as the climate breaks down (largely from the
lack of use of nuclear power) many areas are experiencing temperatures for which their infrastructure was not designed.
It is immediately obvious that any thermal system
can be cooled
if the heat exchanger is large enough. However the cost of heat exchangers adds cost to power.
Anti-nuclear activists, most of whom don't know shit from shinola and who operate by intellectual fraud, will try, as usual, to pretend that this problem is
limited to nuclear power plants, but the situation holds for
their real alternative, which is coal. Of course, this is another example of "nuclear exceptionalism" which is the
lie that a situation that applies to
all energy is only important in the nuclear case. The most notorious such misrepresentation is the question of waste. The pro-coal anti-nuclear lobby doesn't want you to recognize that nobody knows how to make coal waste safe, the worst coal waste being carbon dioxide.
The difference between nuclear and coal, however is clear. Coal makes the probability of high temperatures
worse whereas nuclear energy is essentially climate neutral.
The short term solution will be unfortunate, which is to exceed output temperatures. I note that many rivers are already warm from the
air around them. Many rivers will also become warmer as the glaciers feeding them disappear. In that case, of course, the rivers themselves may disappear.
For
continuous scalable power there are two primary options: Coal and nuclear.
Both of these options require a thermal gradient. Both can have their
efficiency raised, paradoxically by raising their internal temperature - in general to the temperatures of super critical water - but the second law of thermodynamics
still requires a thermal gradient.
In saying that there are only two options for
continuous power, I am ignoring a third option that is
situationally available, the renewable energy option of geothermal energy. Geothermal energy also requires a thermal gradient.
Geothermal energy, which oddly enough has been restricted in some cases by environmental concerns, is an under utilized resource. One of the big problems with it has been access to cooling
water.
In reviewing my tenure here - I am approaching 10,000 posts - one of the posts of which I'm most proud is that which talked about the geothermal situation in the Salton Sea area.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NNadir/1 The point I'd like to drive home is that thermal output energy can be made
useful. This scheme is known as co-generation, and represents one of the most outstanding opportunities for energy conservation known. Great progress has been made industrially with co-generation, but much more remains to be done.