Nuke Plants In Europe Power Down As Global Warming Dries Up Cooling Rivers

[Dems Will Win]

This really shows why nuclear power can not be the future solution to energy in a warmer world. France suddenly has to IMPORT electricity.

A four-year drought has dried up the river water needed to cool the reactors. The French, with 80% of their power generated by nukes, are so desperate they are dumping hot water into the river even though it exceeds environmental standards and will kill the marine life. The French have the dirtiest nuke system in Europe, so this is not shocking.

What's shocking is that this drought crisis shoots the much vaunted generating capacity of nukes straight to hell. Right now, installed solar panel capacity in the hot drought sunshine is generating more power in the daytime than the equivalent amount of installed nuke power at the affected plants!

This is historic, as the first instance of what will occur with regularity as the warmer climate sets in.

So it does not matter that nukes emit less carbon (the nuclear fuel cycle does emit a lot of carbon however, and the CO2 produced during plant construction takes on average 2 years to make up for).

Dick Cheney wants to build hundreds of new nuke plants and the nuke industry has had a huge PR campaign on since 2000 for new nukes. This has succeeded and now the wheels are in motion for the first plants in 30 years. with Bushco's NRC granting A.Q. Khans' former employer URENCO, the right to build a uranium enrichment plant in New Mexico--the first nuke license in 30 years!.

This clears the way for a whole new generation of nuke licensing. It won't work for many reasons. Now there is a big new reason.

THe next question is: August is the hottest month, and this is the fourth year of drought. How long will the European nukes have to remain powered down and when WILL THE US MEDIA REPORT ON THIS MAJOR DEVELOPMENT?

Don't hold your breath.

Here is the future, here today:

The heat is also taking its toll on agriculture, and affecting the generation of electricity, especially in nuclear power plants.

The lack of fresh water for the nuclear plants' cooling systems has led German private electricity suppliers to slow down their generators.

In France, the state-owned Electricité de France (EdF) was allowed to continue to drain hot water from the cooling system into rivers, although the water temperatures exceeded the limits imposed by environmental authorities. But output has had to be lowered.

EdF has been importing electricity to compensate the nuclear power plants' lower performance. Eighty percent of electricity generated in France is produced by nuclear power plants.

In Italy, hydroelectric plants have had to slow down due to a shortage of water in rivers.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34051

Unless you don't care about the future, please recommend so this gets out to the media and people see nukes are NOT the answer to global warming.

The new improved solar technology of concentrating PV, operating at 400 Suns with an efficiency of 40%, along with nanosolar, will operate fine on those hot sunny future days when the air conditioning load will be straining the system. 1 MW per acre instead of 5 acres per MW for the old obsolete panels.

Do the math, tech-heads.

God (or Goddess) is on the side of solar power it seems.

The future is now...

[Redstone]

1. That's something they never consider. There are some clowns who want

to build a gas-fired plant in Middletown (CT) that will evaporate a MILLION GALLONS A DAY of Connecticut river water.

What, they never heard of closed-circuit cooling? A billion cars in the world operate on that principle!

Redstone

[Lindacooks]

2. Excellent points. I do not understand why people think that nuclear

power has a future at all - no one has answered the question about what to do with the waste. Why create something harmful that takes tens of thousands of years to become neutral, when solar power (sun and wind) is perfectly clean?

K&R

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. Why is industrial hemp never included in the equation?

We could solve a lot of problems with the legalization of this versitale plant and we wouldn't need no stinking nuke plants.

[Lindacooks]

10. Is it burned? Maybe that's why, if so.

[immoderate]

13. Plant material that's burned is carbon neutral.

Because it absorbs CO2 while growing, plant material, used as fuel, does not contribute to greenhouse gas. Depending on how it's used, it may cause other atmospheric problems.

--IMM

[DoYouEverWonder]

15. Everything is burned one way or another

in order to create energy to run things.


