Western US may face "crippling" black outs

[phantom power]

A new study released this week highlights what experts have been saying for years: the U.S. faces significant risk of power brownouts and blackouts as early as next summer that may cost tens of billions of dollars and threaten lives.

The study, "Lights Out In 2009?" warns that the U.S. "faces potentially crippling electricity brownouts and blackouts beginning in the summer of 2009, which may cost tens of billions of dollars and threaten lives."

"If particularly vulnerable regions, like the Western U.S., experience unusually hot temperatures for prolonged periods of time in 2009, the potential for local brownouts or blackouts is high, with significant risk that local disruptions could cascade into regional outages that could cost the economy tens of billions of dollars," the report warned.

http://www.nextgenenergy.org/nextgen+blackout+study.aspx

[Bobbieo]

1. Doesn't look good for SW AZ. Yuma has had 100 degree plus temps plus high humidity since

May - that is 5 months of suffocating heat and it is still not over.

[qb]

2. It's too bad Enron isn't still around to save the day...

:sarcasm:

[tama]

3. Come on

It's never the infrastructure (lack of and crumbling), it's allways the evil conspiracy of the other wing of the Party!

[tom_paine]

14. More weak-minded binary thinking. You know, there's more than life to either/or.

Or was Enron unfairly maligned, according to you, and blameless of any crime?

If you answer "yes" to that question, then your position is consisent with what appears to be an unthinking insult and an eaxmple of weak-minded binary thinking.

You see, it is possible for some people to actually believe that Enron was a criminal conspiracy, yet also believe that not EVERYTHING in the oil markets are a result of criminal conspiracy.

Suspicion. I know that concpet seems funny to a binary 0/1 thinker, but sometimes people actually believe something has occurred but don't yet have proof, therefore they adopt a non-binary position called "skepticism" or "suspicion".

You might try it sometime. It's a way to critically think about events which have occurred in the past (such as the Enron Criminal Conspriacy, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Stolen Elections 2002, 2002, 2004, and very likely 2006, even though the Dems "won")then postulate future possibilties from your critical analysis of past events as best as we can puzzle them together in an uncertain world.

Try to sometime. You might find it interesting. But to get there, first you have to learn how to think critically and non-binarily. Maybe you already know how, after all, I don't know you from the next person. Maybe you were just being glib, though it has been my experience that such "glibess" usually but not always means a person is a binary-thinker, not a critical thinker.

Binary thinkers are not moved by scientific data, trends, and critical analysis. Binary thinkers are motivated by individual instances, preferring to smear them out as stand-in for the complex whole. Like in your post I am respinding to.

A classic example of a Binary Thinker is one who disputes global warming because it was cold outside his house yesterday. And even THAT crazily exaggerated example HAS MILLIONS OF LITERAL ADHERENTS in our nation.

Not that I think you or any DUer would be THAT bad. That's evangelical/Palin terroitory.

[kristopher]

4. NextGen Energy Council

NextGen Energy Council is a group of governors from western energy producing states pushing for more coal development. I'd treat this "study" with the same caution I'd use if evaluating something from GW denialist sources. This group gives lip service to GW problems but their objective is clearly the continued mining, extraction and use of all fossil fuels.

[Blue Meany]

8. They conclude that the main cause is excessive regulation...

That made me suspicious right off.

[kristopher]

10. I think this is the group

that is using wind as a pretext to get power lines run to the vicinity of coal mines so that they can build coal plants at the mines. They also propose installing some wind, around which the coal turbine would supposedly configure its generation. I suspect they then would argue that this coal-wind hybrid storage system should be subject to renewable energy credits of some kind.

