EU Countries Shut Down Nukes Because of DROUGHT!

[Dems Will Win]

This news just unraveled the whole Nuke Industry PR campaign that nukes are the answer to global warming. We know that's total BS now.

Heatwave shuts down nuclear power plants

Sunday July 30, 2006
The Observer


The European heatwave has forced nuclear power plants to reduce or halt production. The weather, blamed for deaths and disruption across much of the continent, has caused dramatic rises in the temperature of rivers used to cool the reactors, raising fears of mass deaths for fish and other wildlife.

Spain shut down the Santa Maria de Garona reactor on the River Ebro, one of the country's eight nuclear plants which generate a fifth of its national electricity. Reactors in Germany are reported to have cut output, and others in Germany and France have been given special permits to dump hot water into rivers to avoid power failures. France, where nuclear power provides more than three quarters of electricity, has also imported power to prevent shortages.

The problems have come to light just weeks after Britain declared it will build a new generation of nuclear power stations, prompting opponents to claim the crisis proved nuclear reactors - although they emit no carbon dioxide greenhouse gases - are not the solution to the problem of global warming.

'The main problem they have is: How are they going to expand nuclear power when they are so vulnerable to such things as global temperature?' said Shaun Burnie, Greenpeace International's nuclear specialist.



http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0%2C%2C1833620%2C00.html

[gasperc]

oh the irony

mother nature has a plan, get rid of humans

[donsu]

1. tick, tick, tick

nt

[NNadir]

2. See post #11:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x62220#62302

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. That's not entirely true.

The problem is that these plants weren't designed with these conditions in mind. It is completely possible to build nuclear plants that are not subject to this problem. A lot of it just has to do with citing them correctly.

[Dems Will Win]

4. Problem is you have to close the ones

we already have. That's over 300 Gigawatts worldwide. Plus where does the waste go? And the nuclear fuel cycle puts out TONS of CO2. Nukes are not the answer to gloabl warming.

The new solar breakthrough of concentrating PV is, fortunately.



Take a good look and bid nukes goodbye. Needs only 1 acre per megawatt and this baby can makes TONS of hydrogen instead of electricity.

[NNadir]

8. This is nonsense.

The fact that you are indifferent to the world's most dangerous form of waste, carbon dioxide, doesn't mean that so called "nuclear waste" is dangerous, nor does it make solar energy a promising form of energy.

In general when people make statements like, "And the nuclear fuel cycle puts out TONS of CO2. Nukes are not the answer to gloabl warming," they are making stuff up. I very much doubt that you have any insight whatsoever into the nuclear fuel cycle.

As for the big bad renewable industry that could do this and could do that, I note that massive ignorance about scale is killing everybody on the face of the planet. Making stuff up in this regard is not going to be useful - it is going to make things much, much, much worse.

Here is an exhaustive account of the progress of renewables in the United States that I just finished posting.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x62456

If you think you can knock off dangerous natural gas with renewables, do so. We'd all be happy. On the other hand big words about renewables for decades have only delivered a severe global climate change crisis. Whether the renewable fantasy can even knock off natural gas remains an open question.

The fact is that nuclear energy is not perfect, but it is so vastly superior to fossil fuels it cannot even be comprehended. It is a form of mass delusion that the case is even considered. It seems very possible that we are all going to die without nuclear energy.

This is an emergency for grown ups to handle, not the spoiled children at Greenpeace.

[Dems Will Win]

10. You mean the grown-ups who did not realize

global warming would cause droughts that would shut the nukes, yet they still push them as a solution for global warming? The grownups who said nuclear power "would be too cheap to meter"?

It's Greenpeace that are the grownups and the NRC, Bush and Cheney who are the kindergartners here.

Also the report on the nuclear fuel cycle emitting tons of CO2 is irrefutable:

The production of electricity by nuclear reactors, as long as rich uranium ores are still available, leads to considerably less CO2-emission than does the use of fossil fuels for the purpose. In the course of time, as the rich ores become exhausted and poorer and poorer ores are perforce used, continuing use of nuclear reactors for electricity generation will finally result in the production of more CO2 than if fossil fuels were to be burned directly. In this revision we have given, in Chapter 2, a complete, up-to-date overview of all of the known or presumed uranium ore bodies, and the amount of net energy that burning them would deliver. In our original website we had estimated that using these resources to exhaustion would provide only three years of electrical energy at the present world rate of electricity use. In this revision, this estimate has been raised to about four years, partly because the data on the reserves is much more complete than it was a few years ago.

