Sneak Peak at Beta Version of Nuclear to Wind Calculator
May 28th, 2009
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Something I put some work into this past week: a calculator to demonstrate the aproximate cost of replacing a nuclear facility with a wind power systrem. It’s a “beta version” because it’s not quite done and will need some additional research on numbers. When done it will also have a basic graphical representation, which is still too buggy to post.
Feedback would be appreciated as I work on this!
(there are some citations in the source code if you want to view it. It’s just javascript so it’s easy to check out)
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Announcements, Good Science, Misc, Website. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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May 29th, 2009 at 12:37 am
One of the big differences between wind and fission is the fact that reactors can be placed close to their users, making transmission lines unnecessary. In fact, I think reactors should be underground, right in the middle of cities. This kind of location is not possible for wind. This factor should be accounted for in some way in the calculator.
A large wind farm is going to have a lot more funerals associated with it than does a reactor. Somebody pays for all this service. This could perhaps be another factor for the calculator.
For some situations, such as a scientific research base in a remote location, a small reactor can be brought in, set up, used for a while, then taken out, all at low cost. Hyperion is an example of this kind of use. Doing something similar with wind is impossible. There are many cases where a reactor provides this kind of mobility, or perhaps heat instead of electricity, and a wind system just cannot do the job. The calculator might show these as “Not Possible with Wind” cases.
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May 29th, 2009 at 12:55 am
This is an interesting and potentially useful tool. One suggestion I’d make is since you’re listing the cost of the construction of the turbines and the wind farm footprint, maybe add a column to compare the costs and acreage of the nuclear plant that is being calculated against.
Also just a small fyi, I found a typo in this version you have “avaliable” in a couple instances instead of available.
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May 29th, 2009 at 3:35 am
In your view, how many people who oppose nuclear power oppose it primarily because it is not “renewable” (as opposed to because of worries about waste or accidents or proliferation)?
Oh how I loathe Storm van der Leeuwen!
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May 29th, 2009 at 4:03 am
George Carty said:
It’s a combination of things, but I think for the general public, the reason they don’t push for nuclear is that they have been duped into thinking wind/solar is viable and the way to go. After all, why even bother with something that has even the remotest possible danger of proliferation or waste or whatever if there is free energy for the taking in wind and solar?
The whole “renewable” thing doesn’t really matter. We have more than enough uranium and thorium to last for the habitable period of this planet. Even the (highly inefficient) fuel cycle we have now won’t run into supply problems for several decades if not centuries.
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May 29th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Compressed air energy storage on its own as a way of powering anything except for a nail gun or something like that is a complete sham. If the system is just a full cycle air in and air out system it loses upwards of 90% of the energy by the time you get electricity out. They talk about systems that maintain the high temperature of the air the whole cycle but i doubt it. Compressors need cooling in these situations and letting the air through heat exchangers on the way out might help, but they’ll only do so much. So much heat is lost. Thermal mass might salvage a little to reheat the air, but that complicates things more with adding intermediate fluids and everything to keep the compressors cool and dump the heat into something.
It’s just a bad idea from end to end and it shocks me that it is taken seriously even in the “renewable energy” lala-land.
There are a couple of compressed air energy systems in the world, but they don’t work by pure compressed air. They use the air to feed gas-fired turbines. The air comes out super cold, but it goes through a recuperator that heats up the air while it cools the exhaust of the turbine and the the pre-compressed air is fed. This improves the output of the turbine, but you still end up with a very large net loss in terms of energy in versus energy out.
The generator is still really a fossil fuel unit, it just gets an extra kick from the precompressed air. It is a clever backdoor into selling gas fired units. It still doesn’t even help that much, all things considered, but the point of this scam is to burn more gas anyway and the wind turbines are just for show.
Oh another thought too: A pumped storage facility can fail (and they have) and cause a local disaster. I wonder if anyone’s considered what it might be like if a cavern or some other large structure filled with lots and lots of highly compressed air suddenly ruptured.
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May 29th, 2009 at 6:26 am
I think you should include “Magic” as an option for energy storage; assume that all of the off peak generated energy is stored with perfect efficiency until needed. I know it’s not realistic but I think it would be illustrative of the fact that even if you hand-wave away the profound technical chalanges of energy storage, these things are still just not practical on this scale.
