Fossil Fuels are Not the Enemy

[sk47]

"The only really feasible situation is a natural disaster that causes too much damage to a specific plant or a few plants in a specific region like Fukushima in Japan. Or unsafe operation like Chernobyl. They're simply not the ticking time bombs you're implying." Quote hobohunter

Hello; We have three examples of such disasters if you add Three Mile Island. Fukushima being the one more puzzling. Built in a region with lots of tectonic activity (Ring of Fire Area) with a history of earthquakes and tidal waves. The engineers put the back up generators in the flood zone.
Can an engineer predict and plan for all such issues? No some natural events can take place which no one plans for. But these things do happen and I think such is the answer when people are against the use of these power plants.
Sure everything you can think of can be planned for, but we do not think of all possible things.

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[shogun32]

The engineers put the back up generators in the flood zone.
Can an engineer predict and plan for all such issues? No some natural events can take place which no one plans for

we do that here too. There was a mad scramble with the Mississippi overlowing a few years ago.

 

[Hobohunter]

"The only really feasible situation is a natural disaster that causes too much damage to a specific plant or a few plants in a specific region like Fukushima in Japan. Or unsafe operation like Chernobyl. They're simply not the ticking time bombs you're implying." Quote hobohunter

Hello; We have three examples of such disasters if you add Three Mile Island. Fukushima being the one more puzzling. Built in a region with lots of tectonic activity (Ring of Fire Area) with a history of earthquakes and tidal waves. The engineers put the back up generators in the flood zone.
Can an engineer predict and plan for all such issues? No some natural events can take place which no one plans for. But these things do happen and I think such is the answer when people are against the use of these power plants.
Sure everything you can think of can be planned for, but we do not think of all possible things.

Yeah, I left Three Mile Island out because it ended up not being quite the catastrophe that the other two did. While the core at TMI-2 did melt down, and some radioactivity was vented to the atmosphere, the melted fuel remained completely in the reactor vessel, and still had the complete and undamaged containment vessel between the reactor vessel and the environment. It was certainly a disaster, and could have been much worse.
The Fukushima plants weren't designed for the severity of the tsunami they encountered. They likely didn't have a location they could have built their generators to withstand what happened, but they certainly could have built the structures that housed the generators to be stronger. My understanding was that those structures were not hardened against pretty much anything.

 

[Hobohunter]

the comment was in regards to the entire electrical system and the precursors, not narrowly on the inputs on a nuclear power plant.

I get what you're saying, but the electrical system as a whole isn't in bad shape either. Sure, California keeps starting fires because their transmission lines keep falling off in high winds, and Texas is about to have rolling outages, but that's more likely an effect of lower than average temperatures and they likely have some generators out for outage work. They're still capable of buying power from outside of Texas, I think, although I'm not sure how "Texas" they were about grid interconnections outside of their state.

 

[Matti777]

After seeing some of the fabulous US Engineering ( such as some projects by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ) I would be surprised if anything had been overlooked but you never know. By the way, some of the new electrical infrastructure in the US has EMP shielding. I am not sure whether we should be happy about this or worried.

 

[Shadow277]

You're probably one of the sheep that thinks a $15 minimum wage is a good idea too.

Nope. It needs to be $25. Roosevelt said businesses don't deserve to operate in this country if they don't pay its employees a living wage. That's why the minimum wage was invented

 

[shogun32]

That's why the minimum wage was invented

Roosevelt was our second "Dear Leader" (in every sense of that phrase) and while it may have sounded like a good idea to the naive and economically illiterate as a way to right the wrong of "Robber Baron" types distorting the value of labor on the backs of an essentially captive workforce, it was quickly perverted into a sop to the unions. In any event it should have been repealed decades ago. There is nothing that resembles Eternal Life on Earth as a gov't program and law.

Your labor is worth only the economic value it provides and not a penny more. If flipping burgers that sell for $5 at a run-rate of $600/hr is only worth $10/hr that is what you get paid. Tough.

