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Pacific Northwest Relying On Nuclear Energy During Cold Snap (forbes.com)
Slashdot reader Lije Baley writes: As the unusually long cold snap in the Pacific Northwest has both increased electric demand while decreasing snow melt and stream flows needed for hydroelectric generation, local power companies are asking their customers to conserve energy. Meanwhile, the region's last remaining nuclear plant has been a critical low-carbon resource for keeping the lights and heat on, as Forbes reports. "As reported by Annette Cary of the Tri-City Herald, the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets the electricity produced at the nuclear plant near Richland, asked Energy Northwest, the operator of the power plant, not to do anything that would prevent the plant from producing 100% power at all times during an unusually cold February across the state that increased the demand for electricity â" no maintenance activities, even on its turbine generator and in the transformer yard," reports Forbes. "Don't do anything that would stop the reliable and constant power output of nuclear."
"'No Touch' is requested by BPA when unusually hot or cold weather increases the demand for electricity, notes Mike Paoli, spokesman for Energy Northwest," the report adds. "Many regional transmission and system operators across the United States ask nuclear plants to keep running during extreme weather because nuclear plants are the least affected by bad weather. Columbia Generating Station has the capability to produce 1,207 MW, which is enough energy to power Seattle. And it is usually putting out all of this power at all times. Energy Northwest already has a diverse mix of non-fossil fuel generating systems that, in aggregate, produce over 10 billion kWhs of electricity each year while emitting less than 20 gCO2/kWh. The No Touch order at the Columbia Generating Station is expected to be lifted soon, although continued cold weather could require it to keep producing max power."
"'No Touch' is requested by BPA when unusually hot or cold weather increases the demand for electricity, notes Mike Paoli, spokesman for Energy Northwest," the report adds. "Many regional transmission and system operators across the United States ask nuclear plants to keep running during extreme weather because nuclear plants are the least affected by bad weather. Columbia Generating Station has the capability to produce 1,207 MW, which is enough energy to power Seattle. And it is usually putting out all of this power at all times. Energy Northwest already has a diverse mix of non-fossil fuel generating systems that, in aggregate, produce over 10 billion kWhs of electricity each year while emitting less than 20 gCO2/kWh. The No Touch order at the Columbia Generating Station is expected to be lifted soon, although continued cold weather could require it to keep producing max power."
We should be building more nuclear power plants, not cowarding out and shutting older ones down without replacement.
By the way, there's no long-term waste storage yet.
Still better that the long-term waste storage for fossil fuels, our atmosphere.
Well, when you can edit the past to erase warming trends - yeah, claim what you want... In the mean time, I know the reservoirs in California are all pretty much at or above historical averages, we have MORE rain coming, record cold for a few months now (including a rare snow in Los Angeles - its been 57 years since the previous snow), and I'm sure Governor Newsom will NOT lift the drought - even though we also have a Sierra Nevada snowpack that is at 141% of normal. Time to brace for Spring and early-summer floods!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
http://www.startribune.com/dee...
The brutal cold gripping Minnesota made itself felt in tens of thousands of living rooms Wednesday as Xcel Energy resorted to asking customers to turn their thermostats down to 63 degrees to conserve natural gas.
https://www.americanexperiment...
The screenshot below is from Electricity Map. It’s a fun app that tells you how your electricity is being generated at any given moment in time. Turns out wind is producing only four percent of electricity in the MISO region, of which Minnesota is a part.
While that’s not good, what’s worse is wind is only utilizing 24 percent of it’s installed capacity, and who knows how this will fluctuate throughout the course of
It's a real shame that turning on the lights doesn't make the wind blow.
Nuclear power plants now-a-days are built with a positive coefficient. The nuclear power plants you have to worry about at night are the plants built with 50+ year old designs with negative coefficient properties.