These are the salient results of the research reported on this website.The technical background of these is presented in an introduction and five chapters which can o be downloaded for study from the table of contents below.

The remarkable conclusion of this research might prompt one to ask how it was possible that an entire energy industry was built up when in fact, using all available resources, it could only provide such a small amount of electrical power. There are two reasons that may explain this remarkable fact, one arising from unrealistic, and easy to refute, assumptions concerning the (energetic) yield of nuclear power and the other on an (up to the present) unjustified technological optimism.

The first is that the full energy content of the 0.71% 235U in natural uranium could be converted into electricity (with essentially no losses, except for the unavoidable loss when heat energy is converted into electrical energy). As our calculations show, this is a far cry from reality. The magnitude of the costs of this conversion become clear when the energy costs of energy production are taken into account. These costs are discussed qualitatively in the various chapter of the document. Without going into details at this point, we mention that the largest unavoidable energy cost is that of mining and milling the uranium ores. To calculate this we use only the data on these processes provided by the industry itself. The rich ores that are at present exploited need very little energy for exploitation, but the useful energy content of these ores is quite small (under the assumption that only the 235U is "burned"). When they are exhausted the energy needed for the exploitation of leaner ores will require more input energy from fossil fuels than the nuclear power-plant will provide, so that a nuclear power-plant would become a complicated, expensive and inefficient gas burner.

The second, even more optimistic, assumption made at the birth of nuclear energy was that fast-neutron breeder reactors would very soon be developed that could convert the 99.3% 238U in natural uranium to 239Pu (an isotope of which does not exist in nature, and which is the explosive used in one type of nuclear bomb), which would then be used as fuel in nuclear reactors. Immense amounts of money and energy have been invested to no avail in attempts to develop fast-neutron breeder reactors in the last half century. We make no prediction about the eventual possiblity of breeding. At present it seems to be a technological failure. If that situtation continues we can look back on a wasted half a century in which mankind, for much lower cost, could have instead developed truly sustainable energy sources.

In 2003 we added a Rebuttal (Click here to download ) to the documents on the site. This document refutes criticism that was placed on the web by the nuclear industry (The World Nuclear Association, WNA, www.world-nuclear.org), in an attempt to discredit the conclusions reached in an earlier version of this website. Every point of criticism is completely refuted with facts and calculations, all based on publications of the industry itself. It is unpleasant to have to note that some of the criticism was based on apparently deliberate misquotation of our text.

http://www.stormsmith.nl/

By the way, I work for an energy company, so I'm no child, either.

[NNadir]

11. Look, if I lived by reading Stormsmith's self referential nonsense

I'd only be demonstrating only that I have a poor comprehension of energy.

The scientific literature contains many hundreds of thousands of references to the nuclear fuel cycle and world wide interest is being shown in many countries in seriously addressing global climate change through the expansion of nuclear power. The IPCC, the International Panel on Global Climate Change writes extensively on the nuclear power in the mitigation sections of its scenarios and still day after day after day of actually giving a shit about global climate change in the midst of a tremendous obvious breakdown of the climate I'm still hearing the same old trivial shit from StormSmith and Greenpeace.

The mere fact that you are even focusing on a matter like nuclear energy shows that you are clueless. The mere fact that you are not writing to discuss the coal fuel dumping shows that you are incompetent to comprehend what is happening.

Do you have any comprehension, any at all, at what the capacity utilization of France's nuclear stations was in 2003, the last vast heat wave that killed over 50,000 people in Europe? Do you think that France shut down? What was the energy production via nuclear means in France, which produced 77% of its electricity via nuclear means in 2003? Give me the number in any units, billions of kilowatt-hours, thousands of million kilowatt-hours, or my favorite, exajoules.

The anti-nuclear position is the pro-coal position. It is an appeal to ignorance. It is the equivalent of spectators standing outside a burning building and yelling to the firemen that the water from the hoses might drown someone.

If you work in an energy company, I'm going to guess that either it's in the marketing arm of a "solar will save us" company, or some other non-engineering function. You clearly have not heard, for instance of the second law of thermodynamics, for instance and are technically oblivious.

[Dems Will Win]

13. I don't think I'm totally oblivious, or if I was, I was not aware of it

Seriously, well yes the French nukes did not shut down in the third year of the drought, but this year they are powering down some and illegally raising the water temperature because the fourth year of the drought is considerably worse. So there is no point to your statement about last uear.