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May 29th, 2009 at 7:28 am
Chuck P. said:
Good point. It would seem that many proposals imply just that.
Engineering Edgar said:
I have always been completely floored by the notion of compressed air power cars. Almost one of the first things you learn when managing an industrial shop is that the most expensive form of energy around is compressed air. Plus it’s density is pathetic, and as you pointed out very inefficient to convert. Why anyone would think that this is a good idea on its own, nevermind ‘green’ in any sense of the word is astonishing.
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May 29th, 2009 at 8:27 am
George Carty said:
Well in my view I see many of the anti-nuke people against nuclear precisely because it is non-renewable. I have seen countless blog posts bemoaning the idea that “regardless of fuel type, all fuel is finite.” This frequently segue’s into “we can’t continue to depend on growth forever” and hence the only rational technologies are those that rely on “free” energy. This is a philosophically based conclusion, so it doesn’t matter if the fuel will last 40 years or 4,000 years, “the idea is the same.”
My own belief is that these people are being very closed-minded and just have no imagination. After all, we have barely begun to use the resources of this world, and there are literally billions and billions of other planets out there, waiting for us to arrive and begin mining. They are like small children who feel their backyard garden is the entire world. There’s a whole universe out there – let’s get going.
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May 29th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Great program!
Happen to see that you have the AP-1000 listed as 1,154 MW. I happen to work at Westinghouse and we have it rated at 1,117 MW. Trivial, I didn’t check your sources, but I thought I should let you know.
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May 29th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Eb Faber (futurist) said:
As things stand right now, we need to continue to grow economically, because too large a portion of the world lives at standards of living which are not acceptable (at least in my view) and human population continues to grow.
The only way to have a system that does not grow is to either accept that many people will never be elevated from abject poverty or to have a population crash. If we freeze things at their current levels that’s basically saying things will never get better for anyone.
DV82XL said:
Yes, compressed air is a HORRIBLE way to store energy or send it and that is why it’s really only used in applications where having the kind of fast power pneumatics can deliver in a small package is more valuable than effeciency. (nail guns, impact wrenches etc).
There actually were once pneumatic vehicles that were powered by large air cylinders. They were used in places like mines where carts had to be pulled short distances and smoke from a boiler could not be accommodated or occasionally in some other applications, like factories or around explosives.
They were abandoned as soon as electric motors became avaliable in the appropriate size and capacity, because pneumatic systems were so horribly lossy, among other things
Engineering Edgar said:
SMILE, YOU SON OF A….
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May 29th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I think the calculator is great, and certainly accurate enough for showing people just what their buying into with wind. One small addition I would suggest is to add some of the big dirt-burners to the list. There seems to be a sector that is OK with existing nuclear plants and thinks that wind could replace coal.
I am thinking here of the Nanticoke Generating Station (4096 MW) in Ontario which is scheduled to close. Bruce Power wants to build a large nuclear station to replace it, while the Greens want to see offshore wind on Lake Ontario take its place.
But there is also the Gibson Generating Station in Indiana; Coal Creek Generating Station in North Dakota; and of course Kendal Power Station in Mpumalanga, South Africa, which is currently the largest coal-fired power station in the world.
Just a suggestion.
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May 29th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
As a Brit, can I suggest that if you’re adding cokes to the list that you add Drax Power Station (3,960 MW)?
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May 29th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
drbuzz0 said:
I suspect some people think that capitalism (AFAIK this is normally used as an argument against capitalism, rather than industrial society in general) is a kind of gigantic Ponzi scheme, which must carry on growing forever or utterly collapse. Such a system is clearly unsustainable.
That however is a fundamentally different argument from yours (which would allow for a steady state economy in the future, at a much higher energy usage than that of the current time).
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May 29th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Great tool!
A couple of things I thought of:
It would be nice to include the impact that mining has for the aluminum of wind power turbines and the average deaths/per KWH associated with wind power compared to the much safer nuclear power reactors. It would also be nice to have a little bit more description of how the various choices effect the outcome. I love this idea. I think it should be an iPhone App!
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May 29th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
This is really great so far. I was thinking of doing the same thing but as a flash app, though I wasn’t ready to dedicate the hours to do it.
