Fintan O'Toole "told you so"

[Duke of Marmalade]

In France nuclear power reactors had to be shut down because the water used to cool them, drawn from local rivers, was coming in at 28 degrees: too hot to cool anything. That grimmest of calls - "told you so" - is screaming out from nature itself"

There is a veiled second "told you so" in there viz. "there I told you, nuclear power just ain't safe."

FOT knows that these are gross distortions for as he points out France, unusually, uses rivers to cool its nuclear power plants. The returning water is a about 10 degrees higher than the incoming river water and that is not good for the ecosystems. So strict regulations apply to address that problem. Nothing to do with safety - inside the reactor water is at over 300 degrees centigrade and 28 degrees is certainly not too hot to cool that.
But the real misrepresentation of FOT is not mentioning that this is a regular occurrence in French summers and 2022 in particular was much more severe than the recent shutdowns.

 

[Leo]

FOT knows that these are gross distortions

Exactly, it's deliberately misleading. Anyone who suggest that water at 28 degrees is too hot to cool anything shouldn't be allowed to comment on anything relating to science.

 

[Purple]

I don't understand people who (rightly) lambaste climate change deniers as people who ignore data, facts and science due to ideological reasons but then do exactly the same thing when they adopt an ideological objection to nuclear power.

 

[NotMyRealName]

Yes, but I believe this situation not only happened in France but also in Switzerland and Hungary and Summer has barely started

 

[Purple]

Yes, but I believe this situation not only happened in France but also in Switzerland and Hungary and Summer has barely started

A problem caused by burning fossil fuels which can't be solved with wind and solar so...

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

...and Summer has barely started

Fair enough. But when I read FOT I, like many others I am sure, read this particular exhibit of "told you so" evidence as fairly shocking. On further AI enquiry I see it is something of a non event.
FOT's style is to overstate so maybe his regulars recognised this exhibit for the impostor that it was.

 

[Purple]

Yes, but I believe this situation not only happened in France but also in Switzerland and Hungary and Summer has barely started

They are reducing production because the water they release into the rivers it too hot and could cause a local environmental problem. The alternative is to burn hydrocarbons and make climate change worse. I know what I'd opt for.

 

[mathepac]

The alternative is to burn hydrocarbons and make climate change worse

Another alternative is to cool the water they have borrowed back to the temperature it was at before they used it, thereby maintaining the status quo. That might not be the ideal temperature environmentally, but they won't cause shock or further damage by releasing water that is either substantially hotter or colder than it was before they used it as part of their production process. Any cost involved is part of their costs of being in that business.

 

[Leo]

Another alternative is to cool the water they have borrowed back to the temperature it was at before they used it, thereby maintaining the status quo.

Have you thought about how much energy would be required to achieve that cooling? There's more heat energy lost to waste than is converted to electricity.

 

[Purple]

Have you thought about how much energy would be required to achieve that cooling? There's more heat energy lost to waste than is converted to electricity.

Indeed, 60-70% of the energy generated in a car engine is lost to waste heat. That's why there was a push in the 70's and 80's to create Ceramic engines as they could operate at much higher temperatures.

The same heat problem exists in Gas Turbine power stations were around 60% of the power is lost as waste heat.

Nuclear is around 35% efficient, with newer systems around 50% efficient. The big towers seen in older plants are for cooling the water used in the system.

CHP systems (Combined Heat and Power) are up to 90% efficient as they pipe the waste heat directly into nearby homes to heat them. The obvious infrastructure issues arise.

 

[mathepac]

Have you thought about how much energy would be required to achieve that cooling?

But aren't these outfits in the business of converting one form of energy into another? Sounds like an opportunity for them - rethink, reduce, reuse, recycle, unless of course the challenge is too great for them, in which case revoke their licences.

they pipe the waste heat directly into nearby homes to heat them

There you go, an excellent example of what's possible.

 

[Purple]

But aren't these outfits in the business of converting one form of energy into another? Sounds like an opportunity for them - rethink, reduce, reuse, recycle, unless of course the challenge is too great for them, in which case revoke their licences.

There is ample new nuclear technologies which could and probably would change the world for the better. The Travelling Wave Reactor is a good example. The development of these technologies is hindered as much or more by political interference and that irrational fear of nuclear power held by many voters than they are by engineering and scientific obstacles.

