A "REAL" SHTF problem....Lake Oroville Hydro Power Plant Shut Down.....no water.

[Supervisor42]

Supervisor,
I don't know where you got your information but in 1965 the first liquid Fluoride Thorium reactor went critical. It was tested for several years and then shut down because the infrastructure had been set up for the high pressure Uranium/Plutonium reactors that could produce bomb material.
The test article at Oak Ridge National Labs was shut down.
...
All you have to do is search for liquid fluoride thorium reactor and you can get a lot more real information. HERE is one strong proponent who got his information from the Oak Ridge National lab history.

I love real information!
Like from Wikipedia and not some propagandists.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor

Alvin M. Weinberg pioneered the use of the MSR at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At ORNL, two prototype molten salt reactors were successfully designed, constructed and operated. These were the Aircraft Reactor Experiment in 1954 and Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment from 1965 to 1969. Both test reactors used liquid fluoride fuel salts. The MSRE notably demonstrated fueling with U-233 and U-235 during separate test runs. Weinberg was removed from his post and the MSR program closed down in the early 1970s, after which research stagnated in the United States. Today, the ARE and the MSRE remain the only molten salt reactors ever operated.

There's a really big reason only 2 were ever built.
And if it was such wonderful technology, there must be some really big reasons that they are not everywhere today:
(From the Wikipedia page and not Mr. Yang)
Disadvantages:
LFTRs are quite unlike today's operating commercial power reactors. These differences create design difficulties and trade-offs:

• No large scale production yet – A 2014 study from the University of Chicago concluded that since this design hasn't yet reach the commercial phase, full economic advantages won't be realized without the advantages of large scale production: "Although substation cost-savings are associated with the building of a LFTR in comparison to a traditional uranium plant, the difference in cost, given the current industry environment [as of 2014], remains insufficient to justify the creation of a new LFTR"
• Reaching break-even breeding is questionable – While the plans usually call for break-even breeding, it is questionable if this is possible, when other requirements are to be met. The thorium fuel cycle has very few spare neutrons. Due to limited chemical reprocessing (for economic reasons) and compromises needed to achieve safety requirements like a negative void coefficient too many neutrons may be lost. Old proposed single fluid designs promising breeding performance tend to have an unsafe positive void coefficient and often assume excessive fuel cleaning to be economic viable.
• Still much development needed – Despite the ARE and MSRE experimental reactors already built in the 1960s, there is still a lot of development needed for the LFTR. This includes most of the chemical separation, (passive) emergency cooling, the tritium barrier, remote operated maintenance, large scale Li-7 production, the high temperature power cycle and more durable materials.
• Startup fuel – Unlike mined uranium, mined thorium does not have a fissile isotope. Thorium reactors breed fissile uranium-233 from thorium, but require a small amount of fissile material for initial start up. There is relatively little of this material available. This raises the problem of how to start the reactors in a short time frame. One option is to produce U-233 in today's solid fueled reactors, then reprocess it out of the solid waste. An LFTR can also be started by other fissile isotopes, enriched uranium or plutonium from reactors or decommissioned bombs. For enriched uranium startup, high enrichment is needed. Decommissioned uranium bombs have enough enrichment, but not enough is available to start many LFTRs. It is difficult to separate plutonium fluoride from lanthanide fission products. One option for a two-fluid reactor is to operate with plutonium or enriched uranium in the fuel salt, breed U-233 in the blanket, and store it instead of returning it to the core. Instead, add plutonium or enriched uranium to continue the chain reaction, similar to today's solid fuel reactors. When enough U-233 is bred, replace the fuel with new fuel, retaining the U-233 for other startups. A similar option exists for a single-fluid reactor operating as a converter. Such a reactor would not reprocess fuel while operating. Instead the reactor would start on plutonium with thorium as the fertile and add plutonium. The plutonium eventually burns out and U-233 is produced in situ. At the end of the reactor fuel life, the spent fuel salt can be reprocessed to recover the bred U-233 to start up new LFTRs.
