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Just curious...are these reactors designed to take a direct hit from a tornado?
The kind that have been ravaging the midwest and southeast lately??
Oh, one of my favorite songs just came on the radio...'Dream Weaver'...how odd...
Yes.....actually they are designed to take a direct hit from a modern passenger jet aircraft......different reactors are designed with varying probabilities of weather conditions specific to their geographic area.
KGO Newstalk 810 San Francisco (http://www.kgoam810.com/Article.asp?id=2138317&spid=40353 - broken link)
Here's some new links I found from Scientific American magazine>>>>>
All Things Nuclear (http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/Japan_nuclear?utm_source=SP&utm_medium=more&utm_ca mpaign=sp-nuke-more-direct-3-24-2011 - broken link)
Here's some new links I found from Scientific American magazine>>>>>
All Things Nuclear (http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/Japan_nuclear?utm_source=SP&utm_medium=more&utm_ca mpaign=sp-nuke-more-direct-3-24-2011 - broken link)
Is a microwave oven, a miniture nuclear power plant??
(don't ask me where such questions come from, my mind just spins that way..)
NO.......not in any way I could conceive of.
I assume you ask because many people say using the microwave...... "nukes" food??????
Microwaves are a form of radiation but that's about as close as you can get......and Nuclear Reactors boil water....producing steam for power generation using turbines.
I wish that we could have a distributed grid where everyone makes their own power from green energy, like you envision. However, incident solar radiation and wind power isn't going to cut it for your home needs. Take the unincorporated Florida keys for example. Many days of MUCH more intense sunlight than the majority of the country, much better weather than most of the country in terms of heating costs, yet even solar-equipped homes there can't generate enough power to run their household applicances--to say nothing of A/C, heat, Electric cars, or any of the real power hogs of modern living. Thus they are bringing in utility cables to pull power from gas-fired plants.
We would need a 10-fold improvement in efficiency AND in energy capture. Thin-film solar conversion rates are below 10% and heavier equipment never beats 20%. Even if you could build a loss-less furnace or A/C (or vacuum cleaner for that matter) you simply can't extract the power you need to run your house from on-site solar and wind. To say nothing of apartment buildings or cities. Cities do an excellent job of improving the efficiency of supporting human life through mass transit/transport and the concentration of waste treatment/disposal; so we can't spread everyone out with their own little farm and solar cell without devastating the environment.
We should coat every roof in solar panels (or maybe solar water heaters, since they're more efficient) and, dam every river, and install wind turbines in every empty field. These are "cheap" (and will become more so at scale) and efficient sources of power. I would sooner see huge fields of wind turbines than a new nuke plant. However, nuke/coal/oil/gas are necessary evils for the foreseeable future. Nuke is simply the lesser (evil) of all of them.
Some of this (dis)information is completely untrue.
I R an EE and Master Electrician for a Solar PV company. We can and do design Zero Net energy houses every week -- where during the Peak daytime the house produces surplus energy and sends it up on the grid, and only draws power from the grid when the grid is surplus, at night.
We just size the equipment to match the load, and Zero = Zero. Not exactly rocket science and uses maybe 8th grade math. As far as Florida and the Keys, the math and science works there, too. I used to work in the Florida Keys, and as I recall we were not usually too stoned and/or drunk in morning to do that level of math. By afternoon, of course, was a different story.
The real deal is overall, Electric Power is surplus in the US, and there is no need whatsoever for any additional Nukes, and all future growth could be handled solely by renewables, while displacing the existing "dirty" sources like Coal and Nukes.
btw, very little electric power is generated from Oil -- only remote generation -- like on islands, and some back-up and "end of the line," locations.
[quote=Philip T;19245823]Some of this (dis)information is completely untrue.
I R an EE and Master Electrician for a Solar PV company. We can and do design Zero Net energy houses every week -- where during the Peak daytime the house produces surplus energy and sends it up on the grid, and only draws power from the grid when the grid is surplus, at night.
We just size the equipment to match the load, and Zero = Zero. Not exactly rocket science and uses maybe 8th grade math. As far as Florida and the Keys, the math and science works there, too. I used to work in the Florida Keys, and as I recall we were not usually too stoned and/or drunk in morning to do that level of math. By afternoon, of course, was a different story.
The real deal is overall, Electric Power is surplus in the US, and there is no need whatsoever for any additional Nukes, and all future growth could be handled solely by renewables, while displacing the existing "dirty" sources like Coal and Nukes.]
While your premise will work in many areas it will not work in all areas. There are days at a time where it remains cloudy and many houses are shaded by taller buildings/trees.....and snow loads accumulate on roofs and surfaces.
IMO.......decentralized power can provide some solutions in some situations but will not, in any conceivable future, provide all our electrical needs; especially for many industrial applications.
While your premise will work in many areas it will not work in all areas. There are days at a time where it remains cloudy and many houses are shaded by taller buildings/trees.....and snow loads accumulate on roofs and surfaces.
Any given system does not have to work everywhere, merely in most areas -- and renewables do that. btw, Shading for a house is good thing, energy wise. Tends to cut down summer cooling loads.
Most of the systems we design and build do not go on house roofs, like you may be thinking. Most shingled roofs are only warranted 15 to 25 years, and have been on the building for at least a few years before we arrive. Our solar PV modules/panels have warranties of 25 years, and last years beyond that, so it does not make sense to put them over old shingle roofs.
There are also issues of potential leaks, wind loads and grounding that make it much more attractive to place ground mount systems.
By doing ground mounts we can optimize land use, avoid shadows, and get perfect Southern orientation. Some of the ground mounts wind up as elevated structures and folks use the windload rated structure underneath as the framework for carports, barns, and picnic structures.
But for areas where we do roof mounts -- like in cities, like San Antonio where land use it tight, we study the layouts and optimize for what is. Nice thing about further North in the Snow Belt, the higher tilt of the panels (higher latitude and all) helps keep snow a lesser issue.
Quote:
IMO.......decentralized power can provide some solutions in some situations but will not, in any conceivable future, provide all our electrical needs; especially for many industrial applications.
If US Big Industrial bodes the future of US Central Plant Modeling . . . Central Plant Model is in more trouble and even quicker that I would have said.
Quote:
Centralized power is here to stay!
As far as "here to stay," Sure, Sure. Sort of like landline phones, horses, VCRs, 8-track tapes . . . All of those are still around.
Not saying that the existing Central Plants do not have a purpose, especially for carrying the Base Load as they are slowly displaced across the next 20 to 40 years.
Just does not make any sense to build any more Central Plants -- whether Coal or Nukes. Central Plant had its day, and that day is passing. Just let it die and be gone. No real loss there, at all.
I don't know whether that already exists but, what about a "in-ground buried sensor" located near Nuclear plants in order to detect earthquakes and automatically turn the plant off?
Other question(more complicated) I have. Does anyone has a comparative measure among all kinds of energy making plants? Which one worths more(considering it as amount of energy produced per hour)?
I assume you ask because many people say using the microwave...... "nukes" food??????
Microwaves are a form of radiation but that's about as close as you can get......and Nuclear Reactors boil water....producing steam for power generation using turbines.
But, in response to your answer, could indeed large microves be used to boil water, and achieve the same affect as nuclear plants with no 'waste'...
Is that a break through idea?, or just way off the mark??
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Sort of like landline phones, horses, VCRs, 8-track tapes . . . 
