"Efficiency in our water use and making sure that we're not wasting water or wasting electricity, which in turn uses more water, has got to be addressed in part of a comprehensive plan," he said.
The nation needs a plan, too, said Wilson, if it is going to weather the existing and expected water shortages.
"It's not clear that the water and energy agencies are in a process where they are talking about these scenarios and building the resilience that we need to face these kinds of challenges," she said. "Is someone managing the farm here on integrating our water and energy needs? Or are we just praying for rain?"
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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23 Comments
Add CommentGood question! Lets hope someone has a good answer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, yes, God is punishing us...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDude, a LOT of water evaporates, most of it does not fall again within the same cachement, and most of it near the East Coast will not even fall on land (nor will some of that which is released further inland, maybe even a lot of it).
For your edification, nuclear powerplants do not just 'store water', they use just as much water for each BTU of heat they generate as any other type of plant. Any water they keep on site is moving through their cooling system unless they go to closed loop, and then they need considerable make up water. (I happen to know this all having actually done a good bit of the processing on the temperature, inflow, and outflow volumes at a firm I once worked for). Trust me, they use a lot of water.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1344/
and
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wupt.html
THIS is informative as well, giving numbers for different generation types and fuels in L/1000kwh
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/how-much-water-does-it-take-to-make-electricity
Splendid assessment, Gatnos. Obviously you, unlike the reporters, can do arithmetic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo this article is about a person named Electricty Generation 'Burning' Rivers, who lives in the Southeast, right? Right? No?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWTB Readable Headlines Plox.
tharter you asked for an explanation, I gave a plausible one, that has been recorded in human history. As far as knowing the science of a power plant; actually, I have extensive experience with nuclear power, having been a reactor operator (Rickover trained)in the US Navy and an Engineer (over 30 years) at one of our leading nuclear plants. I am quite up to speed on what goes in and what comes out. But it doesn't take an engineer to recognize that this article is a bunch of environmentalist BS. Let's not forget that hydroelectric plants "use" the most water to make electricity, if that little factoid means anything, maybe we should shut down Niagara Falls and see what environmental benefit we can get from that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, read the article, or IIRC the 2nd link that I gave, where it details the consumption of water by hydro power. That consumption is from evaporation and other reservoir losses. It is indeed water that doesn't make it downstream to others who need it. I'd also note that these are all averages, so don't say anything about Niagra Falls specifically, though I will note that even there they impound LARGE quantities of water in a reservoir for use during the day (when the tourism industry gets to have some water flowing over the falls). I seriously doubt Niagra Falls is the typical case anyway, I don't know of any other similarly sized natural wonders.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRemember, every bit of heat that goes into that plant has to come out again somewhere. At least 1/3rd of it is not used to produce power. Most of that waste heat is evaporating water.
Does anyone here think that possibly increase in population may have something to do with increased use of power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems possible to me.
I think the copulating that does NOT Populate would be a very good thing.
Mostly garbage from the Union of Concerned Non-Scientists (a fellow enrolled his cat as an illustrious member of the UCS).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's instead deal with the FACTS.
This is the Sandia Labs report to Congress on Water Usage:
www.fuelsandenergy.com/presentations/Merson_Energy_Water.pdf
All thermal power plants in the USA use 3.3% of total water CONSUMPTION. 81% is used for Irrigation.
Hydro consumes 10X the water of Nuclear, due to evaporation losses.
Greenpeace's Fav Biomass burning power plants CONSUME 115X the water of the Nuclear Power plant, including the rainwater used to produce the biomass, which could otherwise produce Carbon Sequestering Forest.
And the Nuclear can & does use salt water & gray water for cooling.
In the Sandia Labs report on Water Usage, an avg 980 gals of irrigation fresh water per gal of ethanol produced:
"...They found that bioethanol's water requirements... a gallon of ethanol may require up to over 2,100 gallons of water from farm to fuel pump..."
An average electric vehicle running on Nuclear Power uses 1.7 liters of water per km. A corn ethanol fueled avg vehicle consumes 150 liters of water per km. A biodiesel fueled vehicle 600 liters of water per km, using Merson's numbers. Germany, the Greens, Greenpeace & the Sierra Club are BIG on Biofuels, but they can't stand that 1.7 liters of water a Nuclear Power plant could consume.
