Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The utter failure of renewables to deliver during the Californian heatwave appears to be creating a surge of interest in reliable energy.
California Blackouts: It’s Not Just the Heat, It’s Also the Anti-Nuclear Power Stupidity
Activists oppose a huge source of reliable, climate-friendly electricity that could have prevented the rolling blackouts in the Golden State.
RONALD BAILEY | 8.19.2020 12:31 PM
Rolling electric power blackouts afflicted as many as 2 million California residents last week as a heat wave gripped the Golden State. (It’s apparently eased up for now.) At the center of the problem is that power demand peaks as overheated people turn up their air conditioning in the late afternoon just as solar power supplies cut off as the sun goes down. In addition, output from California’s wind farms was erratic. Currently, about 33 percent of California’s electricity comes from renewable sources as mandated by state law. Until this summer, California utilities and grid operators were able to purchase extra electricity from other states, but the current heat wave stretches from Texas to Oregon so there was little to none available to make up for California’s power shortage.
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Completely ignored in the reporting is that California has been shutting down a huge source of safe, reliable, always-on, non-carbon dioxide–emitting, climate-friendly electricity—that is, nuclear power. In 2013, state regulators forced the closing of the San Onofre nuclear power plant that supplied electricity to 1.4 million households. By 2025, California regulators plan to close down the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant that can supply electricity to 3 million households.
The problem of climate change, along with the blackouts resulting from the inherent vagaries of wind and solar power, are an indication that California should not only keep its nuclear power plants running but also build many more of them.
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Read more: https://reason.com/2020/08/19/california-blackouts-its-not-just-the-heat-its-also-the-anti-nuclear-power-stupidity/
Renewables have failed to deliver this time, and will do so again.
Californian anger at the blackouts will eventually spill over into action, the scrapping of renewables in favour of reliable energy sources. The only question is, how many blackouts it will take before Californian voters get the message?
Looking at the details of Diablo Canyon, there don’t seem to be any reasons to suppose it is at increased risk from tsunami or earthquake… Though if the worse case happened you’d be looking at moving over half a million people out for perhaps decades.
However at 35 years it is approaching the end of its design life and while reactors now often have this extended, there are high costs involved (look at the French nuclear programme). It surely wouldn’t have more than 15 years left, with increasing costs.
I suspect were this in the UK, it would be given another decade of life.
There is no “high cost” in extending reactor lifetime. The high cost is gratuitous. It’s depraved destruction of assets.
Also, the justification for even more nuclear safety is nowhere to be found!
Yeas ago, 50 yeas ago, the notion was that electricity should be available but not seen.
A bit like the opposite of “children (Greta Thunberg) should be seen, not heard.”
In many countries the went along with the notion. The put the cables in ground (where feasible), made the power plants smaller, more discreet and effective, they made the installation in houses almost invisible and had a frequency so stable you could use synchronous motors to drive your clocks.
This notion of esthetics is falling apart when it comes to generation and distribution.
But the deterioration has bin fairly slow, so the frog doesn’t mind being boiled.
“We can see a gradual rise from the 1960s, but recent years still don’t hit the peaks seen in the 1930s and 40s”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/08/20/are-californias-heatwaves-getting-worse/
No.
California will not have nuclear.
They will not have coal or gas electricity.
They will not even have biomass burning.
They will get “electricity” from wind and solar only, 100 % clean renewables.
Maybe the odd bit of hydro.
Let this be enshrined in law for a thousand years.
They’ve made their bed, let them lie in it.
And the rest of us can laugh without end.
Correct. CA and places like Germany with a high commitment to Green Tech need to become pariahs and object lessons. Ratchet up the pain index and maybe the bird brains will learn something.
Correct. CA and places like Germany with a high commitment to Green Tech need to become pariahs and object lessons. Ratchet up the pain index and maybe the bird brains will learn something.
The Irish plan the same fate for their equally stupidly suicidal believing selves. UK gov talks renewables and plans gas and nuclear, it seems. Well, they have to power our grid from a source that can deliver the necessary amount of energy on demand, not like those other countries that can magic up the energy using some energy Gandalf who defies the laws of physics.
May I leave the last word to the late Irish writer Flann O’Brien who said the best way to solve the Irish power shortage was for every Irishman to go to bed for one month each year.
Except for the bakers and brewers.
Conventional nuclear is better than renwables on all counts, including costs (when costs are realistically calculated), but Gen 4 molten salt nuclear reactors are infinitely superior to conventional light water reactors : inherently safe, irregradless of tsunamis or earthquakes or anything else – release of significant amounts of radiation are physically quite impossible (molten salt fuel freezes at below 650 degrees and reactivity ceases.).
