By Steven Goddard
In Wednesday’s Guardian, their lead environmental story made this bold claim about The Whitelee Wind Farm:
Europe’s largest onshore wind farm, which is already powerful enough to meet Glasgow’s electricity needs
There was no discussion in the article about how Glasgow would handle extended periods of cold and calm winds, such as was often seen this past winter.
If the wind isn’t blowing, the turbines aren’t spinning and no electricity is being generated. This tends to happen on the coldest days, when the electricity is needed the most.
The flaw in The Guardian’s logic is a failure to acknowledge that Glasgow needs a consistent power supply 24x7x365. The fact that Whitelee has a lot of windy days and a high annual energy potential, does no good on the cold, calm days. I’m going to try to help The Guardian out with their logic using a few analogies they should understand.
- On average, there is lots of ice in the Arctic during the year – but that doesn’t stop The Guardian from being concerned about the possibility of a few ice-free days.
- Penguin chicks may get plenty to eat most of the year, but during the times when they don’t, many of them starve to death.
- Getting a pay check nine months a year would not pay the bills for the other three.
- Having toilets available only five days a week would not be satisfactory to most people.
- Having only five days a week without being in an automobile crash would not be satisfactory to most people.
- The rainy season in Australia may produce floods, but that doesn’t stop animals from dying of dehydration during the dry season.
- Having your watch functional 90% of the time would not be adequate.
- The fact that a restaurant is not responsible for food poisoning on most nights, may not make you want to eat there.
- Being careful on the edge of the Grand Canyon 90% of the time may not be enough.
- Practicing safe sex 90% of the time is not recommended.
It would be disastrous for Glasgow if they did not have the ability to obtain 100% of their energy from conventional sources on any given day of the year, when the wind isn’t blowing. If The Guardian is attempting to propose that Glasgow could cut off their supply of conventional electricity sources, they should just come out and say that. The implication is both clear and incorrect. “already powerful enough to meet Glasgow’s electricity needs”
Is The Guardian part of the Climate Industrial Complex?
Retired Engineer,
Please pardon my ignorance, but doesn’t Mixed Oxide fuel contain Pu? If MOX contains Pu, and MOX works in many if not most reactors then wouldn’t it be most accurate to say that fuel rods could not be made out of Pu alone but would have to be mixed with Uranium?
As I understand it, uranium becomes enriched during its life in the reactor, then the fuel rods can be reprocessed effectively making the amount of energy that could be created via atomic power infinite. If we do have an infinite energy source, then we need to change our thinking away from most efficent towards what we could do with all that extra power.
Perhaps we should think about what else we can do with nukes aside from just generating electricity. Could we use all that waste heat to distill sea water? Heck, could we build dedicated nuclear reactor which would do nothing but distill sea water? Could we make enough water to give desert dwellers a drink? Could we make enough water to recreate the California agriculture miracle in other deserts around the world?
I’ve read about processes where sewage can be turned into crude oil with heat and pressure. Could it be possible to hook a nuke up to a municiple sewer or a big hog operation to make a fuel with the same energy density and ease of use as good ol’ oil?
My thinking is, that the powers that be are wasting time and money with all of these various alternative energy ideas, conservation and new technology when we already have an infinite supply of energy at our finger tips.
>>The world is swimming in energy, there is no energy shortage.
>> http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage
This site gets mentioned a lot, and I don’t believe a word of it. The oil supply graph is NOT going to be symmetrical. The upslope includes all the world’s biggest deposits of oil, while the downslope has all the worthless puddles that nobody really wants. ie – the slope will be much steeper on the way down than the way up – so I think we are at or nearly at Peak Oil.
All these other fossil energy sources are pretty useless. The last estimate I saw indicated that you burn one gallon of oil for every two gallons of shale-oil extracted. Now that’s a great way to pollute the environment.
Let’s face it, our only viable intermediate energy supply is going to be fast-breeder nuclear. The Greens are just going to have to swallow their pride, or drop out of rational society completely.
.
This needs an article of its own to bring attention to it on WUWT
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Whitehouse2009.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/22/bbc_whitehouse_climate/
You are still reading way too much into a single sentence, which is already powerful enough to meet Glasgow’s electricity needs can equally well be interpreted as meaning that the wind farm’s output on average is equal to Glasgow’s requirements on average, both figures varying over time. I speculate that your average Guardian reader is well aware of how an electricity supply grid works and the need for backup for when the wind does blow and a spinning reserve at all times, and that this does not need to be explicitly spelt out in every article ….
