November 2, 2023
"Offshore wind is not dead, but the industry and its backers are certainly learning some harsh lessons."
"The ambitions of the Biden administration and states along the East Coast like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts to install large amounts of clean electric power generation through offshore wind in the coming decades are likely to be set back.
The industry is dealing with equipment shortages as result of pandemic-era supply chain issues, and trying manage a growing number of orders for wind turbines as governments seek to meet green energy goals. And escalating interest rates, as central banks around the world try to curb inflation, have caused financing costs to soar...."
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KILL THE WHALES!! instead of SAVE THE WHALES. This is how backwards we are today.
Big Wind wants more subsidies. The current level of subsidies is not enough!
"The conventional wisdom,....has no evidence to support it" - John Mearsheimer
The ocean is not your friend. It will kill you in a moment, without warning. That also applies to the things man builds in it or on it.
"The industry is dealing with equipment shortages as result of pandemic-era supply chain issues, and trying manage a growing number of orders for wind turbines as governments seek to meet green energy goals. And escalating interest rates, as central banks around the world try to curb inflation, have caused financing costs to soar...."
Governmental intervention on one side of the equation torpedoes governmental intervention on the other side. Unexpectedly!
Take energy out of the climate system, which is finite, convert it to electricity and send it elsewhere, where part of it is turned to heat. That's the ticket.
Consumers will also probably pay more in their electric bills for power generated from offshore wind, as developers demand higher prices and protection from inflation.
NYT is blaming high interest rates for wind turbines not being a viable technology, but it sounds they aren't telling us the whole story. New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts should have built a couple of safe, clean and reliable nuclear power plants.
So the American government (and others) pump billions (trillions?) into Green energy schemes, resulting in inflation and higher interest rates (not that this is the only cause of inflation) resulting in the Green energy companies finding it difficult to get financing? Who could have foreseen such a thing?
(And COVID gets blamed, too.)
Some of the best locations are near $$$$$$$ coastal real estate. Wind farms routinely face NIMBYism. This has happened in multiple places. E.g.:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/17/wainscott-new-york-hamptons-offshore-windfarm
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2021-4-fall/feature/nimby-threat-renewable-energy
https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/10/california-offshore-wind-humboldt/
The environmental narrative routinely changes to accommodate deep-pocketed donors.
clean electric power generation
If it actually were clean, they wouldn't need to keep saying it.
Cheap energy and money today are the only only things that will give us the escape velocity to make a green energy future. That means fossil fuels and minimal deficit spending now if you are a green energy proponent.
grifters gotta grift...
I'm neither for nor against wind energy and other forms of "sustainable energy."
There are only two ways to approach these things though:
1. They are self-sustaining energy projects that make long-term sense for a given region and don't require costs that outweigh their benefits.
2. They are in the interests of the U.S. because they diversify our energy strategy and lessen our reliance on foreign sources of energy.
I've seen wonderful hydro, solar, and even wind projects that can and have accomplished these goals. However, they are few and far between because government and interest groups (I repeat myself) are pushing them for all purposes, all the time, at any cost.
Ultimately, assuming good cost efficiencies between various modalities, any given major area should want a blend of renewable power constantly supplemented by plentiful consumable power (Nuclear, Petro, etc.) so that the grid can vastly vary based upon actual conditions and we lessen power reliance on supply chain of external sources.
But that requires smart, long-term infrastructure thinking.
The naysayers said so called “green” energy sources would be expensive and a poor ROI. The greenies, MSM, and Regressives(TM) all shouted them down. Now that the naysayers are being proven right, most of these people are still wanting to go full steam ahead. And that still overlooks the fact that so called “green” energy (Wind & solar) is pretty toxic to the environment during manufacturing and after their useful life, which is maybe 10-20 years, before these devices need replacing, costing a lot of money in the process…
Without UNSUSTAINABLE government subsidies, IOW our tax dollars, the whole green energy sector is doomed. It’s us or them. It’s intermittent power and unreliable grids or civilization. I prefer civilization. Like every Progressive plan the “Green Dream” is in reality a nightmare, already spreading misery everywhere it is being imposed. If it was really progress it wouldn’t need to be imposed by force.