One quibble...you mean newer plants have negative void coefficients. The older ones (like CANDU reactors in Canada and the RBMKs in Russia) have positive void coefficients and that's what you have to worry about. Also, licensing isn't really that hard and there is no real reason it should cost billions to license a plant, you just have to actually do it and its the politics that fucks that up. Otherwise I completely agree...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Point of order: Nuclear reactors are actually notably very bad at "spooling up." They don't ramp more than a few percent per hour because it disrupts the balance of transient neutron poisons (esp Xe-135) in the reactor core which is bad for reactivity control authority (i.e. knowing exactly how much control you have to speed up or slow down the reactor).
Coal is pretty bad too, but nat gas turbines and hydro can both start/stop much, much faster. And Tesla's giant ass battery in Australia can do it close to instantly (within some msec), which makes it extremely valuable for grid levelling.
Nuclear power is great! Right up until it goes Fukushima on you. Then it sucks ass. Unwipable ass at that.
Electric cars have the potential to solve problems. They are just giant batteries, you know. If they were allowed to back feed into the grid during high demand periods like right now, it would smooth out demand quite nicely. Wind and solar can become much more useful when there is sufficient energy storage capacity available.
The reactors the GP refers to can't meltdown (like Chernobyl) and don't use water as a coolants so they don't make Hydrogen gas like Fukushima or 3 mi Island. Also, the entire world's output of Li-ion batteries couldn't backup even the CA grid for 4 hours, so the world's entire supply for 20 years is enough to backups CA's grid but Li-ion batteries don't last 20 years so you couldn't even make just CA 100% renewable. Also CA's grid is about 1% of the size of global energy usage. I like EVs and have 2 of them but please don't get confused. We haven't even dented CO2 production and continuing to ignore nuclear is only making the problem worse while we wait for folks like you to figure out solar and wind aren't a real solution.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Thanks for the info. I like when people have a good grasp of the big picture and put things in perspective. A huge problem in today's society is partial information, including (maybe especially) by the news media. I think wind and solar are helping, but I trust you that they won't solve all energy needs. I've put in a few PV systems and I know a reasonably sized system makes as much power as a typical house uses, so in my mind if we put PV on houses and shopping centers, we can cover a lot of the need, but big industries will use more than PV can reasonably generate, and skyscrapers might be difficult to achieve anything close to net zero.
I've been a huge proponent of nuclear power for a very long time, but with the provision that 1) it's done well with true safety thought out, and 2) much better design and efficiency. I'm not a nuclear engineer but I've been working on a project that deals with system safety and monitoring and that's all I'll say for now, and that it's cool and I'm proud to help / contribute to better and safer nuclear power.
If you like Big picture stuff, think about how much coal power the six reactors of fukushima displaced. Gigawatts over your, for about fifty years... 8,000+ hours per year...
That's 400,000 GWH each. Now consider how much toxic filth, heavy metals and radioactive material goes into the coal ash ponds, or even up the smokestack.
Coal caused more cancer over the last seventy odd years, _just from radiation related sources_ than every man made nuclear accident plus the two atomic bombs (including instakills) put together.
Coal ash is just nasty, nasty stuff, and it leaks into our drinking water and food chain whenever it rains a half inch more than expected.
I suppose you would have called for an end to all airplanes when Thomas Selfridge died in the first fatal airline crash in 1908. Or, perhaps you would have called for an end to all heavier than air transport back in 1896 when Otto Lilienthal died piloting a glider?
And I assume you would have eliminated all software or hardware control of medical treatment devices after the Therac-25 radiation therapy device killed three patients back in the mid 80's?
I assume you also, personally, eschew all forms of motorized transport as they are not yet perfect and kill tens of thousands of people in the US alone every year?
Fukushima was a very expensive accident. However, it was not a very dangerous one in terms of human life.
Nothing is completely safe, but we learn from each failure and improve, rather than abandon, technology.
Nuclear power is almost essential if we are going to provide reliable power without spewing CO2 into the air that our ancestors will curse us for.