• Salts freezing – Fluoride salt mixtures have melting points ranging from 300 to 600 °C (572 to 1,112 °F). The salts, especially those with beryllium fluoride, are very viscous near their freezing point. This requires careful design and freeze protection in the containment and heat exchangers. Freezing must be prevented in normal operation, during transients, and during extended downtime. The primary loop salt contains the decay heat-generating fission products, which help to maintain the required temperature. For the MSBR, ORNL planned on keeping the entire reactor room (the hot cell) at high temperature. This avoided the need for individual electric heater lines on all piping and provided more even heating of the primary loop components. One "liquid oven" concept developed for molten salt-cooled, solid-fueled reactors employs a separate buffer salt pool containing the entire primary loop. Because of the high heat capacity and considerable density of the buffer salt, the buffer salt prevents fuel salt freezing and participates in the passive decay heat cooling system, provides radiation shielding and reduces deadweight stresses on primary loop components. This design could also be adopted for LFTRs.
• Beryllium toxicity – The proposed salt mixture FLiBe contains large amounts of beryllium, which is toxic to humans (although nowhere near as toxic as the fission products and other radioactives). The salt in the primary cooling loops must be isolated from workers and the environment to prevent beryllium poisoning. This is routinely done in industry. Based on this industrial experience, the added cost of beryllium safety is expected to cost only $0.12/MWh. After start up, the fission process in the primary fuel salt produces highly radioactive fission products with a high gamma and neutron radiation field. Effective containment is therefore a primary requirement. It is possible to operate instead using lithium fluoride-thorium fluoride eutectic without beryllium, as the French LFTR design, the "TMSR", has chosen. This comes at the cost of a somewhat higher melting point, but has the additional advantages of simplicity (avoiding BeF2 in the reprocessing systems), increased solubility for plutonium-trifluoride, reduced tritium production (beryllium produces lithium-6, which in turn produces tritium) and improved heat transfer (BeF2 increases the viscosity of the salt mixture). Alternative solvents such as the fluorides of sodium, rubidium and zirconium allow lower melting points at a tradeoff in breeding.
• Loss of delayed neutrons – In order to be predictably controlled, nuclear reactors rely on delayed neutrons. They require additional slowly-evolving neutrons from fission product decay to continue the chain reaction. Because the delayed neutrons evolve slowly, this makes the reactor very controllable. In an LFTR, the presence of fission products in the heat exchanger and piping means a portion of these delayed neutrons are also lost. They do not participate in the core's critical chain reaction, which in turn means the reactor behaves less gently during changes of flow, power, etc. Approximately up to half of the delayed neutrons can be lost. In practice, it means that the heat exchanger must be compact so that the volume outside the core is as small as possible. The more compact (higher power density) the core is, the more important this issue becomes. Having more fuel outside the core in the heat exchangers also means more of the expensive fissile fuel is needed to start the reactor. This makes a fairly compact heat exchanger an important design requirement for an LFTR.
• (Continued below)