Years ago Warren Buffet said that the only reason to invest in these monstrosities was the subsidies. He was rght then. He's still rght.
The government is pushing HARD for an EV fleet of cars. Even with governmental subsidies Ford, for example, is losing IIRC $30,000+ per EV.
The government is spending untoled billons of charging stations, wndmills, the grid and more. It isn't nearly enough to bring us power. It certainly won't put a dent in climate change. It is enough to hasten the collapse of our economy.
Talk about distorting the market... t never goes well - except for those in the long chain of grifters between the Treasury Department and the populous.
Oh look! 10% for The Big Guy.
What a waste of time and money. Oh, and don't put those wind turbines anywhere it screws up the ocean view of a wealthy east coast liberal.
I’m in a place where there’s a staging area for giant turbine blades waiting to be driven to Canada. Each is as long as a football field. There’s a bunch of them. I wonder how they’ll be repurposed?
There was an interesting patent case on offshore wind turbines, specifically concerning how far offshore U.S. patent law would sill apply. The turbines in question were beyond the 12 mile "U.S. Territorial Sea" limit, but the judge determined that under a federal statute, the United States has jurisdiction to the continental shelf (i.e., 200 miles offshore) for discovering and extracting resources. Otherwise, the offshore turbine field would be the wild west.
What Dave said.
It's an extremely inefficient way to generate electricity.
We’re supposed to believe that the recent mass die-offs of protected whale species is due to lobster fishing, though lobsters were being harvested for food in North America before Europeans set foot on our shores, and the whales did just fine.
Invest the power in nuclear energy instead.
Windmills are so 19th century - and won't make back the energy expended to build and maintain them.
"Learning some harsh lessons" could be translated as "facing reality." I've spent the night looking at videos of John Mearsheimer talking to people, and the most fun is his talk with Glenn Lowry, because Lowery says things like "you're scaring me" and "this is making me feel creepy" whenever his conventional wisdom is challenged. (The idea that "educated" Americans, like him, let their government convince them to advocate for doing the wrong thing - and they've actually done it - does not seem to have occurred to him, before.) It's enough to make me think that being uneducated is probably the best defense against what these awful people are trying to get us to do to others.
BTW - mearsheimer says our position on gay rights is one of the reasons why Ukraine is getting wrecked now. Which, as far as I'm concerned, it's just more fallout from the stolen election of Harvey Milk, and all the lies that have sprung up from it, that the world has been living (and dying) with.
Moral: If everything we do matters, we should learn there's some things we should not do - like lying to advance a political cause.
"clean electric power generation" ain't. These systems require far more resources to generate the same amount of power that a coal- or gas-powered generator requires. Windmills require lubricating oil, massive amounts of diesel/coal-dependent copper, steel, and fiberglass. These windmills are often poorly designed for the gusty loads they will encounter, which generates fatigue loads and will result in the collapse of either the tower or the blades.
These "clean electric power generation" have only a 20-year lifetime and must be chopped up and trucked to a landfill. These being offshore, the operators will probably just chop them up in place and dump the debris in the ocean, thereby causing water pollution and killing whatever whales they didn't kill during the survey and construction phases.
"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind"
KILL THE WHALES!! instead of SAVE THE WHALES. This is how backwards we are today.
You aren't too good with the correlation vs. causality thing, are you?
so...
where are these wind turbines being manufactured?
wind turbines are made in China, and China has become the world’s largest wind power equipment manufacturing base. In 2021, China was responsible for almost 70% of new wind installed capacity, with the United States and Brazil following behind at 14% and 7%, respectively.
The largest domestic wind turbine manufacturer in China is Goldwind, which is based in Xinjiang province. So, if you see a wind turbine anywhere in the world, there’s a good chance that it may have been manufactured in China.
Support Red China! Support the Wind Industry! Support Joe Biden!
Green is the New RED!!
Pissing IT all away.
Offshore wind being dead is a consummation devoutly to be wished. As is onshore wind. And those grotesque solar farms. Wind and solar are additional data points in the argument that Western Civ is committing suicide.