Molten Salt reactors are so efficient that air cooling is quite pragmatic. While all desert Solar Thermal or Solar PV are prodigious consumers of precious desert water, you can bury a Molten Salt nuclear reactor in the desert and produce more power than several giant Solar Farms with only air cooling. Of course, unlike Solar Farms, you can park MSR's anywhere and since most power demand comes from cities, you can bury the MSR near a city, meltdown is impossible, radioisotope release is virtually impossible, and you can use sewage or waste water as cooling. Even recycle grey water into fresh water using waste heat from the Nuclear Power plant.
Park Service warns of solar projects' impacts to Mojave Desert, huge water demand:
www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/04/23/23greenwire-park-service-warns-of-solar-projects-impacts-t-10660.html?pagewanted=1
And Nuclear Power plants located near Oceans can use the Salt Water for cooling and at the same time they can desalinate that water with waste heat providing millions of gallons of precious potable water to water hungry areas, providing food and energy to millions of people. Big Oil and its surrogates in Big Green don't like that.
This is what the facts suggest to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe heat rejected is a pollutant so why not use it to good effect? The contamination is a question of materials used?
So a new thinking would recombine the overall energy and material balances with a new element or elements to redefine the concept of what a power plant should be rather than a source of problem?
Let me point out that at least in terms of thermal energy level that the output could be a source for biological systems. IE waste treatment gray water treatment heat source for heat pumps and more much more. Approx 60% or so of the total energy used is rejected and represents a problem instead of solution. A good solution would fix carbon and generate income. All thermal plants are similar in this regard coal, gas or nuclear (oh yes nuclear can fix carbon without being a source). I suspect the assumptions necessary for the siting and construction should be examined and modified with this in mind now in anticipation of what will take place.
Perhaps the institutions of utility rents are lacking in the flexibility or ability to accommodate change or expand the concept of its responsibility?
After all this is in fact imposed upon the utility's is it not by its regulation and institution?
In other words were beating heads on a brick wall of our own (legislative) concept of operation and institution of utility.
That is not simple like engineering a solution would be we could fix everything and do it right and reasonable but the hard part is fundamental assumptions no longer appropriate.
There is more than big green and oil here the utilities are a monopoly precisely and deliberately instituted as such by powers beyond oil, coal, green or the offices of government even as large and powerful as cartels and governments are.
Kinda my take on no longer making the assumptions of infinite sink or source of any resource. Earth needs standards that respect the real situation rather than a assumption. Its a closed system not open. Do not think single unit when its many many thousands of units or more.
Ever since reading the Sci. American article on molten salt nuclear reactors, I have wondered why we are not pursuing this option. They seem to make a whole lot more sense than the water cooled reactors we use now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs in comment to some of the earlier comments, pumping a lot of excess heat into a river/lake can be very "toxic" to that ecosystem. From what I understand even 5 degree increase can be detrimental to some fish spawning abilities. That's one of the problems with damming rivers and decrease the water flow through a river, the reduced volume of water heats up more, especially during drought and times of higher than normal temperature. We are reducing the natural cushions and buffers that normally would protect an ecosystem from damage.
Good retort, but where are the "FACTS" on the disposal of nuclear waste and the millions of years it takes to degrade? More water at the cost of more radiation is not much of an improvement ..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgain another discussion that refuses to mention the obvious solution...conservation. The nuclear industry already knows the score. They have literally hundreds of aging reactors in the world with no way to safely dispose of the radiation left over. Netflix has a fascination documentary of the decommissioning of the Soviet nuclear submarine fleet. They have over 200 rusting reactor cores floating in a river there that can't even be disassembled for another 20 or thirty years and first they have to build a facility to store the long term nuclear waste locked up in those rotting hulks. We are decades if not centuries away from cleaning up Chernobyl and Fucushima and those reactors are no where near even stable after a year of band-aide solutions. Another big quake could create a much bigger mess in Japan.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe drought the country is in the grip of has only just begin again this summer and still generations of stupid planning and a greed based society want to complain about the very people who can help solve the dilemma, the environmentalists.
A couple of years ago it was California that nearly burned to the ground, then it was Texas and Arizona. Now it is Colorado and next the Midwest. Still, half the folks posting on a science based forum still don't have a clue.
