There are a few reasons why you will probably never see windspread miniturbines. They all boil down to the fact that wind is a resource that tends to be concentrated in relatively small geographical areas. It's a much better investment of steel and concrete to build one big turbine than a thousand tiny ones.
One reason miniturbines don't perform well is that they are short. Wind velocity follows a power law curve with respect to altitude: at 5 m the wind might average 3 m/s but at 40-50 m, it averages 8 m/s. The next issue is the terrain (read: buildings) in urban areas creates a lot of drag and turbulence. Ideally you want a pool table-like surface to allow the wind to build up speed.
The intermittency issue cannot be understated. Wind farms are usually located in areas where the wind blows relatively stable, but there are still major problems with variation in power output. The fact that you basically have to back all of your wind power with natural gas turbines is a big disadvantage. I discussed the issue in more detail here:
http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/2006/04/
proclivity-of-wind-power.html
Robert is correct. Wind energy potential is often concentrated over small geographical areas. Putting up industrial scale wind generation capabilities in those areas are sometimes physically and economically prohibitive. If what you say is true, that small, home-based facilities are available, then that changes the picture completely, making that claim (wind energy becoming vital--- soon) plausible! Hey, I am all for wind, but you know how some people pay lip service all the time...
Jeff brought up a good point in that energy conservation needs to occur now as well as an increase in wind power. These things also come do to efficiency. Suffice it to say that there are universities looking into how to make wind turbines more efficient and able to work in lighter wind conditions. One also has to realize that solar is a part of the overall picture. I don't believe that any one alternative energy source should be singled out as an answer to our energy issues. The best alternative is to use as many different types as possible all the while reducing demand. Everyone always talks about how converting from halogen to compact fluorescent lights is a common sense thing, yet when you're driving around at night what do you see in every streetlight? If you want to get very serious about conserving energy, streetlights MUST be a top priority. Jeff, can you find out how much energy is consumed by a single streetlight, and then an average block, and then an average town and then compare that to how much people on average use in their own homes? I'll be willing to bet that those streetlights are huge draws on energy and should be replaced with high-efficiency LED's. The folks that work with the lights will tell you that there's a lumens requirement for streetlights. It's my opinion that there ought to be a drop in the lumens requirement anyway to reduce light pollution. Stars aren't even visible in most major cities. That's pathetic and needs to be changed.
Brian:
The high-pressure sodium vapour lamps used in street lights are already 60-70 % efficient. Now LEDs could be better matched to our scotopic vision spectrum but they would still need to be 30+ % efficient blue-green LEDs.
A couple of points:
1) Since wind is growing from a much smaller base, comparing its growth rate to coal and nuclear is misleading. In terms of absolute electric generation, wind remains an almost negligible fraction.
2) Once again, we see power sources compared on rated capacity rather than in terms of absolute generation. As I've mentioned in a number of other forums, 1000 MW of wind capacity and 1000 MW of coal or nuclear are not equal owed to wind's much lower capacity factor.
3) As to the question of subsidies, I wonder what would happen to all that investment in wind power if Congress didn't renew the production tax credit mentioned in the above article?
Efficiency and conservation are definitely the most underrated "sources" of power. Nothing is cleaner and cheaper.
I live in an area that is ideal for wind generation and there are hundreds of turbines within a few miles of my house; because they're located on the hill ridges they are a prominently visible feature from miles away. In the early days of the wind farms the turbines were an interesting novelty and most people found them acceptable; now they're largly viewed as a bird-killing blight on the landscape. I expect we'll see growing opposition to new installations that will end wind power's rapid growth phase fairly quickly, these things just aren't pleasant to have around. I believe that a move to relatively unobtrusive microturbines, if technically viable, is the only way that the growth in wind power generation can be sustained.
Robert,
Thank you for the information on the streetlights. While I believe that 60 - 70% is a good thing, I still feel that something ought to be done in this area. I shutter to think of how much electricity is used up every night in a single town, much less a whole State. Seems to me that there has to be a smarter way.
