The Spanish Grid Drop-out - recently released information....

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2025-05-15 12:11, Martin Brown wrote:

On 15/05/2025 01:20, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-05-14 22:45, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Wed, 14 May 2025 21:07:21 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-10 18:46, Bill Sloman wrote:
One of my LinkedIn contacts - an IEEE contact in this case - posted
some
new data on LinkedIn, from a \"Simon Gallagher, Managing Director at UK
Networks Services | CEng | FIET | FEI | MBA \"


Today the ministry said that they have ruled out a hacking of the REE,
but not in other places. And that it originated in Granada, Badajoz and
Sevilla (loss of generation).

Spanish:

https://www.eldiario.es/economia/aagesen-avanza-desconexiones-
generacion-apagon-empezaron-granada-badajoz-sevilla_1_12297171.html

...

(... continues on the link)

The Times of London published an article today:

.<https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/blackout-risk-was-
highlighted-two-years-before-spains-grid-went-down-lzvxdxvzf

pay wall.

Disabling javascript allows reading 4 paragraphs.


Anyway, government denies that a risk of total blackout had been
highlighted on any report.

You trust your government *not* to lie about such things? How quaint!!

Not really. I distrust all, and I distrust more the opposition from the
right wingers

It conflicts with this popular media source and other tech sources:

https://www.surinenglish.com/spain/the-government-known-since-january-
from-red-20250506082807-nt.html

Only the date when they were warned varies with the source.

You have to notice the wording. The government does not deny warnings;
they deny having received a warning of a total zero. The minister
actually stressed this point in the speech.

The government, being left wing, will naturally not trust a warning
coming from right wing sources that goes against renewables or in favour
of nuclear, as biased and interested.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2025-05-14 23:37, john larkin wrote:

On Wed, 14 May 2025 21:10:06 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-14 19:19, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 22:28:23 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-13 18:14, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/05/2025 11:48 pm, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 12:57:47 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:


Nukes are great, but not if you tear them down.

Nukes are remarkably expensive, and depressingly inflexible. Radiation
damage to the structure means that you do have to tear them down after a
few decades of use, and the radioactive waste starts off very
radioactive, and the longer-lived isotopes have to be managed for a few
hundred thousand years.

And the investors building the stations do not consider the cost of
managing the waste for centuries. They leave that part to the
government. In Spain, we don\'t have any long term nuclear waste storage.
I think we rent storage in France, so the waste has to be transported
there. We have some storage at each station, a large water pool.

The best thing to do with used fuel rods is reprocess them into more
fuel.

Something that is expensive and not every country can do.

A couple of very remote places in the world could do that. And we\'d
get lots of fun isotopes too. Can\'t leave hot rods in a zillion pools
forever.

Transporting nuclear waste long distances is dangerous.

Pools are a temporary solution till someone develops a permanent
solution. Nobody has, in decades.

When that\'s not feasible, dig a deep hole and dump it in. Or drop
barrels of junk into an ocean subduction zone.

That\'s simply wrong.

It\'s irrational to store nuclear waste locally. Nuke policy is mostly
fear driven. And nukes are unpopular in some quarters by people who
really don\'t want us to have affordable, safe energy.

I have a very rational and studied fear of nuclear power.

Why? It\'s very safe when done carefully.

Everybody does it carefully, yet there are accidents with consequences.
Fukushima, Chernobyl, and many others. And close encounters or near misses.

The little modular reactors sound cool.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2025-05-15 08:18, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 15/05/2025 5:14 am, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-05-14 16:16, Glen Walpert wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 07:50:36 -0700, Don Y wrote:

On 5/13/2025 6:26 AM, Glen Walpert wrote:
I don\'t think that using broadcast radio for real time mains grid
control is a good idea. It would be far too unreliable.

