gumsh0e’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Amazingdrx said

  "More energy trapped in the atmosphere means more storms and more extreme weather events.  that means more wind.  Energy available in the wind increases with the cube of wind speed."

  Nice theory, but I'm not sure what you are implying. Winds are created as the result of uneven heating of the Earth's surface. Are you saying we can therefore expect more wind in the Summer and Fall, when electricity demand is light, that we just use to pump water (inefficiently) into reservoirs until Summer? Also, PV is not yet cost competitive and is not a serious option.On Nuclear plants require lots of water in an increasingly dry world posted 2 years ago 28 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  There are lots of ways to design nuclear reactors.

  Some lend themselves to weapons-grade plutonium production more than others. For example, light water reactors, which are the type most often used for electricity production, are not proliferation threats. The world's governments are concerned about Iran's uranium centrifuges, which are buried deep underground to fend off attacks. But Iran is also building a conventional light water power reactor that nobody talks or cares about because extracting bomb-grade plutonium from them is somewhere between impractical and impossible. Likewise, several years ago the United States, Japan, and South Korea offered to build a light water reactor in North Korea in exchange for dismantling their graphite-moderated reactor, which is where North Korea got their plutonium.

  A fast reactor design described in Scientific American a year or so ago doesn't require enriched uranium fuel and would recycle the fuel in a way that doesn't separate the plutonium from the other actinides, such that it both burns the long-lived isotopes and makes the recycled fuel worthless as a bomb material. Win-Win.

  So, we've dispelled the myth that nuclear plants inherently require lots of cooling water, creates waste that we must wait millenia to decay, and is by definition a proliferation threat. What's next? On Nuclear plants require lots of water in an increasingly dry world posted 2 years ago 28 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  What us neo-con nuclear hugger nutbags have in

  mind for the spent fuel (aka "waste") long term is to burn it. Although the fuel can be reprocessed and reused in the current light-water reactor designs, there are limitations. Fast reactors, on the other hand, can burn the fuel down to the nub, so to speak, including the long-lived isotopes, such that only relatively short-lived radioactive ashes remain. The waste from those reactors will decay exponentially down to nothing in just a couple centuries. Yucca Mountain is safe, it just isn't approved. Rather than being a "dump", I view it as more like a warehouse.On Nuclear plants require lots of water in an increasingly dry world posted 2 years ago 28 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  PVs Affected by Smog?

  I believe haze and smog often accompany heat waves because of a lack of wind to blow away. For urban PV arrays, I suspect it could also have an effect.On Nuclear plants require lots of water in an increasingly dry world posted 2 years ago 28 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  The Reasons Nuclear Plants Were Cancelled

  were largely tied to the 1973 and subsequent Oil Crises. The Oil Embargo triggered high inflation that lasted many years. That made financing nuclear plants difficult. It also resulted in a recession that reduced the projected demand for new capacity. For some countries, like France and Japan, concerns over the lack of domestic energy resources outweighed the immediate economic ones and they built up their nuclear fleets in response. The United States, on the other hand, has abundant coal and ready access to natural gas, so it only made economic sense to choose them over nuclear when the decision to cut projects was made. The past few decades have seen tame inflation rates, and the Fed is constantly learning from past mistakes, but the current sub-prime mortgage mess has yet to fully play out and there is admittedly always the potential for something to occur that throws the economy into an inflationary skid again.   On Nuclear plants require lots of water in an increasingly dry world posted 2 years ago 28 Responses