kristopher
kristopher's JournalNREL study finds 4+Terrawatts offshore wind capacty within 50 miles of US coast.
While the capacity factor makes the comparison to total national installed capacity more complex than a 1:1 trade we can correct for that by using a conservative 40% capacity factor for the wind (actual estimates are 44% on average) for an average instantaneous actual output averaging almost 50% more than the total installed capacity of all existing electric generators in the US.
The fuel is there.
Government press release:
News Release NR-3510
NREL Releases Estimate of National Offshore Wind Energy Potential
September 10, 2010
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announces the release of a new report that assesses the electricity generating potential of offshore wind resources in the United States.
According to the Assessment of Offshore Wind Energy Resources for the United States, 4,150 gigawatts of potential wind turbine nameplate capacity (maximum turbine capacity) from offshore wind resources are available in the United States. The estimate does not describe actual planned offshore wind development, and the report does not consider that some offshore areas may be excluded from energy development on the basis of environmental, human use, or technical considerations. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2008 the nation’s total electric generating capacity from all sources was 1,010 gigawatts.
The report’s estimate is based on the latest high-resolution maps predicting annual average wind speeds, and shows the gross energy potential of offshore wind resources. The potential electric generating capacity was calculated from the total offshore area within 50 nautical miles of shore, in areas where average annual wind speeds are at least 7 meters per second (approximately 16 miles per hour) at a height of 90 meters (295 feet). For purposes of this study, it was assumed that 5 megawatts of wind turbines could be placed in every square kilometer of water that met these wind characteristics. Detailed resource maps and tables for 26 coastal states’ (ocean and Great Lakes) offshore wind resources break down the wind energy potential by wind speed, water depth, and distance from shore.
NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by The Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.
Download report here:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/45889.pdf
(Japanese) Academic critical of gov't response to nuclear crisis lauded by journal Nature
Academic critical of gov't response to nuclear crisis lauded by journal Nature
Tatsuhiko Kodama
University of Tokyo professor Tatsuhiko Kodama, who blasted the government over its response to the Fukushima nuclear crisis, has been selected by British science journal Nature as one of 10 important people this year.
Kodama, 58, appeared in "365 days: Nature's 10," a list in the Dec. 22 edition of the journal featuring 10 "people who mattered this year."
...
A little more at link:
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111222p2a00m0na011000c.html
Lack of exercise a concern for Fukushima children
Lack of exercise a concern for Fukushima childrenDecember 22, 2011
FUKUSHIMA--A 34-year-old woman watched her son running around an indoor play center in Fukushima city.
“It’s the first time in a long while I have seen him breaking a sweat as he plays,” she said.
The boy, a second-year elementary school student, has, like many of his contemporaries, spent much of his time cooped up indoors since the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
His mother won’t let him play outside because of the threat of radiation, so he has been watching television and DVDs after coming home from school instead of playing in the parks or vacant lots that were his old stomping ground.
"I think...
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201112200050c
At that age my children were constantly outside at one or another of the neighborhood children's playgrounds that are everywhere in Japan. I guess that memory is why this story somehow seems particularly poignant.
Bad planning for UK energy efficiency program
Scheme to make 14m UK homes more energy efficient will only reach 2-3m households, Committee on Climate Change says
The government's flagship programme to transform the energy efficiency of 14m homes in the next decade will fail and only reach only 2-3m households, according to an unprecedented attack from the government's own climate advisers.
The warning comes from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which on Tuesday for the first time published an open letter criticising government policy. It follows soaring energy bills and the news that one in four homes are now in fuel poverty...
Very good article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/20/green-deal-fail?intcmp=122
Energy efficiency measures have a serious negative effect on merchant (market based) nuclear plant's economic viability.
Citigroup 2008 evaluation of investment potential for merchant nuclear in Europe says:
Under a scenario of the renewables target being fully delivered then the load factor for nuclear would fall to 56%.
Such a reduction is actually already underway, with load factors for nuclear plants in Europe falling from 85% on average during the beginning of the decade to below 80% as renewables increase their share in the fuel mix. In our opinion a slow down or fall in demand could have an even bigger effect, substantially affecting the economics of new plants.
*refers to new plants.
Less effective efficiency programs equal more money for nuclear plants.
Other notes from Citi docs analyzing UK nuclear:
associated grid upgrades for the new plants expected to be about $2.2 billion plus
an *additional* 260MW of new spinning reserve would be needed for EACH new reactor.
