Why We Have No Wind or Solar Power

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi,

If PV was on every roof, that would be the definition of a distributed grid.

You folks need to watch this:

William McDonough on cradle to cradle design | Video on TED.com

[trebuchet03]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

If a terrorist breaks a long distance electrical line (which we already have and use all the time), what happens? We lose electricity.

Infrastructure is hardly a reason to take energy solutions off the table. Our grid is so close to max capacity that a problem in canada results in a blackout for NYC. These expenses that are not avoidable.

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

If a terrorist blows up a nuclear power plant, or gets a hold of some plutonium and uses it in a dirty bomb, or dumps it into a water supply, what happens? You get a lot of dead people and/or a ruined area.

First, you can't let terrorism steal your security That's just my opinion, of course. Second, you don't need nuclear power to get such items (a teenager made suitable dirty bomb materials in his stepmother's shed not too long ago - he was trying to build a breeder reactor in a shed, among other things). And I apologize in advance (as I hate to be the one to make the reference), but history seems to validate that the power plants aren't cost v. benefit optimal targets - aircraft and economic centers are (and the result is a lot death and a ruined area - to be fair, that area is arguably smaller).

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Over the 1,700 miles from San Antonio up to Calgary, do you think that there will be no wind blowing anywhere?

Especially when we start tapping into high altitude wind - which blows very fast, 24/7, 365.

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

In the 500,000+ square miles in the sunniest areas of the country, do you think that there will ever be a time when it is all cloudy?

Per square meter - high altitude wind (.5atm @ 18,000 feet, ~50mph airspeed) is a tad over 39kW/m^2. It is solar driven, yes, but no worries about the energy getting reflected by clouds

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Did you know that enough sunlight energy strikes the earth in 40 minutes to power the whole earth for 1 year? The fusion reactor we call the sun is at a fairly safe distance: 91-94.5 million miles away.

Theoretical wind power available on land and near offshore is ~72TW - 5x the current demand.

The potential takes into account only locations with mean annual wind speeds ≥ 6.9 m/s at 80 m. It assumes 6 turbines per square km for 77 m diameter, 1.5 MW-turbines on roughly 13% of the total global land area (though that land would also be available for other compatible uses such as farming).

I'm not knocking solar - just giving corollary points

[Duffman]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Hi,

If PV was on every roof, that would be the definition of a distributed grid.

I am getting tired of arguing in circles, you state that we could power the U.S. with X% of nevada converted to solar. What you are doing is cherry picking the best locales for generation and trying to paint the rest of the country as equivalent sites. You dont get it both ways, you either generate where it is favourable and transport the power or you generate everywhere including very unfavourable locations and watch your costs skyrocket because you just halved or worse to your duty cycles. At best you are stuck with both because less people live in the strong generating areas, how much of NY do you have to cover to power NY?

[NeilBlanchard]

Hiya,

We can have it ALL ways! PV on every roof AND solar in the southwest -- and wind in the middle of the country and offshore, and biomass, and biofuel, and wave, and tidal, and geothermal, and small scale hydro power...all of these together in a mix that best suits the area can and will be the long term solution for our energy needs.

Nuclear is not a solution.

William McDonough on cradle to cradle design | Video on TED.com

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

If a terrorist blows up a nuclear power plant, or gets a hold of some plutonium and uses it in a dirty bomb, or dumps it into a water supply, what happens? You get a lot of dead people and/or a ruined area.

Nope. Worst you get is a lot of public hysteria. First, suppose you try blowing up a nuclear power plant. First you have to assemble a strike force sufficient to get past all the security guards, and do this without being noticed. Then you have to get through several feet of concrete & steel containment structure that's designed to withstand conventional explosives, and set off your charges next to the reactor vessel. They have to be BIG charges, since said reactor vessel is pretty strong. And if you do manage to do this, the result is contained inside the containment structure, so you have gone to all that effort just to wreck a reactor.

Now if you want to steal some plutonium from one, then you have to figure out how to unbolt the reactor pressure vessel, extract many tons of fuel rods (if I can steal a line from Terry Pratchett, they'll have to be quite strong terrorists :-)), and carry them away for reprocessing.

But let's ignore all that, and get to the real issue. Let's also be more honest than our so-called leaders dare to be, and call these people by their right names. The jihadists already HAVE their nuclear reactors and weapons: Pakistan has them, Iran will soon if it doesn't already. The horse has already been stolen, why worry about the barn door?

