World's Wind Power Capacity Up By Fifth After Record Year (theguardian.com) 153
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's wind power capacity grew by almost a fifth in 2019 after a year of record growth for offshore windfarms and a boom in onshore projects in the US and China. The Global Wind Energy Council found that wind power capacity grew by 60.4 gigawatts, or 19%, compared with 2018, in one of the strongest years on record for the global wind power industry. The growth was powered by a record year for offshore wind, which grew by 6.1GW to make up a tenth of new windfarm installations for the first time. The council's annual report found that the US and China remain the world's largest markets for onshore wind power development. Together the two countries make up almost two-thirds of global growth in wind power. GWEC had expected 2020 to emerge as a record year for the rollout of wind energy projects, and forecast growth of 20% in the year ahead, but it said the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic was as yet unknown.
This is "nominal capacity", a.k.a. output when (Score:3)
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we assume a spherical cow. What's the capacity factor or the actual output, which are the data that matter? If I recall correctly, for wind it is something below 30%.
You do not recall correctly. The capacity factor for all U.S. turbines, averaged 34.8% [eia.gov] last year.
Re:This is "nominal capacity", a.k.a. output when (Score:5, Informative)
The next cost is the big battery to keep that energy day to day.
No the next cost is the Transmission lines, most likely DC Power lines, needed so that we can transition from a Centralised Grid to a Distributed Grid which will mean
for example that when the Sun goes down on the East Coast of America the Grid can powered from West Coast of California.
https://www.swellenergy.com/bl... [swellenergy.com]
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There are number of costs factors that the fans of wind and solar to lesser extent do not count:
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Are you done shouting at clouds Grandpa?
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Wouldn't lots of wind turbines actually make the earth cooler? Remember they are extracting energy from the motion of the air. Motion == heat. Less motion means less heat. Yes on a large scale it could change weather patterns. But I think you'd expect local cooling (if minuscule) around active turbines.
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Perhaps not: https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
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I'm surprised you don't already have long distance DC transmission lines. Europe has a lot of them so that electricity producers can sell their energy to other countries. The larger the market the better, right?
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We have a handful. Remember, US states are on the scale of European countries. Southern Washington State to Los Angles, CA, 1250km. Central North Dakota to Eastern Minnesota - 650km. Northern Quebec to Boston, 1250+ km.
Lots more are planned, spanning more distance as well.
The major issue is that each state has its own power companies, and there is no centralized entity in charge of the electrical grid. This is why PG&E in California had no reason to keep its lines clear, causing massive fires that destr
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Most long distance lines in Europe are AC.
Basically only new lines are DC.
Here is a map of proposed and existing lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Why is a distributed energy grid a better energy grid?
And the full and correct answer is "Because we (the company that is claiming this) sell it"
No (Grin)
,in the USA, called Grid Modernization all that this company is doing is Marketing the Idea.
This is part of an initiative of the DOE
https://www.powermag.com/how-t... [powermag.com]
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Who are you replying to ?
My comment is simply a Distributed Grid (Smart Grid?) is what will happen when renewables reach more than 50% of the grid generation.
https://www.ge.com/reports/set... [ge.com]
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Umm, no.
Batteries don't last forever. Now, I doubt seriously that batteries cost as much per year as fossil fuels, but even so, they're not "one off costs"....
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In (my) domestic situation, with a decent charge controller and proactive energy use patterns, e.g. turn the light off when you leave the room, lead-acid cells last about 10 years. My first set started "growing" the terminals and failing at 8 years, and my current set are 11 years and still OK, although not quite at their capacity when they were new.
Comparing their annualised cost with grid electricity has to take a lot of factors into account. One way is to look at a year's worth of electricity bills, and
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Said the guy who has not seen the current oil and natural gas prices.
Oil and gas have gone dirt cheap in the past month, and will stay so for a very long time, as the world economy restructures itself in the following 6-18 months to avoid the next coronavirus shock.
