Wind farms generate opposition - "We're destroying so much scenery for so little power."

Houston Chronicle ^ | February 5, 2007 | Thomas Korosec

[Cincinatus' Wife]

No kidding.

And the royalties are not guaranteed.

[Wonder Warthog]

"But I'm surprised that you would want to see a nuclear energy plant anywhere near your place, given your attitude about other people's wind generators."

There is quite a difference between an isolated windmill on someone's "backwoods home" location, and a gigantic wind-farm occupying huge swaths of landscape. What is acceptable in the first case is not in the second.

But this is a distinction that escapes you, obviously.

[Centurion2000]

Well this suit won't be going anywhere. Texas has some of the strongest property rights laws in the nation.

Of course people might decide to settle this outside the courtroom. It's never a good idea to piss off all of your neighbors.

[FreeInWV]

I think telling people what is acceptable on their private property is the issue here. It is not the landowners legal responsibility to provide a scenic view at great expense to himself.

[Redleg Duke]

Mike,

That was a very informative and valuable posting. It is amazing what we could be doing! One note of pessimism, though. Your suggestion about making the canisters recoverable is correct, but we have a society that cannot think beyond next week's meaningless reality show, let alone 700 years.

[NVDave]

Exactly. Recycle the nuke fuel, as France and Japan do.

Guess why we can't?

Because our fast breeder reactor project was killed by whom?

President Clinton, 1994. To "prevent nuclear proliferation" according to the anti-nuke nitwits who lobbied his administration.

I'd say that they turned out to be wrong on both the energy issue and the proliferation issue.

[sionnsar]

but makes his living in the chemical business

[chimera]

And the incremental costs for the "backup" power become very, very high, because you essentially have to maintain all the infrastructure associated with those systems, but you're selling fewer units of output if you are simply a "backup" supplier.

That is the Achilles' Heel of many of these schemes. People just assume that when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining, they can just tap back into the grid and draw energy from it at the same cost with the same reliability as they always had before. Well, if they do, they'll probably be paying a heckuva lot more per unit than they are used to, and, worst case, it may not be there at all.

[A CA Guy]

Wind farms have not been great because of the cost of high maintenance of the damage done from the environments they are in. Until that is improved, wind farms are just a fun thought and not logical.

[chimera]

Carter killed commercial reprocessing of so-called "spent fuel" in this country in the 1970s. He had a talk with Amy one night when she was having bad dreams about nuclear war, and decided that reprocessing was a bad thing because of proliferation concerns (really bogeymen more than realistic concerns). Clinton for all intents and purposes killed the last of the breeder reactor technology development in this country when he trashed both the IFR program at Idaho and the FFTF in Hanford. Congress killed the Clinch River breeder demo back in the 1980s, on Reagan's watch. Clinton killed breeder technology because Hillary hates nukes and probably threatened to go public with what she knew about his "indiscretions". If we develop breeder plants at all here, it will probably be with imported technology, most likely from France. Which is ironic, because this is something that was conceived and initially developed in this country. Yet another example of this country selling out it's technological lifeblood.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Exactly.

[bray]

1 nuclear power plant will cleanly replace 10,000 windmills. So are royalties only 30% of $12,000?

Pray for W and Our Troops

[Wonder Warthog]

"I think telling people what is acceptable on their private property is the issue here. It is not the landowners legal responsibility to provide a scenic view at great expense to himself."

If ANYTHING becomes a big enough nuisance, be it visual or otherwise, to impact a significant number of people, they can vote to over-rule his "property right". This is settled law, and has been for quite a long time. Wind farms are ugly as hell. Put'em offshore, make hydrogen, and pipeline it onshore.

[sam_paine]

First thing I caught as funny, making it clear that I live on the northwest interface between "the hill country" and "west Texas" outside of a little town pop. 1100 (on a good day.)

But "We're destroying so much scenery [outside of Abilene] for so little power;" has to be one of the ironic statements of the week. As Rush commented once, "You have to be going to Abilene...you don't go by it on the way to anywhere!" LOL.

This guy, if you read the article -IS NOT- a Texan, nor is he a 'rancher', IMHO.

Rankin, who raises horses on his ranch but makes his living in the chemical business, and eight other property owners sued in 2005 to stop..

Horses are rich mans' toys. I suspect that this guy is a businessman that got rich and bought a bunch of land out in the boonies to get away from it all, and is now trying to tell his neighbors what to do.

Wind power is ridiculous compared to nukes, but $12k/year might pay the property taxes indefinitely and allow you to actually "own" the land once again, even in today's socialist state. This idiot is going to condemn his neighbors to have to move away from him.

And even West Texas will eventually run out of places to run away to!!!

[sam_paine]

I agree with you that nukes are a better idea for power generation....but that doesn't make local landowners any cash like this.

I've been to the area around Livermore and Altemont Pass in California where there are lots of (useless) windmills, and they are visually overpowering and just plain UGLY.

Yeah, I agree. But Abilene and West Texas ain't no Livermore California to start with, either!

[DungeonMaster]

Wind farms have not been great because of the cost of high maintenance of the damage done from the environments they are in. Until that is improved, wind farms are just a fun thought and not logical.

GE, Siemens, BP, Westinghouse and a lot of other multi billion dollar corporations sure don't believe that.

[reagan_fanatic]

[Michamilton]

People just assume that when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining, they can just tap back into the grid and draw energy from it at the same cost with the same reliability as they always had before.

It looks like in the long term, the way around this will be to use hydrogen for grid balancing of wind power. In periods when there is surplus wind energy, excess power will be used for generating hydrogen by electrolysis - this hydrogen can then be converted to power when there is less wind.

I know of one installation in Norway that's doing this now, and I've heard it discussed in the media coverage of the offshore wind project in Massachusetts.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Yeah, I agree. But Abilene and West Texas ain't no Livermore California to start with, either!"

Having been through all of those places, I prefer West Texas to California.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

How perfect-ly awful!

Ha!