Over the 1,700 miles from San Antonio up to Calgary, do you think that there will be no wind blowing anywhere?

It's not NO wind, it's sufficient wind to generate the amount of power demanded by the grid.

In the 500,000+ square miles in the sunniest areas of the country, do you think that there will ever be a time when it is all cloudy?

Take a look at weather satellite photographs over a year, and again remember that it doesn't ALL have to be cloudy, just cloudy enough so that supply is less than demand. Say you have enough PV panels scattered over the US to produce 100% of electricity on an average day. Then you get a Pacific storm system covering most of the west coast, a low over the east, some clouds in the Gulf... suddenly that 100% has become 50% or less, and you have a major blackout.

Did you know that enough sunlight energy strikes the earth in 40 minutes to power the whole earth for 1 year?

Did you know that most of that solar energy is already being used? It drives photosynthesis, on which life depends. You talk about covering large sections of Nevada with solar collectors, putting wind turbines everywhere, building tidal energy plants... and you completely disregard what that could do to the environment.

Nuclear plants have little effect on the environment, they don't take up much space, and you can build them in places near cities where the urban dwellers who'll use most of the power have already trashed the environment.

You folks need to watch this:

If your argument's not worth writing down, then I'll go on thinking it's just more propaganda pablum for the illiterate.

[Duffman]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

You folks need to watch this:
William McDonough on cradle to cradle design | Video on TED.com

Originally Posted by jamesqf

If your argument's not worth writing down, then I'll go on thinking it's just more propaganda pablum for the illiterate.

Despite what Neil thinks I actually look at his links. The last 3 minutes on the design of Chinese cities was pretty interesting, the rest not so much. I am by no means anti-environment either, but my educational background in engineering makes me a pragmatist. That said 100% reliance on renewable may be a theoretical solution, it sure is not a technical one without leaps in technology, massive costs, reworked infrastructure and a public that is willing to make big changes to make it go/work.

Now Neil did you find any of the answers to the questions I posed in post 65? Or do you refuse to look for whatever reason?

[Concrete]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

You've been so - yes, let me use the word - brainwashed by the "evil nuclear radiation" meme that you can't or won't separate truth from fantasy.

Fact is, "radiation" doesn't last for tens of thousands of years, it lasts forever (or at least until the heat death of the universe, a good few trillion years from now). Everything is radioactive, to some degree, and always will be. We are bathed in a constant sea of radiation.

I think you have assumed I am anti nuclear... I am not
I understand background radiation - that is why a little extra from coal burning does not concern me
I realize Western reactors are much better than the old soviet reactors
I realize they are hardened against tremendous physical forces from inside & out

My real concern is one Enron like company running a reactor
Imagine a nuclear Love Canal incident & coverup
is that not scarier than Godzilla!
(sorry, had to use it, this analogy has had me laughing half the thread)

we should get the most out of the reactors we have, but I'm not real excited about bankrolling more
The reactor in my area was heavily over budget and raised the price of electricity locally
I put it in the same category as PV - not profitable without subsidies
(but PV is getting better and nuclear will always have waste issues)
If they made sense - they would be built

Wind is now competing commercially with coal (still higher but very close)
It looks like the day of Nuclear power is past
it is the bridge to the future not the future itself

as for radiation - I may think you are over simplifying
what are the half lives of the the products we are talking about?
many of them are +10,000 years

as for other waste - yes some of it will be cool/safe in decades
but there is a lot of it - concrete, re-bar, safety gear, the cooling water it self
it is not as simple as you make it sound

[Duffman]

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

Based on what I've read new wind is cheaper/kWh than new nuclear, although not by a lot, something around ~3c/kWh compared to ~4c/kWh. This is from the cost figures of Florida's two AP1000's, fuel cost percentage from the NEI, and inflation adjusted non-fuel operating costs from "An Analysis of Nuclear Power Plant
Operating Costs: A 1995 Update".

Originally Posted by Duffman

From what I have seen 4 cents represents the low end of a very large range for the cost of wind power. I have not seen a study from a credible source showing wind to be cheaper than nuclear. One thing to note is these studies are hugely dependent on the interest rate that you borrow against to build your project. I would like to drill down on an actual economic analysis of wind cost but have not been able to find it.

