Over the weekend AP reported the shut down of a nuclear reactor at Browns Ferry, in north Alabama. The vulnerability of nuclear power to an extended heat wave “could be a sign of trouble for nuclear energy in a warming climate.”
South Florida has a problem even more intractable than too hot cooling water: sea level rise.
With glacial ice melting at an even faster rate than computer models have predicted, it is not a question of “if” sea levels will start to rise: only a question of “when” and how rapidly.
Are we going to wait until the tide floods South Dade before questioning why a nuclear power plant was permitted at the edge of Biscayne Bay?
Scientists believe that rapid climate response to global warming is a significant risk.
Does FPL have a rapid response plan for Turkey Point, in the case of sea level rise as a significant event, over a period of a few years?
Even if the facility at Turkey Point could be hardened against sea-level rise, how will workers get to the plant if roadways are flooded? What are logistic issues need to be addressed, if sea level rise turns Turkey Point into an island at the mercy of an indifferent sea?
These questions are difficult to answer, because there is no precedent for this order of climate emergency. Common sense would dictate that in the face of climate change, the permit request for two new nuclear reactors should be denied.
7 comments:
Pain in the butt anon back again ;)
Let me see if I have this straight: You are against the installation of another nuclear power plant where one or two already exist?
Your stated reason for opposition is that sea level will change (due to CO2 induced global warming) and inundate the *new* power plant?
Will not the new power plant reduce the amount of CO2 emissions required to meet our power needs, thus lessening (admittedly infinitesimally) the severity sea-level rise?
Seriously, do you think you are the only one in the world (as opposed to, say, a nuclear plant designer) who anticipates a sea level increase?
Lastly, where does the juice you run your PC and make these posts come from? If you say 'green', I'll just assume you are paying greenmail, cuz FL has no true green resources.
Not attacking, just askin' ;)
We need to move from FL and give it back to nature, lets stop encouraging gorwth and let the market do its job. As insurance, electricity, sea level rise occur people will have to move out. FPL cannot build this power plant and pay the TRUE costs or externalities. How can we even count on the feds to moniter this for 1,000 years if the country is really ess than 300 years old?
I run my PC on methane.
This is not a topic thread about the advisability of expanding nuclear power, to respond to global warming.
Nuclear power plants don't belong in areas that will be underwater.
Plan for the rapid decomissioning of the plant in the case of rapid sea level rise, not expanding a facility that climate change risks closing within the plant's expected lifetime.
Neither do industries and metropolitan areas belong in areas that will be underwater LOL.
Unfortunately these other things don't seem to be causing you as much alarm.
OMG the entire blog has gone down the "memory hole" (look it up on wiki).
I hope that isn't due to my silly questions regarding the means by which you power your PC, air conditioning, refrigerator, lighting, how you pump fuel from underground tanks into your car, how you manage to get frozen food in a hot climate, or how you get an automobile from raw ore.
There are a handful of ways to do this without making polar bears swim. Methane and coal are not among them.
Lastly a brief complaint: You stand here on your soapbox pontificating against nuclear power. Yet you respond that "this is not a topic thread about the advisability of expanding nuclear power"
One of this blog's finest accomplishments is highlighting the lack of responsiveness of government to the governed.
Sadly an equivalent level of hipocrisy is exposed when very valid questions are asked reagarding some *opinions* and rather than addressed, are brusquely dismissed.
Stalin would be proud.
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