It never ceases to amaze me.
Re: your numbers on water use. These seem basically correct, though I haven't checked them all. The problem is you're not comparing the right numbers to the ones in the article. You're talking about ALL water, the article is talking about fresh surface water, which is a very small percentage of that (rivers represent 3% of all surface fresh water, which itself represents only 0.2% of all water and in fact most fresh water is groundwater). Most withdrawals for power generation are from rivers, with wastewater and saline water being the other major contributors. Thus the article and your sources actually agree perfectly since your figures are for ALL water and theirs are for only rivers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSolar PV BTW uses NO water (it is listed as 'negligible' in most sources, and 1L/Kwh in others), so you're incorrect on that one. Also Solar Thermal technology is now starting to be deployed which uses molten salt, not water, this will result in a large decrease in L/Kwh.
Yes, you can build nuclear reactors that are air-cooled, but you still need a steam cycle. Unfortunately you can't generate power directly with the molten salt as a working fluid for a couple of reasons that are inherent to the design of that sort of reactor. No existing design which would operate without cooling water has been proposed, and commercial designs are 2-3 decades from being ready for construction. Optimistically we might see a pilot reactor in the mid 2030's and production reactors in the late 2040's time frame. This is all assuming the concept even pans out. It sounds wonderful in theory but then again so did uranium fueled PBRs back in the 50's...
The Facts on Nuclear Waste disposal. Total Nuclear Spent Fuel in the USA is some 65,000 tons, enough to fill a football field 7 yards deep. Compare with just one toxic waste dump, the Canadian Gov't is going to freeze in place 240,000 tons of deadly, carcinogenic Arsenic Trioxide, within a mine 100 meters from Great Slave Lake, and that site will have to be maintained and will remain toxic FOREVER. So 4X the total USA Nuclear Spent Fuel, far more dangerous, trivially contained and just the product of one minor Gold Mine, not fuel that avoided BILLIONS of tons of toxic fossil fuel emissions. You want Facts:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter11.html
USA PWR Spent Nuclear Fuel is as toxic as natural uranium after 30,000 yrs (CANDU waste after 500yrs) and 1 oz is a fatal dose by ingestion after 600 yrs vs copper 0.7 oz is fatal. Compare Nuclear Waste to equivalent fossil fuel waste:
thingsworsethannuclearpower.blogspot.ca/2012/03/real-waste-problem.html
"..The average coal plant burns approximately 200 coal cars a day, with 100 tons per car. This makes 73,000 cars per year, or 7,300,000 tons per year.
The average nuclear plant uses about 0.005 of a rail car of fuel per day. 20 tons per year.."
The vast majority of River water is consumed by agriculture, industry and cities, power plants are a minor consumer of River water. Thermal heating effects of returned water to rivers may be a significant issue but certainly trivial compared to industrial, agricultural and domestic wastewater pollution. If you are using evaporative cooling plus added air cooling that waste heat effect can be made negligible at a small added cost. Geothermal uses substantially more water than other thermal power sources.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd yes Solar PV DOES use substantial amounts of water in desert areas where it is used to cool and clean the panels.
www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/04/23/23greenwire-park-service-warns-of-solar-projects-impacts-t-10660.html?pagewanted=1
"..approving dozens of solar power plants in southern Nevada could dramatically impact water supplies across the arid region..."
CSP whether it uses molten salt or water in the primary loop still needs to use just as much water for coolant as any thermal power plant. Of course you can air cool as diesel generators are often air cooled, and you can air cool any thermal plant it just costs quite a more, I recall about 1/2 cent per kwh.
And NO you don't need steam cycle for Molten Salt and other high temp reactors. You can use supercritical CO2, Helium or other gases. And you are ignoring the INCREDIBLE advantage of Nuclear Power for desalination, which would overwhelm by a factor of 100X any disadvantage of fresh water consumption. Saudi Arabia is planning a major expansion of Nuclear Power, or 16 reactors over 20 yrs, expressly for desalination.
www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf71.html
"..The BN-350 fast reactor at Aktau, in Kazakhstan, successfully supplied up to 135 MWe of electric power while producing 80,000 m³/day of potable water over some 27 years, about 60% of its power being used for heat and desalination.."
