Environment & Energy

...gas.

I follow the CAISO data fairly regularly.

Storing energy while burning dangerous natural gas anywhere on the grid is obscene, whether or not a nuclear plant is providing energy to that grid.

Now it is true that in 2022, Diablo Canyon produced more energy on a 12 acre footprint than all the wind turbines in California, spread over more than 1000 square miles, but California has just one nuclear plant left.

With extensive coast line and a problematic water supply, California has the option of utilizing nuclear power, with high efficiency systems involved in process intensification to be one of the best places on the planet to engage in environmental restoration using nuclear energy.

I have written in my journal here a great deal about process intensification using high temperatures, for example, here:

The Energy Required to Supply California's Water with Zero Discharge Supercritical Desalination.

Supercritical water can partially address or completely mitigate many serious environmental issues, most notably municipal and industrial wastes via gasification. Under these circumstances, with heat exchange networks, electricity might prove to be an interesting and useful side product.

Some, but not all of the SMR's proposed can be involved in this sort of thing, at least with materials science issues addressed. (My son is working on his Ph.D in nulear materials.) I am pleased with many of these, but my son complains that in many cases, the materials science behind them has failed to exploit what has been learned since the 1970's.

In theory, supercritical water, might be a second product in a heat network, the first being thermochemical hydrogen for captive use to make fluid fuels, the best of which is DME, dimethyl ether.

I have pushed my son to consider these ideas, since I will not live much longer, and hopefully his generation will be able to clean up the horrible mess my generation has left for them. My son will be in a place to do something about it.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.