Eric Worrall writes:
According to Breitbart, Germany’s flagship Bard 1 offshore wind farm has turned into a bottomless money pit, with stakeholders frantically lawyering up, scrambling to pin the blame and ongoing money hemorrhage onto other parties. BARD Offshore 1 is a 400 megawatt (MW) North Sea offshore wind farm encompassing 80 5-megawatt turbines. Construction was finished in July 2013 and the wind farm was officially inaugurated in August 2013. The wind farm is located 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of the isle Borkum in 40 metres (130 ft) deep water.
The magazine Windpower monthly reports that Bard Offshore 1, developed and built by Bard, is owned by project company Ocean Breeze, which in turn is owned by HypoVereinsbank. Getting it fully commissioned in August 2013 had taken more than three years, with many setbacks and cost overruns.
Breitbart reports that according to the German magazine Speigel “everything has turned to the question of who is responsible for the fiasco – and the costs.”
The project is estimated to have cost €340 million in the last year alone, as investors struggle to salvage something of value, from a deeply flawed system which has never functioned as the designers intended. Full details at Breitbart.
My thought – if even the Germans, with their legendary high precision engineering skills, can’t make offshore wind work, surely it is time to pull the plug on this technically infeasible dead end?
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From the Bard web site linked in the article:
“The BARD Group successfully installed the first commercial wind power plant on the high seas, around 100 kilometres off the German North Sea coast. The wind farm, encompassing 80 5-megawatt turbines, was completely connected to the grid in September 2013.”
They left out the part about having to immediately disconnect from the grid due to overloaded and “gently smouldering” offshore converter stations as well as the maintenance cost of one to two million euros a day incurred while failing to produce 340 million euros worth of power.
“Gently smouldering”….I’ll have to remember this phrase the next time I have to report on an electrical fault.
.
“Gently smouldering”….I’ll have to remember this phrase the next time I have to report on an electrical fault.”
I will be using in a failure analysis meeting on Monday!
There is really only one thing left they can do. Fit a maintainance vessel with a 1 MW generator in its hold. Fit another vessel with a tank. Go to the site, plug it in, and run it full out 24/7, while the crew tries to look busy.
I am an engineer by profession and what I just cannot get my head around is how ANYONE could go ahead with wind power, especially units located at sea.
The back of an envelope calcs and a few minutes thought tell you that you are extracting energy from a very low density medium (air) that has a huge range of possible velocities ( from zero to 1/100 or 1/200 year storm) to be designed for using a structurally inefficient arrangement (a cantilever) and locating it remotely requiring long distance cabling. The units lkocated at sea have the added overhead of a marine environment in which to have to install, maintain and decommssion the unit.
There you go. Take those 4 1/2 lines of text to your local merchant bank and see what they say when there is no subsidy rort in play. (‘rort’ is Australian for scam, boondoggle, con etc.) The most suitable legal term in Australia is “scheme of arrangement”, usually associated with tax avoidance, and means some scheme put in place which has no other purpose to justify it other than to effect the scam in question). Has a certain low frequency resonance, doesn’t it?
We need to go into thorium reactors. If we can get the idiots in charge to forget about making plutonium bombs that is.
It just hasn’t been tried on a scale large enough to be economically feasible. I propose we cut down our national forests for wind turbine placement, you know, for the sake of the environment.
After several meetings with the wind industry to discuss implementing vibration measurement and blade balancing techniques from the aviation world – we concluded that the management had no interest in minimizing long term operational costs. They were in it for the subsidies and “green” bump to their stock price.
Not my field, but what are the interactions between the EM fields of the underwater transmission lines and the marine eco-system?
‘Breitbart does not mention the nature of the maintenance problems.’
Actually, it does say what the nature of the problem is. In the second paragraph it says that the converter stations offshore are the problem as they are over-heating. DC converter stations (I assume at 100km it is DC but it doesn’t have to be as, from recollection, that’s around the cut-over point from AC to DC). This is a strange problem but hardly an insurmountable one. I reckon the problem is they are using the newer voltage-sourced converter technology (VSC) which is reasonably well proven but with less experience at higher 200+MW capacities. The largest VSC world-wide at time of commissioning last year is the new East-West 500MW interconnector from Dublin to Wales and it too gave some problems when commissioned but not of the same magnitude (interference problems on telephone circuits).
I doubt this is a problem that cannot be overcome, but I’m sure it will come at a price.
AND to cap all of this, there is no significant reduction in CO2!
By the time one has factored in CO2 emitted from conventionally powered back up (which is not running at optimum performance due to the need to ramp up/ramp down with the vagrancis of wind), other grid balancing devices (emergency diesel generators), there is no saving in CO2. I suspect that if one were to factor in the CO2 incidental to erecting the windfarm (in remote places) and coupling it to the grid compared to building a conventionally gas powered generator, the CO2 is net negative.
So what is the point if they do not even achieve the primary goal of reducing CO2? This is where the politicians will face the biggest problem, when AGW unfolds.
Questions will be asked as to why they put in place an energy system that was unreliable and hiked energy prices threefold when the system does not even reduce CO2 emissions?
Richard,
This is not in fact correct. There are numerous papers out there analyse the CO2/kWh from wind (the LCA technique allows for all CO2 from wind from manufacturing, installation, extra grid, operation etc.). The reduction of CO2 by substitution affect is a least one order of magnitude greater than the reduction of efficiency of fossil fuel plants. See Pehnt et al 2008 for a detailed paper on the German market and offshore wind. A good summary paper on all of this analysis is ‘Life-cycle assessments of wind energy systems’ by Arvesen et al.
Hop Lite
Wind advocates publish all kinds of rubbish to justify reaping subsidies from their subsidy farms. What matters is reality and not the number of papers published by wind advocates.
David Tolley (when Head of Networks and Ancillary Services, Innogy (a subsidiary of the German energy consortium RWE) said of windfarms in the UK,
(NETA is the ‘New Electricity Trading Arrangements’, the UK’s deregulated power market.)
Richard
I should add I don’t really care about CO2 emissions as they don’t appear to be affecting our climate significantly however, they are a good proxy for fossil fuel usage. Therefore, it can be concluded to a high degree of certainty that wind farms do increase energy security insofar as they reduce fossil fuel usage.
Well that was a mouthful.
Care to back down any further, while space is still available ?
Reply to Richard S Courtney.
