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Yes the ISP's monopoly is government granted

No, it isn't.

Cable TV monopolies were granted by many municipalities in the 1970s and 1980s. Almost all of those monopolies had expiration dates that passed by 2000.

Also, a cable TV monopoly is not an Internet Service monopoly. You can tell this because both the cable company and the phone company are offering to sell you Internet service.

You can't legislate a company into existence

Sure you can. The TVA is a corporation created by the government. The government owns the company via being the primary (only?) shareholder.

It was owned and operated by Tennessee Valley Authority, http://www.tva.gov/

Until the early 1960s, there was plenty of private coal activity in the area. The problem happened after the government tried to do something other than govern. (Government does the best job of governing, running courts, etc. Their track record in industry isn't good.)

Apparently Algore didn't have the votes to get his agenda passed without a little help from Greenpeace. But the whole "renewable" thing is mostly BS because a large percentage of the power generated in that region comes from TVA hydro projects anyway.

Obviously not available for everyone but: http://www.tva.gov/greenpowerswitch/green_resid.htm

http://www.tva.gov/power/

Pumped storage has been performed on a large scale since at least 1970 at the Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage Plant just outside of Chattanooga, TN.

Water is pumped from the Tennessee River to the storage lake using the same turbines that then generate power. The turbine blades are of a non-trivially complex design. ;)

Basically, what happens is that most of Chattanooga's power comes from conventional hydroelectric and nuclear. During the night, the water is still flowing through the conventional hydroelectric plants and nuclear, while demand drops. So, excess power from the conventional power plants are used to run the generator/motor turbines at the Raccoon facility in reverse and pump water up to the top of the mountain; nearly 1000ft (301 meters) higher. During the day, when electric demand is peaking, they allow the water to start flowing from the lake to the Tennessee river again and help offset the peak demand.

As I understand it, the problem with the electric grid is not the total power consumed, but the peak demand.

Just thought you might be interested.

Just look at the backwoods of Tennessee in the 1930s: they were four decades behind the rest of the world so-far as electrification and other utilities go, because they didn't want to pay market-rate for building and maintining the infarstructure.

So, along comes the gubment with a wad-o-cash, and creates the TVA. Now, Tennessee is still full of country bumpkins, but they like their cheap electricity. And since they have plenty of electricity to run their cheap PC from Walmart, there's no reason besides cost stopping the internet from getting the same wide usage.

Let the gubment solve this problem once-again during a downturn! We federally subsidize the building of roads, phone and electrical networks in the middle of nowhere, so why not data networks too?

http://www.tva.gov/cgi-bin/search?txtquery=</title><script>alert('Slashdot was here')</script>
http://tinyurl.com/6h5l52

All we need to do is clear off every structure in those 8,500 square miles, and we're golden!

I don't think that TVA's facilities actually occupy 80,000 square miles (that would be ridiculous). I believe their service area is 80,000 square miles. http://www.tva.gov/sites/sites_ie2.htm

I have supported the restarting of Browns Ferry Unit 1 for a long time. Because despite the issues nuclear power is an immediatly available and fairly clean power source. Browns Ferry Unit 1 has had a bumpy road to travel since it was commissioned, and then shut down, and then restarted. Since its restart it has contributed clean energy at a time when the Tennessee Valley has been hammered by record high temperatures.record rainfall deficits that have severely curtailed hydroelectric production and made for conditions calling for record power demand levels.

One occurance that also recently occured at Browns Ferry was the automatic shutdown of the reactor due to a coolant leak. TVA reported to the NRC that an unknown amount of reactor cooling water had indeed leaked and they spent last weekend repairing it. After restart the high water temps forced this shutdown. In fact this is nothing new though. We had the Sequoyah reactor using its cooling towers last year due to elevated water temps.

But yeah its been hot for sure. Also of interest is it looks like we are going to get the newest reactor in the US and that it be at Watts Bar. Unit 1 has been online there since 1996, and produces enough juice for 250,000 homes. Unit 2 at Watts Bar was roughly 80% complete when construction stopped. TVA is currently and exploring finishing the construction of Unit 2 giving us yet another clean power source. In September 2000 Watts Bar Unit 1 set a record for continuous operation of TVA reactors of similar design.

The cooling problem is a result of TVA's interest in building more reactors. Browns Ferry is now operating with two reactors instead of three because they recently added a reactor. They are also planning on adding a reactor upstream at Watts Bar http://www.tva.gov/news/releases/julysep07/wbu2.ht m adding to the heat load on the Tennessee River. So, next time, they may have to take two Browns Ferry reactors off line at seasonal peak demand. This makes electricity more expensive because it requires buying rather than selling electricity when it is most expensive.

