This discussion in here on global climate change reminds me of a telephone conversation I had several years ago with an AP investigative reporter named Jeff Donn based on this e-mail he sent to me:
Thx very, very much for your thoughtful, detailed note.
I am interested in the points you are making.
Could we talk on the phone at your convenience?
Is there a time and number where we could talk next week?
Meanwhile, I guess my first question is: what reason is there to think that this warmer surface water or extra water in the atmosphere poses a problem?
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As you can see from that last sentence, this turned out to be one of the stupidest conversations with a closed-minded fool that I have ever been in.
The conversation had to do with this question: what reason is there to think that this warmer surface water (caused by nuclear facility hot water discharges) or extra water in the atmosphere (put there by nuclear facility cooling towers) poses a problem?
I started the conversation by stating on the record that in light of the facts of the matter, that had to be one of the stupidest questions I had ever heard.
What follows is the “detailed note” of mine that Jeff Donn of the AP refers to above:
Subject: Nuke plants
I have been following your series on nuke plants with great interest, having first conducted research on the fluid mechanics and thermodynamics of nuclear cooling tower plumes while at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1975, research which was subsequently buried by the New York State Power Pool.
As we see rivers today containing massive amounts of water, nobody seems to be asking the question of how did all that water get into the atmosphere in the first place, and perhaps they should, although, truth be told, it is now a bit late to do so.
Your article “AP IMPACT: US nuke regulators weaken safety rules” By JEFF DONN, AP National Writer, 20 JUNE 2011, briefly touched on it as follows:
Called “Oyster Creak” by some critics because of its aging problems, this boiling water reactor began running in 1969 and ranks as the country’s oldest operating commercial nuclear power plant.
Its license was extended in 2009 until 2029, though utility officials announced in December that they’ll shut the reactor 10 years earlier rather than build state-ordered cooling towers.
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Nuclear plants produce prodigious amounts of heat which must be disposed of to the environment.
Case in point:
“Drought could force nuke-plant shutdowns”
By MITCH WEISS, Associated Press
Last updated: 12:52 p.m., Wednesday, January 23, 2008
LAKE NORMAN, N.C. — Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate.
“Water is the nuclear industry’s Achilles’ heel,” said Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, an environmental group critical of nuclear power.
“You need a lot of water to operate nuclear plants.”
He added: “This is becoming a crisis.”
All but two are built on the shores of lakes and rivers and rely on submerged intake pipes to draw billions of gallons of water for use in cooling and condensing steam after it has turned the plants’ turbines.
At some plants — those with tall, Three Mile Island-style cooling towers — a lot of the water travels up the tower and is lost to evaporation.
Progress spokeswoman Julie Hahn said the Harris reactor, for example, sucks up 33 million gallons a day, with 17 million gallons lost to evaporation via its big cooling towers.
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That 17 million gallons lost to evaporation per day from this one plant alone is water in a vapor form that goes high into the atmosphere.
This is what our research back in 1975 was looking into, where does that water go to.
And the simple answer is right up there above our heads, where it is unstable, and thus, will come back down which I believe it is doing now, as our research predicted it would.
And that is not any kind of rocket science, at all, as any little kid who has ever thrown a rock in the air, only to have it hit them in the eye on its way back down could tell you.
And that brings us to the NRC, and cover-ups in the name of continued profits.
Cover-ups done as emergency orders.
When these nuke plants were first licensed, as with the ones on Lake Ontario in NYS, they had a maximum temperature rise for the lake water that they could not supposedly exceed.
Now, like the 17 million gallons per day, each day of operation, with this heat output, you have a cumulative effect, like leaving a pan of water on a stove burner.
No matter how low the heat, it is still going in and the water will eventually boil.
So what did the NRC do when this limit was reached?
Let’s take a look:
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) Items of Interest – Week Ending August 19, 2005
Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station, Unit No. 1 (NMP1) – Water Temperature Emergency Amendment
On August 12, 2005, the staff issued an emergency license amendment to Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station, LLC (the licensee), which revised NMP1 Technical Specification (TS) 3.3.7, “Containment Spray System,” to increase the maximum allowable lake water temperature in TS 3.3.7.f. from 81°F to 83°F.
This change was requested under emergency circ*mstances to avoid a reactor shutdown due to a higher than anticipated water temperature rise in Lake Ontario and weather forecasts for higher temperatures over the next 10-day period.
