The utility can't give them back the power generated ten hours earlier, because there is no effective way to store power at utility scale.
As usual, there's a grain of truth in here, but, since realtime peak solar output is still not within TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE of demand, this is still a bullshit argument.
"Too cheap to meter" is the best example of a straw man argument I've ever heard. Absolutely no one believes nuclear energy is too cheap to meter.
...to put those big scary "$4.4 billion" numbers in there without context. It sounds like a lot of money (especially to people unfamiliar with the industry) but that number is the retail value of approximately 18 months of electrical generation for units 2 & 3 at San Onofre.
$608 million decommissioning seem less ridiculous, this still seems much more expensive then it ought to be.
For perspective, that plant likely produced on the order of a quarter-million dollars worth of electricity EVERY HOUR, round the clock, for decades, so $608 million is not a very exciting figure, even if true.
This is actually great news. It means that decommissioning only costs the equivalent of 3 months worth of full-production output--a bargain.
Rowe was constructed before there were widespread protests against nuclear power, and it was still too expensive.
If 1960s technology wasn't good enough, we may as well give up. That's what I always say.
All it would take is one kid getting sick
Urine is sterile. It literally can't make you sick at the concentrations in question. Case dismissed.
it will lose or gain only one second every 300 million years
Can't they just leave a note to the future people to click it forward/back at the right time?
If the clock in question supports 9-digit years, they could even set an alarm...
You could have a secret number on a scratch card that needs to be transmitted to the phone for it to "suicide".
If the premise is that I can't even avoid losing my phone, how am I, as its sole curator, expected to keep track of this number?
Americans currently spend around $580 million replacing stolen phones each year and $4.8 billion paying for handset insurance.
At that factor of 8, folks, is why insurance is a bad investment. Americans could save $4.3B per year by not buying insurance with a poor ROI.
What do you imagine a replacement battery pack will cost for a school bus?
On the order of $0.10/Wh, by the time it matters. Modern Li cells are outlasting anyone's expectations in traction applications; they're not the weak link that you imply.
Unless you want to take kids on a field trip...
It doesn't make any sense to optimize for outlier trips like that, unless you have money to burn. Rather, you keep a few diesel buses around.
PV is better (economically, for efficiency, and for the grid) when it's stationary and grid-connected, and range extenders negate the benefits of the simple electric powertrain (bringing back ICE maintenance). A "range extended" EV embodies the complexity of both a full-power EV and a convention internal combustion powetrain.
PV could be installed, to also help with range
It doesn't need any "help with range". Fleet vehicles (like school buses) are already a near-ideal case for electrification; they follow well established routes and schedules. Range is either sufficient or not, and once sufficient, the marginal value of additional range is zero.
Basically you have to get charging time down below about 10 minutes for at least 200 miles of range.
That's only required to make electrics practical for the last 3-4% of transportation needs. Several standard deviations of our driving can be met with existing technology. Overnight charging at 6-12 kW is ideal because it's cheapest, and it happens while you do other things (like sleep), and it's when the grid is the cleanest.
The report makes it pretty clear that saving the Columbia was about as realistic as saving the Titanic.
I'm glad you weren't in charge of Apollo 13. : ) Seriously, I think your interpretation is unusual (or maybe we're talking about different documents). The CAIB pretty clearly says the scenarious were plausible. Obviously risky, with no guarantee of success, but not impossible. I can't see how you got from that to "certain doom".
The Columbia crew were dead men walking the moment the foam damaged the tiles. Columba was a wreck the moment the foam caused the damage. She would never reach earth's surface whole once she entered space.
This claim was solidly refuted in the official accident investigation report, which explores parallel scenarios--one for rescue, and another for improvised repair while on orbit.
The report is a fascinating read, by the way, and highly recommended. It manages to be satisfyingly technical without going over the head of a typical engineer or even lay person.
"The Computer made me do it."