"Years ago Warren Buffet said that the only reason to invest in these monstrosities was the subsidies. He was right then. He's still right."
I was in the crowd in Omaha when he said it. Warren was bluntly honest. His shareholders are mostly rich libs and they must have been shocked.
"Blogger The Crack Emcee said...
"The conventional wisdom,....has no evidence to support it" - John Mearsheimer"
What the fuck is the matter with you Crack. Your rabid anti-Semitism knows no bounds. Why are you quoting a long time anti-Semite on a discussion of wind energy subsidies? Are you going to include the Jews must be destroyed on every one of your posts?
The reality is this business is not rocket science, like solar its a spreadsheet jockey business with only a few inputs and a resuting IRR which then depends on decent execution. A lot of the north sea business seems to have been done at around 4-7% IRR over a 20 year lifespan, however with most companies cost of capital going from 2-4% to 7-9% most of these businesses look horrible, especially when often they are being done by companies trying to move to a green future like BP and Shell with a cost of capital north of 8% when many O+G projects are out there with IRR's of 20-30% which you can actually make some decent money on ... Unless long term interest rates really come down fast the future of renewables is not that great, and that is without the massive cost inflation in all aspects of the business ....
Wow! Another bunch of big, fat lies from the NYT! God, they must have a big, fat lie factory somewhere. The hits just keep coming.
The reality is, this shit was never going to be profitable for these assholes unless the government suppressed their competition to drive up their rates, and also paid them massive subsidies in addition to those rate hikes. And the government promised to do that. But now the government has up and changed its little, bitty mind. Since the NYT is fond of both greedy "green power" grifters and the nitwit, criminal government, it has to cast about for someone else to blame. Good thing they're running double shifts down to the lie factory!
I despise wind turbines. They are ugly as sin and death to birds. I understand why they are being done, they have a “small” footprint versus a solar farm and farmers can just plop them in their cotton fields with little crop impact.
But good grief, those turbines are horrible.
My question about OFF-shore wind is: Is the wind more constant out there? Because the intermittency of ON-shore wind makes it a really stupid technology.
I've seen wonderful hydro, solar, and even wind projects that can and have accomplished these goals.
Bullshit bolded above. I'll need to see the math there without leaving out the government subsidies* for producing every component in the supply chain AND the environmental costs of the mining and transportation and construction that goes into each component. I lived within a couple miles of the huge wind power farms in Palm Springs. Without the efficiency numbers, which are always overestimated when these things are approved, even the casual observer can see that wind only generates power <50% of the time and very often much much less than that.
*And the fact so much is sourced from China makes cost comparisons dicey even with true numbers.
It'll be a shame if the only way the Green Grift can be killed is total collapse of the economy, but we could be headed that way.
I’m in a place where there’s a staging area for giant turbine blades waiting to be driven to Canada. Each is as long as a football field. There’s a bunch of them. I wonder how they’ll be repurposed?
They are not and they can't be. And they only last about ten years, like a Tesla battery. The desert floor around the San Gorgonio Pass wind farms are littered with blades that have broken off or been replaced. The same people who wouldn't give as a couple acres at Yucca Mountain for spent nuclear fuel somehow "overlook" this environmental disaster in slow motion taking up thousands of square miles.
They aren't even recyclable!
Why do purportedly smart people need to keep re-learning, at great cost, economic lessons already well-known in the past? Is it simple ignorance? Rampant greed? The blinding self-importance of egotism?
“…in the long run the aggregate of decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralized decisions of a government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster.” --- John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong financial secretary, 1961-1971
Mao and the CCP instituted their Great Leap Forward program shortly after winning the Chinese Civil War. GLF was intended to bring China's economy into the 20th century and to consolidate the CCP's power. They forced collectivization of agriculture, resulting in a famine that killed somewhere in the range of 40,000,000 to 60,000,000 people. They did stupid things, such as mass killing of birds because they ate grain, only to see the insect population explode. They diverted resources into steel production in villages, only to end up with very poor-quality metals. And, like all communist revolutions, they mass murdered over a million people who were considered counterrevolutionaries.