Eric,
I can see your point about nuclear and wind power being different. I think the main reasons people tend to look negatively upon nuclear energy is the extreme complexity of nuclear power plants, the waste that must be safely stored for thousands of years, and the risks associated with accidents. Say the words Three-Mile-Island or Chernobyl and people will mention a meltdown. When nuclear plants fail, regardless of who, or what, is at fault, they tend to fail in a major way. Many people, myself included, feel that the risk is simply too high and the waste management is something I'm not convinced can be done in a safe manner over the long term. I'm from Washington State and the DOE has shown time and time again that they can not successfully manage to clean up the Hanford site. With all of these issues in mind, I'm more than willing to look at alternative fuel sources rather than deal with the risks of nuclear energy, and I'm clearly not alone in these feelings across the US.
As for the tax credits you mentioned, it's likely that future wind farm projects would be abandoned without tax credits in many instances. I firmly believe that this wouldn't be the case in every instance. It's my opinion that many have signed on to get green energy from energy providers, and many more are signing on each day. While I don't believe that wind power will exclusively solve the problem, it is a considerable part of it.
In my opinion, when we start rating one alternative energy source against another, we are allowing the opposition of "they" to define the options and ultimately determine our limited, finite-based solution.
Why? Because the limited, finite-based soultions are controllable in societies based on capitalism. Fewer choices bring more and higher profits.
I think we need to be woking on combining as many different alternative sources as possible to meet our energy needs. We're in the trouble we're in now (supply and cost) because we are relying on too few sources of energy.
One of the earlier comments refers to conservation. This is critical. We MUST learn how to use less and dramatically reduce the waste in the energy we use.
Jeff,
I appreciate the opportunity to contribute.
"It seems to me that the market's sending clear signals, and they're not in favor of nukes or coal..."
I would have to completely disagree. The market is not in favor of gas or oil right now due to high prices. Coal and nukes are cheap, reliable and affordable sources of electricity.
What you will see in the next 5-10 years is a return to these sources of power. Nukes and coal were built up in the 70s and 80s. In the 90s and now gas has been the choice. But what is needed here soon and by 2015 is more baseload sources of electricity such as coal and nuclear.
I'm not just saying this 'cause I'm a nuke guy, I'm saying this because electric utilities are saying this, the Energy Information Administration (DOE) has been saying this and many top industry analysts such as Cambridge Energy Reserach Associates are saying this.
Renewables will have their role. But it shouldn't be nuclear vs. wind or renewables because in reality both have their advantages.
Like MarksEcoShop said: "I think we need to be working on combining as many different alternative sources as possible to meet our energy needs."
Brian,
Nuclear technology is continuing to be safer and safer and can only keep getting safer. Being complex is not a reason to dismiss the technology. Being complex means that there are smart people running these machines.
"When nuclear plants fail, regardless of who, or what, is at fault, they tend to fail in a major way."
Just the opposite. Nuclear power plants trip all the time. Every week or two a unit will trip due to something. Why don't you hear about it? Because it's not that significant.
The partial core damage at TMI proved that these reactors are safe. Did anyone become sick? Was anyone harmed? No and no.
You can argue Chernobyl which was unfortunate but the Western reactors are by far some of the safest sources of energy out there and are not the same type of reactors like Chernobyl.
David Bradish
Nuclear Energy Institute
Wind power has a capacitance of around 20-25% in areas with above average wind. The turbines themselves would have to be placed 50-100 ft up to reach that level, regardless of blade size. So a 1kW turbine would produce an average of 250W or 180kWH per month.
Large wind farms usually augment conventional power where the energy will mean less gas turbine usage. A home would be much less able to adjust demand to supply. This could be accomplished to some extent by a series of controllers. Basically, when wind power is low, the house would go into power saving mode and computers, TVs, etc would go to battery power. When wind energy is high, battery chargers in phones and appliances would charge. You could toss your clothes in a washer and the controller would decide when to start the cycle. It would be even easier for solar panels or a combined wind/solar where there would be a larger stable average production.
I would prefer a free market approach where nuclear, oil, coal and alternatives would get no subsudies and have to compete financially. Net metering is a suckers bet, and if you produce excess power, you've basically just overbought. The real R&D has to be in battery technology. Either in-ground sealed flywheels or hydrogen fuel cells chargeable by natural gas or electrolysis from excess DC power.
If there was a free market wouldn't coal come out tops because it's the cheapest?