Point to point RF links have been in use in (mostly hard wired) grid
control SCADA (System Control And Data Acquisition) systems for at
least 30 years, which is when a former employer did some work on a
SCADA upgrade project for the Egyptian Electrical Authority.  A search
on \'SCADA radio link\' will turn up several vendors.

And they used these to control instantaneous frequency and phase?  Or,
just coarse data collection and /supervisory/ control?

SCADA is used to monitor and control the grid, where control is done in
real time by adjusting the set points for real and reactive power at all
controlled power sources.  A small percentage of sources being
inaccessible degrades control by an insignificant amount.

Real power is regulated by the prime mover governors, which must be
operated in droop mode in order to share the load (the speed set
point is
reduced with increasing load).  The grid Hz/Gw figure which has been
mentioned is not directly related to generator inertia, where
insignificant energy is stored, it is the aggregate droop setting of the
prime mover governors feeding the grid.  After speed/frequency shift
(the
governors only measure shaft speed) due to a load change the grid
control
center adjusts the governor set points to bring the frequency back to
normal.

Voltage regulation is entirely separate and is done by setting the
reactive power output of sources, again by adjusting set points in real
time over SCADA (or one of the other approved standard comm protocols).
This is a bit complex for a quick explanation but is described in detail
in any decent text covering synchronous generator control.

Voltage regulation is more likely to be a stability issue than
frequency.
If you take two widely separated generators or sets of locally
paralleled
generators at two power plants which are optimally tuned for stand alone
operation and connect them with a long transmission line, voltage will
begin to oscillate due to the time delay in locally detecting changes in
the other plants output.  Detuning the regulators to achieve stability
results in inadequate response to load changes - thus central control of
both plants over SCADA.

Large generator voltage response time is limited by the L/R time
constant,
which will be in the 10\'s of seconds, over a minute for some large
multi-
pole hydroelectric generators.  Inverters can respond much faster, with
potentially worse stability issues, and dividing power sources into many
small units does not make stability any easier, you still can\'t set
optimal tuning parameters for widely separated groups of sources which
will be both stable and fast, central control of some percentage of
source
set points is required.  This problem and it\'s solution is well
understood
and the current generation of inverters are designed to allow remote
control of set points.

In the US more than 2/3 of all solar power is utility owned 10 MW or
larger and all of this is under central grid operator control, so no
stability issues there.

More intermittent power sources need more batteries, which are being
deployed by utilities as fast as they can be manufactured, being far
cheaper then peaking gas turbines, the most expensive of power sources.

https://www.tdworld.com/distributed-energy-resources/energy-storage/
news/
55287560/us-energy-storage-industry-commits-100-billion-investment-in-
american-made-grid-batteries

Wouldn\'t it be easier to have the entire distribution network using DC?

just saying with a glass of wine in my hand

That\'s probably correct, but it wouldn\'t be cheaper. It\'s probably true
that taking DC down to the sub-station level could be cheaper, with
today\'s technology, if you were starting from scratch, but since that
kit is already there you would be throwing away a lot of big expensive
transformers from the next level up, and replacing them with a lot of
big, expensive - if less expensive - inverters. It would take a lot of
capital investment to make the switch, and the people who operate the
grid are adminstrators rather than entrepreneurs.

I\'m just thinking that adding sources to a DC distribution network is
easier: the voltage just rises or drops. Possibly it autoregulates.

But of course, we have a huge installed system, replacing it would be
terribly expensive.


Another very wild idea was increasing the frequency to around 600Hz. It
would make transformers and all coiled things smaller. Planes do this.
Possibly would also radiate more. And would not help with control.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2025-05-15 12:37, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2025-05-15 08:18, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 15/05/2025 5:14 am, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-05-14 16:16, Glen Walpert wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 07:50:36 -0700, Don Y wrote:

....

