Europe's Heatwave is Forcing Nuclear Power Plants To Shut Down (qz.com)

Europe's heatwave -- which led to wildfires in Greece and Sweden, droughts in central and northern parts, and made the normally green UK look brown from space -- is forcing nuclear plants to shut down or curtail the amount of power they produce, local media reports. From a report: French utility EDF shut four reactors at three power plants on Saturday, Swedish utility Vattenfall shut one of two reactors at a power plant earlier last week, and nuclear plants in Finland, Germany, and Switzerland have cut back the amount of power they produce. Thermal power plants, such as nuclear or coal, use high-temperature steam to turn turbines, which convert heat energy into electricity. In the process, the steam's temperature falls, so it can no longer be used to move the turbine again. [...] Europe's heatwave, however, hasn't just increased air temperatures but also water temperatures.

Comments

uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, why not just chill the water? You have a machine generating so much power cooling the water should not be significant.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it isn't generating any power to cool the water.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuke plants mostly perform well in hot weather and carry the system when other sources are struggling. A few reactors have to cut back due to heat limits on cooling water. The total percentage of nuclear reduction across the board is less than 10%. Meanwhile, wind power during the recent heat wave was down over 80%. Nuclear was carrying the load. Particularly it was critical in late afternoon and evening when solar fades. There were times when wind production during these critical times dropped below 1% of demand.

https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/europes-power-prices-rise-as-heat-wave-saps-wind-from-turbines

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-01/scorching-start-to-august-set-to-test-europe-s-power-system

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Sarten-X]

It's a terrible summary.

The problem is that the water is chilled... but it's chilled by running it through colder water, usually pulled from a lake or a stream. Usually this isn't a problem, because the waste heat doesn't disrupt the ecosystem too much.

Right now, however, the environment is so warm that adding the waste heat would push temperatures above acceptable levels, killing the local ecosystem. Instead, the reactors are shut down to minimize the amount of heat they have to dissipate.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Sarten-X]

An interesting fact is that heat pumps (like home air conditioners, refrigerators, or nuclear power plants) are actually in the range of 200% to 600% efficient, apparently violating that wonderful law. For a given amount of energy expended, they can actually move 2 to 6 times* that amount of energy across the pump.

Now, this is still not a closed system, so it's perfectly fine to have small-scale violations. The total entropy in the closed system (including both sides of the pump, and the energy supply for the pump) still increases as the pump itself isn't 100% efficient in moving the working fluid.

* I recall the "2 to 6 times" figure as a rule of thumb... but I don't actually know how it compares to the heat pump system in a nuclear reactor, whose scale is far larger than a home A/C system. I would love to know the power consumption of a nuclear facility's coolant pumps.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a terrible summary.

The problem is that the water is chilled... but it's chilled by running it through colder water, usually pulled from a lake or a stream.

Let alone the howling obvious >> In the process, the steam's temperature falls, so it can no longer be used to move the turbine again.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

A heat pump's acceptability has nothing to do with the "scale" of the violations because there are no violations going on at all. A heat pump moves heat from one place to another, it doesn't make or destroy energy.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Hey now, there is no place for facts and rational talk in the middle of an OMGWTFBBQ Climapocolypse! There's death and heat to talk about!

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting fact is that heat pumps (like home air conditioners, refrigerators, or nuclear power plants) are actually in the range of 200% to 600% efficient, apparently violating that wonderful law. For a given amount of energy expended, they can actually move 2 to 6 times* that amount of energy across the pump.

A less interesting observation is that you seem to have no idea how heat pumps work, or you lack an understanding of the laws of thermodynamics as applied to a closed system which the efficiency as calculated with a heat pump is expressly unconcerned with, but if you want to learn something, you could figure out the cooling limits of a given nuclear plant structure.

They exist you know, the same way your home HVAC and refrigerator have limits.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, Wind is still on track to generate more and more power while Vogtle just announced another construction shut down at their nuclear site in Georgia.

How many billions spent are they up to now?

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing energy moving THROUGH with energy produced BY. The laws of thermodynamics are not in any way weakened by, let alone disproven by, your misinterpretation of the facts.

Using a heat pump requires having a temperature differential sufficient for overcoming the heat produced by the action of moving the energy, and being within limits that are a consequence of the materials used to do the moving of the heat. In this case, overcoming means changing the phase of water from liquid to gas, and being able to have it passively return to being a liquid, (condensing,) by radiating that heat into the environment. The side where cooling and condensation takes place is finite and it cost money, time, and materials to BUILD. When they did so, they did so on the basis of being able to count on the outside temperatures being always within a range that would allow the surroundings to absorb that energy. If those surroundings get hot enough, the mechanism through which it normally discharges the heat cannot efficiently discharge that heat, meaning running the reactor could result in overheating which would be bad. (As in Chernobyl bad, in the case of a nuclear reactor.)

It is actually pretty much exactly the same problem you would have if you tried to drive your car when and where it is too hot. The existing radiator, normally sufficient to cool the engine and prevent it overheating is too small to get rid of the heat if the air around it is already too hot, especially when you are running at or near full-throttle, you know... like when the AC is at full-blast because it is hot AF out?

The question, can they not just... is like you pulling your overheating car over and a passenger helpfully suggests ripping the cap off the steaming radiator and pouring a cold beverage into it to cool it off. Except that a giant nuclear reactor radiator will take more than a few minutes to cool so you CAN take the cap off, and unless you have a spare additional radiator and fan you can bolt on somewhere, and can plumb it all in because you also have spare hoses, clamps, etc., and hope the water-pump is strong enough to push the water through all that extra tubing EFFECTIVELY, even if you wait for it to cool off so you can dump all the hot coolant out safely, and replace it with fresh, well... coolER coolant, all you would be doing is having the same problem within about 8 or 10 minutes of driving after the heat from the engine manages to overtake the cooling ability of the replacement coolant. Also there is the little matter of intentionally discharging poisonous ethylene glycol all over the side of the road... and if you did not have more and just replaced it with water, you now have two new problems. One, you lowered the boiling point of your coolant, and the system is designed to work with the coolant STAYING liquid, and you removed the protection against corrosion that was likely in your old coolant when you replaced it with WATER.

OOPS. Now you have gone from a radiator insufficiently capable of discharging the waste-heat of your engine under the load, given the conditions, to one that is likewise insufficient but which is also being eaten away from the inside. Good job.

In short, why not let the adults handle this? They are turning off the fucking reactors because they know what the fuck they are doing. Thanks.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[angel'o'sphere]

You have a strange idea of "efficiency".

Nuclear reactors don't have a heat pump, what would be the purpose?

I would love to know the power consumption of a nuclear facility's coolant pumps.
In relation to the power a plant produces: zero.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

If those surroundings get hot enough, the mechanism through which it normally discharges the heat cannot efficiently discharge that heat, meaning running the reactor could result in overheating which would be bad. (As in Chernobyl bad, in the case of a nuclear reactor.)

This is a statement of utter ignorance. Not enough cooling of the steam loop will absolutely not have any nuclear safety issues. At worst, the turbine efficiency will drop to a point where they just shut the plant down. The primary loop with the reactor is much hotter and heat removal is no problem even with extremely high ambient temperatures.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should of learned in high school physics

And you should've learned in elementary school how contractions work.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[rahvin112]

Waste heat from power plants can be a HUGE problem to local ecosystems. There's rivers in the US where power plants have raised the water temperature 20 degrees and essentially displaced the entire habitat.

Steam generation is 19th century technology that's just plain awful in low water or high temperature areas. We've got power plants in the western US that use more water than the entire local population, water that's just pumped into the atmosphere rather than supporting the local ecosystem. Solar and storage are at the point where we can stop using this ancient technology, it's long since time that steam generation should be abandoned in any area where water is at a premium.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bit more useful, thanks.

Perhaps they'll need to consider dumping the waste heat into the air instead for future designs if this issue keeps up.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not perpetual energy. Perhaps you wanted me to be more pedantic. Okay, I can do that for you.

Move the surplus heat energy from the water into the air using refrigeration so the water is usable.

Since the motivation is by steam pressure and not by heat differential, this doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics anymore than the radiator on your engine does.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Mr D from 63]

An interesting fact is that heat pumps (like home air conditioners, refrigerators, or nuclear power plants) are actually in the range of 200% to 600% efficient, apparently violating that wonderful law

No system and process in over 100% efficient. If you compare different properties of different processes, you aren't truly comparing efficiency. Heat pump efficiency is how efficient it is at moving heat. How much energy is put in, how much heat is moved. For electric heat, it is how much heat is transformed or released from a different energy form to heat.

Nuclear steam cycles are not heat pumps because the heat energy is primarily converted to mechanical energy. Yes, there are heat moving elements of the steam cycle, which are similar in principle to heat pump cycles.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mr D from 63]

There's rivers in the US where power plants have raised the water temperature 20 degrees and essentially displaced the entire habitat.

An exaggeration. But do you know how much habitat Hydro power has displaced by comparison?

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Right now, however, the environment is so warm that adding the waste heat would push temperatures above acceptable levels, killing the local ecosystem.

Something that is in fact already happening

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, Wind is still on track to generate more and more power while Vogtle just announced another construction shut down at their nuclear site in Georgia.

How many billions spent are they up to now?

Is wind on track to generate more than the nuclear plants that are operating?

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

" You should of learned in high school "

Have. They also teach that in high school.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[AHuxley]

Its a German and EU political and environmental problem. eg Thermal pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The cooling water drawn from rivers, lakes, or seas will get more warm in hooter weather as more cooling water is needed.
German laws put limits on how hot cooling water can be when returned to such "rivers, lakes, or seas".
Laws limited the exisiting cooling engineering.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[quantaman]

Thereby violating the third law of thermodynamics. You should of learned in high school physics perpetual energy machines dont work, Silly child.

It's not a perpetual energy machine, the input energy comes from the radioactive decay of Uranium, not from the water.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[quantaman]

It's a terrible summary.

The problem is that the water is chilled... but it's chilled by running it through colder water, usually pulled from a lake or a stream. Usually this isn't a problem, because the waste heat doesn't disrupt the ecosystem too much.

Right now, however, the environment is so warm that adding the waste heat would push temperatures above acceptable levels, killing the local ecosystem. Instead, the reactors are shut down to minimize the amount of heat they have to dissipate.

If true that's a pretty critical point.

It implies the Nuclear plants could be run in these temperatures if it were really critical, they're just shutting them down because there are other power sources with fewer side effects.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Applehu Akbar]

Technical nitpick: this is about heat sink water, not coolant. The too-warm heat sink problem is why ocean water is a preferred heat sink for thermal plants. This affects ALL thermal power plants and has nothing especially to do with nuclear.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The cooling water drawn from rivers, lakes, or seas will get more warm in hooter weather as more cooling water is needed.

This is presumably weather so warm that women take off their tops.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Applehu Akbar]

Waste thermal-plant heat can be directed for useful purposes also, such as keeping Arctic towns warm. The biggest voting bloc in favor of nuclear plants in Florida is manatees, which flock to them in winter to bask in the warm water.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam generation is 19th century technology that's just plain awful in low water or high temperature areas. [...] Solar and storage are at the point where we can stop using this ancient technology, it's long since time that steam generation should be abandoned in any area where water is at a premium.

What irony; solar and wind were in use centuries before, and were largely displaced because they did not meet our needs. Now though, with their second coming, apparently people need to learn that again. The west really needs a reminder of the value of reliable power.

Water cooling is a limitation of conventional nuclear, but high temperature reactors can be air cooled and placed virtually anywhere. They can also be coupled to Brayton cycle turbines when those are further developed, and S-CO2 turbines are especially attractive. Or used for industrial process heat.e

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[hey!]

