Re: Even Nuclear Reactors in Texas have no cold weather safeguards

[bruce bowser]

On Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 10:34:36 AM UTC-5, Mike Flannigan wrote in alt.atheism:
> davej wrote
>
> > "Climate Change?" Humbug! It's just a Libtard hoax! We Texans know
> > everything!
>
> That's what happens when they hire illegal Mexican labor at $2 a day to build
> 'em.
>
> Electricity was invented by somee Eurotrash named Tesla or a damn Yankee from
> New York, not southern people.
>
> Why back then, they were still nursing their wounds from the Great War of
> Northern Agression and trying to figure out how to take care of themselves
> without the aid of black slaves.
>
> Why would they need electricity when it was just another progressive fad?

"Nuclear power provides about 11% of Texas electricity. But one of two reactors at the South Texas Project nuclear plant tripped offline on Monday. It was a big plant to lose, costing the state 1.3 gigawatts of power generation, about a quarter of its total nuclear capacity. The cold weather caused a false signal to shut down a feedwater intake, tripping a pump offline and then the entire generating unit."

Forbes - Feb 24, 2021
-- https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/02/24/best-standing-desks/?sh=720983405486

[gfre...@aol.com]

It is just what happens when people don't plan on the 100 year weather
event.
We had another great example in the North East when 25 million people
ignored the idea that tropical weather can go up the coast and "almost
a storm Sandy" kicked their ass. 150 people died. I think Texas is
doing a little better than that.

[bruce bowser]

Strangely though, profit and price gouging for heirs and heiresses to big oil fortunes wasn't 'frozen'. The obvious is such an oversight.

[trader_4]

On Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 1:01:40 PM UTC-5, gfre...@aol.com wrote:

Typical. "almost a storm"


Hurricane Sandy (unofficially referred to as Superstorm Sandy) was the deadliest, the most destructive, and the strongest hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm inflicted nearly $70 billion (2012 USD) in damage and killed 233 people across eight countries from the Caribbean to Canada.

Also, I would submit that state authorities have far more ability to control what
it's utilities do than they do to somehow get private citizens to redo 100 years
of construction.

One of the things I find interesting is that 6 of the directors of TX ERCOT or whatever
their state electric regulating authority is called, resigned. None of them lived in
TX. Yet that big dope Abbott comes out swinging, trying to blame alternative energy
for the massive failure. From what I see, it was far more attributable to failure
of fossil fuel plants and nukes, to ERCOT estimating a worse case demand wrong,
it turned out to be 30%+ higher and to TX choosing not to be connected to national
grids. Even some of the alternative energy failure was due to windmills freezing
because they chose not to pay extra for the cold options. And sadly when you have
a jerk governor spewing BS and lies, it quickly gets picked up by the usual bunch,
including Qanon, because it's what they want to hear and they can spin it into
another conspiracy claim.

[bruce bowser]

He'll do whatever big oil repubs ask him to.

[gfre...@aol.com]

On Fri, 26 Feb 2021 05:28:00 -0800 (PST), bruce bowser

That surprises you?
The greed went all the way down to the consumers tho. Those people who
wanted to play in the wholesale market for cheap rates suddenly found
that can be a wild ride when they got 5 figure electric bills.
It's Texas, those folks don't think like everyone else and I imagine
they will go back to their old ways in a month or so.

[gfre...@aol.com]

I agree about the damage but it was hitting unprotected structures and
unprepared people.
It was still just a tropical storm when it got to New Jersey, not even
a hurricane. I had a Cat 3 eye come over my house (Irma). All I had
was tree damage but I am built to a 150 MPH wind code, not that poorly
enforced 80 you folks use up north. You have virtually zero uplift
protections. Houses blew off their foundations or were lifted by
rising water. Builders up there assume all load is down and the weight
of the structure is more than enough to counteract shear.

What will you do if you get something like the 1938 storm, a real Cat
3 running right up the Jersey shore and into Long Island?

