Well I'm finally back at work for the first time since last Monday. Last week we had ice for a couple days and the city has no way to clear it, so schools were shut down all week. Then we had the snow and cold over the weekend and early in the week so schools shut down again. My work finally opened back up today and so my wife stayed home with the kids.
We were really fortunate to not lose power or water through this. The rolling blackouts were much less severe here than Texas, but there were areas in Tulsa that were hit for an hour or two a day early in the week. As far as I know those have ended for our area. The city is dealing with something like 180 water main breaks so water pressure has become an issue in a lot of town.
I am hoping this event motivates cities in our are to at least have a little better storm preparedness. I understand that these events are pretty rare. So obviously we don't need a fleet of plows sitting around with nothing to do. But our suburb has 100,000 people in it and we have 14 plows. It's pretty ridiculous. They do not have a clearing plan for non arterial roads. So in times like this when there is prolonged cold, roads do not improve. School cannot reopen. We have to be able to do better. I hand salted the entire entrance to our neighborhood last week as the city won't do it and I am the first house off the main road and I was tried of seeing people slide.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
This individual is not affluent and more of a member of that shrinking middle class. It is likely the individual does not have a high paying job, is limited on benefits, and has to make due with those benefits provided by employer.
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I forgot to mention they weren’t politicians...haha.
I didn’t have the heart to ask details, but they are originally from Calgary and I’m not sure if they took their vehicle with them, so I was wondering if they might have actually had decent all season tires. I’m not sure how far they had to travel to find a hotel with power, but can confirm, it was not Mexico...haha.
Sorry, my comment was only in jest, as a shot at Ted Cruise
My previous math on this came out to, at best, 18% of nameplate capacity over a year. So Brooks is 15MW, it will average to 2.7MW or less over a year.
No one should really surprised by this. I think that's the exact capacity factor quoted often for Canada (with upwards of 20%+ for tracking solar panels in more ideals places like southern Alberta) Everyone knows night exists. But solar also produces during the day when the load and price are typically over the average price.
Especially with the summer peaks usually being a direct result of the sunlight and people needing to use AC. And it bids in at 0 so the more solar the better for our bills really.
That, along with cheaper technology, is why we're beginning to see half a billion dollar projects being invested into Alberta without subsidies.
It only becomes a "problem" when solar and wind start having noticeable impacts on the generation, requiring some form of capacity market or upgrade on interties, but if the argument is that solar and wind produce so little then that won't happen anytime soon.
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Well I'm finally back at work for the first time since last Monday. Last week we had ice for a couple days and the city has no way to clear it, so schools were shut down all week. Then we had the snow and cold over the weekend and early in the week so schools shut down again. My work finally opened back up today and so my wife stayed home with the kids.
We were really fortunate to not lose power or water through this. The rolling blackouts were much less severe here than Texas, but there were areas in Tulsa that were hit for an hour or two a day early in the week. As far as I know those have ended for our area. The city is dealing with something like 180 water main breaks so water pressure has become an issue in a lot of town.
I am hoping this event motivates cities in our are to at least have a little better storm preparedness. I understand that these events are pretty rare. So obviously we don't need a fleet of plows sitting around with nothing to do. But our suburb has 100,000 people in it and we have 14 plows. It's pretty ridiculous. They do not have a clearing plan for non arterial roads. So in times like this when there is prolonged cold, roads do not improve. School cannot reopen. We have to be able to do better. I hand salted the entire entrance to our neighborhood last week as the city won't do it and I am the first house off the main road and I was tried of seeing people slide.
Glad you're ok. What's in store for your utility bill? Seeing as gas prices in Oklahoma hitting the stratosphere over the last week.
You should be ashamed by this post to be honest.
I am not saying we can't talk about the risks associated with nuclear in an honest and open fashion, but to just fear monger- it hurts our climate.
The on-going, no context attacks against developing nuclear energy is helping global warming.
Germany for example, lighting up coal plants... because they decided to be anti-nuclear.
Or how many people is nuclear really killing compared to other energy?
why dont we talk about the vast areas of Russia and Japan that are uninhabitable due to the occasional and inevitable accidents that all power plants have, personally I dont give a toss about death toll, its the prospect of 2/3rds of the lower mainland having to be evacuated for 500 years I worry about
why dont we talk about the vast areas of Russia and Japan that are uninhabitable due to the occasional and inevitable accidents that all power plants have, personally I dont give a toss about death toll, its the prospect of 2/3rds of the lower mainland having to be evacuated for 500 years I worry about
If you're going to say "you don't personally give a toss about death toll" we are a bridge to far to even debate this topic.
Last edited by Mull; 02-19-2021 at 10:12 AM.
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If you're going to say "you don't personally care about death toll" we are a bridge to far to even debate this topic.
Everything we do kills, we all die, there is no power generation that doesnt kill in one way or another, also everything breaks, everything goes wrong, every power plant gets old run down, every power plant has a Homer Simpson working in it.
Build enough plants and we have to accept a certain number of Chernobyl's and Fukishama's as inevitable and unavoidable
If you're going to say "you don't personally give a toss about death toll" we are a bridge to far to even debate this topic.
It's a fair point. Even if a nuclear accident doesn't kill anyone, it can still be catastrophic if it renders a region uninhabitable.
