And now that somebody finally figured out what happens when you keep adding salt water to a boiling pot, it looks like the “let’s spray salt water on everything and pray it works” plan is turning to shit.
Meanwhile, nobody is about to admit, much less explain why fuel pools that take two weeks to reach boiling point all need a constant supply of cold water, and they are still boiling.
If you nutters would quit your whining and just give the nuclear industry a fair 80 or 90 years to do it, they will have technology that can “eat” nuclear waste. I heard about it.
The Japanese actually have one of those reactors running right now. You seriously didn’t know?
That is the only plan that the current budget and quarterly goals can accommodate, and will be for the foreseeable future.
Have you guys seen the new Enercon E-126 wind turbine? Frickin’ awesome. 7MW of power, and 7.5MW already in the pipe. Cool stuff. Check out all the pictures. Isn’t it so cool how these turbines only take up 1% of the actual land, and 99% of the land gets used for stuff like crops and cattle? Neat, huh?
Hey, what’s going in Japan lately? I heard something about the Fukushima province being contaminated with radiation from a nuke plant or something. Isn’t Fukushima province Japan’s fourth largest farmland area? Aren’t farming and livestock the largest parts of the Fukushima’s economy? Didn’t I hear something about Fukushima having to destroy all its crops because of radiation, and they can’t sell it and stuff? Where did that radiation come from again? Outer space or something we could never have predicted and have no control over?
I’m still laughing at how the media, which is painted as ‘fear monngering’ by the pronuclears, (who are terribly concerned about the effect on nuclear power of course), this media hasn’t said anything that I can find, about the screamingly obvious problem.
Remember when after the third explosion they evacuated the plant? Radiation levels too high. They sent in helicopter drops. The media reported that this was dangerous, because the weight of water dropped on the fuel rods might damage them. Remember that?
Because the rods are in holders, with boron rods between them, to abosrd neutrons, it is critical that they don’t get damaged. Then the fuel might contact other fuel, and this would cause a nuclear reaction to start up, as if they were no longer moderated by the boron control rods, the boron and the water circulating around the rods.
This is how they keep spent fuel (and new fuel) from heating up. It’s a critical part of nuclear fuel, you don’t want it acting like a nuclear pile, because that creates a lot of heat.
So dropping water on a pool, especially if it was empty, is dangerous. If you damage the fuel rods, you might get an uncontrollable reaction, and this melts the zirconium cladding, and it can also burn. Releasing radiation and causing the fuel pellets to slump together, which is really bad. Then you have no way to stop the reactions.
So it very important that nothing, say like big chunks of concrete and metal fall into the pools. Because that would certainly damage the fuel rods, the boron control rods, and the holders that keep everything at a distance from each other.
Now a pool of water that the rods are in will take a long time to reach boiling temperatures. Ordinarily. If everything is in order. That the pools are furiously boiling away the cold ocean water, all the time, that might be a clue as to what is going on. If they are leaking, it ten times as bad of course, because when exposed to air, the fuel rods, especially if they are damaged, will burst into flame and burn. This is almost as bad as it gets.
They also will then be spraying neutrons, gamma rays and x-rays out into the universe, with no water to shield them.
If there is a lot of plutonium involved, say MOX fuel rods, it gets even worse. Because if plutonium fuel slumps together, and is not moderated, the boron rods are damaged, and plutonium is slumping together, now when you do cover them with water again, especially water with no boron in it, plutonium does something very bad.
And even I at this point, even I don’t like to even think about what might happen.
But, that kind of information is NOT being talked about by the media. And for good reason. It would scare the shit out of most people.
And it should.
TEPCO getshuge government bailout.
Wow, yet another energy corp allowed to grow so big it can’t be allowed to fail, even after admitting its responsibility for the largest radiological incident in the world.
Fuck me, could you at least be bothered to read your own fucking cites. It’s a 7.5 KW turbine. Go look here:
http://www.enercon.de/en-en/66.htm
You would need 441 million of them to generate the energy requirements of the US in 2005. I imagine in the last 6 years that has gone up.
What a fucking moron. It’s 7,500 kW. That’s 7.5MW. I thought Xtime was a clueless moron. No, Xtime is a clueless moron. You’re something else. On the uranium scale of morons, you’re plutonium.
That made me snicker.
You need to re-read that. It’s 7500 KW and 7.5 MW. Kinda changes the calcs,doesn’t it? And yes, I am advocating building a million of them at a cost of $10 trillion plus. As the radius of the windmill is increased the power is harvested from an area pi r squared.
The E126 has been around for a few years.
Uh, Gary… You need to check again. It is in fact a 7.5MW wind turbine. There are 10MW wind turbines in development.
However… A wind turbine can only produce that amount of power if the wind actually carries that much. Peak output power does not translate into effective grid power 1:1. Wind is variable, and even in great locations there are periods of calm. So a 7.5MW turbine might see an average of more like 1-2MW of power after all factors are counted.
You would still need about 200,000 of these turbines just to replace the world’s current nuclear generating capacity.
Looking at the data sheet for this wind turbine, we can see that it can only produce rated power if the wind is over 17 m/s. There are NO large areas in America where the average wind speed is that high. Look at this 80 meter map of Kansas. The red regions are the best locations for wind power in that state (considered to be a state with good wind potential, btw). The winds available there are in the 8-10m/s range. At those wind speeds, the E-126 turbine only makes 1,900 to 3,750 KW.