And your wild 2030 guestimate for first MSR "pilot plant" is ridiculous. The exceedingly difficult Aircraft Molten Salt reactor was designed, built and operated successfully in under 3 yrs, and ONRL's MSR was built and operated with various variations in under 3 yrs on a few $million per yr budget. China, starting from scratch, with minimal funding (not a high priority for them right now) has just started an MSR/LFTR program and expects first reactor operation in 2015. And several private companies, with trivial funding are planning MSR reactors. I'm sure they are planning on taking until 2030 for a product.
nextbigfuture.com/2012/05/china-plans-to-have-5-megawatt-liquid.html
Here is Kirk Sorensen's take on why the Molten Salt Reactor wasn't developed:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
An excellent Ted Talk by Kirk on the advantages of LFTRs/MSRs:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw&feature=player_embedded
Retired ORNL engineer Uri Gat on the extreme Safety Advantages of Molten Salt Reactors:
nucleargreen.blogspot.ca/2012/06/uri-gat-and-ultimately-safe-reacoir.html
The big question, with the World Energy/Global Warming/Pollution/Peak Oil crisis is why 10's of $billions are not being spent IMMEDIATELY on rapid development of MSR's? Vs 100's of $billions thrown down the sewer every year on NUTTY Renewable Energy Scams, like Wind & Solar energy, Agro-fuels, Hydrogen Economy and Carbon Capture. Right now the US gov't, is spending ZIP on Molten Salt Reactors. The USA developed the tech, and they will end up importing MSRs from China, politicians are willing to sell America's future for Oil cash-in-the-pocket, making the US "the UNDEVELOPING Nation".
The answer: because Big Oil/NG don't want that to happen. Big Oil executives would rather chew on broken glass than let their only competition get a foothold in the market, and destroy Big Oil's Energy Hegemony. With 5 of the top 10 fortune 500 companies being Oil & Gas, including Exxon the #1 company in earnings, as well as super-rich OPEC nations, they will buy EVERYBODY to block Nuclear Energy - media, politicians, research institutions, ENGO's like Greenpeace & the UCS and bureaucrats. Just disgusting, big money corrupts and Oil rightfully deserves the title "The Devil's Tears".
And this is the rub: Monopolies should be banned. There is no easy way around them without starting your own country (island nation?, moving to Australia?) and demonstrating more elegant solutions to these issues, with less environmental demands and damage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate change is already upon us, but neither the govt, big Ag, big Oil or big Green are coming up with demonstrate-able solutions. These giants have no compelling reason to take action that deviates from the status quo. Future generations will have a boatload of serious development work to dig out of this impasse, with water wars AND shoreline flooding already at the forefront. All that's needed is a major earthquake caused by some fracker's underground processing and you can kiss goodbye to new nuclear facilities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdwbd your 'facts' are as bad as the article's and you both show your bias.
The worst part is the heat put in the rivers along with chemicals to keep biofouling in the pipes down.
Next nukes are not that eff running around 28% meaning 72% of the energy is wasted. Coal plants are lucky to get to 40%. New NG CC ones are hitting 60% now.
What I've always wondered is why they don't use low temp Rakine turbines like used for geothermal to extract the waste heat and turn it into power, cash and at the same time cut cooling costs of water, cooling equipment, the energy needed to run them and heat pollution by 50%.
On ethanol it is only 1 of several products made from the corn so the water, etc must be spread amoung them all. Plus much of it is just rain on the fields that would have been used anyway. Same for fertilizer, etc costs making ethanol more eff than oil once everything in oil is added to it. The dried mash is actually a better animal, human feed because of the extra protien so no
For instance gasoline, etc takes 3kwhrs to refine which in my EV's would give 60-120 mile range before the gas leaves the refinery. That doesn't include the drilling, transport, etc.
But for future electric the best retail price is from PV, CSP, CHP, wind at homes, buildings beating coal, nuke, NG retail costs which are 2-4x's wholesale rates.
Facts are home, building systems are already under $3k/kw and once in full production will drop under $2k/kw.
Now dwbd will come up with badly distorted numbers showing how these are 10x's the cost but I use actual numbers one actually pays vs his designed to make nukes look good. Personally I do my own of the RE and get them at $1-2/kw installed by installing them myself which isn't hard at all.