Wouldn\'t it be easier to have the entire distribution network using DC?

just saying with a glass of wine in my hand

That\'s probably correct, but it wouldn\'t be cheaper. It\'s probably
true that taking DC down to the sub-station level could be cheaper,
with today\'s technology, if you were starting from scratch, but since
that kit is already there you would be throwing away a lot of big
expensive transformers from the next level up, and replacing them with
a lot of big, expensive - if less expensive - inverters. It would take
a lot of capital investment to make the switch, and the people who
operate the grid are adminstrators rather than entrepreneurs.

I\'m just thinking that adding sources to a DC distribution network is
easier: the voltage just rises or drops. Possibly it autoregulates.

But of course, we have a huge installed system, replacing it would be
terribly expensive.

Thinking again. Would it be possible to have even the rotating mass
generators connect via inverters? I mean, the inverters would inject
power always at the exact frequency no matter what. The voltage could
vary, but the frequency would be stuck.

Of course, I know basically nothing of power generation/distribution, so
don\'t take me too seriously

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 5/14/25 23:35, Don Y wrote:

On 5/14/2025 7:16 AM, Glen Walpert wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 07:50:36 -0700, Don Y wrote:

On 5/13/2025 6:26 AM, Glen Walpert wrote:
I don\'t think that using broadcast radio for real time mains grid
control is a good idea. It would be far too unreliable.

Point to point RF links have been in use in (mostly hard wired) grid
control SCADA (System Control And Data Acquisition) systems for at
least 30 years, which is when a former employer did some work on a
SCADA upgrade project for the Egyptian Electrical Authority.  A search
on \'SCADA radio link\' will turn up several vendors.

And they used these to control instantaneous frequency and phase?  Or,
just coarse data collection and /supervisory/ control?

SCADA is used to monitor and control the grid, where control is done in
real time by adjusting the set points for real and reactive power at all
controlled power sources.  A small percentage of sources being
inaccessible degrades control by an insignificant amount.

\"Real-time\" means different things to different applications.

I took Theo\'s upthread suggestion to mean broadcasting a *reference*
that all genertors would track -- instead of using the actual power line,
itself.  I.e., the spain event could have been avoided if such a broadcast
reference were used by each generator DISREGARDING THE ACTUAL POWER SIGNAL.
[...]

Sounds like a perfect recipe to blow things up. No individual
generator can pretend to force the grid. Either they track
or they trip.

Driving power into the grid only makes sense in reference to
what is happening at the injection point.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 5/15/25 01:38, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2025-05-14 17:37, john larkin wrote:
On Wed, 14 May 2025 21:10:06 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-14 19:19, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 22:28:23 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-13 18:14, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/05/2025 11:48 pm, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 12:57:47 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:


Nukes are great, but not if you tear them down.

Nukes are remarkably expensive, and depressingly inflexible.
Radiation
damage to the structure means that you do have to tear them down
after a
few decades of use, and the radioactive waste starts off very
radioactive, and the longer-lived isotopes have to be managed for
a few
hundred thousand years.

And the investors building the stations do not consider the cost of
managing the waste for centuries. They leave that part to the
government. In Spain, we don\'t have any long term nuclear waste
storage.
I think we rent storage in France, so the waste has to be transported
there. We have some storage at each station, a large water pool.

The best thing to do with used fuel rods is reprocess them into more
fuel.

Something that is expensive and not every country can do.

A couple of very remote places in the world could do that. And we\'d
get lots of fun isotopes too. Can\'t leave hot rods in a zillion pools
forever.


When that\'s not feasible, dig a deep hole and dump it in. Or drop
barrels of junk into an ocean subduction zone.

That\'s simply wrong.

It\'s irrational to store nuclear waste locally. Nuke policy is mostly
fear driven. And nukes are unpopular in some quarters by people who
really don\'t want us to have affordable, safe energy.

I have a very rational and studied fear of nuclear power.

Why?  It\'s very safe when done carefully.

The little modular reactors sound cool.

Putting used nuclear fuel someplace deepish underground is important.
While a nuclear war would be very very bad, surface storage makes it
much, much worse.
[...]