Here’s my feedback. Perhaps dividing the output into different categories would he helpful. So you would have one box that describes the capital costs, another box that details the environmental/land impacts, and so on. Putting in some details as for the amount of materials required – concrete, steel, etc – would be helpful too. AP1000 has 42 MT/MW ratio for steel for example. Wind has the highest steel MT to MW ratio of all energy sources, it’s important to show that.
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May 29th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
I’m very sorry drbuzz0, but your model is full of flaws. It IS pretty well established that nuclear power is cheaper than wind, but this takes significant financial and industry knowledge to show – it’s not something you can just figure out on your own.
Here’s some of the things wrong with your model:
* It has the wrong units: capital cost per watt only reflects the construction cost, which is not the same thing as asking “which is economically cheaper”. The interesting units are not $/Watt, but $/Joule (or $/kWh) – the costs being amortized over the economic lifetime of the plant. For example:
* You do not consider the lifespan of the power plants, which IIRC is anticipated 20-25 years for wind turbines, 40-60 years for nuclear reactors. This is a huge oversight! Again: $/kWh is the correct unit, not $/W.
* You do not take into account costs other than the construction costs. Wind turbines and reactors are both capital-intensive plants, so these are relatively small, but they are still significant errors. For example: ongoing maintenance, reactor operation costs, fuel fabrication costs, end-of-life decommissioning costs, and spent fuel disposal or reprocessing. (Your comment ‘does not include costs of ongoing maintenance’ is misleading in this regard, as ongoing costs are higher for nuclear plants).
* You don’t take into account financial subtleties like discount rates, which are extremely important when you’re looking at decades-long investments. $1 now is much more valuable than a $1 in a half-century’s time. See for instance, Appendix 5 of the IEA costs study:
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/publications/free_new_Desc.asp?PUBS_ID=1472
* Your wind energy buffering model is too simplistic. You left out some options, like spinning natural gas backup (which is actually cheaper than any of your options). You also overcount the energy losses: you multiply the turbine power by the buffering efficiency directly, but a realistic grid does not send all of its electricity through a buffer all the time. Also, your backup storage requirements are much too small: 24 hours @50% is a very optimistic figure which doesn’t account for prolonged wind outages. You would realistically need weeks of energy storage – see David MacKay’s book for a real examples of wind fluctuation:
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c26/page_186.shtml
* Your nuclear capacity factor figure is inaccurate. You use 93% for all reactors, which is reasonable for US generation. But this is the highest in the world: for example, the Gravelines power plant you use averages 75% capacity over the last 5 years, and this is typical for French reactors. (I think this has to do with France’s very high nuclear penetration, together with the lack of load-following ability of current PWRs, which leads to waste).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravelines_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Here’s some real academic and industry cost studies, as examples of methodology to help you in your modeling. I’ve excerpted the nuclear and wind cost figures. (These all exclude costs of wind intermittency (too difficult) except the British Royal Academy which estimates natural gas backup at USD 2.7c/kWh)
in USD c/kWh
International Energy Agency (2005)
at 5% discount rate
Nuclear: 2.3 – 3.6
Wind: 3.1 – 9.4
at 10% discount rate
Nuclear: 3.1 – 5.2
Wind: 4.8 – 14.4
British Royal Academy (2004)
at 7.5% discount rate
Nuclear: 3.4
Wind (onshore): 5.5
Wind (offshore): 8.2
MIT (2003/2009)
2003
Nuclear: 4.4 – 7.9
2009
Nuclear: 6.6 – 8.4
UK Dept. of Trade & Industry (2007)
Wind (onshore): 9.1 – 12.8
Wind (offshore): 12.7 – 13.7
U. Chicago (2004)
Nuclear: 3.1 – 4.6
Quote Comment
May 30th, 2009 at 12:44 am
Anonymous said:
If it didn’t have flaws I would not call it a “beta” or say it’s a “sneak peak” as I am not ready to consider it a good reflection on the reality of things.
Anonymous said:
Sure it is. Air does not weigh very much or move very fast. That’s that.
Wind can’t do much of anything without an energy storage medium.
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May 30th, 2009 at 12:48 am
BTW: At Ammoymous. Appreciate your comment as it is the kind of feedback I wanted. I will correct several points.