The concept of wind as a power source has implications for my life that I don't like. I don't want a wind turbine on my roof, vibrating all the time, causing leaks, and forcing me to be an electrician in order to balance out all its complex electronics. My life is already too complicated. I don't want ugly whirling windmills distracting me whereever I look. And I don't want the job of picking up all the dead birds and bats around the wind mills and their transmissions lines. I want nuclear reactors underground right in the middle of our cities and towns to minimize transmission lines. No dead animals, no leaking roofs, no noise, no ugly landscape, no need for me to go back to school to learn electronics. What's wrong with quiet, invisible, peacful, reliable, inexpensive nuclear fission?
David,
I appreciate someone from the nuclear field commenting on my post. I do my best to be as informed as possible, yet it is hard to find reliable sources of information about safe nuclear energy without it sounding like propaganda.
It stands to reason that as time advances, processes at nuclear power plants have become more refined and well studied. As a citizen of Washington State, I hear about the debacle going on at the Hanford site and the nuclear contamination out there and cringe when I think of people wanting to build more of these nuclear power plants, though that site was used for Plutonium production. There seems to be no place in the US where the waste can be safely stored for thousands of years. Being someone that doesn't know much about nuclear waste, I would think that a logical place to store all of the nuclear waste would be north of Las Vegas where the DOE tested all of those nuclear bombs. That place is already so irradiated that there's no chance of it ever being productive land, though it does make sense to store the waste there in an already contaminated place rather than contaminate a different location.
One reason I'd give nuclear power a nod is that it has a good chance to provide the hydrogen supplies needed to bring hydrogen powered cars into the mainstream.
I personally am looking into solar and wind power for use in my home and will try to live off the grid, but it's good to hear from someone that works in the nuclear field. Perhaps you could shed some light on a nuclear plants' ability to economically break water into hydrogen and oxygen and the possible yields.
Aaron Glantz's article doesn't just take note of the wide acceptance of wind power, but also reports on the nuclear energy industry's attempt to characterize it as unsustainable. The main criticism cited in the article is the amount of land required for wind farms, and the Nuclear Energy Institute's Mike Singer claims 'Nuclear energy has the smallest environmental footprint of any other emission-free source.'
Interesting. Land use is definitely an issue, but it's a minor one. Also, though I realize that it is an exception to the rule, the environmental footprint of Chernobyl is definitely not small, and I wonder how the footprint stacks up when uranium mining is included.
First, why do arguments about wind power always involve wind farms when this is a resource that could be harvested on a much smaller scale? Springwise noted this week the release of two new very efficient roof-top wind turbines, one in the UK and the other in the US. Wouldn't distributed generation strategies negate the land use argument, making wind the clear favorite in the race with nuclear power?
Not really. First, there is plenty of land. According to the Utility Wind Integration Group, "With today's wind turbine technology, wind power could supply 20% of this country's electricity, according to a recent study by Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL). Today's technology exploits high-wind locations--those in wind power class 5 or greater--with average annual wind speeds of approximately 16 mph and higher at a height of 30m. To provide 20% of America's electricity, 560,000 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, 0.6% of the land of the lower 48 states would have to be developed with wind power plants. This area, about 18,000 square miles, is about the size of four counties in Montana. Furthermore, less than 5% of this land would be occupied by wind turbines, electrical equipment, and access roads. Most existing land use, such as farming and ranching, would remain as it is now."--America Takes Stock of a Vast Energy Resource, February 1992.
Second, wind speeds in urban areas tend to be relatively low, and trees, buildings, and other obstructions reduce them further. There are markets for turbines of all sizes, and each has a place.
Furthermore, why isn't anyone discussing conservation? Wouldn't we make a huge dent in our energy usage just by widespread implementation of measures to save energy. Couldn't we do that faster than anything?
Yes, we could, and yes, it's a great idea. Even better is combining energy efficiency and renewables.
Regards,
Tom Gray
American Wind Energy Association
www.awea.org
www.ifnotwind.org
The intermittency issue cannot be understated. Wind farms are usually located in areas where the wind blows relatively stable, but there are still major problems with variation in power output. The fact that you basically have to back all of your wind power with natural gas turbines is a big disadvantage.