Richard all you’ve got is a comment from this fellow Tolley which you keep repeating ad nauseam. Please read the papers I referred to and all other papers referred therein and point out here where they are wrong. There is a high level of consistency between them in their findings which utterly negate the perception and comment of one senior manager in NGUK. If they are all absolutely wrong then either you are saying these authors are all falsifying results deliberately or else you are saying the have all made an egregious error which I’m sure they would appreciate you pointing out to them what it is. The carbon emission saving/fossil fuel saving due to wind (allowing for ALL of its life cycle from mining raw materials to decommissioning) is an order of magnitude GREATER than the reduction in efficiency (i.e. increased carbon emission/fossil fuel use) caused by part loading and additional start ups etc of fossil fuel plants. If wind results in additional fossil fuel usage as you claim then please point out EXACTLY where these papers and analysis are in error.
I note than coal is the least good performer in the portfolio with wind and I suspect that, give your background, is what you have an issue with.
Given the breath of academic research and findings showing that wind is indeed a net energy contributor, if you are to keep saying here that it isn’t, then it really is now down to you to demonstrate why that is so. If you won’t I will assume it is because you can’t.
Hop Lite
All I’ve got is a statement by an operator of both thermal plants and wind turbines which he made – and placed on record – as part of a keynote address, to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. It was in 2003 and has never been refuted.
All you have is pro-wind propaganda.
Richard
No Richard you really are going to have to do better than that. Hand waving blustering and dismissing academic research as ‘propaganda’ is the sort of behaviour that has given skepticism of GW a bad name. If the ‘propaganda’ isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on then you really have to make the effort to point out where it is wrong.
Generally, the level of debate and application of sound scientific practices is very good on this website but when it comes to the technical/performance aspects of wind (not talking about its economics) there is a lot of yielding to prejudices going on here. You are amongst the worst culprits for this.
The real reason the assertion you quote wasn’t refuted was probably because a) it wasn’t a very important utterance and b) there was nothing in it to refute other than a vague assertion of some ‘estimates’.
As I had said, I will interpret your refusal to review refute the body of research into this matter as a tacit admission that you are unable to. Clinging to a single comment from a single manager from a presentation that is over a decade old, given the large body of comprehensive research since then, has a certain quixotic obduracy to it!
Hop Lite
No YOU are going to have to do better than that.
I gave you a clear quote from a clearly unbiased commentator responsible for operating wind turbines and thermal power plants which he provided to an institution of people qualified to assess it. That is NOT “Hand waving blustering”.
Furthermore, I fail to understand how the statement by Tolley could be wrong. And nobody has attempted to show he is.
The issue is simple. When wind is in the range to enable a wind powered subsidy farm to generate electricity then the electricity from the subsidy farm displaces electricity from a thermal power station. The power station has to reduce its output and it does, but this reduces its efficiency so it uses more fuel – hence provides more emissions – to generate less electricity. The effect is similar to driving a car at 10mph in fifth gear: it can be done but it uses a lot of fuel.
You have only presented pro-wind propaganda and ad hom. aspersions from behind a coward’s shield of anonymity. You say
Bollocks! I was commissioned to conduct a serious analysis of the issue in the UK and produced this. Serious technical analysis is not “prejudice”.
Not content with that, you write
You have demonstrated that you will “interpret” anything in a malign manner if it assists your anonymous promotion of wind powered subsidy farms. I see no reason why I or anybody else should be concerned at your nonsense.
I have studied the pertinent literature and a “body of research” which claims perpetuum mobiles work or that wind powered subsidy farms reduce emissions from grid supplied electricity is wrong: it claims to have discovered how to achieve a miraculous physical impossibility.
Richard
Richard,
As I said previously, you really give GW skeptics a very bad name indeed!
The fact that you liken a WT to a perpetual motion machine says it all really. The energy input to the WT is clear to all bar you – the wind which in turn is powered by the sun (or more accurately the sun’s uneven distribution on our planet).
I have read you brochure and it certainly isn’t serious analysis, as you say, but is more akin to a school boy’s report in terms of the depth and quality of the analysis.
I will take you up on just a few howlers in your report as that is all I have time for:
Your chapter 11 on ‘Power surges’ is a mish-mash of complete mis-understandings and a vague kind of awareness on your part (I’m sure mainly attributable to the fact that you’re not an electrical engineer and haven’t worked in electrical grids). The issue you speak of may have been a minor problem in the early days (<2000) but modern grid code standards largely cover this off. It is mainly managed by ramp-up rates and TSO rights to turn down and disconnect wind farms. You say that in Ireland new windfarms were not allowed due to 'power surges' in 2003. This is complete and utter nonsense. The TSO stopped grid applications due to a glut of them and wanted the existing very very large queue already offered connections to play out to see which happened and which didn't. Your assertion that the additional wind since then could only happen due to grid reinforcements is utter (as you say) bollocks. NONE, and I mean NONE of the large scale deep reinforcements on Ireland's internal grid to strengthen it and allow for additional wind have been built yet and all are in permitting stage (Grid west, Grid link, North-South etc.). East-west interconnector only went live last year and all other grid work was to connect wind farms directly to the system. In the meantime, the installed wind capacity in Ireland went from around 300MW in 2003 to 2,700MW in 2013 (2003 being the turning point from 20MW/year to about 240MW/year installed ironically!). Wind now accounts for 18% of electrical demand and in 2013 was over 50% of power supplied to the grid on around 16 separate days in the year. The consequences of this? Power surges? Black outs? back to candles? Nope on all counts – the performance of the system has not suffered in any way that affects customers. Please review EirGrid's facilitation of renewables to see the technical work being done here – it is hoped wind can go to 75% of instantaneous if certain changes to the grid (mainly protection issues) happen. It is aimed to hit 40% of energy demand.
Your assertion re the incredibly poor part load efficiencies is also largely BS. Please look at gas turbine literature – it's all available on the web. Efficiencies of high 40's for loads as low as 20% of nominal on CCGT's. I know that may not have been the case when you were researching this 100 years ago but it is now. You really need to update your broken record here, Richard, as you are starting to sound utterly ridiculous.
Your assertion re the academic literature being biased is baseless innuendo and probably libelous.
If wind farms are a 'miraculous physical impossibility' then we are seeing miracles every day here in Ireland and around the world. They do generate net positive electricity far outweighing the energy to install them and any thermal plant consequential inefficiencies. This is a simple fact of life that only the preternaturally obdurate will deny.
If all the analysis here is as bad as yours on this issue, it is making me worried that I am placing to much confidence in WUWT!
Hoplite
I have replied to your untrue, irrelevant, and offensive rant here.
Richard
how easy it is to power a city in a small area.
“Russia’s newest nuclear icebreaker — the 50 Let Pobedy, or 50 Years of Victory — is currently the biggest and most powerful in the world. Almost 160 meters long and 30 meters wide, its two nuclear-powered engines are capable of jointly producing 55 megawatts of power — enough to cover the electricity needs of a small city. The only existing icebreaker of a similar class in the world is the U.S. diesel-electric and gas-powered Polar Star, built in 1976?”
