Texas in Crisis

[ideologyhunter]

Water mains? Russkie? We Russkies pride ourselves on our water mains, all made in first Five Year Plan (1919-1957). Less rust than Romanov mains!! Subject of great USSR feature film Vatvy-Monsk 257 (Water Main 257), which ran on double bill with Traktrizhk Rubinsk (Big Red Tractor) in State Cinema, 1959-1970.
Many audience see films. Many Soviet babies conceived during double feature.

 

[barbos]

Water mains? Russkie? We Russkies pride ourselves on our water mains, all made in first Five Year Plan (1919-1957). Less rust than Romanov mains!! Subject of great USSR feature film Vatvy-Monsk 257 (Water Main 257), which ran on double bill with Traktrizhk Rubinsk (Big Red Tractor) in State Cinema, 1959-1970.
Many audience see films. Many Soviet babies conceived during double feature.

Nah, keep your day job.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I still don't believe it. (I am talking about major water lines)

Maybe near house, but not main pipes. You can easily damage it by driving over it or doing yard work.
Regardless, 6 inches is deep enough to not freeze in one week of slightly subzero temperature.

Generally water pipes are prone to fail at its point of greatest weakness. It doesn't all need to freeze, just one part... like say where a valve is located.

And main pipes are plastic anyway.

You do realize that our infrastructure wasn't built in 2010, right? While new construction involves PVC, it hasn't always been PVC. Water lines in the US are made of all sorts of materials, including lead.

I was talking about major water lines. The ones which are at least 5" thick, They are deep and they are PE in new construction.

Our major water lines are 100 years old and growing! It's a good thing they built them well the first time! We pretty much let things fail and fix them as they do. We don't need freezing weather to have burst water mains.

It all depends on where the valves are located.

Now you are going to tell me that main valve was on a second floor?

As I noted later, it doesn't look like anyone was living there and that image is an empty rental... well... was a rental and will be a rental once the damage is fixed.

 

[TSwizzle]

And I highly doubt water mains never break in Russia.

Not on such supposedly massive scale

Water mains break quite frequently in the Los Angeles area. They are long overdue for replacement but not many seem to get replaced prior to failure. No money apparently but somehow California managed to raise and squander billions of dollars on a "high speed rail" project that few people wanted and even fewer will actually use. We were told to restrict our showers to two minutes, not flush the toilet for number ones, not to water our lawns, not to wash our cars and turn the tap off when brushing your teeth. Priorities eh ?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

No money apparently but somehow California managed to raise and squander billions of dollars on a "high speed rail" project that few people wanted and even fewer will actually use.

False. https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_1A,_High-Speed_Rail_Act_(2008)

In 2008, 6,680,485 Californians (52%, a majority) voted for the bill that approved a bond issue for the project. Of course I'm guessing you think all of those votes were fraudulent or some bullshit. Also this was 100% easily researchable.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

This has been a giant jujuflop fiasco. I wonder just how much this will in the future impact Texas politics. Ted Cruz may have just seen any dream of running for president in 2024 go down hard. Guvner Abbot may have just lost his re-election.All those tax hating Texans who are being slammed with $5000+ electrical bills are not going to forget this all. I haven't heard from Senator John Cornyn. Where is he hiding?

More wind turbines you fools! More wind turbines!

 

[Keith&Co.]

More wind turbines you fools! More wind turbines!

Winterized, too! If you're gonna deny climate change, at least prep your infrastructure so it can shrug off CC as well.

 

[bilby]

. Natgas generation has a rather evident vulnerability, its pipelines, but that does not exist for coal and nuclear generation. So what affected them?

I just read that reactors in Texas are shutting down due to problems getting enough cooling water.
Burst pipes, etc.

Nah. One unit shut down because of a feed water sensor failure (probably due to the cold).

The only issue was a sensor failure, and that was in the secondary cooling loop, so not part of the reactor itself. A SCRAM was certainly an over reaction, but that's SOP for nuclear plants - the rules say they must SCRAM for almost anything non-routine.

