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Of course,

Where gravity is stubbornly refusing to cooperate (there might not be much grade to many areas in the US, there is a lot of land and work is still distance/time (at least it is where I live, I understand the Republicans moved to have π set equal to 3.0 in some state legislatures not all that long ago).

But I have always been a strong proponent of using nuclear energy for the things which really require big whomping quantities of the stuff, constantly.

How about water desalination projects that are run during the off-peak times? The areas which need such water (not quite potable, but close enough for agriculture) also happen to be the areas which eat the most electricity during the day - California, for instance. Or use it to produce hydrogen for those "clean cars" which are always right around the corner but never quite show up.

My hopes for a battery with sufficient storage density to replace hydrogen based fuels in the near future is virtually null. But who cares, if you're already processing water anyway and you've got 0² as a waste product...

Or, how about pumping some of the excess water from the mid-west (speaking of natural laws, there's an example of two: Water always finds it's own way, and, water always wins in the end) to the arrid West and Texas? Goodness, one could even be extravagent and turn the Rio Grande back into more grande and less rivulet.

I find the potential of nuclear energy fascinating. I find the thought of getting down on our knees in front of the greedy-gut, corrupt, too-hell-with-safety power industry so they can let down their flys and piss all over us scary. And that is what too many people are advocating. If we are going to trick out with a dangerous partner, let's do it safely.

Again, these highly praised reactors in France are run in what the Americans otherwise always sneerlingly call "Marxist-Leninist-Socialist-Fascist"-highly-regulated quasi-government owned utilities and not by freemarket capitalists who neither know nor understand what ionizing radiation is.
 
~Again, IMO we owe France a large debt of gratitude for showing the world how to proceed with nuclear power.

My limited understanding is such. In France every nuclear reactor is exaclty the same. So an engneer who is familiar with this little valve way over and under here ..... would find the same valve doing the same thing anywhere in the country.

Now there is a low-tech solution to a low-tech problem; standardization. I'd say with nuclear power ANTYTHING THAT can be done to eliminate user error is a good thing!
 
> Again, these highly praised reactors in France are run in what the Americans otherwise always sneerlingly call "Marxist-Leninist-Socialist-Fascist"-highly-regulated quasi-government owned utilities and not by freemarket capitalists who neither know nor understand what ionizing radiation is. <

All but one of France's nuclear plants were built by Areva from *Westinghouse* original designs.

en.wikipedia.org

Nuclear power in France - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
No suprise, there

The French know what's good.
Jeff, I am not arguing against nuclear energy. I am arguing against our returning to the untenable situation of the first atomic era - it was a disaster waiting to happen. Which then did.

Right now, I see the same hurrah-mentality as we saw back then.

By all means, learn from the French. But not just the technology (which Intel also uses and popularized) but from the controlling organs.
 
Westinghouse Design

A wise choice on Areva's part, Jeff, to go with Westinghouse designed reactors. Westinghouse has a solid engineering design as evidenced by their high plant capacity factor operating history and are used around the globe.

Westinghouse utilizes the Pressured Water Reactor (PWR) and GE the BWR. Both have an outstanding track record. Both very viable designs, but from an engineering stand point I give a slight edge to the BWR systems as you reduce some of the complexity with the elimination of the secondary steam loop and associated hardware.

Barry
 
Don't mention Areva in our area!

This is Westinghouse territory! One of my neighbors works for Westinghouse and has been for the past 30 years and if I even say "Arevaderche" as a greeting I get a dirty look. Coincidentally, she looks like Anne Lavergeon, the woman who runs Areva.
 
I think the problem is not necessarily how safe anything is -- it's probably "Not In My Back Yard". No one wants utilities in their neighborhood, just ask around.

You should have seen the bitching, not only by the neighborhood properly, but everyone else that drives through around here when one has to expand and/or remodel or even do just simple maintenance on a water treatment plan, for example.

The Boston Area just recently went through a few years trying to get all the plans and permits to improve (or expand?, I forget) a water treatment plant in Cambridge (the one near the "Rotaries of Death", for y'all who know the area), and it was a year or two of actual construction in which the traffic around the area was just murder. Everyone was bitching about it... I don't even live nearby, and I was bitching too, so no, I'm not excluding myself here, I tell it like it is.

Sure, put a nuclear power plant in the middle of nowhere, maybe not enough people have enough power to stop it. Now try to transport radioactive materials to/from there and see millions of people complaining. I'm all for nuclear power, but I might join the ones complaining: I'd want to know about what kind of safety measures they'd put in place, how they'd avoid people trying to rob the materials passing through etc.