A little off-message but not totally irrelevant
The scandal of UK’s death-trap wind turbines: A turbine built for 115mph winds felled in 50mph gusts. Dozens more affected by cost-cutting
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2754679/The-scandal-UKs-death-trap-wind-turbines-A-turbine-built-115mph-winds-felled-50mph-gusts-Dozens-affected-cost-cutting-Why-residents-living-shadow-demanding-answers.html#ixzz3DI8oxWau
According to the German law as basis of subsidies, the daily costs of the failure, amountig to 2 million Euro (2.6 million $) are relayed to the taxpayer.
(Source: http://www.energiequellen.net/nachrichten/bard-offshore-1-laeuft-immer-noch-nicht-1827/)
Anyone see the piece by Gillis on German wind and solar in Sunday’s NYTimes? Propaganda, by my lights, but right at the top on page one. I’d be most interested in a WUWT rebuttal.
Here’s that NY Times article: Sun and Wind Alter Global Landscape, Leaving Utilities Behind. Mainly about the troubles
being made for the old power generation companies by the roaring success of
these giant offshore German wind farms.
Hoplite wrote
September 14, 2014 at 8:52 am
Absolutely no one claims or believes that wind power is reliable in the sense you mean […]
I know and understand that electricity is more expensive with wind than without it but the issue was never about the cheapest source of electricity but energy security and sustainability (in terms of leaving something to the generations to follow us).
No, the issue has always been greatest return on our investment – biggest bang for the buck – and lowest cost for the consumer. There is no greater energy security than a conventional coal fired power plant, or an entire network of them because energy security means that the power is there when you need it, and that is 24/7/365 without interruption, at the lowest cost to the consumer, or nation.
There is no security in unreliable power, especially when it costs more than reliable power.
Here we see again another face of the scam: the emotional pleading to leave something for future generations, the poor dears, who will no doubt have all sorts of new technology and presumably new knowledge – perhaps even wisdom – to deal with the problems and opportunities that the passage of time inevitably presents our species.
Even if no new viable energy technology emerges in the immediate future, the generations that follow us will still have mountains of coal to burn far into the future – several hundred years, by some estimates.
The important thing to sustain is our modern civilization, and that is also our greatest gift to future generations.
‘No, the issue has always been greatest return on our investment’
What does that mean? maximising wealth? That’s an mantra for shareholders not citizens.
Wind is there and is reliable when it is part of a portfolio of generation. For a country like Ireland that has one of the best wind regimes in the world it makes no sense to not use an energy source on our doorstep. Your statement about no security in ‘unreliable’ power shows me that you don’t understand how wind contributes to a state’s energy inputs.
Your attitude towards future generations seems to me to be ‘they can stuff themselves and make their own way in this world, and they ain’t going to cramp my style’. Not an attitude I’d care for.
I agree that leaving our civilisation in rude good health is one of the greatest gifts we can give future generations, however, claiming that introducing wind power as part of the generation mix is going to destroy that civilisation is egging it just a bit, no?
Hoplite says:
Wind… is reliable when it is part of a portfolio of generation.
Wind power is unreliable, period. If the wind blows too fast, or too slowly, or stops, wind power stops. That means it is unreliable. As Steve P says above:
There is no security in unreliable power, especially when it costs more than reliable power.
I can see solar power improving to the point that it does not need subsidies to exist. But windmills? Not likely, except in *very* limited circumstances.
Face it: wind power is basically ridiculous, when other power sources are considered. The best, cheapest power is from coal and other fossil fuels. They are the gold standard. Then nuclear, then solar, then peons on bicycles, then windmills. Maybe the last two can be switched; not sure. The subsidies make it questionable.
Windmills are an energy scam, a blight on the landscape, and raptor-blenders. They are basicallty NFG, and if you doubt that, why not ask the people who have to live next to giant windmills what they think?
Windmills are modrn day pyramids; just as useful, and erected as the eco-answer to the gods of ‘sustainability’. If they were all torn down immediately and replaced by coal-fired power plants, the country would be immensely better off.
@RichardSCourtney,
As I said previously, you really give GW skeptics a very bad name indeed!
The fact that you liken a WT to a perpetual motion machine says it all really. The energy input to the WT is clear to all bar you – the wind which in turn is powered by the sun (or more accurately the sun’s uneven distribution on our planet).
I have read you brochure and it certainly isn’t serious analysis, as you say, but is more akin to a school boy’s report in terms of the depth and quality of the analysis.
I will take you up on just a few howlers in your report as that is all I have time for:
Your chapter 11 on ‘Power surges’ is a mish-mash of complete mis-understandings and a vague kind of awareness on your part (I’m sure mainly attributable to the fact that you’re not an electrical engineer and haven’t worked in electrical grids). The issue you speak of may have been a minor problem in the early days (<2000) but modern grid code standards largely cover this off. It is mainly managed by ramp-up rates and TSO rights to turn down and disconnect wind farms. You say that in Ireland new windfarms were not allowed due to 'power surges' in 2003. This is complete and utter nonsense. The TSO stopped grid applications due to a glut of them and wanted the existing very very large queue already offered connections to play out to see which happened and which didn't. Your assertion that the additional wind since then could only happen due to grid reinforcements is utter (as you say) b*****ks. NONE, and I mean NONE of the large scale deep reinforcements on Ireland's internal grid to strengthen it and allow for additional wind have been built yet and all are in permitting stage (Grid west, Grid link, North-South etc.). East-west interconnector only went live last year and all other grid work was to connect wind farms directly to the system. In the meantime, the installed wind capacity in Ireland went from around 300MW in 2003 to 2,700MW in 2013 (2003 being the turning point from 20MW/year to about 240MW/year installed ironically!). Wind now accounts for 18% of electrical demand and in 2013 was over 50% of power supplied to the grid on around 16 separate days in the year. The consequences of this? Power surges? Black outs? back to candles? Nope on all counts – the performance of the system has not suffered in any way that affects customers. Please review EirGrid's facilitation of renewables to see the technical work being done here – it is hoped wind can go to 75% of instantaneous if certain changes to the grid (mainly protection issues) happen. It is aimed to hit 40% of energy demand.
Hoplite
I have replied to your untrue, irrelevant, and offensive rant here.
Richard
don’t know what is happening to this website but I cannot post a reply to RichardSCourtney
@Anthony Watts, why can’t I post my reply to Richard Courtney? Even when I try to break it into 4 pieces it will not post.
“…if even the Germans, with their legendary high precision engineering skills,” ; more legend than reality. German industry historically depends on highly skilled craft technicians to tweak so – so designs into submission. Without a good set of files and hammers in the hands of craftsmen the “legendary German engineering” would just be so much krap.
