

38. Yeah, but I don't think is an issue of nuclear vs. wind/solar

I'm all for wind and solar, too. I think the OP is addressing people who are vehemently anti-nuclear, who think wind/solar will solve all of our problems.

Every means of energy production has its advantages and limitations, and they all tend to be highly specific to certain environments. You can't build nuclear without access to a lot of water, for example. You can't build solar under a perpetual marine layer. Our grid needs to be diverse; I am in total agreement with you there.

[hunter]

22. Nuclear power makes these wind plants unnecessary.

Especially if the purpose of these plants is to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

I'm not overtly hostile toward the solar panels built over the parking lot of our local supermarket. It's nice to park in their shade.

I'm extremely hostile toward wind and solar projects built on previously undeveloped land or offshore.

[Happy Hoosier]

29. Where I live there is very little undevloped land...

and lots and lots of corn and soybean fields. And lots of wind. Nothing wrong with building wind farms here, IMO. And we have TONS of parking lots and rooftops that could be producing energy.

I agree we need nuclear, I just see these technologies as being complimentary to each other, not competitive. I personally would love to be able to power my house with solar, and plan to someday.... fewer power outages whenever we get a particularly blustery day!

[jeffreyi]

31. Thank you.

Even as Nevada (with the blessings of the Biden admin) prepares to pave over thousands upon thousands of acres of previously undisturbed land with solar and all the accompanying roads, cables, powerlines, etc. One of the projects "necessitated" transplanting all of the desert tortoises they could find (and they did not find all of them), which were promptly killed by predators in the new location. Because we can't be bothered with rooftop solar, apparently. We just have to f**k up new country. Of course, everyone knows, there's "nothing out there" . So someone please win me over, why is this "green?" How is the carbon footprint actually reduced by doing this? To me, nuclear generated energy is becoming a no-brainer.

Right now, there is an uncontrolled giant wildfire north of here (Bootleg) that "threatens" one of the main tranmission power conduits that goes from the Columbia River to southern California. I haven't checked the status of that yet today, but if that line goes, a lot of power goes right in the middle of the 2nd record heat bubble of the summer, the severity of which is probably due to climate change.

So thanks, nnadir, for being stubborn with your arguments for all these years.

[Jim G.]

12. I Lived In Lancaster Co., PA For 25 Years - Where Three Mile Island Is Located

Nuclear power has its disadvantages as well.

[Happy Hoosier]

14. With all due respect...

modern plants are not Three Mile Island.

Compare Three Mile Island to the damage caused by coal and natural gas, and it's a no-brainer, IMO.

[Jim G.]

15. And Yet Three Mile Island Is Still Active Today

Have any old nuclear power plants been rebuilt to "modern" standards?

[Happy Hoosier]

34. There are certainly some older plants....

that might not be as safe as they could be, but I think we're mainly talking about how to move forward and defeat Climate Change. To put it simply, we need modern nuclear NOW to meet our emissions goals. It is an off-the-shelf technology that can meet our emissions goals realistically. No other tech is there yet. I also support Wind and Solar, but there is no road map I've seen that shows that Wind and Solar can completely replace fossil fuels on anything like the time table we need.

[hunter]

18. An expensive accident but not comparable to, for example, the Deepwater Horizon disaster...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

We largely ignore the environmental damage done by fossil fuels, most especially from the "normal" use of fossil fuels. We're familiar with fossil fuels.

People will fill their automobile's fuel tank with toxic gasoline, maybe spilling a bit on themselves or on the ground, and breath the fumes and not be especially upset by that. And then they'll freak out about some tritium release thousands of miles distant.

Natural gas is a much greater threat to the earth's environment than nuclear power. Yet many people think gas is benign because they've cooked on a gas stove and use it to heat their homes.

"Natural" gas was one of the most successful marketing terms ever. Gas. It's Natural.

Brawndo. It's got electrolytes.