You say "oil and gas" in every sentence like they are exactly the same thing with the same costs. Gas is cheap, oil isn't. The pipeline cost of gas in 2019 was the equivalent of $14.60 a barrel for oil. That is cheap. The average price of oil last year was $57 a barrel. That is not cheap. For the entire decade of the 1990s the average price of oil in 2020 dollars was $34.
Oil does not compete with wind. The amount of electricity produced by oil is negligible in the U.S. and tiny worldwide (4% now).
Gas is a t
Nice, but need to add new Nuclear Power plants (Score:2)
Instead, we need to add more nuclear power plants (and start replacing the old ones), along with more wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro.
Stop spouting out brain farts, provide arguments (Score:5, Interesting)
You provided no arguments for your POV, can you be more specific, because I live in Germany and when I plug a device into the socket, it works 99,999999% of the time - no issues at all.
And Spain isn't the best example with 25% nuclear energy.
In short, no more nuclear because it cannot assist the changing renewables.
And btw. have you ever thought about the future price for electricity in france .. they have a big nuclear park .. of very old and ever aging plants that need to be replaced .. .. replacement = new nuclear reactors = expensive -> leads to -> the future french electricity price will increase above the german prices.
Re:Stop spouting out brain farts, provide argument (Score:4, Interesting)
France is keeping old reactors going because they don't want to pay for new ones. Nuclear basically turned into corporate welfare and they are fed up with it. EDF, one of the big nuclear operators, nearly went bust and had to be bailed out by the government a few years ago.
They basically gave up trying to build new nuclear in France and have been trying to do it elsewhere in Europe, but all the projects have ended up behind schedule and over budget. Take Hinkley C for example. The budget says it will be the most expensive object on Earth when finished (the ISS is about the only thing more expensive) and the electricity for it has a guaranteed price about 2x that of subsidised wind. No legal issues or challenges, it is being built on an existing site with existing infrastructure already in place. In the end they had to get Chinese investors in to keep the project afloat.
So yeah, I don't think France is very keen on replacing its existing reactors with new ones.
A pressure vessel's life time is limited .. (Score:2)
Old pressure vessels (reactors) are going to finally crack at a certain point in time. This will most likely happen during a load cycle (pressure up/down down/up).
Every material has defects of a certain size and you can observe the size and number of the defects that are introduced by operation.
With those old reactors the water for emergency/fast cooling is for some time now required to be warmed up, to leverage the thermal stress on the pressure vessel.
Those cracks are under observation, but you can tell f
Re:Stop spouting out brain farts, provide argument (Score:4, Funny)
In short, no more nuclear because it cannot assist the changing renewables.
That's no longer true. There are companies now building proof of concept prototypes of nuclear power plants capable of load following. We know how to build Brayton cycle turbines that run on heat from molten salt. These were used on solar thermal collectors to produce electricity. We know how to keep molten salt hot from nuclear power. These are both technologies that are decades old. The only thing we needed to do is have the federal government allow someone to prove the concept with a license to build a prototype. This happened shortly after Trump was elected as POTUS.
I don't know how far along they are in building this prototype but this technology will come to a civilian nuclear power plant relatively soon.
And btw. have you ever thought about the future price for electricity in france .. they have a big nuclear park .. of very old and ever aging plants that need to be replaced .. .. replacement = new nuclear reactors = expensive -> leads to -> the future french electricity price will increase above the german prices.
You really think so? I wouldn't bet on that.
Molten salt solar thermal (Score:3)
I think that your information is outdated. It seems nuclear engineers with that expertise have switched to building molten salt solar plants [insideclimatenews.org] and are no longer proponents of nuclear energy.
Re: Molten salt solar thermal (Score:2)
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They haven't even built a prototype and you consider it as good as done? I used to be optimistic like that, but none of these high-tech nuclear power plant designs seem to come through in the long run. It's proving very difficult [www.gov.uk] and expensive to decommission the Prototype Fast Reactor [wikipedia.org]. The Monju fast breeder has been plagued by a series of incidents [wikipedia.org]. The AVR pebble bed reactor [wikipedia.org] was supposed to be inherently safe, but suffered from localised hot spots. It caused groundwater contamination, and now it's p
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That's no longer true. There are companies now building proof of concept prototypes of nuclear power plants capable of load following.
