Improvements in Windmills

[Finishline42]

Big changes as they improve.

Link to tweet

Costs going down

Link to tweet

Utilization going up

Link to tweet

[Mickju]

1. And they don't even cause cancer.

[hunter]

2. These wind turbines are not sustainable or renewable.

All they do is increase our dependence on natural gas; thus they will not "save the world." This dependence on natural gas is one reason wind power has been embraced by gas producing states such as Texas and nations such as Denmark.

Modern modular nuclear reactor designs will displace high maintenance wind turbines. These reactors can be fueled with depleted uranium and the used fuel of current light water reactors, the used fuel that's currently considered waste. This a huge stockpile of fissionable fuel, enough to power the nation for more than a century without mining any more uranium.

I think solar power will still be around even in a nuclear future.

A society powered exclusively by wind, solar, and the other supposedly carbon neutral energy sources that many anti-nuclear activists promote would look nothing like the high energy industrial economy many affluent people now enjoy.

I'm not confident "alternative" energy sources like wind and solar can even support the existing human population.

[Finishline42]

4. Interesting

On one hand you tout 'modern modular nuclear reactor designs' while saying windmills are high maintenance.

Looking at a nuclear reactor vs a windmill I would say that a nuclear reactor is much more high maintenance unless of course your are talking hub height. LOL

There are wind farms all over the world that run with minimum personnel and every nuclear power plant I see has a small army to kept it operational.

Although it would be nice to have some use for depleted fuel rods.

Wind and solar will continue to take an ever larger slice of the power grid which increases the cost to operate a natural gas plants. Batteries are taking the place of peaker power plants.

The one thing that would bring about a world that burns less fossil fuels is to make them expensive. That would bring about not only less use but more efficient use of that energy.

[hunter]

5. If wind turbines and solar panels were free...

... they would not support the high energy industrial economy many affluent consumers now enjoy, for the simple reason that the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine.

Not even with batteries.

Wind power is never going to make the natural gas industry go away.

The natural gas industry is probably the biggest threat to the planet.

People know coal is bad, they know oil is bad, yet somehow they think natural gas is acceptable, able to provide "clean" backup power to their misguided wind and solar schemes.

[Finishline42]

7. What happens if

Democrats win in Nov?

Does that change what gets injected into the fracked wells to keep them producing?

Bankruptcy is rampant in the Nat Gas drilling industry, who's going to loan them money in clearly an unsustainable industry?

My utility bill has a fuel adjustment component - what happens if nat gas goes up 50%?

As long as I can remember oil has had a boom bust cycle. Times when you get change back from a $20 when you fill up your Prius. Others when you need a $100 bill to get change back to fill up an SUV.

We don't see it so much with Nat Gas, few people buy it directly, it's mostly an indirect cost. But if we see a major increase in the cost it changes a lot of the cost factors in the electric utility industry. It will spur investment into wind and solar and the more that utilities get power from wind and solar the more expensive it gets to run nat gas plants.

You keep talking about a high energy industrial economy. I don't think there's a difference between the electricity produced from a nat gas power plant and a windfarm with the exception a windfarm needs for the wind to be blowing. Do you see a something else?

[progree]

3. I'm glad to see anything that reduces our dependence on fossil fuel

Last edited Thu Aug 27, 2020, 06:33 AM - Edit history (2)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=137533

Many other myths about wind power and EV's debunked in the same thread by several of us
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127137444

I'm an old man. I've seen, heard, and read endless cheerleading about safe, modular, inexpensive nuclear power for over 50 years, but so far it's been all hat and no cattle. As for the commercial scale nuclear power plants that are actually being built in the West, it's just been huge mega-cost-overrun boondoggles (V.C. Summer, Vogtle, Flamanville, and Hinkley Point come to mind). I don't think we can wait more decades for the cattle to actually show up.

In this century (2000 to 2018), globally nuclear energy has increased just 1.38 exajoules to 29.68 exajoules. This on a planet where during the same century, total energy use has increased 179.15 exajoules, to a total of 599.34 exajoules.

This according to the 2019 Edition of the IEA World Energy Outlook Table 1.1 Page 38.

Meanwhile, even existing nuclear plants, whose construction costs have long been paid off, are being retired, or subsidies are being begged for, because they aren't cost competitive. I'm sad to see that, but it is what it is.

[hunter]

6. Well, we'd better get used to climate change then, because nothing else is "competitive" with gas.

It's not going to be pretty.

How many times will we have to be surprised when hurricanes "unexpectedly" explode into cat 4 or 5 monsters?

How many "unusual" floods and droughts will we have to experience?

What will we do as the oceans rise faster than expected?

Where will all the refugees end up, U.S. American refugees included?

I'm in a bad mood. I live in California and I've been breathing smoke and ashes for too many days now.

[progree]

8. Don't blame wind and solar for natural gas. Yes, w&s needs backup, but that can just as

Last edited Thu Aug 27, 2020, 08:20 AM - Edit history (2)

well be provided by nuclear as with gas. It's not true that wind and solar ties us to natural gas. Wind and solar need backup, but there is no reason at all why it has to be provided by natural gas or other fossil fuel. Yes, natural gas is cheaper than nuclear, but that isn't wind and solar's fault.

You've argued that if we do all nuclear, we don't need wind or solar. I agree, but at the current economics, the operating cost of nuclear exceeds that of wind and solar, so a nuclear + wind + solar mix will be more economical than nuclear alone. They aren't incompatible.

And that way, we have a diversity of supply -- no utility wants their eggs all in one basket -- we've learned our lesson with strikes and huge sudden price shocks that affected one of our supplies, but not all of them. Nuclear is not immune to that either -- we had huge runups (quadrupling IIRC) in the cost of nuclear fuel back in the 70's, and in the past decades we've seen a huge increase in the construction cost of nuclear.

In the meantime, on almost all utility systems, a kwh produced by wind or solar is one less kwh produced from fossil fuels.