According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) report, the Three Mile Island accident resulted in no deaths or injuries to plant workers or in nearby communities. Follow-up epidemiology studies have linked no incidents of cancer to the accident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_Nuclear_Generating_Station

I remember doing some research prior to the shutdown of the Rancho Seco power station in California. All sorts of people were claiming the power plant caused cancer. How they discerned that is anyone's guess. The area surrounding the power plant was a swamp of toxic agricultural chemicals and combustion wastes.

[ProfessorGAC]

39. I'm With You, Except...

...the electrolyte content in natural gas (predominantly sodium carbonate) is nearly irrelevant compared to CO2 emissions from combustion.
There also trace amounts of metals in natural gas, quantitated by ICP at low single digit parts per billion, or parts per trillion.
The natural gas "peaker" plants around here have sophisticated scrubbing systems that are interlocked to the operation. (Permits are written such that if an emitting process has a pollution abatement unit operation, the former can't run if the latter is not working.). So, emissions from that source is extremely miniscule, if even detectable.
Are they in there? Absolutely!
Is that really the reason we should drift away from this & other combustion sources? I don't think so.
Everything else you wrote, I agree with.

[NNadir]

23. Get any extra heads?

What's your theory that coal fired air pollution in Pennsylvania has been harmless since 1976?

Lancet reports that currently about 7 million people die every year from air pollution.

In the 45 years you've apparently lived after Three Mile Island, if the death toll from air pollution was as low as 5,000,000 per year over that period that means 225 million people have died as a result of selective attention.

I recently drove through Harrisburg. I wasn't killed by radiation and the city looks fine to me. I guess living in Lancaster PA doesn't make one an expert in epidemiology.

[Jim G.]

25. While I Don't Advocate For Coal Or Any Other Fossil Fuels...

I'm not going to pretend nuclear energy is safe or efficient either, despite being talked down to. I may not be a scientist, but I feel like I don't need to have a doctorate in proctology to recognize some things.

[Cosmocat]

24. I lived less than 10 miles from TMI when it occured

and lived in the area for more than a half decade after, and visit frequently.

Still feel rejuvenated when I got back to the Hershey area, still as beautiful as I remember growing up, and I am in perfect health.

Not a good example.

[Tom Rinaldo]

16. Interesting that you don't mention the Hosgri and Shoreline earthquake faults

since you like talking about the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant so much.When construction began on Diablo Canyon those fault lines weren't known to the public although internal PG&E documents seem to indicate that the firm knew more about those risks than the regulators did at that time

Since you like to quote Wiki, here is some basic information from that site about those faults and their proximity to the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant:

"The Hosgri Fault is a component of the San Andreas Fault system.[3] Its movement is primarily reverse thrust, as well as exhibiting right lateral slip, and is thought to be capable of generating earthquakes of up to magnitude 7.5.[1] The November 4, 1927 Lompoc earthquake (magnitude 7.1) is thought to have occurred (uncertainty) on this fault.[4]...

Seismologists monitor activity on the Hosgri fault constantly because of its physical proximity to the nuclear Diablo Canyon Power Plant. In fact, the fault lies only 2½ miles offshore from the nuclear power plant.[5] More recently in 2008, yet another even closer fault was discovered, the Shoreline Fault 1 mile from the NPP."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosgri_Fault

Here is part of a more detailed scientific study:

"Seismicity of the Shoreline and Hosgri Faults, Estero Bay, and Irish Hills"

"...Composite focal mechanism shows that the northernmost Shoreline Fault events are aligned with the Shoreline Fault, not the Hosgri Fault. Implies that the Shoreline Fault does extend to the Hosgri at seismogenic depths.

Given the apparent connection - and definite close proximity - of the Shoreline and Hosgri faults, it does not seem prudent to rule out a joint rupture.

o No reason a north-going earthquake on the Shoreline Fault couldn’t make the slight (~30°) bend and continue onto the Hosgri Fault.

o No reason an earthquake couldn’t nucleate at the junction and propagate bilaterally onto both faults"
https://www.pge.com/includes/docs/pdfs/shared/edusafety/systemworks/dcpp/SSHAC/workshops/ws2/SSHAC3_WS2_Day01_09_Hardebeck.pdf

And this from another study:

"Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America:
Geometry and Earthquake Potential of the Shoreline Fault, Central California