When you say "chill the water", what that inevitably means is putting the heat somewhere else. You can't magic it away, it has to go somewhere, and you have to build some kind of heat exchanger that gets it there.

So where would you put the heat? The obvious answer is the atmosphere, but consider that this was an option open to engineers when they designed the plant. They *could* have condensed the turbine working fluid by exchanging the heat with the atmosphere like the air conditioner in your house, which demonstrates that it is physically possible to do. But they rejected this approach for a good reason.

That reason is likely that the quantities of heat involved are considerably greater than those involved with cooling your house. They chose to put the heat into water because (a) water has over 4x the heat capacity of dry air on a mass basis and (b) water is 1000x denser than air. For any given level of efficiency, your air cooling device would have to be thousands of times larger.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Sarten-X]

You have a strange idea of "efficiency".

The "efficiency" to which I refer is the coefficient of performance, which is more accurately the efficiency of just a part of the larger thermodynamic system. To physicists who only work in closed systems, it's an infuriating misuse of terms. To an engineer who understands that open and closed systems are different and are measured differently, it's perfectly fine. That's also why it's only an "apparent" violation of thermodynamics... looking at a system large enough to be closed, the whole thing is still increasing entropy, keeping the universe happy.

Nuclear reactors don't have a heat pump, what would be the purpose?

The steam loop in a nuclear power plant essentially forms a heat pump system, transferring heat from the primary coolant or reactor itself to the turbines and cooling towers (and then the water/air around the facility). The only notable difference between the power plant's cycle and a home A/C system is that the power plant uses a turbine to extract energy from the working fluid, rather than just dissipating the energy through a radiator.

In relation to the power a plant produces: zero.

Which would mean their CoP is infinitely large, which is substantially more than the "2 to 6" I normally consider.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, in best liberal style, lets compare apples & pears. Hydro power means in no way compares to nuclear or fossil power. Environmental effects are completely different.
Nuclear power releases warm water that causes higher fish populations due to growth of plants and krill size animals fish eat. Nuclear power saves lives as coal is not blown off trains coast to coast, coal is not burned so heavy metals are not blown out the stacks with other chemicals. Nuclear power exhausts only wet air & hot dry air.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US of A, fossil and nuclear plants use for cooling rivers, lakes, man made canals, atmosphere using hyperbolic cooling towers lacking fans and fan forced cooling towers. What is used for cooling may be determined by local, state or federal limitations of water or air temperature. Seasonal humidity affects cooling tower designs. When tides, winds, currents & weather change water temperature, power plants may be limited per cooling equipment limitations or legal water temperature limitations.
People love the great fishing where power plants release warm water. In FL, a large group of mantees survive cold winter water in the outlet canal of a power station.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

But do you know how much habitat Hydro power has displaced by comparison?

Then there are man made lakes that were created for the purposes of nuclear reactor cooling, for example Lake Anna in Virginia. So here you get both the habitat displacement of hydro, with the hot water discharge for a thermal nuclear plant. There is a "public" and "private" side of the lake. The private side being the side of the lake where the hot water is discharged. Of course, they built this nuclear plant with the expectation of consistently hot summer weather in mind. A "heat wave" in Europe is a normal summer day in Virginia.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[c6gunner]

Well technically he's right. If Europe starts to experience 1,000 degree temperatures, those cores will have a tough time getting cooled down. Not sure anyone will care, but, you know ...

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[mikael]

Given that the average person generates 1kw of heat/hour, adding millions of new citizens to Europe each year must be the equivalent of adding a nuclear reactors all over the continent.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans run at about 100W. We're pretty efficient

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[peppepz]

A person does not dissipate 1000 W of energy. Speaking of "W per hour" of heat has no sense, watts are already "energy over time". European population is decreasing.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[MightyYar]

It's true that they created the lake for the nuke plant, but to be fair they also have a 1MW hydro plant installed there as well. That's half of the Hoover Dam's capacity - nothing to sneeze at!

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Uecker]

How is a law preventing damage to the ecosystem of the rivers is a "political problem"?

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth hurts huh? Better talk about something else, completely irrelevant!

FTR, Sweden isn't exactly known for it's tropical wildlife, but there used live tropical fish in the sea outside Barsebäck thanks to the cooling water from the reactors. I can imagine what would happen if you used something as limited as a river.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[angel'o'sphere]

Your fridge is a heat pump.
A power plant using a steam turbine is not ... an engineer would know that.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, this garbage from a 3-digit ID? What the actual fuck.

kw/h, improperly capitalized, lies about European population growth. And really, how hot do you think humans would be at 1kW? Did someone crack the account or was it sold?

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know anything about the Hoover dam other than the fact that it was a major engineering project, but I can absolutely guarantee that it produces more than 2MW power.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's rivers in the US where power plants have raised the water temperature 20 degrees and essentially displaced the entire habitat.

An exaggeration. But do you know how much habitat Hydro power has displaced by comparison?

I don't know, but one thing I can be certain of is that you're about to exaggerate about it.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a German and EU political and environmental problem. eg Thermal pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The cooling water drawn from rivers, lakes, or seas will get more warm in hooter weather as more cooling water is needed.

German laws put limits on how hot cooling water can be when returned to such "rivers, lakes, or seas".

Laws limited the exisiting cooling engineering.

For every complicated human question, you can guarantee that AHuxley has a solution which is simple, elegant, autistic and wrong.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[nospam007]

"Seriously, why not just chill the water?"

They do. The massive towers around the plant are cooling towers. :-)
But even those don't cool the water enough to be able to send it back to the river without killing all the fauna, because the river is already hot and also it doesn't have enough water in the first place.

In winter, the river is frozen and they can't use them either.

And still they want us to believe that they can work around the clock, unlike solar and wind.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[q_e_t]

100W, not 1000. And it's only a threat to life in rivers if they live in them, and even given the propensity to build on floodplains, that isn't really happening.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

People complain about illegal immigrants voting, and they let non humans vote in Florida?

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey now, there is no place for facts and rational talk in the middle of an OMGWTFBBQ Climapocolypse! There's death and heat to talk about!

Well, you certainly won't find facts about energy production in Europe at Bloomberg - either they are morons or liars.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[jimtheowl]

"Laws limited the exisiting cooling engineering."

The laws impose restrictions, but not a limit it in the sense that there is no way around by adding more money; ie: build water ponds where the heat is allowed to rise much higher temperatures (without being returned to a river).

That would make the initial cost of building the plant less appealing by building upfront for a scenario that hasn't occurred yet.

It has now.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[thegarbz]

This is europe, we do that even in the cold weather.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[slazyrio]

Duh, it's the same as operating a cooling fan from part of the generated power.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[AmiMoJo]

rahvin112 made a claim. You denied it, but didn't provide any evidence. I did a quick google and found http://iopscience.iop.org/arti... which suggests a 10C rise, which is in the region of 20f.

You then tried some whataboutism in the hope that no-one would bother to validate your claim and start thinking about hydro power instead, even though rahvin112 was suggesting solar+storage as the alternative.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mr D from 63]

rahvin112 made a claim. You denied it, but didn't provide any evidence. I did a quick google and found http://iopscience.iop.org/arti... which suggests a 10C rise, which is in the region of 20f.

You then tried some whataboutism in the hope that no-one would bother to validate your claim and start thinking about hydro power instead, even though rahvin112 was suggesting solar+storage as the alternative.

That link does not show that the heating 'displaced the entire habitat', which was the claim. He made the claim, if he can back it up he should respond with the source. I say its total bullshit.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The heat sink water discharge temperature (usually river water) is a result of environmental regulation, you can't discharge back into the body of water too high above the ambient temperature without potentially affecting the aquatic life. One trick is to use a particularly deep river, and place the intake at the bottom and the outlet near the surface, so you have additional gradient available beyond just the allowed difference.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it feels good to say it. Stupidity trumps logic.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah there are two hydro plants in my town, one near the town center and one on the minor river Island where there's the stadium.
No dam! just small plants on the river. The former was installed in 1888 to power street lighting and can produce 3 MW (I had to go check this). They say the water flow is 90 m^3/s and drop height (I don't know the term) 4 meters to 4.7 meters.

No idea about the Hoover dam except its general picture and reputation. Probably has a power of 2GW not 2MW :)

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[AmiMoJo]

No, the watt is a unit of instantaneous power. Energy over time is measured in watt-hours (Wh).

For example, a heater that produces 1000W of heat running for 1 hour would produce 1000Wh of heat energy.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US EPA commonly uses 20 degrees F as a limit on discharge temperature rise on major rivers where you would place a large power plant, here's the first available permit from Google, for the Kendall Cogeneration Plant: https://www3.epa.gov/region1/npdes/mirantkendall/assets/pdfs/draftpermit/Kendall_Determin-Doc_06_08_04.pdf

Kendall Cogeneration Plant is a natural-gas plant, generating electricity and steam for heating and lighting Boston.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[hey!]

Great fishing in warm waters depends on the what you're fishing for. American bass (which are actually sunfish) are warm water species and do well in unnaturally warm waters. Trout, salmon, northern pike, and walleye are cool water species which often can't survive elevated temperatures.

Some cool water game fish are warm tolerant, others not. The most important game fish of Europe are trout and salmon, which die when exposed to warm water. There are fishing subcultures that go after "coarse fish" (which pretty much means anything not a salmon or trout), but I don't think anyone thinks it's a good idea to wipe out trout to make better habitat for carp.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had no idea manatees were tropical animals. I just assumed this kind of beast lived near the North Pole
Reading your post : wait, in Florida? And winter in Florida?
I learned something today.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[fazig]

I think it was less a comment about physics but more of a political potshot at Europe's current immigrant and refugee politics/crysis.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[AmiMoJo]

Okay. And your whataboutism, care to defend that?

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

100W for a lazy slob not doing anything. It's only an average too.
1000W sounds realistic for someone very much active at a given moment.
e.g. 200W mechanical power on a bicycle is something you might do on a bicycle but you're pushing it already. I wonder how much you're heating then, 500W, plus the 100W base? More?

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

He meant that the average electricity power consumption of a European is 1kW. That's actually not really accurate: the European average is 615W. For comparison in the US it is 1377W. Note also that, in both cases, this is only for electricity. Total average power consumption is much much higher.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[rapidmax]

Living at the Rhine River well before any thermal power plants, we already see dead fishes (thymallus and trouts) here.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[peppepz]

The watt is defined as J / s, which is energy / time. In fact, as you say yourself, to obtain an amount of energy you have to multiply by time.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, in best liberal style, lets compare apples & pears.

Err no, it is for both side. Don't try to finger pointing to the other side alone. I've seen both liberal and conservative using the similar style.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

A few countries like France are gaining population naturally, others are slowly dying.
Anyway while there still will be migrant you won't see mass refugees from Syria anymore. On the contrary, Russia et al. won the war and there will be Syrians returning to Syria.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful now.
If you describe quantity A over quantity B then it means you divide A through B -> A over (fraction line of) B = A/B. Energy over time, at least as long as we're talking about it in the context of electricity, is just what peppepz said - Watts.