FUEL

Hemp biomass as a source of fuel is the most under-exploited use of hemp, due to the fact that is economically unfeasible at this time. Hemp stalks can be used in the generation of energy through a process called 'chemurgy" which is a cross between chemicals and energy. The hemp stalk can be converted to a charcoal-like substance through a process called pyrolysis, and used for power generation and to produce industrial feed stocks. Auto giant Henry Ford was a pioneer in the pyrolysis process, and operated a biomass pyrolytic plant at Iron Mountain in Northern Michigan.

Hemp as an auto fuel is another potential use. Almost any biomass material can be converted to create methanol or ethanol, and these fuels burn cleanly with less carbon monoxide and higher octane. In fact, the diesel engine was invented to burn fuel from agricultural waste yet ended up burning unrefined petroleum. Hempseed oil can also be refined to produce a type of hemp biofuel. Woody Harrelson just toured with a diesel bus run on hemp biofuel, and a hempcar is touring this summer, demonstrating the environmental benefits of biofuels.

http://www.thehia.org/faqs/faq7.htm

[NickB79]

24. Um, if there's not enough water for cooling the reactors

There won't be enough water to grow hemp.

[brer cat]

7. How much uranium production does Cheney &

BFEE control? When oil tanks, they must control the next non-renewable resource. They can't buy sun and wind.

[mom cat]

3. When will nanosolar become available for home use?

[Joanne98]

23. What's nanosolar?

[mom cat]

26. Check this:

http://www.nanosolar.com/
and this:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-02,GGLG:en&q=nano%2C+solar

[Joanne98]

30. WOW!

[mom cat]

31. Glad you like it. There is hope if we can manage not to destroy this

planet before we can fix it.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. K&R

[Massacure]

5. There is a simple solution to your "problem"

A reactor using water as a coolant can do two things with the water after it is used: Either dump it back into the environment while warmer than it already is, or cool it in a cooling tower and reuse it.

[Dems Will Win]

8. Your solution doesn't work in reality

There's just too much water needed to cool a big reactor. That's why they are dependent on large rivers. It takes too long or too much energy to cool enough water in time to use it again. The numbers just don' work out.

Ergo, the hotter the planet gets, the more nukes will have to shut down.

No matter how you look at it nukes are not a viable strategy for a globally warming planet.

[MindMatter]

12. That's a matter of economic relativity

As mentioned above, there are alternatives to dumping hot water into rivers. As power becomes more precious, it will become affordable to pursue other alternatives.

Remember, the whole point of any nuclear plant is to CREATE hot water. It is that heat that is converted into electricity. At a certain price per KW, it may not be worthwhile to extract every bit of energy from the hot water, choosing to just dump that energy into a river. But as the value of the energy goes up, it will pay to develop technologyies to convert more of that heat into electricity or other useful forms of energy.

[stepnw1f]

9. More Solar, Wind and Tidal Power is Needed

around the World. If we did so, we would at least, minimize polution and our need for foreign resources. It just needs investment and government to tell "big" energy to "step off!!!".

[Dems Will Win]

11. They have just invented practical and economic tidal power

Cheap! Invisible (big turbines anchored to the sea bottom) and big 500 MW installations have already been sold and are going to go in.

Add that and micro-hydro, and the new concentrating PV MIRACLE, the new 25% more efficient wind turbines from Clipper Wind and throw in the 20 US Gigawatts from exiting dams, and brothers and sisters, we don't need nuclear power.

Although we will need conservation!

[stepnw1f]

27. Sorry I Didn't Reply Sooner

Been away from DU for a little. That's awesome news. I read somewhere that England was installing turbines in the English channel to take advantage of the tidal power there. Every bit will help us all.

And I agree.... we don't need Nuclear Power.

[Stephanie]

14. Dick Cheney can bite me.

Who cares what he wants. The only question is if his heart will give out before he is indicted, or not.

[BrightKnight]

16. huge impact: each reactor = 16,020,000 tons of coal

"Each uranium Pellet produces as much energy as... 1,780 pounds of coal; or 19,200 cubic feet of natural gas. There are more than 18,000,000 fuel pellets in each reactor."