@RichardSCourtney,
As I said previously, you really give GW sceptics a very bad name indeed!
The fact that you liken a WT to perpetuum mobiles says it all really. The energy input to the WT is clear to all bar you – the wind which in turn is powered by the sun (or more accurately the sun’s uneven distribution on our planet).
I have read you brochure and it certainly isn’t serious analysis, as you say, but is more akin to a school boy’s report in terms of the depth and quality of the analysis in it.
I will take you up on just a few howlers in your report as that is all I have time for:
Your chapter 11 on ‘Power surges’ is a mish-mash of complete mis-understandings and a vague kind of awareness on your part (I’m sure mainly attributable to the fact that you’re not an electrical engineer and haven’t worked in electrical grids). The issue you speak of may have been a minor problem in the early days (<2000) but modern grid code standards largely cover this off. It is mainly managed by ramp-up rates and TSO rights to turn down and disconnect wind farms.
Hoplite
You really are a nasty little troll. As Steve P said to you
I review what you have done here.
This began when richard verney accurately wrote
You replied saying that is untrue and that there are “many studies” say windpower reduces CO2 emissions. But you did not name, cite and/or quote those “studies”.
I quoted Tolley’s statement which bluntly says Steve P is right so your reply to him is nonsense.
In reply to my post you went ballistic. You posted a nasty piece which consisted of untrue assertions about me, and about Tolley together with citation of a pro-wind propaganda paper.
I pointed out fact. I again explained the issue raised by richard verney. I said that your accusation of “prejudice” is untrue: a professional association commissioned a paper from me on the matter so I have studied the literature and linked to here which was well-received. And I said
You still have not made any attempt to explain how the statement by Tolley could be wrong.
Instead, you have provided a barrage of bombast, ‘ref herrings’; distortions of my words, and insults.
Let us assume you are right that I give scepticism a “bad name” and that my acclaimed analysis is rubbish. And let us assume you are not an anonymous sock puppet for the industry which fleeces the public by use of wind-powered subsidy farms.
None of that alters the fact that use of wind-powered subsidy farms INCREASES CO2 emissions from grid-distributed electricity generation systems.
Richard
‘You replied saying that is untrue and that there are “many studies” say wind power reduces CO2 emissions. But you did not name, cite and/or quote those “studies”.’
I most certainly did and I asked you to read them!! Here we go again:
‘See Pehnt et al 2008 for a detailed paper on the German market and offshore wind. A good summary paper on all of this analysis is ‘Life-cycle assessments of wind energy systems’ by Arvesen et al.’ Now who’s the one not paying attention?
BTW the title of the Pehnt paper is ‘Consequential environmental system analysis of expected offshore wind electricity production in Germany’. The Arvesen paper is a summarising of other papers and you can get plenty of other references there. If they are wrong (fairly consistent results between them) then the are so massively wrong it is either a fraud or spectacular incompetence. Please read them as I asked you to do and come back here and point out where they are wrong.
‘You really are a nasty little troll.’ – no I’m not. Instead, I’m a well read and experienced person in electrical power systems and renewable technologies. You’ve met your match here Richard and you don’t like it. I am pointing out where you are spreading falsehoods and prejudices as facts. I understand you don’t like that but that doesn’t make me a troll – nasty or otherwise. Ad homs are not the way to defend your position.
‘You still have not made any attempt to explain how the statement by Tolley could be wrong.’ – the papers I quoted show there is a order of magnitude difference between the saving in CO2/kWh (proxy for fossil fuel use) against the increase in CO2/kWh due to less efficient running of thermal plants (including coal in the portfolio). Tolley’s assertion is emphatically WRONG and there is a large body of research that has been done since then that points out what he said is utter and absolute tosh. TOLLEY IS REFUTED.
‘None of that alters the fact that use of wind-powered subsidy farms INCREASES CO2 emissions from grid-distributed electricity generation systems.’ – correct it does but the substitution effect (wind replacing ff generated electricity) is around 10 times greater. Net effect? REDUCED CO2/Fuel usage. (and that’s over the complete lifetime).
I note you have not challenged where I pointed out the egregious errors in your ‘analysis’ of the Irish grid situation and supposed ‘power surges’.
I don’t work in the wind industry and never have. I don’t depend on it for a penny of my income. If the wind industry completely died in the morning it would have almost no affect on my career. I can absolutely be described as an impartial observer of that industry (and I am also a critic of it too where they play fast and loose with its economics). In any event, even if I was employed by it, it has no bearing on the veracity of what I say and the challenges I am presenting to you. Play the ball not the man, Richard. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t make them biased or dishonest.
I don’t set out to hurt your feelings when it comes to your report of the wind industry and take no pleasure in doing so. I have worked as a technical consultant and also employ technical consultants. If the report you pointed me to the other day was presented to me by a technical consultant I employed, I simply would refuse to pay for it. However, we have to be honest here even if your pride takes a bit of a bashing. ‘Self praise is no praise’ – this is an adage that you should remember when it comes to your report which you have self-described as thorough and detailed. It’s simply not and is so replete with issues, I really don’t know where to start. For you, you need to start with the modern wind industry and not the one in the 1970’s that is in your reference list when describing the technology and its efficiencies (refs 7 and 10 from recollection).
Your behaviour here is IDENTICAL to those climate scientists who simply refuse to believe what the climate is doing is real and cling on desperately to their belief that CO2 driven CGW is for real. In your case, that cherished belief is that the wind industry cannot generate net positive energy when all factors are taken into account and that they will destabilise and topple over grids if they become large enough. This may have been a defensible position 30 years ago but it is rank denialism today (and I don’t like that word) that is akin to still claiming that the world is flat. The real world facts on the ground today are proving these ‘cherished beliefs’ wrong hour in-hour out, day after day. You only sunder your credibility by spouting them here. There are areas that the wind industry can be challenged but I’m afraid these two are not among them.
AWEA board member E.ON, which operates German transmission grids and also builds wind plants in the US, is succinct:
“Wind energy is only able to replace traditional power stations to a limited extent. Their dependence on the prevailing wind conditions means that wind power has a limited load factor even when technically available…. Consequently, traditional power stations with capacities equal to 90% of the installed wind power capacity must be permanently online [and burning fuel] in order to guarantee power supply at all times”
http://www.nerc.com/docs/pc/ivgtf/EON_Netz_Windreport2005_eng.pdf
This means wind generation cannot replace fossil generation to any meaningful extent.
This also means that comparisons between wind and fossil with respect to emissions are ill informed. Wind is entirely reliant upon fossil fuel. Wind is more honestly referred to as fossil/wind. Wind cannot stand on its own and cannot replace fossil generation.