Which is fine, if your 'safety' focus is correct in assuming that the only dangers come from the fission process itself; But turns out not to be so great when people are literally freezing to death if the reactor stops generating power.

A broader focus on all sources of risk would have concluded that it's better to keep running, and take a minuscule increase in meltdown risk, than to shutdown and get a large and certain risk of hypothermia. Particularly as it takes a couple of days to restart the reactor after a SCRAM due to Xenon poisoning.

Even so, nuclear has failed the least of all Texas power sources during this crisis.

 

[TomC]

More wind turbines you fools! More wind turbines!

Winterized, too! If you're gonna deny climate change, at least prep your infrastructure so it can shrug off CC as well.

I've been trying to think of a simple and clear way to explain this.

Climate change doesn't mean everything gets a degree or two warmer. Adding heat to the atmosphere will result in more extreme and less predictable weather conditions, over all. Bigger hurricanes. Heavy cold in Texas. Drier conditions in California, resulting in more fires. Etc. Etc.


This sort of thing could happen to Texas anytime. But such freakish events will become more common as the biosphere warms up.

Tom

 

[Keith&Co.]

More wind turbines you fools! More wind turbines!

Winterized, too! If you're gonna deny climate change, at least prep your infrastructure so it can shrug off CC as well.

I've been trying to think of a simple and clear way to explain this.

Climate change doesn't mean everything gets a degree or two warmer. Adding heat to the atmosphere will result in more extreme and less predictable weather conditions, over all. Bigger hurricanes. Heavy cold in Texas. Drier conditions in California, resulting in more fires. Etc. Etc.


This sort of thing could happen to Texas anytime. But such freakish events will become more common as the biosphere warms up.

Tom

Someone described the weather system as a push-up bra. Used to be, the jet stream pushed the cold up on the pole and held it there.
You get occasional nip-slips, but it usually worked.

We've been drying the bra in a hot dryer, rather than gentle, and we've ruined the elastic. Now the push-up bra is more of a booby hammock, and massive bosoms of icy cold swing down lower and lower as the world turns.

There may have been more to the analogy, but i was lost to the image of giant snowy white death boobs vengefully motor-boating Texas....

 

[Gospel]

I've been trying to think of a simple and clear way to explain this.

Climate change doesn't mean everything gets a degree or two warmer. Adding heat to the atmosphere will result in more extreme and less predictable weather conditions, over all. Bigger hurricanes. Heavy cold in Texas. Drier conditions in California, resulting in more fires. Etc. Etc.


This sort of thing could happen to Texas anytime. But such freakish events will become more common as the biosphere warms up.

Tom

Someone described the weather system as a push-up bra. Used to be, the jet stream pushed the cold up on the pole and held it there.
You get occasional nip-slips, but it usually worked.

We've been drying the bra in a hot dryer, rather than gentle, and we've ruined the elastic. Now the push-up bra is more of a booby hammock, and massive bosoms of icy cold swing down lower and lower as the world turns.

There may have been more to the analogy, but i was lost to the image of giant snowy white death boobs vengefully motor-boating Texas....

Man if I didn't believe in climate change I wood would now.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

So, Ted Crud runs off to Cancun when bad weather was coming to Texas. Leaving his poor white Poodle, "Snowflake", behind in a cold, cold house. Cruz has definitely lost the poodle fanciers of Texas votes.

 

[ideologyhunter]

So now it's the Forgotten Dog. Trump missed that theme. I'd love to know the mindset of the working class Texan who would still vote for this turd blossom.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Democrats = socialists! Cruz + anti-socialist. That is Texas politics in a nutshell.

 

[Keith&Co.]

. I'd love to know the mindset of the working class Texan who would still vote for this turd blossom.

He's not 'that socialist AOC.'
Or 'that pedo assassin Hillary.'
Or 'that bitch Pelosi.'


Pretty much it.

He's the choice left after the boogeyman-ification of any rational alternatives.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So now it's the Forgotten Dog. Trump missed that theme.