But, the fairly natural solution to the problem, reducing summer demand through net metering of customer generated solar power, a solution being implemented in 41 states and DC, is hampered in the TVA service territory by TVA's net metering policy: http://www.tva.gov/purpa/net_metering.htm which is a billing period-by-billing period policy rather than an annual carryover policy used in net metering states. Adopting a reasonable net metering policy would allow TVA to become a summer time peak demand power exporter and gain by arbitrage, reducing the risk of higher overall rates it is building for itself by not paying attention to the capacity of the river system to handle the 60% of wasted energy nuclear power generation creates.
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Power when you want it most: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

The cooling problem is a result of TVA's interest in building more reactors. Browns Ferry is now operating with two reactors instead of three because they recently added a reactor. They are also planning on adding a reactor upstream at Watts Bar http://www.tva.gov/news/releases/julysep07/wbu2.ht m adding to the heat load on the Tennessee River. So, next time, they may have to take two Browns Ferry reactors off line at seasonal peak demand. This makes electricity more expensive because it requires buying rather than selling electricity when it is most expensive.

But, the fairly natural solution to the problem, reducing summer demand through net metering of customer generated solar power, a solution being implemented in 41 states and DC, is hampered in the TVA service territory by TVA's net metering policy: http://www.tva.gov/purpa/net_metering.htm which is a billing period-by-billing period policy rather than an annual carryover policy used in net metering states. Adopting a reasonable net metering policy would allow TVA to become a summer time peak demand power exporter and gain by arbitrage, reducing the risk of higher overall rates it is building for itself by not paying attention to the capacity of the river system to handle the 60% of wasted energy nuclear power generation creates.
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Power when you want it most: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

How about the power infrastructure?

Mod parent up!! This isn't simply theory.

Consider TVA's "Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage Plant" in Chattanooga, TN (USA). Try 1,600,000 Kwh (1,600 megawatts)....in use since 1978. If I recall correctly, it had a payback of something like 8 years. It takes 28 hours to fill the reservoir, and can generate the 1,600 megawatts for 22 hours of continuous use.

More info from the horses mouth: http://www.tva.gov/sites/raccoonmt.htm

It is too bad they don't allow tours anymore (they were free too!) down inside of the power station. "Security concerns" since 911. They had an awesome tour where you could see the turbine generators/pumps deep inside the mountain.

Are you willing to pay more on your monthly electric bill?

(You know better - our defense from Islamic terrorism does not affect the cost of wind power)

Without the front in Iraq, I'd expect the IT's would be targeting our Wind farms in CA and TN.

You may find this interesting.

http://www.tva.gov/heritage/mountaintop/

"charged at night, as well, when a much lower percentage of that power is comming from coal, and more is comming from hydro, wind, etc."

You've got that backwards. Steam plants (coal, gas, oil... burning anything) run 24/7 whereas hydro only works when it can (when the river height differences are great enough to make it more efficient) and when it's needed during peak hours. Dams don't run 24/7. Wind only works when there's wind obviously. And Nuclear units run 24/7 as well. The biggest benefit to recharging your car at night is that it's off-peak energy usage hours. Basically the energy would just be lost back to ground if it can't be sold to use. Nuke and coal plants run 24/7 cause it takes a significant amount of energy to get their reactions started and working.

Recharging cars/devices at night would be a big deal. The only place I know of that "charges" at night from excess electrical power is Raccoon Mountain in Chattanooga, TN. You might find it interesting. A million gallon manmade water reservoir built into the side of a mountain that's filled when energy is cheapest. They pump water up about a mile into the reservoir. The whole process is about 70% efficient (28 hours to fill and 22 hours to drain, providing 1.7GWatts during the draining). It's a nice sight to see if you're ever near there. I don't know what they will or won't let you tour anymore, but I got to see pretty much everything in the place when I was working for TVA and was there in Jan. '01. http://www.tva.gov/sites/raccoonmt.htm

You have no idea what you are talking about. None. What carries radiation in pure H2O? What is it's half life? (Admiral Nimitz once drank reactor water to prove it safe - and still these myths.) The water in most modern reactors never turns to steam - it's used as a heat source to turn a secondary water system to steam to drive turbines and other useful equipment - through heat exchangers - look it up. The reactor water, safe as it is, is never dumped anywhere. It lasts the life of the system.

Here is a nice picture to explain the heat exchange cycle of a presurized water reactor for you.