That’s one of the problems with inland wind. The wind isn’t strong enough to provide the level of power those huge turbines can produce. So you have to use smaller ones, and a lot more of them. The same company makes the E33 turbine, which only makes 330KW, but can operate more cost effectively in lower wind conditions.
Read my last message. Those turbines are unsuitable for use in the large areas in America required. They make more sense in coastal areas where there are sustained high winds. Good luck finding that kind of space to build a million. And if you do, good luck figuring out how to get all that power to the large inland cities.
You know, there’s actual engineering involved here. There are rules and physical limits and stuff. You need to know what you’re actually talking about before you can make the kinds of sweeping claims you tend to make - especially when you’re trying to push policy in that direction.
If wind power was that easy and cost-effective, we’d already be building turbines everywhere. Unfortunately, the details matter.
There are plenty of places that would allow 2.5Megawatt power from them windmills. Year round.
So, 500,000 windmills to replace all nuclear plants? I wonder which costs more? Build 441 new nuclear plants, or put up half a million windmills?
Seriously, considering the number of corrections people have already had to point out to you in this thread, you really want to try that?
I’ll be honest, I completely misread it. My bad. So now you’re down to a mere 1/2 million windfarms. If they all operate at peak capacity. Which as Sam has already pointed out, they can’t, because you don’t have anything like sufficient area of places with the windspeed they require to get close to that.
So now, you’re talking how many? A million? Maybe more? And I guess that as you don’t want a million of them onshore you’re going to look at offshore, where the wind is certainly stronger, but then you have the slight problem of maintenance and servicing in a marine environment, as well as replacements for storm damage. But that’s fine, because at least it will be safe right? Well, safe other than for all the workers in that marine environment of course, which as the oil industry knows can be a right fucking bastard to work in, but hey ho, that’s ok, at least you’re going to keep fatalities down to the hundreds per year, compared to the nuclear industry where staff fatalities are…oh.
As I mentioned above, you really are not in a position to make any comments about other people being stupid. Even by internet standards, you are one thick son of a bitch.
So, how many windmills to replace all the coal as well? I’m liking this direction. Some places, far from where we want the power of course, have a lot of wind. All the time.
If only there was a way to turn electricity into a fuel that could be moved around like oil.
I think this is important.
I’ve been plenty critical on these boards of some aspects of laissez-faire capitalism. I firmly believe that government regulation in certain areas of the economy is a good thing if it enables a more equitable distribution of resources and helps those who might be left behind in the free marker free-for-all. I also believe in government oversight in areas such as safety standards that protect citizens and consumers. Even if these types of government intervention sometimes reduce raw economic efficiency, think they are good for society, and an appropriate use of government power.
But despite my reservations about unrestricted free enterprise, the fact is that capitalists are generally pretty good at seeking out opportunities for investment and return. While it’s easy to portray the whole energy situation as a cabal of oil and coal executives conspiring to deny cheap, renewable energy to the people of the world, the fact is that there’s plenty of wealthy people who are interested in the potential of clean energy, and who would be happy to make a buck from it.
The fact that larger amounts of money haven’t been poured into wind and solar energy suggests that, right now at least, those forms of energy are not as cost-effective as some of the arguments in this thread claim. I know it might chap the hide of us democratic socialists that getting anything done requires an economic payoff, but the fact is that costs versus returns is a perfectly reasonable way for an investor—whether private or government—to evaluate the viability of a project.
If private investors thought that they could produce and sell wind power at a profit, they’d do it. They wouldn’t refrain just to piss off us long-haired, unwashed environmentalists. One of the critiques made of capitalism is that it is amoral, but that can also be one of its strengths. Capital searches for profit opportunities, and if not enough people are investing in wind power, it’s not because capitalists want to kick tree-huggers in the balls; it’s because capitalists don’t yet see profit in it.
Of course, in the long run, we as a society are going to have to look beyond a simple economic return evaluation of energy sources, because traditional sources will become more and more strained as they dwindle, and as world demands for energy increase. As i said earlier, i’d be willing to pay more for clean electricity from wind or solar power, and i also think that there’s a role for government in helping to develop clean power resources for the benefit of society. But whoever does it, the power still has to be paid for somehow, and if it costs more to bring the electricity to your house, are you willing to see a dramatic rise in your power bill?
[QUOTE]
There are plenty of places that would allow 2.5Megawatt power from them windmills. Year round.
So, 500,000 windmills to replace all nuclear plants? I wonder which costs more? Build 441 new nuclear plants, or put up half a million windmills?/QUOTE]
Do the math. Figure they cost between 1-2 million each. Pretend the cost will come down to half a million each. So, at 1 million, each 1000 cost a billion. At half price it would be each 2000 cost a billion. So…how much for 500 k? And that gets you to the same as nuclear…20%.
And it leaves aside where you are going to put them all. How many are in use today? 5000? 10,000? No ideas off the top of my head…but this would be another order of magnitude at least. And this leaves aside that all the best places are already being used or looked at. Double just what we have today and you will be hitting the second or third tier sites…assuming the NIMBY folks don’t quash a large percentage of future deployments once you get past putting the things in the middle of no where, Texas…
-XT
All the best places have not been used. Not even close yet.
Fine…pretend there are hundreds of thousands of tier one places left in the US. Did you do the math on what it would cost?
-XT
