Climate change’s impact on the Hoover Dam, slowly, slowly, then all at once.
Gemini says:
Critical Threshold: When the water level falls below 1,035 feet, 12 of the dam’s 17 main turbines will lose enough water pressure to operate.
Power Loss: This drop will slash the dam’s electricity generation capacity by 70% to 80%.
Remaining Capacity: Only five specially modified wide-head turbines can function below 1,035 feet, down to a lower limit of 950 feet.
“Dead pool” sounds like the end of the story, but it has a specific meaning. It is the point at which a reservoir drops so low that water can no longer flow out past the dam and continue downstream. The lake is not empty when this happens. There is still plenty of water in it. That water just sits there, stuck below the dam’s outlets, unable to reach the cities and farms that depend on it.
Formed by holding back the Colorado River with Hoover Dam, Lake Mead was designed to hold up to 28.9 million acre-feet (roughly 9.4 trillion gallons or 36 trillion liters) of water at full capacity. A multi-decade megadrought across the American Southwest, combined with heavy municipal and agricultural water demand, has severely depleted the reservoir. It now sits below 30% of capacity, and in August 2026 it fell to its lowest level since the lake first filled in the 1930s, leaving a deficit of roughly 20 million acre-feet.
That deficit raises an obvious question: how long would it take to refill Lake Mead to its designed capacity? In purely theoretical terms, cutting the outflow or boosting the inflow could do it in as few as two to three years. Under a more realistic scenario that depends on vastly improved water management and favorable weather, a refill could take 30 to 50 years, and even that may be optimistic. It is entirely possible that the reservoir never again reaches full capacity.
That’s why we need more nuclear power.
Certainly why we need more solar PV, CSP, onshore and offshore wind, to use some of the 60,000 US dams higher than 7 feet that aren’t used for power now, geothermal, tidal, and for now, some bioenergies.
Nobody needs nuclear. Ever.
Lake Meade and other reservoirs appear to be being sacrificed so that Lake Powell doesn’t suffer the same fate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iO4o10NEXw
And?
“High temperatures have forced France to shut down multiple nuclear reactors, exposing the vulnerability of nuclear power to climate change and its profound impact on the French economy and European energy markets.”
https://www.franceeconomicdaily.com/en/articles/france-nuclear-reactors-heatwave-energy-resilience
Excellent idea! Like Fukushima!
https://images.cartoonstock.com/lowres/miscellaneous-speed_bump-rubs-rubbed-villain-whiplash-CG126937_low.jpg
Or put them far away from the sea (and most of the world’s population). But also somewhere far from important wildlife (or cultural or historical heritage sites.) And far from rivers and lakes so they don’t heat or deplete them (but near water so they can stay cool. Uh… maybe up in the sky in places where it rains a lot.)
Nuclear power, in the US at least, takes too long and costs too much. And with higher interest rates, every month of delay makes the debt to capital balloon. Nobody knows how to build nukes in the US any more, and right now more major construction projects are for expedited mega data centers.
If only there were some other source of power available in the Arizona/Nevada deserts that didn’t depend on water….
Build nukes within range of the sea for cooling.
August 2018:
Warm cooling water forces Swedish nuclear reactor Ringhals 2 out of operation
“The continued warm weather in Sweden has brought the sea water close to 25 degrees during recent days. To maintain cooling capacity at Ringhals’ production facilities, sea water is used for cooling of various systems and components in the process. The sea water used for cooling Ringhals 2 has now reached a temperature that makes it necessary to take the reactor out of operation.”
https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/newsroom/2018/warm-cooling-water-forces-swedish-nuclear-reactor-ringhals-2-out-of-operation/