 

[Supervisor42]

• Waste management – About 83% of the radioactive waste has a half-life in hours or days, with the remaining 17% requiring 300-year storage in geologically stable confinement to reach background levels. Because some of the fission products, in their fluoride form, are highly water-soluble, fluorides are less suited to long-term storage. For example, cesium fluoride has a very high solubility in water. For long term storage, conversion to an insoluble form such as a glass, could be desirable.
• Uncertain decommissioning costs – Cleanup of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment was about $130 million, for a small 8 MW(th) unit. Much of the high cost was caused by the unexpected evolution of fluorine and uranium hexafluoride from cold fuel salt in storage that ORNL did not defuel and store correctly, but this has now been taken into consideration in MSR design. In addition, decommissioning costs don't scale strongly with plant size based on previous experience, and costs are incurred at the end of plant life, so a small per kilowatthour fee is sufficient. For example, a GWe reactor plant produces over 300 billion kWh of electricity over a 40-year lifetime, so a $0.001/kWh decommissioning fee delivers $300 million plus interest at the end of the plant lifetime.
• Noble metal buildup – Some radioactive fission products, such as noble metals, deposit on pipes. Novel equipment, such as nickel-wool sponge cartridges, must be developed to filter and trap the noble metals to prevent build up.
• Limited graphite lifetime – Compact designs have a limited lifetime for the graphite moderator and fuel / breeding loop separator. Under the influence of fast neutrons, the graphite first shrinks, then expands indefinitely until it becomes very weak and can crack, creating mechanical problems and causing the graphite to absorb enough fission products to poison the reaction. The 1960 two-fluid design had an estimated graphite replacement period of four years. Eliminating graphite from sealed piping was a major incentive to switch to a single-fluid design. Replacing this large central part requires remotely operated equipment. MSR designs have to arrange for this replacement. In a molten salt reactor, virtually all of the fuel and fission products can be piped to a holding tank. Only a fraction of one percent of the fission products end up in the graphite, primarily due to fission products slamming into the graphite. This makes the graphite surface radioactive, and without recycling/removal of at least the surface layer, creates a fairly bulky waste stream. Removing the surface layer and recycling the remainder of the graphite would solve this issue. Several techniques exist to recycle or dispose of nuclear moderator graphite. Graphite is inert and immobile at low temperatures, so it can be readily stored or buried if required. At least one design used graphite balls (pebbles) floating in salt, which could be removed and inspected continuously without shutting down the reactor. Reducing power density increases graphite lifetime. By comparison, solid-fueled reactors typically replace 1/3 of the fuel elements, including all of the highly radioactive fission products therein, every 12 to 24 months. This is routinely done under a protecting and cooling column layer of water.
• Graphite-caused positive reactivity feedback – When graphite heats up, it increases U-233 fission, causing an undesirable positive feedback. The LFTR design must avoid certain combinations of graphite and salt and certain core geometries. If this problem is addressed by employing adequate graphite and thus a well-thermalized spectrum, it is difficult to reach break-even breeding. The alternative of using little or no graphite results in a faster neutron spectrum. This requires a large fissile inventory and radiation damage increases.
• Limited plutonium solubility – Fluorides of plutonium, americium and curium occur as trifluorides, which means they have three fluorine atoms attached (PuF
  3, AmF
  3, CmF
  3). Such trifluorides have a limited solubility in the FLiBe carrier salt. This complicates startup, especially for a compact design that uses a smaller primary salt inventory. Of course, leaving plutonium carrying wastes out of the startup process is an even better solution, making this a non-issue. Solubility can be increased by operating with less or no beryllium fluoride (which has no solubility for trifluorides) or by operating at a higher temperature[citation needed](as with most other liquids, solubility rises with temperature). A thermal spectrum, lower power density core does not have issues with plutonium solubility.
• Proliferation risk from reprocessing – Effective reprocessing implies a proliferation risk. LFTRs could be used to handle plutonium from other reactors as well. However, as stated above, plutonium is chemically difficult to separate from thorium and plutonium cannot be used in bombs if diluted in large amounts of thorium. In addition, the plutonium produced by the thorium fuel cycle is mostly Pu-238, which produces high levels of spontaneous neutrons and decay heat that make it impossible to construct a fission bomb with this isotope alone, and extremely difficult to construct one containing even very small percentages of it. The heat production rate of 567 W/kg means that a bomb core of this material would continuously produce several kilowatts of heat. The only cooling route is by conduction through the surrounding high explosive layers, which are poor conductors. This creates unmanageably high temperatures that would destroy the assembly. The spontaneous fission rate of 1204 kBq/g is over twice that of Pu-240. Even very small percentages of this isotope would reduce bomb yield drastically by "predetonation" due to neutrons from spontaneous fission starting the chain reaction causing a "fizzle" rather than an explosion. Reprocessing itself involves automated handling in a fully closed and contained hot cell, which complicates diversion. Compared to today's extraction methods such as PUREX, the pyroprocesses are inaccessible and produce impure fissile materials, often with large amounts of fission product contamination. While not a problem for an automated system, it poses severe difficulties for would-be proliferators.
• Proliferation risk from protactinium separation – Compact designs can breed only using rapid separation of protactinium, a proliferation risk, since this potentially gives access to high purity 233-U. This is difficult as the 233-U from these reactors will be contaminated with 232-U, a high gamma radiation emitter, requiring a protective hot enrichment facility[ as a possible path to weapons-grade material. Because of this, commercial power reactors may have to be designed without separation. In practice, this means either not breeding, or operating at a lower power density. A two-fluid design might operate with a bigger blanket and keep the high power density core (which has no thorium and therefore no protactinium). However, a group of nuclear engineers argues in Nature (2012) that the protactinium pathway is feasible and that thorium is thus "not as benign as has been suggested . . ."
• Proliferation of neptunium-237 – In designs utilizing a fluorinator, Np-237 appears with uranium as gaseous hexafluoride and can be easily separated using solid fluoride pellet absorption beds. No one has produced such a bomb, but Np-237's considerable fast fission cross section and low critical mass imply the possibility. When the Np-237 is kept in the reactor, it transmutes to short lived Pu-238. All reactors produce considerable neptunium, which is always present in high (mono)isotopic quality, and is easily extracted chemically.
• (Almost done!)