Also, you'll notice, other countries tend to have fewer, larger power plants away from cities and high-voltage towers bringing the power to where it's needed -- how often do you hear people here demonstrating against the installation of such towers through their neighborhoods? And who can blame them, I wouldn't want the eyesore, or the problems associated with them, including lowering property values. Heck, people in Martha's Vineyard are trying to stop the installation of wind power generation because they claim it will be noisy and an eyesore... noisier than the ocean? And really, when it's several miles off the coast like intended, how visible is this gonna be, a quarter inch on the horizon? Still, maybe I'd be on their side if I lived there, who knows?

It's all about how unobtrusive things can be. I've been to areas where cell phone coverage is near perfect (sometimes in 3rd world countries), and there are areas in USA where there's no coverage by one company or another, 'cuz no one wants a cell tower nearby and if a church or two refuses to let the antennas be hidden in the steeple, "no cell coverage for you!" is what you get. If you can hide a small power plant in an innocent looking building around here, you have power, otherwise, tough luck.

It always cracks me up when I'm walking or driving through Cambridge and see signs proudly announcing that "Cambridge is a nuclear-free city" -- sure, honey, if you discount all the energy that is brought to your fair city through wires but generated in some nuclear power plant, then you're right... also, if you insist on forgetting that MIT *has* a nuclear reactor, and so does Harvard -- sure, research reactors, but hardly nuclear free.

And Panthera, I may be the last person defending the republicans, but setting the value of Pi to 3 is, as far as I've been told, not for science or anything else, but for one case: if you have a piece of property that is circular, for the purpose of calculating the property taxes, you can use 3 instead of Pi -- it's like a discount on your taxes, which is I think the reason they suggested this law, as opposed to they can't afford a $10 handheld calculator that would produce the proper value. But they may have duped me on this, maybe they can't remember the value of Pi and can't be arsed to get a calculator, who knows. ;-)
 
NIMBY

NIMBY - Not in MY Backyard has become the rallying cry to stop any and everything here in Munich. Windmills? May the gods forefend - a bloody pigeon might run into one.
Methadone treatment centers? No, three times no, after all, everybody knows that somebody trying to get well is a bad person.
Cell phone antennas - What!?! - we've all seen the youtube video where those kids popped corn with their cell-phones, no way!

And so on.

But everyone, of course, wants unlimited energy, the best medical care and communications...just, not at their personal cost or possible inconvenience.

We have to learn to work together when such big infrastructure projects are needed. Actually, given the pitiful state of the North American electric grid, any hope of nuclear energy saving us is a lost hope until that mess is resolved. Texas has noted, frequently and loudly (well, they are Texans) that they can't even move the energy their current wind farms are producing around because of the grid's limitations.

Earthling, I didn't know about that surveyor's trick, interesting. I like decimals, hated fractions (still do). But, no, actually, there really is a group of Republicans who actually have tried to change the observations we have gained through the natural sciences on many occasions. I was being a bit oblique there because I don't want to insult the folks from the State in which they made their first attempt. And these are the people who make the laws governing industry...which has clearly proved that, no, it is not capable of regulating itself.
 
Panthera -- sorry, I had no idea, the last time I've heard the" Pi is 3" thing was nearly 15 years ago just as I described, so I thought it was the same old thing. I stand corrected. Just when I thought we had reached rock bottom, they started digging now? Jeez. I hope we can improve from here on.
 
Oh, no,

The politician's motto (regardless of party) is: When in a hole, don't stop digging - we are making progress...and don't forget to post that little sign right over the hole: Your tax dollars at work.
 
Continued Developments

Our govenor in Ohio, Ted Strickland(D) let it be known that
Duke energy will be using Areva to build the new nuclear plant in Piketon, Ohio. It will be a version of a Pressured Water Reactor (PWR) that Areva call the EPR (European Pressurized Reactor).

Currently we have 104 operating nuclear power plants in the U.S., this will be the 105th.

Of our plants, 34 are currently BWR and Areva will give us the 71st PWR.

Barry
 
.....and more developments

Ohio Governor Strickland(D) is working with President Obama to secure some additional funding for a prototype, at the site of the new Piketon plant, center of nuclear electricity production and uranium enrichment.

(Up to 2001 there was a uranium enrichment plan run by USEC there)

Plans are for USEC to operate a new and more efficient advanced centrifuge separation plant in Piketon with Areva's new reactor.

Strickland and Obama are in agreement to call it "Clean Energy Park".
 
Not to change the subject, but the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory here in the Bay Area recently had a grand opening. I guess it's some sort of milestone - they've demonstrated the contained fusion concept can work, I guess, now they just need to demonstrate that it can produce electricity regularly and economically.

The size of the thing is enormous, I understand. Massive lasers all focused on one little tiny bead of hydrogen... trying to turn it into helium and releasing more energy than was input.

OK, yeah, I'm skeptical this approach will ever be practical or cost effective (the capital outlay is enormous) but it's the closest thing to "clean" fusion nuclear power so far. It's kind of interesting, that's for sure.
 

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