I have been keeping an eye on the water situation in CA as well. The Sanfran bay area used to have evap ponds to produce salt. Why not desalinate sea water and pump the left over brine into the ponds and carry on producing salt.!!!
Really Bill, per California propositions XX, salt has been known to cause cancer and is also a deadly chemical. They are not allowed to produce it there any more. Gas and diesel is next.....
Had a guy for Proctor and Gamble call last week and they are looking at having their 40mmBTU hot oil system legislated and permitted out of
existence and they are looking at electric heat.. asked him where is he going to find 12mw of power for an electric system in Cali? He said he should probably start there and then call me back if they find that kind of power.
10 and 15 years ago, all I can remember anymore saying is "fixing this will cost $xxxxxxxxxxxx...too much", Guess what, not fixing is costing one to two x more than if we'd been smart about this thing all along.
OK David. In the past I bought many thousands of tonnes over the years ( solar salt ) from Cargill. Each year 4000 tonne barge load, ship it to Kitimat and distribute it throughout northern B.C. and the Yukon for winter use. Retired now for 7 years so not up to date. The last couple of years I got it from K-way / Central Canada Potash in Saskatchewan Can. FYI the planet consumes 40 million tonnes a year, maybe the VERY smart people in politics should rethink the idea in the bay area. The brine from desalination can not be disposed of back into the ocean. Could be a win for everyone !!!!
They have to stop producing electric through the dam. At some point, there will no longer be hydraulic head enough to spin the turbines anyhow so it seems common sense to me to stop all together and seek other forms of power from solar. That would allow the lake the refill. But I am sure all the government people and environmentalists have it all figured out.
As bad as the loss of significant generation in the Western Interconnect is, the loss of the water is the real concern, and that's gonna happen no matter what as long as people refuse to understand we can't maintain the economies of the past, we can't continue to procreate as many offspring as we want, and we can't continue to pretend it will go away when all of us old folks are patted in the face with a shovel.
The truth is that humanity will absolutely cease to exist. There is no way around this. Might be in the near future, in 100 years, a thousand years, a million years. The universe came into existence for no reason whatsoever. There is no objective meaning to life, sure you can come up with your own subjective meaning for life and I will line up 1 million people who will tell you that you are completely wrong. There is no right/wrong, no good/evil. There is nothing when you die, just complete obliteration and you will be completely forgotten after a few generations.
Unless there is a God...
I love the discussion in the media about pumping water from the Mississippi to the west. Uhhhh, yeah, right.
I guess putting things off in addressing climate change, due to cost, hasn't turned out to be very cost effective. Can't wait for the price of produce to skyrocket when these farms, dependent on this water, can no longer harvest a crop anymore.
Plenty of water and abundant electrical power = nukes, and desalination = just a matter of time before people realize that the solution is right in front of their faces.
Here's a general overview of the components and issues of destination plants in Isreal.
...one more time:
Chernobyl...Fukushima...Three Mile Island...Rocky Flats Plant...Hanford nuke plant and "waste storage" site...SL-1...Windscale...Saint-Laurent...etc....
If a coal or nat gas power plant blows up - or IS BLOWN up - it's no real or long-term biggie. Just go in and repair it, 'throw the switch' and it's right back in business. BUT............if a NUKE plant goes 'boom'.............