Like hot dogs, I used to love fried bologna. Could we find something else to diss. Besides, I look at bologna and hot dogs as a chance to put everything to good use we would normally throw away, or throw up, or what ever. Food efficiency if you will.
Wind energy is as big a joke, if not bigger, than the Ethanol thing.
It provides a warm and fuzzy feeling to the populace and lines the pocketbooks of a few at taxpayer expense…
I feel wind energy is worthwhile. Unfortunately , everything I have read or heard about it negatively evolves around maximizing short term profits so wind turbines have to be located in areas that cause more problems then they solve; everything from locating too near residence to obstructing views of politically connected people. They work, they function efficiently, but working throught the politics is not what the engineers who design and place them are very good at.
"No one has ever been killed by a nuclear reactor accident in the US. If you add up all the deaths from coal mining (direct and indirect), transportation and respiratory deseases caused by coal, you get a very high figure. "
That is a very very misleading statement. It is technically true, but it hides the fact that if you add up all the deaths from uranium mining (direct and indirect), transportation and respiratory diseases caused by radioactive ore dust, you also get a very high figure. It is in fact as high or higher than than coal mining.
Two very rare species, retired coal miners and retired uranium miners. of the two, you will find more retired coal miners.
I would also dispute that no one has ever been killed by a nuclear reactor accident. That is only true if narrow the scope to a reactor accident that involves a leak of radio active material. As in any construction job, I am sure that there have been deaths during the construction of the reactors and as a power plant that shares elements of all power plants no matter how they are fueled, I’m sure there are fatalities from other things, electrocutions, burns from steam, falls from heights etc.
I know I sounded like a big supporter of nuclear power in an earlier post, but all I meant was that it can be made safer and someday, we are going to have to embrace some form of nuclear power or go without any power at all. I would like to see that nuclear power come from a fusion source rather than a fission source, but so far, that isn’t happening and we don’t seem to be investing in the research to make it happen.
@dagosa, the reason why I don’t buy into the wind farm thing is because (using the farm here as an example) the amount of power claimed to be generated is only true if every turbine is functional and if every turbine is putting out its maximum. Neither one happens.
An analogy would be to say that 100 cars with 100 amp alternators are putting out 10,000 amps of electricity. It’s not going to happen and if it did they will all be frying in a short period of time.
There’s a mind boggling amount of energy used to build, operate, and maintain those turbines and every single one uses grid power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week whether a blade spins or not.
More often than not, the blades are not turning and only at rare times does one see all or a majority of them turning at all. Even the electric company says the optimum time for turbine useage here is in the spring and fall. It will be interesting to see how often those things turn with summer coming on and wind becoming light. Even this spring it’s been spotty at best.
As to nuclear problems, the old Kerr McGee nuclear facility is not too many miles down the road from me and the problems there even led to a movie by the name of “Silkwood” involving the woman who died under suspicious circumstances after plutonium contamination.
Back in the 60s there was a radioactive fish kill in the river which is about 1/4 mile from the plant and about half a dozen or so years ago the local news reported higher than normal levels of radiation in a small town about 20 or so miles downstream.
The company changed its name after Silkwood’s death and the plant closed some years later but someone still maintains a presence there; to keep people out I suppose.
The big turbines use a small amount of electricity from the grid in the same way that your cars alternator uses some electricity from the battery. The generator on the turbine is just like a cars alternator, except for size. It even has a rectifier bank so that its output is DC (around 500 VDC). It feeds the DC to an inverter in the base that produces 60 Hz three phase electricity, synced to the grid and that is fed to a three phase step up transformer located outside the tower at the base. This in turn is fed to a substation transformer to step it up to the transmission line voltage.
How do the president’s green energy subsidies stack up against Pentagon spending for useless weapons?
So any wasteful spending is ok if it’s less than pentagon waste?
Is the administration’s spending to encourage energy independence and improve the environment less justified than useless weapons programs?
Regarding Docnick’s assertion that “No one has ever been killed by a nuclear reactor accident in the US,” I submit that death isn’t the only thing you need to worry about. Some fates are worse than death.
Please allow me to introduce you to some Chernobyl survivors. These aren’t even the worst of the pictures. For your benefit, I left out the pictures of dead babies and abandoned children.
After looking at these pictures, I’m willing to let my taxes be used to invest in renewable power infrastructure, even if it’s costly. It is definitely preferable to the wasteful spending on the Iraq war (estimated to be between 3.2 and 4 billion dollars - and that that only includes direct costs).
( Photos pulled from http://www.pixelpress.org/chernobyl/index.html )
"Is the administration’s spending to encourage energy independence and improve the environment less justified than useless weapons programs? "
The question is whether the spending is useful. There is no ‘energy independence’ issue with electrical power, it’s just about all produced from domestic sources, regardless. And the subsidies are a mistake if they don’t actually improve the environment (which can easily be argued for wind power) or are so high they are an outright waste of money, with better results if the money was spent on, say, basic research into improving solar power.
We use about 4,000 Billion Kw-hr of electricity a year. At $0.77/Kw-hr subsidy for solar, that’s about $3 TRILLION if it were applied to the total usage. The Spanish have found how painful wasteful spending on unneeded subsidies can be. They’re now in a severe depression, with stunning unemployment. Wasteful government spending contributed to their problems.
I’d also like to offer this excerpt in rebuttal to Docnick’s assertion:
People Died at Three Mile Island By Harvey Wasserman People died -- and are still dying -- at Three Mile Island.As the thirtieth anniversary of America’s most infamous industrial accident approaches, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history.