I did some looking into my own question and found this site.

NREL: Wind Research - Baseline Cost of Energy

Its obviously a pro-wind site but thats ok, but keep in mind they are not going to present costs any higher than the lowest they will be.
I sifted through their analysis and the first thing that I checked was the capacity factor (what I have been referring to a duty cycle in past posts). It takes a capacity factor of 42%. Wikipedia states that it should be 20 to 40%, other number I have seen are 30% so I wont accept a number higher than 40%.

Wind power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I also checked their spreadsheet provided and they take 60% of O&M but never explain why. I changed their spreadsheet to reflect 100% and duty cycles of 30% for the lower case and 40% for the higher case and the costs rise to 5.7 cents and 4.27 cents per kWh. So yes these costs are competitive but even using their duty cycle of 42% it should be obvious to everyone that 60% of the time they are producing no power or an inadequate supply. Now let me get something clear, I have never been against wind power, because when supply quantity is kept low, then you don’t need a backup but as your % of the grid grows then backup generation must be installed and idled when not in use greatly increasing your costs and frankly your carbon footprint as well because that infrastructure needs to be built as well. (Note the interest rate they used was 9.5%, fixed charge rate is not an interest rate)

Here is a site I like for nuclear costs.

The Economics of Nuclear Power

Again it will be pro-nuclear but it sites a lot of different studies and includes ranges.

[Duffman]

Originally Posted by Concrete

as for radiation - I may think you are over simplifying
what are the half lives of the the products we are talking about?
many of them are +10,000 years

Remember that the faster a radioisotope decays, the more radioactive it will be. Here is a good link on nuclear waste.
World Nuclear Association

Originally Posted by Concrete

as for other waste - yes some of it will be cool/safe in decades
but there is a lot of it - concrete, re-bar, safety gear, the cooling water it self
it is not as simple as you make it sound

You need to put this in perspective. Right now society has no problem using plastics or styrofoam cups etc in huge quantities that will not biodegrade for a few hundred years and we derive minimal benefit from it. Yet we are opposed to something that on a volume x timeline basis has a much smaller impact.

The following is from
Reprocessing: processing of used nuclear fuel for recycle

Reprocessing used fuel* to recover uranium (U, as RepU) and plutonium (Pu) avoids the wastage of a valuable resource. Most of it - about 96% - is uranium at less than 1% U-235 (often 0.4 - 0.8%), and up to 1% is plutonium. Both can be recycled as fresh fuel, saving up to 30% of the natural uranium otherwise required. The materials potentially available for recycling (but locked up in stored used fuel) could conceivably run the US reactor fleet of about 100 GWe for almost 30 years with no new uranium input.

DUPIC
Another approach to used nuclear fuel recycling which could be employed by some countries is DUPIC (Direct Use of used PWR fuel in CANDU reactors).

The DUPIC technique has certain advantages:
• No materials are separated during the refabrication process, uranium, plutonium, fission products and minor actinides are kept together in the fuel powder and bound together again in the DUPIC fuel bundles.
• A high net destruction rate can be achieved of actinides and plutonium.
• Up to 25% more energy can be realised compared to other PWR used fuel recycling techniques.
• And a DUPIC fuel cycle could reduce a country¹s need for used PWR fuel disposal by 70% while reducing fresh uranium requirements by 30%.


END of Quote

I know waste is a problem but look where society was even 100 years ago; the first cars, no aeroplanes, no satellites, no TV, poor comunication methods, no computers, minimal medicine. The nuclear industry is only 60 years old. Humanities knowledge base is growing at an exponential pace. There are solutions being developed like thorium reactors, breeder reactors, fission reators, we will have a waste solution eventually.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi,

I hope that you all can read the book "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things" by William McDonough & Michael Braungart. One of the chapters is called Waste Equals Food.

You can't eat plutonium, and you never will. And you cannot through it away -- because there is no away.

A solution is sustainable because something can eat the waste. In fact, there is no "waste" in a sustainable solution.

They write about biological nutrients, and about technical nutrients. You can't mix them. Each kind of nutrient goes through a full circle cycle again and again, and it sustains us.

Plutonium is not either kind of nutrient.

Have you heard of the Pacific gyre? It's several times larger than Texas, and it has all manner of trash -- anything that has ever been made out of plastic, has ended up in it.