Furthermore the unit Watt can be described in many different forms. One of which makes sense as long as we talk about electricity is: [W] = [V] * [A]; with [A] being the dimension of the base SI unit I and [V] being a dimension of the base units [V] = ([kg] * [m^2]) / ([s^3] * [A]).
Now if you multiply [V] * [A] the [A] dimensions cancel each other out and you're left with [W] = [kg] * [m] / [s^3]. We see that the dimension of time is in there with the power of 3.
Now what does instantaneous mean? In the broadest sense it means that it happens in happens in an infinitesimal amount of time. So we let the factor of s approach zero. What would happen then? Does multiplying or dividing by zero make any sense to you within the context of physics? Sure you can always multiply or divide by one or add or subtract zero. But multiplying or dividing? That smells of trivial solution, that's worthless at best.
There may be errors in here as well. Anyone feel free to point them out, even if it's just nitpicking. I'm only human after all.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[peppepz]

I know, I know.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[MightyYar]

HAHA! Got me. I'm only off by 3 orders of magnitude, though - so there's that.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[MightyYar]

Yeaaup, I'm off by 1000. Good enough for government work.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know an adult swimming freestyle for an hour burns from 500 to 1000 kcal energy turning it into heat, which translates to ~2 to 4kJ. Assuming that their body temperature stays perfectly the same all the time, all of that energy is released as mechanical energy into the water, and they were swimming for that hour they've transferred 2 to 4kW into the water.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a retard. A failure at life who looks for anything to project his self-hatred on. Don't bother.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[jbengt]

I design HVAC systems (among other things) for a living.
For an average office worker we assume about 250 btuh (75 watts±) of sensible heat and 200 btuh (60 watts±) of latent heat (evaporating sweat) for a total of a little less than 135 watts.
For heavy exercise, about 700 btuh (210 watts±) of sensible heat and 1100 btuh (320 watts±) of latent heat, for a total of about 530 watts per person.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mashiki]

There is no whataboutism there. The fact that the link doesn't even scientifically show what the other poster claimed is where the bullshit is. It's taking other data, painting it together, and claiming it is proof. There were no readings, there was no long-term study, hell there wasn't even a short-term study. The entire thing boiled down to "temperature is the cause" and "ecosystem disruption" by painting the two together to paint a story and not even looking for an actual cause.

Problem: Their own data shows that fish species with low tolerances to higher temperatures aren't having drop-offs in their population. Further, F&W agencies show that populations are high or within norms, except in cases where other factors come into play. Those other factors? Mainly people doing stupid things, like some farmer dumping shit on the fields and failing to plow it under causing a toxic bloom high enough to kill, but not enough to be noticeable outside of lab tests. Or a parasitic population bloom, caused by a variety of other factors like "boom years" with high populations and spawned populations being eaten by other fish creating less diversity in the offspring - aka lower resistances.

Good example from right here in my own neck of the woods. We have a serious problem with lamprey eels in the great lakes killing fish. We also have a serious problem with them traveling further up river every year and causing serious problems with fish spawning, breeding, and habitat destruction due to the rot of the fish in the river. Lamprey's have an extremely low tolerance to high temperatures, but this causes no impact to them in the river ecosystems which means traps and lampricide are an absolute requirement, despite the impact that lampricide has on other fish populations. The absolute destruction they cause is unbelievable and they can wipe out the entire river population in an area then travel further up or downstream continuing it.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay. And your whataboutism, care to defend that?

Whatabout you make a point?

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mashiki]

Did you read the article? Did you notice how it said oxygen starvation? Notice the picture? Notice how far the river is out from the normal "width" of it? Notice all those rocks which would be in the shallows and add to oxygenation? So we have no rain, which lowers the river, we have dredging to deepen the river. This makes a slow moving river with low oxygenation now. Add in that fertilizer runoff has been a serious problem for decades, and fertilizer causes massive lower end booms in population which use oxygen like crazy, and suddenly you have fish dying.

Seriously, just think a little bit. The problem is far simpler then "temperatures causing it" and requires a far more complex solution because of what 400 years of what Germany has done to the rivers "flow" all on it's own. The easiest one would be adding chops to add oxygen to the river, which are similar to aquarium air pumps.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[mikael]

I meant that the human body generates about 100w/heat an hour. Even been in crowded room? It gets quite hot rapidly. Add a few million new residents, and it's like installing patio heaters all over the place.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can understand what you are saying, but I'm in Florida. It is hot all the time. The heat isn't just the issue. The humidity is the issue. It is all well and good to discharge heat into the air but if the humidity is too high there is no transfer as a system cools by evaporation. When the humidity is too high it is impossible to move heat from one object to another. An example... with low humidity when you get out of a swimming pool and step into the sun you actually feel cooler as the water evaporates off of your body and transfers your heat into the air. Let's change the humidity factor to 90 percent and above, the water does not evaporate efficiently and you are now hot and sticky. No heat transfer can happen because the air is already saturated with moisture and will not accept any more. This actually REALLY sucks when you are out working in the Florida sun all day because not even a breeze can cool you off.

Now I'm not a nuclear scientist or even an advanced physicist but I can easily imagine this being a challenge just because of witnessing it first hand here in the swamp

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[AmiMoJo]

No, the stuff about hydro power.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

High ambient temperature and high humidity combined is the issue for us humans and many other endothermic animals.
The evaporation of sweat allows us to get rid of excess heat and maintain our body temperature even when ambient temperature is higher than our body temperature. That's why it isn't to difficult to sit in a sauna with an air temperature of about 100C. While in a Turkish bath with 100% humidity you'll barely be able to stand 50C for a longer time. If ambient temperature is (significantly) lower than our body temperature, even with higher humidity we can still get rid of excess heat. Under these circumstances the high humidity increases heat conductivity and makes the air feel even colder.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[rahvin112]

Fish and plant life are adapted to certain temperatures, for example rainbow trout and it's surrounding ecosystem are dependent on cold waters (below 50 degrees IIRC), you raise that temperature above 50F and the rainbow trout cannot simply survive in the waterway (the higher temp causes their metabolism to increase and for them to burn more calories than they can eat) along with many of the supporting plant life and even some of the waterborne insects and other food sources for the fish. Almost all aquatic ecosystems have strict temperature dependencies that the life in them depend on.

Installing a power plant along a river that raises the water 20F in such a situation would create a deadzone in the river where the native ecosystem can't survive, though they are typically recolonized by a different ecosystem, for example using the rainbow trout example above, the rainbow would be displaced by brown trout, bass and other warm water fish. But the big problem is this zone in the river creates a break that doesn't allow the rainbow to properly migrate and any rainbow that enter this part of the river will die if they remain.

As someone else already pointed out, 20F rise in temperature is the point where the EPA regulations kick in. But continue on with your whataboutism and baseless denial. Wasteheat can be a very serious problem.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The stuff about hydro power wasn't whataboutism either.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[saider]

This is thermodynamics from a heat flow perspective, not an energy generation one.

Let's walk through this.

1. Water cannot be used to cool the plant because it is too warm. Warm water cannot carry enough heat away from the reactor.
2. The proposed solution is to cool the water so it can be used.
3. A giant heat pump will remove heat from the water and reject it to the air. This heat pump needs to carry more than the heat from the reactor.
4. This would require the construction of cooling towers, which evaporate water to carry the heat away.
5. The increased air temperature would also impose limits on the efficiency of this system. The hotter the air gets, the harder it gets to cool the reactor. Eventually you need to shut down the reactor because your cooling system cant keep up. Or you keep building more cooling towers.
6. As the cost of this rube goldberg solution increases, you re-discover why nuke plants are stationed near large sources of water - Rejecting heat to the air is inefficient.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine the hydro plant is there as a backup power source for the nuclear plant cooling pumps if the reactor itself scrams. I could be wrong with that, but it would make a lot of sense to me, but I'm not a nuclear power engineer.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad enough to think that W/h is a relevant metric for anything you're saying here. But comparing thermodynamics of a room to a continent?
Sure a crowded room can get hot pretty quickly. For all intends and purposes it acts a lot like a closed system. And if you dump energy into a closed system the average temperature rises. That's why people Inuit can have a relatively warm temperature in their igloos from their body temperature alone while temperatures outside can be 30F below the inside. This is usually not the case for entire countries or continents.
Have you ever been in a crowded football stadium in winter? Did it get quite hot rapidly?

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the nuclear plants in FL have no problems with high heat.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[LinuxLuver]

The energy required to cool that volume of water makes the nuke plant pointless.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mashiki]

Still not a whataboutism thing. Sadly this is the state of academic review these days, where people correlate information that's outside of their field of expertise and try to present it as fact.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the article? Did you notice how it said oxygen starvation? Notice the picture? Notice how far the river is out from the normal "width" of it? Notice all those rocks which would be in the shallows and add to oxygenation? So we have no rain, which lowers the river, we have dredging to deepen the river. This makes a slow moving river with low oxygenation now. Add in that fertilizer runoff has been a serious problem for decades, and fertilizer causes massive lower end booms in population which use oxygen like crazy, and suddenly you have fish dying.

Seriously, just think a little bit. The problem is far simpler then "temperatures causing it" and requires a far more complex solution because of what 400 years of what Germany has done to the rivers "flow" all on it's own. The easiest one would be adding chops to add oxygen to the river, which are similar to aquarium air pumps.

No doubt. The impact from nuclear plants when looking at the scale of all else we do is very small. It is a rare even confined to very small portions of waterways where it can be (and is being) directly managed. The anti-nuke horn blowers will keep up their annoying noise though. That's what they do.

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.fondriest.com/environmental-measurements/parameters/water-quality/dissolved-oxygen/

Water temperature affects the amount of oxygen in the water, the hotter the water the less oxygen it will contain. There is a table at the bottom that shows how much or little oxygen there is at certain water temperatures and salinity levels. At 20 degrees celcius it is about 9 mg/litre DO, at 40 degrees about 6. Freshwater fish typically require levels between 4 and 15 but this is species-dependant. Higher temperatures trigger algea bloom, especially when combined with extra nutriets from surrounding fields. Algae blooms further reduce available oxygen, creating deadzones. Thermal run-off from a power plant will add upon an already warmed up river and create bigger, longer warm areas and thus deadzones.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mr D from 63]

Fortunately, cases where there is a significant impact from nuclear plants are rare and affect a small area for a short duration. Its quite easy to manage as well. Its not a serious problem.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[angel'o'sphere]

No idea why you cite a fake news site, when you can get the correct numbers by using google: https://energy-charts.de/power...

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[angel'o'sphere]

But do you know how much habitat Hydro power has displaced by comparison?
Zero?
Because the hydroplants are still full with fish?

Why do you compare apples with stones is beyond me.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[angel'o'sphere]

The main problem is not the temperature per se but the oxygen level.
Higher water temperature mens lower oxygen, the fishes simply suffocate.

In some parts of Germany we are picking out fishes by the tons each day. Around Cologne, e.g.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[angel'o'sphere]

cases where there is a significant impact from nuclear plants are rare and affect a small area for a short duration.
Exactly, because we shut the plants down.

Its quite easy to manage as well. Its not a serious problem.
Fully true, because we shut the plants down.

I still don't get what your ranting point is ....

Re: uhhh cool the water then?

[OneAhead]

Heh, I LOLed.

Also, found the Skin Horse reader.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mr D from 63]

When lakes are filled for hyrdopower, vast animal and plant habitats are destroyed, even native water life is impacted. Not only are animal habitats destroyed, but many animals themselves die. Even human habitats have been destroyed, displacing entire towns.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mr D from 63]

Its not a rant, it puts thing in perspective. If you don't like viewing things in perspective, you can ignore.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[angel'o'sphere]

I simply don't understand your perspective. That is all.
The summary clearly stated that Germany (and Swizerland) only power down a few plants and don't completely shut off any.
And you claim the summary is wrong: because you don't see the 5% load dip ... so again: what is your point you want to make?

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, and?
That is a rather minour inconvenience in relation e.g. of lumbering a few woods, that you do all the time, and putting farms there.
Hint: a lake is a habitate, too. There is nothing lost, bottom line you could argue it it is a net gain.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mr D from 63]

And you claim the summary is wrong: because you don't see the 5% load dip ..

