O.T. Hydroelectric

doorman

Member
With all the discussion now days about Nuclear vs. coal fired vs. wind turbine why is hydroelectric not mentioned?
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that each type needs a turbine to turn the generator and fuel to power the turbine.
Wouldn't the water powering a turbine be the cleanest and most constant and therefore the cheapest?
Any insight into this would be welcomed. Thanks doorman.
 
No No you cannot dam the rivers !! What about the poor salmon!
Yee gawds the way people talk. The next thing the dang fish will be allowed to vote!!
Give me cheap power and I will eat something other than fish!!
 
You can only build so many dams to do that before it causes other problems. Here in Missouri they built one years ago and the lake did not fill as they believed it should. The reason was that they did not know about a cave and that cave was letting the water out as fast as it was coming in. Then of course there are other problems like all the land that they have to buy because of the lake that is formed etc. etc. When the lake of the Ozarks was formed they had to move a town because other wise the town would have been flooded or should I say the town is still there it is just under water now. Yep the small town of Linn Creek was moved but they left the buildings behind and they are still there
 
Got to be careful building a dam cause some fish not be able to swim upstream. Wasn't there some where that the enviro nut cases were demanding rivers be undamed because of some NON-edible fish.
 
No more rivers left un-dammed with enough gpm flow. Also require enough drop/fall enough ft to be worth while.
Unless you want to spend billions building a 100MW plant on the north-west or north-east sides of Hudson's Bay. It will also take 100,000's of millions to run the transmission lines nearly 1000 miles to the customer. Line losses will waste at least 1/3 of the power generated.
It doesn't pay economically to build. Even without considering all the legal & research fees on top of the actual dam/generating station/lines.
 
I read an article somewhere that a "wing dam" with a spillway channel would turn a turbine without hampering traffic or fish.
Another article was in "The Commercial Appeal" in Memphis.
The premise was that turbines could be "sunk in the bottom of the river and produce enough electricity to power Shelby County.
In New Orleans, ther were a series of turbines on barges some years back that produced most of that city's electricity. This Old House did a segment on them with Norm Abrams explaining how they worked. Maybe "Katrina" destroyed them?
doorman
 
Ya if it was only that simple. Do one thing and it can in fact impact 100 other things down the line. That is why we now have killer bees in the U.S.A.
 
Solar power is the best way to go and they have in the works panels that will cost around $0.10 per watt so a person could have a set up that would power there own house for less then $2000. Ya no one answer will work but yes something need to be done.
 
There was a show on the other night about making electricity. They showed a plant that opened gates and allowed a huge basin to fill with the incomming tide and then when the tide went out they funneled the captured water through turbines to generate electricity. They said thyey could get about 5 hours of power generation time off of each tide change. Along with that they showed what they called a centerless turbine. It was designed to be set in the water and turn, producing power, just by the motion of the tides, both ways. If they can do this with just the changing movement (inflow and outflow) of the water from the tides why can't they use the constant flow of a river for the same thing?

Beyond these things my question has always been why not figure out how to capture and use the power generated by lightening? Mother nature has provided us with pretty a much unlimited supply of natural electricity if someone could just figure out how to capture it, and make it usable. I can't believe with all the technology we have nowdays that it can't be done.

Then again all of this is being done to reduce greenhouse gasses, etc. Why not take the billions spent on research and use it to widen the roads and give driving lessions. The less gridlock at rush hour the less emissions being expelled into the air from idling vehicles for no reason. Then provide better training for the numerous dumb a$$ driver who don't know how to exit an interstate, merge onto an interstate, move over when construction signa warn of lane closures two miles in advance, etc etc, all which tend to cause the gridlock in question, and you have a two prong approach to reducing alot of needless polution.

Read any trade magazine that has an article on "clean power" and what you'll ultimately find is there are alot of things that can be done but it takes real money to do all of them and nobody really wants to spend the money....
 
In the news recently was a hydroelectric generation station abandoned 10 years ago that has recently been purchased by private investors and put back into operation. And there are several retrofit and/or new hydroelectric projects in the Kentucky region that have been submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers.
Kentucky River Hydroelectric Power
 
Hydro will never supply more than a few percent our country's energy needs, unless we manage to implement energy conservation on a huge scale. And nobody seems willing to even talk about conservation.

