It's fascinating to watch, since California is wind and solar nirvana...and one can thus see clearly and graphically that this implies dependence on gas.
On the "emissions" tape they have real time data on CO2 per hour. At this particular moment it's 8,383 metric tons per hour. It goes much higher.
It's very tragic, but I have to say, it may be a case of living by the sword and dying by the sword.
I've been interpreted as expressing glee at this, but that's not it at all.
I'm merely pointing out that decisions have consequences, including California's decision to phase out nuclear power and decisions like it around the world are having consequences, and all of the Trumpian scale lies in the world will not change that fact.
Diablo Canyon has a thermal efficiency of around 33%, but there is no reason that we couldn't go very much higher than that, given material science improvements over that employed first carbon dioxide working fluid reactors that were built in Britain in the mid 20th century. 60% seems reasonable and even higher is not that much of a stretch, particularly if some energy is captured as chemical energy.
Doubling Diablo Canyon's efficiency in new plants, would bring each plant up to around 4400 MWe for the same thermal output. California demand seems to peak on hot days like those a few days ago at around 48,000 MW. That means the whole damn state could be powered in 11 or 12 small buildings, essentially no carbon dioxide, ever, at any time of the day, no gas wells, no wind farms, just 11 or 12 relatively small industrial buildings.
Edit history
Recommendations
0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):
= new reply since forum marked as read