By the way, the heat wave in Europe is supposed to return soon. The point is what happens in the fifth, sixth and seventh years if global warming as proceeds as predicted.

I agree with you about coal and natural gas being something to end--to think I'm pro-coal or the enviromental side pro-coal is bizzare.

We may need some natural gas unfortunately in the transition but a MIXTURE of renewables, including hydro--which could be bumped a few hundred gigawatts worldwide--and we need the new solar and wind turbine breakthroughs.

Plus there has been a HUGE breakthrough in tidal power. You really should look into that. I think you will be impressed. They just anchor these big turbines to the bottom and the tidal currents run'em all the time on high--backwards and forwards. Big contracts were just signed on these, like 500 MW contracts.

It's breakthroughs like this that are easier and quicker to research, perfect and produce--and in fact the Concentrating PV breakthrough, the Clipper Wind Turbine breakthrough and now the Tidal Power breakthrough all change the old equations and make renewables competitive with fossil fuel.

The new CPV for example is 640 MW per square mile. There's an awful lot of square miles of desert in the Southwest, that is cheap and would produce competitive CPV power. And it would be peak power, on hot sunny days, when we now use diesels to run the extra air-conditioning load.

We do have to get out of the low capacity renewables age and into the high capacity renewables age. The market for cleantech, by the way, is now suddenly enormous, with Venture Capital firms creating Cleantech Funds everywhere.

And the definition of Cleantech for those funds does not typically include nuclear power, legally, in the description of the fund itself.

Volley and serve!

[NNadir]

18. Well, I'm not so sanguine about waiting for "breakthroughs."

You don't get it at all, do you?

Maybe you think that this weak shit in the face of a vaste catastrophe is new?

Referenced in my journal is a paper entitled "A Half Century of Long-Range Energy Forecasts: Journal of Fusion Energy," which details 50 years of wishful thinking.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NNadir/16

Also in my journal, although with many salient energy remarks, that are reality based and do not consist of useless crap that everyone wants to hear is the energy flow chart, which I will now produce:



Meanwhile I note that you cannot produce one person killed by the storage of what you will call "dangerous nuclear waste," nor do you have even a close (or even remote) comprehension of the systematic Vaterfall study of the carbon dioxide impacts of various forms of energy.

For the record bub, in 2003, the year of the heat wave that killed 50,0000 Europeans, France produced 419.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity via nuclear means, the second highest amount it ever produced, 2004 being the highest. So much for the intellectually ridiculous claim that nuclear power plants shut down in heat waves.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls

But I want to focus on the 50,000 dead, and not the billions of kilowatt-hours.

You come to us, at an hour when the northern hemisphere is clearly under extreme distress, when world agriculture is at the precipe of destruction, when our basic ability to survive is in question, and you offer us platitudes about more research? Have you no sense, at long last, of decency?

Let me tell you about decency, since you are as clueless about that as you are about energy. What the most decent people do is to accept risks to themselves for the greater good. Is nuclear power risk free? No, it is not. It is risk minimized but not risk free. Do you have any clue about a system that is better? No you do not. You have no information about the environmental impact of putative tidal systems, and still you stand before a dying world and announce that this non-response should be taken seriously, that everyone on the planet should put their lives in this ill informed faith of yours.

There is no evidence at all that nuclear energy is particularly dangerous when compared to any of the fossil fuels, including the natural gas which you so blithely announce we may need. Give me a break. Natural gas isn't killing people in some grand idolized future populated with cute tidal systems. It is killing people RIGHT NOW. Today. Currently. Immediately.

The other day I was poking around at MIT's website, and I came across the impressive young woman Lisa Stiles-Shell, who heads the International Youth Nuclear Congress.

http://web.mit.edu/nse/

I was thus lead to the Congress's website that includes these remarks, which measure, in part, my level of disgust with the kind of distorted thinking that says "nuclear plants can't operate on hot days..." and so we should bet the farm on so and so's favorite renewable strategy. I quote:

Stockholm, 19 June 2006: The International Youth Nuclear Congress (IYNC), a large and growing network of young nuclear professionals from across the world launched a Declaration today urging world leaders to: acknowledge the contribution that nuclear energy makes – as part of an overall energy mix that includes renewables - to combating climate change...

...The Declaration emphasises the need to dispense with the ideological arguments, false assumptions and non-scientific approach that has hindered the nuclear debate so far.