I’ve signed a lease to have 3 wind towers put on my farm. A few salient points:
The developer collects data for at least six months from meteorological towers before financing is possible.
While it may be said that “20m long blades only has 2.7 kw.” The kw increases as the square of the blade length – such that, nameplate power on turbines currently being produced is over 2 megawatts per tower and is getting greater with each passing year.
While there is depreciation expense on towers – THERE IS NO FUEL COST!.
The local county will collect almost twice as much in property tax on each tower as the landowner collects in rent.
The rent offered is high enough to make most landowners consider it a good deal – almost comparable to the kind of rent that one earns from cash rent.
The power from the wind varies as the cube of the wind speed – meaning power curves of wind turbines (which are very well studied) are very steep.
The engineering involved in designing a wind tower is much better understood that the engineering involved in a creating a climate model …… Wind tower’s have been tested in real situations. For example Betz’ law (which states that you can only convert 59% of the energy in the wind) was formulated in 1919.
An important design consideration is sheer – meaning difference in windspeed between the low and high end of the turbine.
Local nature groups will oppose a wind farm (greatly irritating property owners) for capricious reasons largely having to do with simpleminded notions about corporate greed or personal aesthetics.
No American soldiers lose their lives defending wind towers.
In general wind is stronger and more sustained over flat treeless areas such as the Dakotas ( or over seas ).
And, of course, the higher the tower the better, since wind speed improves with height above the ground.
A resounding Yes!
How about “wind-elector,” “wind-watt-or,” or “wind-amp-or” or [for when the wind is not blowing] “wind-down-or”? Without the -‘s of course.
Hank,
While, I respect your property rights including your right to make as much money as possible from the land that you own, I do not believe that these windturbines represent capitalism as usual. Pumpjacks are not pretty, neither are oil refineries or transmission lines, but these things increase the efficiency and the energy supply which makes everyone wealthier. Wind Turbines do not make everyone wealthier through an increase in energy supply and would not exist in a free market. They only exist because of government. They are not better, faster or cheaper than what came before, nor do they decrease the demand for coal or nuclear energy, they do not decrease the demand for oil or lower costs to ratepayers. You might make money, the wind company might make money, and even the county might make money, but us common folks who are paying higher rates are getting the screws, which decreases our purchasing power and makes domestic manufactoring less competitive and more expensive so in aggregate we all become collectively less affluent while being forced to look at these ugly things.
Worst of all, these things are redundant and completely unnecessary. They are nothing more than an added expense which gets passed on to us. Yes, the government might try and shift around the burden by taxing so called polluting industries to subsidize these things, but that is only going to increase their operating expense increasing the incentive to move their operation offshore costing jobs, or suffer the financial loss which will force them to decrease the dividend payments to shareholders decreasing their purchasing power, it will limit the company’s ability to attract new capital which will limit their ability to expand, hire more employees and compete to their ultimate potential. The result is going to be higher unemployment, less productivity, more social welfare and we all end up less wealthy than we would be if these things did not exist.
If someone were to design a machine to destroy wealth while presenting the illusion of creating wealth, one could do no better than a wind turbine. I’m certain that you, Hank, are an honest man, and are just trying to maximize your earnings, just as I am certain that the men building these things are honest men just trying to do a days work, but the corporations and governments that are putting these things up are destroying wealth by doing so. Since the monsters are destroying wealth in aggregate, much like a parasite sucking the life out of the beautiful animal of capitalism that created it, it is righteous to seek to prevent these things from going up and try to have the ones that already exist be destroyed, since they cost the rate payer the most money when they are working.
To create another analogy, suppose that we are both on an island and one of us has fishing tackle. That fishing tackle is capital because it creates our means of survival. All is fine and good until the one of us finds a club and learns that he can bonk the other on the head and take the product of the fishing tackle (fish). It would be perfectly righteous to for the owner of the tackle to seek to destroy the club since the club destroys wealth. These wind turbines are identical to violence, although they are not obviously violent they use the force of government to redistribute the wealth of of capital while providing no benefit in return.