Least he didn't put the dog on the roof of the car....

 

[bilby]

I don't understand all these videos with water gushing from the ceiling and utterly destroying house. Why not close the main valve?

A lot of people do not know where the main valve is. For some homes in Texas it may be outside, and frozen (or it may be inside, and frozen) where the outer diameter of the flow area is frozen but the inner diamter still passes water. Some may have turned off, but that’s how much water is left to drain.

Yeah, it's in the OP: Texas wasn't built for this shit.

None of it was built for this. It's like an earthquake happening where earthquakes don't generally happen.

And Texas is shunning national efforts to help.

Anyone up in this thread talking about wind power trying to blame it needs to get their head screwed back on right this time.

At any rate, it's a cheap retrofit to put different turbines on pylons.

Fixing a nuclear power plant's burst pipes? That's gonna suck...

I guess this is what you get when you try to duck federal regulations to make a quick buck.

No nuclear power plants have suffered any burst pipes. One (of four) reactors was shut down due to a sensor error. One of several redundant sensors in one of four reactors gave a false reading, and the insanely cautious regulations demanded that the reactor be shut down in such circumstances. Which would be hyper-cautious under normal conditions, but is positively dangerous when the state is already seeing deaths due to insufficient generation.

The lesson here is not to be so stupidly scared by nuclear power plants.

 

[Rhea]

No nuclear power plants have suffered any burst pipes. One (of four) reactors was shut down due to a sensor error. One of several redundant sensors in one of four reactors gave a false reading, and the insanely cautious regulations demanded that the reactor be shut down in such circumstances. Which would be hyper-cautious under normal conditions, but is positively dangerous when the state is already seeing deaths due to insufficient generation.

The lesson here is not to be so stupidly scared by nuclear power plants.

Wellll, hang on now.

The reason Texas is having such terrible woes is that they chose to avoid regulations by making their own power grid so they could skip maintenance and preparedness steps which lack is now actively causing failures.

Are you sure promoting nuclear power to a state with a proven track record of not just ignoring but celebrating the lack of safeguards is a prudent move?

 

[Angra Mainyu]

No nuclear power plants have suffered any burst pipes. One (of four) reactors was shut down due to a sensor error. One of several redundant sensors in one of four reactors gave a false reading, and the insanely cautious regulations demanded that the reactor be shut down in such circumstances. Which would be hyper-cautious under normal conditions, but is positively dangerous when the state is already seeing deaths due to insufficient generation.

The lesson here is not to be so stupidly scared by nuclear power plants.

Wellll, hang on now.

The reason Texas is having such terrible woes is that they chose to avoid regulations by making their own power grid so they could skip maintenance and preparedness steps which lack is now actively causing failures.

Are you sure promoting nuclear power to a state with a proven track record of not just ignoring but celebrating the lack of safeguards is a prudent move?

Have you seen any lack of safeguards in nuclear power stations in Texas?

Looks like they are being too cautious, going by bilby's info.

 

[Deepak]

No nuclear power plants have suffered any burst pipes. One (of four) reactors was shut down due to a sensor error. One of several redundant sensors in one of four reactors gave a false reading, and the insanely cautious regulations demanded that the reactor be shut down in such circumstances. Which would be hyper-cautious under normal conditions, but is positively dangerous when the state is already seeing deaths due to insufficient generation.

The lesson here is not to be so stupidly scared by nuclear power plants.

Wellll, hang on now.

The reason Texas is having such terrible woes is that they chose to avoid regulations by making their own power grid so they could skip maintenance and preparedness steps which lack is now actively causing failures.

Are you sure promoting nuclear power to a state with a proven track record of not just ignoring but celebrating the lack of safeguards is a prudent move?

Have you seen any lack of safeguards in nuclear power stations in Texas?

Looks like they are being too cautious, going by bilby's info.

I’m capable of holding both ideas in my head. If there’s any place where Chernobyl style negligence would happen in the US it would be Texas.