Can Nuclear Power Take The Heat?
Can Nuclear Power Take The Heat? The New Republic -Bradford Plumer 7 July 09 Via Climate Progress, the London Times reports that France’s nuclear fleet is once again running into water and heat trouble during the summer……………………….These summer shutdowns are becoming more and more common, and don’t bode well for the future, given that temperatures in Europe have been creeping up faster than the global average, according to a recent European Environmental Agency report, and will almost certainly keep climbing as the world warms. Some countries, like France, Germany, and Spain, have responded to this problem in the past by overriding their own environmental laws and allowing plants to dump hotter water into the rivers—the downside is that this can cause considerable damage to river life.
Nor is this just Europe’s problem: In 2006, Exelon had to cut the power at a nuclear plant in Illinois when the Mississippi River got too warm to be used as cooling water. According to the recent NOAA synthesis report on climate-change impacts in the United States, one of the things we can expect to see across the country in the coming decades is a much greater frequency of hotter-than-90°F (32°C) days—precisely the point at which France’s plants keep running into trouble. Meanwhile, as the AP reported last year, if droughts become more frequent, that could mean additional trouble for nearly one-quarter of the nation’s nuclear plants.
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This Month
Doncha get sick of all the nuclear hype? Meanwhile, where it’s really all happening is in truly CLEAN energy!
(This month on our Action page: 1. UK: Block the Builders is a campaign which aims, using nonviolent direct action, to prevent the building of new nuclear weapons facilities at AWE Aldermaston . 2. Belarus: A call for solidarity actions with Belarusian antinuclear movement on February 19-21)
For February 2010 we focus on RENEWABLE ENERGY and ENERGY EFFICIENCY
1. The most effective method of all: ENERGY EFFICIENCY
The false message of the nuclear lobby is that in order to reduce greenhouse gases, and have enough energy, we need nuclear energy.
In fact, both of these goals can be met quickly, cheaply and cleanly, by just stopping wasting energy.
Energy wastage can be stopped – in the home, in business, in transport, building and manufacturing. The European Plan has already shown how effectively energy can be saved through existing energy efficincy procedures. http://www.energyscience.org.au/FS04%20Energy%20Efficiency.pdf
Cost-effective energy management. There are many ways to implement cost effective energy in homes, offices, industries. Many countries are not doing this yet, due to market problems, lack of information, differing aims of landlords and tenants.lack of institutionalset-ups for delivering services such a sheating and cooling in the least costly way.
Government action would solve these problems by regulating energy performance standards for both existing and new buildings, appliances, equipment and industrial processes.
2. The other component: renewable energy – (and let’s not forget,- while there are set up and maintenance costs – the fuel is free.)
Gas is a good energy source to tide us over the change to renewables, and can provide back-up for solar. Wind power and Solar energy are advancing, but would require special assistance schemes.
The BASELOAD FALLACY
A baseload power station, in theory, provides elctricity 24 hours a day.. In practise, they are costly to manintain, and do break down.. So they have reserve plant, and peakload pland (gas turbines or hydro-electricity.
Renewable energy can provide several different baseload technologies.:
- bioenergy – burning crops and rsidues, or converting them to gas
- hot dry rock geothermal power
- solar thermal electricity, with heat storage in hot water or hot rocks
- large scale distributed wind power, with a small amount of occasional backup from peakload plant
Contrary to general opinion, wind power is generally not intermittent, when it is part of a system of several wind farms, or when connected to a national grid.
A renewable energy system would consist of a mix of different energy sources. Ultimately, its success would depend on some limit to economic and population growth.
http://www.energyscience.org.au/FS05%20Sust%20Energy.pdf
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