Nuclear energy still produces the kind of ill-informed, incredibly dangerous possibly universally fatal response of the type that characterizes this thread. Ms. Stiles-Shell, an MIT trained nuclear engineer, should be free to work, with what is probably a brilliant mind, on giving humanity it's best shot by doing what she is trained to do. Instead she finds herself in the distracting task of confronting abysmal ignorance.

You may think that the crisis is a cute game of tennis - no doubt because you are typical of the middle-class sort (read Greenpeace members) of elitists who insist, between ice teas at the country club - that the discussion of global climate change is also a game, with "points scored" and "volleys made."

It isn't a game. The future of all humanity is clearly at stake. NOW. RIGHT FUCKING NOW. In this context this entire conversation fills me with moral revulsion.

[jpak]

15. Nonsense

How many nuclear power plants have been ordered by US utilities over the last 30 years???

(zero)

How many US nuclear plants have been canceled since 1973???

(110)

How much did those cancellations cost???

(at least $112 billion)

How much will Yucca Mountain cost????

($65 billion and rising)

How much of this will the nuclear industry pay???

($28 billion)

Who will pick up the difference????

(taxpayers)

How many billions of dollars did Dick Cheney's Energy Bill throw at the nuclear power industry to build 6 new nuclear plants (6000 MW)????

($12 billion)

How many have been ordered????

(zero)

If they are built, when will these new nuclear plants come on line????

(2015 at the earliest)

How many states have enacted Renewable Portfolio Standards????

(22 and rising)

How much new renewable power capacity was installed in the US last year????

(more than 2700 MW)

How much new renewable power capacity will be built in the US by 2015????

(>24,000 MW)

So by 2015, the US **might** add 6000 MW of new nuclear capacity (which would just barely keep pace with reactor retirements) and most certainly will add 24,000 MW of new renewable power capacity (that would actually displace fossil-fired power plants).

The bottom line is this...

Nuclear power won't save us.

Renewables will.

period.

[truebrit71]

16. Maybe we should leave it to the grown-ups at the NRC? I don't think so....

NO NUKES!!!

[NNadir]

19. You may as well write NO LIFE!!!!!!

Do you have any clue what kind of training it takes to work on the NRC?

[truebrit71]

20. NO NUKES!

.

[NNadir]

21. No brains.

[truebrit71]

22. What a clever response...

:eyes:

Does Three-Mile Island ring a bell? No? How about Chernobyl? Sound familiar yet?

Dead simple really, NO NUKES.

[NNadir]

23. Does 5 million air pollution deaths ring a bell?

You really are DEAD simple to think that there is any risk free form of energy.

Here is a simple fact: If you are anti-nuclear, you are pro-coal.

One hundred thousand people could die next year in China from coal each year and you will not even cloud your eyes in response. But man, you will cry for decades over thirty-one people killed at Chernobyl and act like it's the fucking end of the world.

The world may end. And if and when it does, one of the big things that will cause it will be ignorance, including the special case of innumeracy through selective attention.

Choke on this one baby: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update42.htm and then come back and tell me whatever it is that you claim to know about Chernobyl.

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

www.externe.info

Every nuclear power plant that is not built represents murder.

[truebrit71]

24. Pro-Coal..?? What Solar and wind energy doesn't work anymore?

Interesting.....

[NNadir]

25. Actually, no, they don't, not on a scale to replace coal.

If you know anything about energy - and let's face it you don't - you recognize immediately that these intermittent forms of energy are too small and too inconsistent to provide significant relief from global climate change.

The solar cell was invented in 1954, three years before the first commercial nuclear reactor. For the last 14 years the percentage of electricity provided by solar energy has remained at a fairly constant 0.014% of total electrical production.

Thus the case can be made that solar doesn't work, at least on sufficient scale.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NNadir/19

Everybody loves solar. Everybody loves wind. I do too. But this is a fucking emergency. The planet is dying and yes ANYONE WHO PRETENDS THAT SOLAR AND WIND IS ENOUGH AND NUCLEAR MUST BE BANNED IS PRO-COAL.

Period.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

26. I've changed my mind on this issue over the years.

I used to be opposed to nuclear energy for some of the usual reasons, and some of my own. But the situation as I see it now, wrt our knowledge of climate change, is radically different than it was even five or ten years ago. Unfortunately, it has turned out that the more alarmist climatologists turned out to be right - or in some cases not even alarmist enough.

I'm an amateur geologist. I'm used to thinking in terms of slow change over time. What we've seen in the world of climatology in the last five years has been shocking to me. I used to laugh at myself for thinking that the more serious consequences of global warming were something I'd ever live to see. I viewed that position as a necessary evil, to get selfish people to think about it as a problem they and not their children or grandchildren would face.