 

[Supervisor42]

• Neutron poisoning and tritium production from lithium-6 – Lithium-6 is a strong neutron poison; using LiF with natural lithium, with its 7.5% lithium-6 content, prevents reactors from starting. The high neutron density in the core rapidly transmutes lithium-6 to tritium, losing neutrons that are required to sustain break-even breeding. Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, which is nearly identical, chemically, to ordinary hydrogen. In the MSR the tritium is quite mobile because, in its elemental form, it rapidly diffuses through metals at high temperature. If the lithium is isotopically enriched in lithium-7, and the isotopic separation level is high enough (99.995% lithium-7), the amount of tritium produced is only a few hundred grams per year for a 1 GWe reactor. This much smaller amount of tritium comes mostly from the lithium-7 – tritium reaction and from beryllium, which can produce tritium indirectly by first transmuting to tritium-producing lithium-6. LFTR designs that use a lithium salt, choose the lithium-7 isotope. In the MSRE, lithium-6 was successfully removed from the fuel salt via isotopic enrichment. Since lithium-7 is at least 16% heavier than lithium-6, and is the most common isotope, lithium-6 is comparatively easy and inexpensive to extract. Vacuum distillation of lithium achieves efficiencies of up to 8% per stage and requires only heating in a vacuum chamber. However, about one fission in 90,000 produces helium-6, which quickly decays to lithium-6 and one fission in 12,500 produces an atom of tritium directly (in all reactor types). Practical MSRs operate under a blanket of dry inert gas, usually helium. LFTRs offer a good chance to recover the tritium, since it is not highly diluted in water as in CANDU reactors. Various methods exist to trap tritium, such as hydriding it to titanium, oxidizing it to less mobile (but still volatile) forms such as sodium fluoroborate or molten nitrate salt, or trapping it in the turbine power cycle gas and offgasing it using copper oxide pellets. ORNL developed a secondary loop coolant system that would chemically trap residual tritium so that it could be removed from the secondary coolant rather than diffusing into the turbine power cycle. ORNL calculated that this would reduce Tritium emissions to acceptable levels.
• Corrosion from tellurium – The reactor makes small amounts of tellurium as a fission product. In the MSRE, this caused small amounts of corrosion at the grain boundaries of the special nickel alloy, Hastelloy-N. Metallurgical studies showed that adding 1 to 2% niobium to the Hastelloy-N alloy improves resistance to corrosion by tellurium. Maintaining the ratio of UF
  4/UF
  3 to less than 60 reduced corrosion by keeping the fuel salt slightly reducing. The MSRE continually contacted the flowing fuel salt with a beryllium metal rod submerged in a cage inside the pump bowl. This caused a fluorine shortage in the salt, reducing tellurium to a less aggressive (elemental) form. This method is also effective in reducing corrosion in general, because the fission process produces more fluorine atoms that would otherwise attack the structural metals.
• Radiation damage to nickel alloys – The standard Hastelloy N alloy was found to be embrittled by neutron radiation. Neutrons reacted with nickel to form helium. This helium gas concentrated at specific points inside the alloy, where it increased stresses. ORNL addressed this problem by adding 1–2% titanium or niobium to the Hastelloy N. This changed the alloy's internal structure so that the helium would be finely distributed. This relieved the stress and allowed the alloy to withstand considerable neutron flux. However the maximum temperature is limited to about 650°C. Development of other alloys may be required. The outer vessel wall that contains the salt can have neutronic shielding, such as boron carbide, to effectively protect it from neutron damage.
• Long term fuel salt storage – If the fluoride fuel salts are stored in solid form over many decades, radiation can cause the release of corrosive fluorine gas and uranium hexafluoride. The salts must be defueled and wastes removed before extended shutdowns and stored above 100 degrees Celsius. Fluorides are less suitable for long term storage because some have high water solubility unless vitrified in insoluble borosilicate glass.
• Business model – Today's solid-fueled reactor vendors make long term revenues by fuel fabrication. Without any fuel to fabricate and sell, an LFTR would adopt a different business model. There would be significant barrier to entry costs to make this a viable business. Existing infrastructure and parts suppliers are geared towards water-cooled reactors. There is little thorium market and thorium mining, so considerable infrastructure that would be required does not yet exist. Regulatory agencies have less experience regulating thorium reactors, creating potentials for extended delays.

