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Rising Sea Level Could Put East Coast Nuclear Plants At Risk
mdsolar (1045926) writes with news that global warming may make it more difficult to use modern power sources that rely upon being near large bodies of water for cooling. From the article: "During the 1970s and 1980s, when many nuclear reactors were first built, most operators estimated that seas would rise at a slow, constant rate. ... But the seas are now rising much faster than they did in the past ... Sea levels rose an average of 8 inches between 1880 and 2009, or about 0.06 inches per year. But in the last 20 years, sea levels have risen an average of 0.13 inches per year... NOAA) has laid out four different projections for estimated sea level rise by 2100. Even the agency's best-case scenario assumes that sea levels will rise at least 8.4 inches by the end of this century. NOAA's worst-case scenario, meanwhile, predicts that the oceans will rise nearly 7 feet in the next 86 years. But most nuclear power facilities were built well before scientists understood just how high sea levels might rise in the future. And for power plants, the most serious threat is likely to come from surges during storms. Higher sea levels mean that flooding will travel farther inland, creating potential hazards in areas that may have previously been considered safe."
The article has charts comparing the current elevation of various plants with their estimated elevations under the various NOAA sea level rise estimates.
Not by half.
Not by half of what? The oceans are thousands of feet deep and cover 2/3 of the planet.
because we have such a great record in actually decommisioning sites to the extent where they are allowed to get flooded...
Even after the site is decommissioned, the site is still a mess. It needs to remain quarantined for tens (hundreds?!) of years beyond when things are dismantled and you've got to make sure that storm surges aren't sloshing through the area for that time too.
Just ask the British how their decommissioning program is going... (Hint: it sounds a lot like "Oh my, what a mess, can we talk about it later instead?")
i'm afraid that most of these deniers brains cannot compute those sorts of sizes, its the same with creationists not being able to visualise more than a few years
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
No, I'd never seen that. It was just coincidence that I picked a problem that's been looked at but not solved before. That's considered an unsolved problem. The answer is "1" but it can't be proven. It's obvious from the data, and questioning the data won't change the outcome. But it makes for a "controversy". A fake one invented by the mega-rich trying to confuse the issue.
Learn to love Alaska
You must have missed the Cryosat data, then. Antarctic sea ice is pretty much irrelevant in the discussion. It is mostly seasonal, and it has negligible impact on sea level. What we care about is the the grounded ice, and we care about the volume, not the area.
I find it very enjoyable, yet irritating, to see people take every single effect/cause independently, somehow analyse them (while actually having no clue at all what they are doing) and come to the conclusion they are too small to be related to a trend, while missing the obvious point that independent effect can be cumulativ. Worse, different effect can promote other and accelerate the trend. And they cook up a counter arguments (again while having no clue, even of the oders of magnitude) and propagate their ignorance to others ready to believe their pseudo scientific facts.
I really have to stand on the side of other posts I read here, stating that most people are simply not open minded or bright enough to understand the data and analyse it. A large part of this is to blame on education, but when basic logic and analytic skills fail (either due to intellectual capacity or to unwillingness to use those skills) I doupt even that would help.
Please stop with the half-assed facts. The average temperature of the coldest region of Antractica is -57C. That has nothing to do with the average temperature overall on the continent. What you wrote is just as stupid as saying nobody will get a heat stroke anytime soon in Pheonix; the average temperature in Vail is 11C (52F) after all.
The point is anyone who asks such questions in that manner is objecting. It's a stupid rhetorical "trick" to claim [citation needed] without expressing an opinion themselves, nor supporting their obvious opinion. It's just lazy.
Learn to love Alaska
Because it is useful to stir up a bunch of chicken-littles to run around panicking about the sky falling. Then D.C. is obliged to begin another round of legislation , probes and programs that wont work, but will create a nice diversion to cover other activities.
The useful parts of the report are probably classified so they dont fall to terrorist hands, like anyone who would vote them out of office.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
South Florida has a population of greater than 6 million. Not only do we have nukes right on the beach we also have garbage mountains, graveyards that go back 150 years, chemical wells, and every other pollutant that a city tends to have. All of this is less than five feet above sea level. Most of it may be only two feet above sea level. The topography is such that the area will flood from the Atlantic all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The region will not be habitable inland or on the coasts. Keep in mind we get high tides, spring tides, and hurricanes with surges as well as very tall waves. In other words a house on stilts would not help. Houseboats would have about a two year life span as tropical storms are common. So what you may say. Who gives a hoot about South Florida? the catch is that the pollution that would take place may well be enough to destroy the Atlantic ocean completely. South Florida also produces fruit and vegetables even in winter and there is no other part of the continental US that does that. On top of that the investment and mortgage value of south Florida is on a scale large enough to completely destroy the US economy if we go under.