Most RE are simple machines, more simple, less material than a moped and last 20-50 yrs making power near free after a 1-4yr payback. Thus making your own power and eff is the future of electricity and most homes, building will have their own.
Where did this article get the figure that 50% of all water is used to generate energy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have never red any # close to that in any report or story, and Agriculture is usually credited with the overwhelmingly highest percentage of all water usage.
It is so out of line, it sounds utterly false, especially since the article does NOT give any source for that #.
jerry once again trying his best to fit into the category that Big Oil lobbyists call "useful idiots". They just ensure that Big Oil will retain its Energy Hegemony until the last drop of oil and the last cubic foot of Natural Gas is ripped from the Earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjerry claims: "..dwbd your 'facts' are as bad as the article's.."
I show citations for my facts unlike the article or jerry. jerry figurs "because I said so" is all the citations he needs.
jerry claims: "..nukes are not that eff running around 28%.."
Nope. EIA 2010 states the heat rate for Nuclear in the USA is 10,452 BTU/kwh or 3413/10452 = 33% eff.
Coal is similar @ 10,142 BTU/kwh.
Combined Cycle NG is 7,619 or 45% eff.
Geothermal is 21,017 or 16% eff.
www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/pdf/table5.4.pdf
www.nrel.gov/analysis/power_databook/docs/pdf/db_chapter12_9.pdf
And yes the latest most efficient CCGTs peak new at 61% eff and the GenIV reactors we could build now if the gov't would cough up a small fraction of the 100's of $billions going to Nutty Renewable Energy SCAMS are up to 70% eff.
And of course waste heat from Thermal power plants can be used for other uses such as Greenhouses, Building Heat & Cooling and Desalination. Greenies refuse to endorse that area of Energy Efficiency because it validates the economics of Nuclear Energy.
jerry claims:"..On ethanol it is only 1 of several products made.."
Yeah, yeah the byproducts hype. Way more than can practically be used and is fully accounted for in EROEI calcs. The latest and greatest analysis of Corn Ethanol:
netenergy.theoildrum.com/pdf/theoildrum_6760.pdf
Analysis showed EROEI, including coproducts is avg 1.07 with a low of .36. Best case scenario of 1.18, it would take 7.5 liters of ethanol produced to get ONE LITER OF NET ENERGY. And anything less than a 3.0 EROEI is a NET DRAIN on the transportation sector requiring energy inputs from other sources. If gasoline or oil products were anywhere near that bad our economy would collapse and starving hoards would be roving the countryside laying waste to everything.
jerry claims:"..future electric the best retail price is from PV, CSP, CHP, wind at homes, buildings beating coal, nuke.."
Yeah, right. Latest NREL data show #1 home Solar PV in the USA, California is $7.87 per peak watt (up from 2011) or > $52 per avg watt RETAIL, > 50 cents per kwh vs Nuclear at <$5 per avg watt. Yep, jerry's Solar IS >10X the cost of Nuclear:
openpv.nrel.gov/rankings
jerry's homemade-by-swamp-people specials sound great but are not relevant for SERIOUS Energy Policy.
This article is just more BULL made up by the Union of Concerned non-Scientists, a schlock anti-nuclear ENGO that relies on $millions in donations from Big Oil Family Foundations like the Rockefeller & Pew foundations as well as $million anonymous donations from persons such as the CEO of Chesapeake Energy was making to the Sierra Club (they were outed and had to confess with tears and whimpers) to fund their anti-Nuclear and anti-Coal legal & propaganda campaign.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf anyone REALLY wants to know the facts about Nuclear & other Thermal Power Plants water consumption, and a LOGICAL, RATIONAL examination of thermal power plant cooling, here it is:
www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/reference/pdf/PS-cooling.pdf
The Big Oil Sycophants at the Union of Concerned non-Scientists pretend that Solar PV and Wind, without cooling needs would supply our energy. Sure can as long as they are shadowed by fuel guzzling NG power plants that will supply 90% of the energy of the Wind/Solar/Geothermal/NG system. A fact-of-life that Big Oil/NG knows very well. And the fact that is kept secret is that including leakage from Shale Gas & also LNG, Natural Gas is just as bad for GHG emissions as Coal - no improvement there:
www.sustainablefuture.cornell.edu/news/attachments/Howarth-EtAl-2011.pdf
So let's take a look at what the USA has achieved after 100's of $billions of subsidies down the sewer on Wind, Solar & Geothermal energy:
www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/USTPES.pdf
See that almost invisible and scarcely increasing thin green line on top of the graph (1971 to end of 2009)that's your Geothermal,Solar & Wind. Wow - real impressive that is. Compare it with the mundane, highly profitable Nuclear expansion in 1973 to 1989, before it was blockaded by Big Carbon payola:
depletedcranium.com/why-i-hate-the-nrc/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDWBD so what is the retail rate of nukes to customers?
