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localroger

(3,782 posts)
8. Well allow me to be the first
Sun Jul 17, 2022, 06:08 PM
Jul 2022

We are going to have to abandon coastal cities. The first to go will probably be Miami, because it can't be protected by seawalls due to its porous geology. This will probably happen within my lifetime. (I'm 58.) By the way, there is a nuclear power plant near Miami. It will have a Fukushima-like problem within the next couple of decades. There is no way it won't. It will probably be caused by a hurricane storm surge rather than an earthquake generated tsunami, but it will happen because the plant is built at sea level on the coast in a place that cannot be protected by seawalls.

I live near New Orleans. It will also go pretty soon, though seawalls will probably be practical for twenty or thirty years after Miami has to be largely abandoned. Large parts of New York City will also go in that time frame. Cities on the Pacific will fare better because the land rises steeply going inland, but they will lose their existing beaches and port infrastructures.

Three Mile Island will be immune to this though, being at an elevation of about 300 feet. But inland reactors have another problem, which is that changing hydrological conditions might starve them of cooling water and the sink in which to flush it after it is used. Lake Mead is probably just going to be the Colorado River flowing under a useless dam within two or three years.

I could go on, but you probably get my drift. The single biggest positive thing that has happened in my lifetime as far as energy is the invention of LED lamps. In the end we will simply find ways to use less energy, because there will be less energy available no matter what we do.

This is going to happen fast, as I said a great deal of it within my expected lifetime of maybe 20 more years, and that's not long enough to build enough nuclear plants to save our asses even if we were fully committed and completely solved all the safety problems yesterday, which we aren't and haven't. Windmills are at least a tech that is within our means now that won't kill a bunch of people once in awhile. Are they enough? No, but then nothing is if we continue to use energy at current US per capita levels. That is simply a thing that is not going to continue to happen one way or another.

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Carry on cbabe Jul 2022 #1
Upton Sinclair stated it so well: ZZenith Jul 2022 #2
An apt criticism of natural gas dependent "renewable energy" schemes, perhaps? hunter Jul 2022 #5
Exactly equivalent. Carrying on about Fukushima in particular is abysmally stupid... NNadir Jul 2022 #3
Well allow me to be the first localroger Jul 2022 #8
I have no use, zero, for carrying on about Three Mile Island, nor do I have any use for doing... NNadir Jul 2022 #10
I do not have an "absurd fear" of radioactive materials. I have respect for them. localroger Jul 2022 #12
So your Dad was a scientist? You did a high school project?. NNadir Jul 2022 #15
I see you missed the part where I work in industry with high technology localroger Jul 2022 #16
I'm responsible for buying millions of dollars of high tech equipment. NNadir Jul 2022 #17
You see only what you want to see, and hear only what you want to hear localroger Jul 2022 #18
Is world total turbine capacity a small multiple of the Danish figure? 4dog Jul 2022 #4
It doesn't take too much spreadsheet work to estimate an answer to your question. NNadir Jul 2022 #7
Accidents are bad, but they are not the deal-killer with nuclear localroger Jul 2022 #6
Actually, the deal killer of "waste" should apply to dangerous fossil fuels, not used nuclear fuel. NNadir Jul 2022 #9
Excuse me but you do not seem to know what you are talking about localroger Jul 2022 #11
Really? I'm getting a lecture on nuclear fuels and fission physics? NNadir Jul 2022 #13
Well if you think I'm ignorant... localroger Jul 2022 #14
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