Public land theft

Good for onX, making this information available to the public.

“Good for onX, making this information available to the public.” Yep. and good for Terran for making this available to us here.

that said, the map is broad brush. Is some land being made available for solar panels or windmills? I might back that, depending. Of course, with the current administration, it would seem likely that lands are being sold to private interests for exploitation of timber and mineral resources. I almost wrote “wealth” instead of “resources”. But in most cases the wealth is in leaving the land alone. this sort of wealth is a gift that we found already there. Moreover, it’s part of a planetary ecosystem whose complexity still escapes us. we know at least that forests convert Co2 into oxygen. One might think that oxygen is both wealth and gift. But no, in our day we measure wealth as shareholder returns. Few understand the spiritual benefits of wilderness or even know what nourishing the soul for free in a wild landscape is all about. Watching a romcom on Netflix is not the same. although nothing wrong with this last!

For electrical power you need transmission lines which are best placed along the major roadways. The best place for solar is on the roof. Everything else is a scam. This is a land grab and nothing else. Land that we’ve paid for and protected. It is our land. It always will be. There is no difference between Russia stealing land or MAGA stealing land. They both work off of violence.

My dad lived in a gated community in Indian Wells, near Palm Springs. Over the years the community would build out into the desert sands every year, until a housing crunch hit. there’s hundreds of square miles of desert around this greater area. Putting a relatively small solar array–perhaps and acre?-could power the entire community. And yes of course solar on each condo would be best, but that hasn’t happened. One has to work with the reality we’ve inherited.

There are windmills up on the pass before dropping into Palm Springs that generate electricity. Yes, these can be bad for birds. But they’re a useful part of energy production for the area. Dams on the Colorado are more problematic still.

Every new home built throughout the southwest should be required to have solar panels. But I’m not the king of the forest and I can’t make that happen, as obvious as it is.

Vote, folks. Folly in leadership always ends badly. a crisis is always just around the corner and those in positions of authority are incompetent.

I’m biting my tongue to stay within guidelines.

El Dorado?

I’m biting my tongue to stay within guidelines.
Me too!
Cheers

In Oregon, solar panels are best east of the cascades, where it’s sunny more.  And maybe some north and some south in case its sunny more one place than another.

Windmills are best in the Columbia gorge where it’s windy.  West and east ends because sometimes its windier one or the other.  And some on the coast because sometimes it’s windier there…

The biggest problem with transmission lines is it take 10 years to get regulatory approval.  We have passed environmental laws that are designed to delay things, even environmentally friendly things like transmission lines that are required to transition away from fossil fuels.

If you don’t provide electricity every time, people will balk and vote for people that will switch subsidies from renewables to fossil fuels.

It’s a complicated problem. Solar panels on roofs have less transmission loss but you have to look at everything.

This is a land grab and nothing else. Land that we’ve paid for and protected. It is our land. It always will be. There is no difference between Russia stealing land or MAGA stealing land. They both work off of violence.

I don’t consider public land sales as “theft”: that term has very specific definitions, and in my opinion the act of legal ownership transition – regardless of the commodity – does not fit them.

That being said: land ownership can be a sticky topic.  This is especially true in the western United States, with the occupation and acquisition of land inhabited by native peoples so recent in the country’s past. That chapter in America’s history reduces most clear-cut statements of land “ownership” to difficult questions of ethics and morality, at best.  In this particular situation, one could probably make a better argument for the property reduction being a sale of stolen goods than theft, in and of itself.

Jerry makes good points.

I grew up around Seattle. When solar first came out, I recall having a conversation with my high school debate partner and extolling the advantages of solar. He said, “Jeff, look around. How often does the sun shine?” We were in the long months of winter in the PNW. I shrugged and said, “Yeah, you’re right.” I had no idea at the time that sun can shine 12 months out of the year in many locations, or 10 or 11.

Jerry’s in the PNW. He’s right that it takes a mix of wind, solar, dams and I’d add MODERN small nuclear plants to address the current crisis. And global warming remains a crisis, although it’s been drowned out by gestapo style actions and g’vt. lawlessness lately here at home.

Throughout the Southwest of the U.S., where the largest population gains are taking place, solar is perfect. Rooftop solar is simple and easy. Small arrays that feed adjacent communities is also easy. Large arrays out in the desert, coupled with wind, will reduce the demand for carbon emitting options. Better is better, even if it’s not perfect. Nothing is perfect. A rational approach would be to assess the options for any given region and proceed from there. And proceed quickly! But that’s not how things work.

There is a company Terra Power, and probably others

They burn depleted uranium, that is, convert it to plutonium in the reactor and then fission that.  So, they use up the nuclear waste produced by other plants, not produce more, although they produce lower lifetime waste.

They heat up sodium and can store it when there’s plenty of alternate energy, then use that stored, heated sodium to produce electricity when the sun sets and the wind stops blowing.

It’s a small reactor.  They can make them in a factory, rather than a unique design for each mega nuclear plant.

If the reactor has to shut down, it doesn’t need to keep cooling for years to avoid a fukashima type disaster.