Pretty much all of the best hydroelectric sites have been used up. Also, hydro plants are far from environmentally friendly; for example, the use of hydro power for "peaking" generation can lead to erosion downstream of the dam. Most dams have a finite lifetime, depending on how fast they silt up. Imagine the cost of dredging the silt out of Lake Mead, when it becomes necessary.

Hydro power is about the best form of peaking generation available, and it's important to have hydroelectric plants if only for peaking generation. But hydro isn't enough on its own.
 
Mark B is right. Hydroelectric is only a few % of the total amount of electricity we use as a country. THe USA uses 3.8 trillion kilowatts of electricity---in 2007 I think. That is a lot of power and about 50 % is made from coal burning plants.
 
My Brother's company "ATS" is/was trying to build those wonder cells.
They work fine in theory but in real life production. These thin flex film solar cells have brought the company from prosperity to near bankruptcy. And that was before the market went for a skid last year.
Solar cells don't work very well at night either. Peak electrical demand begins at dusk. Right when solar cells shut down.
 
I worked in hydro, fossil, nuclear and CT power plants for a large power company for 24 years and the what it comes down to is that there are very few rivers left that would be *practical* to turn into a new hydo plant. There's almost as much paperwork and regulations in a hydro plant as there is in a nuke. Remember the dams they are removing to allow the fish to pass through? Those sites could have been repowered but the regulations make it too costly to bother.
Nuclear power is the best way to go and is safer than the gas station down at the corner. I don't know why they've never had an ad campain but for openers, there's nothing in a comercial US nuke that can explode. No wepons grade plutonium is created IN THE US except in the government owned and operated reactors.
It'll be interesting when they succede in shutting down those nasty, dirty fossil plants - that'll be about 85% of the US generation capicity shot to h*ll and we'll all be freezing in the dark with no where left to work....but the politicians and environmentalist will be happy...
 
Nuclear is the way to go. We should copy what France has done, nothing else, just this. They built one plant, then build copies of that one plant all over the place. They don't go through redesigning different custom plants for different areas. I served on two nuc subs back in the day, slept and worked in a sealed tube with a nuc power plant in constant operation. I still have all my hair. Have two kids, no mutants here, though sometimes I wonder about my son. But all this is academic, We are not going to use nuc power. We are not going to drill and use our own oil. We are going to have our coal industry severely restricted. Nope, in the name of the scam that is global warming, We are going to pay through the nose for ALL our energy use, whatever it is. The people in charge now want us all equally miseruble. The answers are right in front of our faces for clean, plentiful energy. But we are not going to get it. Jack
 
More on the French system - they use a "fast breeder" system. VERY little rad waste because the waste is used to enrich the fuel for the Rx run cycle....but because it uses and consumes plutonium at one stage we can't build them here in the US.
Fast Breeder Rx info
 
If you live in Michigan, Minnesota and maybe even North Dakota you are using hydro electricity. It is imported from Manitoba. Hydro electricity has not harmed our fisheries one bit, in fact it has improved them. Now the cost of developing in northern Manitoba is another matter and it takes fossil fuel to do it. I have the figures right in front of me, and my total bill for electricity in 2008 was $ 1958 CDN in 2008. My heat (1300 sq ft home) is in that total. Note that that is in Manitoba where there is the odd chilly day.
 
Anyone besides me ever really wonder?
Finding alternate energy sources and becoming less dependant on foreign oil has been a key point in every administration since Carter started it. What do we have to show for the hundreds of millions of tax dollars other than we're MORE dependant on foreign oil and we CAN'T drill for our own resourcs, we CAN'T build new nukes, we CAN'T build new fossil generation, we CAN'T build new refineries.....we CAN'T even build wind farms because it'll mess up someones view 10 miles out at sea or on top of reclaimed coal mines.....