"Now building"? Construction of the first site (just concrete pouring) won't start for more than three years, and the optimistic projection for completion of the first actual module is more than six and a half years from now. "Now not building" would be accurate - "still just planning".
Lets see when (if) they bring their full 12-module plant on-line as planned in seven years producing a grand total output of 0.72 GWe. Wind and solar are adding almost twenty times this much production (not capacity) this yea
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You sound like you are employed as a press flack for NuScale.
And you sound like you've been paid to promote wind and solar.
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That's no longer true. There are companies now building proof of concept prototypes
Wow. There's optimism and then there's "unnamed companies are building proof of concept prototype nuclear reactors". So by the time they have been proven, assuming no major issues like all the other proof of concept reactors over the years, do you think they will be economically attractive and needed?
Anyway, I think you meant to say that it is true but maybe one day in the medium to long term there might be a solution, if anyone wants it.
See my projection, answer with argument (Score:2)
"You really think so? I wouldn't bet on that."
This is not an argument of any kind.
My projection is based on facts that can be cross checked, and lead to a logical path:
1.) france has old reactors -> fact
2.) reactors going to reach EOL -> fact (fatigue, crack growth, and radiological induced defects)
- or will be operated with an ever decreasing safety margin
3.) France is now finishing one new nuclear reactor, it has overshot its building cost (10 billion EUR) have trippelt the estimated price (3,3 bill
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France is switching to renewables, just like Germany. ... however it is cheap because of "demand shaping", aka producing heat at night for hot water/shower and in winter heating, so the reactors can run at higher yields as they would otherwise. And cheap because it is sold for ~ 50% of its production
I doubt the energy price will change much as the power prices in France are subsidized by the government - or if you prefer: by the state.
The idiots in the internet think the power is cheap because it is nuclear
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That should be the way, however France is in a dead lock situation, because changing renewables don't go well with old nuclear reactors. Those old reactors can only experience a low number of thermal cycles. (metal fatigue and transmutation in steel from neutrons from 30-40 yrs. of operation)
France really needs to add storage technology to the net or natural gas plants (yes contradictive but natural gas plants can adapt to changing renewable output, with the consequence of emitting fossil CO2)
Re: Stop spouting out brain farts, provide argumen (Score:2)
Re: Stop spouting out brain farts, provide argumen (Score:2)
Next you tell .. (Score:2)
.. that Covid-19 is just a mild flu, that the earth is indeed flat, that Neil wasn't on the moon.
Do you really think "modern" yet to be built and tested micro-reactors will really show up?
Past experience of what you wished for and what happened and is happening should teach you otherwise.
And micro-reactors would lead to an excessive amount of nuclear radioactive waste.
Re:Nice, but need to add new Nuclear Power plants (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems the underlying point you're making is that we should decarbonise but not do it stupidly. Agree. The UK, Norway, Sweden are all examples of sensible decarbonisation. None is predicated on large quantities of new nuclear (Hinckley notwithstanding). All have moved at pace.
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We need to add all of these.
And yes, it is all about getting our emissions down.
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I don't know why you're bothering to point out these things to me -- I'm not suggesting that the UK, Norway or Sweden don't have large amounts of low carbon electricity from sources beyond wind and solar. However, none of them is bring lots of new nuclear online, specifically. New nuclear is not needed in order to decarbonise. It can be used, but it's not needed. And it brings its own problems.
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we need to avoid the issues that Germany and Spain have.
The issue that the power works as advertised on a nationally stable grid part of the larger EU wide network?
I don't want to avoid that issue. I'm actually quite happy about how power works in all of these countries.
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Far better to simply have a nice energy matrix that is clean. America is headed in the right direction with coal plants being shut down. We just need to shut them ALL down.
Easy Breezy (Score:2)
Capacity isn't the useful metric. (Score:2)
Megawatt hours actually generated is. How much did wind generated power increase?