For those nuclear proponents, who advocate that nuclear power plants are the answer to future energy needs due to their reliability:
The Prairie Island Nuclear Plant was shut down unexpectedly for three days this week — taking off-line more than 500 MW of generating capacity.
Hmmm… does this mean there is a requirement for backups to nuclear power plants, just like is required for wind-power plants?
Which is worse, instantaneous loss of a few MW of wind generation, or 500 to 1,200 MW of nuclear generation? (the amount produced by a single reactor)
http://www.twincities.com/business/ci_12429271
gblittle (05:36:50) :
The BBC while in Europe made a big deal of this. When the announcer asked the builder of these wind turbines how efficient they would be the CEO of the company which built the system said it would operate at a maximum of 35 percent efficiency. That was an answer that I did not expect. The CEO added that they could have never built the system without government help. (Apparently Shell pull out of the project based on pure economics) Personally as someone who relies on electricity, 35 percent efficiency is not reassuring. As an investor, betting on 35 percent efficiency, when there are more efficient ways of producing electricity at a much cheaper cost is a tough sale. Now you know why governments have to “assist” in their construction.
When I first read this I thought that you were being sarcastic but on second thoughts perhaps you meant it? You do realize, I hope, that the efficiency of power generation from fossil fuels is typically less than 35%.
urederra (12:14:56) :
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/wres/pwr.htm
is a European HVDC supergrid linking Icelandic geothermal, Scottich Wind, Scandanavian hydro, North African Concentrated Solar etc.
Oh really? In the meantime, the Germans don’t want to develop their weak grid to cope with peak electricity from the northern windmills that must be preferentially accepted by law and transferred to the southern industry, where it is in fact needed. They prefer to ram these excessive watts through Czech or Polish grid, which is due to the commie regimes still a bit oversized. However, such an impulse might damage the grid and indeed both Czech Rep. and Poland experienced blackouts due to German overdrive. Therefore Czechia installed at the borders sort of fuses, to protect the grid, but Germans complained at the EU because of blocking the free transport of goods. Incredible.
Philip Johns,
I absolutely am not reading to much into the article. Policy makers in the UK are not preparing the conventional capacity requirements for next decade, because they believe that simply by increasing “green” energy peak capacity, they can rid themselves of coal. The country is going to be caught in a serious bind if they don’t start having an honest discussion of issues like these. There are a number of nuclear plants going off-line in the UK during the next decade.
The Guardian is quite open about their desire to influence government, and their belief that they do just that. If the key people in the UK understood the problem as you claim, why aren’t they taking necessary steps – or even talking about it?
1. We’ve used Pu239 and high-enriched U235 reactors since the early 50’s – the second nuclear submarine (SSN 575) tried a liquid metal reactor back then, an dfound it couldn’t compete from a maintenance and reliability standpoint.
2. Th and U233 have long been viable fuels. Recycling and fast flux breeder reactors have been running in Idaho Falls since the early 1970’s. Carter – a democrat eco-illogically mis-guided liberal president in the mid-70’s if I remember correctly – pulled construction funding from a breeder reactor that had a commercially-viable design for a breeder-electrically-generating power reactor 40 years ago. There is NO technical reason why we are not running those now.
3. Soviet-era Pu239 fuel was bought from the Soviet bomb storage sheds many years ago, shipped to the US by the Bush administration, and was used for many years as a nuclear fuel in US power reactors. No modifications needed to the reactors – but their fuel refilling plans were slightly (and quietly) changed.
4. Could we burn nuclear fuel to heat (assuming brackish and dirty – assuming it is available) salt water to condense into fresh water to water deserts? Well, yes. BUT IT ISN”T COST EFFECTIVE. It costs more to produce that “fresh water” per gallon than it does to buy and burn gasoline. Some places are deserts for a reason. They have no water natureally – and they should NOT be turned into farmlands BECAUSE they are NOT economically viable as farms and livestock producing areas. CA canals “work” because they have billions of tons of naturally pure fresh water falling as ice and snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountians, which – relatively slowly – runs off downhill into collectable areas, and which can be run “downhill” most of the way to the south and east to be used for irrigation and people. The mountains in the way can (just barely) be pumped over, and some of that recovered energy be picked up as the water flows downhill from the high spots.