Other than getting rich on tax payers money what HAVE they done?
Oh yeah - Cuba and China seem to have no problems drill for oil off our coasts!
China drilling off Fla
 
We could do it, in this country. I read before that We have self imposed restrictions on reprossesing from the mid seventies. We could get this out of the way and move foreward. But, as I said in my previous post, that is simply not going to happen. Also, good article you found there. Jack
 
I would bet that if you look at who is donating lots of money to "tree hugging scum"its coal industry money.Or its somebody who is opposed to putting a nuclear plant in because it might lower their rates they have established,or something.Also there are so many crooks that point the finger at somebody else,when it is really them,causing unimaginable damage,to our country,and the world,the tree huggers are not very much of a problem.The tree huggers are a tool thats used by greedy,crooked,people to hide the fact they are behind lots of the corruptness of the world.This is a lot like an organization in trucking called the American Trucking Association or ATA.The ATA is funded by shippers and for the most part does nothing to help the trucking industry.They are for trucking in name only,and regularly lobby congress to pass laws in favor of toll roads,they want trucks to haul heavier loads,they want truckers to be paid lower wages,work longer hours,and just plain are a problem in trucking and should be thrown out of it.Of course for many years nnalert congressmen would do what the ATA wanted and claim they were helping truckers,but actually were working against them.The stuff they have tried to do over the years is why the trucking industry has 100% turnover rates for most big companies.Even big truck companies were fooled by these 2 faced crooks,and a line of these same 2 faced crooks has been running the country for many years now.Thats whats wrong with our country more than anything else is crooked corporations,buy politicians,who then lie to us,then pass laws they say will help us,but only help the corporations,and now they are so big they control what we do about anything.Even electricity and how we generate it,and if its going to cut some corporations profit,in come the tree hugging scum to stop the nuclear plants from going up.I dont know how many tree huggers there are,but there are over 300 million Americans,and if we want nuclear plants,the tree huggers are outnumbered badly,even if they were legitimate.The big problem with nuclear is what to do with the waste,but if we can get the crooks out of government for a while,fund research and development like JFK did,maybe we can come up with a newer better way to get rid of waste.Believe me as soon as somebody brings that up there will be tree huggers all over that idea,and when there is,it should tell you who is really against it,coal companies,at least if or until the coal companies can get into nuclear and crookedize it.
 
Yep that is why no one way is the best each has its limit. But the way things are going it is going to be a world wide grid and if/when that happens there will be light some place at all time feeding the grid
 
Can't span the Atlantic or Pacific with power cables.
Power plants are built as close to the heaviest loads for a reason.
Your 1HP electric lawn mower looses power with 200ft of cable between it and the distribution transformer. A 1 million HP/750MW generating unit is considered "small". Imagine the I2R losses over just 100 miles of power lines.
 
Used fuel is not the problem it's claimed to be by GreenPeace etc.
A heavy water or sodium cooled reactor breeds fuel. Our fuel bundles go in with 0.7% U235. And come out with 1% plutonium and .1 or .2% U235.
It's not like there is a lot of used fuel to store. A football stadium will hold all the US used fuel.
How much room is used for storing really nastey stuff like lead, arsnic, mercury, dioxions, organic chemicals etc.
How much just "disapears" into lakes, rivers, ordinary landfills. The gov't catches on occassion "disposal companies" getting rid of waste oil and chemical products by mixing it with gasoline or diesel fuel.
 
Lots of hydro power in the Pacific Northwest- and our electricity is still only about 4 cents a kilowatt. But there probably will never be any more, at least in this area- enviros block any attempts, in the name of saving salmon. Any river with enough fall and a narrow enough valley to dam is now a "scenic area", so King's X on any developement.

A curiosity- we have to have a certain percentage of our power "green"- purchased at a higher cost, of course. But hydropower is not considered "green"- why on earth not? Its about as "green" as you can get, by any definition I can think of.

"Earth First- we'll log the other planets later."
 
