Recent content by KennyG

Every nuclear "event" has resulted in a review and upgrade of US safety standards. The basic problem at Fukushima was that the emergency power diesels were in an underground chamber, which was flooded by the tsunami. No US plant had this design. However, all the US plants were upgraded to...

The best info I can find says that Palo Verde uses less than 5% groundwater. When the plant construction started 50 years ago (design started 60 years ago), nobody wanted the Phoenix wastewater. Things would probably be done differently today.

I'm 5 miles from one nuclear plant, 20 miles from another. Pretty happy with the location.

We could argue all day about the TMI effects. I think the studies that show cancer increases have cherry picked the data. As I recall, one of the studies that showed the largest impact used data that showed cancer increased upwind of the plant, not downwind. However, nuclear plants don't need...

Not sure where you got that information. The Palo Verde plant in Arizona is cooled by waste water from Phoenix. They pipe the sewage to the plant and the plant cleans it and uses it for cooling. It's Phoenix that's sucking the groundwater, not the nuclear plant. Power plants of various types...

To understanding the impact of wind turbine installation you need to realize that the foundation is more significant than the turbine. The new largest turbines require 500 to 1000 yards of concrete for the foundation. The impact of placing 1000 tons of concrete in the ground is not small and...

Yes, blueberries seem to take a while to get established, although the commercial growers around here are pretty good at getting them going. I've got some from different sources. The best ones are 3 year old plants I got from local growers. I've been applying sulfur to lower the pH and that...

I have a couple of "Chicago Figs" which is the only variety which will survive in colder temperatures. They are healthy but so far have only had a few small figs after 3 or 4 years. Not sure if they just need more time or I need to work on the soil chemistry.

Restart is also being considered for the Duane Arnold plant in Iowa. There are other nuclear plants that were perfectly good units that were shut down for political reasons or because of competition from cheap natural gas. They include /Rancho Seco and San Onofre in California, Zion in Illinois...

The Westinghouse AP1000 is, at it's basis, a conventional pressurized water reactor. However, it is passively safe. That means that, in the event of a design basis accident, no active components, power supplies, or other support is required.

The newest operating plants in the US are the Westinghouse AP1000 units at Vogtle in Georgia. They were late on schedule and over budget but now the design is standardized and approved and Westinghouse claims they want to build at least 10 more units in the nest 5 to 10 years. There are several...

There is a least a chance that we may start building nuclear plants again in quantity. They won't be cheap, so it won't reduce electric rates, but it should stabilize rates for a long time. New nuclear plants should operate for 80 years or more, so capital costs are less important.

I think it is basically an ad. The "MIT professor" quote is neither startling nor relevant to article. I'm not sure why people don't apply a little common sense. "Renewables have come way down on cost and are cheaper than fossil fuels" but "loss of subsidies will stop solar and wind...

The only person who said this was Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, who wasn't an engineer. His analogy was to water which he said was too cheap to meter. I'm not sure where that came from since I've always had a water meter.

I'm skeptical that wind turbines have diesel motors. My understanding is that they will self start with wind in the 10 mph range. They may require a small electric input to adjust blade pitch or orientation with the wind, but that is usually supplied by the grid. A farm may have a diesel...