There are few other areas where those combinations can be duplicated.
5. The AGW extremists DEMAND higher energy prices and reduced energy availablility as a fundamental part of their justifications for the tax-and-cap and oil drilling restrictions. It can be correctfly argued that Pelosi’s oil production restrictions, and her (deliberate) meddling in international oil markets between 2007 and 2008 FOR her AGW extremism CAUSED the high energy prices and economic recession we now face worldwide. The ECO-extremists WANT high energy prices and more (human) deaths. They see each humans as a pollution soiurce themselves, and – since the mid-70’s – have been trying to limit (Western) population growth and economic expansion.
6. No one (on this site) “wants” to deny alternative energy systems their place. But … significant pause … to date, NO “alternative energy source” is an “economical energy source.” EVERY alternative energy source is in place because of government intervention in the market – even Israel’s alt energy efforts stem from the fact that “they” are denied realistic oil and coal imports BECASUE of the regional religious hatred.
NO wind energy can make it economically on its own. NO solar power installation can make it without government intervention – artificially raising electric rates to “force” utiliities to subsidize the installation and use of photovoltaics. Do coal and nukes use government intervention?
See DOE and TVA for examples. Yes, but now – Those PAY the more ineficient wastes of money (ethanol, wind, solar, tides). Doesn’t make wind attractive: it is a waste of time, money, and valuable resources. For nothing.
7. A 7 or 13 megawatt generator at the top of a wind tower still needs maintenance and servicing. LOTS of servcing. That’s why less than a 1/5 of CA’s vaunted wind farms are ever turning: over the past years, even at very low powered (low failures, low loads) older wind turbines, MOST CAN’T RUN past their first 2-3 years. You simply can’t afford to spend 2-3 weeks shutdown having people climb a 200 foot tower hand over hand to go up and take them apart and reopair the d*mn things. So maintenance is reduced and they fail. And a 7 or 15 MW wind turbine takes just about as many people to fix and just as long to fix as a small ground-based 125 MW CT’s. You just have to repair 20 TIMES as many wind turbines to get as much power out (40 % of the time) as ! large combustion gas turbine.
BUT – today’s wind energy “guru’s” will have sold their plans and their concepts to gullible cities and states and nations and investors – made their money (like GE and Pickens) from the first three years of (almost 38% operation) then sell out before the next twelve years of 15% operation. Then you have go take the things down and destroy them as a liability for failure during for next year.
8. A modern gas turbine running a heat-recovery steam turbine gets 68% fuel efficiency at 100% availability generating over 360 MW. 24x7x365. (I’ll grant I need to shutdown for 4 weeks a year every second year to replace things.)
All that on 5 acres of land. Including the parking lot. Give me 2 more acres and I’ll give you an extra 360 MW. And use the same control room. And the same number of operators.
9. Unneeded starts and stops DESTROY converntional power plants: heat up stresses, water entrapment erodes baldes as systems heat up, thermal cycles stress pipes, supports, pumps, turbines, lube oil systems entrain acids and waters when they are cold, steam systems are less efficient as they heat up – and hurt pipes, boilers, water chemical systems, thermal resistance paints, pipe supports, boiler supply piping and economizers entrap chmicals as they heat up in the gas pths … There are LOTS of “bad things” from a maintenance standard and length-of-plant operations standpoint as an engineer that are very, very destructive each start and stop cycle.
Wind farms exaggerate EVERY start and stop cycle, because, as the Danes and Germans and Brits and CA’s have found out, you can’t rely on them. So we have CT’s here up north that have 8000 and 12,000 running hours, but have also 2200 starts. EACH RUN cycle is a very short amount of time: lifetime maintenance goes up, plant life goes down. But Mass and CT and NH democrat politicians don’t care: they proudly point to their states’ SUBSIDIES of hundreds of (unprofitable) wind plant as evidence of their stupidity (er, caring.)
And then demand nationally that more states act that irresponsibly. Wasting tax money on energy policies that do nothing but waste money and destroy power plants.
10.