No, this is incorrect. Demand for electricity is always fluctuating, and wind adds little variability to the system. See Utility Wind Integration State of the Art, a brief report issued recently by the Utility Wind Integration Group (UWIG), in cooperation with the three major U.S. utility trade associations--the Edison Electric Institute, the American Public Power Association, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. The UWIG report summarizes five articles on wind that previously appeared in Power Engineering Magazine, the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Power Engineering Society. Here is a pertinent quote: "In two major recent studies, the addition of 1,500 MW and 3,300 MW of wind (15% and 10%, respectively, of system peak load) increased regulation requirements by 8 MW and 36 MW, respectively, to maintain the same level of NERC control performance standards." In other words, 8 MW of additional reserves was sufficient to cover the added variability induced by 1,500 MW of wind, 36 MW to cover the variability from 3,300 MW of wind.
Regards,
Tom
1) Since wind is growing from a much smaller base, comparing its growth rate to coal and nuclear is misleading. In terms of absolute electric generation, wind remains an almost negligible fraction.
It's only misleading if one misinterprets it: "fast-growing" does not mean "big." Even so, wind this year will generate 5x the total electricity usage of the state of Vermont, and we'll add another 3 Vermonts this year and next.
1000 MW of wind capacity and 1000 MW of coal or nuclear are not equal owed to wind's much lower capacity factor.
Absolutely true. It should be noted, though, that wind is different from a fueled power source--its capacity factor is a design choice. You could achieve a very high capacity factor by coupling a large rotor with a very small generator--but the economics would be lousy. The best economics are achieved with a rotor-generator combination that yields a capacity factor between 25% and 40%.
I wonder what would happen to all that investment in wind power if Congress didn't renew the production tax credit mentioned in the above article?
Probably the same thing that would happen if Congress didn't renew the Price-Anderson Act that shields the owner of a nuclear plant from full liability in the case of an accident.
In the early days of the wind farms the turbines were an interesting novelty and most people found them acceptable; now they're largly viewed as a bird-killing blight on the landscape.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here is what the U.S. Department of Energy has to say about this:
"[Myth #9:] Wind turbines kill birds and thus have serious environmental impacts.
"Bird kills have caused serious scientific concern at only one location in the United States: Altamont Pass in California, one of the first areas in the country to experience significant wind development. Over the past decade, the wind community has learned that wind farms and wildlife can and do coexist successfully. Wind energy development’s overall impact on birds is extremely low (less than 1 of 30,000) compared to other human-related causes, such as buildings, communications towers, traffic, and house cats. Birds can fly into wind turbines, as they do with other tall structures. However, conventional fuels contribute to air and water pollution that can have far greater impact on wildlife and their habitat, as well as the environment and human health."
Source: Wind Energy Myths.
Besides, almost all public opinion polls find heavy majorities of respondents favoring wind.
Regards,
Tom
Tom,
Again, a couple of points:
1) Like how you mention Vermont in your last comment. And it's probably pertinent to point out that in the real world, Vermont gets 75% of its electrical power from just one nuclear power plant, Vermont Yankee.
2) As to Price Anderson, it's as much of a canard about nuclear as bird kill is about wind energy. The fact is, Price Anderson hasn't cost American taxpayers one red cent, and that includes the only time it ever had to be used, at TMI.
3) Returning to the capacity factor question -- while I don't doubt your figures, it's important to point out again, in the real world, nuclear has a fleet wide average capacity factor of 90%.
4) When I use the term misleading, I should be precise. I found this post misleading because it ommitted the fact that wind currently provides less than 1% of U.S. electric production. And because of so many of the obstacles that so many other commenters have pointed out, terming wind the "foundation" for the new energy economy is definitely misleading.
Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean that wind won't play a role, it certainly will. But overstating the role that it can actually play can't help its cause in the long run.
I thought about jumping in here, but, quite frankly, I'm having a better time watching the representatives of the two trade groups debate these issues. Tom and Eric, thanks for chiming in (in addition to the other commenters, of course).
Costs have been addressed here, but time frame seems another issue that's important. Perhaps I'm taking a simplistic approach, but can't we build wind farms much more quickly than nuclear reactors?
