[rerevisionist]

[1] This 'conspiracy theory' is a separate issue from nuclear bombs: it's possible that heat might be generatable from nuclear sources, but that they can't be made to explode.

NOTE inserted 18 Dec 2015: The generic expression for computer control where sensors, transducers etc are involved, is SCADA = 'Supervisory Control Data Acquisition System.' (It's on Wikipedia, and must be a standard expression). If there is computer control of electricity, diverting surplus to dumploads, this is the sort of technique which would be used. (Thanks to 'Greg Swamp' on Youtube.

[2] The dumpload (or dump load) hypothesis is:- so-called nuclear power stations are "dumploads" or "dump loads" - in effect giant electric kettles which waste energy by heating and boiling water. As far as I know the initiator of this idea was the online Canadian commentator, 'cactusneedles'.

[3] What is a dumpload? Well, everyone knows from experience what happens when power supplies are too low: equipment dims or operates slowly, or malfunctions. Brown-outs and blackouts are the way such events are described when they happen on a large scale.

However, there are problems with oversupply of power too - equipment may overheat, run too brightly, explode or melt, or otherwise malfunction, usually in damaging ways. If you google or bing 'dumpload' you'll find advice aimed at people using domestic gasoline generators or domestic windpower - their dumploads are usually resistors, which in effect are electric heaters.

[4] Please give an example! OK - imagine a popular TV event - ball game, for example. In the interval, 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 million people may make coffee (US) or tea (Britain)! A typical British kettle uses 3 kilowatts; if 5 million people do this in a period of several minutes, this act alone increases demand by 3000 watts x 5,000,000 - a total of 15 Gigawatts. Note that 'the current record holder for the largest coal fired power plant [is] 5.78 gigawatts.' Just boiling water to drink can cause a huge absolute variation in load, though it is still only a part of the total load.

Added 27 August 2014: Let me give a few more examples of the need to match power supply to equipment. People often aren't aware that the voltage supply they are using is monitored and adjusted all day long.
  • Lightning strikes. These are powerful enough to destroy and vaporise metals. Evidently, they are too powerful for normal electrical equipment.
  • At the other end of the scale, some readers may have tried powering light bulbs/ globes for mains use with an ordinary small battery. There is of course little or no light. In the same way, run-down batteries give little light with bulbs. As LEDs, which use low power, become more popular, no doubt there will be incidents where they are connected to the mains and are ruined.
  • The above examples are extreme; but the same logic applies to domestic and industrial electrical equipment. If the voltage and alternation is right, they are designed to operate correctly. They are often said to 'take the right amount', but of course this depends on the voltage being set correctly. There are meters which measure AC voltage, which can be watched and seen to fluctuate.
  • Another example familiar to many people shows up in foreign travel: for example, UK electricity is 240V alternating at 50 cycles per second. In the USA, domestic electricity is 110V at 60 cycles. An American electric shaver plugged into a hotel socket will blow; a British electric shaver plugged into a US socket will work feebly. This is why they sell adaptors!
  • Yet another example is earth / ground connections. To dump a gigawatt by earth / ground connection would generate a huge amount of heat in the earth itself, where the heat would be unable to escape. The design would be unsafe, since if the rods melted there would be a huge power surge.
  • To see dumploads in action in small circuits, not connected to a grid, Google 'caravan and motorhome dumploads'. A typical specification reads: 'Our 500w dump load is utilised to ‘bleed-off’ excess power from your off-grid power system when your battery bank is fully charged. These 500w dump loads are designed to be connected to either our 45A diversion controller or 60A diversion controller working off a 12v or 24v off-grid power system. ...' The 'diversion controller' directs the right amount of power into the dumpload, depending what's turned on in the motorhome.
  • Many coal or gas burning power stations incorporate their own dumploads: the site has for example coal delivery arrangements and storage areas, feed mechanism to the boilers, turbine room(s), feeds to the pylons, plus cooling towers to operate when the output is too large, and ash disposal.

Comments based on doubts in fakeologist.com, by 'psyopticon' on August 27, 2014 Canadian time]

[5] Note that power consumption consists of a base load, more or less analogous to 'fixed costs' in a business. Depending on the time of year, heating and industrial and street and shop lighting, factory and office consumption, and other stable elements, make up the fairly predictable base load. Then on top of these are the variable loads.

[6] Note that it is much more difficult to start up a power station and bring it online, than it is to waste surplus electricity. This is the crucial reason why it makes sense to plan for and build dumploads. If power stations could be fired up and brought online instantly, the problem wouldn't arise.

[7] Is there supporting evidence for the hypothesis that some or all 'nuclear power stations' are dumploads?
Yes. Here are some facts from several sources---

*There have been large-scale blackouts in which, despite being connected to grids, nuclear power supplied zero electricity.
*There appear to be no parts of the world exclusively supplied by nuclear power: the EIA state no such place exists.
*On a smaller scale, evidence of the motive force of supposed nuclear powered ships is inconclusive. The EIA's only examples are nuclear subs (invisible) and aircraft carriers (refueled each day with jet fuel, for the jet fighters of course - but that fuel could also be running the aircraft carrier).
*It is in practice hard to tell in which direction electric power is moving. (One of Enron's frauds was to claim electricity was generated out of state).
*The secrecy and security make investigation difficult. It's entirely possible that the nominal controller of a nuclear plant would be unaware of the actual practice - he may believe he's adjusting his equipment to increase power supply out, whereas in fact his actions simply reduce the the power coming in to be wasted.
*Only about 15% of electricity world-wide is 'nuclear'. This figure is a plausible range to allow for wastage of power when domestic demand fluctuates.
*China has built large numbers of coal-fired power stations, despite being supposedly a nuclear power. Why haven't they built nuclear power stations?
*Why have the extravagant claims made for nuclear power - virtually free, unlimited, unmetered, electricity - failed so incredibly to even begin to come true?
* All the contracts to maintain these installations (according to Alex Jones - not checked) are exclusively with Jewish companies. Why would they need to do this?
* Google for 'patents electric steam boiler'. Like patent 1543514, which is a 5 megawatt steam boiler. Doesn't really prove that nuclear electrical generation is fake. But, why do they have them?