In 1908, if you were told to build a runway and flight support for an airplane, you could take a flat grass pasture 200 feet long, 50-75 feet wide, and put up a tent and a wooden pair of saw horses holding a vise as the “maintenance facility.” No need for electric power – there were no radios, radars, flight control towers, or taxiways. AND YOU COULD NOT HAVE PREDICTED THEM. You couldn’t have predicted landing lights, nor hangers, nor cranes, nor fuel tanks farms nor crash truck stations either. Your BEST airplane was a modified Wright Flier carrying two people for a few minutes, flying 200 feet high at about 35-50 mph, that could (just barely) make controlled turns. And that passenger would shortly be killed – in a plane crash.
So, 38 years later, a B-29 would be capable of flying around the world. A B-36 wold be taking off on concrete runways 300 feet wide, 8 feet thick and 12,000 feet long.
Bristol Brabazon 1949 290,000 lbs
Hughes Flying Boat (Spruce Goose) 1947 300,000 lbs
Convair XC-99 1947 320,000 lbs
Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing 1947 194,000 lbs
Convair B-36 1946 370,000 lbs
Lockheed R6V Constitution 1946 184,000 lbs
Douglas DC-6 1946 97,200 lbs
Douglas C-74 Globemaster 1945 145,000 lbs
Blohm und Voss BV-238 1945 176,400 lbs
Boeing 367 Stratocruiser 1944 120,000 lbs
Lockheed 049 Constellation 1943 86,200 lbs
Martin JRM Mars 1942 144,000 lbs
Douglas DC-4 1942 73,000 lbs
Douglas XB-19 1941 164,000 lbs
Tupolev Ant-20bis 1940 99,200 lbs
Blohm und Voss BV-222 1940 108,000 lbs
…
Y aknow what’s “funny” about all of those government-sponsored, big-business-supported, BEST-IN-THE-WORLD designed airplanes?
None were flying commercially and successfully 5 or 10 years later.
EVERY ONE had been replaced by pair of a simple commercial products from Boeing: The 707 and the B-52. Slide rules and profits. That’s what you need to produce power.
Now, tell me – what will be invented in the next twenty years. The next 40 years.
Johnnyb (11:29:19) : Plutonium doesn’t work by itself, it just isn’t that radioactive. Put a bunch of it together and nothing happens, unlike U235. To make it go boom, you have to compress it with some really high power conventional explosives and you still need an “initiator” in the middle to provide a burst of neutrons. A conventional reactor (using 8-10% pure fuel) will produce PU as a by product. That was the reason Jimmy decided not to build a reprocessing facility in the late 70’s. Didn’t want to risk diversion by bad guys. Tried to convince France of the same. They ignored him and have reprocessed for 30 years, without any obvious disasters.
We have a vast amount of spent fuel rods at existing nuke plants and far more left over from weapons production. We could reduce the volume of bad stuff by 90% with reprocessing, making it far easier to bury somewhere and gain a whole lot of useable fuel in the process. There is more to a spent fuel rod than plutonium. We even had a test reactor in the 90’s that ran on spent fuel rods. BC shut that one down.
Nukes are evil, we can’t have them.
So we let the nutcases in the third world separate the Pu and build crude bombs that will someday make it across the puddle for an above ground test on our side of the pond.
Without electricity to run the hospitals to care for the survivors. (unless the wind is blowing hard enough)
That makes sense.
Roger Sowell-that nuke was taken off-line in a controlled manner of -MW/hr, not instantaneously tripped-but it could have been if needed. The grid does have sufficient reserves for the largest unit on-line at any given time to be taken off-line. It does not have sufficient spinning reserves to accomodate a multitude of rapidly fluxuating 2-2.5 MW units going from full on to full off in minutes. To accomodate that kind of fluxuation, gas-fired or coal fired generating stations with very fast ramping capacity will have to be installed to accomodate anything more than about 10-15% of wind generation mix and that 10-15% will have to be mirrored with coal, gas, or nukes at heat and of equal capacity at all times to maintain demand. So, wind generation doesn’t even replace an equivalent amount of conventional generation as fossile (or nuke) fuel is expended just to have sufficient spinning capacity to allow the wind units to connect to the grid.
Polymer mats to collect yellow cake from sea water – have you calculated how many mats you would need and where you would place them to catch current(or are you going to pump water over them?
A small pellet of uranium may contain as much energy as a barrel of oil. BUT refining oil does not require much refining.
To get uranium suitable for reactors leaves mine tailings, chlorine/flourine, enriching etc, etc.