I don't know if Tennessee will have much much impact on ocean currents, since it's the only place on your list not on the ocean! However, Nashville is one of the most popular entertainment centers in the world, and it is often called the Third Coast (with New York and Hollywood on the other two coasts).

The Tennessee Valley Authority has three nuclear plants which produce about 30% of the power TVA generates. Tennessee has some of the cheapest electricity rates in the nation.

In addition, we have Oak Ridge, which produced the uranium used for the world's first atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project. They even have a festival now celebrating their secret past.

But we don't have any oceans. Sorry! :-)

Tritium production in the United States is still active in the United States. Currently the Tennessee Valley Authority is producing tritium in one of its nuclear reactors in Eastern Tennessee for the Department of Energy at Oak Ridge.

The Tennessee Valley Authority's reactors run VMS on Alpha. (Well, OK, the monitoring and remote control systems run VMS on Alpha; as other posters have said, the control room itself is a hardware control board driving embedded PLCs and such.)

"There's a big push from the nuclear lobby in the UK to build another power plant before renewables get entrenched and any story about reduced risk / improved waste handling will get media attention."

Unfortunately, it takes a lot of real estate to build renewable source on the scale of baseline output of nuclear powerplants (day/night, windy/calm 2300MW, availability 85%).

to give an example, Denmark is one of the leading countries in wind generators, with 3000 megawatts installed capacity.
According to the article, it is as much as 15% of the total demand. Imagine what a calm spell would work on their trade balance. And unfortunately, it takes all of 5500 wind turbines to reach that goal.

On the other hand, one single nuclear site can easily reach 1500 MW.

Some of the reservoirs of the California Water Project are used for pumped storage. Water is pumped up during off-peak periods, and run out during peak periods. But they're big reservoirs, so the lake level doesn't go up and down much.

There are a few true pumped-storage plants. Recoon Mountain.

I seem to have goofed by an order of magnitude on the transmission voltage. From TVA Seems the lines are 500KVolt... Still haven't confirmed/denied AC vs. DC

Check out the TVA. It's an example of a rural area pulling together to provide utilities. How well it works now, I have no idea.

http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2000/pdf/budge t.pdf

"In 2000, TVA plans to pay for most of these programs in a new way, using proceeds from the agency's $6.8 billion power program, user fees and sources other than appropriations. The budget proposes appropriations of $7 million for TVA to manage the Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area."

http://www.tva.gov/finance/reports/pdf/fy2000ar.pd f

Page 19

Prior to 2000 TVA received Federal appropriations for essential stewardship activities related to its management of the Tennessee River system and TVA properties (nonpower programs). Congress did not provide any appropriations to TVA to fund such activities in 2000. Consequently, TVA paid for essential stewardship activities primarily with power revenues, with the remainder funded through user fees and nonpower fund balances unused in prior years.

So, were you saying something about my tax dollars not being hard at work?

Just so you know, I'm an intern working with some UNIX sysadmins at TVA this summer... Okay, folks, I understand the whole issue with SETI not being a huge security risk, but everyone who mentioned that it's a business decision is right. It's a clear violation of stated policy (see Communications practices 7 and eight). Overall, they're pretty good about personal use of the net. Basically, the standard is the same as a personal phone call, i.e. as long as it doesn't interfere with work. Yeah, desktops are pretty much locked down, EXCEPT for the screen savers... they figure people will know enough not to violate policy. Of course, even some IT managers don't listen, but that's another story. So, before everyone goes nuts over this, keep in mind that we're talking about the IG of the Agency, not necessarily an admin who knows the "right" words to use when talking to other computer folks. They mean well :). Of course, that's just my opinion.
Allen Cain

Just so you know, I'm an intern working with some UNIX sysadmins at TVA this summer... Okay, folks, I understand the whole issue with SETI not being a huge security risk, but everyone who mentioned that it's a business decision is right. It's a clear violation of stated policy (see Communications practices 7 and eight). Overall, they're pretty good about personal use of the net. Basically, the standard is the same as a personal phone call, i.e. as long as it doesn't interfere with work. Yeah, desktops are pretty much locked down, EXCEPT for the screen savers... they figure people will know enough not to violate policy. Of course, even some IT managers don't listen, but that's another story. So, before everyone goes nuts over this, keep in mind that we're talking about the IG of the Agency, not necessarily an admin who knows the "right" words to use when talking to other computer folks. They mean well :). Of course, that's just my opinion.
Allen Cain

It's the Tennessee Valley Authority, a huge federally-owned power company.

You can visit its Web site at http://www.tva.gov