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Fred Porter's avatar

Is there a less value-laden word for the hype around nuclear than "renaissance"?

Thanks for pointing out how much water is evaporated and taken out of the system by Palo Verde: it's water that could be sent back to taps, reducing the fresh water draw of Phoenix, or sent down the Gila.

Water is a big deal for most "thermal" powerplants, though not solar or wind or batteries. A couple of the few recently-completed nuke examples promoted as relatively economic overseas were cheaper/ish because they utilize seawater cooling. In Finland, Baltic water, in the UAE, Persian Gulf water. Both were also kept cheaper/ish by use of semi-incarcerated imported labor from Poland and Pakistan respectively.

Most importantly, the Finns have shelved plans for more nukes as they realized that it's cheaper and faster to keep expanding their wind turbine fleet, and utilize some summer solar, and build heat pumps and heat storage, both small and ginormous. The Emiratis are shifting gears, unsurprisingly, towards massive solar. 5.2 GW dc. The link says it all: https://www.power-technology.com/news/uae-24-7-solar-pv-battery-storage.

Nuclear...

Resurgence?

Regurgitation?

Reincarnation?

Reexamination or review? (Mostly a lot of discussion so far, there still aren't even any functional quarter scale prototypes of "SMRs".)

Resuscitation? That captures it for me.

Back to water; Bill Gates's "sodium-cooled" reactor circulates that sodium through the core, then to a steam boiler-turbogenerator-cooling tower system. So it evaporates water just like every steam power plant in the West. Apparently testimony to the Colo leg was misleading, at least to reporters.

China and nukes? The few that are actually under construction are on the SE coast. Solar and wind dominate current Chinese power additions.

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Maggie's avatar

I follow a blog about Spring Creek Basin Wild Horses - the gal that posts there has been saying there's not a lot of water in the streams or creeks (this is Colorado) I dont know exactly where in Colorado this is, but she does a really good job of not only keeping track of the various bands of Horses, but cant say enough for the BLM people who take care of area. One of theirs got removed a while ago (due to firings) but somehow they managed to get him back on the crew.

I dont hear a lot of good about most BLM people who are involved in the "management" of Wild Horses, but the guys and gals in that area have been super. Nice to hear of something good - these days!

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