"...The OADC results show that the Shoreline fault is a single continuous structure that connects to the Hosgri fault. Discontinuities smaller than about 1 km may be undetected, but would be too small to be barriers to earthquake rupture. The Hosgri fault dips steeply to the east, while the Shoreline fault is essentially vertical, so the Hosgri fault dips towards and under the Shoreline fault as the two faults approach their intersection. The focal mechanisms generally agree with pure right‐lateral strike‐slip on the OADC planes, but suggest a non‐planar Hosgri fault or another structure underlying the northern Shoreline fault. The Shoreline fault most likely transfers strike‐slip motion between the Hosgri fault and other faults of the Pacific–North America plate boundary system to the east. A hypothetical earthquake rupturing the entire known length of the Shoreline fault would have a moment magnitude of 6.4–6.8. A hypothetical earthquake rupturing the Shoreline fault and the section of the Hosgri fault north of the Hosgri–Shoreline junction would have a moment magnitude of 7.2–7.5."
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/bssa/article-abstract/103/1/447/331609/Geometry-and-Earthquake-Potential-of-the-Shoreline?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[NNadir]

17. The risk associated with this issue compares with the risk of...

...19,000 people will die today from air pollution, which happens to be 100% every day how?

Funny that you didn't mention that risk, nor the risk of climate change and related fires. Funny, but not unexpected, antinukes rely on selective attention, selective attention that kills people every damned day, and in the process of killing the entire planet with dangerous fossil fuel waste.

Nuclear energy does not need to be without risk, to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else which it is.

[Tom Rinaldo]

21. For the sake of clarity, you advocated for Diablo Canyon specifically here.

Keeping that plant open will not eliminate the deaths of 19,000 daily from air pollution, which literally has millions of contributing sources. Diablo Canyon however is literally sited about a mile away from an active fault zone with the potential for a massive rupture.

It was, in my opinion of course, arrogant of you to simply dismiss those who argued for the closure of Diablo Canyon specifically as resorting to "appeals to fear and ignorance and wishful thinking."

[NNadir]

27. Yes, that's right.

I stand by my remarks. There has been one earthquake related destruction of a nuclear complex by a geological event. People like to act as if the 20,000 people who died in that event were killed by radiation from the plant.

The reality is that practically everyone who died, did so from seawater, not radiation. If it "proves" anything, it proves that coastal cities are "too dangerous."

I do regard the selective attention as ignorant since it is a fact that seawater killed more people than radiation.

Facts matter, and do so far more that speculation.

At Fukushima, diesel engine failure from seawater was a root cause of the melt down. This problem can be engineered away. My favorite solution would include using residual heat from used nuclear fuel or its constituents in the ever improving thermoelectric devices. Bathed in seawater would have improved the thermodynamic efficiency of the devices, which have no moving parts.

Air crashes have killed more people than nuclear plants but they are not phased out when they fail. Rather engineers improve their design.

I have heard all this rhetoric before, of course. I lived in California when Diablo Canyon was being built, and in fact was a dumbass antinuke at the time. Happily for me, when I looked into Chernobyl which established the worst case, it occurred to me, using something called "critical thinking " that the worst nuclear case was trivial when compared to the observed reality of climate change in the best case.

Your scary "if" statements do not dissuade me from observing what "is." Closing Diablo Canyon remains for me a crime against humanity. It will kill people who do not need to die.

[RussellCattle]

35. I'm sure that you've changed a few minds about nuclear power plants over the.....

....years, mine included, but I had to laugh when I found out that you had once been a “dumbass antinuke” yourself. I myself now have the “zealotry of the convert” and encourage you to keep putting up the good fight.

[MineralMan]

37. Interestingly enough, I served on a jury in a trial of a bunch of protesters

at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant while it was being built. We turned them all loose. I was generally opposed to its construction, and said so during the voir dire, but also said that it didn't matter, and that I would look at the protesters without considering my own opinion. so, I was seated on the jury.

I lived just a few miles from that plant, in Los Osos, just over a small mountain range.

Now, it's closing soon. Oh, well.