Also on costs, I recognize that the power from existing nulclear reactors is relatively cheap, but we're still not seeing a rush in the private sector to build new reactors -- without significant subsidies, they simply haven't been built...right? My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that nuclear reactors are prohibitively expensive. While wind benefits from the tax credits, aren't those a drop in the bucket compared the subsidies required by the nuclear industry?
I, too, am in favor of a mix of energy sources -- that just makes sense on so many levels, not the least of which is the varying amounts of resources avaiable in different parts of the country. We shouldn't take a "silver bullet" approach (which does seem to be happening with biofuels -- they need to be a part of the mix, but won't save us on their own), but, of course, we have to look at the costs and benefits of each source. Quite frankly, the rhetoric's gotten so thick, especially on wind and nukes, that I'm a bit lost at this point...
Brian,
Again, I appreciate the openness to discuss nuclear with you.
I can understand your concerns about Hanford however it needs to be pointed out that the Hanford site is a military site for the production of nuclear weapons. It's completely different from the commercial side of things which we are debating here. You can read more about Hanford here.
All of the used fuel from the current fleet of plants are stored onsite in dry casks and in spent fuel pools. The plan is to move it to Yucca Mountain. After that we'll probably turn Yucca into a reprocessing facility and turn 95% of the used fuel back into new fuel to reuse again. And after we do that the 5% leftover will have about a couple hundred years of radioactivity instead of thousands. This program is the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership which you can read here.
As for cracking hydrogen. The program you're talking about is the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative which you can read here.
Nuclear waste is not a problem because it's handled safely, properly and is still a goldmine of energy. It's virtually limitless what we can do with nuclear technology.
Jeff,
For our discussion I think it's important you provide some links on where you receive information about nuclear's subsidies and costs. More often then not many anti-nuke's claims are repeated yet no one knows where they came from. Most of the time these claims are incorrect.
Just like wind, Mr. Gray does well providing links to squash wind energy's myths.
With regards to subsidies check out a piece written by Thomas Tanton analyzing this very issue.
With regards to costs check out the bottom of the page of our link. You will find that wind and nuclear both have similar capital costs on a $/kW basis.
Constructing a new nuclear plant is estimated to take about 4-5 years. Wind power is much quicker to build of course. But what's the problem of taking longer? New nukes and current ones will be licensed for 60 years. It's important that we build them correctly and efficiently from the beginning.
Define a rush to build new plants. Before the EPACT of 2005 was passed there were only 3 reactors on the books. A year after it was passed there are more than 20. You can find a list here. The first few won't come online till about 2014 or 2015 because half the time is spent obtaining the license.
But there definitely is a lot of movement with building new nukes.
Eric,
2) As to Price Anderson, it's as much of a canard about nuclear as bird kill is about wind energy. The fact is, Price Anderson hasn't cost American taxpayers one red cent, and that includes the only time it ever had to be used, at TMI.
Yes, but it is not a canard to say that the nuclear industry would likely disappear without it. But let's stick to direct subsidies. A report from the Renewable Energy Policy Project in 2000 found that at that point, the federal government had spent $150 billion subsidizing nuclear, wind and solar, with a mere 96.3% going to nuclear. Wind still has a couple of decades of catching up to do. Press release on the report can be accessed here, although the server seems to be misbehaving at the moment.
4) When I use the term misleading, I should be precise. I found this post misleading because it ommitted the fact that wind currently provides less than 1% of U.S. electric production. And because of so many of the obstacles that so many other commenters have pointed out, terming wind the "foundation" for the new energy economy is definitely misleading.
And again, I'll just say that it is only misleading if it is misinterpreted. Wind is fast-growing, it is not yet big. I will note, though, that the worldwide installed wind capacity now is close to 60,000 megawatts (MW). If that were all in the U.S., it would be enough to generate about 4% of U.S. electricity--and almost all of it has been installed in the last 10 years.
Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean that wind won't play a role, it certainly will. But overstating the role that it can actually play can't help its cause in the long run.
Agreed, but then of course, understating the role it can play doesn't help it either. I think the prevailing wisdom is still more in danger of the latter.
Tom
Jeff,
Costs have been addressed here, but time frame seems another issue that's important. Perhaps I'm taking a simplistic approach, but can't we build wind farms much more quickly than nuclear reactors?
Yes. A wind farm can typically be built in a year or less, while a nuclear plant takes several years at least.
