US electrical infrastructure near breaking point

sicophiliac · **Posted:** Fri Jul 18, 2008 6:58 pm

Too bad the economic stimulus package did not address this issue, 150 billion could have gone a long way in upgrading and maintaining our electrical grid.

HEADER_RACK · **Joined:** Thu Feb 15, 2007 1:00 am **Posts:** 499

All those electric cars!! They will be contributing to the demise of civilization!! Let's hear it for the cornies!! :lol:

roccman · **Posted:** Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:11 pm

Yep - best get your wind generators up and panels bolted down.. Its gonna be a wild ride ahead of us.

lawnchair · **Joined:** Wed Oct 20, 2004 12:00 am **Posts:** 888

20 years of, averaging 2.2% annual growth in demand will do that to you. Double the population growth. 55% more power drawn than in 1988. Added demand about the size of a Missouri or a New Jersey every year.

Homesteader · **Posted:** Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:44 pm

Hogan wrote:

HEADER_RACK wrote:

All those electric cars!! They will be contributing to the demise of civilization!! Let's hear it for the cornies!! :lol:

Yeah, that's one fact techno-cornucopians conveniently ignore.

No, no, no. . . they all get charged up at night when demand is low and . . . and. . . . and then we all drive our 43 miles and. . .and. . .
cripes are we farked!

patience · **Joined:** Fri Jan 04, 2008 1:00 am **Posts:** 2869

The son of our local electrical co-op board member told me to expect KWHR price to double in a couple years, due to new plant construction. If we get a carbon tax, Indiana coal-generated power will be costly indeed. Thus my solar system, and lots of usage cutbacks.

frankthetank · **Posted:** Fri Jul 18, 2008 8:19 pm

What about those nuke plants? The McCain Nuke Initiative? Have they started building those yet? How many are completed?

SILENTTODD · **Posted:** Fri Jul 18, 2008 8:36 pm

I heard Edward Teller tell me in 1966 we were going to have fusion by 1975. What happened!?

lawnchair · **Joined:** Wed Oct 20, 2004 12:00 am **Posts:** 888

frankthetank wrote:

What about those nuke plants? The McCain Nuke Initiative? Have they started building those yet? How many are completed?

The NRC has accepted applications on 13 units at 8 locations in the last year, and are anticipating a total of at least thirty unit-applications in the next year-and-a-half. Since there hadn't been any applications for decades, that's right impressive. Sadly, the 8 applications already filed include four different reactor types, with others in review. Standardization? Not in this country!
McCain's "45 new plants" speech seems pretty weak when 30 of them are already in the pipeline.

startswithearthquakes · **Joined:** Tue May 27, 2008 12:00 am **Posts:** 92

oh nooozz!!!1 Doom DOO00M DoOooOOMMm

cube · **Joined:** Sat Mar 12, 2005 1:00 am **Posts:** 3955

frankthetank wrote:

What about those nuke plants? The McCain Nuke Initiative? Have they started building those yet? How many are completed?

The McCain plan == 45 nuclear plants
however....
People tend to forget we have 104 nuclear power reactors currently in operation and MOST of them are near the end of their "service life".

We need to build a hundred nuclear power reactors just to stay even.

Twilight · **Joined:** Fri Mar 02, 2007 1:00 am **Posts:** 3062

Perhaps as in the UK, there is no direct comparison between an old and new nuclear power plant due to the greatly increased size of the new ones? It is possible that what has been proposed would allow the US to "stay even".

The grid issue is very real though, and the last thing we need is to scale mass-ownership of mains-charged electric cars into this environment.

US electrical infrastructure near breaking point

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