In the UK one small scram on a nuclear plant wiped out a large part of the grid about 5 years ago. nuclear reactors have an availability of about 80% (cf wind at 30%)
Backup is always required.
Climate Heretic (07:55:39) :
Wind energy displaces nothing, ZERO, fossil fuel load generation must be maintained to be available on demand, that is the simple fact the supply is unreliable and it is not feasible to man and maintain generation plants and “spin them up” on NatGas or other as needed because the delay, demand spikes are commom.
You are totally wrong! Many plants are already on warm standby many are on spinnig reserve. These plants use much less fuel generating no power than if thew were generating 500MW. That MUST be obvious.
Read this alarmist article.
The BBC has based an yet another article based on a computer model prediction.
“But new studies by Chilean scientists suggest climate change could pose huge challenges for the country.
The scientists say their models show projected temperature increases of at least 1C to 1.5C and a drop in rainfall of at least 10 to 15% in the next 40 years.”
Then there is the nonsense claim that such a rise in temperature, if it were even to occur, would wipe out Chile’s wine industry. It’s warmer in California, South Africa and Australia yet their wine production hasn’t ever been affected negatively.
I stopped reading when I came across this photo with caption
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45806000/jpg/_45806168_007311287-1.jpg
“The rate at which Chile’s glaciers are melting has increased in recent years”
The photo shows the fragile surface of an iceberg or sea based ice sheet (which do not exist in Chile) cracking off. It does not show a glacier or even melting.
>>Hmmm… does this mean there is a requirement for backups
>>to nuclear power plants, just like is required for wind-power plants?
Of course, everything needs a backup. The difference is that a good nuclear plant may get 90% run-time every year, and the 10% or so that is missing is most often PLANNED. You know when the energy outage will occur and plan for it.
Windelecs run only 20 – 25% of the time and you have no idea when they will stop. Indeed, they may stop five times in one day and the owner will say that ‘we generated for 50% of today’, but that energy was totally useless because it was too variable – a gas-fired station had to be burning and turning the whole day to take up that variability.
Just what is the point of a windelec?
>>Which is worse, instantaneous loss of a few MW of wind
>>generation, or 500 to 1,200 MW of nuclear generation?
>>(the amount produced by a single reactor)
But the whole point of windelec proponents is that they want 30% of UK energy from windelecs. That is 20gw of sustained electrical production, or 100gw of windelec installed capacity.
So here we have the problem that when the wind is blowing steadily we will have more energy than the UK needs (UK demand is about 70gw). Energy coming out of our ears. But then the Sun goes down, the sea-breeze stops, and the country looses 100gw of energy all in the space of 30 minutes. (All wind in the UK is more or less in step, there is no great difference between north and south – and a sea breeze is a sea breeze, it is generated by the mid-day Sun.)
There is no normal energy source in the world that can instantly take up 100gw of supply, so all the UK fossil and nuclear plants will have to be running all day anyway – just in case.
So what is the point of windelecs?
.
>>You are totally wrong! Many plants are already on warm
>>standby many are on spinnig reserve. These plants use
>>much less fuel generating no power than if thew were
>>generating 500MW. That MUST be obvious.
No, you are wrong.
With fossil and nuclear, you only need about 5% or less on standby, because power stations are reliable and most downtime is PLANNED. And in the UK we have Dinorwig, a pumped storage system that is always on standby and can run 5% of demand for five hours. (Although it has to be said that Dinorwig is mainly there for demand increases, not supply decreases).
The problem is that with windelecs producing 30% of UK power, you can then lose 30% of the grid – and lose it two or three times in one day. Thus you will need a huge number of conventional stations on spinning standby.
And as for cost, you have to include all the costs of spinning standby. A prime component of electrical cost is not the fuel, but the capital, maintenance and manpower costs. These will have to be met whatever is happening. So you may use 80% less fuel on spinning standby – big deal. The cost of these backup systems is still HUGE.
Yes, electrical costs will have to treble, in my opinion. And take all the government subsidies into account, because you pay for these too.
.
More “science” from the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8063000/8063392.stm
Yosemite’s giant trees are disappearing because of climate change! Yes, the article is literally saying giant trees are magically disappearing. They provide no evidence for such a conclusion except to say that aged giant trees are scarcer, but do not offer any relative evidence. It seems in the world of manmade climate change alarmism if something isn’t melting or catching fire then it is magically disappearing without a trace.