Next there is no new Gen4 nukes available and won't be for yrs. The present new ones like Progress Energy's are coming in at $11k/kw, No? A utility can now put in 5x's the rating of RE for that, easily making up for lower capacity.
No I'm not a fool for oil, coal and use solar for my EV's and most of my power. You on the other hand is a fool of nukes and will pay through the nose for it. Myself buying new units, mounting them myself, my payback is 1.5 yrs then almost free for 20-25 yrs afterward. Deal with it. Or are you incapable of bolting some metal struts together to save 50%?
sunelec.com for $1/wt PV, etc.
Next most RE is either callable or peak load following making it far more valuable than constant power of nukes getting $.25-2/kwhr for peak rates. Vs nukes that near have to give power away off peak. If we get more nukes than 25% of our grid much will be wasted off peak as no demand.
Let's take solar PV. The main peak load in most places especially the south is daytime and A/C loads which PV matches near perfectly. If clouds come over the A/C load decrease too, No?
Solar Thermal has built in storage and can ramp up, down as needed making it far more valuable than nukes. Others just add the collectors to fossil fuel plants cutting their fuel use. One can also make a biomass/solar hybrid that is callable.
Next biomass is callable as is hydro.
Only wind isn't callable but if widely used on homes, buildings it averages out making it reasonable steady. In many places the winds are reliable and happen just when it gets hot which happens just when power is actually needed.
I don't mind nukes if done right and the Gen 4+ reactors are ok once we actually get them in 10+ yrs from now but you will still pay far more retail than we'll done home, building generation because one doesn't have to pay 2-4x's the wholesale rate added to it. No?
The EIA are averages and even if nukes are 33% eff it's still too costly at the retail level vs good RE.
Just because I can do RE myself makes me a swamp person? It makes you a fool saying such bull and shows what kind of person you are.
So keep putting out such garbage about RE and nukes and I'll be counting my extra cash and you can count your electric bill and see who has more at the end of the month. A fool and their money is soon parted.
Yet dbwd PV and wind easily supplies me with cheap power, cheaper than even free nuke to utility power just from the utility markup costs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have to take the whole system into account for a full cost accounting instead of your pick and chose facts.
Is PV, wind for everyone? No of course not but for many it is. We need to use fossil fuels as little as possible and the fastest way in the US is RE as new nukes just are not going to happen anytime soon. Nukes can't even get financing now in the US.
I do agree with you on the NRC, DOE as I see no reason very safe reactors like Hyperion, Thorium, etc Gen V units can't be fairly quickly approved as they have been used already.
But I look at it in how much does the power cost me plus the damage it does and it's clear for most retail customers, making, catching their own is the winning bet.
Feel free to pay through the nose for nuke like other utility power but for me, RE is not just viable but 10-20% of the cost of utility power over 20 yrs.
And RE costs are dropping like a rock as I've shown , sunelec.com
making it more available to others not as techincally able as I am. Deal with it.
Why would you insult me for doing my own RE? Are you that desperate to advance nukes to do that? Yes seems to be the answer.
Just why are you so against people doing RE? The effect does the same thing, reduce oil, coal, NG use. No?
Plus it compliments nukes inability to reduce output by supplying the peak power it can't. No? Only someone so biased would be against people not using FF by another method while saving/making money with it.
So please tell me how nukes will supply peak power without wasting their output most of the time off peak?
Please tell me the costs of such tech to the customer?
Maybe you need to crawl out of your swamp and into the real world instead of insulting me, other who point out the glaring flaws in your argument.