[hunter]

42. I didn't get arrested. I knew a few people who did.

I was really good at being invisible then, on the road between San Onofre and Humboldt.

I'd already had plenty of practice avoiding middle and high school bullies who weren't much different than cops. Which is why I quit high school.

Came close to being caught a few times, mostly dumpster diving, but I usually presented as some crazy hungry homeless guy, mostly harmless, which I may have been on occasion.

When I was just sixteen I was a frequent unofficial tourist of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory There used to be a nuclear power plant there, one of the first, but I was more interested in the rockets.

Crossed paths with Helen Caldicott and her California entourage, then onward to young adulthood adventure. Nudity and everything! (No, not with Helen Caldicott, just some of the California entourage.)

My great aunt started to let loose her most scandalous Hollywood stories when she was in her later eighties. She and her sister, my grandma, had said "Oh, hell no," to the California dairy industry as teens.

My great aunt lived a few years past a century. Cancer killed my grandma before she was old enough to tell me her own true stories.

It's possible, if I live so long, I may tell stories.

As I recall, Jackson Browne closed out one of the Diablo Canyon rallies. It may have been the Jerry Brown appearance. "No MORE nukes!"

After that things got weird.

[MineralMan]

45. I remember the reactor meltdown at Santa Susana there.

Very well, indeed. Made me a little wary about nuclear power generation. Yes, it did.

[hunter]

47. I was watching when they hauled it away.

Such trespasses were easy for me then. I thought I had nothing to lose.

I bought nitrates at Western Farm in Fillmore, supposedly for my dad's orchard, mostly for my rockets.

My dad, knowing I was a pyromaniac, would only task me to buy urea.

Both my grandfathers remembered when any stupid young adult white male kid could buy dynamite.

One of my grandfather's friend's was missing an arm as a consequence.

Me and and an ex once blasted a big crater in Sespe Creek.

She supplied the blasting cap, me the nitrates.

We made it rain rocks. Big rocks.

I quit those sorts of experiments forever that day.

It was worse than when I'd had to ask my brother to pick shrapnel out of my back. (We told my mom I'd fallen in the rose bushes.)

My ex got her doctorate and DOD contracts.

I'm a pacifist.

The last time I saw her was at some conference in San Jose and we pretended not to know one another.

[NurseJackie]

33. Thank you!

[denbot]

20. I'm pretty sure the Nazca lines didn't ruin the southern Peruvian plains.

And I’m pretty sure Fukushima is still spewing radiation.

[hunter]

26. If you are cooking with gas that's a greater danger to you than Fukushima.

Even if you live near Fukushima.

One reason California is discouraging gas appliances in new housing is the toxic air pollution these appliances produce, especially indoor air pollution.

Cooking with a modern inductive stove top is very similar to cooking with gas.

[RussBLib]

30. Sounds like gridlock

Aren't there some newer, safer nuclear reactors available these days?

Oh, humanity!

[NurseJackie]

32. Lulz.

Notice all those delicious service roads for diesel trucks. Delicious...

Lulz.

[MineralMan]

36. So, How Many New Nuclear Power Plants Are under Construction in the USA?

In 2021, there are exactly two new nuclear power generating facilities being built in the United States. Two. Why is that? The reason is that this country has rejected the idea of building them within our borders, pretty much everywhere. Two reactors are being constructed at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant In the state of Georgia (Units 3 & 4), as an expansion of the existing facility.

You appear to be a proponent of nuclear power generation. You praise that method of generating electricity, but use loaded negative language when referring to other technology for power generation. Even wind farms stimulate your ire.

Here's the thing: People don't want a nuclear power plant near where they live. They don't want it very much at all. Whether they are right or wrong in that opinion is beside the point.

We are not planning a widespread increase in construction of nuclear power generating facilities in the United States. I don't see that changing.

I'm quite familiar with the Tehachapi wind farm. I'm also familiar with the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. I just moved to a suburb of Minneapolis. The first time I went shopping, I noticed that there is a large wind turbine right smack in the middle of Main Street here. Now, that probably doesn't power many of the homes in this smallish city, but there it is. There are wind turbines all over the place in Minnesota in its southern rural areas. We're wind-friendly here in Minnesota. South Dakota and Iowa, too. Wind turbines everywhere.

