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As Sea Levels Rise, Are Coastal Nuclear Plants Ready? (nationalgeographic.com)
mdsolar writes with this National Geographic story about the danger of rising sea levels to low-lying power plants across the country. According to the story: "Just east of the Homestead-Miami Speedway, off Florida's Biscayne Bay, two nuclear reactors churn out enough electricity to power nearly a million homes. The Turkey Point plant is licensed to continue doing so until at least 2032. At some point after that, if you believe the direst government projections, a good part of the low-lying site could be underwater. So could at least 13 other U.S. nuclear plants, as the world's seas continue to rise. Their vulnerability, and that of many others, raises serious questions for the future."
I am very close to a nuke that is right on the beach on Florida's Treasure Coast. Apparently to shut down a reactor and clean up everything that is contaminated is a process that takes years. This nuke has only one road that runs along the beach and if that road is swamped access to the plant would be by helicopter or boat, weather permitting. And that road frequently has challenges with hurricanes and spring tides as it is. I wonder if any planning is going on in regard to this situation.
Yes the sealevels will rise, but they already rise with every hurricane or tides of the moon.
After Fukushima everyone knows that you need big ass dams, flood walls, protected and working backup generators etc.
If you build a 10m high floodwall or a 11m high one to also protect against global warming induced sea level rise simply doesn't really matter. If someone hasn't already built said 10-15m high flood wall, it's not global warming that is an issue but the regulatory commission in your country. A much more immediate problem too.
That's an extremely gradual process. However, we've just recently learned about the collapsing ice sheets in Antarctica, which appear likely to cause the much more rapid rise in sea level over the next few decades. Nobody had planned on that, and it will cause headaches, hazards and costs far beyond this example of nuclear power plants.
We can move them. Yes, it would suck complete and total ass and be ridiculously expensive and environmentally dangerous, but the sea doesn't rise over night without an Earth quake so in the many many many years while the water is creeping up the shoreline towards the plant ... we can decommission it and move the dangerous bits to higher ground.
Well, in theory we can ... unfortunately the utterly retarded NIMBY anti-nuke crowd will ensure that instead we'll leave it right where it is cause god fucking forbid some accident might happen ... and instead we'll just let it pollute thousands of square miles of sea and destroy our food stocks instead ... because thats way better than moving some dangerous materials in a controlled and actually very safe method.
So you either move it and don't tell anyone, so that NIMBY morons don't have a chance to stand in the way of the trucks doing the moving (which makes it way more fucking dangerous!) before you get it to higher ground. Remember these are the same morons who would swallow coal dust and get cancer for sure rather than take the risk that if they hang out at the nuclear plant after a major disaster they might have a slightly higher chance of thyroid cancer ... that can't be proven scientifically anyway.
Besides ... nuclear reactors are water tight from the start, at ridiculously high pressures, if you get them into a cold shutdown state, you can just leave them under water for centuries without anything actually happening. Put a concrete sarcophagus around it so that nothing can easily damage it and forget about it. By the time it actually starts leaking it will have decayed to something we don't care about nearly as much.
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You mean the expanding ice sheets in Antarctica ?
https://www.nasa.gov/content/g...
mdsolar writes with another sensationalist article about how we will all die a nuclear death.
In the mean time I live in a country that is mostly below sea level, yet somehow my feet have kept dry. Is it possible that humans are capable of engineering their way around problems? What does this mean for the future of the human race? We'll explore all of these questions and more at 11.
In the US alone - 130 natural gas, 96 electric, 56 oil and gas, and 4 nuclear facilities at or slightly above sea level. http://www.motherjones.com/blu... Would seem to be a matter of national security !
http://journals.ametsoc.org/do...
And no thread is complete without a self righteous zealot being incorrect on the volume
In the U.S. we already have entire cities that are below sea level.
City, singular: We have exactly one city below sea level, New Orleans, elevation -2 meters.
Not sure if I'd call that the best example of why it's ok to have levees keeping out the ocean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
There you go again confusing sea ice with land ice. You do this every single time, and it gets pointed out to you every single time. Your failure to take on board such simple information is staggering, but would go quite some way to explain why you believe abject nonsense in the face of scientific rigour. Or, maybe, you do understand the difference, but are prepared to lie in order to make some point. Pick one. Please. It's tragic, but fascinating.
I live below sea level too. Far in the midwest with dry feet.
Unless you think that Death Valley and the Salton Sea basin are in the "midwest", or you live in a hole several hundred feet below the surface-- no, you don't live below sea level in the midwest.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
At least he cited a source. Do you have a link to nasa.gov which explains the difference?
Seems like the "climate change" alarmists are willing to constantly manipulate their data and revise their models to reach the preordained conclusion.
What's tragic is that no matter how many times they're fooled, people are still completely vulnerable to a barrage of fear mongering. "Climate change" is just the latest iteration of the Red scare and the terrorist scare. One that appeals to the political left more than the right. Be afraid! Be afraid! We're all going to be burned alive! Only government can save us!
I understand that the point of the article is really just to spread FUD, but even the terrified masses must understand that "warming" sea level rise is expected to measure a double handful of inches over the next century. Normal daily wave variation is more than that; if your nuclear plant designers aren't planning for bigger variation you have much more serious problems than what's going to happen a 100 yrs from now (and which of these plants is expected to run a century anyway)?
-Styopa
Miami Beach Florida already has issues with tides - certain high tides of the year flood the city, leaving it deep enough for fish to swim into major roads. In some areas they had to raise the roads a full meter above land level so that at least the roads are clear. Of course this leaves the houses, parking lots, businesses all flooded.
The main problem with Florida is that the water doesn't come from one direction it comes from all six directions. Rivers flow from the other states into Florida, sea water on 3 sides, rain falls down onto it and finally the land itself is porous limestone that sea water seeps into and UP out of the ground. Basically, most of the state of Florida is not solid land, but a sponge. That's why it has sink holes and why floods are so bad. Florida, unlike Holland, does not have a sealing salt/anihydrite layer that blocks water movement.
For this reason, unlike the Dutch, merely building a huge dike is not enough. As global warming raises the sea level it invades deeper into the center of Florida's porous, limestone ground. What used to be safe relatively dry land, miles from the dangerous shore, is now wet, eroded limestone. Fresh water wells turn into salt water wells, sink holes open up, new springs suddenly appear where there were none before.
Some of those new springs will be INSIDE the grounds protected by the dikes built around the nuclear power plants.
In such circumstances, to truly protect a nuclear power plant, you have to put a solid layer of water proof concrete UNDER it, connect that to the water proof 10 ft wall around the nuclear power plant and then arrange for a pumping station to drain out any rain water that falls into the plant area. Good luck with that.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Wind and solar turn out to be so much cheaper, that really it is the opportunity cost of nuclear power that has delayed climate action. The politically promoted and protected nuclear industry has slowed progress for decades.
Solar power is more polluting, more toxic, less efficient, more destructive of habitat and much less safe than nuclear. Better than coal, sure, but better than coal isn't good enough. Mankind is better off without solar power. It would be much better to focus all of our resources on next gen nuclear power instead of going down the dead end of solar.
And we have the rising CO2 level because the anti-nukes have obstructed the implementation of the only carbon-free power source that actually has the capacity to power industrial civilization for the past 40 years or more. "We can't have nuclear because... oh, yeah, sea level rise" is sort of like Erik and Lyle Menendez demanding the court's mercy because they are orphans.
And the funny thing is, your later reply demonstrates you were aware of the full extent of the information.
So that makes you a liar ? or what ?