>One of the things I find interesting is that 6 of the directors of TX ERCOT or whatever
>their state electric regulating authority is called, resigned. None of them lived in
>TX. Yet that big dope Abbott comes out swinging, trying to blame alternative energy
>for the massive failure. From what I see, it was far more attributable to failure
>of fossil fuel plants and nukes, to ERCOT estimating a worse case demand wrong,
>it turned out to be 30%+ higher and to TX choosing not to be connected to national
>grids. Even some of the alternative energy failure was due to windmills freezing
>because they chose not to pay extra for the cold options. And sadly when you have
>a jerk governor spewing BS and lies, it quickly gets picked up by the usual bunch,
>including Qanon, because it's what they want to hear and they can spin it into
>another conspiracy claim.
>

They were seriously unprepared but they did not plan on it getting
this cold for this long. The parallels are striking tho.

[Tekkie©]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 13:01:07 -0500, gfre...@aol.com posted for all of us to
digest...

They can't even read signs that say "Road flooded". One can never beat the
human condition...

--
Tekkie

[trader_4]

The vast majority of the catastrophic damage here was due to flooding,
not wind.

>
> What will you do if you get something like the 1938 storm, a real Cat
> 3 running right up the Jersey shore and into Long Island?

Same thing that happened with Sandy, same thing that has happened in FL
many times, have a lot of damage. What happened in Homestead, FL, for
example?

> >One of the things I find interesting is that 6 of the directors of TX ERCOT or whatever
> >their state electric regulating authority is called, resigned. None of them lived in
> >TX. Yet that big dope Abbott comes out swinging, trying to blame alternative energy
> >for the massive failure. From what I see, it was far more attributable to failure
> >of fossil fuel plants and nukes, to ERCOT estimating a worse case demand wrong,
> >it turned out to be 30%+ higher and to TX choosing not to be connected to national
> >grids. Even some of the alternative energy failure was due to windmills freezing
> >because they chose not to pay extra for the cold options. And sadly when you have
> >a jerk governor spewing BS and lies, it quickly gets picked up by the usual bunch,
> >including Qanon, because it's what they want to hear and they can spin it into
> >another conspiracy claim.
> >
> They were seriously unprepared but they did not plan on it getting
> this cold for this long. The parallels are striking tho.

I don't know that the failure had much to do with the duration of the cold.
The cold came and within a day or so they failed, isn't that what happened?
The biggest two factors I've heard so far was that they underestimated
peak demand by 30% or more. That's not a time dependent thing, if you
don't have the capacity, you don't have it, all it has to do is get cold enough
to exceed your capacity. The frozen windmills, if it's cold and freezing
rain, they freeze up, it doesn't take a week. Natural gas lines, not sure about,
but I would suspect that what froze was above ground and it didn't take very
long to freeze that either. Some of this seems really stupid too, like the
nuke going offline because of a sensor on the intake being frozen or
something? You would think there would be plenty of warning, that the
operators could have seen it happening, fix it, solve it, before it went offline
or failing that quickly get it going again. At least they didn't Chernobyl it.
I suppose if they did though, Abbott would be blaming that on alternative
energy too.

[gfre...@aol.com]

On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 06:34:30 -0800 (PST), trader_4

In Homestead the biggest problem was those folks were bribing
inspectors for decades and not a whole lot was built to code. They
were finding roof sheathing laying in the road with 15 or 20 nails in
it. Hurricane clips were not the right type or missing altogether.
There was no uplift protection on sheer walls and a host of other
things. The result was a revamp of the building code statewide but
they simply disbanded the Dade county government and merged them with
Miami. All of the inspectors were fired and the state instituted a
state wide licensing for inspectors. Since most of them were from the
North East originally I wouldn't be surprised if you had a lot of the
same stuff going on. Flooding explains stuff getting wet but it
doesn't explain the house floating away.

Places that don't expect it to get that cold are very likely to have
resistive heat and that is a horrendous demand. We had that here the
last time it really got cold (Christmas around 1986). They were doing
rolling blackouts but they were pretty short in duration.
OTOH I haven't had the central heat on here for more than a few hours
since.
I have heard everything that could go wrong in Texas did go wrong. Gas
pipes froze because they didn't dehumidify the gas, windmills iced up,
nukes powered down, lines were down from tree damage and ice along
with exceptional demand.