Also on costs, I recognize that the power from existing nulclear reactors is relatively cheap, but we're still not seeing a rush in the private sector to build new reactors -- without significant subsidies, they simply haven't been built...right?
I'm no expert in this area, but my sense is the slowness has more to do with the long construction lead time, which adds to the risk that by the time the plant is built, the energy price situation will have changed and it may not be economic. That should be changing, though, given what has happened with energy prices over the past five years.
Quite frankly, the rhetoric's gotten so thick, especially on wind and nukes, that I'm a bit lost at this point...
Hey, you invited rants. 8^)
Tom
Tom:
It is a real pleasure to have the opportunity to once again discuss energy technologies with you. It has been a long time since we used to spar on USENET boards.
The wind provides energy that people can capture to do work. This fact has been well understood by humans for at least 4-5,000 years. We have developed some very refined ways to capture that wind, but we have yet to overcome some very basic physical limitations.
The wind does not always blow, and when it does its energy is relatively diffuse, requiring devices that are very large in comparison to the amount of energy captured. Highly refined sailing ships were beaten in the energy market by primitive coal engines. This was not because ship owners liked paying for fuel, it was because customers liked reliable delivery schedules.
Nuclear power is very new. We only discovered its existence a few decades ago. Once we figured out how to build power plants, it took just a couple of decades before it was supplying more than 7% of the world's total energy needs and about 16% of its electrical power needs.
In the years since our last conversation, I have come to have a very strong belief, supported by a few pieces of hard evidence, that much of the organized opposition to nuclear power has been funded by people that are interested in continuing to sell coal, oil, and gas. These very large, wealthy and powerful interests have often been aided by scientists and engineers interested in obtaining grants and other taxpayer supplied bounty for research and development of "alternative" energy sources.
The numbers for subsidies that you quote include two major research areas that have nothing to do with commercial nuclear power - they are fusion (the energy of the future and it always will be) and sodium cooled fast breeder reactors.
As near as I can figure, commercial fission power did not receive any subsidies for at least 20 years. In fact, it was a huge bill payer with waste fee contributions that add up to more than 750 million per year (without any waste being handled by the federal government), local property taxes, and fees to the NRC that pay its entire budget.
Much too long, but if you want links for more information about nuclear power, please visit www.atomicinsights.blogspot.com or one of the many other great nuclear blogs that are listed on that site.
By way of disclosure, I am still the President and CEO of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc. We are very confident that we have developed an engine design that can compete head to head with diesel engines and gas turbines. There is no chance that windmills can ever supply the markets that we are targeting.
Rod Adams
Here's what that UWIG report cited by Tom Gray of the American Wind Energy Association says: "The addition of a wind plant to a power system increases the amount of variability and uncertainty of the net load. This may introduce measurable changes in the amount of operating reserves required for regulation, ramping and load-following. Operating reserves may consist of both spinning and non-spinning reserves."
Note that the figures of wind capacity of 10-15% of system peak load are not the usual measure of "penetration," i.e., how much of the system's electricity is actually generated by the wind plant. Since wind's production is typically 20-30% of capacity in the U.S., the studies cited by UWIG are talking about only 2-5% wind.
That amount is well within the excess capacity already available to handle wide fluctuations of demand. Even so, the studies found it required new back-up capacity, approaching equivalence as the percentage of wind increases.
And it does not address the extra burden on the system, such as increased emissions due to more frequent ramping.
As the UWIG report states: "Utility planners traditionally view new generation primarily in terms of its capacity to serve peak demand. But wind is primarily an energy resource. Its primary value lies in its ability to displace energy produced from the combustion of fossil fuels and to serve as a hedge against fuel price risk and future restrictions on emissions."
Those are good criteria. Does wind in fact reliably serve peak demand? Is wind able to displace the combustion of (and not just the energy from) fossil fuels? Nope and nope.
Tom Gray also poo-poos the killing of birds by diverting attention to the crimes of others. But that doesn't diminish one's own. And the killing of bats has turned out to be a huge problem -- so much so that FPL Energy halted study of the issue at their facilities.
As another Vermonter, I should correct Eric McErlain that the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant provides a third -- not three fourths -- of our electricity. Another third is from HydroQuebec.