Where did I claim that?

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mr D from 63]

Good, then lets not get all worked up about a, occasional, rare, temporary and relatively much smaller impact on water temperature.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[angel'o'sphere]

It is not small.
Many plants reduced their power output by ~10%

It is temporary, yes, likely 4 to 6 weeks.

relatively much smaller impact on water temperature.
The relevant rivers have hard set maximum temperatures like 26C or 28C, if that temperature is reached the plant will shut down completely.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[angel'o'sphere]

In your first post to this thread.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mr D from 63]

No, not many, very few.

Re:uhhh cool the water then?

[Mr D from 63]

In your first post to this thread.

You must be seeing things that don't exist. Doesn't surprise me.

Terrible Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

So why did they have to shut down the reactors?

Re:Terrible Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they use lake water to cool the steam back into water before they start the process over again. That makes the cooling water too hot to put back in the lake for environmental reasons.

Re:Terrible Summary

[110010001000]

Because they need to pump more river water to cool the plants since the temperature is higher and there is a limit to the volume of water they are allowed to pump out.

Re:Terrible Summary

[bhcompy]

Because Quaid didn't turn them on

Re:Terrible Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to post the same, dear fellow AC.

Thermal power plants, such as nuclear or coal, use high-temperature steam to turn turbines, which convert heat energy into electricity. In the process, the steam's temperature falls, so it can no longer be used to move the turbine again. [...] Europe's heatwave, however, hasn't just increased air temperatures but also water temperatures.

WTF?? The sad state of eduction in the 21st century... Sigh...

Re:Terrible Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Thermal power plants require water to cool the turbine condensers. Due to the very large amount of heat which must be removed from these large nuclear plants, river water temperatures increase. Because oxygen solubility in water falls as temperatures increase, there is a risk of injury to aquatic life if water temperatures are allowed to rise too high. For this reason, there are legal limits on the temperature of the water which they are allowed to discharge back the rivers. So, when river temperatures are already high, plants must reduce output or shut down to avoid damaging aquatic life.

It would have been possible to equip the plants with cooling towers, which would avoid the need to return warm water to the rivers, but this was judged unnecessary by the design engineers. Electricity demand in Europe is lowest in Summer, and in France, nuclear plants often run at part load as there is insufficient demand for electricity. During heatwaves, forced load reductions due to temperature can easily be accommodated by other plants, hence there is no engineering justification for upgraded cooling at the affected sites.

Re:Terrible Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Most likely the water fell out of the expected temperature range it was designed for.

Running the plant at reduced capacity is most likely no problem, someone just needs to update the specification for this new condition.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago nuclear was 66% of Swedens electrical power genereation due to the drought preventing the hydropower dams from filling up. It'll be an expensive winter in sweden.

Re:Terrible Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Go easy on the writer, he did not know what he was writing.

Re:Terrible Summary

[slazyrio]

Even worse: increasing temperatures also lower the solubility of CO2 in the water and shift Henry's vapor/liquid equilibrium in the direction of more atmospheric CO2, which (allegedly) heats up the atmosphere more, evaporating more water (even a much stronger 'greenhouse gas' than CO2) from the river as a result, of which the CO2 also adds up to that in the atmosphere... enfin, you get the idea: a description of global thermal runaway that the IPCC would have loved to have come up with.

Re:Terrible Summary

[mikael]

When plankton get too hot, they release chemicals into the ocean and atmosphere that encourages cloud formation.

Re: Terrible Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize how tiny the impact is, particularly compared to the benefits? Heat is discharged to the environment when we make solar cells and wind generators as well.

Its an overblown concern and is already being managed.

We care about climate change

[foxalopex]

The problem with climate change isn't so much as our planet breaking but everything we depend on breaking. Somewhat wacky that nuclear reactors aren't designed to handle this heat but then again I would have never imagined the crazy kind of temperatures Europe has skyrocketed up to. So one has to wonder, what other stuff is going to break?

Re:We care about climate change

[Mr D from 63]

The problem with climate change isn't so much as our planet breaking but everything we depend on breaking. Somewhat wacky that nuclear reactors aren't designed to handle this heat but then again I would have never imagined the crazy kind of temperatures Europe has skyrocketed up to. So one has to wonder, what other stuff is going to break?

Nuclear reactors can handle high temps just fine. Only in places where there is limited cooling water and cooling releases rise above local environmental limits are they cut back.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

In Germany, recently, nuclear was a steady producer while wind was barely producing.

https://www.energy-charts.de/p...

Re:We care about climate change

[cheesybagel]

It depends on how the nuclear power plant is designed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with climate change isn't so much as our planet breaking but everything we depend on breaking. Somewhat wacky that nuclear reactors aren't designed to handle this heat...

So how do we explain that two Brazilian nuclear plants operate under those conditions most of the time?

Re: We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

They were designed to operate under the expected local climate conditions and hopefully built accordingly.

The expectations in other places differed and so did the construction.

Same reason a house in Texas doesn't have the same heater as one in Minnesota.

Re: We care about climate change

[Miamicanes]

The problem isn't that the water is too warm to run the plant. The problem is that heating lake water to 100+ degrees (F) will kill just about everything that lives in the lake (except algae, which will bloom like crazy and suffocate whatever the higher water temperature didn't kill directly), so they throttled back the plant to avoid overheating the lake.

Re:We care about climate change

[Mr D from 63]

Germany produces 3 times more power from wind than from nuclear. Moron ... Which is pretty clearly visible on your cherry picked graph.

You miss the point. Germany has stupidly shut down nuclear plants, but nuclear is still available when needed, unlike wind. One chooses charts to illustrate points, I chose one illustrating what is happening during a heat wave. Sorry you don't like that.

For the heat wave weeks, nuclear generated more than wind. Even with 58 GW installed wind vs 9.5 GW installed nuclear.

https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

Re:We care about climate change

[meglon]

You miss the point. Germany has stupidly shut down nuclear plants, but nuclear is still available when needed, unlike wind.

....except when it isn't, which is what this article is about. Just saying.

Re:We care about climate change

[meglon]

So how do we explain that two Brazilian nuclear plants operate under those conditions most of the time?

The same reason the lunar rover worked on the moon, but your own car won't.

Re:We care about climate change

[Mr D from 63]

You miss the point. Germany has stupidly shut down nuclear plants, but nuclear is still available when needed, unlike wind.

....except when it isn't, which is what this article is about. Just saying.

But they were available. If you look deeper than headlines, you might realize such. I even provided links to make it easy for folks like you.

Re:We care about climate change

[Mr D from 63]

Germany produces 3 times more power from wind than from nuclear. Moron ... Which is pretty clearly visible on your cherry picked graph.

Also, your statement is false. Wind only produced about 1.5 times nuclear last year and so far this year. But don't let facts get in the way of your complaint.
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

Re:We care about climate change

[meglon]

So, if a nuke plant is offline it's available, but if a wind tower if offline it isn't. Got it.

At /., accuracy and completeness isn't as important as the narrative.... Mr D from 63 (seriously, just a little ways down)

How Ironic.

Re:We care about climate change

[Mr D from 63]

So, if a nuke plant is offline it's available, but if a wind tower if offline it isn't. Got it.

At /., accuracy and completeness isn't as important as the narrative.... Mr D from 63 (seriously, just a little ways down)

How Ironic.

If nuclear plants are generating power, as they were throughout the heat wave, then they are not offline. Your attempt at being a smart ass is pretty futile when I've provided links to charts showing the steady output of nuclear. Go ahead, profess your ignorance.

Re:We care about climate change

[Mr D from 63]

Korea is even started up nukes that were scheduled to be down for maintenance to help during their heat wave.

http://www.world-nuclear-news....

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said this heatwave was due to climate change?

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

lol ya they only had to install about 10 times that capacity to get that output .... call me again when we gotta build 10000 GW worth of nuclear to get 100GW

Re:We care about climate change

[rtb61]

That was the old rule. The new rule is, it depends upon how many batteries were in the system. So I would design the burbs with every millimetre of roof as a solar panel and one battery pack for the home and one battery pack for the grid. A distributed power station, where the power station and it's grid is already built, all you need to do is add the generators (solar panels and smaller low noise vertical axis wind turbines) and batteries. You get the system in place, by people directly investing in their own homes, by people leasing them system and by people simply paying for the electricity produced by their home at a discount.

I would still have nuclear as a back up (storm events can be extremely disruptive and takes months to repair, can't let a city or it's residents die whilst the system is being repaired and it is a very vulnerable to weather system) but mainly used for high energy recycling, returning all waste into raw materials for reuse for zero waste cities. We should be aiming for 100% recycling and that means using energy to reduce waste materials back to raw materials ready to be used.

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if a nuke plant is offline it's available, but if a wind tower if offline it isn't. Got it.

At /., accuracy and completeness isn't as important as the narrative.... Mr D from 63 (seriously, just a little ways down)

How Ironic.

That is correct. The nuclear plants were voluntarily shutdown but could be restarted if needed, so it's available whether or not it is producing at the moment.
When the wind isn't blowing, then then wind tower is offline and cannot be started up, so it isn't available.

Re:We care about climate change

[Uecker]

It is not a terrible deep insight that wind is intermittent power source. It is also not new that there is less wind in the summer. On the other hand, there is more solar and the total production from renewables is surprisingly stable: https://www.energy-charts.de/r... Always about 35% which in summary is much more than nuclear.

Your charts highlight another point: The renewables clearly cut into consumption of coal and lignite. This is very good.

And there is another thing to learn: Nuclear is always running at the same level. This is related to a disadvantage of nuclear: It can *only* be used for baseload.Technically, it might be possible to do load following, but that makes the economics of nuclear even worse as you have very high investments you need to recover. On the one hand, this makes it very unattractive to have a lof of nuclear in a modern grid with intermittent power sources. On the other hand, you cannot use only nuclear because of demand side changes. So there is no real long-term use case for nuclear anymore.

Re: We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

They could just turn the nuke plant to full power of it was extremely critical, although it will destroy part of the local marine ecosystem. If this weather becomes more frequent a cooling tower could be installed to prevent this issue. The offline wind turbine can't just be turned on.

Re:We care about climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

You miss the point. Germany has stupidly shut down nuclear plants, but nuclear is still available when needed, unlike wind.
I think you miss the point. German population fought to get rid of nuclear power since 50 years. When the red/green government under Schroeder finally planned the exit, we all were happy.
Then came Merkel and canceled the exit.
Then came Fukushima and Merkel reintroduced the exit.

There is nothing stupid in that.

Why you pick cherry picked graphs to prove a point which you don't have, is beyond me.
Over the course of a year nuclear produces about 10% of our power, wind about 30% and renewables in total over 40%.

For the heat wave weeks, nuclear generated more than wind.
Yes, because Germany is one of the few European countries that does not need to shut down nuclear power plants at the moment ... due to relatively high water in the rivers.

Look at France on the other hand, 65% of all power comes from nukes ... they will probably shut down 20% - 30% of them during August ... and buy coal power on the European market. So much for your beloved nuclear power.

Re:We care about climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

You provided links for the steady output of nukes in Germany.
Not for Europe

Why that concerns you, is beyond me.

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

Why that concerns you, is beyond me.

There are a great many things that are beyond you.

Re:We care about climate change

[martin_dk]

I know. These days my Miele tumble dryer keeps stopping before the clothes are actually dry, beeping with this annoying sound and a faulty error code. Almost as annoying as an uranium rod stuck in a reactor.