Yes! Now convince the populace and the politicians.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Martin Brown]

On 15/05/2025 13:43, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 5/14/25 23:35, Don Y wrote:
On 5/14/2025 7:16 AM, Glen Walpert wrote:

SCADA is used to monitor and control the grid, where control is done in
real time by adjusting the set points for real and reactive power at all
controlled power sources.  A small percentage of sources being
inaccessible degrades control by an insignificant amount.

I\'ll believe it is used to monitor the parameters at key locations in
\"realtime\", update set points and try to reset tripped breakers.

\"Real-time\" means different things to different applications.

I took Theo\'s upthread suggestion to mean broadcasting a *reference*
that all genertors would track -- instead of using the actual power line,
itself.  I.e., the spain event could have been avoided if such a
broadcast
reference were used by each generator DISREGARDING THE ACTUAL POWER
SIGNAL.
[...]

Sounds like a perfect recipe to blow things up. No individual
generator can pretend to force the grid. Either they track
or they trip.

Pretty much guaranteed to cause trouble when the national grid is of a
size and power level such that it behaves like a true transmission line
even at 50/60Hz. ISTR it limits supergrid power handling to ~3GW max.

UK\'s peak N-S flow is limited by a \"thermal constraint\" on some
insignificant location not far from where the new DC interconnector
comes onshore. No explanation is given as to what that really means.

Driving power into the grid only makes sense in reference to
what is happening at the injection point.

Indeed. And smaller generation systems can just get crushed like flies
if they try to stop a rampaging elephant as big GW systems drop offline.

If the system did fail due to local over voltage excursions somewhere
and then failed to become stable again after a few suppliers dropped out
then their network stability analysis must be appallingly bad.

--
Martin Brown

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2025-05-15 14:46, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 5/15/25 01:38, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2025-05-14 17:37, john larkin wrote:
On Wed, 14 May 2025 21:10:06 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-14 19:19, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 22:28:23 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-13 18:14, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/05/2025 11:48 pm, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 12:57:47 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:


Nukes are great, but not if you tear them down.

Nukes are remarkably expensive, and depressingly inflexible.
Radiation
damage to the structure means that you do have to tear them down
after a
few decades of use, and the radioactive waste starts off very
radioactive, and the longer-lived isotopes have to be managed for
a few
hundred thousand years.

And the investors building the stations do not consider the cost of
managing the waste for centuries. They leave that part to the
government. In Spain, we don\'t have any long term nuclear waste
storage.
I think we rent storage in France, so the waste has to be transported
there. We have some storage at each station, a large water pool.

The best thing to do with used fuel rods is reprocess them into more
fuel.

Something that is expensive and not every country can do.

A couple of very remote places in the world could do that. And we\'d
get lots of fun isotopes too. Can\'t leave hot rods in a zillion pools
forever.


When that\'s not feasible, dig a deep hole and dump it in. Or drop
barrels of junk into an ocean subduction zone.

That\'s simply wrong.

It\'s irrational to store nuclear waste locally. Nuke policy is mostly
fear driven. And nukes are unpopular in some quarters by people who
really don\'t want us to have affordable, safe energy.

I have a very rational and studied fear of nuclear power.

Why?  It\'s very safe when done carefully.

The little modular reactors sound cool.

Putting used nuclear fuel someplace deepish underground is important.
While a nuclear war would be very very bad, surface storage makes it
much, much worse.
[...]

Yes! Now convince the populace and the politicians.

Jeroen Belleman

<https://chatgpt.com/>

What are the pros and cons of storing nuclear waste deep underground?


Storing nuclear waste deep underground—typically referred to as **deep geological disposal**—is one of the most researched and widely supported long-term strategies for managing high-level radioactive waste. Here are the **key pros and cons**:

---

## ✅ **Pros of Deep Underground Nuclear Waste Storage**

### 1. **Long-term isolation from biosphere**

* **Goal**: Prevent radioactive materials from reaching the environment for thousands to millions of years.