We also have a couple of nuclear power plants nearby. Right on the Mississippi River, where they are changing the ecology of that river by dumping cooling water in it. That's not all bad, but it is altering the biome in that part of the river.

Every industrial technology has a negative impact on the environment. Take your pick. The bottom line is that we will continue to use all of those technologies to meet the energy needs of our homes and businesses. As long as there are people living somewhere, they will use energy. More people - more energy.

So, like a number of other nuclear plants that have shut down, Diablo Canyon will shut down in 2024. That's the nature of that technology. They all have a limited lifespan.

[NNadir]

41. Enacting a stupid policy does not make it less stupid.

It's pretty amusing that you refer to heating the Mississippi River has a huge drawback to nuclear power.

It would be interesting if you were concerned about the effects of climate change on rivers, like say, the Colorado River, or the Columbia River, but, well you want to assert popularity as a surrogate for wisdom.

I once owned a Mercury Sable, a model that was an upscale Ford Taurus. The Ford Taurus was advertised, quite honestly, as the "best selling car in America," which happened to be true at the time. The seats fell apart at around 35,000 miles, the rear view mirror fell off at 40,000, the air conditioning could never be repaired so as to last for 10,000 miles. Thankfully I was put out of my misery when the engine siezed at 80,000 miles. It was by far the worst new car I ever owned.

An American generation built more than 100 nuclear reactors in around 25 years while providing the lowest priced electricity in the industrialized world. Hype calls the generation "the greatest generation." I'm not sure I agree with that characterization entirely but the fact that my generation's attitude toward nuclear energy compared with theirs is abysmally stupid, if popular.

They were the sort of people who at least cared for future generations and the nuclear plants they left us were a gift that saved lives. That we are too stupid to appreciate it says more about us than them. We ate leaving nothing but waste.

I note with some shame that my generation, the generation that produced the Presidencies of Reagan, two Bushes, and Trump should not be acclaimed for its wisdom.

But please don't tell me, of all things, that you care about rivers. If you did, you'd care more about about climate change than cooling water. This is not to say cooling is not an issue, but modern engineering around heat networks offer a clear solution readily available to nuclear technology with very high environmental rewards.

[MineralMan]

44. However, it reflects reality.

Your attempts to insult me, however, are hollow.

[NNadir]

48. I'm very pleased to learn that reality is wonderful. The West Coast is on fire, but it's not...

...about you, is it?

In fact, I didn't even realize that this precious bit of wisdom about the Mississippi River was yours, but thanks for pointing it out. I was typing on a cell phone, while waiting for a meeting.

I am decidedly not "trying" to "insult" you. I am simply drawing reference to your opinion, with which I obviously, based on long education, hard work, and careful reading, I disagree.

I have probably written in my journal on this site, hundreds of technical articles based on readings in the scientific literature to support my positions on the environment. I'm sure you didn't mean to insult me when you informed me that scientists are very narrow minded people.

My journal is here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/~NNadir

It speaks for itself, just as what you write and say speaks for itself.

Your post on the "narrowness of scientists" would be this one:

I'm afraid your viewpoint is far too narrow for me

to take seriously. You are talking about technical issues, which are important of course. But you ignore the fundamental issue that drives it all. Science often sees things from a very narrow perspective, focused on a particular discipline. That is what I'm seeing in your rant.

Note: All posts written by me are my opinion only. Your opinion might differ. I do not normally respond to DU Mail. If I reply with two dots (..), each dot stands for a word. You can choose the words.

I added the emphasis.

I. Don't. Care. What. You. See. In. My. "Rant." I don't care about your dots, your response to DU mails, but I do care about "opinions" held by anyone that hurt other people. I contend that opposing nuclear energy kills people. I couldn't be more clear on that than I am.

In stating this, I agree with another one of those "narrow" scientists, Jim Hansen:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Now, Dr. Hansen wrote a wonderful book, called "Storms of My Grandchildren"

It's very clear, as you noted yesterday, that you are one of the best people in the world because you chose not to have children.