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May 30th, 2009 at 5:08 am
Everyone who knows the first thing about wind power knows that it relies on spinning reserve, but why give wind power a free pass to acomponie gas? You never hear of wind turbines being sold as a means of augmenting gas turbines. They always talk about them being non-fossil-fuel. Seems to be a back door into more gas generation. Gas is cleaner than coal, but we’re really becoming heavily reliant on gas based power plants and that could come back to bite us.
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May 30th, 2009 at 7:40 am
can you put the cost of the nuclear power plants and the cost of the fuel for its entire lifetime? IIRC the fuel for a wind turbine is free, basically you pay for it during fabrication.
can you put the percentage of what can be recycled into another power plant (nuclear and wind) when a power plant reaches its end of life?
can you put the current backup systems that backup nuclear power when the reactors are refueling? i am not talking about future ones, i am talking about the ones you have on the list, also please insert the current working backup systems for current systems? (make a list of examples by country/capacity)
can you factor in the cost of several fuels that each nuclear power plant can use and the cost of protecting or destroying high level radioactive and toxic nuclear waste to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands during the time its dangerous?
this is not a destructive critique, i what to help.
also: can you make a future one that calculates nuclear to solar, nuclear to hydro and nuclear to mix (mix being a mix between wind, solar, biomass and hydro with controllable percentages)
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May 30th, 2009 at 7:56 am
ps:
Could you also make one with a negawatt/nuclear comparison and/or factor in negawatts in the mix (see above)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negawatt_power
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May 30th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
I loved the idea for the nuclear wind calculator. but it ca be better whit more nuclear reactor designs like the canadians CANDU 6 and the Advanced CANDU Reactor. and also compare nuclear to solar photovoltaics and thermal
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May 30th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Randal Leavitt said:
Reactor can be placed close to the user? Yeah, because sooo many people, want to live next to a nuclear reactor. If anything, it’s the other way around. Distributed wind can be close to people’s homes instead of centralized and transmitted over a long distance.
Anyway, this is all academic. Senate just passed a renewable mandate, so whether you think renewables are the best solution or not, they are the solution that America has chosen. Some Republican, tried throwing some amendment in to redifine renewable to “clean” (so nuclear would count also), thankfully he had no luck. Especially, given that nuclear will not be clean once the uranium supplies start running LOW and more and more energy is required to extract the uranium. To Lamar alexander, the Republican senator who wanted 100 more nuclear reactors – where is all that fuel supposed to come from – the grand canyon??
Renewable Mandate:
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN21261453
Dwindeling Uranium Supplies:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Good-Bye-Uranium-Good-Bye-Nuclear-Power-84065.shtml
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May 30th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Bruce you are such an idiot.
As far as your NIMBY argument goes, it seems no one wants a wind farm in the neighborhood ether, so what else is new?
The U.S. Senate is one of the most power political assemblies on the planet, but no amount of legislation can change the basic nature of wind. It just is not going to be able to supply any more than a small fraction of the energy needed for your country, the rest will be made up by burning gas and coal. That is what we have been trying to show everyone. The numbers just don’t add up – ‘renewables’ are just whitening the sepulcher of fossil-fuel generation, and the obstreperously stupid like you are swallowing it hook, line, and sinker because you want it to be true. Why you refuse to look behind the curtain here is beyond me. Do you honestly think that you can ignore basic physics just because you don’t like what it is saying?
There is no shortage of uranium, in fact there is enough uranium above ground, sitting in spent fuel pools and dry-caskets to keep the current fleet of reactors going for the next 200 years, all it needs is to be processed. The fact is that this is not being done in countries like the U.S. and Canada because it is cheaper to get fresh out of the ground. There are vast amounts of this element in sea water and viable technology for extracting it, and many many low density known deposits that just are not worth working at this time because the metal is so cheap.
This whole pile of crap that refining will generate more greenhouse gases as ore grades start running low is something that we won’t see happening for several THOUSAND years. Note that the critics that haul out that argument are always very coy about when this will start to be an issue.
And then there is thorium which works just as well in a reactor, which is available in abundance but isn’t being used because there is no market. Why? Because right now there is more uranium available than the market can absorb. Run ‘uranium’ into a search box at any of the big business journals, this article at Softpedia is a crock, even the guy trashing nuclear power in that piece allows that it will contribute.