Aron,
Colorado’s Giant Sequoias have already disappeared due to climate change – 35 million years ago.
http://www.nps.gov/flfo/
MikeinAppalachia (21:02:04) :
Only the AGW true believers, and their duped politicians believe that wind-power or solar-power can replace fossil power. The engineers know better.
Until we have economic solutions for energy storage systems, intermittent power plants of any type will not replace fossil power. There are plenty of workable, practical storage solutions, but none are yet economic.
My point is a deliberate jab at the crowd who maintain that “nukes will save us all.” It is pure rubbish to employ nuclear power, as if it is always available (it is not). One of those going down unexpectedly, as happened here, puts a serious strain on the entire grid. Just ask Japan…where they had to restart many fossil fueled plants recently after their nukes suffered damage from an earthquake.
ralph ellis (01:37:47) :
Of course, everything needs a backup. The difference is that a good nuclear plant may get 90% run-time every year, and the 10% or so that is missing is most often PLANNED. You know when the energy outage will occur and plan for it.
There is no way of predicting the unplanned as occured in 2003 (i think) = grid shutdown in large area. and I think you will find the uptime nearer 80%.
Windelecs run only 20 – 25% of the time and you have no idea when they will stop. Indeed, they may stop five times in one day and the owner will say that ‘we generated for 50% of today’, …
There is no normal energy source in the world that can instantly take up 100gw of supply, so all the UK fossil and nuclear plants will have to be running all day anyway – just in case.
they do not stop everywhere simultaneously. The wind speed allows hours of warning.
False: Up time on large nukes is much higher than your (guessed ?) very false 80%.
yes, unplanned outages are just that: unplanned. We (the power industry) work very hard to keep them “unplanned” and “infrequent” – trying to base or justify a (false) wind power energy theory based on a single (large) power failure in 2003 shows just how scared wind advocates are of the truth.
2003 – 2009. Figure 5-1/2 years x 365 days x 24 hours just to FIND one large outage.
But NO wind power PRODUCTION can even be “planned” – Look at the Danish example where they only had 5-1/2 DAYS in an entire year when they WERE producing “almost nominal rated” power from their huge wind mill farm on the most beautifully productive wind area in the world: the flat sea coast off the North Sea!
And all of the money going into windmills is wasted – there is NO productive value in spending that money. No “gain” in reducing AGW gasses nor in “replacing” fossil fuels either – since there is no demonstrable link between temperatures and CO2.
Nuclear Energy Institute, from their press release about reliability:
—
Nuclear Power Plants Set Reliability, Output Records in 2002, Industry Tells Wall Street
NEW YORK—The nuclear energy industry posted another year of record-high operating performance in 2002, underscoring the crucial role that nuclear power plants play in the nation’s diverse portfolio of energy sources, industry executives told Wall Street financial analysts today.
Although final performance figures are not yet available, preliminary estimates for 2002 show that the nation’s 103 nuclear power plants set an electricity production record for the fourth straight year, increasing their output 1-2 percent to about 778 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh). Nuclear power generation in 2001 was 769 billion kwh.
The plants’ average capacity factor—a measure of efficiency—reached a record high for the fifth straight year, climbing to about 91.5 percent in 2002.
“By any measure—reliability, productivity, safety, economics—the nuclear energy sector has achieved major gains in recent years,” said Don Hintz, president of Entergy Corp. and chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute’s (NEI) board of directors. “We’ve achieved these results by concentrating on safety, by continuing to share the best operating practices across the industry, and by further sharpening our management skills.”
Since 1990, the industry’s sustained excellence in operating performance has enabled the nation’s reactors to increase electricity production equivalent to what 25 new reactors would add to the electricity grid, NEI President and Chief Executive Officer Joe F. Colvin said.
“In just the last five years, the increase in output is equivalent to 13 new 1,000 megawatt power plants,” Colvin said.
With improved productivity and reliability leading to better economic performance, the average production cost (fuel costs plus operations and maintenance) in 2001 stood at a record low of 1.68 cents/kwh. The average production cost for 2002 likely will set a new record when those figures become available later this year, Colvin said.
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Hmmmn. 91.5 percent capacity factor, eh?