GE makes this clear here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/oira_2060/2060_07232013-1.pdf
This means the ill effects of wind energy are added to the ill effects of fossil fuel extraction – not a replacement for them.
Wind energy adds insult to injury, both from an environmental and an economic perspective.
Even the Center/Left Brookings Institute concurs:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/05/low-carbon-electricity-technologies-frank
“Wind is one of the great scams of the modern age,” Robert Bryce, Manhattan Institute Scholar, correctly stated in his presentation – “MORE ENERGY PLEASE!”:
“WIND TURBINES ARE CLIMATE CHANGE SCARECROWS”:
http://www.nationalreview.com/nro-energy/364885/wind-turbines-are-climate-change-scarecrows-robert-bryce
Hoplite
Your implications that your need to wait for a post to leave moderation is some kind of misbehaviour by WUWT is disproved by my post replying to you now being in moderation.
Richard
This is a repost with hopefully corrected formatting.
Hoplite
I am replying to your additional falsehoods and nonsense.
Firstly, as I said, your initial post did NOT cite any references. You only did that after I pointed out that it did not.
Secondly, merely citing papers is pointless. SAY WHAT YOU THINK THEY SAY AND QUOTE FROM THEM TO JUSTIFY IT. We can then discuss whatever issue you want. Merely stating there are papers which support you but not saying how is ‘setting homework’ which you are required to do, not me.
The nearest you get to providing any statement of what your references say is this in your offensive missive I am answering
NO, troll! You have cited the paper and it is up to you to say why you think it supports your untrue assertion and why you think it does. There is no reason for me to provide a review of the paper which onlookers may not have seen.
And you really, really are a nasty little troll.
You accuse me of “spreading falsehoods”, and the kindest understanding of that accusation is that it is an example of your psychological projection.
Saying you are a troll is NOT an ad hom. It is an observation that you are an anonymous sock-puppet for the wind industry who is presenting falsehoods. Indeed, the ad homs. have all been provided by you. As I said to you
And your egregious post I am answering still does not. It merely raves
Troll, that is the logical fallacy of ‘argument by assertion’. It is NOT an attempt to refute the fact that use of wind-powered subsidy farms INCREASES CO2 emissions from grid-distributed electricity generation systems, and it does not.
And you clearly know it does not because you admit it when you write this nonsense.
So, you assert that the INCREASE to CO2 emissions caused by wind-powered subsidy farms is compensated “10 times” by “wind replacing ff generated electricity”. As I said, that is physically impossible. I yet again remind that the issue is
That is reality, and your daft assertions don’t change it.
And of course I did not discuss your daft assertions about my analysis. I also don’t bother to refute assertions that the Moon is made of green cheese. I yet again repeat that if your claims about my analysis were true then it would not alter the reality that use of wind-powered subsidy farms INCREASES CO2 emissions from grid-distributed electricity generation systems.
Your insults don’t “hurt”. They are laughable. You know you are spouting nonsense so you try to distract from your nonsense by flaming from behind the coward’s shield of anonymity. Clearly, in light of your other falsehoods there is no reason to accept your assertions that you are not a shill for the wind industry.
Richard
Richard,
My God you are some operator here!! This is prima facie evidence of how you simply CANNOT be debated with. You state:
‘Firstly, as I said, your initial post did NOT cite any references. You only did that after I pointed out that it did not.’
But if you read my ORIGINAL post (ever before you got involved and to which you responded):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/13/offshore-wind-power-even-germany-cant-get-it-right/#comment-1736427
See? I know you won’t read it. But for other readers here who are intellectual honest and decent they can see I quote the two papers. The first can easily be found with just author name and year and second gives the title and author – 5 seconds googling and you’d have them both.
Now, Richard, which of the two of us here is a troll?
I have quoted the results of it which are quite clear the NET effect of wind is unquestionably CO2/ff reduction. If you want me to repost the entire contents of the paper here then just ask but that is the pertinent conclusion to the matter in hand. Tolley is refuted by a large body of research.
I am not a shill of anyone and once again I would have thought you were old enough to know that just because someone doesn’t agree with you doesn’t make them dishonest or a liar.
What else is there to say to a bad tempered and nasty man like you?
‘So, you assert that the INCREASE to CO2 emissions caused by wind-powered subsidy farms is compensated “10 times” by “wind replacing ff generated electricity”. As I said, that is physically impossible. I yet again remind that the issue is’
The marginal CO2 generation from a CCGT plant of one unit of electricity is around 400g CO2. The marginal (key word) CO2 generation of a unit of electricity from a wind turbine is more or less 0g CO2. If wind generates the unit of electricity rather than the CCGT that is around 400g CO2 reduction. This is the substitution effect. We have gone from 400g to 0g – a reduction. How on earth is it even possible that you do not understand this very simple point?
The papers are available and free on the web and you could read them for yourself – but you won’t as your mind is made up and anyone who tries to argue against you is a shill of the wind industry. I guess there’s no arguing with some people. However, I hope other readers here can see you for what you really are.
If readers don’t like the wind industry and don’t like paying a bit extra for it that’s fine – everyone is entitled to their opinion and many enthusiastically support it. But what isn’t acceptable is making sh*t up that simply is NOT true in order to win people over to your side of the argument. The truth is sacred and science would have gotten nowhere without fidelity to it. We have seen the consequences of not having that fidelity in the GW sorry saga.
Hop Lite and Hoplite
Enough troll(s).
This thread is not about you and/or your ravings and/or your fallacious assertions.
The reality is as you know and you inadvertently admitted
use of wind-powered subsidy farms INCREASES CO2 emissions from grid-distributed electricity generation systems.
Now stop bothering with your untrue and disruptive rants. Go troll some other blog instead.
Richard
Hope Lite…
..
You know you have won the argument wit R Courtney when he calls you a ‘troll”
beckleybud@gmail.com
Hop Lite and Hoplite did not make any argument to win or lose. They only made unsubstantiated and untrue assertions of the ‘yes it is’ and ‘no it isn’t’ kind.
I know the ravings of a troll have been overcome when another troll arrives to support the first troll.
Richard
Thanks beckleybud. I was starting to wonder was I going a bit mad as I have never in my life come across such obduracy and stridency. I have noticed him having similar go’s at others here and I suspect you may have been one of them.
Hoplite and beckleybud@gmail.com
It is very sweet that you are having a troll ‘love in’.
It would be good if you were to round up some more of your ilk so you can all go off to some blog of your own to enjoy the ‘love in’. This would benefit everybody except for discontinuing any payments for your trolling.