I was very, very wrong. Hell, a lot of climatologists were wrong. It is very weird for me to find myself in a position of supporting massive nuclear fusion investment and development, but that's where I'm at. I honestly see no other way. We have very little time to sort this out, and I don't see any other politically tenable strategy right now.

[NNadir]

27. That about sums up my attitude.

I've educated myself over the last decades about nuclear energy.

It's nowhere near as bad as advertised.

Without using this resource, we have very little hope of keeping the world together.

[truebrit71]

29. Hmm, I am anti-nuke but not pro-coal....

..sorry to burst your bubble....

[NNadir]

30. You don't get it. This is a black and white issue.

You are one of those people, apparently, who believes that energy is created by magic.

It is black and white. There is no third scalable option for continuous on demand energy. It's either nuclear or fossil fuels.

I have demonstrated with something which you are apparently unfamiliar - it's called data - that appeals to something like "solar and wind" in the current context is purely absurd.

You may represent yourself any way you wish. George W. Bush probably has a record of himself calling himself "pro-peace." But the defacto effect of what you say when you say NO NUKES is YES COAL.

[truebrit71]

32. The only defacto effect here is that you choose to engage in personal...

..attacks when I am simply espousing my own view. No nukes does NOT equate to PRO-coal.

So go ahead and take your sanctimonious data and shove it where the sun doesn't shine, m'kay?

If you attack me again I will have to bring this to the attention of the Mods.

Have a nice day.

[NNadir]

35. If you wish to interpret my statements as a personal attack, you are free

to do so. There is nothing personal about it I am merely stating that in order to anti-nuclear one must be pro-coal. Again this argument depends on what I have already noted, there are only two forms of generation of continuous scalable energy, nuclear and fossil fuels.

If you wish to bring this exchange to the attention of the mods, please feel free to do so. I think they have better things to do, but maybe you don't.

To the extent that I have introduced personal issues, I have merely noted that your representation of yourself does not hold water. The issue is either/or, and not "both." You cannot simultaneously be anti-nuclear and anti-coal, any more than you can be for against peace and against war.

I am not surprised that you can find data "sanctimonious." Most people who shout slogans like "no nukes" object to data. Nor am I surprised that you wish to "shove it (the data) where the sun doesn't shine." The anti-nuclear argument consists entirely of elevating gut feelings over scientific data and denying data.

Unfortunately the matter of global climate change will not be solved by pretending data is irrelevant.

Here, for anyone who is interested in data, is a discussion of nuclear energy by 8 physicists at Australia's University of Melbourne:

http://www.nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/FullSummary

I find this web site realistic and informative.

[sendero]

36. I've read your posts here...

... and basically I agree with you to a point. "Renewable" energy sources cannot begin to replace our fossil fuel generated power, not now, probably not ever. I'm not wild about nuclear power, but alternatives are not realistic.

But there is one thing I'd ask you to consider. We WASTE enormous amounts of energy. Very little effort is put into dealing with that IMHO. And the only thing that is going to change that is simple - market forces.

In the not very distant future energy in the form of electricity is going to get very very expensive. Too expensive for everyone to cool their sieve houses to 75 degrees in the summer and 74 degrees in the winter.

Too expensive to run 500 watts of Christmas lights 6 weeks of the year. Too expensive to run "toaster ovens" that have no insulation and are equivalent to blowing a hair dryer on a piece of bread.

The many ways we WASTE energy is shameful.

[NNadir]

37. I agree. Conservation is an important element of dealing with global

climate change, an essential element.

Some routes to conservation are to be preferred to other. Conservation through deprivation is only to be preferred to conservation through mass die off.

I am of the opinion that the last option is a very real possibility.

An appeal to the very real environmental benefits of nuclear energy must not be misconstrued as an appeal to the indiscriminate use of energy. It is still important, as the saying goes, to live simply so that others may simply live.

[BreweryYardRat]

31. *claps hands*

Amen. I'm a big fan of nuclear energy, because it's the best large-scale method available to us right now. In the future, we might be able to get giant solar and wind farms running to help with power generation, but nuclear energy is it for the moment.

The "WAAAAHHHH NUKES BAD" crowd needs to realize that the odds of a nuclear disaster are extremely small, especially with modern technology (as opposed to the systems at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl), while the odds of global warming fucking up the planet are 1:1. If we'd had Democrats in power 1980-1992, we'd probably have more nuclear plants up and running. Big Oil's puppets back then, Reagan and Bush I, fucked that up, and so has Bush II in the present day. (NNadir, correct me if I'm wrong.)