Clearly, Dr. Hansen is a lesser being than you, since the title of his book implies he has grandchildren.

But no matter.

If disagreeing with you on an issue I've spent studying intensely over three decades is "insulting" you, well, what can I possibly say?

Do I need to be "nice" and defer to your wisdom? Did you have some wisdom I missed?

Perhaps you think I should shoot my two sons to be as noble as you told me you are because you cared so much about the environment that you remained childless. I concede that my sons are consuming resources that could be used to power moving trucks.

One of my sons is a highly trained engineer, taking graduate courses based on a Presidential Scholar award, and now looking to enter another graduate school to study the materials science aspects of nuclear energy. My other son, when he graduated as an artist was surrounded by the faculty at the reception, all of whom wanted to remark on how talented he was to his parents, my wife and I.

Narrow as I am, I did raise an artist as well as another narrow unidimensional scientist/engineer.

Somehow, I think these young men are more critical to the world than a childless man of my awful generation who writes very amusing and informative posts about real estate deals, moving trucks, and his parents lives and deaths. This kind of color is pleasing to the eye of course, but writing it doesn't not excuse indifference to the future while navel gazing.

I had parents too, as it turns out, both of whom have been dead for decades, neither living to their 90s. I have, in fact, outlived them both. My mother died at 51 from a brain tumor probably generated as a result of occupational exposure. I got over it. Perhaps you're glad she got out of the way and stopped consuming resources, since the existence of my sons offends you.

To wit:

I find it interesting that you mention your "little brat" in the post above.

Below, I replied to your initial post, linking climate change to global population growth. That is the root cause of it, regardless of technological causes. Demand by the global population for energy, for whatever reason, is why we are burning so much fossil fuel.

I bring this up because you have apparently contributed to the growth of the global population, by your own admission.

I did not. In 1965, I made a pledge not to reproduce, due to the clear impact of global population grown. I have fulfilled that pledge. I have no "little brats." At age 75, I'm certain that I will not add any offspring to the flood of humanity. Yet, global population continues to grow, does it not?

Think on that, if you please.

Note: All posts written by me are my opinion only. Your opinion might differ. I do not normally respond to DU Mail. If I reply with two dots (..), each dot stands for a word. You can choose the words.

You seem to believe I should deign to have my thinking directed by you.

You, of course, are above insulting people, just as you are above breeding.

I had other things to do with my life than worry about moving my parents furniture after they died. I lived my whole life that way. I'm not leaving my kids a house, a car, and a big pile of money, but I am leaving them ideas because I care about the future, not about writing or executing my will or for that matter, nobly sparing the world my two sons as an act of ersatz environmentalism.

If you find these objections an act of contempt, you are freely entitled to do so, and who knows, it may be popular to do that, but I regard opposition to nuclear power by anyone as criminal, for reasons I have elaborated for a long time on this and other websites and covered in my journal with literally thousands of references to the primary scientific literature.

I'm not supporting nuclear energy to be popular. I'm supporting it because it's the right thing to do.

My biggest regret in life is the part I took, when I was fairly uneducated and stupid, in opposing the Shoreham nuclear plant and the second Seabrook reactor. My ignorance killed people.

No one, not even me, is so old as to be unable to look away from the mirror into the broader world. I find people who spend their days looking in the mirror to be disinteresting, and should any person find that remark to be insulting, this says something about who and what he or she is than it says about who and what I am.

[hunter]

46. Replacing the Diablo Canyon power plant with a gas plant will be yet another crime against humanity.

We are a suicidal species.

Shutting down the fossil fuel plants should be our first priority.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

40. About those transmission lines bringing in electricity from Oregon:

Pacific DC Intertie



Map of the route of the Pacific Intertie transmission route and stations

The Pacific DC Intertie (also called Path 65) is an electric power transmission line that transmits electricity from the Pacific Northwest to the Los Angeles area using high voltage direct current (HVDC). The line capacity is 3,100 megawatts, which is enough to serve two to three million Los Angeles households and represents almost half of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) electrical system's peak capacity.