Collision Mortality Has No Discernible Effect on Population Trends of North American Birds
Collision Mortality Has No Discernible Effect on Population Trends of North American BirdsTodd W. Arnold1*, Robert M. Zink2
1 Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America, 2 Bell Museum and Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
Abstract Top
Avian biodiversity is threatened by numerous anthropogenic factors and migratory species are especially at risk. Migrating birds frequently collide with manmade structures and such losses are believed to represent the majority of anthropogenic mortality for North American birds. However, estimates of total collision mortality range across several orders of magnitude and effects on population dynamics remain unknown. Herein, we develop a novel method to assess relative vulnerability to anthropogenic threats, which we demonstrate using 243,103 collision records from 188 species of eastern North American landbirds. After correcting mortality estimates for variation attributable to population size and geographic overlap with potential collision structures, we found that per capita vulnerability to collision with buildings and towers varied over more than four orders of magnitude among species. Species that migrate long distances or at night were much more likely to be killed by collisions than year-round residents or diurnal migrants. However, there was no correlation between relative collision mortality and long-term population trends for these same species. Thus, although millions of North American birds are killed annually by collisions with manmade structures, this source of mortality has no discernible effect on populations.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024708&annotationId=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F45166fd2-e951-48f7-902e-113f9e37ac81
French nuclear energy under pressure
Areva has been hemorrhaging money since Fukushima and things only appear to be getting worse. They have been set on locking in a substantial part of the more than one quadrillion dollars that the energy market stands to be worth over the expected lifetime of their latest product but now they are in free fall.
Do you think they want solar, wind and energy efficiency efforts to succeed?
Article by: THE ECONOMIST Updated: December 19, 2011 - 5:42 PM
...Its European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) is the world's most-advanced nuclear reactor, and some consider it the safest. But since the nuclear accident at Fukushima, potential buyers have been having second thoughts (although the Japanese plant was not a French design.)
...
Areva is the world's only one-stop nuclear shop, selling everything from uranium to fuel recycling. Much of the charge came from a slump in the value of UraMin, a uranium-mining firm bought for a giddy price in 2007 when nuclear power was surging. The price of uranium, which fuels reactors, tumbled afterward.
Before Fukushima...
In Europe...
Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, has reaffirmed the country's commitment to nuclear power. But François Hollande, his Socialist rival in the presidential election next spring, says that if elected he would reduce nuclear's share of the national energy mix from 75 percent to 50 percent by 2025. That would mean shutting two dozen reactors.
Hollande would...
Even before Fukushima...
Some say that Fukushima ...
The biggest customers for nuclear power in the coming years will be developing countries, for which price is crucial. The International Atomic Energy Agency now predicts that nuclear capacity in western Europe could fall by as much as a third by 2030. (Before Fukushima, the agency said nuclear capacity would expand.) Capacity in Asia, by contrast, will more than double...
More at:
http://www.startribune.com/business/135890938.html
The sale of civilian nuclear technology to developing nations with potentially unstable regimes is a significant problem in the eyes of nuclear weapons proliferation experts.
EU lawmakers back plan to withhold carbon permits
EU lawmakers back plan to withhold carbon permitsProposal will prop up record low carbon prices by withholding 1.4bn permits from the third phase of the emissions trading scheme
European Union lawmakers backed a proposal on Tuesday to allow the European commission to prop up record low carbon prices by withholding 1.4bn permits from the third phase of the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), sending prices 20% higher.
The majority of the members of the European parliament's cross-party environment committee backed changes to an energy efficiency bill that could give the commission the power to intervene in the carbon market it set up, after it misjudged the amount of permits EU industry needed to cover their emissions.
The EU ETS caps the emissions of some 11,000 factories and power plants in the bloc, forcing them to buy carbon permits to cover their emissions output.
The commission, which oversees the scheme, overestimated the amount of permits the EU's heavy emitters would need to cover their emissions in the period 2008-12, resulting in over-supply.
The supply glut...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/20/eu-plan-withhold-carbon-permits
Re Kim death: Japan PM 'Prepare for the unexpected'
'Prepare for the unexpected': Noda
By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer
Immediately after the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was announced, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Monday told his administration to "take all possible measures to prepare for the unexpected."
Kim's death, which occurred Saturday but was only revealed Monday noon by the Pyongyang media, put the Japanese government on alert for signs of an internal collapse in the isolated nation that could turn into a state of emergency.
The prime minister also ordered the government to collect information on developments inside the North and share information with other countries, including the United States, South Korea and China.
At a hastily called news conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura revealed that the government had no prior word of Kim's death and said he would keep a careful eye on the situation in Pyongyang.
"I would like to offer my condolences...
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111220a4.html
Additional background information on earthquake damage at plant
In the early days of the disaster a special panel to investigate the meltdowns was convened by Prime Minister Kan. This panel was composed of people from outside the nuclear industry with authority to conduct an investigation as they saw fit. They don't believe TEPCO whey TEPCO rules out the earthquake as the cause of the problems.