Though the problem with nuclear isn't the danger; it's the cost. There's a reason basically no one is building them anymore (I think there has been 1 new plant in the entire US brought into operation in the last 25 years) and why they take decades to build (the newest plants all started construction in the '70s).
Tightly controlling the reactor design and more importantly location should mitigate the majority of potential issues. Chernobyl was a poor reactor design, and Fukushima should never have been built along the coast in a well known tsunami zone.
Tightly controlling the reactor design and more importantly location should mitigate the majority of potential issues. Chernobyl was a poor reactor design, and Fukushima should never have been built along the coast in a well known tsunami zone.
It doesnt matter what you do, mistakes and accidents are inevitable in everything, if you build enough of them a percentage will blow up for a reason that will seem obvious afterwards but wasnt before, Chernobyl wasnt a poor reactor design before it blew up, in fact it was considered impossible to blow up, it was only after they discovered that in a very limited set of circumstances they could blow it up.
Fukishama was designed to be proof against tsunami's, Japan is the most tsunami prepared nation on earth, they took every precaution they could think of, they are a massively technically adept nation, easily as smart as we are, they thought they had thought of all the risks and it wasnt enough
It doesnt matter what you do, mistakes and accidents are inevitable in everything, if you build enough of them a percentage will blow up for a reason that will seem obvious afterwards but wasnt before, Chernobyl wasnt a poor reactor design before it blew up, in fact it was considered impossible to blow up, it was only after they discovered that in a very limited set of circumstances they could blow it up.
Fukishama was designed to be proof against tsunami's, Japan is the most tsunami prepared nation on earth, they took every precaution they could think of, they are a massively technically adept nation, easily as smart as we are, they thought they had thought of all the risks and it wasnt enough
So, this is your justification to simply disregard human lives from your calculation of safe energy?
You want to debate the value of land impacts, fine, but frankly your position that human lives don't count is horrific to me.
As for Japan, they are using at least a portion of this "unusable land". Couldn't find exact numbers. Its NOT the original 20km radius however, people have been allowed to return by the government to at least a portion of that radius.
It's a fair point. Even if a nuclear accident doesn't kill anyone, it can still be catastrophic if it renders a region uninhabitable.
Though the problem with nuclear isn't the danger; it's the cost. There's a reason basically no one is building them anymore (I think there has been 1 new plant in the entire US brought into operation in the last 25 years) and why they take decades to build (the newest plants all started construction in the '70s).
No it is not a fair point at all?
AFC quite simply said they "don't personally give a toss about death toll"
How can you have a rational debate about the best forms of energy for us when one person wants to simply remove the death toll impact from the discussion all together?
That's not a fair position, as I said, its a horrific position.
This doesn't mean AFC's other points don't have merit, I never said that.
So, this is your justification to simply disregard human lives from your calculation of safe energy?
You want to debate the value of land impacts, fine, but frankly your position that human lives don't count is horrific to me.
As for Japan, they are using at least a portion of this "unusable land". Couldn't find exact numbers. Its NOT the original 20km radius however, people have been allowed to return by the government to at least a portion of that radius.
Yes Japan is digging up 5 cm of topsoil across the edges of the radiation zone in order to mitigate the radiation, of course the billions of tons of contaminated top soil has to be stored somewhere permanently for ever, so hardly a workable solution for more than one or two accidents.
As to death toll the reality is we have happily lived with what ever the death toll is of carbon power is all our lives, you are no more concerned with it than I am, its just what our world is right now
Literally the safest form of clean power (minus the waste) available to humanity, we should be building modern nuclear plants everywhere, there has been so much progress in their designs and technology, yet people still fear it because of old nuclear power plants built in the 50's and 60's.
We've come such a long way, but we can't get these built because of people not having information about what modern nuclear energy is all about.
Nuclear is proof (I think) that a stigma can prevent the best technology from being used.
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Nuclear is proof (I think) that a stigma can prevent the best technology from being used.
Nuclear is also proof that no matter what technology advances are made we still end up using a heat source to crank up a boiler in order to pass steam through a turbine, for all the bells and whistles its still a very flashy steam engine
Glad you're ok. What's in store for your utility bill? Seeing as gas prices in Oklahoma hitting the stratosphere over the last week.
No idea. We bottomed out at -13F the other night, so the furnace was going pretty much all day long this past week.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
This individual is not affluent and more of a member of that shrinking middle class. It is likely the individual does not have a high paying job, is limited on benefits, and has to make due with those benefits provided by employer.
Unfortunately the "best" technology is also the most expensive and slowest to bring online.
As for stigma, that plays a role, but places that care far less about that still aren't building new plants. China has built more plants over the last couple of decades than anyone, yet they're still only investing about 1/20th in nuclear compared to renewables and haven't started any new nuclear projects in half a decade. Nuclear hasn't really made economic sense for a while and the gap between it and other options is widening as time goes on.
There are definitely some promising technologies in nuclear (like small modular reactors) that overcome some of the drawbacks of existing facilities, but at this point they're basically vaporware. And they're still expensive for what they produce.
Nuclear is also proof that no matter what technology advances are made we still end up using a heat source to crank up a boiler in order to pass steam through a turbine, for all the bells and whistles its still a very flashy steam engine
Even fusion will work that way. Using an artificial sun to heat water....mankind is coming full circle