This is the future power technology : cheaper than every power source except the cheapest possible natural gas power. Molten salt reactors can “load follow” meaning no need for peak power generators, which are typically fossil fueled. Molten sala reactors can be built very rapidly in factories at less than half the cost of a conventional nuclear power plant. Prototype reactors should apppear in a few years and shortly afterwards be commercialized. There are no mysteries about molten salt reactors – they have been around for deacdes, but until recently they were impractical due to the restricted core space, which required weapons grade levels of radiactive fuel, a no-no. But no longer – molten salt reactors can use spent nuclear fuel (“nuclear wastes”) . And they can also be fueld by Thorium, although uranium is proliferaation resistant and should therefore be used. Molten salt reactors can come online before any conventional reactors begun today would be able to produce power. There is no reason to not wait for molten salt reactors.
Col
I’ve got you down for Q2’2026 start-up of a commercially-viable MSR. The clock is ticking.
Let me know when that gets pushed out. Or is that what your cryptic statement means?
Does that translate to “There is a reason to wait for MSR”? How long?
Col, agree. Molten salt is great but regulatory approval before 2040 is impossible. Natural gas now, phase in small scale modular from 2030 to 2050 when molten salt may start coming online.
“irregradless”
Good job, Col. You misspelled the double negative word! 🙂
The solution is to cut off the electricity to politicians and their homes. They must suffer so that they understand what their constituents are going through.
Leftism destroys empathy while convincing someone suffering from it that they are, in fact, MORE empathetic than the average person. They lie must be exposed and the only way to do it is through practical demonstration.
I allude that CA policy is like a “doomsday prepper” vs “minimalist tiny house builder”:
A doomsday prepper for those that have not heard of these people is someone that has such an intense fear of the collapse of society that they stockpile food, build intricate yet easily breached defenses around their supplies, and create what they believe to be innovative ways to escape to their hidey hole to wait out their chosen Apocalypse. Usually resulting in living in a bunker prison trapped by their own fear and surrounded with their own waste. These people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their elaborate plans that have a far simpler and less costly solution. I.e. they let fear drive them into bankruptcy and utter financial collapse and if this is what they were prepping for–well it becomes a self sustaining prophecy.
A minimalist tiny house builder is the exact opposite of a doomsday prepper, instead of living in a steel or concrete prison cell, they take all considerations for energy, mobility, comfort, waste..etc into play to build a small but livable space that can produce it’s own energy (due to it’s size) and deal with it’s own waste. Mobility is achieved through either building on a trailer or not achieved by building a permanent structure designed for self sustainability using technology, education of the past (i.e. canning food), and innovative waste management solutions–look up an Earth Home;after you get over the idea of living in a dirt hut, the waste water treatment is really freaking cool–to produce a sell able house for a minimalist. Now a tiny house isn’t for everyone, but it IS livable, minimalist lifestyle is not for everyone, but again, it IS livable and achievable on every level to your personal preference. But more importantly, it is attainable, sustainable (for as long as you can live in a tiny environment that is), and realistic.
How does CA resemble these two seemingly opposing ideas? CA is more like the doomsday prepper. They stockpile with good intentions but not thinking things through properly for sustainability (not the dirty word version, but the correct definition without the implications) and instead only thinking about the fear that puts them into prepping and disaster mode. When was the last time CA was hit with a tsunami? How far inland did it go? Ok, so build out a few miles from that and on higher ground. Instead of stopping with, “OMG THERE MIGHT BE A (insert natural disaster of choice)” ask the question, “WHAT IS THE LIKELYHOOD?” and plan accordingly. Pretty soon CA will be like that prepper–stuck in their hidey hole of fear and surrounded by their own waste–although some would argue that has already occurred.
All power matters. Not just nuclear.
The Brown New Deal.
Give all the politicians in Sacramento a “Wag Bag” and then burn the human waste at the Mesquite Power Plant.
A true renewable source of energy – California politicians are full of it!
how many blackouts it will take before Californian voters get the message?
Based on the record of California voters, a LOT more.
I agree that it is blindingly stupid to shut the nuclear plants.
But this post totally misunderstands the California mindset. The well-to-do will proudly get a battery system for their rooftop solar, and then they won’t give a rip whether or not the not-well-to-do have power. I’m literally seeing ads for this already.
California is neo-feudal.
And none of them have ever tried to anticipate what will happen when they see three or more days of overcast.
Mark,
My brother in law checked into a tesla home battery this week as lots of retailers are offering them up as an option for PSPS’s and black outs. The sales guys said that the battery needed to be stored in a controlled environment- between 65 and 85F. John doesn’t have HVAC for his garage and he didn’t think his building codes would allow the battery to be indoors hence he is going to stick with his small generator.
Joel Kotkin has a post up at city journal on feudalism- https://www.city-journal.org/kamala-harris-california?