There is a large source of depleted uranium.  Regular Uranium for regular plants (U235) is in short supply and it’s difficult to refine.  Thorium is another good fuel proposed for some reactors.

“It’s a small reactor.  They can make them in a factory, rather than a unique design for each mega nuclear plant.”

a small nuclear reactor that’s cheap to build and that uses up nuclear waste as fuel? and doesn’t produce waste? If it’s safe, what’s not to like?

China is going in the opposite direction, with a new huge dam in the works with a unique design to built in Tibet very near a very active earthquake fault. How active? an 8.6 earthquake killed thousands and caused huge landslides in recent times. It’s the Himalayas! Three Gorges dam is a disaster in the works. In a hundred different ways. these Stalin era grand projects are outdated.

A small entirely clean nuclear reactor (if possible) is a better option. Fewer dams, other options is ideal. Hell, de-commission dams wherever possible.

Theory
Theory
Theory
No products yet, but many promises to the investors.
Driven by the same guy who invented Windows.
Yeah, right.

Cheers

Right up there with “clean coal”. If you need nuclear waste as fuel, you need to produce nuclear waste. Odd to think there once was a time when we had no electricity at our disposal. Somehow we existed.

Yeah, no product yet.  But, we’ve done it in experimental reactors so it’s probably possible to commercialize it. We have to try multiple solutions and scale up what works.

It’s not that you have to create nuclear waste for this to work, it’s that we have all this nuclear waste already and we can’t figure out what to do with it

Burning it would be better than storing it.

People keep discounting the problem of storing it, just saying it’s solvable, but so far we’ve been unable to find a solution.  People don’t want it stored in their backyard.

Fusion has been 10 years away for 50 years.  They might get that to work eventually. We sure spend a lot of money on it.

I’ve been following the news in liquid salt reactors for a few years. The idea has been around for a long time, but they have trouble containing the very high temperature salt. Apparently it is super corrosive.

Still, they have several advantages, as Jerry said. Some designs can burn thorium, which is more abundant than uranium, and less dangerous.

The hope for modular reactors is that they could dramatically reduce licensing burden as well. Get the design approved in detail at the factor then (theoretically), getting approval to install one should be relatively simple. That’s the idea anyway.

It’s interesting stuff to watch. We could be on the cusp of seeing nuclear power return, possibly more popular than ever. That seems better than burning fossil fuels.

Theory.
But when you transition to practical commercial reality you run into cost-cutting, shoddy engineering, corruption, political influence, and so on. Ha – all run by an untested A I !
‘She’ll be right mate’.
A whole bucket of very hot molten sodium – fun stuff.

Cheers
PS: as an undergrad, I studied nuclear physics.

Vaporware.

Just hope it is not sodium vapour in a mushroom cloud.

The worst nuclear plant catastrophes have occurred in an ancient Russian plant–Chernobyl–and another in Japan where the plant was overwhelmed by a tsunami.

a small, safe nuclear plant that burns off the waste we’ve accumulated from current plants would be welcome. No CO2 put into the atmosphere, tens of thousands of homes powered. As part of a mix of solar, wind, and remaining dams, this could be a good mixed energy formula.

Engineering has come a long way since Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. I grew up hating nuclear and was glad to see it gone. But now, with global warming, I’m looking for quick alternatives to coal and oil for energy production. I’m willing to look at nuclear now.

All that said, I know nothing about these proposed plants that Jerry mentioned, yet. I’ll look into it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/style/isabelle-boemke-nuclear-influencer-rad-future.html – this will convince people – influencer Isabel boenke kissed a casket of spent fuel rods showing how safe it is

Couple of thoughts:

• Theory is usually a good place to start.
• Sodium is – and has always been seen as – a transitional solution.
• Thorium is also a transitional solution, and possibly a better one than uberheated salt.
• Jerry makes some good points.
• Fusion would be nice.
• Sure, we existed without electricity…but we didn’t thrive.
• Public land might be a good place to put a few clean, efficient, power-surplus-generating dinguses.

influencer Isabel boenke kissed a casket of spent fuel rods showing how safe it is
Total exposure: a few seconds.
Wait 5 years for the cancer to show up.

Don’t put the mini-reactor on public lands. Instead put it in the promotor’s back yard.

Cheers

Are we thriving or just overpopulating?

If we weren’t able to post on a social media like BPL we would not be thriving : )

If the only argument for nuclear plant safety was an influencer kissing a casket, then we should not do them : )

A con I could think of is when proponents of nuclear power say that there have been no deaths from nuclear plants, my spidey senses tell me those people are over confident and I fear they’ll make a mistake.

Fukashima is a good example.  The sea wall was too low, plus, it had sunk from subsidence so it was even lower.  They should have put the generators required to prevent the plant from blowing up higher up in the building – tsunamis were a know risk.

Three Mile Island released a bunch of radiation.  Nobody died like at Hiroshima, but there were probably many cancer deaths.

I’m not pro or con, just watching what’s happening.

That Terra Power plant would be really good if they could make it commercially.  It worries me that in this political environment, we are deregulating everything, so there will be less oversight on the Terra Power design, more likely to have bad events in the future.