Brilliant idea the politicians have - shut down the nuclear plants, push for ineffective wind power, and in the mean time buy power from other EU countries and former east block countries.
Sometimes I think the Greens are more concerned with being Luddites than being green. I mean this is great, let’s fuck up the climate with coal and other fossil fuel instead of generating a relatively small amount of nuclear waste. Makes no sense to me. Global warming is a real and present threat to the whole planet. Nuclear power isn’t.
Yeah, well, see. Transporting nuclear waste is just too fucking dangerous - what with all the Greens trying to disrupt the transport by derailing trains and all.
Mort, it would be interesting to find out why your windmills aren’t turning. In general the current generation of windmills are quite reliable and will operate almost all the time.
However, you will find the “capacity factor” of the windmills are generally low - 25% to 35%. This is not because they don’t operate but because they operate at low power because of low wind speed.
In general, you need at least 10 mph (16 kph) or so to make it worthwhile to run the electrical generating windmills although pumping windmills have been designed that would operate at 2 or 3 mph (5 kph). Windmills are designed for site specific maximum wind speed. This might be about 30 mph (50 kph). Beyond this, the windmill must be stopped because stresses will be too high.
**Mort Furd **, while I still don’t share your fear of collapsing windmills, I do agree, that these things are not particulary pretty. But there is some price one has to pay if we want power. I have seen some of these wind parks with dozens of mills, and yes, they sure don’t turn all. There must be a reason - I hope…
Mort, unfortunately the homepage of your local windpark is unreachable, so no information there.
But look here for some pro/contraarguments.
So here it is claimed, that on average the mills are only operating on 288 out of 365 days. That’s for sure bad news!
And they also admit that it’s damaging the tourism industry (and pissing off locals as you).
So if wind is not the alternativ to nuclear power what is? My suggestion is: Force everyone who builds a new house to put a solar panel on his roof. (There are actually some comunities that do this.) The state should be a role model and do the same with every school, university, office etc. (They actually are doing this in some places.)
You know I once looked into putting solar panels my roof, the pay back period worked out to 25 years.
Oh ooh, big mistake! The translation should of course read:
Windmills operate only on 77 days a year and are stopped on 288!
They will start to dismantel the now shut down nuclear power plant at Stade in 10 years, and it will take them 15. Not to talk about the waste, which will be there for ever.
It’s not christmas yet, so there is nothing for free!
I don’t have a fear of it as such. I don’t walk (or drive) by and think “Oh, God. This thing is going to fall on me.”
It is more of a concern. These things are going up by the gazillion. They are also situated in places where wind storms can get very nasty - they have to be, because that’s also where you have your most steady winds. Even when shut down, they present at least some profile to the wind so that they always have a load on them.
Given all of that, and that the power companies are (naturally) going to try to operate as cheaply as possible, I just wonder when the first one is going to come apart and who is going to be close by when it does.
Well, that windpower homepage for my area is sorta spectacularly useless.
Not only does the link you gave me on the page not exist, the main page consists entirely of a flash animation and nothing else. Since I don’t have flash installed, I can’t even get in to see what else they can tell me.
No I realize that, it’s just that I likely won’t be in my current house more than 3-5 more years. It’s a demand/supply/technology lag that needs worked out before I’ll start plopping x thousand dollars on credit.
Nuclear plants run pretty clean until something goes wrong with them, at which point a lot of people die and/or get sick and a lot of land is rendered useless.
Fossil fuel burning plants burn dirty all the time, and a lot of people die and/or get sick and land is made filthy over long periods of time. It’s slower, so nobody notices.
Which is worse?
Newer pebble bed reactors potentially get rid of major failure scenarios and you still wind up with waste, which might tip the balance.
On the whole though, I always get leery when politicians “ban” a technology.
There was a thread in this forum a long time ago where I and others tried to factually determine this, and it appeared at the time that nuclear was still much better, both short and long-term.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55605
The time it takes to decommission the plant really has nothing to do with payback time. The initial cost has been paid back many times already. When nuclear facilities are closed, they are typically just put into a “safe store” condition for a period of time because the dangerous levels of radioactivity within the plant decay to relatively low levels in a few years, making the ultimate dismantling much cheaper and safer.
For those not aware, in the US, nuclear plant electric rates include a small amount for a “decommissioning fund” which then pays for return of the site to normal use. In the few plants which have been decommissioned, this fund has proved to be more than adequate to do the job.
On a related subject…does anybody study nuclear engineering any more? In the USA, we haven’t built a new nuclear plant for 20+ years! Those profressors at the engineering departments must be getting old!
They’re still building nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, aren’t they?
Just a few notes…
Until they have a realistic viable alternative to nuclear power that is more environmental sound, I think Germany’s choice is not only incredible stupid, but also environmentally damaging.
Austria has been trying very hard to get the (Soviet designed) Czech Nuclear Plant Temelin on the Czech Austrian border closed – so far unsuccessfully. The Czech claim Temelin has been upgraded to western standards, and are apparently planning expansion.
Sweden’s nuclear plant at Barseback is only being closed after much pressure from Denmark, which have their knickers quite throughly twisted to see the Swedes have build it just 5 miles from Copenhagen (even though the Swedes before building it specifically asked the Danes if that was ok). Denmark has no nuclear plants but lotsa jolly environmental unfriendly coal plants and already a fairly large electricity export to Sweden. Closing more reactors at Barsebæk will only mean Denmark throw more coal into the furnaces. Greenpeace, for some reason, has also been very active in getting the Swedish nuclear plant closed, something bordering on mind-boggling criminal idioticy since the alternative (coal) is so obvious the environmental worse choice. But then Greenpeace has never been known for their intelligence. Denmark also has a thriving windmill business (Denmark is by far the largest producer in the world), and a very high percentage of power generated from windmills (something like 15%). That you find them ugly is of course a personal taste, dangerous is quite unfair though (I’ve never heard of anyone getting killed after construction). Also while not quite on-par with coal generated electricity, they’re definitely getting there.
The French made a conscious choice a long time ago to try to minimize their dependency on oil. If you’d just open your eyes, they have a thing or two or three to teach you here as well. They’re also Europe’s bet for the global project for an experimental fusion reactor (Iter).
- Rune
Since the meltdown in Chernoble, I hear there has been more cancer in Germany, so it’s understandable that they’d want to get rid of them plants.