The Left has been pushing what I call the Green Leap Forward for some time now. Billions, if not trillions of dollars have been spent in wind and solar projects. The result is high energy prices, unreliable electricity, failed energy projects, and massive amounts of graft. The biggest difference so far between Mao's Great Leap Forward and the current Green Leap Forward is the mass deaths, but they're working on it.
"You aren't too good with the correlation vs. causality thing, are you?"
YOU aren't too good with the hypocrisy of the left, are YOU??
"New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts should have built a couple of safe, clean and reliable nuclear power plants."
"Safe, clean, and reliable" until a meltdown or other catastrophic failure occurs, such as breaches in the storage facilities holding the ever-accumulating tons of nuclear waste--which will remain radioactive and perilous to human health for many eons. With ever-accumulating waste, there is a perpetual need for building and maintenance of additional storage facilities. That waste will never go away.
“'…in the long run the aggregate of decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralized decisions of a government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster.' --- John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong financial secretary, 1961-1971"
Well...that's one man's opinion.
Wind and solar are additional data points in the argument that Western Civ is committing suicide.
Fact check: TRUE
"I've seen wonderful hydro, solar, and even wind projects that can and have accomplished these goals."
Of those three only hydro pays for itself without massive Zionist subsidies. Plus they are wildly inefficient ways to generate electricity.
From a (2006?) diligence meeting regarding investing in a small wind power company: "So, what we are really investing in, is the rationality and stability of the California state legislature."
The meeting ended shortly thereafter.
The truth is, the energy density offered by nuclear is the only way to go for society, especially a society driven by growth and concern for environmental issues, however well-supported by the data. The second truth is, natural-gas-driven power generation is not very far behind nuclear.
But so-called 'renewable' energy has been hyped into the same category as the above, and that is not supported by the data. It had fundamental problems with both energy density and intermittency. It is not reliable on the same cost and uptime basis. And its life-cycle cost has been obscured by subsidies (mostly tax-payers) and good old-fashioned business hustle, trying to make a buck in a niche opportunity. The decommissioning costs for both solar and wind have not properly been assessed, nor experienced - yet. But there are a bunch of whales out there that aren't feeling too 'renewable' right now, more like 'recycled'.
Why do purportedly smart people need to keep re-learning, at great cost, economic lessons already well-known in the past? Is it simple ignorance? Rampant greed? The blinding self-importance of egotism?
It's called corruption. There's plenty of graft to be made with these subsidies. So what if the projects never starts construction. Just think of all the fees to be generated and kickbacks to the politicians. Never mind all the whales, birds and insects these projects kill.
as wind developers in the U.S. faced wrenching financing costs (NYT).
How can that be? We have been told many times that wind/solar is cheaper than gas/oil. Have they been lying to us? /s
Francis Menton (Manhattan Contrarian) has reported on the "renewable energy" scam for a long time now. As he notes, there has never been a successful wind/solar energy demonstration project for replacing fossil fuels done anywhere in the world. From his latest blog post on the topic:
"I have previously reported here that there is no such thing anywhere in the world as a demonstration project that has achieved anything close to 100% electricity generation from wind and solar sources without fossil fuel backup. The most significant attempt at such a demonstration project — El Hierro Island off the coast of Spain, which opened in 2014 — has barely achieved 50% of electricity generation from its wind/storage system in some years, while falling far short of even that level in other years. Today their website has quietly dropped or downplayed any mention of claims to be trying to achieve 100% renewable electricity generation. In the most recent year for which they provide data (2020), their backup diesel generator ran approximately 85% of the time."
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-10-29-a-do-it-yourself-demonstration-project-of-wind-solar-and-batteries-comes-nowhere-near-eliminating-fossil-fuels
Who spends billions (trillions?) of dollars without proof of concept to demonstrate feasibility? Nobody. Well, aside from the government, anyway, where it's easy to spend other people's money and skim some off the top for yourself. Beats working for a living.
As David Horowitz has said, the issue is not the issue, it's the revolution. The climate change and related environmental cabal are looking for a revolution to strip out all vestiges of alternative (non-solar and wind) energy sources. They studiously ignore our best bet for clean, safe, reliable power pending a fusion breakthough, which is nuclear fission. Today's reactor and plant designs are orders of magnitude safer, better and more efficient than the current 1950s-designed facilities against which the climate cabal disingenuously rages.