Re:We care about climate change

[AmiMoJo]

Only in places where there is limited cooling water

You make it sound like they just built the plants in the wrong place.

Nuclear plants have some pretty difficult requirements for location. You need somewhere that is geologically stable, where there is sufficient space and isolation to build the plant, waste storage and security apparatus. It needs a supply of water for cooling. It needs to be sheltered from severe weather and natural disasters as far as possible. And it has to have good infrastructure to keep it supplied, connect it to the grid and allow staff and emergency services to get in and out.

Your Forbes link doesn't open for me, but I note that when it gets hot in the US nuclear plants have to shut down because the sea gets too warm: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/...

Not to mention the inland ones suffering from droughts. https://www.newscientist.com/a...

Re:We care about climate change

[tlhIngan]

Nuclear reactors can handle high temps just fine. Only in places where there is limited cooling water and cooling releases rise above local environmental limits are they cut back.

Nuclear plants have specific cooling requirements. The problem is that the cooling water they use, as it gets warmer, they need more water in order to perform at the same cooling level. As such, either they max out the amount of water they can draw at the intake (either through environmental limits to limit the heat released into rivers, or the amount they can physically pull through their systems).

You have to remember that even if there is normally plentiful flows, the rivers may have shrunk from the heat so there may not even be enough flow to keep the intakes covered.

Thus, they have to run at reduced output to reduce their heat generation.

This heatwave is rather exceptional and likely beyond the initial design requirements of the reactors.

It's just the same in other fields - it can be so hot planes can't fly. Or rather, they can, but the temperature exceeds the performance graphs supplied in the manual, and when that happens, you're not allowed to fly. (No extrapolation required, unless you want to be a test pilot).

Re: We care about climate change

[q_e_t]

This was one of the issues in 2003, although I suspect the high death toll amongst the older population was due to most people not having air conditioning, rather than insufficient power to run it, plus older people tend not to be as able to sense or regulate body temperature so may try to do too much and not sense the danger signs. Ideally newer homes should have high levels on insulation, and possibly a section of high thermal mass that can regulate temperatures year round. It's not necessarily expensive in terms of materials, but it does mean designing with respect to the locality, and ensuring future developments don't do things like alter solar gain. In terms of energy, a mix of baseload, renewable that generally tracks demand, and peaking is likely to be required. It's not going to be cheap, as redundancy is required. It would be simpler to use just nuclear, coal and gas, we're it not for climate change.

Re: We care about climate change

[q_e_t]

Grrr... Formatting

Re: We care about climate change

[q_e_t]

As I understand it (relative who worked in the sector, as my work related to the energy sector was only with regard to large wind turbines) is that domestic wind is mostly not worth it due to shadowing from other buildings, unless you live on a hill, but that ground source heat pumps can be viable. If you place a large insulated block under ground you can dump heat into it in summer, draw it out in winter, but it's a huge cost and disruption, not least to the environment.

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany is Europe and Europe is Germany! Victoire a nous!

Re:We care about climate change

[blindseer]

Over the course of a year nuclear produces about 10% of our power, wind about 30% and renewables in total over 40%.

Germany has between 9 and 10 GW of operating nuclear power capacity. Germany also has 5 GW of hydro, 40 GW of solar PV, and 50 GW of wind turbine, in operating electrical generation capacity. So ten times the installed renewable capacity produced only four times the energy of nuclear.

Look at France on the other hand, 65% of all power comes from nukes ... they will probably shut down 20% - 30% of them during August ... and buy coal power on the European market. So much for your beloved nuclear power.

France has over 60 GW of electrical generation capacity from nuclear, which produces over 80% of its electricity. France has 25 GW of hydro producing over 10% of its electricity. France has over 10 GW of installed wind and solar producing less than 10% of its electricity.

It should be no surprise if France shifts from nuclear to coal. Unreliable energy like wind, water, and sun, cannot keep up with nuclear and coal.

Re:We care about climate change

[AmiMoJo]

One of the ones having delayed maintenance (Hanbit) was one of the plants affected by the fake certification scandal. Suppliers of about 6000 parts to the plant faked the certifications on them. Some were removed and replaced, others were just left there.

Re:We care about climate change

[Mr D from 63]

You make it sound like they just built the plants in the wrong place.

No, I never hinted they were. They operate at very high capacity factors even in the very few places where very infrequent restrictions come in to play.

Re:We care about climate change

[Mr D from 63]

The economics of any power source is worse when they are not fully utilized. Wind curtailment which will be required for high penetration generation is one example.

Re:We care about climate change

[Mr D from 63]

They parts were not adequately documented. "faked" is a term then anti-nuke press likes to use. The plant did the right thing and is resolving the issue in a very conservative manner.

Re:We care about climate change

[thegarbz]

Nuclear production has reduced by less than 1GW in Germany as a result of this. In the meantime the daily cycle from solar goes from 28GW to 0. Wind was 9GW 3 days ago and 2GW the day before that.

I think we'll be just fine with things "breaking".

Re:We care about climate change

[AmiMoJo]

https://www.ibtimes.com/south-...

Over 7,600 forged certificates.

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

France has a handful remaining coal plants, no longer does any coal mining at all (for more than a decade) and government announced coal power would be forbidden (which is a fairly symbolic and opportunistic virtue signaling). I've just read that they help for demand spikes in winter - electric home heating is massively used and even more so during cold waves when even the cheapskates will use it.

France is supposed to shift to 50% nuclear at whatever date but some time ago we learned we would drag our feet such that the number or a date are more a like a suggestion. Probably depends whether a left-wing president and assembly get elected in 2022 or not.

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all power sources are affected equally. But nuclear is already too expensive and requires huge upfront investments. The risk that the plant is not fully utilized will make this situation much worse. Once wind curtailment is necessary, installation of new wind power plants might also slow down... Or not, because wind might just become so cheap it doesn't matter if utilization goes down.

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

How much energy can be extracted from a thermal power plant depends on the difference in temperature produced via generation and the cooling source. This is due to the laws of thermodynamics. So hot weather that heats up the cooling source will always result in a heat derate for thermal units.

Re:We care about climate change

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

They could raise the allowed output temp some. It's probably got some slack, and the environmental zero animal deaths concern near the output is overly important anyway. So the animals clear out downstream half a kilometer further.

Re:We care about climate change

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

But it is available. The problem is regulatory on allowed output temp of the cooling water. The plant's operation is a-ok.

That's what the famously-shaped towers do. They have nothing to do with the nuclear directly. They cool the water used to cool the system by very low tech: spraying the water out into the open at the top and it cools as it rains all the way down.

They will come up with a solution but it won't be before the summer ends. Maybe a few more loops of cooling, or another tower.

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

The same reason the lunar rover worked on the moon, but your own car won't.

While I'm not sure my car would work for certain, it is electric. At least the propulsion should work. So it might at least try to move the wheels forward. Not sure I'd get very far after the tires sunk into the lunar regolith.

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound like they just built the plants in the wrong place.

No, I never hinted they were. They operate at very high capacity factors even in the very few places where very infrequent restrictions come in to play.

You aren't answering his question. The Nuclear plants are failing to deliver power when it's most needed - the point when there is little wind and when it's very hot. This was the whole reason we bought them at vast cost - by far the most expensive form of electricity in current use - so it turns out that the need for cooling water is a big problem. You are trying to mislead us and we can see it.

Looking back at your original post, it's very interesting that you choose to compare with wind power when the good weather renewable is solar. No doubt you will be surprised to hear that solar power has been producing very successfully throughout Europe during the heatwave. The supply of solar happens to match quite well with the need for air conditioning, especially if you add in some pump storage to slightly delay the peak of availability.

Re: We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly fuses. Not forged but rather signed off without the required paperwork. Not typically a problem in the US and other countries where the buyer is required to check all paperwork and even monitor certain qualification activities.

There is no indication any parts are faulty (beyond expected ), inpections and tests have been done to check.

Re: We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, France bactracked on nuclear reduction "goals" once they were informed of the impacts to both CO2 progress and costs. It was an ill unformed political play. I'll give them credit for at least realizing it made no sense.

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't answering his question. The Nuclear plants are failing to deliver power when it's most needed - the point when there is little wind and when it's very hot.

Of the scalable, non CO2 emitting technologies (solar, wind, and nuclear) nuclear is the ONLY one delivering power when needed during these heat waves. While a few plants may have to curb output briefly, most don't. In total, nuclear is still outputting well over 90% capacity overall. Solar fades away every day when demand is still high, and wind over a region the size of Germany at times drops to a couple percent of total capacity.

Are you saying the problem with nuclear is that is doesn't completely make up for the flaws of wind and solar?

Re: We care about climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

The biggest problem is that the average person born after 1950 is simply put: super dumb.
The only "extreme" we have at the moment is that the "heat wave" covers all Europe. But the temperatures in themselves are no really that extreme (exceptions: some points in Greece, Spain and Portugal).
The easy way to handle heat like that is old school: a foot bath with cold water. Or if you really are that touched by a little bit of heat, a cold water (ice?) filled towel on your forehead, or putting your arms into cold water.
Can't be so hard. But as I said above: people are to dumb in our times, you have to spoon feed them simple "tricks" like this. 100 years ago that was common sense!

Re:We care about climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

France has over 60 GW of electrical generation capacity from nuclear, which produces over 80% of its electricity.
France produces about 65%of its power with nukes. No idea why you always post things where you have no clue about.
The maximum was 75% and that that was 20 years ago ...

Re:We care about climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

I stand corrected.
Well, last year Germany produced 38% of its power from renewables.
I guestimated that that means 30% from wind and 8% from other sources.
As nuclear is a little bit above 10% that would be a factor of 3.
No idea why the graph is showing a different number, perhaps it shows the total produced power from which 30% - 50% got exported and that distortes the graph. Hm, makes no sense either ... as the nukes are basically running at full capacity and their "baseline" stays constant. Another "internet mystery" :D

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

France has over 60 GW of electrical generation capacity from nuclear, which produces over 80% of its electricity.
France produces about 65%of its power with nukes. No idea why you always post things where you have no clue about.
The maximum was 75% and that that was 20 years ago ...

Let me see what Google says...

Nuclear Power in France(Updated July 2018)
France derives about 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security. This share may be reduced to 50% by 2025.
France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over €3 billion per year from this.
The country has been very active in developing nuclear technology. Reactors and especially fuel products and services have been a significant export.
About 17% of France's electricity is from recycled nuclear fuel.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx

So, as of last month France was getting 75% of it's electricity from nuclear power. Not 20 years ago, more like 20 days ago.

Re:We care about climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

Germans like their moral panics about anything and everything. Why anyone would use them as a model, though...

Re: We care about climate change

[q_e_t]

The biggest problem is that the average person born after 1950 is simply put: super dumb

On what basis do you suggest this? Do you have any citations?,/p>

The only "extreme" we have at the moment is that the "heat wave" covers all Europe

And other countries, as apparently places like Korea have had hot temperatures, apparently.

The easy way to handle heat like that is old school: a foot bath with cold water. Or if you really are that touched by a little bit of heat, a cold water (ice?) filled towel on your forehead, or putting your arms into cold water.

Poor advice as those will make you feel cooler, but won't significantly increase the rate at which you cool, as the feet or head are pretty small areas of the body overall. Don't come back with the nonsense about how you lose a huge amount of heat through the head in winter, as you pretty much lose it in proportion to the surface area of the head.

100 years ago that was common sense!

I prefer to use things that are evidence-based, as many things that were common sense 100 years ago (smoking helps with a sore throat, for example) have turned out to be really bad ideas.

Re: We care about climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

Seems you are also super dumb.

Feet and Hands are in cold water extremely efficient cooling helps.