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May 30th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Bruce said:
Bruce, people here have been far kinder to you than you deserve. This may be because at one point you did actually show some signs of moving toward a more rational outlook on the energy issue. With this last comment of yours it becomes clear that you just don’t want to learn.
You have spent enough time on this site now to have absorbed all the necessary basic facts about nuclear power and the issues connected with it. You certainly should know full well that uranium is in vast and plentiful supply. You should be able to see through claims to the contrary. Instead you just parrot the same old tired, idiotic anti-nuke lines in the apparent belief that someone is going to be impressed.
If we end up in a situation around the middle of this century where it is no longer possible to maintain technological civilisation because of irrational energy policy, or if we have to end up burning so much coal to keep going that an environmental tipping point is reach, the blame will rest in large part with cowards like yourself who refused to face facts, refused to contemplate the possibility that their dogma might be wrong, and refused to take up the grave responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy by rationally assessing the public debate on energy production and commenting and voting accordingly.
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May 30th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Bruce said:
Some people live ring on top of a reactor (like within several feet of it) and do so while submersed under hundreds of feed of ice cold sea water, with their entire life dependent on the reactor functioning properly.
Anyway, the nuclear power plant near me is on the shore and just outside the border of the power plant, about 300 yards from the reactor core is a private beach with lots of little cottages behind it. I wouldn’t mind living there, except as things are I couldn’t really afford it… it’s a rather expensive private neighborhood with its own beach and marina and everything.
Bruce said:
No. They’re not a solution. They’re not simply “not the best solution.” They are a non-solution. The fact that “America has chosen” a mandate means that they will be built, it doesn’t mean that they will do anything useful.
It’s like saying “Whether or not you think antibiotics or homeopathy is the solution to a raging bacterial infection, we have chosen homeopathy.” No… chosing homeopathy doesn’t mean it will work. It means you have chosen stupidly and will die.
In the case of “choosing renewables” the US will not die. We will, however, waste gobs and gobs of money on something that is useless while continuing to burn coal like we do now.
Bruce said:
Gawd. This has been gone over time and time and time and time and time again. Even the relatively ineffecient fuel cycle we use now could be sustained for centuries through conventional mining. Simply reprocessing the fuel at least tripples the amount of fuel.
We have enough thorium nitrate in a government reserve in Nevada to last ten years of full power production – without lifting a single shovel for a new mine. We have enough uranium and plutonium in stratigic weapons reserves to last more than a century.
Thermal breeding of thorium would provide thousands of years of energy from existing mines.
Let me try to explain something: If you provided all of humanities energy needs.. ALL of it. From the US to China to Europe to Austraila.. 100% of energy needs, not just electricity but heating, cooling, transportation, process heat… everything. And you did it using uranium that was used at 100% burnup (like in a fast reactor and then the material refined until you had nothing left but fission byproducts) You know how much uranium you would need?
You would need a block of uranium roughly the size of two standard shipping containers per year.
That’s it.
Two single unit 40′ shipping containers full of uranium.
The energy density of it boggles the mind.
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May 30th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Finrod said:
Good point Finrod, but we cannot forget or ignore the perfidy of those who’s obvious level of education, and intellect make it almost impossible to believe they cannot know the truth. These traitors (I can think of no better term) have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage, trading their integrity for money to pay lip-service to technologies they know will fail to produce as promised.
The Bruces of this world will always be with us. Lacking the capacity to think, they subordinate themselves to any idea that suits their fancy, even better if it is the exact opposite of those that they feel inferior to. While annoying to the extreme, in the end they are nothings, and have little impact except in mass. Ultimately they deserve as much pity as contempt. Those that can reason, but turn their backs on the truth for gain on the other hand are my blood enemies, and I would never pass up a chance to tear one of them down when I have the chance.
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May 30th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Somewhere I have an old pamphlet from the Atomic Energy Commission, titled “Johnie had 2 tons of Plutonium to power New York for a year, how much plutonium did he have left? 4 tons of Plutonium.” Nuclear energy does mysterious stuff.
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May 30th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Bruce said:
You know what Bruce. You just refuse to look at the facts and consider the numbers. It’s all politics to you and nuclear is bad and “renewables” are good and that’s just that, right? Screw reality.