Given the unreliability of solar panels (made in China) to provide reliable energy and the limited lifespan (15-20 years) of the most current wind designs, I can only conclude the grift (and virtue signaling) must be scandalously great indeed to stop our country from enjoying the benefits of cheap, reliable electric energy from nuclear power, and the energy independence that comes with it.
Follow the example set by elites in Martha's Vineyard: eject illegal aliens, exclude economic integration, share... shift the Green blight to your neighbors' yard. Progress.
Maybe, just maybe, we can learn about the economics of this scam and avoid the collapse of civilization. Mark Steyn , after 11 years, is finally going to trial in his lawsuit with grifter Michael Mann.
Put them off the coast of Malibu.
But seriously, it must cost a fortune to install windmills on the ocean floor.
And then the constant maintenance in a hostile, salt environment.
"KILL THE WHALES!! instead of SAVE THE WHALES. This is how backwards we are today."
I remember 'Nuke the unborn gay whales' but maybe it's just my age : )
'"Safe, clean, and reliable" until a meltdown or other catastrophic failure occurs, such as breaches in the storage facilities holding the ever-accumulating tons of nuclear waste--which will remain radioactive and perilous to human health for many eons. With ever-accumulating waste, there is a perpetual need for building and maintenance of additional storage facilities. That waste will never go away.'
The waste can be dealt with and the modern reactors don't melt down.
If they could shrink one down to personal size, I would be happy to have one on my property.
If you are concerned about global warming or climate change and you are not in favor of nuclear energy, then you are either not a serious person or you have another agenda.
JAORE said...
The government is pushing HARD for an EV fleet of cars. Even with governmental subsidies Ford, for example, is losing IIRC $30,000+ per EV.
$62,000+
What is killing these projects is that the turbine gear boxes have to be replaced on a much quicker time schedule than the morons running these schemes were claiming. These projects only look financially viable if you ignore the capital replacement costs of the equipment. The same is being done with the solar farms and onshore wind systems. You get, maybe, 15 years-worth of production from them before they have to be almost completely replaced. For the last 15-20 years, this could be ignored, but the replacement cycle has started in earnest, and the builders are having to account for this new data in their bids- and those bids require much higher guaranteed electric rates for the final end consumers or much higher subsidies from the governments mandating them.
"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind"
I finally predicted which lyric you would use for a thread!!!
Within a 40 mile radius of me there are close to 1000 windmills. They are less than 15 years into a 25 year lifespan. They have already started to replace turbines. Blades flying apart is common. Last week one made the news that burned up the turbine and belche black toxic smoke for 24 hours. Iowa gets a federal kick back for producing wind electricity, but sells it to Illinois, because Illinois state gives a kickback for BUYING wind and solar electricity. Power companies get a kickback for building the wind and solar generating capacity...they cannot go into the market and build the infrastructure and turn a profit, without taxpayer funds.
Non of this works without a massive shift of wealth to wind and solar. It cannot sustain itself.
Same with EV power. It does no work. Even with massive subsidies, both Ford and GM are shutting down EV production of their pickups.
Whiles lots of city folk have bought pickups (Hello Meade!), the majority are still being used as work vehicles, towing and hauling loads. The working pickups would be a great adaptation to electric since the never stray far from home base. The problem still is range. Under load, EV PU cant go 80 miles. IC engines and 25 gal tanks still require filling up twice a day if they are hauling non stop, in season.
Some day it may work. Today, nothing about EV works.
Nice to know that Cook is still worried about mythical nuclear disasters, which have never happened here, but did happen where his commie pals were in charge of safety. Forget about the ongoing environmental disaster of mining and transporting rare earth minerals so China can supply us with the parts to expensively harvest wind and expensively harvest solar power. Forget about the horrendous environmental costs and death of endangered species that are an accepted part of the green energy agenda. No please worry about a mythical meltdown and how we will ever survive storing the tiny (relative to "green waste") amount* of nuclear waste in a hollow mountain far from everyone.