(1780 lbs coal * 18,000,000 fuel pellets )/2000 = 16,020,000 tons of coal per reactor

http://www.txucorp.com/power/plants/comanche_peak.aspx

[Fovea]

17. The Goddess designed the first pebble bed reactors.

and they have been up and running for a billion years or so.

I think there is room for us to try a few.
Having said that, I am not a graphite moderated, or light water fan.
Similarly fast breeder reactors need to be someplace safe, like the moon.

[Dems Will Win]

19. Altho air-cooled, Pebble Beds Are Inherently Unsafe

As they depend on millions of perfectly made tennis ball-sized "pebbles". If one of these is defective it could start a graphite fire, as happened in May 1986 in Germany when an experimental pebble bed caught fire and contaminated a 2 km circle around the plant. Germany banned them as "unsafe". They cannot be built with containment buildings as they require LOTS of air and need convection to operate.

NO PEBBLE NUKES.

They also produce 10 times the amount of nuke waste. No thanks.

[Fovea]

20. My understanding was that there have been

at least two generations of newer technology in pebble beds since the 80's.

But the most interesting stuff I have read lately was on z-pinch
EMP technology being able to yeild impressive amounts of energy suplus
in firing with thicker seed wires in the reaction chamber.

In the near future, we will be very heterodox in our energy sources, I suspect.
There may be a magick bullet out their in the energy field, but it will have to be
commoditizable-- unless the current laissez faire energy market paradigm changes to favor aunt Millie.

[Turbineguy]

32. Do the pebble beds

require that periodic burnout that graphite core units do?

[lostnfound]

18. Yet another reason why portable, decentralized technology is better

The more basic human needs that can be met at the family level or community level, the better.

[ErisFiveFingers]

21. Goddess, in her infinite wisdom...

Gave us a path.

She knew that solar is near useless in areas without regular sunlight.

She knew that her magic earth soils provide immense amounts of power, but that power cannot be highly concentrated without risk of danger.

She knew that oil, coal, and other "solar-remant" technologies can only be harvested for as lomg as input does not exceed withdrawal.

She knew that winds, and tides, are irrregular sources of power, and woe unto those who expect uniformity from her.

As a species, we, of course, then totally screwed it all up.

We made alliances, formed commitees, and tried to create a "true. perfect. system.", which is totally contrary to the way goddess works. Rather than building billions of magic earth systems everywhere, we tried to put all of the magic earth in small places, and hurt the goddess when the systems got out of control. Rather than using sunlight in our bright and shiney lands, wind in our windy places, tidal in our tidal places, we dithered about the "true. perfect. system.", and hurt the goddess.

What would I like to see? A small reactor in every home, with solar panels on the top of the house in sunny areas, geothermal sinks (where appropriate) by the house, windmills near where houses have wind, etc.

I think the problem was started when we started thinking of "massive power plants for everybody's needs", rather than "collective power co-op", where each member of the group could use, or deliver, as much power as they wanted/needed.

[Kellanved]

22. France is a special case

Because it ignores EU regulations on energy subsidies. Nuclear power plants are only feasible with government controlled energy service companies/agencies and huge subsidies. Especially they are infeasible in a privatized economy.
Even the Cheney plan (IIRC) lists a demand for additional 350,000 MW, but only funds for 6000 MW nuclear power; i.e. it's a drastic reduction of nuclear power, while stating the contrary (in a way the complete contrary of the German "opt-out"; that one states reduction, but actually causes an increase).
Anyway, even in the "wildest dream" scenario by the nuclear lobby, the share of nuclear power will decrease and not increase. It is unfit to solve the energy problem anyway.

[Dems Will Win]

25. kick

[Bandit]

28. We have a lot of coast line and in fact with Global Warming

it is increasing. We don't need rivers for cooling the reactors we can use salt water. Let's not completely rule out Nuclear energy as it is very clean if we can find a way to deal with the waste. Maybe fire it into the sun or some such but we need to really think about this...

[BrightKnight]

29. "27 Methods of Neutralizing or Disposing of Radioactive Waste"

Yucca Mountain is not the best or only way to deal with nuclear waste.

http://freeenergynews.com/Directory/NuclearRemediation/Vesperman/index.html