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Nameplate capacity [wikipedia.org] always exceeds actual generated energy, regardless of technology. Fuel availability, maintenance cycles and amount of demand apply to all sources, just in different ways. The industry term for this is capacity factor [wikipedia.org]. Nuclear and geothermal have the highest capacity factors (80-90%). Wind and solar the lowest (10-35%).
Closely coupled with this is dispatchability [wikipedia.org] to handle the immediate need for power "now" vs the average over time. Here, batteries, geothermal, hydro, and gas turbines ar
50 DeLorerans (Score:2)
That is enough to power 50 DeLoreans [wikipedia.org]. Sweet.
Easy to forget history (Score:2)
There is always a time lag between the creation and adoption of new technology, and the creation and adoption of the required supporting structure. The longer the current structure can tweaked to support new technology, the longer it takes to develop the required new structures. The wheel came long before roads. Building dams to create reservoirs came long after the development of water-powered machinery.
Batteries are today's electrical energy storage structure. As solar and wind power generation become m
Turbine Blades Not (Effectively) Recyclable (Score:2)
Typical worthless data (Score:3)
Capacity != output. The capacity factor of wind is around 35% [eia.gov]. Install 1 MW of wind? You get, typically, 350 kW of output. Meanwhile, the capacity factor of nuclear is around 94%, so you install 1 GW of nuclear, you get 940 MW of output.
Also ignored is when that power is available, and what the downtime is. For nuclear, it's almost always scheduled maintenance that brings down a plant; with wind, it's whenever the wind is - or isn't - blowing.
So we can crow about getting 21 GW of actual generation output (at 2 MW per turbine, that's around 10,000 turbines), that happens at random times, or we could just build 10 new nuclear power plants, have the same generation output - and schedule when that power is available.
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Of course there will be people who would try to put a realistic perspective on the bombastic numbers from the Green PR warriors. Nominal capacity means nothing. Actual capacity and its variability is what is important.
Not every place in the world can afford the German hypocrisy - professing "green", but importing freely nuclear from France and Sweden.
Germany will not abandon nuclear power. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not every place in the world can afford the German hypocrisy - professing "green", but importing freely nuclear from France and Sweden.
Nuclear power is just as "green" as wind power, if not more green. The hypocrisy lies in Germany not only in their claim of being better for the environment while ranking fourth in national coal consumption but in their claim of not using nuclear power while importing it from France.
Germany has been able to keep the lights on only because of their ability to lean on imports of not only nuclear power but also on imports of coal, oil, and natural gas to fuel their power plants. They manage their shortfalls in domestic electricity production by buying nuclear power from France and hydro power from Nordic countries. Don't get me wrong, this is great that they are using low carbon energy from nations with plenty of hydro and nuclear power capacity. What this does though is drive energy prices up.
They sell excess electricity production cheap to nations with lots of hydro and nuclear power only to have to buy it back at higher prices when German utilities can't get enough electricity from domestic wind and solar power. If they were smart then they'd be building their own nuclear power plants so they can keep from exporting money and jobs to their neighbors. Germany doesn't have geography all that favorable for hydroelectric dams so they can't just store up this excess electricity like Nordic nations can.
If someone wants to claim that Germany can just build grid scale batteries for storing up excess solar and wind electricity production for later then please tell me how much this will cost. If it were as simple as building batteries then why hasn't Germany done this already? The answer is simple, because it costs too much.
My guess is that Germany will not ever be without domestic nuclear power electricity production. They will keep pushing out the shutdown dates of their currently operating nuclear power plants until they can admit to themselves that they can not afford to be without nuclear power and start building new nuclear power plants again.
Can a nation produce all the energy they need from wind and solar? In most nations this is true, at least in theory. The chances of doing this economically is slim to none.
