Worst drought in California history? Not really…

what is the snail darter please?

Jim
Submitted on 2014/11/22 at 12:45 pm
Can someone comment on why nuclear power plants do not have seawater desalination as the preferred and standard cooling method.

Sure.
1. Very, very few places actually NEED the fresh water that California has restricted out of use: That is, Crude oil can be piped long distances ONLY because it costs some 100.00 dollars per barrel. Fresh water, priced out-of-the-tap rates at dollars per acre-foot rates (roughly 0.05 cents per gallon (0.0005 dollars per gallon) simply CANNOT be charged rates high enough to pay for the steel in the pipeline big enough to matter, the legal and regulatory expenses of the pipeline, the material and costs to build the pipe, and the power to pump it up and down the elevations between the ends of the pipe.
2) California made this problem up by restricting water use in the Sacramento River and the restricions on additional dams in the Sierras and coast mountians and hills. It over sold the Colorado River water and power rights from the Hoover Dam based on unusually high Colorado flow rates in the 1915-1918 time frame (look at global, regional, and local rainfalls and temperatures) and thus is permitted too much water from the Colorado for long-term use. That problem has not occurred elsewhere.
3) Using nuke power plant cooling water heat to desal ocean water requires, simply put, that the nuclear power plant be: on the ocean using ocean to cool the condensers (and very few are.)
4) And that the drought – assumed to be long-term! – that requires the desal plant’s fresh water is needed within a few dozen miles of the nuke plant. And that ALL of the other requirements (terrain, power need, etc.) ALSO exist within economical distance of the desert needing fresh water from the proposed desal plant. And that the drought requiring the desal plant’s fresh water is small enough (the water need small enough) that what little water comes from the desal plant’s huge expense can “cure the problem.” (For example, you could water a field using store-bought bottled water, right? But you could not buy enough bottles of water to actually make money from the crops in that field. That a solution exists, does NOT mean that solution is the right one. ) A single desal plant does not produce much water actually.
If for drinking water only, sure you could make some water.
But not enough for a city, county, or town. Why have a town at all, if there is no”reason” for the town economically?
So, if a nuke plant existed on the FL coast, could you pipe its water to California? If a nuke plant was on a river in Arkansas, where would get the water to desalinate? The river is already fresh water! The lake nearby is already fresh water. But you still could not pipe that water up to Colorado, up over the Rockies, down and over the desert basin salt lakes, up over the Sierra’s, down the valleys to the CA coast!

The eco-green of America and, presumably, especially of California, want to use the Californian drought as a lever on CO2 reduction and anti-fossil fuel measures. They don’t actually care about mitigating the effects of the drought: water-use costs in California are very low. In Palm Springs, desert country as it is, the cost of water-use is so low it does not pay to fix your leaking swimming pool, nor does it dissuade the city from watering (during the day) the streets’ grassy verges even when it is 114F (as it was in early September this year). I understand there are 120 golf courses surrounding Palm Springs; the costs of water are no sufficient to reduce their usage, either. Meanwhile, the desert valley floor is expanding its agricultural sector – drive around and you see new land being broken.
The drought in California exposes the academic concern of the American eco-green. Lifestyle changes that directly assist the “cause”, such as abandonment of SUVs, 4X4 Jeeps, reduced watering or even ownership of grass and flowering plants in a desert, reduced home size etc. etc. are NOT on the to-do list. The eco-green American wants someone else to do the heavy lifting, say, shutting down Pennsylvanian coal production or power generation, or richer peoples’ tax dollars shunted over to subsidize their electric cars.
Robert Kennedy Jr said to the Fox reporter at the New York climate march in September that he didn’t believe the CO2 or fossil fuel “problem” required a reduction in a person’s standard of living, which was why he said he was not giving up his cellphone or his air travel. I’ve been surprised that this quote didn’t get top billing on some blog. Somehow the leading lights of the eco-green movements – including Leonardo DiCaprio and Neil Young – think that the socio-economic-political changes they insist are necessary to combat CAGW can be brought about without personal cost. And perhaps they are right, being the rich: being a 100 millionaire or a 90 millionaire doesn’t really discomfort the millionaire’s lifestyle. But the rest of the movement, the birkenstockers and the Patagonian-wearing protesters, also act as though THEIR position has no cost, impact or need to be diminished.
How the Californian drought is being used a telling indictment of the hypocrisy of American environmentalist position, just as how the Keystone XL pipeline is a telling indictment of the environmentalist movement’s co-option by top American foreign policy. In both cases it is clear that the specific situation – the lack of water in one place and the removal and use of oil in the other – is irrelevant. The individual does not feel the need to reduce water in California or to stop the removal of and use thereof of oil in America (otherwise the expansion of North Dakota Bakken oil production would be equally under attack by the Sierra Club). The eco-green environmentalist movement uses pictures of dry land or open-pit mining as theater pieces just as Detroit uses scantily-clad women in their car commercials: to sell the gullible public the background product.