(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
For September 1, 2022
by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/20220901-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf
A Note to Readers
Our cover photo today is of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear power plant in California. On Wednesday, August 31, the California legislature voted to extend Diablo Canyon nuclear plant operations, bringing to a close a fight that until two months ago was considered a lost cause. Facing the reality of black outs, even Governor Newsom began campaigning to extend the life of the plant, submitting a bill just two weeks ago to do so.
With an extreme heat wave now engulfing the state, and with the threat of blackouts and the governor declaring an emergency, urging everyone to shut down their air conditioners this Labor Day weekend, underlining, once again, the irresponsible attempt to run the largest state in the country on “renewables,” this breath of sanity is very welcome.
A great victory for sanity has occurred in the state that has led the anti-nuclear cult for decades, with, of course, a boost to nuclear power everywhere.
In addition, we have the following quotation from an article published yesterday:
How To Turn Desalination Waste From Burden To Profit
By: Tristan Justice
August 31, 2022
Initial plans at Diablo Canyon reportedly included six reactors as opposed to just the two standing today. The extra four were meant to enable the plant to integrate operations for desalination processes, allowing Californians to capitalize on an abundant source of water in a parched region.
A joint study from Stanford and MIT researchers published last year concluded extending the lifetime of the nuclear plant to 2035 would cut state power sector carbon emissions by more than 10 percent compared to 2017, and strengthen an increasingly fragile regional power grid from rolling blackouts experienced in recent years.
Moreover, “operating Diablo Canyon as a polygeneration facility — with coordinated and varying production of electricity, desalinated water, and clean hydrogen,” they wrote, “could provide multiple services to California, including grid reliability as needed, and further increase the value of the Diablo Canyon electricity plant by nearly 50 [percent].”
And just to have a little fun, we have this headline today:
California is the first state to make electric cars mandatory. Now it’s telling owners not to charge them
BY Alena Botros
September 1, 2022 at 4:16 PM PDT
California asks EV owners to limit charging amid heat wave.
California approved a plan last week to end the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, making it the first state to try to switch exclusively to electric and other zero-emission vehicles.
But now state officials are telling drivers not to charge their electric cars during the upcoming Labor Day weekend, when temperatures are expected to hit triple digits for millions of residents, putting a strain on the power grid.
In the rest of this week’s report:
The U.S. Drought Monitor this week shows the slight decline in drought intensity this past week due to Summer Monsoons throughout the Southwest region.
Fifty years of shutting down U.S. industry and not building infrastructure, has, as forecast at the time by Lyndon LaRouche, virtually destroyed the nation’s ability to sustain its own population. In addition, now with more than 100,000 drug overdoes annually, on top of Covid, for the first time in more than a century, we have a dramatic two-year decline in U.S. life expectancy.
The temperatures today were over 100 degrees for large parts of California: “Fires rage, power grid tested as most intense heat wave of year hits Southern California”
Drought and its impact on the food supply, is our next section, with this headline to begin with: “Cattle Herds Are Being Decimated and Crops are Left to Die, as Drought and Water Cut-offs Spread from the West Coast to the Midwest.”
I have presented over the last few weeks extensive reports on the Colorado River and the intention of the Bureau of Reclamation to ensure that the river and the reservoirs will continue to provide water and electricity. That requires, according to the Bureau, two to four million acre feet cut from what the seven states annually take. This week, I just include a few reports that update the negotiations now underway among the states, and the fears expressed by agricultural interests of what that will mean for them.
