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Scorching temperatures across Europe coupled with prolonged dry weather has reduced French nuclear power generation by around 5.2 gigawatts (GW) or 8%, French power grid operator RTE’s data showed on Thursday.
Electricity output was curtailed at six reactors by 0840 GMT on Thursday, while two other reactors were offline, data showed. High water temperatures and sluggish flows limit the ability to use river water to cool reactors.
In Germany, PreussenElektra, the nuclear unit of utility E.ON, said it would take its Grohnde reactor offline on Friday due to high temperatures in the Weser river.
Interesting impact of the recent heat wave, right when electrical demand is on the rise.
Previously: Records Tumble as Europe Swelters in Heatwave and the Forecast Isn't Any Better
(Score: 2, Disagree) by leftover on Saturday July 27 2019, @05:13PM (21 children)
This smells like another case of small-minded people in business suits trying to squeak by with not quite enough reserve. They should have had a cooling tower ready for warm weather.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 27 2019, @05:23PM (6 children)
They certainly balked at repetitive redundancy, if they didn't balk at reserve. A cooling tower ready to take over just in case river water cooling failed was just too much to ask for.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday July 27 2019, @06:02PM (2 children)
A cooling tower that would normally just be sitting idle doing nothing but costing money and messing up the view, until that once in a century heat wave, kind of like a wall to stop a once in a century tsunami.
And not just the extra expense of building the towers, they would have needed more land, more time to build, and there would have been more opposition to the plant because the tower would have had more of an impact on the local environment and economy.
It's not the power plant operators fault that there was a problem. The government is to blame for not allowing the additional power plants that would have provided the extra generating capacity to make up for shortfalls like this.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @07:20PM (1 child)
Kinda makes you think that "once in a century" is some BS calculation. I've looked at it before, and it is exactly the sort of byzantine process that has been clearly jury rigged together process developed by political committee that you would expect.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 28 2019, @01:33AM
Agreed. We have "once in a century" floods around here. Even allowing for the weird byzantine processes: If a person expects to live more than half a century, and the event happens once a century, then that person can EXPECT to witness this once in a century event during his lifetime.
(Score: 2) by leftover on Saturday July 27 2019, @06:06PM (2 children)
That was likely how the approach was 'sold', even if technical concerns existed. It takes pressure from all sides to out-shout the suits but it can be done. There are two nuke plants on the shallow end of Lake Erie with towers for extra cooling. Too bad they cheaped-out on other things and are now being decommissioned. The suits who pushed cheapness tricks are, of course, nowhere to be seen now that the plant's working lifetimes are ended prematurely.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @07:05PM (1 child)
>lake Erie
This one? It Is to keep running
https://www.thenews-messenger.com/story/news/local/2019/07/24/firstenergy-solutions-announces-refuel-davis-besse-nuclear-power-station/1822494001/ [thenews-messenger.com]
(Score: 2) by leftover on Saturday July 27 2019, @08:15PM
It is! Had not seen that, thank you. There has been a political/economic brawl going on in Ohio over a bill to bail out the plants. Had not heard a peep about this being an option.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @06:16PM (13 children)
Yep. And somehow, some people will keep claiming that nuclear energy is the only viable long term solution for our energy needs, that with enough technology, these "small-minded people in business suits" will automagically just disappear...
The world will always be run by sociopathic greedy bastards. Always. There is no solution to this.. Therefore, the only smart thing to do is to always favor the types of technology with the least negative consequences in case of catastrophic failure, because there will always be catastrophic failures.
Windmill fails catastrophically. Worst case scenario: A few cows get beheadded. Maybe.
Nuclear power plant fails catastrophically. Worst case scenario: Dozens of people are killed on the spot; hundreds more die later a horrible, painful death; thousands of people are displaced from their homes permanently, they lose everything, communities are destroyed, lives are ruined; hundreds of square miles of land are made inhabitable for thousands of years.
Choose your pain.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday July 27 2019, @06:44PM
Choose your pain.
How about compact kitchen reactors that can't overheat? Thing should last 20 or 30 years...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @07:43PM (1 child)
How about making the entire fucking planet heat up and making it screwed up for tens of thousands of years? Entire planet, not just a few miles. And that's working by design, not some accident. How about knowing about it and yet making it worse every year while proclaiming how bad something is that doesn't produce any CO2?? How about waking up to reality that CO2 emissions are going up and up. We are burning 50% more fossil fuels than in 2000, when Kyoto was signed!!
https://www.iea.org/weo/ [iea.org]
Choose your pain, you fucking nit-wit!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @08:30PM
Learn to read, and then re-read my post again.
Fucking moron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @08:40PM
Thorium
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday July 28 2019, @04:44AM (8 children)
And yet, fewer people die per unit of energy generated than die from wind generated power. The unsolvable problem has been solved for a long time.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 28 2019, @07:02PM (1 child)
LOLOLOL WAAAAT?
Hey crazy boy, time to get back on your meds.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 29 2019, @12:40AM
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday July 29 2019, @03:12AM (5 children)
Nuclear waste from today will still be dangerous thousands of years from now. Only a crystal ball could tell us what form of energy is safer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 29 2019, @03:56PM (4 children)
Except, of course, if that isn't so. Reprocessing used nuclear rods gets rid of the vast majority of the danger.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday July 29 2019, @06:31PM (3 children)
And how much reprocessing is done in the US? None. The current situation is that high-level radioactive waste gets stored on site in casks that are designed to last for decades, not millenia. Claims of nuclear safety are wrong if they ignore the nuclear waste problem. It is a big wildcard. Political constraints can be as real as technical ones.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 30 2019, @04:06AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Tuesday July 30 2019, @04:44AM (1 child)
So we agree that statements about nuclear safety need to include an asterisk about future deaths from today's waste being unaccounted for. We can add a second asterisk that says khallow is confident that this number will be small.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:56AM
Sure. But I'm not going to include attempts to deliberately make nuclear waste dangerous.
And future energy from existing used nuclear rods large.