LA is "stealing" water again!

[reb]

"... It amazes me about water rights and all that stuff..."

I think it was Barry Goldwater who said, "Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over."

 

[dickfoster]

What a waste of resources........with the Pacific ocean in your backyard......those idiots should have been building desalination plants for the past 50 years. They'd have enough fresh water to have green grass and let the water hose run while washing their cars.

Trouble with that is you first have to have cheap power to desalinate sea water and make it make any sense. Of course as long as the energy companies keep lining the pockets of our politicians that won't happen until it's too late and they've sold the very last drop of oil or lump of coal. Meanwhile they keep the looney left amused with solar energy and keep them busy chasing windmills.

 

[buickanddeere]

Trouble with that is you first have to have cheap power to desalinate sea water and make it make any sense. Of course as long as the energy companies keep lining the pockets of our politicians that won't happen until it's too late and they've sold the very last drop of oil or lump of coal. Meanwhile they keep the looney left amused with solar energy and keep them busy chasing windmills.

Nuclear could cheaply desalinate salt water with the excess base load capacity during nights and weekends.

 

[dickfoster]

Nuclear could cheaply desalinate salt water with the excess base load capacity during nights and weekends.

Exactly, as long as it was the right kind of nuclear.

 

[bcp]

What about that nucular power I keep hearing about? Is it cleaner energy than nuclear?



Bruce

 

[dickfoster]

What about that nucular power I keep hearing about? Is it cleaner energy than nuclear?



Bruce

Don't know what you mean. Your post reads is nuclear cleaner than nuclear.
There are different ways to achieve nuclear power. First there are fission and fusion. We're still a long way from fusion, that leaves fission but the way we've done it so far is actually not the best way to generate electricity from fission. The reason we went that way is because the DOE was more interested in nuclear weapons than they were nuclear energy so we took the wrong path. The way we went tends to fail catastrophically like Chernobyl or Fukushima Daiichi. These are light water reactors that are inherently something trying to run wild and out of control like a herd of wild horses. These are fueled with relatively rare uranium and have several other inherent faults built in that everyone is all too familiar with. However there is another type of fission from thorium which is much more plentiful especially right here in the USA. There are several advantages to this type or reaction that addresses all of the faults of the uranium reactors. First of all it's a throttled reaction meaning when you want to stop it all you do is take your foot of the pedal. No containment is needed or required unlike light water reactors. The radioactive by products are much less by orders of magnitude and they have much shorter half lives measured in a hundreds instead of tens of thousands of years. You can even use it to help convert the stockpiles of byproducts we're now sitting on now into useful energy. It's doable because there have already been two pilot reactors built and successfully run way back in the late fifties and early sixties. However the DOE didn't want it because it can't be used to produce weapons grade materials. You don't get to hear much about it because there are many who don't want it to become well known, including the fossil fuel PACs and lobbies, the solar and wind nuts because they want to keep their streams of tax money and grants flowing in etc. etc. etc.. Basically it boils down to be all about money and politics which always walk hand in hand. There is lots of info on the web about it but you have to do your own research because those in power aren't going to let you know diddly squat about it if they can help it. At least not until it's likely too late to do any of us any good.

 

[turnkey4099]

A while back they even tried to steal the Columbia river!

 

[TheMan419]

Trouble with that is you first have to have cheap power to desalinate sea water and make it make any sense. Of course as long as the energy companies keep lining the pockets of our politicians that won't happen until it's too late and they've sold the very last drop of oil or lump of coal. Meanwhile they keep the looney left amused with solar energy and keep them busy chasing windmills.

Solar would help quite a bit. Although Nuke is a better idea. Can do the desal during the night when the power is not needed for the base load.

 

[dickfoster]

A while back they even tried to steal the Columbia river!

They've already got their hooks into the Colorado pretty good. They'll steal anything if you let them get away with it. Now they're trying to divert more water from northern cal. There's a big ole fuss over it too.

 

[dickfoster]

Solar would help quite a bit. Although Nuke is a better idea. Can do the desal during the night when the power is not needed for the base load.

Solar is nothing but a diversion and you'll never quite realize your return on investment from it. It ain't cheap and is by no means a real answer to anything. The only thing good about solar is that it's fusion but it's just a bit too far away to do us much good. Meanwhile the right kind of nuclear is scalable while you can put it where and when you need it. It's also very simple to replace the heat source in current fossil fueled plants with a thorium fueled fission reactor thereby saving a ton in needless capital expense as you get to keep and use the generation and transmission equipment already in place.