…the state of Pennsylvania hid the health impacts, including deletion of cancers from the public record, abolition of the state’s tumor registry, misrepresentation of the impacts it could not hide (including an apparent tripling of the infant death rate in nearby Harrisburg) and much more…
As the pushers of the “nuclear renaissance” demand massive tax- and rate-payer subsidies to build yet another generation of reactors, they cynically stonewall the obvious death toll that continues to mount at the site of an accident that happened thirty years ago. The “see no evil” mantra continues to define all official approaches to the victims of this horrific disaster…
Meanwhile, the death toll from America’s worst industrial catastrophe continues to rise. More than ever, it is shrouded in official lies and desecrated by a reactor-pushing “renaissance” hell-bent on repeating the nightmare on an even larger scale.
( The whole article can be found at Three Mile Island Killed People / Nuclear Industry's Despicable Regulatory Record )
And how painful is the wasteful spending for useless military toys and parades and country clubs? The GOP’s fondness for throwing dollars at the Pentagon and industries that supply the military dwarfs the paltry sums that the administration has spent to PROTECT us from future brown outs and black outs.
It’s all a matter of perspective. The GOP’s paranoid war hawk constituency requires feeding to keep them on board while the Dem’s younger, greener constituency is likewise expecting to be thrown a few crumbs. How much does the rest of the world waste on their military?
@Whitey Yes, Chernobyl was a terrible accident that did not need to have happened. The engineers were conducting an unauthotrized and very dangerous experiment as to how low they could turn down the reactor. Add to that the Russian reactor design is essentiall a large charcoal BBQ if it catches fire. The US design is inherently safer; the Three Mile Island units shut down as planned preventing an accident. All safety sysems operated as designed.
Nuclear safety has advanced a great deal over the years. The main difference between uranium mining and coal mining is the volume. To get the same energy the amount of uranium mined is miniscule compared to coal. In China there is a coal mining accident very 3 weeks or so and typically 25 or more miners die in such events. I’m being very conservative here.
As mentioned, there is no such thing as a completely safe form of energy. Properly designed and operated neuclear plants are very safe.
All windmills need backup if they are to be considered “base loaded”; other wise they can only be used only when wind is available. This very low availability makes wind power so expensive. The same is true for solar. Cheap energy storage is not anywhere on the horizon yet.
If you really like wind and solar, move to Denmark; it has the highest Green energy percentage. They also pay some 38cents per kilowatt hour or more , compared to most US consumers paying abnout12 cents or so.
The Dutch virtually invented windmills and at their height in the 1600s there were 35,000 of them operating. They pumped water, ground grains, and sawed wood. But they ony did that when the wind blew. They did not generate electriclty, and lighting was still by candles and whale oil lamps. Steam power then virtually put them out of business. The 1500 remaining old style windmills are for the benefit of US and other tourists. There are some new one but the bulk of power is generated by efficient and low cost natural gas conbined cycle plants.
Here’s a plot showing how variable wind generation is. Also notice how it’s highest in the spring, lowest in the summer, the opposite of our needs. That means HUGE backup capacity is required:
Over a year, on average the turbines put out about 20% of their “nameplate” capacity.
I question hyperbole from the right and the left, @texases. I am highly skeptical of the windmill solution. But like most political issues it has become a snow ball rolling down a long hill and only a fool would step in front of it. But then,who will step out and endanger their political career on closing half the military bases in the country?
The whole turbine solution seems limited when you use wind, but has a lot more promise if used in the ocean, where the tide is always either coming in or moving out.
I can’t remember a time that ANYONE suggested wind power be our only renewable source. In fact, it seems logical and intuitive to me that when the sun is shining, you expect less wind, and when it’s windy, you expect less sunshine. If I had the resources to live off the grid, I’d have both solar panels and a windmill or two. Trying to rely on only one source would be shortsighted.
Has nuclear power plant safety really come that far since Three Mile Island? If so, what’s with all the lies and cover-ups I cited above? Surely, if nuclear safety had come such a long way, why are they still covering up the truth about the death toll from Three Mile Island?
In terms of nuclear safety technology, I’m struggling to find any great developments in the last 30 years, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster supports that view.
As the cost of energy increases relative to the stagnant income of the average American what direction will the country take? I am too old to consider any great changes in my situation. But for young families whose stagnant wages already fall short of their living expenses many months, with only a deterioration of the situation on the horizon, what options are currently available and what possible options might be brought into play to give them a reasonable chance to catch up and get ahead enough to enjoy life. Will more people settle for homes without air conditioning? Something’s got to give it appears.
Electricity prices have been flat since 2008:
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/7?geo=g&agg=0,1&endsec=vg
Much of this results from the gas production boom.
I am not a believer in the " one size fits all approach" . Making one big reactor or one large wind farm to serve large numbers of people amplifies the problems that any generation plant has. I am a believer in local power generation, public owned and non profit. Larger population centers naturally generate more revenue and can buy the surplus power generated from the less populated areas with greater natural power generation resources.
Encouraging wind farms in locals where the negative affects are minimized is fine for some, but not all. The most efficient and most economical power generation occurs as close to the user as possible. It also provides security that only multiple sources can provide. Nothing wrong with tidal power for coastal ommunities, solar for sun belt, wood fired oilers as a renewable source in Maine for example, and wind power in smaller communities in areas it works. When “for profits” are the norm, the larger, the more invasive, but the most profitable for these entities is the plan.
WHen the local energy company in our area long ago used hydro for the immediate area, the area energy costs were moderate. Then, greed set in and the energy company wanted to expand to oil plants, later to gas and reknewables and service the entire third of the state from just a few plans. Energy costs have escalated beyoind expectations ever since. Even the original managers admitt that the best thing to do was to remain committed to hydro and not chase the golden goose while allowing smaller generation plants to develope in each local, adapted to their resources.
Govt. subsidies in and of themselves are not the problem. It’s govt. subsidies and for profits that create the problem and never give back in return what is promised.