Re: Bailing the Titanic with a teaspoon...

On May 18, 3:08 pm, Jon Kirwan <j...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 18 May 2009 14:07:01 -0700 (PDT), mrdarr...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On May 18, 1:36 pm, Rich Grise <richgr...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 18 May 2009 12:30:49 -0700, mrdarrett wrote:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/05/13/mackay.energy/index.html

The bit on cellphone chargers puts it all in context.

So, the obvious solution is, get started on those nuclear power plants
TODAY! ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

Where?  California is Earthquake Central.

Skip the nukes in CA, except in areas of stability.  Must be some
towards the Nevada side and perhaps the north-eastern corner near
Oregon.

But CA has some mostly useless area (except to the few insects living
there) with lots of sun -- death valley comes to mind.  Perhaps solar?
I remember the article mentioned "wind farms with a total area roughly
equal to the area of California."  Replace "wind farm" with "solar
farm?"


Don't I wish. You'd think the Mojave Desert would be the ideal place
to build more SEGS systems...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEGS

A co-worker who used to work for the Calif. Energy Commission
mentioned these environmental studies that had to be done... you know,
on the Endangered Desert Snake... the Endangered Desert Mosquito...
these studies delay construction of solar plants quite a bit. Yay
environmentalism.


Nevada's in the middle of nowhere, and will need lots of HV power line
to the nearest city.

And attending losses.  I think I remember reading that about 50% is
lost in transmission systems, as an mean US-wide value.

Oh, and cooling water.

CA already drains one entire river in other states for its own water
supplies and has been making motions to take _my_ river (Columbia) for
some time.  Nevada's Las Vegas has been getting flak over taking what
little water is available elsewhere in the state for farming and other
uses to supply its sometimes extravagant city needs.


Palo Verde is a large nuke reactor in Arizona... hmm...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station

Wow, it uses treated sewage for cooling. No need for a river/lake.
Pretty cool technology there.


Speaking of which, there was a drought years ago when I was commuting
to Burbank every week by air.  SF had cut back by 50% and was letting
lawns go brown and so on.  At the same time, I read in the LA Times
paper that LA itself had only cut back 10%.  And as I flew over,
coming into Burbank, there was all the same swimming pools everywhere
all full and ready to go and evaporating like crazy.  Which tells me
that certain areas in CA really don't care that much, even when asked
to care by administrators.  Life goes on and a lot of people just
ignore the problems leaving others to suffer for it.

Have these attitudes shifted somewhat?


I doubt it. Here in Sacramento there's some talk about water
rationing - but the water gets pumped via aqueduct to LA regardless,
for those same swimming pools and lawns. At least, as long as the
Endangered Fish aren't harmed by the huge water pumps...


Did you feel yesterday's quake?

Not in Oregon, I didn't.  :)


Ah. 4.x quake near LA, no news of injury though. Amazing.


By the way, were you aware of the discovery in 1987 that 9.0
earthquakes have occurred off the Oregon coast consistently at spans
running from about 300 years to about 600 years, for the last 15,000
years?  The last one was about 310 years ago and killed people in
Japan.  The tital waves arrived there about every hour for three days.
The researcher I spoke with in Seattle in 2001 or so was the one who
did the original work in the mid-1980's in Oregon and whose team first
reported this discovery.  He had just come back from Japan (I'd left a
message and he didn't get back to me for 3 weeks) when we talked.
There, he had been going through the old records in Japan regarding
the last quake a year or two before 1700, I think.  This relates to
the Juan de Fuca plate; maximum deflections take place around
Vancouver Island, memory serving.  Satellite systems combined with
ground stations continue to monitor the continued compressions right
now.

We may be due for another not so far out.  Or maybe still a long time
away... it's hard to know.  I don't know how this propagates in CA or
impacts faulting there.  But it seems also related to the Gorda plate.
So maybe.

Jon


Didn't know about that.

Regards,

Michael
.

Relevant Pages

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