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The amount of coal Germany uses for electricity production has been falling steadily for decades: https://www.cleanenergywire.or... [cleanenergywire.org]
As you can see from the same link Germany is a huge net exporter of electricity too. Your point about them importing nuclear from France is actually true, but it only happens because France has to sell excess power extremely cheaply due to relying on Germany for peaking. France's nuclear plants can't ramp up or down very fast so are reliant on imports to meet surges in demand, a
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Your point about them importing nuclear from France is actually true, but it only happens because France has to sell excess power extremely cheaply due to relying on Germany for peaking. France's nuclear plants can't ramp up or down very fast so are reliant on imports to meet surges in demand, and at other times are producing an excess of energy so have to sell it off well below cost.
This does not surprise me as Frances Nuclear Power Industry was really setup for the purpose of producing Nuclear material for weapons it just happens to
as a side benefit produce Electricity for the Nation.
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Nuclear can be on a par with wind for CO2 emissions, but it can also be a lot worse depending on where the fuel comes from: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/asset [www.ipcc.ch]... [www.ipcc.ch] (IPCC figures)
Let me copy from your link:
Min/median/max emissions per kWh:
Nuclear 3.7/12/110
Wind onshore 7.0/11/56
Wind offshore 8.0/12/35
Solar PV-rooftop 26/41/60
Solar PV-utility 18/48/180
So the median emissions for wind and nuclear are nearly identical. Incidentally solar power comes out much worse than nuclear.
However, this doesn't take into account that nuclear power has a ~90% capacity factor while wind energy has a ~35% capacity factor. So nuclear power can supply emissions at any time, while wind requires a large a
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Why does wind require higher emission backup power? Why not just build more geographically distributed turbines in areas where the wind never stops blowing? Europe has many such places such as the shallow areas of the North Sea.
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Why does wind require higher emission backup power? Why not just build more geographically distributed turbines in areas where the wind never stops blowing? Europe has many such places such as the shallow areas of the North Sea.
Because that doesn't work.
A Europe wide grid to keep the lights on from wind and solar power requires every nation to play nice all the time. For nations that lack hydroelectric dams there is no economical means to store electricity, and there are a lot of nations in Europe that lack any meaningful amounts of hydroelectric dams. We see this trade in energy being used as leverage against other nations all the time, be it with natural gas pipelines, oil shipments, coal, and uranium. This Europe wide grid w
Re: Germany will not abandon nuclear power. (Score:2)
The chances of doing this now are slim to none.
Solar is doubling in efficiency on a regular period of around 4 - 6 years, and has been doing so for decades. Batteries are now doubling in capacity / performance every decade. Though this should accelerate with recent increases in the scale of production.
How many more doublings fo
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Solar is doubling in efficiency on a regular period of around 4 - 6 years, and has been doing so for decades.
No not really. And there are no real efficiency gains fore seeable. They only got cheaper and we have "paintable" ones and films on windows etc.
Solar cells are based on "absorbing" specific wavelength, you can only make them more efficient by absorbing more wavelength, and that is not easy or not cost effective.
Re: Germany will not abandon nuclear power. (Score:2)
https://graylinegroup.com/sola... [graylinegroup.com]
https://rameznaam.com/2018/01/... [rameznaam.com]
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I'm pretty aware about the technology.
The graph is wrong, as all those cells are based on different technologies.
A 30% efficient tin film cell is not a more efficient version of an 18% silicium cell, it is a different technology. So: no, there are no efficiency gains. There are new technologies that inherently have a different efficiency.
A gasoline engine is around 20% efficient, an electric engine around 99.5%. Switching from the first to the later is not an efficiency gain, it is a change of technology.
Re: Germany will not abandon nuclear power. (Score:2)
The material used is not a factor in this equation, but based on the amount of energy available per unit area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The hypocrisy lies in Germany not only in their claim of being better for the environment while ranking fourth in national coal consumption ... how should that be remotely possible?
We aren't
but in their claim of not using nuclear power while importing it from France. ... because you are an idiot.
No one claims that.
You claim, we would claim that
My guess is that Germany will not ever be without domestic nuclear power electricity production.
Wrong.
