matter again too.
In fact, the entire dumb fundie anti-nuke conceit relies entirely on selective and arbitrary attention.
Nowhere is there any discussion of the climate change cost of building 136 billion dollars worth of wind plants, and no where is there a discussion of disposing completely of the waste of doing so.
The traditional and
fraudulent conceit of the "renewables will save us" industry is to report - with zero justification and with zero rationality - that
only nuclear energy need account for its entire environmental impact.
Has anyone ever included the cost of say, copper contamination, shipping, concrete in this little fantasy game of "wind will save us?" Back up power? Spinning reserve?
No. Of course not. Self delusion is too popular an activity.
In any case I have stated before that it is actually rather silly to talk "watts" when the issue is
energy.
I'm trying
not to be contemptuous, but I'm really, really, really having a hard time.
The cost of energy is not the cost of "watts", but rather the cost of joules.
It is relatively easy to calculate the cost per
joule of energy for nuclear energy by simple calculation.
Britain built the
first Western commercial nuclear reactor at Calderhall. It came on line in the mid 1950's. Thus nuclear power has been providing
energy continuously to Britain since that time.
Since 1980, it is easy to show by direct calculation that Britain produced 6.39 exajoules of
electrical energy.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xlsAt 33% thermal efficiency - ignoring the fact that Calderhall was a co-generation facility - this is the equivalent of 19.4 exajoules of
energy consumed,
ignoring completely the 26 years of previous nuclear generation.Thus, the cost per joule of decommission
all of Britain's nuclear power facilities amounts to 9
billionths of a cent per joule.
Seen on this basis, the entire cost works out to 0.08 kw-hr. This ignores, again,
half of the history of nuclear power to be ameliorated by the money in Britain roughly, and further it ignores that this cost
includes the cost of British
weapons related nuclear facilities.
If there is a dumb fundie anti-nuke who has identified
any form of energy that meets this cost level for disposal of
all of its waste that will be met by a nuclear "clean up," that would be interesting to see but no one will bother, because no one is rational about energy.
There is no attempt on the part of "renewables will save us" fundies to include say the cost of coaling the battleships at the battle of Jutland in the external cost of coal plants, nor will be there any attempt to account for the cost of the Iraq war in providing diesel to fuel barges to build offshore junk. There is, for that matter, no attempt to include the cost of the Battle of Trafalgar in the cost of wind plants.
Arbitrarily dumb fundie anti-nukes wish to include the cost of say, Hanford, with their illiterate conceits about nuclear power, and of course, they like to pretend that that
only nuclear energy must include the cost of weapons related technology.
Now, let's talk about "restoring" the environment
after the plants are used.
If one wants to see, by the way, how long it takes for wind plants to turn into junk, one could, in theory - not that this will happen - take a look at the waste heaps in Altamount pass.
That plant when on line in 1981 and now we have these wonderful words:
Unsalvageable Turbines. Most of the first generation machines are technologically obsolete for bulk power generation in California and have little or no salvage value.(18) Some of these turbines are no longer in service, or operate infrequently. Public complaints about "abandoned" turbines are targeted primarily at these machines. Production from this class of turbines is particularly low, and repowering could result in production increases of up to an order of magnitude. The ability to successfully upgrade this class of turbines will largely depend on the quality of wind resources at each site, along with receptive policy and practices from state agencies and utilities. Turbines located at sites with modest wind resources will exhibit less production improvement than those at more energetic sites
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/Repower.htmlThis is not an excellent advertisement for the eternal operation of wind plants. Now we are going to hear all sorts of dumb ass fundie yuppie talk about how the new wind plants are new and therefore - as all new stuff is very popular in consumerist yuppie circles - they will last for eternity.
Bullshit.
Wind rotors can and
do fail catastrophically, which is not surprising. They are devices requiring huge torques and huge friction, required to stand extreme weather over a vast area.
Thus entire game is again, at best, an exercise in selective attention and at worst an act either delusion or obfuscation - it doesn't matter which.
Again, I am really trying not to be contemptuous here - although I can seldom escape feeling contempt these days - but I note that the standards for the alleged "clean up" of Britain's nuclear facilities will far exceed any standards for cleaning up the dangerous fossil fuel waste generated by ships and barges hauling concrete out to sea for wind plants. In fact, any such standards will be
ignored by the wind industry. When exactly, did the carbon dioxide from the barges and concrete used to construct Denmark's plants get "disposed." If you can produce one report of the inclusion of this waste in the calculation of cost for wind plants, I'd love to see it.
When the wind plants break apart, as they inevitably will, no one will give a rat's ass about the cost to say, fishing, of the heavy metals and lubricants that tumble into the sea. There will be zero dumb fundie anti-nukes who will appear anywhere giving a rat's ass about the topic, just as there are zero fundie anti-nukes here who give a rat's ass about abandoned turbines at Altamont.
By comparison, the standards set for "cleaning up" nuclear energy are arbitrary and frankly absurd. Only nuclear energy is required to demonstrate that no one ever anywhere at any time will ever be injured by the technology.
These wind plants will not be built, because they will not
work. There is
not one dangerous fossil fuel plant on the face of this planet that has been shut by wind plants, not
one that has been shut by solar plants and the reason is that energy and
instantaneous power are different things.
I also note that the external cost of wind power in this facile and rather absurd calculation fails to include the cost of energy
storage. Britain has very little hydroelectricity to back up renewable energy. The famous Danish wind energy - which is not expanding rapidly by the way - would collapse in 20 minutes without access to Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian hydroelectric capacity. The scientific literature is replete with calculations of the external cost of energy storage and I note, again with contempt, that the cost of cleaning up any type of storage system to nuclear standards is absurdly high and are routinely
ignored.
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