[kristopher]

5. From "Energy Policy TV: the Coal Channel"

http://video.energypolicytv.com/displaypage.php?vkey=ad02658508fe4616098a&channel=Coal


Cool website, by the way. Be sure to visit their home page...
http://video.energypolicytv.com

[bananas]

6. Reactors have to be shut down so they don't go Chernobyl

Depending on circumstances, the Station Blackout reactor accident scenario can be particularly dangerous to public health and safety. The reactor core can melt on time scales comparable to the TMI accident. Unlike the limited loss of cooling event at TMI, however, the core damage scenario in a Station Blackout can be particularly severe, including a so-called “early high energy release” comprising a particularly heavy “portfolio” of fission products dispersed far and wide within a few hours.

Bad enough an extended loss of offsite or grid power occurs at a single reactor site and threatening a Station Blackout accident – worse that this extended grid loss occurs without warning at more than a dozen reactors such as the 2K3 Blackout or a particularly severe hurricane.

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=514

:nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

[NNadir]

7. If you don't know what you're talking about, make stuff up.

Why don't you stick to telling us about 2050, big boy?

I'm quite sure that your pals praising Governor Hydrogen Hummers brazillion solar roofs program are all quite safe in yuppie "we don't need the grid" heaven?

No?

You for instance apparently have a "world's largest" pile of electronic waste, um, oops, solar PV system on your McMansion on your fucking roof, don't you big boy?

In Hurricane Andrew, the Turkey Point nuclear station took a direct hit from the hurricane.

Any fucking idea which power plants came back to grid after Katrina?

Don't know.

You are, as usual, an abysmally misinformed mystic.

[meow mix]

12. did they shut down some euro reactors during a summer heatwave?

just asking,
please dont start screaming obscenities at me in your usual manner.

[bananas]

15. It's starting to happen in the U.S, too

Not for safety reasons, but for environmental reasons.
2007: Hot Weather Forces Partial Shutdown of TVA Nuclear Plant
2006: Michigan Reactor Shut Down Due to Heat

[bananas]

17. Many European reactors shut down or reduced power in 2003 and 2006 heat waves

Heatwave shuts down nuclear power plants
Juliette Jowit and Javier Espinoza
The Observer, Sunday July 30 2006

The European heatwave has forced nuclear power plants to reduce or halt production. The weather, blamed for deaths and disruption across much of the continent, has caused dramatic rises in the temperature of rivers used to cool the reactors, raising fears of mass deaths for fish and other wildlife.

Spain shut down the Santa Maria de Garona reactor on the River Ebro, one of the country's eight nuclear plants which generate a fifth of its national electricity. Reactors in Germany are reported to have cut output, and others in Germany and France have been given special permits to dump hot water into rivers to avoid power failures. France, where nuclear power provides more than three quarters of electricity, has also imported power to prevent shortages.

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/jul/30/energy.weather

Climate change puts nuclear energy into hot water
By James Kanter
Published: May 20, 2007

<snip>

Officials at Électricité de France have been preparing for a possible rerun of a ferocious heat wave that struck during 2003, the hottest summer on record in France, when temperatures of some rivers rose sharply and a number of reactors had to curtail output or shut down altogether.

The French company operates 58 reactors - the majority on ecologically sensitive rivers like the Loire.

During the extreme heat of 2003 in France, 17 nuclear reactors operated at reduced capacity or were turned off. Électricité de France was forced to buy power from neighboring countries on the open market, where demand drove the price of a megawatt hour as high as €1,000, or $1,350. Average prices in France during summer months ordinarily are about €95 per megawatt hour.

<snip>

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/20/africa/nuke.php

[Throckmorton]

9. A station Black out and a Loss of Off-site Power event

are not one in the same.

The executive summery of NUREG-1776 states:

"The NRC designated SBO, which is a loss of all offsite and onsite ac power concurrent with a
turbine trip, as Unresolved Safety Issue A-44 in 1980. In 1988, the Commission concluded that
additional SBO regulatory requirements were justified and issued the SBO rule (Title 10 Code
of Federal Regulations Section 50.63 <10 CFR 50.63>) to provide further assurance that a
loss of both offsite and onsite emergency ac power systems would not adversely affect public
health and safety. The SBO rule expected a reduction in the risk as a result of licensees
maintaining highly reliable onsite emergency ac electric power supplies; ensuring that the plants
can cope with an SBO for some period of time; developing procedures and training to restore
offsite and onsite emergency ac power should either become unavailable; and making
modifications necessary to meet the SBO rule requirements."