Richard
Looks RichardSCourtney like you are going to the last word in this round as I simply cannot post a reply to your last one. I have tried many different ways. I am intrigued as to the technical (or maybe not technical) reason as to why my post to you will not show up here. Curiouser and curiouser.
Hoplite
I don’t know the cause of your problem but have had similar in the past. And it is very frustrating. I suspect it is WordPress doing it. If my suspicion is right then your post will probably be retrieved when the mods. clear out the ‘bin’: this sometimes means a wait of several hours. However, I have had posts vanished by WordPress and as far as I can tell nobody knows why.
Richard
Hoplite
I waited and – as expected – your item did appear.
I have replied to it because it is complete rubbish which demonstrates you don’t have an answer to the fact that wind-powered subsidy farms increase CO2 emissions from power generation, and you will say anything to hide the reality that you know wind-powered subsidy farms increase CO2 emissions from power generation.
Richard
Hoplite wrote
September 14, 2014 at 2:00 pm
Your attitude towards future generations seems to me to be ‘they can stuff themselves and make their own way in this world, and they ain’t going to cramp my style’. Not an attitude I’d care for.
I have clearly articulated my attitude about future generations in my post at 9:51. It bears no resemblance to your words above, which by the way, clearly illustrate your manner of debate: ignore what has been said, and pretend that it was something else, to wit:
Your statement about no security in ‘unreliable’ power shows me that you don’t understand how wind contributes to a state’s energy inputs.
No, it means you’re going to pretend not to understand my clear remark:
Unnecessary expense is a drain not only on people’s pockets, but also on state treasuries. Excessive state debt due to unnecessary expenses can hardly be considered a sign of security. Rather, it is a sign of vulnerability.
Not everyone is out to make money in the stock market. Many of us are just happy to be able to pay our utility bill. You forget that most people in this world are poor.
My concern about future generations is that they will think we were fools for littering the landscape with these towering whirligigs, when we had mountains of coal.
And finally, more of the same; what you claim I said:
[…]however, claiming that introducing wind power as part of the generation mix is going to destroy that civilisation is egging it just a bit, no?
And what I actually wrote:
The backbone of modern civilization is base-load power. Wind can’t provide that, and introducing it into “the mix” just makes everything more complicated, less reliable, and more expensive.
‘There is no security in unreliable power, especially when it costs more than reliable power.’
There is security in a portfolio of generation that includes wind. There is no security in wind on its own – who’s claiming there is? Why is there security? As the imported fossil fuel requirements lessen. Ireland imports the vast majority of its energy. This is seen, rightly, as a national vulnerability. By lessening this reliance, which wind does, that increases security. Your ‘reliable power’ is not so reliable in Ireland where its fuel has to be imported often from politically unstable regions whose sudden unavailability makes the prices surge. By relying on wind our national strategic imported reserves last longer = more security of electrical supply and stability of its price.
The extra cost of wind has been modest to date in Ireland that has the largest penetration of wind on a >1GW synchronous system in the world (now nearly 20% of energy demand). The annual PSO levy in Ireland for 2014-15 will be E64.37 on an average annual electricity bill of E1,236 (5.2%). I, and 80% of my fellow citizens, are happy to pay this as we support wind as one of the energy sources to our economy. The PSO levy also pays for the peat burning stations which are Gov policy (much less public support for them) so the element in that supporting wind is less.
Ireland, UK, Germany, USA etc etc can well afford these extra costs for renewables and don’t cod yourself that we can’t. I fully agree with the deep criticisms of the enviro lobby that is denying cheap power to the developing world but those nations that can afford to pay a bit more to create sustainable energy sources can and should do so as a moral imperative. I guess we just disagree on how strong that moral obligation to future generations is. Our energy usage, like our consumption patterns, need to become a little more sane and sustainable and you certainly don’t have to be a Green to believe that. I am not and have never politically supported them as I believe economically and in other areas they are loolahs.
NYTimes plants sloppy wet kiss on German Energy program:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/science/earth/sun-and-wind-alter-german-landscape-leaving-utilities-behind.html
NYT Sept 13 is 180 from this article………… so what is the TRUTH?
When talking about the amount of energy a wind farm generates, even the actual amount of power produced is an over-estimate. The real question is how much usable power does the thing generate. Power generated at off-peak times is completely useless because it will just get dumped.
Steve – that is incorrect. The fossil fuel generation is turned down and wind supplies the load instead of it. BTW how is electrical power ‘dumped’?
Hop Lite,
When the power is not used on the grid, wouldn’t that mean that it’s dumped?
Also, I agree with Steve that the numbers promoted by wind power generation are inflated.
Face it, windmills are a lose-lose, except for the people receiving the subsidies. Those folks, and the eco-freaks who have no skin in the game are the only ones who like windmills. Everyone else would prefer that they just disappear. Especially the birds and bats.
‘When the power is not used on the grid, wouldn’t that mean that it’s dumped?’
The power IS used on the grid as I explained. Where do you think the power goes to? Energy cannot be created or destroyed ……etc etc etc.
Some of the wind industry are guilty of egging it somewhat on the financials and the benefits of wind but the production levels are a matter of public record now and cannot be gainsayed. I have calculated the capacity factors of wind myself from these power times series. There really is no place for them to hide in falsified numbers at this point. You can get all that data yourself at eirgrid.com or uknational grid website. Please note these entities have no stake in or are allowed a stake in wind or any other generator.
Nope – wind is not a lose lose as it does reduce dependency on fossil fuels but at a price (the part the wind industry tries to fudge). I have given the actual details of that level of costs for wind in Ireland today at 20% annual energy demand levels (+5% or so).
I haven’t read the literature much on WTs and birds but I have spoken to windfarm operators who have told me they don’t see many bird strikes (one was in Spain and another in Ireland controlling multiple farms). As I understand it the loss of birds to hunting and poisons is much greater. My suspicion is that this ‘fact’ about wind is similar to many of the canards about it that still are trotted out by many (one unname-able here!).
If you don’t like wind power and don’t want to pay extra for it that’s a perfectly legitimate view but you don’t have to make stuff up about it in order to promote your stance.
The author wrote:
“My thought – if even the Germans, with their legendary high precision engineering skills, can’t make offshore wind work, surely it is time to pull the plug on this technically infeasible dead end?”
Let me rephrase that slightly:
My thought – if even the Japanese, with their legendary high precision engineering skills, can’t make nuclear fission reactors work, surely it is time to pull the plug on this technically infeasible dead end?
Let me add:
After trillions of dollars of R&D and subsidies for 70 years, one accident at Fukushima lost more money and destroyed more assets than any other source of electricity in history, and forced the shut down of the entire industry. In one day, nuclear power was revealed as the most dangerous and expensive source of energy.