Interesting. Elon implied that the Tesla battery packs could just be mounted in the garage. Should have realized that was not quite true since the cars go to great efforts to manage battery temps.
And the anti-hydrocarbon fuels stupidity.
Izaak: Jeez! Are you kidding me? Go to alot of places in alot of towns on voting day and follow around the man with the twenties…
California’s Dysfunctional Electricity Policies may lead to more Blackouts – Shuttering of in-state power plants, “leaks” the generation and emissions to other states. As a result of California’s intermittent electricity from wind and solar being unable to provide continuous uninterruptable electricity in-state, California imports more electricity than any other state as a result of “leakage” to other states from them to generate emissions for the generated electricity needs of California. At the same time, the states “green” religion remains adamantly against in-state coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro power plants. Can you see the conundrum the state is in?
https://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2020/08/californias-dysfunctional-electricity-policies-may-lead-to-more-blackouts/
Shut down the nukes! Maximize the pain index! CA must be come an object lesson for the rest of the country, especially with GND fanatics waiting in the wings.
Bird brains can only learn through adverse stimulation. Negative reinforcement.
On Stupidity:
Nothing will change until the grid really collapses and energy prices are 3 or 4 times the sensible states. Because of the Dunning Kruger effect. We are all doomed by human stupidity.
Most Californians are too stupid to understand and promote difficult reality, they prefer easy belief in whatever nice sounding PC nonsense is promoted by delusional zealots and exploited by the snake oil salesmen. Something they can all agree on w/o understanding, so are easily manipulated by lying politicians and the renewable lobby who bought them so they could have their overpriced inefficiency imposed on the believers for massive easy profits enforced by law for the rent takes.
A simple legalised protection racket, a snake oil cure for a non-problem of almost certainly natural climate change, which has gone up and down all the time for milliopns of years in the short and long term, exactly as we observe it now, something any fool can check in the ice cores.
It’s so obviously a racket because, if you wanted more sustainable cheap zero CO2 energy 24/7, you would build nuclear, the only energy source intense enough and generation plant sustainable enough to replace fossil use at the scale required in simple energy fact.
If you wanted to end famine AND pesticide use, you would fast track disease resistant GM crops rather than try to ban effective pesticides while forcing a return to unproductive feudal farming methods susceptoble to crop failure from disease and pestilence as “healthy”. For whom?
It’s that simple to understand and fix , but it won’t be. Because such rationality is beyond the stupid.
Because of Dunning Kruger (if correct, which the success of the scientifically obvious climate change fraud against the available science facts, and the very easy to calculate physics and engineering facts of what can replace fossil use and what cannot, confirm it is.)
This effect states that the majority of people are stupid and gullible, and don’t know it, even think they are clever because they aren’t clever enough to know they are stupid. Especially a problem in Californians, Australians and Germans, and all ISIL et al fundamentalists. All easily deceived then led.
As a kicker, the clever people overestimate the stupid people and think they understand the truth when told it, but in fact they cannot.
So the stupid people never learn from the clever honest people and simply choose between the practised certainty of professional liars for personal gain, a breed that are, in particular, schooled in te best private schools to know very little except debating and winning arguments. versus the uncertain reality of those who do understand and explain the complexities of reality rather than tell people what the truth is, simply.
No contest there with the hard of thought. By the time reality kicks in the money has been taken, the energy supply crippled, and the guilty retired on the Billions in subsidies, from pointlessly generating resource intensive, expensive energy inefficiently, some of the time, enforced by law, also for acting as priests talking up the deceit, and finally the $Billions that will be made in carbon trading by insiders and banks, that reduces CO2 not one bit. etc. You can’t make it up. That’s their job.
CONCLUSION: We are all doomed by the common mass human stupidity exploited by the few cynical exploitative snake oil salesmen, from Hitler through Baghdadi to Gore, who know how to create and disseminate false beliefs for easy power and profit at the expense of the stupid hence easily deceived and manipulated masses, and how to recruit equally stupid zealot armies fearful of the imaginary Armageddon, supported by well paid “expert” priests like MIcahel Mann paid to find a problem and promote the required beliefs, and finally a layer of wannabe psychopath Gestapo/SS/Inquisition style enforcers to run their inquisitions against any inconvenient truth tellers, because they are right and everyone else is wrong. Especially attack those telling the actual science few people can check, because most are too stupid to understand it. etc.
JohnCleese explains the serious academic conundrum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU
On being doomed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxqvwkmTNy8
Comments on a postcard please.
“Californian anger at the blackouts will eventually spill over into action, the scrapping of renewables in favour of reliable energy sources. The only question is, how many blackouts it will take before Californian voters get the message?”