* **How**: Waste is stored in stable geological formations (e.g., granite, clay, salt beds) that have been geologically stable for millennia.


### 2. **Passive safety**

* No need for constant human oversight or mechanical systems to maintain safety, reducing reliance on future generations.

### 3. **Security from surface threats**

* Underground storage is less vulnerable to:

* Natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, wildfires, flooding)
* Terrorist attacks or sabotage
* Accidental human intrusion

### 4. **Scientific consensus**

* Supported by decades of scientific research and endorsed by many international bodies (e.g., IAEA, NEA) as a viable long-term solution.

### 5. **Reduces surface-level storage**

* Frees up surface storage space currently used at nuclear power plants, which are not ideal for long-term containment.

---

## ❌ **Cons of Deep Underground Nuclear Waste Storage**

### 1. **High initial cost and complexity**

* Requires extensive geological surveys, tunneling, engineering, and long-term planning.

* Projects often cost billions and take decades to develop (e.g., Yucca Mountain, Onkalo).

### 2. **Difficult to retrieve waste**

* Once buried, accessing the waste for future reprocessing or unforeseen needs becomes very hard or impossible.

### 3. **Political and public opposition**

* Local communities often resist becoming host sites due to safety concerns and stigma (“Not In My Backyard”).

* Political gridlock can stall or cancel projects despite technical feasibility.

### 4. **Long approval and construction timelines**

* Even if technically sound, these projects can take 30–50 years from planning to operation.

* Example: Finland’s **Onkalo repository** is the world’s first operational deep geological repository, and it took over 40 years to develop.

### 5. **Uncertain future conditions**

* Predicting geological and environmental stability over hundreds of thousands of years involves uncertainties, especially regarding climate change or seismic activity.

---

## Summary Table

| Factor | Pros | Cons |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| Environmental Impact | Isolates waste from biosphere long-term | Hard to predict geologic changes over millennia |
| Safety | Passive safety, less risk of accidents or attacks | Retrieval is difficult if needed |
| Economic | Long-term cost savings via passive design | Very high upfront costs |
| Social/Political | Can reduce opposition with proper planning | Strong public and political resistance in many areas |
| Technical Feasibility | Based on decades of research and trials | Implementation and oversight are complex |

---

Let me know if you\'d like a visual diagram or case studies (e.g., Finland’s Onkalo or the Yucca Mountain project in the U.S.).


--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Don Y]

On 5/15/2025 6:18 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 15/05/2025 13:43, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
On 5/14/25 23:35, Don Y wrote:
On 5/14/2025 7:16 AM, Glen Walpert wrote:

SCADA is used to monitor and control the grid, where control is done in
real time by adjusting the set points for real and reactive power at all
controlled power sources.  A small percentage of sources being
inaccessible degrades control by an insignificant amount.

I\'ll believe it is used to monitor the parameters at key locations in
\"realtime\", update set points and try to reset tripped breakers.

The \'S\' in SCADA -- SUPERVISORY. Like deciding how fas the subway
car will travel but not actually commutating the current in the motor.
You want local control that reports status (Data Acquisition)
and accepts control (Supervisory Control) from a higher level
functionary.

Indeed. And smaller generation systems can just get crushed like flies if they
try to stop a rampaging elephant as big GW systems drop offline.

If the system did fail due to local over voltage excursions somewhere and then
failed to become stable again after a few suppliers dropped out then their
network stability analysis must be appallingly bad.

The problem is all of the distributed \"residential\" solar rivals
\"big GW systems\". E.g., we have ~10GW of total solar, here -- but,
of that, 300,000 individual residential systems in the 5KW (avg)
power rating. So, 1.5GW whose location is varied and diverse
BUT whose control is *likely* mandated by regulations/specifications
created when solar was intended to be \"the dog\'s tail\" -- tracking
an otherwise stable grid.

