Wising up - California / Electricity

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Even the blind have moments of vision from time to time. From Breitbart:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom: Time to ‘Sober Up’ About Green Energy’s Flaws
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that the state had to “sober up” about the fact that renewable energy sources had failed to provide enough power for the state at peak demand, and needed “backup” and “insurance” from other sources.

Newsom addressed journalists and the public in the midst of ongoing electricity blackouts that began on Friday, as hundreds of thousands of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) customers in northern and central California lost power.

There is currently high demand for electricity across the state, as the entire West Coast has been hit by a heat wave and record-breaking temperatures.

One reason the state lacked power, officials admitted, was its over-reliance on “renewables” — i.e. wind and solar power.

Nuclear anyone? The most common reactors in use today are direct decendents of designs first sketched out on cocktail napkins 70 years ago.

There have been some wonderful advancements in basic reactor design. Liquid salt reactors do not need a pressure vessel, there is no danger of melt-down and they are walk-away safe. Fukushima would never have happened. Add to this that these designs are a lot more efficient (they use about 70% of the available fuel as opposed to the Pressurized Water reactors that only use 5%). The waste from these reactors is dangerous for only about 400 years. Plus, they can burn the waste from the original reactors and use that for energy.

The cherry on top is that the salt reactors use Thorium as fuel. Thorium is about as common as lead in the earth's crust. Dead common. Uranium is about as common as platinum - much more rare. Cheap to build, cheap to run and cheap to deal with the waste.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on August 17, 2020 5:12 PM.

A sobering thought - Portland was the previous entry in this blog.

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