They will keep pushing out the shutdown dates of their currentl
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Germany doesn't have geography all that favorable for hydroelectric dams
Yes we have. Hint: look on a map you idiot.
so they can't just store up this excess electricity like Nordic nations can.
Why should we? We have HVDC lines to Norway, idiot.
If someone wants to claim that Germany can just build grid scale batteries for storing up excess solar and wind electricity production for later then please tell me how much this will cost.
We don't do that at the moment. We have not enough "excess energy" to store. W
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And for all the "increased likelihood of disaster", we've had three nuclear "disasters" in history, and collectively, they've killed fewer than 100 people.
Which is fewer than routinely die in rush hour traffic every day in the USA (note that the current effect of covid-19 reactions here have significantly reduced rush hour deaths in the USA, so right
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And for all the "increased likelihood of disaster", we've had three nuclear "disasters" in history, and collectively, they've killed fewer than 100 people.
So far.
The difference being that those disasters are still occurring and will continue to occur until the melted fuel is completely removed. It's taken 35 years to *contain* Chernobyl with New Safe Confinement [wikipedia.org] and no sane person could claim Fukushima is even controlled. As for TMI, you forgot Windscale Nuclear Disaster [wikipedia.org] and Lake Karachay [wikipedia.org], which I think easily qualifies.
So considering that the IAEA has a charter to promote Nuclear power and exercises publishing interdiction orders over the WHO in all
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We do not know how many got killed. ...
Chernobyl killed a few ten thousand in the the first weeks, about 600k - 1M over the next 15 years. And meanwhile Russian researchers estimate about 2M dead
No idea where you pull your idiotic 100 from, you don#t even know how many disasters we had, I count 6, you count 3 ... strange discrepancy ..
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Chernobyl killed a few ten thousand in the the first weeks
Please cut down the FUD and the absurd numbers, buddy.
WHO estimates the total number of victims of Chernobyl who may have died of radiation exposure in the 20 years following the accident at 4000: https://www.who.int/mediacentr... [who.int]
Cite a credible source for your crazy numbers or GTFO.
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The WHO estimates what they get told to estimate.
Every 5 or 10 years we have the Chernobyl anniversary. And that is broadcasted on majour TV stations in Europe, especially Germany and France. From the 660k so called "regulators" who were the first clean up troops - conspripted soldiers - 600k are confirmed dead. At least so say the surviving regulators who are interviewed every few years ...
So: who do you believe more? Random numbers in the internet or survivours who swear that all others of their company
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Okay, so you've got nothing. Thought so.
What is that supposed to mean?
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Obviously it means one thing - you have no facts to support your absurd number of hundreds of thousands to a million "killed" and that instead of acknowledging the facts, you deny research by hundreds of scientists over many years calling it "random numbers in the internet " and revert to conspiracy theories ("WHO will estimate what they told to estimate") and "I heard it from a random 'survivor' on the TV".
TL;DR: your claims are total bullshit.
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You can google the facts yourself.
If you were interested in the topic you already had.
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There is no need to google, I've provided a summary of all the valid, relevant and peer-reviewed data in existence.
Like I said, you've got nothing but bullshit and FUD.
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No you haven't and I provided the reason why [slashdot.org] WHO and IAEA information has no credibility in nuclear matters when it comes to health.
The World Health Organization has been widely criticized because it is subject to interdiction orders from the IAEA who's Statute [iaea.org] specifically states in ARTICLE II - Objectives:
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WHO and IAEA information has no credibility in nuclear matters when it comes to health.
Like I said, WHO provides a summary. The research they summarize is not made by them, or by IAEA. Something you would have known if you had read the link I posted.
because it is subject to interdiction orders from the IAEA
The only references my search engine has about "IAEA", "interdiction orders" and "WHO" are comments from some "MrKaos" on a website called Slashdot. So until we have a confirmation from other, more
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You were provided with links. Words are how we communicate and this is a complex subject.
I provided links to communicate why I don't think the the WHO's opinions are credible in matters regarding the nuclear industry and health.
You were provided references from the IAEA statutes and the WHO acknowledging existence of the agreement.
