Reply #21: More "greenie logic" - aka "illogic"

[PamW]

Getting rid of Rancho Sucko (Seco) cost a lot, but was ultimately cost saving to people in
=================

None of the efficiencies quoted were contingent on the plant shutting down.

Evidently it didn't occur to you that the residents of Sacramento could have had
all those advantages of increasing efficiency, as well as having cheap power from
a nuclear reactor if they just let someone run it that knew how - like Duke Energy.

Here's a little history of the sordid Rancho Seco tale:

http://www.energy-net.org/01NUKE/RSECOT.HTM

Look at all those shutdowns for things like "loose parts in generator", and trouble
with "feedwater flow", and "turbine vibrations". It wasn't the reactor SMUD had
trouble running - it was the Rankine steam cycle plant. That's the part of a nuclear
plant that is the same in a fossil plant. If Rancho Seco had been a coal plant, SMUD
couldn't run it either - they were that bad.

However, the Rankine steam cycle is at the heart of most of the powerplants in the nation,
and there are people that know how to run it.

So it didn't occur to the "greenie logic" that the benefits of the nuclear plant and
the benefits of increased efficiency are not mutually exclusive.

Sacramento could have had both halves of the loaf instead of one.

PamW