Doncha just love facts?!
Who needs an old-timey hydroelectric dam if we can have dozens of these wonderful things?

 

[UrbanHunter]

Hey it looks like Hydrogen, the fuel of tomorrow always has been always will be!

 

[Grimm]

Weedy it has always been easy for Cali to take or "buy" cheap water. You are correct that they , as other countries have, could / should build desalinization plants. Problem is, they are giving too many hand outs so likely its unaffordable. The other issue is simply that without fossil fuels, the power grid would never be able to sustain the demands needed to run those plants. It seems like every other plan a certain group creates. They hated the last president and supposedly voted "en mass" for the new regime. Let them reap what they have sown at this point.

We use to have nuclear plants producing our electricity. The libs shut them all down so now we can't power the damn state! The sea life use to thrive along the coast because of the warm water pumped out of the plants. Now we are seeing a decline in the sea life populations. Related?!

 

[Supervisor42]

Hey it looks like Hydrogen, the fuel of tomorrow always has been always will be!

That's what the sun uses!

 

[LadyLocust]

I just got off the phone with someone who lives down there & asked if he still had power. He said the plant is going "off grid." Those were his words. Because the reservoir is dry. He said it is due as much to poor water management as it is the drought. This didn't surprise me.

 

[UrbanHunter]

I was doing a little reading on the water emergency and found that although the states and farmers will need to cut their water usage: Cities such as Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson, and Native American tribes are shielded from the first round of cuts.

 

[Weedygarden]

How about a water pipeline from the Pacific that is desalinized and pumped into Lake Oroville and other drought stricken areas? I know it won't happen, but its a thought.

 

[Bacpacker]

So is Mexico. And yes the country, they get a percentage and will not lose any until like the 4th round of cuts

 

[UrbanHunter]

How about a water pipeline from the Pacific that is desalinized and pumped into Lake Oroville and other drought stricken areas? I know it won't happen, but its a thought.

The desalting plants take a lot of power and it takes a lot of power to pump it uphill from the ocean.
California would be better off to put in Co-Located Desalting plants and Nuclear Power Plants for every city along the coast and stop pumping water from the central valleys to the coastal cites. It would cost a lot but it would solve 2 problems for a while....

Arizona could cut a deal with Mexico to put in a desalting plant on the northern end of the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) and pump the water to Phoenix but I don't think it would be enough to help the farmers.

Nevada is screwed, eventually they will not be able to keep Las Vegas going....

If Utah and Colorado were to ever stop releasing water to keep the Colorado river flowing things would get ugly really fast....

What is needed for the South West is for someone in authority to develop a long term strategic plan and execute it well....
I would say that the President could declare a national emergency and task the VP to spearhead an operation to implement a sustainable clean water program like T did with VP Pence on the COVID Vaccines, but I don't think the new team has the capability to do anything successfully....

 

[Weedygarden]

The desalting plants take a lot of power and it takes a lot of power to pump it uphill from the ocean.
California would be better off to put in Co-Located Desalting plants and Nuclear Power Plants for every city along the coast and stop pumping water from the central valleys to the coastal cites. It would cost a lot but it would solve 2 problems for a while....

Arizona could cut a deal with Mexico to put in a desalting plant on the northern end of the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) and pump the water to Phoenix but I don't think it would be enough to help the farmers.

Nevada is screwed, eventually they will not be able to keep Las Vegas going....

If Utah and Colorado were to ever stop releasing water to keep the Colorado river flowing things would get ugly really fast....

What is needed for the South West is for someone in authority to develop a long term strategic plan and execute it well....
I would say that the President could declare a national emergency and task the VP to spearhead an operation to implement a sustainable clean water program like T did with VP Pence on the COVID Vaccines, but I don't think the new team has the capability to do anything successfully....

It just seems that it is not going to be pretty in the future.

 

[Supervisor42]

What is needed for the South West is for someone in authority to develop a long term strategic plan and execute it well....
I would say that the President could declare a national emergency and task the VP to spearhead an operation to implement a sustainable clean water program like T did with VP Pence on the COVID Vaccines, but I don't think the new team has the capability to do anything successfully....

Well heck yeah they can!
They were 100% effective at destroying the Keystone XL pipeline and then begging OPEC to send us some oil .
It requires forward thinking.
In order for Cali to need water, you have to destroy their source first.
We're good at destroying things that work.
...You know, in order to save the planet from climate change.

