Poll: Nuclear power

[Stan]

Back in the '80s, there was talk of putting in a hydro dam in one of the valleys that would produce electricity during the day, and pump water at night to fill the dam.  It didn't get off the ground, but sounds like the kind of solution you are suggesting. 

Yes we had one of those, one of my first things to do on a graveyard shift was buy a gigawatt to pump with. I got it from Arizona utilities that could not get their generation down low enough to match thier load. They'd start out selling it for the cost of production, but if you put the arm on them they'd sell it at a loss, just to avoid the inadvertant. We'd use it the next day for peaking. Tell those folks at Salt River etc., that reducing lighting load at night was the way to solve their energy problem. 

[Linda]

  Go Tom! smiley_clapping

[mometal77]

I said no,
i could go on and on about this and all the state agencies.  I grew up with a hydro electric plant 25kw my dad build by himself. And we tried to get a two megawatt restarted that was abandoned.  Its a joke there is so much potential for having renewable energy out there maybe why in foreign countries its easier to accomplish and without all the agencies. In russia nuclear power plants on ships connected to the mainland.   And with all the waste i agree with some of the guys out there this is a big problem russia has one of the worst dumps in the world look at hanford in washington state they put old subs in steel 3 inch boxes. And we wonder why the north pole melts at a rate of 1.5 inches a yr that study was done by noaa.  Also look at that nuclear sub that was cut in half after a hydrogen peroxide leak killed everyone on board and they just cut the nuclear part and left it on the bottom of the ocean.
bob

[DR Buck]

I vote yes....


I have two (2) conventional oil/natural gas fired power plants in my back yard.    The 1st went in 2 1/2 years ago, the second went on line this past winter.   The farthest away is 1.1 miles, the other is about 3/4 mile away.


I'd trade them for e nuclear plant any day.

[rbarshaw]

Nuclear power is good. I've spent 20 years in the nuclear power field in the Navy and find that most people are (for lack of a better word and not meaning to insult anyone) ignorant of the whole thing, and misinformed, and just plain don't understand it, therefore are afraid of it. And as far as the waste goes, the stuff is not something that is new or wasn't there before, it's been removed (lowering the general background rad level)from the environment, processed, used to generate power (with the safest record of any type of power generating system), then the waste is processed and stored, also here the rad levels of the result are lower than if the stuff had just been left out in the environment to start with, just concentrated in one spot, and someone will find a use for the waste in the future.

Ok' with all that, where do I vote? I can't find it because of the glow I give off.

No seriously, Where do I vote 'yes' at?

[DR Buck]

rbarshaw,

My son is a reactor operator on a Nuc sub.  As I type this, he is somewhere under the Atlantic pushing his boat through the water with "excited atoms"!

As before , I vote YES Even in my back yard.

[dave7191]

I have to agree about voting for Tom When the draft was ended I thought that was the best thing that ever happen, Boy was I wrong!

[rbarshaw]

rbarshaw,

My son is a reactor operator on a Nuc sub.  As I type this, he is somewhere under the Atlantic pushing his boat through the water with "excited atoms"!

As before , I vote YES Even in my back yard.

That's what I used to be a Reactor Operator on several different Nuc Subs, Also was a Nuclear Planner and, an instructor for Reactor Operators.

[Furby]

Here are a couple pics of the Ludington Pumped Storage Plant near Ludington, MI.






Link

Stats:
27 billion gallon reservoir
2.5 miles long
1 mile wide
110' deep
can generate enough electricity for a city of 1.4 million people.......in just minutes!
the facility's six reversible turbines pump water 363 feet uphill from Lake Michigan to an 842-acre reservoir at night.
the turbines are rated at 433,000 horsepower

Basicly just a big battery that can be tapped into during high demand.
Power from an outside source is still needed to fill the reservoir back up for the next use.

[mometal77]

http://www.nuclear.com/n-plants/index-Floating_N-plants.html
good link

April 26, 2005
Life After Chernobyl
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4485003.stm
http://www.llrc.org/belarusokeanov.htm
http://www.llrc.org/index.html

I was at a voe tech and became best friends with a retired gentleman from the coast guard.  Now he is a merchant marine.  Lot of stories had coffee every day with him.  Did you know the first russian nuclear propelled ship killed everyone on board and they let it drift for five yrs till they actually did somthing about it.  What sickens me with chernobyl not just with the dna and passing it down to kids is the only major helper/contributor is ireland.
bob
deming,wa

[Stan]

quote]

Ah yes but terribly inefficient, you only get back 60% of the energy you used for pumping.

[Furby]

They don't really care, as they are useing left over off peak power to fill it back up.
As was mentioned before, you can't simply shut down a power plant when the power is not needed.
Hydro can be shut down. These "batteries" are great for overcoming the peak load issue, with out having more plants online 24/7.
The real issue would show up if there were a lot of these 'batteries". There would have to be more fossil fuel/nuke plants online to cover the pumping needs. Solar don't work too well in the dark, and the winds tend to slow at night, thus leaveing those options out to provide pumping power for the batteries.

As things are now, we need more power! I don't see any real large scale innovations in power production coming about for several decades.....maybe even longer. The biomass, trash burners, wind farms, solar farms, and the others are real options, but think how many we would needed to increase production to keep up with the growing demand and try to phase out the fossile fuel/nuke plants.
It just won't happen for a long time and in the mean time we need to increase production.

I'm not saying I want a nuke plant in my backyard, and we put up a hard fight to stop them from putting in a natural gas plant a half mile from here, but I REALLY like being able to throw a switch and see where I'm going at night! ;)

[rpg52]

Didn't vote, but would have voted no.  Nuclear power is only for people who never make mistakes.  I don't know anyone like that.  Chernobyl will be too dangerous to approach for longer than there have been nations, seems like a dumb risk to take to keep your electric blanket warm.  Just my $0.02.
Ray

[Stan]

They don't really care, as they are useing left over off peak power to fill it back up.
As was mentioned before, you can't simply shut down a power plant when the power is not needed.

I'm glad that you grasp the idea of minimum loads at thermal plants, many don't seem to. The reason that thermal plants can't be cycled on and off like hydro plants is the thermal stress on the turbine metals. Thermal plant longivety in not measured in years but in the number of heating/cooling cycles.
Nukes can't economically operate at anything other than full load as the fuel decays at the same rate reguardless of the power output. The construction of nukes allows the construction of more pumped storage plant for peaking power. People don't want the plant in their vicinity, but they sure want the electricity that it develops. Long distance transmission of power has its issues as well.  :P