TS 3.3.7.g. requires the plant to begin shutting down within 1 hour of reaching the TS 3.3.7.f. limit and be in hot shutdown conditions within 8 hours and in cold shutdown within 24 hours.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/secys/2005/secy2005-0155/2005-0155scy.html
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collecti…05-0155scy.html
Yes, you got it, they let them take the water temperature even higher, with no review whatsoever of the effects of that temperature rise on the increased amount of evaporation that would cause, given that evaporation is a function of surface area and temperature.
And once heated, that volume of water tends to stay warm, since more heat is going into it, 24/7/365.
I would say that New Jersey wanted cooling towers added to that plant, because the same thing was happening down there.
Then we have the Fort Calhoun plant in Nebraska which discharges into the Missouri River.
Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants – Supplement 12 Regarding Fort Calhoun Station, Unit 1
Final Report U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
Washington, DC 20555-0001
Manuscript Completed: August 2003
Date Published: August 2003
Division of Regulatory Improvement Programs
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001
The cooling-water circulation system is operated in compliance with provisions of NPDES Permit NE0000418 for Fort Calhoun Station.
The permit currently limits discharge temperatures to 43.3 C (110 F) and allows a conditional discharge temperature of 44.4 C (112 F) under the terms of a Consent Order that was entered into by the OPPD and the NDEQ (OPPD 2002a).
The terms of the Consent Order allow for continued full-power operation of Fort Calhoun Station during the unusually high ambient river temperatures that have been experienced in the Missouri River in recent years.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collecti…/sr1437s12a.pdf
Notice that a GENERIC IMPACT STATEMENT means essentially no review of cumulative impacts, and notice the language about the increased temperature of the river, and ask yourself why the river is getting hot and what that means for evaporation into the atmosphere.
And this goes on and on and on.
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People are oblivious to the world around them.
They spend their time inside air-conditioned cars and offices and homes, or in air-conditioned casinos and gambling joints or on manicured golf courses like this present mindless incumbent in the white house, and so they are living lives completely isolated from the forces of nature around them, while lacking the basic understanding of the hydrologic cycle that school children and simple country folks whose lives are determined by the weather have.
And it is those people, like this up-jumped casino operator/TV reality star host we now have in the white house, that we turn to for solutions to this mess, as if the very best advice one can get on the environment has to come from a mindless fool who doesn’t even know where the environment even is.
So what is wrong with that picture, people?
As to this so-called AP “investigative reporter,” he was much more concerned with keeping things quiet to preserve a status quo that puts money in his pocket in the form of a pay check, and whatever other encouragements he might be offered to not investigate matters too deeply, and in that he is one more symptom of the problems the next generation is going to have to face, because the fact is, this train left the station many years ago now, and that Humpty-Dumpty is now nothing but bits of egg shell all over the bottoms of the hooves of the king’s horses and the boot bottoms of the king’s men.
And outside of going outside in the midst of the storm to shake our fist at the heavens, there is nothing we can now do to halt the change.
How do we now go about, pulling all of the heat ENERGY we have put into Lake Ontario, for example?
Do we now invent some giant form of refrigerator to remove that heat?
But where will the power then come from to run that refrigeration unit?
Where will the heat from that power generation go to?
Out into space with all the other waste heat we are generating to maintain a lifestyle that is consumptive, which requires more and more environmental destruction and devastation, like blowing up whole mountains, and therefore, unsustainable?
And when you manage to pull all that heat out of Lake Ontario, what on earth do you do with it?
Put it in a rocket and blast it off into space?
Or maybe we can get some politicians to come along and tell us there really is no problem, so go back home, for there is nothing here to see.
As Forrest Gump once said, stupid is as stupid does, and people, here we are, heading for that apex at a frenzied pace, because we have built a machine with no OFF BUTTON.
Those nuclear plants can’t be turned off without destroying the unstable and unsustainable U.S. economy, so the only other alternative is for the supposed “regulatory” agency to keep looking the other way while granting emergency waivers that allow the nuclear facilities to keep raising the water temperature of the receiving bodies more and more, which in turn pumps yet more heat energy and water vapor into the environment, while hoping that nobody will notice.
And most of us won’t.
More fools us, then, is how history will look at this age of gluttony and greed we are now mired in.
And now, in the spirit of equality, it is time for a counterstatement from the science deniers of America who will tell you this is all bull****, nothing to worry about, it is just the result of a poorly designed (that is so America, isn’t it) drainage system that nobody raised any questions about as it was being poorly designed at taxpayer expense, so stay tuned!