Luddites are real and they walk among us.
For comparison it takes up less land than ONE wind turbine and unlike windmills it won't be an eyesore.
Please name one single municipality that has saved electric consumers money by substituting "green" energy sources for the old fossil and hydro-powered sources. Just one.
It should be easy, given all the hype, right?
The real issue here is wind power, in its current state, is not a useful form of power generation. For an electrical grid to function it requires that is have X amount of power at all times in order to cover all requirements, plus a cushion. (What X is varies by time of day.) This requires that power generation be predictable and at least somewhat flexible so the grid can guarantee it has enough power. The more unpredictable the power is, the more likely there will be blackouts.
Wind power cannot do this. Its output is going to vary wildly depending on the wind. No wind? No power. Too much wind? No power. That maximum power generation in the specifications? Never going to get that. What will it produce today? Guess. Maybe the weather report will be useful.
When you add wind (and solar) power to a power grid, the entire power grid revolves around trying to make wind (and solar) power work. You have to have alternate power sources that can produce consistent power and can be ramped up when needed, so when wind and/or solar fail, which they will, the grid does not collapse. If it wasn't for the fact that it is "clean" energy - quite debatable of how "clean" it is - you would never want this as a power source. It is a lot easier to use something that can guarantee power - fossil fuels, nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, even biofuels - and plan around that.
A power grid with wind and solar either has too little wind and solar to matter, in which case why bother, or alternate between danger of blackouts to overproducing and having to pay someone else to take the extra power that you cannot use.
'"Safe, clean, and reliable" until a meltdown or other catastrophic failure occurs, such as breaches in the storage facilities holding the ever-accumulating tons of nuclear waste--which will remain radioactive and perilous to human health for many eons. With ever-accumulating waste, there is a perpetual need for building and maintenance of additional storage facilities. That waste will never go away.'
As Joe Smith pointed out, modern fission reactor designs are “fail safe”. This means that they automatically shut down, when not actively kept running. Earlier plants were not, so they had to be made safe from possible disasters, which the Soviets, being Communists at the time, screwed up. The left, the Green Energy nuts, etc, just manage to keep these moder reactor designs out of production, because they know that they would ultimately kill their Green Energy wet dreams.
As for disposal - two words: Yucca Mountain. Bury it a mile deep in a seismically inactive salt mine. It was shown to be safe for 100k years, and then the govt came back and required 500k years. They were in the middle of that study when it was finally killed by NV Sen Majority Leader Harry Reid, based on the risk of derailment on its way through Las Vegas. Do you know what surrounds Las Vegas? Essentially desert. Hundreds of miles of desert. Mostly BLM land, where the ranchers who had leases, have been evicted so Reid’s Chinese clients could build solar farms. Of course, maybe the best route around Vegas is by his boyhood home of Searchlight… Which he had left before my partner and her siblings would play with his kids, on Sundays, growing up in Las Vegas, in the early 1960s. So, thanks to Reid protecting his boyhood home, and taking bribes from Chinese companies, we (currently) don’t have a 500,000 year safe nuclear waste depository. Of course, it would take a small fraction of the money spent on wind and solar by the government to bring it online… But until then, people like Cook can use this as an excuse why we can’t have nuclear power. Oh, did I mention that the Las Vegas airport is now named after him?
Keep in mind the people clamoring for clean, green, renewable energy are the very same people demanding we tear out the cleanest, greenest, most renewable energy devised by man ... hydroelectric dams.
Anyone that has owned a boat knows that “marine grade” anything means it’s 4 or 5 times as expensive as materials not used in the salty environment. Offshore wind will be outrageously expensive to service and maintain. This matter should be filed under: Least Surprising News of the Century.
Michael K said...
"Maybe, just maybe, we can learn about the economics of this scam and avoid the collapse of civilization. Mark Steyn , after 11 years, is finally going to trial in his lawsuit with grifter Michael Mann."
Just to mention. All the delays have been on Manns side.
