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We do need an alternative, but this isn't it.
Edited by Sredni Vashtar
Updated - 16th Nov
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Nukes cost Billions not millions.
Posted by shaunehunter
16th Nov
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Another White Elephant MONSTER Wind Farm
Haven't we learned our lessons yet about the DAMAGING effects that wind farms cause? http://www.wind-watch.org But here we go again. It's about making a profit and teaching NONSENSE, to convince the public that this is an 'environmental' way to make energy. Windpower is only benign when it is scaled down to the family unit size. These monstrosities are TOO LARGE and kill an unprecedented number of birds and bats every year. Not to mention affecting weather patterns and the downstream turbulence that makes farm land useless for up to two miles. What's the alternative? We've known it all along, and the U.S. governing-of-the-mental refuses to subsidize the DECENTRALIZATION of energy production. So the playing field is uneven players, in favor of centralized power. Empower the family unit to do it themselves, then we'll get some lasting results. There is 20%+ line loss from the wind farm to the light switch. Not to mention supporting an infrastructure of ugly power lines everywhere that we've just grown up with and become accustomed to looking at. People don't even question it why everything we need for energy-production is centralized. It is similar to a baby elephant's foot which is tied with a strong rope to prevent it from escaping. As it grows up, it then only needs a thin line that it could easily break, to do the same job.
Posted by darinselby
16th Nov
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It's one of the least offensive, Iowa's such a mess already, but..
According to what I read, Iowa is almost totally industrialized already by corn varieties owned by Monsanto. And it's flat and boring.
But I wonder if Google could have bought an ARC100 reactor from http://arcnuclear.com -- if the NRC would get a nuclear engineer who could see how very superior its ancestor, the EBR II of Argonne National Labs's Integral Fast Reactor project is to all other energy alternatives with the possible exception of the thorium alternative, LFTR.
It starts with a 20.7 (metric) tonne core of uranium, perhaps 3 tonnes of it U-235 -- although it could use and thus dispose of Cold War "surplus" plutonium -- and after running at 100 MW round the clock for 20 years, it's ready to be refuelled, but the old core is refurbished by changing 8% of its mass, taking out fission products an putting in un-enriched or even "waste","depleted" uranium. So it has actually used up less than 1.7 tonnes of uranium, and the servicing depot needs to dispose of 1.7 tonnes of quite short-lived radioactive waste. By short lived, I mean that the longest lived, and least radioactive component of the waste is cesium-137, half of which has decayed in 30 years from the date of its creation, and the entire 1.7 tonnes will contain less than 1.7 kilograms of radioactive isotopes after 300 years. So that terrifying waste is about 3 lbs.
But I wonder if Google could have bought an ARC100 reactor from http://arcnuclear.com -- if the NRC would get a nuclear engineer who could see how very superior its ancestor, the EBR II of Argonne National Labs's Integral Fast Reactor project is to all other energy alternatives with the possible exception of the thorium alternative, LFTR.
It starts with a 20.7 (metric) tonne core of uranium, perhaps 3 tonnes of it U-235 -- although it could use and thus dispose of Cold War "surplus" plutonium -- and after running at 100 MW round the clock for 20 years, it's ready to be refuelled, but the old core is refurbished by changing 8% of its mass, taking out fission products an putting in un-enriched or even "waste","depleted" uranium. So it has actually used up less than 1.7 tonnes of uranium, and the servicing depot needs to dispose of 1.7 tonnes of quite short-lived radioactive waste. By short lived, I mean that the longest lived, and least radioactive component of the waste is cesium-137, half of which has decayed in 30 years from the date of its creation, and the entire 1.7 tonnes will contain less than 1.7 kilograms of radioactive isotopes after 300 years. So that terrifying waste is about 3 lbs.
Posted by Sredni Vashtar
16th Nov
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Nukes cost Billions not millions.
ARC doesn't have a working website never mind a working reactor.
Posted by shaunehunter
16th Nov
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wind farms
Just look at the destruction on the East coast caused by Earth warming and CO2 which will only get worse, which do you prefer, people choking to death, asthma, COPD, stick your nose up a tail pipe and you will die, the same stuff that is pumped into our atmosphere ever minute of every day, I prefer windfarms and biotech, bet those 25,000 homes in Iowa that is getting that clean energy are very happy with leaner energy bills , Native American
Posted by ustabearepug
16th Nov
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We do need an alternative, but this isn't it.
"25,000 homes"? No, the man said 15,000. But that's humbug too. 50 MW is what the turbines produce in the maximum wind they dare use, which is about 25 to 30 mph. At lesser speeds, the wind power drops according to a cube of the speed law. In general, you can expect the average of the highly variable output of wind turbines to be 25% of the MW rating. That would be 1.25 MW, which is 1250 kW (kilowatts). So the humbuggery lies in the probable fact that on average, each of these 15 thousand "homes" consumes 12.5/15 = 0.833 kilowatts. Put it another way, it's 0.833 kWh per hour.
Your electric bill probably tells you the total kWh for which you're being charged. BUT, when you turn on an electric kettle, or a microwave oven or stovetop component, you are asking for quite a lot more than a kilowatt. When I had a small window air conditioner and my laser printer (foolishly) on the same 15 Amp circuit, and turned the printer on while the A/C was running, I blew the fuse. No harm done, but note that 15A x 110V = 1650 Watts, i.e. 1.65 kW. That's a good deal more than my average consumption rate. So the fact that wind turbine electricity is fed into the grid, and that gas turbines also supply the grid with power, means that so long as the dispatchers can call upon a spinning gas turbine to adjust its fuel intake, they can handle the unpredictable supply of wind. But you'll never get rid of carbon burning that way. If it were 50% wind turbines, the madhouses would be full of grid dispatchers.
Your electric bill probably tells you the total kWh for which you're being charged. BUT, when you turn on an electric kettle, or a microwave oven or stovetop component, you are asking for quite a lot more than a kilowatt. When I had a small window air conditioner and my laser printer (foolishly) on the same 15 Amp circuit, and turned the printer on while the A/C was running, I blew the fuse. No harm done, but note that 15A x 110V = 1650 Watts, i.e. 1.65 kW. That's a good deal more than my average consumption rate. So the fact that wind turbine electricity is fed into the grid, and that gas turbines also supply the grid with power, means that so long as the dispatchers can call upon a spinning gas turbine to adjust its fuel intake, they can handle the unpredictable supply of wind. But you'll never get rid of carbon burning that way. If it were 50% wind turbines, the madhouses would be full of grid dispatchers.
Posted by Sredni Vashtar
Updated - 16th Nov
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Large Wind Farms are Great
darinselby, I disagree with you about large wind farms. First of all, properly located wind farms kill 10s of thousands of birds, but glass windows in our homes kill millions of birds every year in the US. You point out 20% loss of power to the grid, but think about how efficient could your average family's windmill really be when in most cases they won't be well located and the smaller windmills won't be as efficient nor as cost-efficient for installation. My home has the space but is surrounded by woods that block the wind. Most people live in apartments or have tiny yards. And higher winds are concentrated in certain regions. But rooftops are plentiful: If you really want something at your home, probably solar power will be better. Solar water heating is somewhere around 50% efficient and is still cheaper than solar-electric--but that price will drop as well. You can like decentralizing where it is practical, but your comment was overly upset about big wind farms.
Posted by lenupinnh
16th Nov