December 06, 2011
By AKIRA SATO / Asahi Shimbun Weekly AERA
Not a few members of the government panel looking into the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are skeptical about Tokyo Electric Power Co. pointing the finger of blame at an unprecedented tsunami.
"The claim that tsunami alone caused the accident is nothing but a hypothesis," said panel member Hitoshi Yoshioka, vice president at Kyushu University, who has written a book about the social history of nuclear energy.
"I feel a majority of panel members feel this way. It is close to a common understanding that it would not be good to trust as is TEPCO's analysis that tsunami was the cause of the accident."
The conclusion reached by the panel could have ground-shaking ramifications for other nuclear power plants in Japan....
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201112060052
Why is it important to both TEPCO and the strong pronuclear faction within the government and bureaucracy? Because this could have a profound effect on the ability of the country to resume use of their reactor fleet. They have 58 reactors and all but 8 are now idle (40) or closed permanently (10). The latest shutdown was caused by coolant leaking from a valve inside the containment vessel.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201112070075
TEPCO and the rest of the (global) nuclear industry have a strong selfish motive to promote the assumption that it was the tsunami. The earthquake that the plant experienced was far weaker than the 9.0 forces at its epicenter; in fact it was only a bit more than the reactors' design parameters.
If one of them failed as a result of quake forces it means that every reactor in Japan, and anywhere else that is in an earthquake zone must be viewed with a very critical eye. And since earthquakes are a lot more common than tsunami it means that the costs of upgrading safety and/or forced shutdowns stands to be enormous.
The table released by TEPCO comparing the earthquake's actual directional forces at the Fukushima #1 site to the reactor's design specs:
Glossary
· Observed Record of Earthquake Intensity
Record that indicates the intensity of an earthquake (Unit: gal)
· Regulatory Guide for Reviewing Seismic Design of Nuclear Power Reactor Facilities
Revised in September 2006 based on the newly accumulated knowledge on seismology and earthquake engineering and advanced technologies of seismic design, this is a regulatory guide in reviewing the validity of the seismic design of nuclear power reactor facilities.
· Basic Earthquake Ground Motion Ss
A basic earthquake ground motion in seismic design of facility, stipulated in Regulatory Guide for Reviewing Seismic Design of Nuclear Power Reactor Facilities
· Maximum Response Acceleration against Basic Earthquake Ground Motion Ss
Assuming Basic Earthquake Ground Motion Ss in the evaluation of the earthquake-proof safety, this is the Maximum value of the quake of a building, which is expressed in acceleration.
"Revised in September 2006 based on the newly accumulated knowledge on seismology and earthquake engineering and advanced technologies of seismic design, this is a regulatory guide in reviewing the validity of the seismic design of nuclear power reactor facilities."
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11040103-e.html
Here is a first person narrative of what people on the scene observed, published in July.
The reactor walls of the reactor are quite fragile, he notes. “If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside and there is a buildup of pressure, it can damage the equipment inside the walls so it needs to be allowed to escape. It’s designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it’s common sense.”
A second worker, a technician in his late 30s, who was also on site at the time of the earthquake, narrated what happened. “It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling, and within minutes, I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall. Others snapped. I was pretty sure that some of the oxygen tanks stored on site had exploded but I didn’t see for myself. Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate and I was good with that. But I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told and I could see that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn’t get to the reactor core. If you can’t sufficiently get the coolant to the core, it melts down. You don’t have to have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out.”
As he was heading to his car, he could see the walls of the reactor one building itself had already started to collapse. “There were holes in them. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami. We were thinking about survival.”
Meltdown: What Really Happened at Fukushima?
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/07/meltdown-what-really-happened-fukushima/39541/
(Independent) Fukushima probe to avoid assessing quake damage
Fukushima probe to avoid assessing quake damageKyodo
A government panel investigating the triple-meltdown crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant will not provide in its interim report any in-depth analysis on how badly the March 11 earthquake damaged key facilities before the tsunami arrived, sources said Monday.
The decision leaves open the possibility that facilities key to securing the plant's safety were seriously damaged by the 9-magnitude temblor.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has asserted that the direct cause of the disaster was the larger-than-expected tsunami.
...The report could further delay the resumption of atomic power use across the country because local governments are waiting for the probe to conclude before taking a stance on whether to allow reactor restarts. Several were recently idled for regular inspections.
If doubts about current quake-resistance standards increase...
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111220a6.html
Even though the intensity of the quake at the location of the plant was only marginally above design specs, the panel has made clear they think the evidence available, though not conclusive, points to the earthquake as the causal event in the meltdowns. This is an interesting development.
Earlier story here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10161811
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