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posted by martyb on Tuesday July 20 2021, @11:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the Dam-it! dept.

Drought Threatens to Close California Hydropower Plant for First Time:

A California power plant likely will shut down for the first time ever because of low water during a prolonged drought, squeezing the state's very tight electricity supplies, state officials said yesterday.

The Edward Hyatt power plant, an underground facility next to Oroville Dam in Butte County, is expected to close in August or September, said John Yarbrough, California Department of Water Resources assistant deputy director of the State Water Project. The plant has run continuously since opening in 1967. It receives water from Lake Oroville, and that reservoir has dropped because of the drought, as CNN previously reported.

[...] In addition, "high heat events in California and the rest of the West have begun earlier than usual and have exceeded historic temperature levels," the California Energy Commission and California Public Utilities Commission leaders said in a July 1 letter to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the grid manager.

The state's power system expects to lose about 1,000 megawatts of power generation as a result. While that's a fraction of a system with daily peak demand of 44,000 MW, supplies already are tight, said Lindsay Buckley, a California Energy Commission spokesperson.

"Based on our May projections, we really didn't have 1,000 megawatts to lose," Buckley said in an interview.

[...] The loss of generation at the Hyatt plant would occur if the lake levels fall to around 630-640 feet of elevation, due to lack of water to turn the plant's hydropower turbines, said Yarbrough with the California DWR.

Lake Oroville is currently at 666 feet of elevation with 1.015 million acre-feet of water storage, which is 29% of its total capacity and 37% of its historical average. Over the last week, the reservoir has decreased from 673 to 666 feet, he said.

Hyatt is designed to produce up to 750 MW of power but typically produces between 100 and 400 MW, depending on lake levels, Buckley said. The state DWR expects the plant this year to generate about 20% of what it generated last year.

[...] Environmental laws restrict how much water can be released from the system into reservoirs. Water releases to the Feather River are required for water supply, environmental and fishery needs; for health and safety; and to prevent salinity intrusion, Yarbrough said.

Oroville–Thermalito_Complex entry on Wikipedia.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday July 20 2021, @03:38PM (5 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 20 2021, @03:38PM (#1158286) Journal

    Care to provide any details?

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by turgid on Tuesday July 20 2021, @04:04PM (2 children)

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 20 2021, @04:04PM (#1158298) Journal

    There are a few things you can do with high-level nuclear waste, particularly plutonium. Since it's fissile, you can use it to enrich natural or depleted uranium for use in conventional nuclear reactors, effectively taking the place of the U-235. This has the advantage of consuming the plutonium and turning it into less unpleasant fission products. In the UK we developed some nuclear fuels based on this principle.

    Plutonium can also be used as the fuel in a fast reactor, where the chain reaction runs on fast neutrons alone. We built and operated a couple of those in the UK too.

    I'm sure there are other things you could do with nuclear waste to use it up and to generate more power. Someone who's still in the industry might be able to tell you.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 20 2021, @04:15PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 20 2021, @04:15PM (#1158300) Journal

      Thank you

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Tuesday July 20 2021, @04:20PM

      by Beryllium Sphere (r) (5062) on Tuesday July 20 2021, @04:20PM (#1158303)

      Not only that, it's better than a gold mine. It's a rhodium mine. $18,000 per ounce, more than commercial quantities, and usable after a cooling-off period the oldest spent fuel has already reached.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 20 2021, @08:16PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 20 2021, @08:16PM (#1158409) Journal
    In addition to turgid's reply, there's a convenient gap in half life between the isotopes that can be used in a reactor and the shorter lived fission products. The latter has half lives of under a century.

    So, for example, one could take a used fuel rod, let it sit for about a year to allow for the really short lived stuff to decay, then chemically extract the remaining fuel and put it back in fuel rods. The decades to centuries long isotopes can then be buried or used and you're back in business.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 20 2021, @08:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 20 2021, @08:42PM (#1158429)

    >> Care to provide any details?

    Put it in barrels, ship it overseas... same way we recycle plastics.