Too many artist concept drawing seen in movies, you know the ones. In a future utopian society. Everbody is lounging around in white robes under a clear blue sky on a grassy hill. No farms, factories, industry,roads or machinery in sight. Just some solar cells on a roof and a wind turbine in everbody's yard.
Where does everything get manufactured and processed? Where does the foods come from and garbage go? How does everything get transported. What about heating in winter, cooling in summer and light at night?
I will ask how are North Americans entitled to live 30-90 miles in the "country"away from their "city" job. Living on prime farmland comsuming sprawling subdivisions. And drive solo inside great hulking status symbol vehicles on over crowded roads.
We will eventually run out of cheap energy and live/travel like the Europeans & Japanese do. Walk, bicycle, bus or rail to work.
 
Amusing comments. One little source of nuke power is barges with submarine power plants on them. Proposed during Carter administration but dropped over concerns about public acceptance. Last year Putin told of Russian power barges being made same pattern- use your current or older submarine power plant design on a barge to provide power to coastal cities. Big kicker is that after first 6 barges built for Russian use the powerplant barges will be sold on world markets about 2012 proposed. S Africa, Cuba may get a friendly price, The US was noted to have many coastal areas that would benefit- as in Boston, New York City, Atlanta, Miami, San Fransisco. These were same areas that the US proposal indicated would benefit from Power plant barges. The electricity suppliers there might take 10 years for paperwork- but the barges designed and built in old sub building yards can be moved almost any place in world that has moderate depth of water. French noted they can make a similar design and sell to politically nervous about Russia- French currently selling and building their land based compact designs to some other countries. RN
 
Bret's got it about right!! On the Missouri-Mississippi river basins new dams,increased hydro electric,improved technology have been all scraped because:
1)downstream barge traffic would be disrupted
2)several species of fish would be effected
3)the cottonwood trees are disappearing because natural flooding doesn't occur anymore to start young trees
There are groups out there that actually are trying to REMOVE the dams and revert to a "free flowing" state!!
 
Sub reactor is too small. Only 30-50MW which is only enough to power a small remote coastal settlement of a few thousand people.
We are looking at a need for 75 more reactors of 1500MW capacity each.
 
Sub powerplant on water might then be a usefull supplement for the large demand areas. Maybe get a dozen of them instead of the natural gas peak generators now used some places for the demand spikes. Maybe see if Russians have them available in 5 years and how big they get- economy may affect sales. RN
 
In the movies all that ugly stuff happens in the off-world colonies of course.

Here in reality we have to make do with all the limitations that come with living in one world where we breathe in what someone else breathes out, where the sewage processing plan discharges into the next downstream town's water source, and we may want to build houses on last year's landfill.
 
It costs within a few % to design and build a 50MW or 1500MW unit.
Then figure the operating costs for personal and maintaince to operate 30 small plants or one large plant.
Good idea but in only practical for small artic and remote locations isolated from a national utility grid.
Except for the most recent all electric drive subs. The older nucs drove the prop with a main steam turbine with most of the reactor steam. The aux electric power turbine generator(s) wouldn't total 1MW.
An old nuc sub converted would require a total and expensive re-fit. Probably cutting the sub and lengthing it with a 50+ft turbine generator section addition.
I'd rather have a nuc plant powering my town sitting on bedrock. Instead of bobbing in the water upon the the USS Wallowing Sea Cow.
 
About 25 years ago I worked on a project for dry spent fuel storage. After the spent fuel is old enough for the initial hi rad levels to have faded the fuel is transfered to SS casts, the head is welded on by certified welders, a vacuum is pulled and a N2 blanket is applied. Then the cast is transfered to concrete tombs on the nuke site.

They are checked during the weekly rounds by the on site HPs (Health Physics Technicians) who's reason to exist is to monitor the rad levels throughout the plant...the rad levels at the tombs are not much higher than bright sunshine.
The biggest problem with rad waste is consumables. Once it goes in it has to be drummed and sent out as rad waste. The ordinary sand blasting medium we used on the turbine rotors was less radioactive after we used it than when it came in but it still had to be drummed - just 'cause! You can buy the same stuff about anywhere and nobody knows it "hot". The levels are so low nobody outside of a nuke can measure it but once it's on-site, it becomes rad waste because it's measurable.
Stuff like silk lantern mantles, tungston for TIG welding, SAND, COAL, GRANITE COUNTER TOPS and a lot of other REAL common stuff is MUCH more radioactive than 95% of what you can find in a power plant.
 