They will NEVER wake up, they are educated to follow their leftist master, that is why even now their response to recent black outs are few and ineffectual.
Leftists have been so brainwashed by their puppet masters, it’s difficult for them accept nuclear power.
The irony is that if the $7 trillion wasted on the bogus Wuhan flu economic shutdown had instead been spent to develop/build Thorium MSRs, 100% of US’s electrical needs could have been from nuclear power, producing unlimited amounts of electricity @ur momisugly $0.03/kWh 24/7/365, as opposed to intermittent, unreliable, and absurdly expensive wind/solar @ur momisugly $0.30/kWh…
Leftists are completely insane.
Californians only have themselves to blame. They voted the policy makers in , did they not?
This is the direction and desired outcome of the Global Warmists and One Worlders who want to take us all back to the stone age … or current 3rd world standard …
Ok, alittle late, but maybe someone willbread this.
I think al, those predicting CA’s doom are not seeing the entire picture.
How important is CA to the Democrats? If they regain power of the federal government, would they let the state fail? Of course not. The financial bailout is the easy part, but solving electrical shortages is not much more difficult. Using national security and defense as an excuse, a Democrat government would MANDATE that neighboring states contribute to CA’s energy needs, even if it means blackouts in these states. They would rather risk losing AZ and Idaho than CA. If push came to shove, well, Nevada’s not that blue. Rest assured that Nancy’s ice cream is not going to melt.
If the Dems win, any state close to CA is at risk.
I worked for 27 years for the largest industrial gas turbine manufacturer in the world. Their head office is in San Diego for how long was an office pool that is getting more recent activity since Newson took office. The company has a number of large divisions in and around Dallas TX. and there is a 4 section parcel of land adjacent to the one operating rebuild plant.
The Green nut jobs in California have been on this road to failure for a long time. Back in the 1990’s California demanded that Gas Turbine manufactures reduce the NOX and NO2 coming from the exhaust stacks. On a hot day you could see these pollutants in the exhaust as a yellow haze. 200 PPM combined NOX and NO2 was the normal amount for a Gas Turbine running full load with no modifications.
Engineering came up with a water injection scheme to reduce these numbers. De-ionized Water was injected into the fuel injectors at a pressure higher than the fuel pressure. This water flashes to steam and reduces the NOX and NO2 to 45 PPM from 200.
After a while of running these water systems problems arose with combustor and injector fowling from unclean water. Cracking and failures of hot end components reduced the over all turbine life increasing the costs. Depending on the horsepower of the unit the de-ionized water plant would have to supply as much water as if the unit was running on diesel fuel. 10 gallons a minute was the required amount for a 10,000 Horsepower turbine. The costs of running and maintaining the water filtration and treatment system was an added cost of 15% of the operating costs from no treatment.
The California greens were unhappy with 45 PPM by the year 2000. They pushed for 25 PPM. Our company alone spent 1.2 billion dollars developing a dry (NO water used) low NOX technology over the next 10 years. The Dry technology kept changing for the better and most of it was in the design of the fuel injectors and later heavily modified and more precise control systems. The conversion costs to our customers were usually handled during an overhaul cycle but for a 10,000 HP turbine the conversion to dry was close to an added $500,000 from the wet cycle. The original overhaul price for a standard turbine was close to $750,000 without the conversion. By the year 2008 the development of this system could get the emissions down to 12 PPM NOX and NO2.
So comes the year 2012 in California the greens had a conference and they decided that the NEW emissions level would be 5 PPM. To go from 12 PPM to 5 PPM it was necessary to add an absorb-er system to the exhaust stack. Passing the exhaust through a chemical like anhydrous Ammonia to remove that last 7 PPM. The only problem with that is now you have this toxic waste product that you have to dispose of and the California government makes that disposal process as painful as it can even though they were the ones who demanded it.
As a result installing NEW Gas Turbine generators inside the state of California comes at a cost that is almost of 150 % of one that is not installed in the state. My company since 2012 has installed over 185 generator units in states bordering California to avoid the higher costs of installation and operation and the stricter emission standards. The customers who did this were sending a majority of this clean produced power to California while the emissions were charged to the state of origin. Unfortunately the infrastructure needed to move this power the extra distances to market has seen a number of problems from the Californian’s focus on green energy. Rather than basic maintenance of the power distribution system and power lines these idiots have been wasting their money on non reliable unicorn windmills and solar panels. So now brown outs and black outs are going to be the NEW NORMAL for a while to come in California.
As I said before it has been a long time coming and it is going to get a lot worse till the people left in California finally vote out these green idiots. If not they should get use to no lights at night and No air conditioning as well.
“The only question is, how many blackouts it will take before Californian voters get the message?”
It didn’t happen in South Australia, so I doubt it will happen in California.