Well, it’s not a solution to ANYTHING except a bad case of fat wallet. Wind and solar are expensive and they DO NOT HELP. If you connect a wind turbine to the grid it does nothing. At the very least you need to pair it with spinning reserve (MORE GAS BURNING!!!) and even then it only gives you minimal return.
Build them all you want. Know how many coal plants are going to close because wind put them out of buisiness? NONE BRUCE, NONE. NOT A SINGLE ONE WILL CLOSE.
Do you get it? Texas has been building turbines like crazy for ten years. THEY ARE BUILDING MORE GAS AND COAL BURNERS!
Germany is building wind turbines as fast as any country and has since 1980. They are building over a dozen new coal power plants. Yes, Bruce, new coal power plants. Last I heard 26 were either being built or undergoing major increases in capacity.
Why can’t you confront this? Why keep bringing up parties. Just explain how wind or solar helps. Please, just give some information.
You know why this mandate passed? Because it’s simple. Politicians want one thing more than anything else. They want to get reelected. Politicians put that at number one. Even their political party is less important than the next election. So they vote for things that they think are going to get people to vote for them.
You’re an idiot, Bruce. You don’t question anything or look at the facts or the science. You’re so unable to comprehend anything other than democrats and republicans and the propiganda that supports your preconceived notion that you won’t ever see past it.
You’re an idiot and there are other idiots like you. That’s why these useless measures pass. The politicians are banking on your own stupidity to be their trump card to the next election. They voted for something popular and used the big buzz words like “green” and “renewable” so they can ride the wave of your ignorance into another term.
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May 31st, 2009 at 4:14 am
Bruce said:
A nuclear power plant is no problem to live near and besides, you only need a few of them so you occupy a few acres with a nuclear plant or millions with wind turbines.
Boy wouldn’t you love to live next to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbIe0iUtelQ&feature=related
There is so much good info on this site adn there are other excellent sites linked in the links section. Do you even bother to read it or are you afraid it might force you to realize your idea of what a “solution” is is false.
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June 2nd, 2009 at 12:45 am
So, we can all agree Bruce is an idiot. But the notion that we will be building nukes underground in the middle of our cities is pretty ignorant too. The AEC eliminated the possibility of that idea in the early/mid 1960s with their decision on the Ravenswood plant in NYC. So, just like wishing we could get all our power from wind is stupid, so too is the wish to build nuclear plants in cities. It ain’t happening. I guess that makes Randall an idiot too.
And, not that it matters, I’m afraid my earlier post may have been misconstrued – I dont think that growth is evil, unnecessary, bad, or a ponzi scheme. But I think alot of the anti-nukes do think this.
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June 2nd, 2009 at 1:26 am
Eb Faber said:
Building nukes in cities is probably not going to happen. I don’t say this because they’re unsafe primarily but for other reasons. For one thing, land and construction of anything in a city is expensive and even if underground, there are a lot of problems with digging in an existing city. Also, electricity can be sent without much loss. So more likely the location will be near cities, but not too close to them.
There have been reactors in New York City, however
Quote Comment
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:54 am
drbuzz0 said:
The funny thing is there are many nuclear reactors in dense urban areas – many small pool type research reactors in various universities across North America. For that matter the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station is I believe, now technically considered part of the Greater Toronto Area, it’s certainly visible from various parts of the city.
As for radioactivity I learned to-day that radiation from the granite used in Grand Central Station NY, NY, exceeds the NRC limits for nuclear-plant operation. Grand Central Station wouldn’t get a license as a nuclear plant.
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June 9th, 2009 at 3:49 am
drbuzz0 said:
I was able to post a comment on that anti-nuclear article, basically saying that “enemies of nuclear energy are enemies of humanity”.
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June 10th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Eb Faber said:
Why not, why do we need perpetual growth? What’s so great about it. It’s always, more more more. When will it end? How about instead, we live sustainable lives and redude our consumption.
Build them all you want. Know how many coal plants are going to close because wind put them out of buisiness? NONE BRUCE, NONE. NOT A SINGLE ONE WILL CLOSE.
Do you get it? Texas has been building turbines like crazy for ten years. THEY ARE BUILDING MORE GAS AND COAL BURNERS!
The problem is electricity consumption is increasing as well. If we changed our paradigm, and instead reduced consumption (negawatts) we wouldn’t be needing to build more coal plants.