And your evidence you can simply find yourself, next time you feel hot get big enough bucket of water that you can put both feet into it and try it yourself.

In South Europe: everyone does that!

Re: We care about climate change

[q_e_t]

And your evidence you can simply find yourself, next time you feel hot get big enough bucket of water that you can put both feet into it and try it yourself.

It does indeed feel good. It doesn't mean it's effective. What you want to do to cool the body down is to promote evaporative cooling. The amount of evaporative cooling you get from dunking your feet in cold water is minimal, but may trick your body into thinking that it is cooler than it is (wrong signals to the hypothalamus), and reduce sweating and thus reduce evaporative cooling over the whole body (which is bigger than the feet) and be counter productive. This is what I mean about 'common sense' sometimes being nothing of the sort, and evidence trumping this. I am trying to track down a link for you, and I will post that later if I find one, but most of the hits for my current search terms on Google are just pulling up tabloid newspaper articles telling you to not sit in the sun and drink water, which really is common sense that is also actually true.

Re: We care about climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

The effect of putting your feed into a bucket of water versus evapouring cooling is probably 100 times stronger ... no idea what point you want to make, no clue about physics?

Re: We care about climate change

[q_e_t]

Assuming all sweat instantly vaporised, a typical adult could shed energy at a rate of 1kW through sweat, based on the energy required to do the phase transition and amount of sweat, but that's not realistic as not all of it evaporated. I calculated it independently, but also see http://c21.phas.ubc.ca/article..., but is likely to be around 100W as an order of magnitude, for actual evaporative loss, as 30W is about the base level even when not sweating. The metabolic output of a human is about 100W, but somewhat less if you are sitting down, which you need to do if you have your feet in water. Feet don't have great blood flow, and are only a small proportion of the body, so at rest you are only going to be losing maybe 10W through your feet in cold water, based on the blood flow through the feet. It's an order of magnitude less than from actually sweating, and a fraction of just overall evaporative loss when not even sweating. Wetting your body with extra water is effectively sweating from an energy balance point of view. The major effect of putting your feet in cold water is from how it feels, and the fact that you are definitely not exercising when doing it, so your heat generation has fallen.

The final irony, though, is that putting your feet in cold water is being suggested by some as a way to lose weight when you are not exercising, as it increases the metabolic rate (and heat output) over just sitting there with warm feet. I have no idea if it is actually effective.

So what was your point about my understanding of physics again?

Re: We care about climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

Feet don't have great blood flow,
They have, that is the point.

So what was your point about my understanding of physics again?
The poing of having no idea about the human body, e.g. how much blood flows through your feet and how much water you can evapourate via your skin :)

Why don't you simlly try it, instead of arguing?

Re: We care about climate change

[q_e_t]

They have, that is the point.

Which is why people never, say, get frost bite, as the super efficient blood supply means their toes stay toasty. Oh, hold on... Or why when people start having vascular problems they definitely don't have issues with blood flow to the... oh hold on.

The point of having no idea about the human body, e.g. how much blood flows through your feet and how much water you can evapourate via your skin :)

I provided you with references. You seem to have ignored what they said. To repeat, 30W loss from evaporation even when not sweating. Only a small fraction of the body's blood flow goes through the feet (10% would be generous). Having your feet in cold water cannot cool blood that hasn't even gone there. So you are look at, at rest, 100W output, 10W maximum through the feet, 30W evaporation even if not sweating It's an extra 10W of cooling, perhaps, but wetting your body would be more effective, which is why we sweat.

In terms of trying it, I already pointed out that I have. It feels nice. It doesn't mean it is effective, it's just an extra few Watts of cooling. The act of sitting down is probably as effective.

Re: We care about climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

Only a small fraction of the body's blood flow goes through the feet (10% would be generous).
That is wrong: all blood flows through the feet and the hands. You have like 7% of your body weight as blood, so about 1.2 - 1.5 gallons, or around 6liters.

https://www.healthline.com/hea...

"The heart can move 5 to 7 liters of blood in one minute and 7600 liters (2000 gallons) per day."

During the course of a few minutes: all your blood was once in your feet or your hands.

Which is why people never, say, get frost bite, as the super efficient blood supply means their toes stay toasty.
You get it reversed ... strange. Obviously you get frost bite because the feet are so efficient flown with blood. If you lose heat and start freezing, the body shuts down blood circulation to the extremities where it loses most heat: which are your feet and your hands. The body would love to shut down the head too ... but obviously that would be no solution :D

Putting your feed and hands into water implies your pour a bit water over your legs and forearms: what is cooling more? Cold water evaporating from your forearms and calfs or 100F/37C warm sweat?

Re: We care about climate change

[q_e_t]

That is wrong: all blood flows through the feet and the hands.

We are talking about Watts, thus J/second. Are you saying all the blood in the body flows through the feet every second (and the hands)? Really? Seriously? If so, I give up. You even use a figure "The heart can move 5 to 7 liters of blood in one minute and 7600 liters (2000 gallons) per day", so per second through the whole body this is (on average) 6000ml / 60 seconds, or 0.1 litres per second through the whole body. Blood flow through the feet is about 3% of this. (10% through the hands) when the hands and feet are at the same temperature as the body as a whole. That drops a bit if the feet are cooler. So let's say the body is overall warm, then 0.1*0.02*4184J per C drop of the blood temperature. Then we have to go to Newton and some assumptions. Let's assume water at 5C, and the area of both feet is 0.1m, and the feet as plates with laminar flow. dQ/dT=hAdeltaT. Or dQ/dt=0.1*0.54*(37-5)=1.7C/s, so now we have a heat loss of 0.1*0.02*4184*1.7=14 Watts. And this is assuming that the blood is actually going over a surface at 5C, so the feet are at 5C (which would be very uncomfortable). The evaporative heat loss, even without sweating is 30W (and we've just knocked 5% off that by putting our feet in water), so net it's 12.5W. When sweating fully you can lose 100W. So whilst putting your feet in cold water feels great (and I sometimes do it myself), it's not the most effective way to keep cool. It's certainly less messy than spraying your naked body with water, and easier to do in company.

And no, blood, at 37C, would keep the tissues of your feet warm, but it seems it cannot (although partly because blood flow to the feet shuts down). Again, do you really believe what you are saying?

Putting your feed and hands into water implies your pour a bit water over your legs and forearms:

Well, that's a definition of 'putting your feet into' that is new to me. Here, where they use English, it means taking a body of water, and placing your feet into it, not pouring things over it. Again, do you really believe what you are saying?

Re: We care about climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry,
you want to claim: loosing heat via sweat on your feet is more effective than putting your feet into cold water?
As I said before: why don't you simply try it? It would save us the math games which are hard to debate about if no one actually knows how much heat we lose over which surface.
And another hint: my feet are far bigger than my hands, so I'm quite sure, I lose more heat via my feet than my hands ...

If I put/place my feet into water, I obviously also pour water over my legs from knee down ... and wet my arms from hands to roughly ellbow ... is that good enough english for you?

No cooling towers?

[sims 2]

N/T

Re:No cooling towers?

[barc0001]

Cooling towers don't cool the water enough. Need more cooling tower surface area, or a larger reservoir to dump the warmed water back into.

Re:No cooling towers?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's why many nuclear plants use natural draft cooling towers. But they are big and ugly. Cooling reservoirs are better, but the temperature rise is limited and the land area is huge.

Even so, South Texas nuclear uses a cooling reservoir, and I have not heard of them ever getting curtailed. And I doubt Europe is much hotter than Bay City Texas. We've been hitting close to 100 degF for a while.

Re: No cooling towers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusingly the US press is reporting European temperatures in centigrade when they would be over 100F, and in farenheit when 99F or lower. Cities in Southern Europe have hit 111F and 113F so far, with 117F expected.

Re:No cooling towers?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>> South Texas nuclear uses a cooling reservoir, and I have not heard of them ever getting curtailed.

Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, ~50 miles west of central Phoenix, AZ also uses cooling reservoirs. Its the largest nuclear power station in the US by net power output 3.3GW. Palo Verde is the only large nuclear plant in the world not located near a large body of water. When the residents of local municipalities in west Phoenix flush their toilets and take showers, the waste water is processed, then sent to Palo Verde, to fill the water reservoirs used to cool the plant. The system when the ambient air temperature is 118F ( 48C ) or greater. I love to look to the west on clear, cold winter days, to see that big steamy poopee cloud rising up from Palo Verde.

BTW. Carppy article summary, but thats ./ these days. I miss Cmdr Taco.

Re:No cooling towers?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know... these cooling towers have limited surface area exposed to atmosphere. Approximately a circlular plane. If you created a vortex of the atmosphere and coolant in the tower, you'd get much better cooling. Is that a thing?

Re:No cooling towers?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is not in technical limits but in what local ecosystems can handle. What lives in that Texas cooling reservoir probably is adjusted to different conditions than what lives in a European river with a nuclear plant next to it that uses its water for cooling.

Re: No cooling towers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. You have fan driven cooling towers. They are more efficient.

Re: No cooling towers?

[q_e_t]

Cooling towers are used in many plants, nuclear and coal, and seem to work.

Re: No cooling towers?

[painandgreed]

Cooling towers are used in many plants, nuclear and coal, and seem to work.

Cooling towers work to specifications they are built to. I believe what the parent is saying, is that the current heat wave is driving things past those specifications. Cooling towers would work, as would large water reservoir but they'd have to be rebuilt, perhaps from the ground up and the current conditions would probably be over by time the money was paid and the work done. That's assume they had the money and available water, but they certainly don't have the time.

Re: No cooling towers?

[q_e_t]

What I was hinting that is, in the UK, I haven't heard of any coal plants or other thermal plants, which use cooling towers in the UK, closing down over the summer. So that suggests that cooling towers seem to have been doing reasonably well, as there haven't been any power cuts. Granted, in the UK air con is less common (my workplace has it, though) and the nights are light, and people have been spending more time outside burning things ('BBQ' is apparently what it is called), so perhaps demand has been sufficiently low that coal plants have been throttled back somewhat. I've heard that wind has been relatively thin. I suppose I could go and look up the figures, as the National Grid provides a lot of live and historical output figures.

I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[Ichijo]

On the "bright" side, there's a lot of sun right now for the PV panels!

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[110010001000]

Because the sun shines brighter on hot days? I didn't know that.

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well to be fair, it probably shines more during droughts.

Re: I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[Anonymous Coward]

It does actually. The warming air becomes less dense and easier for light to pass through, with less of it being absorbed. (You may find this shocking but sunlight is brighter in space around the Earth than on its surface, due to atmospheric attenuation. It may not be a big difference, but it is definitely A difference. Especially in the UV band, where itâ(TM)s mostly dark on Earth even in broad daylight. (If you could survive laying naked on the surface of the moon, with no solar protection, like under a perfectly transparent pressure-dome, with 100 percent transmissivity across the entire EM spectrum, on the bright side of the moon, facing the sun, I suspect you would get the sunburn of your life VERY damned quickly. Then, you would have your skin burned off, and you would die.). Of course, I could be wrong.

As to the original point, solar power is mostly pretty consistent most places. The right answer to this problem however, is to halt and reverse AGW or AGCC before it is too.. oh, what? It is already too late and we are all fucked? Shit.

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power should be thought of as an emergency short-term / stop-gap measure to eliminate CO2 emissions while we phase out coal and develop sustainable power technologies like solar, wind, and wave power generators.

Re: I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[110010001000]

" Of course, I could be wrong."

No way.

Re: I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[c6gunner]

FTFY.

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[Anonymous Coward]

The nuclear fanbois are trying to spin this right now. Nuclear was never a viable option and would die without heavy government subsidies.