Can't at this time but there has been talk for years about doing so just haven't got that far yet and may never get that far. That is why I say no one way is the answer it is going to take many ways to do it including thing out in space as they have also talked about for years
 
Mafia owned "disposal companies" in New Jersey used to run that stuff out of tanker trucks on the NJ Turnpike at night in the rain.
 
My patient long suffering wife works at a Dry Fuel storage facility. The used fuel is stored very similar to yours. Each flask is even X-rayed to obtain it's own unique signature.
A deep depository is in the works for the low and medium waste. Anything that will burn goes through the incinerator then drummed. Metal is compacted and drummed.
Surprising how small the site is which is storing waste from 21 reactors. Some units in service since the mid 1960's.
Used fuel fresh from the reactor is impressive. A trolley with a dozen 70lb bundles rolls into the fuel bay under 30ft of water.
The bundles cast that classic bright blue/purple light. For the next day or two there is enough decay heat you can see the convection currents of hot water rising 30ft to the surface of the pool.
It's a contentious issue with "rad cops" here. Most everybody used to be badged high enough to plan rad work, look after new less qualified/less experienced people. And clean up after the job.
Now with our new management. They are bringing non trades people off the street. Rushing them through a six month "green badge " course . Then sending these rad cops into a plant they know little about. To plan and over see tasks they never seen or heard of before.
Of course everything takes longer to do now as it's one more work group/empire to coordinate with.
 
"More with less" & "TQ"...I was with Progress Energy. Years ago I operated the polar crane to remove the upper and lower internals during the 10 year inspection at RNP. Looking down the Rx bore and seeing that blueish/purple glow give you a funky feeling! The fuel pool glow is tough, too!
I was part of the company's "road trash" - the traveling crews. Shoot me a note if there's a chance we worked together or just swap "outrage" stories.....
 
The main problem with hydro is that there isn't a whole lot of capacity left to develop, and what there is has been blocked by indians and whack jobs that want to preserve the land as is was.
There is certainly a major impact to creating large resevoirs and realigning rivers, etc... but it is fairly cheap power to produce.
The other problem is that it's most often in a very remote location and transmission is expensive, and losses high.
The only viable project that I know of, and one that will probably 'go' is the Lower Churchill project in Labrador.
Their current plan is to pull a line form central Labrador, across the straight to Newfoundland, down the coast, across the gulf to Cape Breton, and then hook into NSP's grid to carry the remainder west, ultimately to New England if there's anything left.
NSP is also negociating for a chunk of that power, mainly to shut down some coal I think.
If I remember correctly, the lower curchill project is something like 2200 MW... Not really a huge chunk of power.

Rod
 
Here is a neat little deal that is a great idea if you live near a running stream and no dam needed! This company has all kinds of goodies to get you off the grid and keep those greedy "bastages" hands off your money.
Untitled URL Link
 
Looks like they are not to repeat the same mistake with the Lower Chruchhill as they did with the 1st.
Running those transmission lines over Quebec then having Joey Smallwood sign Labrador's/NFL's power to Quebec for 2 cents a KW/hr for decades.
The country of Quebec makes a lot of money just to nothing but be a "dog in the manger".
I hope the new transmission lines have enough capacity to swap the old plant onto them as well. It's a national disgrace that Quebec was allowed to get away with the theft for the past 20+ years.
 
Just stayed in Ontario with the Pickering site, the Bruce site and a wee bit at Darlington.
Being four or eight unit plants, there was always an outage or outage prep. Unlike a single unit station were the unit is operated with a skeleton crew. And outside contractors brought in to perform outage work.
The eight unit Bruce site is currently being run into the ground by some whack job name Robert Fisher. He's tryng to run the place as it it were a nuclear military vessel or single unit civilian power plant.
In house experienced outage and maintenance people are being replaced by outside contractors because it's the way BF is used to "doing it". While it appears cheaper on paper to use contractors. The drop in the units capacity factors say otherwise.
Looks good though if you "cook the books".
New staff isn't being hired and trained. The workload is being carried with older staff near retirement working overtime. And retirees coming back under contract to double dip. Soon the pool of experience is going to be too old, sick or dead to work.
Before that time BF will be gone along with his bonuses on top of his $68,000 per week.
 