Jed Rothwell,
I think what you are referring to re: Fukishima is politics, not safety.
Politics is the reason that nuclear power is so expensive. If it were treated rationally, by now nuclear power would be producing plenty of inexpensive electricity. But it is fought tooth and nail every step of the way, mainly with lawsuits. That makes a nuclear plant incredibly expensive, because aside from the constant delays, there are also constant engineering changes required, and those changes generate more lawsuits.
Regarding safety, how many people did the Fukushima accident kill? As far as I know, the number is zero. Considering that statistic unemotionally, and adding other nuclear accidents in the West that also caused no deaths and very few injuries of any kind, it appears that nukes are extremely safe — much safer than any alternative. But that is an unemotional assessmant. Politics is inherently emotional.
So while Fukushima may be the most expensive accident in history [I don’t know that for a fact], it was undeniably not dangerous. There are arguments on both sides, but as usual, the wild-eyed scaremongers get all the press. Rational skeptics don’t.
You wrote: “Regarding safety, how many people did the Fukushima accident kill? As far as I know, the number is zero.” The accident itself killed several people but that was not from radioactivity. It remains to be seen how many people will die from radioactive exposure. Thousands of workers received doses far above the safety standards, so the standards were changed. Middle-aged and retired workers have volunteered to do the work, knowing that it takes 20 years in most cases for health problems to appear. I do not know whether the government accepted volunteers. Most of the workers there have been recruited through criminal organizations, so I doubt there has been much follow-up. (Yakuza-run employment agencies often contract manual labor in Japan.)
I happen to know a great deal about this because I translate Japanese physics and chemistry papers into English. I was in contact with several of the nuclear engineering professors involved in the cleanup, from Hokkaido U., and I watch the NHK news and documentaries about the disaster.
The professors tell me that soil and biological samples taken far from the reactor are so radioactive, they are a hazard to work with in the lab. Long-lived isotopes will make an area roughly 600 square kilometers uninhabitable for centuries. The government disagrees, but I expect the professors are right. The NHK reported on wildlife captured or shot ~100 km from reactor:
“Tests of the meat from boars shot in Fukushima Prefecture show radioactive cesium at levels up to 61,000 becquerels, which is 610 times the maximum allowed by government safety standards.” (my translation, see: http://www.nhk.or.jp/gendai/kiroku/detail_3379.html)
Most of the radioactivity in the boars comes from plants, which is about half their diet. There is no doubt that crops for humans are also contaminated. Maps showing average contamination are not reliable because contamination varies a great deal in one place. You can have normal background levels in place, and 100 meters away in a culvert where water collects, you might find radiation several orders of magnitude above background.
I expect this is the most expensive accident in history. Japanese population density is high, and their farms, factories and cities are highly developed, with infrastructure and investment. Chernobyl is in the middle of nowhere compared to Fukushima, so property damage measured in dollars was smaller. Official estimates are that $250 to $500 billion in property was lost, with 159,000 people displaced. That sounds low to me. At $500 billion that comes to $3 million per person. We are not just talking about houses lost. They also towns, schools, roads and other infrastructure, and equipment, factories, farms, and all other places of work and public and private property. I expect that comes to a lot more than $3 million in rural Japan. (I lived in rural Japan for a while, so I know how much land and other assets are worth.)
The losses have been incurred by individuals, so they are difficult to tally. The government and the power company have offered home owners, farmers and other nominal sums as compensation, for example $25,000 for a farm worth millions, with equipment alone worth far more than that. This is not surprising to anyone familiar with Japanese government or industry.
See:
http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/environmental-health-policy-institute/responses/costs-and-consequences-of-fukushima.html
Let me add that I said fission reactors are “dangerous.” That does not necessarily mean they kill people. Danger would include causing property damage or the permanent evacuation of a large area of land. It includes a situation where workers can only spend a week on the clean-up site before exceeding radiation safety standards — even though these standards were arbitrarily increased a great deal. Whether that kills a worker or not, I think we all agree it is hazardous, or dangerous. That’s why they have to wear those plastic hazmats suits.
Fukushima may have shortened the lives of hundreds of workers. We will not know for another 20 years. If the previous safety standards in Japan, which are still current elsewhere in the world, were valid, then probably it has shortened many lives and it will cause cancer.
Wind turbines have occasionally collapsed or burned. They can be dangerous. Coal and natural gas plants have exploded. However, these accidents cause no long term damage, and they are not hazardous to clean up. They do not cost a lot to clean up.
There is also the financial hazard. The Tokyo Electric Power Company is the largest power company in the world. It had so much money before the accident, it was investing in projects even outside of energy. The accident effectively bankrupted it. The company cannot possibly pay for the clean-up, never mind compensation. The government has stepped in. The actual costs are impossible to calculate, given the opacity of Japanese finances. Plus, as I said, much of burden will fall on individual farm and factory owners displaced from the land, who have been paid a pittance, or nothing. Many have been told they can return to farming, but no sane person would eat the produce from that land, according to the expert professors I have been in contact with.
Hi Jed. I just want to say that I, along with many others here, followed the whole situation with real nuclear guys who posted continually about radiation levels and what was really going on. As a consequence the Fukushima thing played out as a huge over-reaction by so many folk it was risible.
The simple facts are that the system was overwhelmed by a tsunami wave bigger than design parameters. The stand by diesel system was drowned and failed to kick in. Nobody died, nobody got sick but lots of livestock died because they were abandoned by spooked humans who bought into the official line regarding radiation.
Today we have the gross pretence that the area is dangerous, which it isn’t, and that the design of Fukushima was a failure which it wasn’t. You and your ilk have an agenda which is anti-human but it is still nonsense. Nuclear radiation is not the issue you make it out to be.
Jed Rothwell says:
The accident itself killed several people …
Name them, please. Provide a source.
The professors tell me…
Another uncited assertion. Please stop that.
This is the internet’s Best Science & Technology site. It is not the National Enquirer, or Skepticalscience. You need to provide cited facts, not someone’s opinion. We all have opinions.
You stated that people were killed at Fukushima, but you never identified anyone killed. Then in your next post you contradicted yourself, and admitted that no one was killed. And your “What-if” speculation is just that: speculation. Nuclear power remains the safest form of power generation. Many people have been killed in coal plants, hydro plants, NatGas plants, etc. They are all more dangerous than nukes.
But you can only accept those facts if you keep your emotions out of it. Otherwise, the anti-science Greens will manipulate you like a string puppet.
“The accident itself killed several people …
Name them, please. Provide a source.”
I do not know their names. Three people were reportedly killed by collapsing structures or by being washed out to sea. See:
http://asiancorrespondent.com/53036/the-fukushima-death-toll/
As I recall, several others were killed in subsequent days, by the hydrogen explosions and other conventional causes. About 100 were reportedly subjected to radiation beyond the new, higher standards, but they are not dead as far as I recall.