*Note added 11 Sep 2012: A reader found this site by searching with the keyphrase 'If they can have nuclear aircraft carriers, why not nuclear factories?'—A factory is comparable is size with an aircraft carrier; its lighting, heating, conveyors, robots, machinery could be powered by nuclear power if nuclear power is genuine. So why doesn't this happen? This site suggests it doesn't happen because it doesn't work.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Are there any dumploads on the power grid that aren't disguised as nuclear plants?

[NUKELIES]

Related side note: I visited my Grandfather in Niagara two months ago and I recall him saying Ontario pays New York State to take excess electricity from the Niagara / Lake Ontario hydroelectric works.

[rerevisionist]

I remember noting that some designs of 'nuclear power stations' seem to include dump loads - it's quite possible they are designed so part is explicitly a dump load, supposedly for the plant itself. This would get around the problem of how to disguise it.

I don't know if 'cooling towers' are partially or completely dump loads; they could be. Heat exchangers are pretty efficient; is it credible that huge towers are needed to dissipate heat which could drive turbines?

[rerevisionist]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob-kmowe8qc

Windmills Being Shutdown Because North West Has More Electricity Than Infrastructure Can Handle - shorter than 30 second video.

Maybe there's a fraud contest of 'nuclear' vs 'wind'?

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Are there any dumploads on the power grid that aren't disguised as nuclear plants?

I'll answer my own question: Street lights might be a dump load.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob-kmowe8qc

Windmills Being Shutdown Because North West Has More Electricity Than Infrastructure Can Handle - shorter than 30 second video.

Maybe there's a fraud contest of 'nuclear' vs 'wind'?

There was a wind power company that came near here about five years ago and wanted to erect 600 windmills, at 1.5 megawatts each. I got curious, and looked on my electric bill, and there was a toll free number, and it said, if you have a question, call us. So, I called and said I wanted to talk to engineering. They put some guy on named Eddie. I ask Eddie what the biggest power line was in the north part of the county, and he said the 108 kilovolt line. I asked him if it would carry another 300 or 400 megawatts. He said, "No way." emphatically. I told him about the 600 planned wind mills, and he didn't know anything about it. I was very intrigued that a huge wind farm was planned, to be connected to their power lines, and the engineering staff knew nothing about it.

So, the next day I called back. I got Keith this time. I asked him if Wind Force, another wind power company, had a co-generation permit. He had to check, and called me the next day. He said they had applied for a 150 megawatt permit to be connected to the 108 kv line. The same line Eddie mentioned. The permit wasn't approved yet. But Wind Force had already built 166 wind mills, which would be 249 megawatts. So I asked Keith, what about the other 100 megawatts? He said he didn't know.

[rerevisionist]

Googling for 'nuclear myths' I found Do you know you can never completely dismantle a nuclear power plant? Ever. This sounds like another hoax maintenance idea. After all, the thing was put together and there is supposed to be protection against radiation. If you can never get in, you can't check what's there.

[BNSF9647]

Here's a link from Exelon Corps website, one of the largest electrical generating utilities here in the US. Now the name of this power plant is a fitting one indeed, its called zion station. Anyhow here's the link http://www.exeloncorp.com/PowerPlants/zion/Pages/profile.aspx seems it was converted to a grid stabilizing station. A fitting transition, this just lends more credence to the dump-load hypothesis.

[rerevisionist]

To cope with nuclear or fossil-fueled plants’ large-scale intermittency, utilities must install a ~15–20% “reserve margin” of extra capacity, some of which must be continuously fueled, spinning ready for instant use. [This is another cost etc]

-quoted from somewhere; it doesn't really matter. Is it possible for a generator to 'spin, ready for instant use'? Since the whole design is intended to supply a huge amount of electrical energy, it seems unlikely on thermodynamic grounds. It's possible that claim is made to hide the existence of dumploads - the online document has no mention of them.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

I think I related this once before, but it won't hurt again:

I was touring the Marion Point coal burning power plant, and I asked an engineer if they varied output during the day, to compensate for power demand. He said, no; since coal was the cheapest power generation, a coal burning plant run full power 24 hours a day. However, another engineer, a woman, said that they did cut power back about one am, and then would bring it back up to full about 6 am. She spoke as if this was a slow, gradual process.

So could a spinning turbine handle a sudden demand for power? I don't think so, really. It would take a flywheel sort of arrangement. Remember that article I posted someplace about the flywheel power storage?

[rerevisionist]

They may have - in fact I'm pretty sure they must have - more than one turbine. So they can cut down output by powering a single turbine down. I'd guess this means the remaining turbines - to get the same voltage - would need their transformer ratio to go up.

But the question was - whether a turbine can just be disconnected or reconnected while at full power. I'd expect on thermodynamic grounds the sudden plummet or steep rise in the load would wreck it. Probably there's info online - though equally probably in badly-written form.