[truebrit71]

33. Yeah, okay, so building a series of nuclear reactors by the LOWEST BIDDING

..contractor makes perfect sense...After all if a coal powered plant goes bang it's potential damage zone is soooooooo much larger than if a nuclear reactor goes bang....

Oh no, wait..... :eyes:

[One_Life_To_Give]

9. Cooling towers can be retrofitted

Most of the Nuke plants around the world could have additional cooling capacity added, if it was needed. It's not nearly as cheap as using an available supply of water, but easy enough to do.

The solar design is interesting. But to be more than an insignifivcant source we would need 10,000acres of these in California alone. Which is not likely to be acheived within the next 10 years.

[BelgianMadCow]

5. Here's what happened in Belgium - some perspective

It was reported here that as the coolant water drawn from streams heated up, the cooling power of that water obviously went down.
Therefore, reactors had to reduce the heat (and thus, energy) production in order to still get by with the available cooling capacity.

It shows a degree of vulnerability, but for example through installing higher or more efficient heat exchange capacity, this could be tackled.

Just saying. I mainly concluded one more sign of global warming, July has been exceptional over here. Although I voted green, I'm also an engineer and I find a lot of the discussions about nuclear energy irrational.

But what I'm really for, is more solar & wind energy, over here they only account for a couple % of production.
Wind mills seem to be continuously built wherever I go in Europe.

[Dems Will Win]

6. Not irrational:

Global Warming means more droughts, nukes will have to shut down or lower power, much-vaunted generating capacity numbers thus mean nothing for the future!

Waste has nowhere to go, even Yucca can't open now.

Major nukes take too long to permit, takes 2 years to pay back fossil fuel in construction and the nuclear fuel cycle means every nuke plant ends up causing the emission of 1/3 Greenhouse Gas as does a combined cycle Natural Gas plant.

Nukes make no sense in a war on terror. Too easy a target, especially the fuel rod storage pools! The industry won't even put the stuff into dry casks to be safer. Why? Profit--the fucking bastards.

Not irrational--facts.

[Selatius]

12. Nuke plants could be retrofitted to handle warmer water at the same time..

you could pursue more solar and wind. Countries like France are not going to totally dump nuclear reactors because they have no shortage of uranium, nor are they in the problem position of pissing off the Middle East. The "War on Terror" is a problem the US brought upon itself, and the Europeans have been rather determined not to get involved in that stupidity.

[One_Life_To_Give]

7. Also Coal, Oil and Gas

This is not unique to nuclear, though the authors of this article seem to want you to beleive that.
The electric generation system was not desinged to run at the current demand with the prevailing climate conditions. Whether they should have been designed for full output power at the current stream flows and ambient temperatures is the real question.

[NashVegas]

14. TVA Shut Down a Reactor Yesterday

Watts Barr. They said it was due to generator - not safety - problems.

[Igel]

17. Oddly, the posts in response have been split.

While drought could be a problem, it's not the problem in this article.

Redesigning cooling towers would fix the problem in this case. In the case of drought, I suspect a quick redesign would be difficult.

I think a few nuclear plants have ponds or lakes that they use as giant swamp coolers: they pull in water, use it as a coolant, and chuck it back out to cool. As long as the original source of water wasn't all dried up, this would still work.

I remember discussion of some sites decades back: surface water was cleaner, but of less certain supply; ocean water was cooler and more abundant, but corrosive. Perhaps advancements in anti-corrosive coatings would make them more reliable; didn't I hear about a proposed sea-based Russian nuclear station?

[Dems Will Win]

28. kick

[warrens]

34. Silly lieberal

Don't you know that the only "problem" global warming will cause is that we'll all have nicer tans and more beach days? You people are such PESSIMISTS. Global warming is your friend. And stop saying it has anything whatsoever to do with the internal combustion engine, you oil company haters.

[BeHereNow]

38. The ultimate energy solution- return to indigenous ways.

How ever did folks get along with out electricity?
Fact is, they did, and I vote for survival of the fittest
at this point.
We have whacked this poor mother Earth senseless
for the last hundred years.
I think it is time that she whack us back and it looks to me
like global warming is her whacking stick.

And yes, I have lived with out electricity before.
I did just fine, as a matter of fact it was
one of the happiest times of my life.

BHN

[rodeodance]

39. glad to see they are taking precautions.