Bob the deconstructor said,
"Safe, clean, and reliable" until a meltdown or other catastrophic failure occurs, such as breaches in the storage facilities holding the ever-accumulating tons of nuclear waste--which will remain radioactive and perilous to human health for many eons. With ever-accumulating waste, there is a perpetual need for building and maintenance of additional storage facilities. That waste will never go away."
All the nuclear waste generate by all the nuclear powerplants in the west is stored...............at the nuclear power plants. When the fuel rods have decayed to the point where they are no longer a threat they are sold to make depleted uranium projectiles.
There has never been a nuclear explosion at a nuclear power plant.
"Without constant attention & expensive maintenance, the marine environment is toxic to rotating machinery." Former Damage Control Asst, Nuclear Attack Sub (Auxiliary Div, SubSafe Program, Ship's Diving Off)
"The waste can be dealt with and the modern reactors don't melt down."
A glib statement that assumes faults and breakdowns never happen or can happen, that cost-attentive corporations will not try to find ways to avoid maintaining due diligence, that malfeasance and misfeasance are not always at play, that physical plants and the equipment in them do not wear down and corrode, that political and financial considerations (and corruption and self-seeking and avoidance of responsibility) are not commonplace in everything that we do...that unpredictable and unstoppable natural events won't overcome all the built in safeguards...in short, it assumes that "shit don't happen," to use the vernacular. Human history contradicts all the above at every turn.
"If you are concerned about global warming or climate change and you are not in favor of nuclear energy, then you are either not a serious person or you have another agenda."
I am concerned with global warming/climate change, but I have given up thinking we have the time (much less the will) to do anything that can arrest the consequences of climate processes already underway, whatever they may be. I believe the die has been cast. Aside from the probable consequences from global warming, we are dumping plastics and other forms of civilization's shit into the natural world. Many civilizations in our history have perished, as well as non-human life forms--happening now--and there is no reason to think the same won't or can't occur again, especially if humans continue to manage our affairs as we have done up to now and will almost certainly continue to do. (Oh, I think humans will survive, but likely in far fewer number and in significantly more difficult circumstances. Maybe a new human society will grow from the devastation, as has happened in the past. Better? Worse? The same? Who knows?)
"more Americans have died in Ted Kennedy's car than in nuclear power plant accidents"
Lyndon LaRouche (I think)
Hundreds of Americans have died in windmill accidents. Mostly falls from height.
John Henry
The Crack Emcee (8:24),
The man's name is Glenn Loury. Props to you, though, for misspelling it two different ways in the same post.
Question for Mr cook:
Have you seen the 1978 movie "the China Syndrome"? It is pretty cartoonist but very enjoyable. Any movie starring Jack Lemmon and Wilfred brimley will be. It makes an excellent point of showing how safe nuclear power is.
The world's nuclear power fleet probably has millions of hours of operating experience since shippingsport went online in the early 50s.
There has been one, count 'em, one, nuclear accident where 4 (some reports say 6-7) people died from radiation. That would Chernobyl in Ukraine.
Chernobyl seems to have been designed by taking all the years of lessons learned around the world, compiling a manual of worst practices and then building on that. Then getting marginally qualified people and asking them to run it with little or no training. And no maintenance ever.
And when it failed, as it did catastrophically, fewer than 50 people died. Fewer than 8 from radiation. Most from fighting the fire.
For comparison 89 coal miners died in the USA in 1986.
You really need to learn a bit about nuclear risk and safety. You could do worse than starting with China Syndrome
John Henry
Hey, icepilot,
Exnuke here went to Bainbridge in 68
Not subs though I knew a lot of bubblheads, even lived with one for a year.
I admired them but most were a bit nuts.
Better you than me
John Henry mm1 67-75
Something most non-electricians miss:
Most power is AC and generated rotationally with a nice sine wave.
Windmills and solar generate DC power then invert it into (sort of) AC. This is more of a square than a sine wave shape.
When you start getting a lot of inverted power, more than 15-g20%,trying to mix with rotational power, it causes problems.
The problems can be dealt with but they do add complexity and additional points of failure.
And I'll leave power factor and KVARs for someone else to explain.
My point is, not all electricity, not even all 60hz DC electricity is created equal.
John Henry
I'm rereading Edward hat Epstein's book on the diamond industry. Very interesting.