I worked 'minimum wage' jobs for 5 years off and on (high school, summers) and yet I got paid considerably more than actual minimum wage because my labor was worth it and in order to attract and retain sufficient talent, minimum wage wouldn't cut it. Yes, back in the day even working for McDonalds actual had a modicum of skill behind it, unlike what the fast-"food" industry has degenerated into. Heck, the various McD around my house were offering 15-17/hr and that was like 8 years ago.

 

[augga]

until heat death of the universe. Or since we terminated our own processing industry, ship it off to the Russians to deal with. There are LOTS of problems with the uranium fuel cycle that does not exist with other fissionable fuels. You can't ever lose water circulation of the spent fuel pool. Which means if the grid goes down you have a spent fuel meltdown. Our reactors are decades past their certified life and the technology is badly outdated. There are better ways to do uranium and we've never implemented it.

We are implementing them in the Westinghouse AP1000 design. It takes all of your points into account. We are just not building enough of them. Currently, only 2 being built in the US. China has 4 producing power.

 

[Matti777]

Nope. It needs to be $25. Roosevelt said businesses don't deserve to operate in this country if they don't pay its employees a living wage. That's why the minimum wage was invented

It sounds like socialism to me.

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Margaret Thatcher

 

[shogun32]

Nope. It needs to be $25.

and Maduro/Chavez declared that beef was going to be $3/lb (not sure on exact price) and there was no beef to be had on the supermarket shelves. NYC has declared rent to be X and amazingly the units available at the price promptly disappeared. and when the gov't forced landlords to have a certain number of units at that price, the landlord just raised the rent on everybody else to cover his losses on the gov't decreed units.

Govt "dictats" and economics is like squeezing silly-putty - a compensating solution is going to emerge somewhere else.

 

[Rogues Gambit]

EV's were tried and failed about 100 or so years ago for the same reason's they'll fail again

Of course, UN2030/Agenda 21/whatever you wanna call it wants us all in big cities and monitored like it's 1984. They'll use EV's to control how far we travel and like the Samsung's or Tesla's, wirelessly control/reduce the range.

More I think about it, more I wanna ditch everything, get an old skool truck without electronics and can be fixed/repaired by my future kids and live somewhere in the woods, aware from everyone

 

[Ishyne22]

Ross, you are entitled to your viewpoints and opinions but this forum does not allow political conversations. We actually had a political sub forum that was removed because many members found it difficult to behave in an respectable manner. That includes name calling. How about we leave that for Facebook And Twitter?

Ira, "Come on maaaan." This thread incites political bias. I don't do Fakebook or Twatter.

 

[shogun32]

We are implementing them in the Westinghouse AP100 design

https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/new-plants/ap1000-pwr/safety
I still find it concerning the spent-fuel pool only has a margin of 72hrs. If there was a gravity-fed system of replenishment (mechanical sluice gate to nearby river/body of water) that could fill it back up great but "the operator will take action to re-fill" strikes me as a whole lotta wishful thinking. Are there problems if the fuel pool water is untreated fresh or even sea water in a pinch?

I love how half of TX windfarms are frozen up solid due to a little cold air. How you like'n your Renewable Power bitches? It's generating ZERO watts for the past week and into next. Though to be fair the biggest oil refinery is going offline this week due to cold temps and even natgas well heads and pipework are freezing. Why is this stuff falling over at a little below freezing temps? We run mines, explore and drill for gas in the friggin' arctic, so just how much money did they save by not weather-hardening essential infrastructure?

Modern man is just friggin' stupid - they think they can economize/optimize to the razor's edge and when that black swan shows up as it always does, millions get to learn what it means to be facing major lifestyle/economic disruption, possible death or ruinous expense as a result.

 

[Matti777]

...so just how much money did they save by not weather-hardening essential infrastructure?...

A lot. For example the refinery I work at has over 14,000 heat trace circuits. I don't know why they shut down but I assume they had no choice. Shutting down is the last thing you want to do when it gets cold. I wonder what their minimum design ambient temp is.

 

[Ishyne22]

Nope. It needs to be $25. Roosevelt said businesses don't deserve to operate in this country if they don't pay its employees a living wage. That's why the minimum wage was invented

Thanks for the history lesson. But... that theory was more realistic a 100 years ago and there's this little thing called inflation.

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