My guess, knowing a few Texans, (some in my family) they will say
"shit happens" and not change a thing, assuming they will be dead
before it happens again. They don't look at stuff like other folks.
It is just the new arrivals who will want to "do something".

[trader_4]

For once I agree with you. And regarding building codes, the codes here
in NJ have changed significantly over the years in reaction to storm damage.
The houses rebuilt from Sandy that were in flood prone areas, eg close
to the beaches, were rebuilt raised on stilts. Many with major damage
were lifted up on to stilts. You now see AC units four feet off the ground.
I'm sure they increased the requirements for roofing too, but not familiar
with the details and it;'s not going to help 95%, because they are already
built. Some of it is really simple too. I remember a noreaster back around
1990. I was living in a new condo complex. Ours had minimal shingle loss.
The similar complex across the road, built just a few years later, had major
shingle loss, whole sections blown off, throughout the complex. The difference
was our used nails, their's used staples. We both got nailed by the FRT plywood
disaster though. That was where the plywood industry on the east coast
came up with a plywood with chemicals added that would inhibit fire from
spreading as easily. Trouble was after being installed, they found out that
after ten years or so, in summer heat it got hot enough that it activated,
produced acid that destroyed the wood. It all had to be replaced.

[Dean Hoffman]

On Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 9:55:32 AM UTC-6, bruce bowser wrote:

> "Nuclear power provides about 11% of Texas electricity. But one of two reactors at the South Texas Project nuclear plant tripped offline on Monday. It was a big plant to lose, costing the state 1.3 gigawatts of power generation, about a quarter of its total nuclear capacity. The cold weather caused a false signal to shut down a feedwater intake, tripping a pump offline and then the entire generating unit."
>

What happened to the mini sized reactors that were supposed to be built for electrical power
years ago? Tree huggers, terrorists, cost, something else??

[hub...@ccanoemail.ca]

Mini as in submarine-sized ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_submarine

This article says that there are 2 types -
nuclear --> steam is one ;
the the other isn't explained - some mysterious technology ?
John T.

[Dan Espen]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-u-s-small-nuclear-reactor-design-is-approved/

Reached approval last September, scheduled for operation 2029.

Some "experts" have questioned the safety of these reactors
worrying about a "criticality condition". Clearly anyone
thinking that way is a tree hugger. As I understand it,
Chernobyl was good for the trees and will be good for those
trees for at least 20,000 years.

--
Dan Espen

[gfre...@aol.com]

On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 06:59:45 -0800 (PST), trader_4

A lot of that is just FEMA and the insurance companies doing their
job. I also agree about staples. They suck. The code here is 6 nails
per shingle with a membrane under the shingles ("Ice and water" or
similar). When I lived up there putting the shingles directly on the
plywood was not unheard of. (not even the minimal protection of 15#
felt). Our nailing schedule on the plywood is pretty stiff. You need
2.5" ring shank corrosion protected nails. Hot dipped galvanized is OK
but stainless is pretty common. The schedule is every 4" on the edges
and every 8 in the field. They also inspect for shiners (nails that
missed the truss). In a stick built house evert stick on the envelope
is strapped to the member below it. The cost of the clips and the
labor makes concrete block attractive. They dowel every corner, both
sides of any opening and every 4 feet along a wall. That is a #5, tied
to the footer steel and tied to the tie beam steel, on top and that
cell is poured solid when they pour the tie beam. Straps are poured in
the tie beam hooking the top rebar and going over the trusses.
You end up with a structure that could almost lift the footer out of
the ground pulling on the roof.
http://gfretwell.com/electrical/addition/Blocked%20up.jpg
http://gfretwell.com/electrical/addition/tie%20beam%20steel.jpg
http://gfretwell.com/electrical/addition/Tie%20beam%20poured.jpg

[Clare Snyder]

On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 08:11:56 -0800 (PST), Dean Hoffman
<dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

Mostly NIMBY treehuggers but also cost

[Rod Speed]

"Dean Hoffman" <dean...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:917f4def-ba54-4f22...@googlegroups.com...

Rolls Royce is still trying to go that route and has
a decent chance of getting somewhere given that
they have done small ones for submarines etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_modular_reactor_designs

> Tree huggers, terrorists, cost, something else??

Its harder to get those approved.