There you go, an excellent example of what's possible.

With extremely expensive infrastructure which in itself is very carbon dense.

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

Why do I read FOT? I guess I like being antagonised.
Today's offering talks about the Irishman who fought the Brits in the American War of Independence to secure the lands west of the Appalachians for the natives.
As a counterfactual we might ask ourselves "where would we be today if the US had confined itself to the eastern seaboard? Presuming we would still have had a WWII, it is fairly safe to say we would be living under either a Nazi or Communist dictatorship. Trump is better (if only marginally) than either.

 

[Purple]

Why do I read FOT? I guess I like being antagonised.
Today's offering talks about the Irishman who fought the Brits in the American War of Independence to secure the lands west of the Appalachians for the natives.

The brits did try to honour the treaty they had signed to keep settlers East of the Appellations. The locals wanted Bluegrass Country. The Texas rebellion happened because the Catholic Mexicans told the Protestant "American" settlers that they couldn't own slaves (15% of the population were slaves). That led to America's first colonial war of expansion and the Mexican Cession. That i turn led to a number of very "successful" genocides against the native people. Fintan had a point.

As a counterfactual we might ask ourselves "where would we be today if the US had confined itself to the eastern seaboard? Presuming we would still have had a WWII, it is fairly safe to say we would be living under either a Nazi or Communist dictatorship. Trump is better (if only marginally) than either.

Quite possibly. If the Mongol Empire hadn't killed 10% of the world's population the Black Death wouldn't have reached Europe, the Agricultural revolution wouldn't have happened, the Industrial Revolution wouldn't have happened and European powers would not have dominated the world.

There's no end of what if's in History.

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

There's no end of what if's in History.

Well yeah, it was a cheap point.
But what I am really getting at is this OToolism of seeing everything in anti American, anti capitalism terms.
He thinks it's clever to finish his OP insinuating that the real "savages" where the European immigrants.
Does he ever stop to think how incredibly improved is the human condition, in these parts anyway, as a result of the US miracle?
But Fintan's conscience is clear - it was an Irishman who tried to stop the European driven expansion in the US.

 

[Purple]

Well yeah, it was a cheap point.
But what I am really getting at is this OToolism of seeing everything in anti American, anti capitalism terms.
He thinks it's clever to finish his OP insinuating that the real "savages" where the European immigrants.
Does he ever stop to think how incredibly improved is the human condition, in these parts anyway, as a result of the US miracle?
But Fintan's conscience is clear - it was an Irishman who tried to stop the European driven expansion in the US.

Yep, history is full of wars between the bad guys and the other bad guys. The enlightenment, in effect the flowering of the better parts of Greek philosophy after more than a thousand years under the ice of Christianity, was the thing that gave us modern democracy. Without the French, the British and the Americans we wouldn't have had it at all. All three murdered their way around the world... just like every one else who could. Countries can produce good and bad things and good and bad people. Fintan should write an article about all the Irish people who participated in British (and American) colonialism. We are great at claiming the Anglo-Irish who we like (Shackleton, Yeats, Shaw, Swift, Robert Boyle, John Tyndall, Parnell, Arthur Wellesley, etc) but ignore the bad ones (Charles Trevelyan, Captain Boycott, Sir Michael O'Dwyer, Richard Wellesley).


Then there's the "real" (Catholic) Irish who engaged in savagery around the world.

A person favourite is the utterly revulsive Patrick Connor, the Kerry born American general who fought with Texas in their slave war against Mexico and perpetrated the largest single massacre of native Americans by the Union Army in the Bear River Massacre, as well as many other massacres in what is now Wyoming and Montana, instructing his officers that "You will not receive overtures of peace or submission from Indians, but will attack and kill every male Indian over 12 years of age." We don't learn about those guys in our history books. The more famous General Philip Sheridan was born in New York of Irish parents (more Irish than Obama). He was responsible for more ethnic cleansing than Connor. Another charming individual.

Best of all is John Nicholson, born in Dublin he was a man described as "an "imperial psychopath" and "a violent, manic figure, a homosexual bully; an extreme egoist who was pleased to affect a laconic indifference to danger". I don't remember learning about him in school either.

Anyway, Fintan, if you are reading have at it.