I understand that. What I am saying is they are all UN organizati
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So: who do you believe more? Random numbers in the internet or survivours who swear that all others of their company died? At that time the typical regulator was 19, they would be 55 now ... 90% of them dead. And you think it has nothing to do with their task but they died randomly, haha.
The average life expectancy for a male born in Ukraine in the year 1965 is just short of 67 years. Just generally for Ukrainian males born in the 1960s they can expect an average life span between 66 and 67 years.
Source -> https://data.worldbank.org/ind... [worldbank.org]
I had a conversation with a Ukrainian physician in a web forum much like this where he said this life expectancy was accurate but potentially misleading. There is a large disparity in life expectancy among the professional class and the worker class
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Here's who I believe, that Ukrainian physician that I conversed with, someone with firsthand experience of the health issues facing men in Ukraine.
So where is a link to that conversation so that I can make my own mind up?
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However, solar and wind do NOT have to account for their decommissioning costs - so yet another subsidy for wind and solar, where they privatize the profit but socialize the costs...
That is because solar and wind do not have radioactive materials and can be demolished the same way you demolish any normal building. That's not a subsidy for wind or solar, it's an ongoing cost of nuclear which is one of the reasons nuclear power is not economical.
Besides with wind you would be utilizing the base and tower to compound the return on investment, rather than tearing them down.
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I'd like to have a bit of whatever you are smoking. It must be potent stuff for that level of conspiracy theory nonsense.
I doubt anything compares to the reality bending opioids produced by your brain, from your nuclear idealism.
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Unless you think nominal capacity scales more slowly than actual capacity and have some evidence to back this, this is completely irrelevant to a discussion about a growth of 20% in wind capacity from Y1 to Y2. And in the end, neither actual nor nominal capacity is what really matters. What really matters is how much energy is actually delivered from each different source. And in the UK, for example, it looks like page 3 in this document:
https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]
(Except it's already out of date)
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Not every place in the world can afford the German hypocrisy - professing "green", but importing freely nuclear from France and Sweden.
And importing Donald Trump's anthracite, not just for the existing plants that use this form of coal that Germany can no longer supply, but for this brand new one:
https://www.power-technology.c... [power-technology.com]
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We're talking about 61 GW of capacity - that's about 21 GW of actual generation, based upon actual capacity factor [eia.gov].
A 2 MW turbine has a rotor diameter of about 125m [ge.com]. And the recommended spacing of 7 rotor diameters between turbines [sciencing.com], that means each turbine occupies an area of 12,000 square meters, or about 3 acres.
Assuming the 61 GW of new capacity was comprised of 2 MW turbines, that would be 30,500 new turbines. Or an area about 100,000 acres of land.
Compared to a typical nuclear power plant of 2 GW act [wikipedia.org]
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No "thermal energy" is removed from atmosphere.
All "wind energy" eventually becomes atmospheric heat because of friction. That includes the wind energy converted to electricity and then to heat or other uses which eventually generate heat.
More, there is no reason to expect a large time differential between the conversion of wind movement to heat and the generated electricty into heat. If anything, the wind energy that is converted to electricity and is stored, will become heat slower than if it remained "
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Don't argue with WSTY - he/she thinks they know more about everything than anyone. Note the account ID - created very near the "no more AC" period recently.
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Yet there is a massive insect die off happening. Maybe not coal plants but rather agriculture, habitat destruction and such.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
https://www.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
Are just some articles. I know I've noticed way less insects then when I was young.
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Maybe you can tell me something I've been wondering about - as a long-time AC, what's it like to be downvoted all the time?
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> Cats don't kill bald eagles, windmills do.
Trust me, no bald eagle has ever been killed by a Scottish wind turbine.
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Trust me, no bald eagle has ever been killed by a Scottish wind turbine.
I have no doubt of that. In Scotland windmills kill the rare white-throated needletail.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/... [foxnews.com]
Windmills are killing birds. We need to do something about that, other than ignore the threat.