Epstein mentions great in one of the most productive mines they produce more diamonds from processing 100 years of waste trailings than from the mine itself.
Until the 60s, there was little market for the diamonds contained in the waste. It was also expensive to extract them.
Then they figured out how to sell the diamonds and how to extract them.
Landfills are, by definition, "waste". Until someone figured out how to recover the methane and turn it to electricity.
Manure us waste. Unless you digest it and make methane to run a generator.
The so-called nuclear waste mm ay be waste today. At some point in the future, 5 years? 50? It will probably be a resource.
"Waste" is funny like that. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
Read "today and tomorrow" by Henry Ford 1930. He was a fanatic about turning wastes to resource. And a genius at it.
One of my personal heros.
John Henry
"All the delays have been on Manns side."
Why, it's almost like he's afraid to make his case publicly, with his data and methodology made available for all to see.
Kind of like Democrats, when it comes to elections.
The Mojave/Tehachapi corridor in Caifornia, is a concentration of hundreds of wind turbines. If you like your environment cluttered and unatural, then you'll love it there.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-10-5-update-on-offshore-wind-projects-off-the-mid-atlantic-and-new-england
"After 30 years of talk, the number of actual functioning wind turbines out in the Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. coast is now exactly seven: five off Block Island (part of Rhode Island), and two off Virginia. Those provide some tiny fraction of 1% of the electricity for the mid-Atlantic states and New England."
"The only thing dumber than onshore wind energy is offshore wind energy. The good news for ratepayers, taxpayers, birds, bats, landscapes, viewsheds, and the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, is that both sectors are getting hammered by market forces that make their projects uneconomic."
In '19. on the bus across the plains of western Saxony to Wittenberg, at some points there seemed to be wind turbines everywhere in the distance. They were ugly as hell, if nothing else.
There was a Canadian EE on the cruise who explained the issues as described by John henry and others.
John henry mentions Epstein's Rise and Fall of Diamonds, which I read years ago. DeBeers became rich convincing stupid rich people that diamonds are rare.
It's the lure of easy money coming to an end. All that Boomer cash is leaving the market and headed to fund jet travel and RV tours in retirement.
"Waste" is funny like that. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
Am I remembering correctly that the original use for "rock oil" - petroleum - was the kerosene fraction, for lamps? That at the outset the gasoline fraction was just... waste?
Also. I am a geologist by training (though it's been a while). I have never wanted a diamond; I prefer garnets. They're almost as hard, they're much more colorful, and they're a hell of a lot cheaper. Luckily, my husband, also initially a geologist, knows this about me.
Driving along Rt40 through northern TX there are thousands of these turbines on either side of Amarillo. So someone has figured out how to make it work. You could never put all that in a residential area, or even in the ocean.
Fortunately they were all installed in an era of cheap, easy money. In 10 years I can imagine the maintenance costs will be more than the installation costs. Quite possibly they will all just be abandoned when they fail.
It's the American way.
“John henry mentions Epstein's Rise and Fall of Diamonds, which I read years ago. DeBeers became rich convincing stupid rich people that diamonds are rare.”
What I never understood is why (real) artificial diamonds were considered inferior to natural diamonds, esp since the value of natural diamonds is based, to a great extent, on how perfect they are.
Jamie is correct about petroleum; a wonderful example of trash to treasure is the story of the Mudlarks of London, as recounted in the early part of Steven Johnson's "The Ghost Map." (IIRC)
My wife has never liked diamonds. Recently I sold some pieces--rings, watches--that my own female relatives had left to us. They sat in the dark losing value so I took what I could get.
Bruce, I don't recall what Epstein (or anyone else) might have said about that--it's been a long time.
"Driving along Rt40 through northern TX there are thousands of these turbines on either side of Amarillo. So someone has figured out how to make it work."
You can make lots of things work if the subsidies are high enough. I'm not familiar with the area described but if I had to guess, I'd say subsidies (actual dollars, along with relaxed regulation) were involved.
Mason G,
Subsidies or mandates; though I suppose any fair accounting of the latter would characterize them as simply better-hidden subsidies.
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