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[blindseer]

Solar PV output drops with heat.
https://energytransition.org/2...

One reason the situation wasnâ(TM)t worse in Germany, of course, was the large number of solar arrays. But even their output is negatively impacted during heat waves; efficiency drops by up to 0.5 percent per degree Celsius â" and the panel temperature counts, not the air. Fortunately, temperatures in Germany still do not rise as much as they do in Spain, where the effect was greater.

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[rapidmax]

While we have 18% more sunshine here, the additional PV power it generated was an 13% increment. Still plenty more energy, but we see how the efficiency is affected by the heat.

Re: I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[Mashiki]

You're wrong. How well does that light work through with 90% humidity? Cause that's what living around the great lakes, and south-east US is like in the summer. It's down right tropical and always has been, the very rare cases are when the jetstream dips and pushes humid air away or levels it out through the mountains in KY and TN. It gets worse of course, because you also don't get any real wind during these cases and they can go on for over a month during the peak summer. We're at around 27 days between July and August with low wind, high humidity, high temperatures. In other words a normal southern ontario summer. In theory it should work well in the winter especially here(winters are either crisp and cold or snowy depending on when the lakes freeze - and them fully freezing over is very rare), problem is solar doesn't work too good when covered with 20cm+ of snow.

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[angel'o'sphere]

Solar PV output drops with heat.
And why is that relevant when we now have 18h sun every day since 10 weeks?

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar PV output drops with heat.
And why is that relevant when we now have 18h sun every day since 10 weeks?

It's relevant because when the temperature gets to be 45C outside your PV efficiency drops 10%. When you need that electricity the most for running fans and air conditioning the output is lowered. Then when the sun sets, and it's still 35C outside, you have nothing from your solar PV to cool your buildings.

You want more output from the PV panels? Then you need to run water over them to cool them down and wash off the dust. But you have a drought? Then no cool water for you.

The article didn't say that the nuclear power plants didn't work in this heat, only that to keep the water from getting too hot for the fish they reduced output or shut them down. They chose to shut them down, and they can choose to turn them back on. Which is different than the solar panels, there's no choice in reducing output because of the heat, it just happens.

There's nothing inherent about nuclear power that says output needs to be reduced in the heat, only that they were not designed to run in this heat. Had they planned for this heat, with cooling towers or pools separate from the fish, then they'd still be operating at full capacity. They likely didn't do that because it adds costs. Perhaps solar panels can also be designed for the heat, but that adds costs as well.

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[blindseer]

That's relevant when the panels can get to be 65C in the sun even if air temperature is 40C to 45C. The PV electrical output drops not by the air temperature but by the panel temperature. Efficiency drops by about 0.5% for each degree above 25C. With panel temperature at 65C that means 80% maximum output. If the panel is at 65C then so is the roof on your house, and that heat needs to be removed to keep people inside comfortable. That heat is removed by air conditioning, which needs electricity.

If you have 18 hours of sun then you need 18 hours of cooling. Even then when the sun goes down the air outside might be 35C, and you'll need cooling in the house until it's 20C or so outside which might not happen until well past midnight. Maybe that can be done with wind power but heat likes to diminish the winds. I've seen heat waves before, lots of hot sun and not much wind.

The thermal cycles on hot days can stress the PV cells, leading to cracks that permanently reduce the output of that cell. A damaged cell can lead to further damage with stresses on adjacent cells in the circuit, since this cell is no longer matched with the rest in that string. Kind of like how a bad cell in a battery can stress the other cells and lead to total failure.

I worked on a solar car in college. Hot and sunny days were bad for the car, we wanted some clouds to keep the temperature down. If we had water we'd spray the panels when we could to lower the temperature and wash off dirt. In a drought you don't have water for that.

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[angel'o'sphere]

Panels on the roof of a house provide shadow, they don't cause need for more cooling.
Strange that your panels lose so much power when "warmed" a bit, why don't you buy modern state of the art panels instead of junk? That would spare us a lot of your misinformed posts.
BTW: if I had AC, the summer temperature would probably 24C in my house. I really don't like to wear a suit or a long sleeved shirt in summer and change dress to get outside.

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[blindseer]

Panels on the roof of a house provide shadow, they don't cause need for more cooling.

They also provide shade in the winter, when I want the sun to warm my house. Trees are better for summer shade and in the autumn they lose their leaves and let the sun warm my house. People need more trees, not more solar panels.

Strange that your panels lose so much power when "warmed" a bit, why don't you buy modern state of the art panels instead of junk?

Because if you actually did some research on this there are two kinds of solar cells, ones that are highly efficient and ones that handle heat better. The solar car competition was barred from using space grade PV cells, as that was deemed an unfair advantage to the well funded programs and did not demonstrate the performance of what people might expect of solar panels for consumers. The sponsors of the solar car competitions wanted to "sell" solar power on Earth. I'm sure that space grade panels handle the heat very well, but they are astronomically expensive.

That would spare us a lot of your misinformed posts.

Citation needed.

BTW: if I had AC, the summer temperature would probably 24C in my house. I really don't like to wear a suit or a long sleeved shirt in summer and change dress to get outside.

I do have AC and I tend to keep the house at 28C during the day, but cool it down to 25C at night. My concern is mostly to keep the humidity under 50%, which keeps the house very comfortable.

Re:I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW?

[angel'o'sphere]

hey also provide shade in the winter, when I want the sun to warm my house
You want to warm your house in winter by letting the sun shine on top of your roof?

Ah ha ....

Reason why reactors were shut down

[Morgaine]

From TFA, the reason why the reactors were shut down (which wasn't included in the summary) is:

Europe's heatwave, however, hasn't just increased air temperatures but also water temperatures. Regulations protecting wildlife mean that the usual water sources drawn on by nuclear plants cannot always be used for cooling, leading to shutdowns. It's not the first time this has happened: Heatwaves forced nuclear shutdowns or curtailments across Europe in 2003, 2006, and 2015.

Yeah, I know that reading TFA is no longer cool on Slashdot, but someone has to help out the editors. :P

Re:Reason why reactors were shut down

[Mr D from 63]

From TFA, the reason why the reactors were shut down (which wasn't included in the summary) is:

Europe's heatwave, however, hasn't just increased air temperatures but also water temperatures. Regulations protecting wildlife mean that the usual water sources drawn on by nuclear plants cannot always be used for cooling, leading to shutdowns. It's not the first time this has happened: Heatwaves forced nuclear shutdowns or curtailments across Europe in 2003, 2006, and 2015.

Yeah, I know that reading TFA is no longer cool on Slashdot, but someone has to help out the editors. :P

At /., accuracy and completeness isn't as important as the narrative.

Re:Reason why reactors were shut down

[drinkypoo]

Yeah, I know that reading TFA is no longer cool on Slashdot, but someone has to help out the editors. :P

You know what else is no longer cool? The water they're using to cool their reactors.

I thought Nuclear was supposed to be the solution to global warming. Guess not.

Re: Reason why reactors were shut down

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the editors and posters on slashdot should be solicitous of the readers and recognize the demands on our time, and write more fucking concisely. That is why they call it a SUMMARY. It is supposed to be SUMMARIZED. As in, if you want reasonably informed discussion, do not ask your readers to wade through an Olympic Swimming Pool of word-salad before getting to the fucking point.

Re: Reason why reactors were shut down

[Anonymous Coward]

It requires some literary skill to write a good summary. Back in my secondary school days long long ago, I remember us being taught to write precis of short literary works in Eng Lit class --- a skill which one might reasonably expect an editor to possess.

Sadly it seems that literacy has plummeted along with society's expectations of it, and intellectual interests have gone into reverse gear --- a glance at those we elect is probably a good indication of where "civilization" is heading, namely into regression.

Re: Reason why reactors were shut down

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the perfect grammar nazi trap. Marvel at it's perfection!

Re: Reason why reactors were shut down

[Anonymous Coward]

*its

Re:Reason why reactors were shut down

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't the full story either. A nuclear power plant that has it's own cooling water discharge pond unconnected to the river system is still working fine.

They simply cut corners and mostly relied upon being able to discharge the cooling water into rivers.

Wat

[Anonymous Coward]

"In the process, the steam's temperature falls, so it can no longer be used to move the turbine again"
This makes no sense. The turbines are turned by the pressure caused by the expansion of water as it turns into a gas. Not by its temperature.

Poor design. It's not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor design. All over the world there are nuclear plants operating just fine in hot tropical and subtropical climates, including the USA. Never has been a problem. So the Euros are doing something wrong with their designs.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[Mr D from 63]

Poor design. All over the world there are nuclear plants operating just fine in hot tropical and subtropical climates, including the USA. Never has been a problem. So the Euros are doing something wrong with their designs.

Almost all the European nukes are running just fine, full output. Only a few have cut back due to discharge heat limits.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[iggymanz]

wrong,

it's just done out of concern for causing too much heating in the water around the plant, limiting environmental damage. the plants could work fine even if temperature were higher.

this isn't even that newsworthy, happens some years.

Re: Poor design. It's not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

All over the world there are nuclear plants operating just fine in hot tropical and subtropical climates, including the USA. Never has been a problem.

That's true, because just like in Europe they throttle down because of these problems, not to mention the occasional line break or jellyfish swarm. Yes, jellyfish.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor design.

Nope. Just poor understanding on your behalf.

All over the world there are nuclear plants operating just fine in hot tropical and subtropical climates, including the USA.

As are the European plants.

Never has been a problem.

Same thing in Europe, as far as the plants and their design are concerned.

So the Euros are doing something wrong with their designs.

Nope, they are not.

The plants that were temporarily shut down were so to lessen the environmental effects of increasing surrounding water temperatures due to the cooling system, temperatures which would otherwise rise enough to affect the local ecosystem beyond what is deemed acceptable according to regulations.

The only reason some plants were shut down in Europe while plants elsewhere were not is that in Europe (at least parts of it) we care about the environment, while in other locations (not all, but quite a few) they don't give a crap.

It has fuck-all to do with design.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

4 out of 7 belgian plants are down.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[thegarbz]

So the Euros are doing something wrong with their designs.

Nothing wrong with any designs. Designs have conditions on them, when those conditions are breached your design project needs to take measures.
You should try suddenly freezing your hot tropical nuclear reactors and see how long they last.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[rkordmaa]

Not a design issue, it's a "lets not cook the fish" issue.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[cascadingstylesheet]

Poor design. All over the world there are nuclear plants operating just fine in hot tropical and subtropical climates, including the USA. Never has been a problem. So the Euros are doing something wrong with their designs.

Almost all the European nukes are running just fine, full output. Only a few have cut back due to discharge heat limits.

Oh. So, it's not an OMG problem?

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[drinkypoo]

it's just done out of concern for causing too much heating in the water around the plant, limiting environmental damage. the plants could work fine even if temperature were higher.

Yes, that is generally the concern with nuclear plants... that they will cause death. And death of stuff in rivers has health repercussions for humans.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[iggymanz]

rather silly considering the greater amount of death that say coal and oil fired plants cause.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Ought to be a major concern for any large scale industrial venture, and it is as long as we're aware of the risks beforehand. Only nuclear gets such a totally irrational and visceral fear reaction from the general public though.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[drinkypoo]

Your logical fallacy is "false dichotomy".

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[drinkypoo]

Only nuclear gets such a totally irrational and visceral fear reaction from the general public though.

There's nothing irrational about being concerned about the risk of rendering areas uninhabitable on human timescales. And the public would never have accepted nuclear power except for the lie about it being "too cheap to meter", which was never going to happen because of the risk factors.