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If we are to look at the externality of windmills are doing to birds then we also need to look at the concrete externalities of nuclear industry, specifically depleted uranium effect on human beings. Ignoring the direct use of DU as a weapon and instead concentrating on side effects of the oxide produced after it has been fired and contaminates the ground.
I warn people that these images are shocking of babie [duckduckgo.com]
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If we are to look at the externality of windmills are doing to birds then we also need to look at the concrete externalities of nuclear industry, specifically depleted uranium effect on human beings. Ignoring the direct use of DU as a weapon and instead concentrating on side effects of the oxide produced after it has been fired and contaminates the ground.
I warn people that these images are shocking of babies with birth defects from exposure to depleted uranium in the womb as a consequence of using material externalities of the nuclear industry as weapons.
I think we need to be concerned what nuclear industry radionuclide externalities do to the human genome and human beings and do something about that, other than ignore the threat.
Nuclear power has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, DU projectiles, or other radioactive and heavy metal contamination of battlefields. That's like blaming drunk driving deaths on ethanol fuel additives.
If you want to make a case against nuclear power then actually make a case against nuclear power. All you did was claim DU is bad, made a tenuous connection of this to nuclear power, and from this claim nuclear power is bad. Mentions of Chernobyl and Fukushima are also not relevant to the discussion bec
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Depleted Uranium is a by product of enriching uranium for nuclear fuel production. It's also converted to pu239 inside fuel rods within reactors.
For you to say Nuclear power has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, DU projectiles, or other radioactive and heavy metal contamination of battlefields simply shows your opinions are divorced from reality.
U238 is the primary waste product of the nuclear industry and if it wasn't being produced by the nuclear industry it wouldn't be available for use as a weapo
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Depleted Uranium is a by product of enriching uranium for nuclear fuel production. It's also converted to pu239 inside fuel rods within reactors.
The only means we know of to safely destroy the Pu-239 we have now is in a nuclear reactor. What do you propose we do with the Pu-239 we have now?
For you to say Nuclear power has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, DU projectiles, or other radioactive and heavy metal contamination of battlefields simply shows your opinions are divorced from reality.
Repeating your false claim does not make it true.
U238 is the primary waste product of the nuclear industry and if it wasn't being produced by the nuclear industry it wouldn't be available for use as a weapon.
U-235 and U-238 are both valuable fuels for nuclear reactors. If we can't destroy these isotopes in a reactor then this material we have doesn't just go away. Nothing prevents someone from skipping the step of removing the fissile U-235 from uranium and using natural uranium in weapon projectiles. If we cannot c
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Don't bother, BS doesn't entertain anything that presents an argument against or an alternative to nuclear fission-fuelled energy.
BS: NUKE=GOOD, anything else=BAD.
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Sovacool estimated that in the US wind turbines kill between 20,000 and 573,000 birds per year, and has stated he regards either figure as minimal compared to bird deaths from other causes. He uses the lower 20,000 figure in his study and table (see Causes of avian mortality table) to arrive at a direct mortality rate per unit of energy generated figure of 0.269 per GWh for wind power. Fossil-fueled power plants, which wind turbines generally require to make up for their weather dependent intermittency, kil
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Uh... ok... interesting chain of logic. Who says pollution has an impact on insects?
Err, scientists. Scientists say pollution has an effect on insect population [annualreviews.org]. But who are we to listen to scientists? Let's all go our running around, ignoring the scientists advice about covid-19 and stuff and having big church meetings and not letting these "experts" try to dictate to us. Oh what - now it's your personal safety rather than everyone's safety suddenly you want to listen to the scientists. Right.
That was a random paper from the literature, but there's plenty more - Google is your frie
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As much as I like wind energy, I don't agree with the evolution sentiment for the simple reason that mankind is wiping out species at a rate faster than most of history's mass-extinction events and personally I don't think this mass genocide is morally OK.
I also don't think that wind turbines are going to cause the extinction of any species. It's mainly feeding humans, mining and hunting that causes the extinctions of species with the biggest factor being there's simply too many of us.
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