[pp.int.general] Don't roast our planet

Andrew Norton ktetch at gmail.com
Fri May 18 21:47:50 CEST 2012


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On 5/18/2012 5:49 AM, Kenneth Peiruza wrote:

> Right now, Spain is producing 10% of it's energy with renewable sources,
> and 11% of its electricity with wind power. Wind power is (as stated by
> US dpt. of Energy) significantly cheaper than nuclear power, and below
> market-prices. The cheapest source is advanced combined cycle, which
> will increase its price in the next years, as it's based in fossil fuels.
> 

Ooh boy. You combined the W and the N in a statement, and oh boy...

First, Nuclear is expensive, yes, why? Because of an institutionalized
paranoia that ranges on the obscene. Were we to submit any other form of
electricity generation to it, nuclear would be the cheapest.

We had a major nuclear incident last year. Despite that, the
deaths/serious injuries at nuclear power locations remains? Oh, Zero.
How many fatalities have there been at wind power sites in, say, 2011?
ELEVEN!
Oh my.

Do you know what constitutes a 'leak' at a nuclear power station? If you
take a smoke detector in, it will flag a leak alarm. If you carry a
bunch of bananas, it will trigger a leak alarm, you have a handful of
brazilnuts? leak alarm...
I haven't actually checked this but some very rough calculations
indicate to me that if you take a wind power turbine, and put it in a
nuclear power site, it will set off the leak alarms.
THIS IS WHY IT'S SO EXPENSIVE.

When you have people making policy that don't understand the science,
then you have serious problems. I live in Georgia. We're actually
getting a new nuclear plant built here (albeit many many miles from me).
There's lots of nuclear protesters around there. About 20-25 miles away
is a coal plant (one of the biggest in the US - Georgia Power's plant
Scherer) and there's NO nuclear protesters there. Obvious you might
think. Just one problem - residents around plant Scherer, are starting
to suffer from Uranium poisoning, as the ash pool leeches into groundwater.

I have no worries about nuclear power. Perhaps because about 10 years
ago, i did some design work at a nuclear power plant+reprocessor. Last
September, I sat next to (or withing 5 meters of, at all times) a
nuclear reactor. Not just ANY reactor though, but one a 17yo kid had
built himself. here it is -
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d32/ktetch/0903011932a.jpg (that
bright spot on the left side of the pic is from my laptop, which is
where I was sitting, working the mixer desk) and here's a video of it in
action, showing it's radiation output with a Geiger-Muller counter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbgIQ8X3uc

Of course, all this is because I understand radiation, and nuclear power
(really, it's not that hard. and the day before, I'd led a panel on a
particle accelerator that has uses including dealing with nuclear waste)

But Wind? Wind scares the crap out of me. If there's no wind, it
generates nothing. If there's too much wind, it generates nothing
because they have to stop it so it doesn't break. If the brakes fail, it
catches fire, and spews huge amounts of toxic smoke. These fires are
usually left to burn because they're incredibly difficult to put out,
and very high up (and fanned by the high winds that started it). And if
the fire spreads it can be VERY nasty; one wind-turbine wildfire in
Australia torched an area of national park roughly the same size as the
Fukushima exclusion zone. Then there's the blades - In Germany it's been
shown that bits of blades can embed themselves in house roofs kilometers
away. If it gets cold, they can throw big ice chunks just as far.

then there's effectiveness. A study by the UK National Grid found that
wind turbines provided only an average around 23% of their rated
generation capacity. So you have to build even MORE. That's more
expense, and of course, that's not usable all the time.

The UK was also looking at, I believe, cutting the heavy subsidies paid
to wind generators, who were being paid even if they were generating
NOTHING.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9076458/Wind-industrys-extensive-lobbying-to-preserve-subsidies-and-defeat-local-resistance-to-turbines.html

But seriously, if you want to talk about cost, make sure you understand
ALL the facts, especially those facts which drive the costs. Know your
facts, know your science, know that nuclear is the best option at present.


- -- 
Andrew Norton
http://ktetch.co.uk
Tel: +1(352)6-KTETCH [+1-352-658-3824]
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