[bananas]

11. Yes, the article I linked to explains it pretty well.

Some people seem to be under the impression that current reactors can't melt down.
They can, and the reason for this NRC regulation is to reduce the odds of that happening.

[NNadir]

13. "Some people?"

In fact, dipshit, a reactor did melt down at TMI.

Educated people know that. Of course uneducated fear mongerers stumble around illiterately claiming that the event wiped out the city of Harrisburg, even when the same illiterates don't give a rat's ass about how many people in PA die each year from particulate pollution.

The point is that the systematic error of that time was corrected. Even if it had not been corrected in such a way that it did not repeat, nuclear power would still be safer than all the dangerous forms of energy endorsed by illiterate anti-nukes.

In fact, RBMK reactors, which can explode are safer than dangerous fossil fuels. They have only killed a few thousand people, this more than 20 years ago, whereas dangerous fossil fuels kill millions each year, every year.

Anti-nukes couldn't care less about the latter.

One of the "some people" who showed that Chernobyl's experience did not apply to Western reactors - despite the stupid whining of illiterate anti-nukes here and elsewhere to the contrary - was Hans Bethe. You know who Hans Bethe was don't you?

You don't?

Why am I not surprised?

I personally reject stupid "appeal to authority" arguments like "Al Gore said..." "Joe Rohm said..." but this case is different. Hans Bethe was present at every major step in the early development of reactors. He was very much involved in the confrontation with the "reactor opposer" Edwin Teller over reactors and more broad moral issues. Thus Bethe was something that dumb anti-nukes don't understand in their dumb "appeal to authority arguments:" Competent authority.

In fact, renewable energy killed hundreds of thousands at Banquio, and kills millions each year from wood related particulates. The main way the "renewables will save us meme" kills today is to produce inaction through sound bite laziness.

The city of New Orleans, and all of the surrounding was destroyed, along with all the electrical grid around it. Maybe in your googling approach, you've heard of it. The reactors in Louisiana were ready to power that grid before any other form of energy was available, including the dangerous fossil fuels you ignore continuously because you couldn't fucking care less.

You are here to agitate to destroy some of the West's cleanest infrastructure through mysticism, laziness and appeals to fear, irrational fear. It is my pleasure to confront this ignorance.

[bananas]

16. U.S. reactors can explode, too

As explained in the article:

Unlike the limited loss of cooling event at TMI, however, the core damage scenario in a Station Blackout can be particularly severe, including a so-called “early high energy release” comprising a particularly heavy “portfolio” of fission products dispersed far and wide within a few hours.

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=514

It's interesting you mention Katrina.
The levees shouldn't have failed.
The Army Corps of Engineering admitted they screwed up:

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers admits fault

On April 5, 2006, months after independent investigators had demonstrated that the levee failures were not due to natural forces beyond intended design strength, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock testified before the U. S. Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water that, "We have now concluded we had problems with the design of the structure." He also testified that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not know of this mechanism of failure prior to August 29, 2005. The claim of ignorance is refuted, however, by the National Science Foundation investigators hired by the Army Corps of Engineers, who point to a 1986 study by the corps itself that such separations were possible in the I-wall design.

Nearly two months later, on June 1, 2006, the USACE finally and unequivocally admitted responsibility for the events in New Orleans with the release of the completed report. The final draft of the IPET report states the destructive forces of Katrina were "aided by incomplete protection, lower than authorized structures, and levee sections with erodible materials."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_levee_failures_in_Greater_New_Orleans

This is a valid concern with aging infrastructure.
Vermont wants an independent competent authority to make sure there isn't a nuclear Katrina with their reactor:

He was a nuclear engineer, a nuclear industry executive, a nuclear industry whistleblower, and now
he's been appointed to the Vermont nuclear oversight panel.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x160168