You can confirm my statements about the change in radiation standards, retired professional volunteering and so on in various sources, including the one I attached and also the New York Times, the Yomiuri, the NHK and the official Japanese Diet investigation. I linked to the NHK report. It is in Japanese but you can ask Google to translate it.
“The professors tell me…
Another uncited assertion. Please stop that.”
I did cite it! I said nuclear engineering professors at Hokkaido National University. You can find the same information in many other authoritative sites. Granted, it is easier to find them in Japanese, but there is plenty of English documentation available.
“This is the internet’s Best Science & Technology site. . . .”
In that case you should accept information from authoritative sources sources such as the NHK. That is the gold standard of objectivity in Japan.
Let me explain that if you want to determine how much radioactive debris is located at various distances from the accident, there are several methods. There are airborne detectors that compile averages. You can send people down roads or into the bush with handheld detectors and sample bags. However, a much better method is to shoot a wild boar and test the meat from it. Wild boars eat lots of plant food from many different places, including places inaccessible to most people. The foraging range of wild boars is known, and biologists are quickly learning more about it. So this is a much more comprehensive and reliable way to measure radiation in plants than any human technology. When you shoot many boars, and you find up 61,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium in the meat — such that it would be an extreme hazard to eat it — that is irrefutable proof that dangerous levels of radioactive debris have spread far and wide from the reactor. You cannot go around shooting people who eat crops from that area, but if you could it is likely you would find radioactive debris in the people too. It is up and down the food chain, on land and at sea. If that is not “dangerous” I do not know what would be.
And yes, that information does come from authoritative sources: the NHK and the Japanese government biologists who are shooting the boars and also monkeys, rats, badgers and various other animals. You can look it up.
From Jed Rothwell on September 15, 2014 at 10:22 am:
Like Hiroshima, so desolate the population was only 1,173,980 on January 2010. Or Nagasaki, still so dreadfully irradiated that as of January 2009 it was only supporting 1,100/km2 (3,000/sq mi), merely 446,007 people in total. Sadness.
Then there is what was the greatest disaster at a nuclear power plant, Chernobyl. To fully appreciate the absolute unresolvable unrelenting devastation, you need to take the tour. Go stare at the reactor buildings and have lunch at the Power Plant canteen, walk on through the abandoned town of Pripyat. Stop near the Red Forest, enjoy the abundant wildlife. You might even meet the self-settlers, those who moved themselves back home after the evacuation, who are inhabiting the uninhabitable wasteland.
Five-star rating from Trip Advisor. The reviews rave about how good the tour guides are, because the guides spend most of their time there!
You wrote: “Like Hiroshima, so desolate the population was only 1,173,980 on January 2010.”
You are confusing radiation with radioactive material. The Hiroshima bomb had about 10 kg of uranium in it. That is the most radioactive material it could have spread, and it went over a large area. A fission reactor core has tons of uranium, and many other dangerous isotopes. Two of the Fukushima reactor cores blew up in spectacular hydrogen explosions, far into the air, pulverizing and releasing tons of radioactive material. Hundreds to thousands of times more than a nuclear bomb releases (depending on the isotope). Radioactive debris from the reactors is spread much farther and in greater amounts than all of above ground nuclear tests in history, I have read.
dbstealey wrote
September 15, 2014 at 8:52 am
Your assessment is based on the mistaken assumption that the disaster at Fukushima is over.
Mankind’s knowledge of radiation spans less than 120 years, but nuclear advocates are eager to close the books on any possible long-term health effects of any and all nuclear events, or radiation, in general.
I don’t know what is causing the reported sharp decline in sperm counts in France, and elsewhere, and I don’t know either what accounts for the observed end of the Flynn Effect among Norwegian & Danish recruits, and other groups, including in the UK. It seems the vaunted precautionary principle does not apply when it comes to radiation or chemicals, but is only operative when we are discussing a beneficial, but demonized, trace gas.
In any event, even if we set all the health questions about radiation aside, there are still the issues of cost, and security. I’m old enough to remember the early TV ads from the nuclear power industry about how their product would be Too Cheap To Meter.
I don’t think that has worked out too well.
Steve P says:
Your assessment is based on the mistaken assumption that the disaster at Fukushima is over.
“Mistaken assumption”?? Isn’t that just another “What if”? And who are you to say it isn’t over?
I try not to deal in too many assumptions. Going instead by “What is“, we see that the Fukushima situation didn’t kill lots of folks. Actually, none was the last number I heard.
But “what if” it does, years from now? Then we will have to look at that situation at the time. But right now, there aren’t hospital beds full of radiation victims. People are not dying. The tsunami happened years ago. If we are making assumptions, what would you assume? That people are going to start dropping dead now?
Next, you write:
…nuclear advocates are eager to close the books…
No, it is you and Jed who want to keep the books open, when there is no evidence of any fatalities. That outcome isn’t good enough for you folks. Like the runaway global warming believers, you need a bigger disaster. But the fact is that a tsunami wave much bigger than design parameters caused most of the damage. The radiation was incidental. As we constantly ask here: “Where are the bodies??”
Next, Jed Rothwell sounds a tad too emotional when he writes:
Two of the Fukushima reactor cores blew up in spectacular hydrogen explosions, far into the air… Hundreds to thousands of times more than a nuclear bomb releases… Radioactive debris from the reactors is spread much farther and in greater amounts than all of above ground nuclear tests in history… And so on.
Subtracting his emotion, we get this:
A larger than expected tsunami wrecked a nuclear power plant. There were no fatalities. Radiation levels are rapidly declining.
False alarms have been sounded about nuclear power plants for sixty years now. But the fact is that nuclear plants are as safe as, or safer than all other kinds of power plant. Any worrying beyond that is just rank speculation.
Speculating is simply making a conjecture. But after 60 years of baseless conjectures, in which the predicted disasters never happened, it is time to tone down the wild-eyed scares and accept nuclear power for what it is: just another way to produce electricity.
and thats the real answere to the thread
wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/22/the-eu-climate-change-and-the-giant-sucking-sound/
of course the EU Bureaukrats have technicians telling them ‘half the power, double the working time’.
but as well the greens know they’re driving us to ‘Mangelwirtschaft’ resp. poor energy supply.
Look up ‘Janosz Kornay’; a economy unable to meet consumers needs.
As in former DDR, nowadays north corea, cuba etc.
And as in times of war.
Less power, twice the time means: hopefully our energie supply doesnt break down at the needs, ‘give us more time to deliver’ – at the best forget about it.
brg – Hans