 

[LadyLocust]

If the SanAndreas fault would just break off, half the problem would be solved.

 

[UrbanHunter]

Well heck yeah they can!
They were 100% effective at destroying the Keystone XL pipeline and then begging OPEC to send us some oil .
It requires forward thinking.
In order for Cali to need water, you have to destroy their source first.
We're good at destroying things that work.
...You know, in order to save the planet from climate change.

You are right they are very effective at Screwing the Pooch....... and the American People

 

[UrbanHunter]

If the SanAndreas fault would just break off, half the problem would be solved.

I would not pray for that this year, the way our luck is running this year the fault will break and everything but California would sink!

 

[Cascadian]

Well on a positive note boat prices are great if you are buying. Especially house boats.

 

[Supervisor42]

Well on a positive note boat prices are great if you are buying. Especially house boats.

...And if it's got a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) on it, you can go around the world!!!

 

[Terri9630]

When I was a kid I used to ask my dad why they didn't build pipelines from the east where it floods to the west where it didn't. I was always told that was a dumb idea, it wouldn't work. I still think it would be a good idea....

 

[Bacpacker]

When I was a kid I used to ask my dad why they didn't build pipelines from the east where it floods to the west where it didn't. I was always told that was a dumb idea, it wouldn't work. I still think it would be a good idea....

Probably a good idea.....if you could solve the problem of pumping water over a mile high to clear the Rockies

 

[Terri9630]

Probably a good idea.....if you could solve the problem of pumping water over a mile high to clear the Rockies

Trucks, trains, planes... Where there's a will there's a way.

 

[user 55]

Probably a good idea.....if you could solve the problem of pumping water over a mile high to clear the Rockies

Tunnel?

 

[SheepDog]

Siphon! They already have a few into California.
It is a good idea but; it is unreliable - they have droughts in the east too.
It is expensive as were all the gas and oil pipelines.
After buying the pumps that water is going to be expensive.

 

[Terri9630]

After buying the pumps that water is going to be expensive.

But they'd have water....

 

[Sourdough]

China has the solution.............

 

[elkhound]

a bit of good news after the storm this weekend...up 20 feet this weekend and expected to rise more as run off is captured.




https://www.actionnewsnow.com/conte...n-the-rise-after-rainy-weekend-575607171.html

 

[INresponse]

It looks like the higher elevations off I-80 in California a bit west of Tahoe got over 15" of rain over the last 5 days. That should be helpful for some of the reservoirs in the area.

Not sure if this link will show what I was looking at but if not click on a region to see the numbers, at the top of the page you can choose the time frame, I chose 5 days because that was pretty much the duration of this weather system.
https://home.chpc.utah.edu/~u079048...92626953124999&net=1&zoom=6&limitlo=&limithi=

 

[Bacpacker]

Thats a bunch of rain. Itll help for next summer, but will take much more like thatcsystem to get things topped off

 

[Supervisor42]

It looks like the higher elevations off I-80 in California a bit west of Tahoe got over 15" of rain over the last 5 days. That should be helpful for some of the reservoirs in the area.

Not sure if this link will show what I was looking at but if not click on a region to see the numbers, at the top of the page you can choose the time frame, I chose 5 days because that was pretty much the duration of this weather system.
https://home.chpc.utah.edu/~u079048...92626953124999&net=1&zoom=6&limitlo=&limithi=

Just in time!
It is much needed by the Delta Smelt in the Pacific ocean!:
https://sacramento.newsreview.com/2021/10/13/extinctions-edge-biologists-continue-to-find-zero-delta-smelt-in-sacramento-san-joaquin-waterways/
I wonder how quickly they can flush all that water out to the sea?

“To protect smelt from water pumps,” the Wall Street Journal editorialized in 2015, “government regulators have flushed 1.4 trillion gallons of water into the San Francisco Bay since 2008.”

Here's your water California!

One of those plans is sure to be contentious. The “Delta Smelt Resiliency Strategy” released Tuesday by the California Natural Resources Agency calls for allowing between 85,000 and 200,000 acre-feet of extra water to wash out to sea this summer to bolster smelt habitat. That’s no small amount: 200,000 acre-feet is equal to a quarter of Folsom Lake’s capacity, though not all the amount released would come from Folsom.