Sounds REAL familure! After being a Sr mechanic/millwright/welder/machinist/etc for years I was in turbine/generator outage planning for my last 15 years, at home 4 days a month if I was lucky. The nuclear navy took over our company and said up front they wanted a 10% per year turnover. As far as I know, they got it. They made us exempt, didn't bother to tell us, cut our OT pay out, $0 increase in the base pay to compensate and still expected us to work 100+ hours a week - and they can't understand why ALL of us are gone!
I still hear from some of the guys - sounds like every outage is a major struggle now that all us old guys are gone - with all the knowlege the company didn't think was useful.
Actually, upper managment in any power company now days is like a big "musical chairs game". New managment comes in, makes cuts and is betting that they'll be able to get their bonus and move on before something major breaks. They get the money and the problems usually land in someone else's lap. You noticed that upper managment "rotates" often now, too? They can't be held accountable for something that happened on someone else's watch.... It's lack of long term "ownership" in the company.
Ten years ago the average age of our maintenance guys was 55. I don't know who they think is going to keep the equipment running but for someone who's good with their hands who doesn't want to go to college and doesn't mind getting dirty, there's going to be a future where they can demand top money for their services!
Good luck! I took the early out for medical reasons and I can tell you - life AFTER a power company job is great!
 
They ain't dealin' with no Smallwood this time... The lad that's there now would probably make a stunt of cutting the live cable with bolt cutters to prove a point.
I don't think you'll ever see them take the falls power this way tho. They'd simply have to build that grid in this direction.
What they're up to now is basically taking some of that new power to newfoundland and the leavings will come this way. I think if NSP can get he pricing they want, probably Lingan will shut down, or perhaps a couple unit at Lingan. They're worried about their emissions... as that plan generally ranks in the top 10 of the worst polluters in the country.
It seems to me that they've got two, or perhaps three lines coming from there and Point Aconi that carry 7-800 MW at 113KV. Probably not enough capacity there to take much more unless they bumped the voltage.

Rod
 
Lingan is has two 300MW turbines by the looks of the switch yard. Odd how they used four boilers rather than two.
Lingan is right there in ice berg alley. Thought they would have built on the south side of the island. The coal mines must have been nearby.
If they used Power River Basin coal they cut stack emissions significantly. Problem the btu's per lb are so low, the station won't be able to make nameplate capacity. Even with every pulverizer going 100%.
That pwb coal also soots up the units. Also tends to burst into flame where ever there is a pile of the stuff left sitting.
We could sell you a real nice 1000MW Advanced Candu. Only needs heavy water in the moderator system, different than the older units which also ran heavy water in the heat transport.
Hydro One is putting a 3rd 500KV dual circuit four conductor per phase transmission line along the back of my farm. Rated to carry 3600MW to Toronto. Once that’s complete they will want to install another 500 wind turbines at 3 or 5MW each.
I'd like to see NFL pull the plug on the existing 765 KV line through quebec. And run every watt around quebec instead of through quebec.
 
When Lingan was built, the had a belt system running from the mine I believe... There were a number of them handy there... #26, Lingan, Phalen were the last in my memory.
Point Aconi was also designed to burn the high sulfur coal from Prince... again, right next to it. That never really worked though. The boilers couldn't handle it. I believe they're burning a mixture of low sulfur venezulean coal and petcoke these days since the mines closed... and Lingan is now using some strip coal from the surface of the Prince site. Lingan can burn it, then send it up the pipe.
I've got my doubts if you'll ever see a reactor here tho. It's the same as everywhere else. Not in my back yard... doesn't matter how much sense it makes.
To be honest, I wouldn't have much faith in NSP managing that either. They can't keep the damn lights on as it is. They went to the Monty Burns school of electrical system management...
They'd probably hire Homer J. to run it.

Rod
 

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