And, if a residential cogenerator goes offline, the residence\'s LOAD
is still there, no longer being supported by that \"local\" generation.

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 5/15/25 12:29, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2025-05-14 23:37, john larkin wrote:
On Wed, 14 May 2025 21:10:06 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-14 19:19, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 22:28:23 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-13 18:14, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/05/2025 11:48 pm, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 12:57:47 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:


Nukes are great, but not if you tear them down.

Nukes are remarkably expensive, and depressingly inflexible.
Radiation
damage to the structure means that you do have to tear them down
after a
few decades of use, and the radioactive waste starts off very
radioactive, and the longer-lived isotopes have to be managed for
a few
hundred thousand years.

And the investors building the stations do not consider the cost of
managing the waste for centuries. They leave that part to the
government. In Spain, we don\'t have any long term nuclear waste
storage.
I think we rent storage in France, so the waste has to be transported
there. We have some storage at each station, a large water pool.

The best thing to do with used fuel rods is reprocess them into more
fuel.

Something that is expensive and not every country can do.

A couple of very remote places in the world could do that. And we\'d
get lots of fun isotopes too. Can\'t leave hot rods in a zillion pools
forever.

Transporting nuclear waste long distances is dangerous.

Pools are a temporary solution till someone develops a permanent
solution. Nobody has, in decades.
[...]

That\'s not true. Putting it deep underground in a stable and dry
layer of rock would be perfectly safe. Finland is doing it, at long
last. In other countries, the opposition still wins.

In the Netherlands, there was talk of putting it into underground
salt formations. That\'s folly, in my opinion. Salt is plastic,
corrosive and soluble, and people might want to mine it. Fortunately
this time, here too the opposition wins.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[john larkin]

On Wed, 14 May 2025 19:38:09 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2025-05-14 17:37, john larkin wrote:
On Wed, 14 May 2025 21:10:06 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-14 19:19, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 22:28:23 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-13 18:14, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/05/2025 11:48 pm, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 12:57:47 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:


Nukes are great, but not if you tear them down.

Nukes are remarkably expensive, and depressingly inflexible. Radiation
damage to the structure means that you do have to tear them down after a
few decades of use, and the radioactive waste starts off very
radioactive, and the longer-lived isotopes have to be managed for a few
hundred thousand years.

And the investors building the stations do not consider the cost of
managing the waste for centuries. They leave that part to the
government. In Spain, we don\'t have any long term nuclear waste storage.
I think we rent storage in France, so the waste has to be transported
there. We have some storage at each station, a large water pool.

The best thing to do with used fuel rods is reprocess them into more
fuel.

Something that is expensive and not every country can do.

A couple of very remote places in the world could do that. And we\'d
get lots of fun isotopes too. Can\'t leave hot rods in a zillion pools
forever.


When that\'s not feasible, dig a deep hole and dump it in. Or drop
barrels of junk into an ocean subduction zone.

That\'s simply wrong.

It\'s irrational to store nuclear waste locally. Nuke policy is mostly
fear driven. And nukes are unpopular in some quarters by people who
really don\'t want us to have affordable, safe energy.

I have a very rational and studied fear of nuclear power.

Why? It\'s very safe when done carefully.

The little modular reactors sound cool.

Putting used nuclear fuel someplace deepish underground is important.
While a nuclear war would be very very bad, surface storage makes it
much, much worse.

The Chernobyl disaster released about 3.5% of the core inventory of one
reactor out of four.(*)

One Hiroshima-size bomb on top of a comparable large nuke plant could
release all the inventory in all four cores, which would be about
4/0.035 ~ 114 times worse than Chernobyl.

If the site included extensive spent-fuel pools, the total would be
correspondingly larger--maybe 500 Chernobyls, maybe more. And that\'s
just one installation.

