According to http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/cooling_power_plants_inf121.html a nuclear power plant would need approximately 830 gallons per megawatt-hour of energy produced. Assume a one gigawatt (1,000,000,000 watts) power plant running at capacity and you have 830,000 gallons per hour or 30.8 cubic feet per second. Lowest recorded flow rate in the past week was about 900 cubic feet per second ( http://waterdata.usgs.gov/fl/nwis/uv?format=gif&period=7&site_no=02375500 ), so cooling demand should be about 3.4%.

Currently it’s up near 5,000 cubic feet per second so that’d be about 0.6% of current flow rate. The lowest flow ever recorded was in October 2001 at 555 cubic per second ( http://wdr.water.usgs.gov/wy2010/pdfs/02375500.2010.PDF ), that would be 5.6% of total flow.

- A smaller plant would have lower demand.
- Lower power demand times of the day or year would have lower water demand.
- Other cooling designs would have lower water demand.
This is true whether the power plant were nuclear, coal, natural gas or even solar-thermal (lots of mirrors heating a focal point with sunlight).

What they’d actually build is yet to be determined. I’m just talking in generalities.

There would be lots of public hearings with lots of screaming and shouting ere anything happened.

David considering water and noise

Eminent domain hasn’t come into play other than in the minds of those looking for an excuse to oppose. Nor does it apply.

Just admit you’re scared of radioactive materials, ignore the fact a coal fired power plant puts them out and a nuclear plant doesn’t.

“Yes they do, yes they do! Look at Japan! Look at Chernobyl.”

Chernobyl used a graphite moderator system. Graphite doesn’t melt but DOES burn. They drained the cooling water and were surprised to see it caught fire. (Whodathunk?) The fire spread radioactive material over a large area. (Wildlife are doing well in that area.)

Nuclear power plants in the USA were designed to melt down if they lost coolant and mix with neutron absorbing material to kill the reaction. The one in Japan used that design and lost coolant (also known as water) when an earthquake took the reactors off line and the tsunami drowned the backup electrical generators. Notice tsunamis would have to wipe out the entire county to reach the heights proposed here so we wouldn’t care either way, already being dead and all.

Even with power loss, this new design is set up to continue to provide coolant to the reactor so even if you lucked out and got the earthquake and tsunamis you‘re wanting, it still wouldn’t melt down. (Not that we’re on a major fault line.)

David considering failure modes

We must make a concerted effort to stop it, just like the folks in Conecuh Co. have with the landfill situation. Oh that affects Escambia Co AL and FL too–same watershed!!

The actual center is solid, not molten. It is surrounded by liquid. (This is based on his seismic waves are transmitted through the earth.)

Pressure by itself does not generate any thermal energy. I can’t just squeeze a bar of iron and make it melt. (only Superman can do that)

The core of the earth isn’t made of one hundred percent pure elemental iron. There are many radioactive isotopes throughout the planet. As they decay, they give off small bits of energy. The energy mounts up enough to melt iron because it can’t quickly escape from thousands of miles underground. This also powers plate tectonics.

David contemplating heat transfer,
Potassium-40, and other isotopes

They don’t.
But I wasn’t aware that cars and planes have safety systems in place that will shut sown the car and safely pull it off the road and alert the proper response teams if you speed or drive drunk, or some other activity that is wreckless. American designed nuclear safety systems and the inherent designs of our nuke plants have these “features”. Not to mention that it is, by far easier and involves a much less thorough background check to get a drivers license or a pilot license. I would venture to say that a lot of reactor operators are former navy nukes, and therefore have, atleast in the past, held a secret or top secret security clearance. How many automobile drivers do you believe could be trusted with that sort of information that the clearance involves? As a percentage, I would guess, not above 10%. The people that operate these plants also have to undergo extensive background checks to ensure thier viability as an operator.

1 incident on American soil since its inception, versus thousands and thousands of life ending disasters caused every day; the vast majority caused by someone’s irresponsibility. I say that I trust nuclear power 100x’s more than I trust another driver.