Average Lifetime of Danish Wind Turbines, as of February 2018.

[NNadir]

13. This post originated with a comment on Dominion's decision to build gas plants to go "renewable."

That post is here: Dominion Energy Going "Renewable" and Therefore Is Building 8 New Gas Plants.

I chose a Dominion Plant in Virginia, more or less at random, however I am familiar with many nuclear plants that can produce more energy than all of the wind turbines in Denmark, as much, or nearly as much all 9,452 of them, 3,232 of which have been decommissioned. To be perfectly honest, I rather thought that the Surrey plant would be easily capable of producing more energy than all the wind turbines in Denmark, but dutifully reported that all the wind turbines in Denmark produced 42 MW of average continuous power as the two reactors at Surrey.

If I wanted to dig further into exposing why the wind industry is a disgrace, I could have easily calculated the "capacity utilization" of all the wind turbines in Denmark, but I didn't feel like it.

Personally, the nuclear plant closest to my heart is the one that will be closed in October of this year - thus killing people since nuclear plants save lives - the reactor at Oyster Creek.

This closure will have direct effects on the health of my family and every other family in New Jersey. It will close after 49 years of service and is the oldest reactor in the United States, having come on line in 1968. It had a license extension that would have allowed it to run longer, but Exelon went with gas. It cost well under $1 billion to build in 2018 dollars and has been a spectacular performer.

It's closure breaks my heart, but the reactor was a huge success.

It will be replaced by gas, Marcellus Shale Gas, drilled in such a way as to produce flowback water that is more radioactive than the sea outside of Fukushima.

I could have picked the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant - due to be closed in 2024 because of appeals by ignorant people to irrational fear - which produces more electricity than all the wind turbines in California in a single building.

California Electricity Generation

Speaking of cherry picking. We have had lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of posts here along the lines of "Renewable energy briefly produces 100% of Portugal's electricity." Usually they're talking about a period of a day or two when the wind is blowing and the sun is glaring. Unlike the vast majority of my posts, they usually get oodles of recommends.

These posts always include biomass - the second largest contributor to air pollution deaths - hydroelectric, wind, and solar - in the definition.

During droughts, when the reservoirs are empty, and hot days in the doldrums perhaps with cloud cover or heavy air pollution, no one posts "Portugal imports a record one day total of Algerian Natural gas!!!" posts.

I covered the overall performance of the US nuclear industry elsewhere in this post. Anybody who's interested in educating themselves, of course, could do what I do, look stuff up and offer specific criticisms.

An accusation of "cherry picking" is Trumpian in its hypocrisy, the equivalent of Donald Trump complaining about Hillary Clinton's ethics.

Now how come people cherry pick Fukushima and Chernobyl, neither of which killed even a tiny fraction of the number of lives nuclear reactors that nuclear operations have saved?

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

How come everyone wants to talk about some guy who might have ten or twenty years shaved off of his life because of radiation exposure at Fukushima but nobody wants to talk about 7 million people dying each year from air pollution?

A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (Lancet 2012, 380, 2224–60: For air pollution mortality figures see Table 3, page 2238 and the text on page 2240.)

Looking at these numbers, which is more dangerous, nuclear power or fossil fuels and biomass?

I post these links all the time, two of my favorites from the tens of thousands of papers relating to energy present on my computers.

Everyone has biases, and I have mine to be sure, but this said, I am fully confident that I can - and do - support my biases a lot better than the people who have been spewing pablum - disastrous pablum - about how so called "renewable energy" would save the day.

It hasn't; it isn't; it won't.

And I have to hear about "cherry picking?" Really?