As a citizen of Washington State, I hear about the debacle going on at the Hanford site and the nuclear contamination out there and cringe when I think of people wanting to build more of these nuclear power plants, though that site was used for Plutonium production.
That is correct. I would like to add, keep in mind the mission of Hanford was completely different than civilian nuclear power. In a sense, it's an apples to oranges comparison in the actual work that went on there. One needs to be careful when applying the comparison.
Interesting. Land use is definitely an issue, but it's a minor one. Also, though I realize that it is an exception to the rule, the environmental footprint of Chernobyl is definitely not small, and I wonder how the footprint stacks up when uranium mining is included.
Some would argue the actual environmental impact is not nearly as bad as previously thought. Most of the damage to humans was psychological resulting from bad Soviet policy and handling of the disaster.
That said, no one is defending Chernobyl. It was the pinnacle of Soviet arrogance and ineptitude in both design and operation. The fact the accident occurred was inexcusable.
To be fair, however, when one looks at the footprint of building new plants, one has to look at modern designs. Chernobyl was an unstable design that would never be built in the US or any modern nation. It's "old" technology that has proven problems and has been superceded over 40 years ago by much better technology.
Using Chernobyl as a benchmark really paints an inaccurate picture because of this fact.
A report from the Renewable Energy Policy Project in 2000 found that at that point, the federal government had spent $150 billion subsidizing nuclear, wind and solar, with a mere 96.3% going to nuclear. Wind still has a couple of decades of catching up to do. Press release on the report can be accessed here, although the server seems to be misbehaving at the moment.
Although I cannot view this, does this report include defense applications of nuclear -- nuclear weapons and naval reactors? Often the amount of subsidies received for nuclear power in many reports is grossly high because they forget to subtract out the defense work which is under the Department of Energy for historic reasons.
The defense work in recent eras is many times higher than civilian nuclear energy research work.
Rucio,
Of the electricity generated in Vermont, the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant produces 3/4 of the electricity. But for Vermont's total electricity consumption you are correct.
Wind energy development’s overall impact on birds is extremely low (less than 1 of 30,000) compared to other human-related causes, such as buildings, communications towers, traffic, and house cats.
But the impact is high when you look at the natural state of the land before any development. The argument here seems to be that the social cost of wind energy is lower than the social cost of other uses of the same land. That may or may not be the case but ignoring the social costs for a source of renewable energy is no more acceptable than doing the same with fossil fuels.
Besides, almost all public opinion polls find heavy majorities of respondents favoring wind.
Most people don't have a wind farm nearby, and most never will because wind generation isn't practical everywhere. I think people who do live near a proposed wind generation facility are increasingly likely to look at the social costs associated with installations like Altamont Pass before they make a decision, and IMHO that doesn't bode well for the future of massive wind energy projects.
I'm strongly in favor of both wind and nuclear. The claim that wind power is growing more than coal is totally
wrong and shows how one can deceive by using simple minded stats like percentage of growth w/o regard to the base number. The simple fact is that 10,000 MW of coal fired electrical capacity was added last year, as opposed to only 1/4 as much wind capacity - 2500MW. Now if you know anything about wind, then you know that wind output is typically 25% of capacity, which means that , in actuality, the amount of coal fired electricity added last year was 16 TIMES that added of wind power. Nuclear power added last year was more than twice as much of an actual MW increase as wind.
The author of that article doesn't
exhibit any observable knowledge of the US power industry. It is purely hype and fraudulent claims.
I hear conservation over and over, and
it is now and always has been a complete
waste of time. Even during th dark days of the Carter Administration during the 70's, conservation was no answer. If you don't believe this, just take a look at the gasoline consumption in this country
after prices tripled - it has increased.
Conservation is and always has been a total flop. I'm getting tired of people
even suggesting conservation. They are totally naiive and aren't affecting anything.
I think it's getting pretty humorous watching the various environmental groups coming to blows over wind and nuclear power. The founders of Greenpeace are now solidly behind nuclear, after 30 years of ranting about its dangers. Well, since nothing bad has ever happened at a US nuclear plant
since 1956, perhaps they figured that
the tryout period has been sucessful. Those opposed point to Chernoble, which
is a totally invalid argument, aside from being just plain silly.
Commenting by HaloScan