The intertie originates near the Columbia River at the Celilo Converter Station of Bonneville Power Administration's grid outside The Dalles, Oregon and is connected to the Sylmar Converter Station north of Los Angeles, which is owned by five utility companies and managed by LADWP. The Intertie can transmit power in either direction, but power flows mostly from north to south.

The section of the line in Oregon is owned and operated by Bonneville Power Administration, while the line in Nevada and California is owned and operated by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

The transition is at the Oregon–Nevada border, at 41°59′47″N 119°57′44″W.

This is one of two HVDC lines serving Los Angeles; the other is Path 27.

{snip}

Path 27 comes n from the direction of Utah.

Path 66



Pacific Intertie transmission routes



A dual-circuit 500 kV line forming a part of the connection between Path 66 and Path 15.

California Oregon Intertie (COI), identified as Path 66 by Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), is a corridor of three roughly parallel 500 kV alternating current power lines connecting the electric grids of Oregon and California. Their combined power transmission capacity is 4800 MW.

Two of the power lines run from Malin Substation southeast of Klamath Falls, Oregon to Round Mountain Substation northeast of Redding, California. One of them is owned by Western Area Power Administration, the other by Pacific Gas and Electric and PacifiCorp jointly. These lines are a part of Pacific AC Intertie and were completed in the 1960s. The third line runs from Captain Jack Substation near Malin to Olinda Substation south of Redding. It is a part of California-Oregon Transmission Project, the project manager is the Transmission Agency of Northern California (TANC), a joint venture of several public utilities. It was completed in 1993.

{snip}

Route

Path 66 is composed of one segment of TANC, PG&E and PacifiCorp 500 kV lines. The TANC line route starts at Captain Jack Substation (42° 4' 38.06"N 121° 23' 25.47"W) close to Malin, close to the California-Oregon border, near the Malin Substation, where the other 500 kV lines start (PacifiCorp & PG&E). These substations link to both the PacifiCorp and Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) grid in the Pacific Northwest.

{snip}

[hunter]

43. What do you want to know about HVDC?

Some of my abandoned university thesis advisors, bridges long burned behind me, were upgrading it from mercury arc rectifiers to thyristor valves.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

49. What surprises me about it is how old the technology is.

The project was authorized sixty years ago. The system has been in operation for over fifty years. The thyristors go back to 2004.

Overview

The idea of sending hydroelectric power to Southern California had been proposed as early as the 1930s, but was opposed and scrapped. By 1961, US president John F. Kennedy authorized a large public works project, using new high voltage direct current technology from Sweden. The project was undertaken as a close collaboration between General Electric of the US and ASEA of Sweden. Private California power companies had opposed the project but their technical objections were rebutted by Uno Lamm of ASEA at an IEEE meeting in New York in 1963. When completed in 1970 the combined AC and DC transmission system was estimated to save consumers in Los Angeles approximately US$600,000 per day by use of cheaper electric power from dams on the Columbia River.

{snip}

History



Sylmar East station, rededicated as the Sylmar Converter Station in 2005 following the upgrade to 3,100 MW.

The first phase of the scheme, completed in May 1970, used only mercury-arc valves in the converters. The valves were series connected in three six-pulse valve bridges for each pole. The blocking voltage of the valves was 133 kV with a maximum current of 1,800 amperes, for a transmission rating of 1,440 MW with a symmetrical voltage of 400 kV with respect to earth.

{snip}

• 2004: The Sylmar East station situated at 34°18′42″N 118°28′53″W was upgraded from 1,100 MW to 3,100 MW. The controls and older converters, including the mercury arc valves, were completely replaced by a single pair of 3,100 MW 12-pulse converters built by ABB. In parallel with this project, the six-pulse mercury arc valves at the Celilo Converter Station were replaced with Siemens light-triggered thyristors in compliance with their Modified Age Replacement Policy (MARP).

{snip}

Somewhere in my computer I've got a .pdf of a study to take electricity from solar panels in the Sahara Desert via cables under the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

I don't know if that's just a pipe dream or something that might really happen.

Desertec