And, I do want to make clear, I have come to the conlusion, from reading this blog, that nuclear power would be the cheaper way of going carbon free. I didn’t used to think that, but even if current nuclear plants go multiple times over budget, they would still be cheaper than a hydro/wind/solar grid. I’ve decided though, that nuclear power is not worth the risk of accident, proliferation and the fact that it is not a fundementally sustainable source of power. No matter how much uranium there is, we are going to run out after a few thousand years AT THE MOST.
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June 10th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Bruce said:
You can’t have a reduction in growth without certain things happening. A “Recession” by definition is a reduction in growth. That’s what it is.
Growth is what allows for an increase in living standards and general improvement of what we have. You are basically saying you want to freeze things as they are now. You’re okay with the fact that most of the world does not have access to clean water and reliable food. I’m not okay with that. I’d prefer that be changed. I’d prefer that medical procedures that are now cutting edge and only avaliable in a few experimental hospitals become widespread. I’d prefer that technologies only enjoyed by an elite few become avaliable to all.
Bruce said:
Energy is a GOOD thing. The more you have the better. The only way to see a net reduction is to have a great step backward.
The reason they are building more coal plants is becuase consumption is increasing and wind power doesn’t do diddly-squat to address this. Even if consumption were staying at the same level, wind would not lead to plant closures. Even if you trippled the amount of wind, it would not be enough.
If you drop consumption enough, you may need two coal plants burning instead of three, but you’ll never get it low enough to use wind.
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June 10th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Bruce said:
Uranium and thorium could last hundreds of thousands of years at the very least. What you are suggesting for “sustainability” is absurd. It would be like the Egyptians worrying about whether or not they could use sandstone at a given pace or if it would run out by our generation. You have no imagination or understanding of the magnitude of things. The cold hard truth is we are living on finite time: ENTROPY is the reason the sun will eventually burn out. Eventually the universe will cool down and spread out to nothing.
I don’t know what is going to happen in thousands of years, but I’m not about to make the world suffer now because I’m too pea-brained to imagine what energy will be like in the distant future, when we may very well have fusion power or mine uranium from the moons of Jupiter.
This is crazy.
You need to take a BASIC course in economics. Growth is needed. You misunderstand what “Growth” means. It means consumption but it also means improvement and upgrades.
Without growth there are no jobs. PERIOD.
Think about it: I install things like fleet radio and 2-way satellite systems and manage the upgrade of cell towers and other wireless stuff. What if there were no growth? What if a company that put in a 2-way radio system in the 1950’s decided to keep the exact same one forever, or until it was useless? What if they decided never to upgrade and just to replace it when it finally was corroded to nothing.
VERY RARELY do I ever replace an existing system with a new version of the same thing because it was broken and no longer useful. I replace things because there are better ones. I also install new ones.
Without growth people would still be happilly using teletypes from the 1950’s and the only time they would ever be replaced is if they were so worn that they needed a replacement. There go 99% of jobs, right there, Bruce. If that were the case I wouldn’t have work.
What about the author? He works with networking and installing IT equipment. Companies pay him to make their systems better. What if we all stayed with the telegraph. Once the lines are strung the only time anyone needs to work on them is if they fall down. HE loses his job.
What about the guy here who works with gas turbines? In your world there’s no need to design better, more powerful, more effecient gas turbines. Perhaps we never even got airplanes.
Are you so smallminded, so uncreative and so boxed in that you look at the world and see no hope? No room for improvement? I look at the world and see how far we’ve come and that is why I am hopeful that we can continue to go even further.
I can rember a time when it was a big deal to go on an airplane for the average person, where a color television was a big deal, where long distance calls were expensive and where it was impossible to get information at home like you can with the internet. This has all changed. I’m glad it has and I want more of that.
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June 10th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Now, now. I know some of us like to pile on Bruce when he says something foolish (I’ve participated myself). But something important is being lost here:
Bruce said:
Bravo Bruce. You’re starting to get it. Keep reading, keep learning, keep thinking. There’s hope for you yet!
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June 12th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Energy is defined as the capacity to do work.
Once you understand that you start to understand why our energy consumption will keeping going up (and then there’s White’s law which is really just a corollary).
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April 21st, 2012 at 6:27 am
Where is the subscribe button on this blog so I can add it to my rss reader
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