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That's generally the "concern" with anything, no? Is there anything folks are concerned about that has no risk of causing death to anything?

Re:Poor design. It's not my problem

[iggymanz]

not at all, U.S. nuke plants are way less damaging than coal and oil plants. provable fact.

Guess you need to buy more coal

[Anonymous Coward]

from the Great United States of America.

Leftism is destroying the Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Leftie science and religion, nuclear power is bad. Even though it's the best. It's even one of the most common sources of power in the universe! Except on Earth, because of leftards.

I could point to the environmental ravages caused by leftists in North Korea, a socialist country. But let's not open that box.

Re:Leftism is destroying the Earth

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

" It's even one of the most common sources of power in the universe! Except on Earth, because of leftards."

Did you actually use the average properties of the universe as an, um, 'data', point about what sources terrestrial electricity production should use? Because 'the universe' is so representative of conditions on earth in other respects? Is having an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, rather than an almost complete vacuum also a liberal conspiracy?

Plus, I think that you might have been a trifle sloppy lumping fission and fusion together under 'nuclear'. Not only is fission power something of an aberration on a universal scale(supplies of elements heavy enough are pretty scarce; and found more or less exclusively as byproducts of stars that did a rather heroic amount of fusion before they got to that step); the industry-standard fusion generator configuration is an open-reactor gravity contained design; not one of the oddball ultra-compact curiosities..

In fact, if you venture outside during the day you can see the one we already have installed and (mostly uneventfully) supply most of earth's energy requirements...

Re: Leftism is destroying the Earth

[c6gunner]

In fact, if you venture outside during the day you can see the one we already have installed and (mostly uneventfully) supply most of earth's energy requirements...

Maybe you should stop turning it off for half of every fucking day ...

Re: Leftism is destroying the Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the Earth is round and rotates with respect to the always-on sun...

Re: Leftism is destroying the Earth

[c6gunner]

I see that THEY got to you ...

Re:Leftism is destroying the Earth

[hyades1]

Just think of all the free energy we could get if only we could find a way to make use of the friction your mouth generates on all those cocks.

Re: Leftism is destroying the Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

We should stop spinning the Earth (but be careful to keep the core spinning)

No longer? I've been here ten years

[raymorris]

"No longer cool?" I've been on Slashdot and it sure seems to me that most people I've talked to here never read past the second sentence of the summary, much less the article.

Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's fun when we have this exchange:

MD Solar: Fucking Trump screwing everything up again.

Me: The first sentence of the summary is "In 2015, the TSA stripped searched 4,800 people". Can you read the first two words? I didn't know Trump was running the TSA in 2015.

Re:No longer? I've been here ten years

[quantaman]

"No longer cool?" I've been on Slashdot and it sure seems to me that most people I've talked to here never read past the second sentence of the summary, much less the article.

Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's fun when we have this exchange:

MD Solar: Fucking Trump screwing everything up again.

Me: The first sentence of the summary is "In 2015, the TSA stripped searched 4,800 people". Can you read the first two words? I didn't know Trump was running the TSA in 2015.

Second sentence of the summary?

I barely even finished the second word of the title!

No wonder it's hot!

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been stealing the cooling wind!

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we're apparently past the point of no return now, why bother complaining or conserving energy anymore? May as well let the inevitable happen.

Nuclear power plants useless in hot weather?!!

[Narcocide]

Solar wins again, fools.

Advantage of SMRs

[WindBourne]

Seriously, NuScale's new SMRs can actually run without water just using an air-based cooling tower.
Of course, it is far better to not and instead use the waste heat to desalinate water.

Re: Advantage of SMRs

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on what air temp though?

C'mon you stupid ass thermoelectric materials

[Anonymous Coward]

Heat abounds!

Tons of free electricity out there.

Harness it you dumbasses.

Lousy article

[johannesg]

"Europe's Heatwave is Forcing Coal Power Plants To Shut Down" is just as valid for the title, but nuclear is so much more click-baity...

And the reason they are being shut down is to avoid pumping too much waste heat into the environment, since that would be bad for the ecosystem. It's not some kind of generator failure we should all lose sleep over.

Re:Lousy article

[blindseer]

Also no mention of reduced wind energy production from the heat wave. It doesn't take much to find news articles on European wind output dropping, especially in UK and Germany that made large investments in wind power recently.

Here's one example of such a news report:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

When temperatures rise every electrical generation system we have in common use is affected. Thermal plants that boil water will often have to reduce output or shutdown because the cooling water exceeds minimums of safety and/or environmental impact. Wind sees lowered output due to weather patterns that come with a heat wave. Solar PV output is reduced since the panels get less efficient in heat. Hydro sees lowered output from evaporation out of reservoirs.

The least effected is natural gas turbines, because they operate at such high temperatures that the hot air doesn't mean much on the heat sink side. If we saw similar high temperatures in nuclear, which fourth generation designs can reach, then we'd see nuclear still operating in the heat.

Re:Lousy article

[AmiMoJo]

It's interesting because some people are promoting nuclear power as the solution to "base load" and CO2 emissions. Unfortunately they are not actually very good at either of them.

Coal is affected too but no-one except Trump is suggesting that we use more coal, so the fact that coal plants also suck is less interesting (and also very well understood).

As well as solar, natural gas is doing very well too since it doesn't need nearly as much cooling as nuclear or coal.

Re:Lousy article

[Anonymous Coward]

"Europe's Heatwave is Forcing Coal Power Plants To Shut Down" is just as valid for the title, but nuclear is so much more click-baity

"Government Regulations are Forcing Nuclear Power Plants To Shut Down" is also valid. It's much more subversive too for the lefty crowd at /.

Re:Lousy article

[angel'o'sphere]

If we saw similar high temperatures in nuclear, which fourth generation designs can reach, then we'd see nuclear still operating in the heat.
And where would those miraculous nukes put their waste water?

Re:Lousy article

[Anonymous Coward]

The same place those "miraculous" natural gas turbines do. They don't use water to cool, they use the air. When your turbines run at 1500C they don't much care if the air outside is 45C. Planned Gen IV nuclear don't run that hot, more like 600C or 800C, but either way they are air cooled and are relatively unaffected by the heat.

Re:Lousy article

[blindseer]

Open air Brayton cycle turbines would be used on high temperature molten salt reactors. They don't use any water, they use air. I'm having difficulty finding a good source for how this would work. Perhaps this is a good introduction:
https://www.nuclear-power.net/...

We aren't going to run out of air, even though water might be scarce in certain times and places. Even if the air is a bit warm at 50C the heat for the turbines would come from a molten salt reactor or molten metal cooled reactor which would run somewhere around 1000C. Any loss of output with such a power plant from a hot day would be a rounding error.

But solar energy is way up

[Askmum]

The upside of this weather is that solar energy production has gone up massively. July boosted my record month to 15% over the previous record getting more than 20% more than my average july month.

Re: I thought nuclear power was the answer to AGW

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the energy from solar power could be used to run the coolant system of nuclear plants. Or to cool down the planet in general.

I'm so glad nuclear fission ...

[Qbertino]

... is going to save us from global warming. ...

Solar Baseload Option

[MrKaos]

High temperature molten salt solar is quickly developing into an excellent base-load power option. We know that the sun will be shining in the future or we'd have much bigger problems.

It looks awesome too!

Nuke vs wind (vs Solar)

[DrYak]

So, if a nuke plant is offline it's available,

Yes, because you could restart it whenever you would like simply by pushing a (metaphorical) button.
Germany simply legally choose not to, in order to avoid dumping too much waste heat in the lake and rivers which are used to cool the loop.

But if Germany decided to change that law (or to ignore it due to an emergency), there are no technical limitation in restarting the plant (well, nit-picking : to actually *ramp up the output back to full capacity*, it's not really completely shut down)

but if a wind tower if offline it isn't. Got it.

Because no matter how much you would like, you can't choose to restart the wind at a button press.
Even if Germany wanted to restart the plant, there's the technical problem that wind is still missing.

Same also with hydro : you can't just magically refill the lake at a button press if the water level is low...
(...that is, except for a few weird projects that would like to use excess solar power to pump water back into the lake as type of storage. Basically turning the hydrodam into a giant gravity-based rechargeable battery)

Luckily, the type of weather that is bad for nuclear, wind and hydro, happens to be the type of weather that is optimal for solar : lots of sun, so no technical limitation for those !

Simplest solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems it's mostly an issue with habitat and not being able to cool return water at an acceptable temp. Large sub terrain reserves is a solution, that way there is no threat to aquatic life. Some of the heat is absorbed by earth.

Oh, look...a twofer

[hyades1]

It's not often we get a chance to see the GW Denier trolls and the "nuclear will solve every problem" trolls all partying together on the same page.

This is a real treat.

No cooling tower for you

[Anonymous Coward]

They do. The massive towers around the plant are cooling towers. :-)

These massive cooling towers are beautiful, though ominous for many.
The slight problem is, not every nuclear plant have them! If the nuclear power plant relies on the river, the sea or a lake it might well have been designed and built without a cooling tower.

The Gulf Stream

[sjbe]

So one has to wonder, what other stuff is going to break?

If you live in Europe you had better hope the Gulf Stream isn't one of the things that "breaks". If that happens just remember that the northern parts of the USA are roughly the latitude of Spain. The weather would get... interesting to say the least.

Re:The Gulf Stream

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the jet stream?

Re:The Gulf Stream

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting question. I would expect that to be important in terms of wind patterns, certainly, but given the massive difference in the heat capacity of a cubic meter of air vs a cubic meter of water, not as important to temperature levels as one might guess.

I know one European who disputes this

[micahraleigh]

Sartre says anyone claiming they are forced to do things is in bad faith

Paging Obfuscant

[Anonymous Coward]

You are obfuscating things on purpose to avoid the fucking point. A certain user on this site might get pissed- that's his bag, baby. We aren't talking about that link Mojo posted. We are talking about D's flagrant attempt at deflection. Rahvin's comparison was regarding solar and storage and Old D comes screaming whatabout hydro dams. We aren't fucking talking about hydro dams. Old D can call bullshit on Rahv's claim all day, that's fine since he didn't back it up, but none of that shit applies to solar + storage. You are perpetuating this nonsense since you and Wrinkled D from 53 are politi-bros. You two always have each other's back and it's sickening. THAT is what is a "sad state" these days.

Re:Paging Obfuscant

[Anonymous Coward]

You are obfuscating things on purpose to avoid the fucking point.

Other way around. Screaming whataboutism is the attempt to obfuscate.

We aren't fucking talking about hydro dams.

But you/they were talking about the negative effects on local ecosystems.

Pointing out that even a power source like hydro power has negative effects is not whataboutism, but a keen observation that all forms of power have positives and negatives. A proper analysis would look at as many factors as possible, but if the other party was only making single point quips, it's no unreasonable to respond in kind with your own quips. At worse this is tit-for-tat, still not whataboutism.

The problem with relying on boiling water

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you have to cool below below that boiling point and delta-T is so low that you need big heatsinks.

Molten salt-based systems wouldn't have that issue because you don't need to use waterways as a heatsink. The thermal gradient is high enough that dumping to atmosphere is perfectly fine.

Since wind curtailment loses nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Whilst a nuke station NOT running still needs maintaining at the same high level, so they are not the same systems at all for this. Nukes not used cost more to run. Wind not used costs nothing.

No it is not available. It produces no power.

[Anonymous Coward]

And it takes of the order of a day to ramp up. Meanwhile guess what there's a lot of in a heatwave? Solar....

And the lighting in homes and businesses was 0W.

[Anonymous Coward]

So really it doesn't matter if the nukes were on, all they could do was waste power.