Not a bad score for one small bomb--there are lots bigger ones.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(*)
https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_28292/chernobyl-chapter-ii-the-release-dispersion-deposition-and-behaviour-of-radionuclides

That\'s terrifying. As time goes on, it gets easier to make nukes and
to deliver them, and people seem to keep getting crazier.

Even conventional explosives delivered by a swarm of drones could be
nasty.

 

[john larkin]

On Thu, 15 May 2025 12:29:03 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-14 23:37, john larkin wrote:
On Wed, 14 May 2025 21:10:06 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-14 19:19, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 22:28:23 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-13 18:14, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/05/2025 11:48 pm, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 12:57:47 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:


Nukes are great, but not if you tear them down.

Nukes are remarkably expensive, and depressingly inflexible. Radiation
damage to the structure means that you do have to tear them down after a
few decades of use, and the radioactive waste starts off very
radioactive, and the longer-lived isotopes have to be managed for a few
hundred thousand years.

And the investors building the stations do not consider the cost of
managing the waste for centuries. They leave that part to the
government. In Spain, we don\'t have any long term nuclear waste storage.
I think we rent storage in France, so the waste has to be transported
there. We have some storage at each station, a large water pool.

The best thing to do with used fuel rods is reprocess them into more
fuel.

Something that is expensive and not every country can do.

A couple of very remote places in the world could do that. And we\'d
get lots of fun isotopes too. Can\'t leave hot rods in a zillion pools
forever.

Transporting nuclear waste long distances is dangerous.

Not as dangerous as transporting gasoline or chlorine, and we do that
all the time.

Pools are a temporary solution till someone develops a permanent
solution. Nobody has, in decades.

Of course we have, but public fear keeps the things from happening.

When that\'s not feasible, dig a deep hole and dump it in. Or drop
barrels of junk into an ocean subduction zone.

That\'s simply wrong.

Why?

It\'s irrational to store nuclear waste locally. Nuke policy is mostly
fear driven. And nukes are unpopular in some quarters by people who
really don\'t want us to have affordable, safe energy.

I have a very rational and studied fear of nuclear power.

Why? It\'s very safe when done carefully.

Everybody does it carefully, yet there are accidents with consequences.
Fukushima, Chernobyl, and many others. And close encounters or near misses.

The Fukushima and Chernobyl messes were caused by stupid design. Stop
doing that.

A dam or a grain elevator or a parking garage will kill people if they
are designed by idiots.

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 5/15/25 12:43, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2025-05-15 12:37, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-05-15 08:18, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 15/05/2025 5:14 am, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-05-14 16:16, Glen Walpert wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2025 07:50:36 -0700, Don Y wrote:

...

Wouldn\'t it be easier to have the entire distribution network using DC?

just saying with a glass of wine in my hand

That\'s probably correct, but it wouldn\'t be cheaper. It\'s probably
true that taking DC down to the sub-station level could be cheaper,
with today\'s technology, if you were starting from scratch, but since
that kit is already there you would be throwing away a lot of big
expensive transformers from the next level up, and replacing them
with a lot of big, expensive - if less expensive - inverters. It
would take a lot of capital investment to make the switch, and the
people who operate the grid are adminstrators rather than entrepreneurs.

I\'m just thinking that adding sources to a DC distribution network is
easier: the voltage just rises or drops. Possibly it autoregulates.

But of course, we have a huge installed system, replacing it would be
terribly expensive.

Thinking again. Would it be possible to have even the rotating mass
generators connect via inverters? I mean, the inverters would inject
power always at the exact frequency no matter what. The voltage could
vary, but the frequency would be stuck.

Of course, I know basically nothing of power generation/distribution, so
don\'t take me too seriously

The frequency is the signal that tells generators how to adjust
their power! You *don\'t* want to interfere with that.

Individual generators and inverters can\'t force the frequency.
They *must* sync to the grid. The frequency is the same all over
Europe. (Barring small excursions to dynamically adjust the phase
from place to place. f=dphi/dt.)

Jeroen Belleman