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To: livius
Solar panels are hideous, and even more hideous are those gawdawful windmills. Aside from chopping up birds, they march over every hill in California, destroy the view, and make a roaring noise that can be heard for miles.

Really? Would you like to throw some more straw men up there? I've NEVER heard of the second complaint. There are legitimate reasons that we shouldn't be adopting wind power, but these two arguments aren't anywhere near legitimate.

I agree that we should be building nuclear plants. But there are issues with those. Nuclear plants are not responsive enough to deal with fluctuating demand. It takes timeframes on the order of weeks to change the output of a nuclear plant. Wind, combined with energy storage technologies can be responsive to this demand. I'm an engineer. I deal with making the peg and the hole fit together. Putting up windmills for the sake of putting up windmills is a square peg, round hole thing. But putting up windmills with a defined storage strategy that makes them fill a niche in the power generation industry is good engineering and makes use of the resources available to us.

Arguments like yours are a detriment to those of us trying to propose "common sense" solutions.

10 posted on 03/21/2009 9:38:20 AM PDT by AntiKev ("Within the strangest people, truth can find the strangest home." - Great Big Sea - Company of Fools)
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To: AntiKev; livius

For your education AntiKey

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-windmills-usat_x.htm

http://birds.suite101.com/article.cfm/birds_and_windmills


19 posted on 03/21/2009 9:41:43 AM PDT by Godzilla (If the first step in an argument is wrong everything that follows is wrong. ~C.S. Lewis, The Problem)
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To: AntiKev
There was a woman who has written a book on nuke power. She used to be very green and against nuke power. She did a number on the footprint of wind turbines and the space of solar panels.

She advocates nukes and also solar poiwer from space. Said NASA was wroking on the option now.

Sorry, I can't remember her name or book. It was about 3 weeks ago on Dennis Prager. He said he would post it, but I never saw it.

23 posted on 03/21/2009 9:43:43 AM PDT by nufsed
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To: AntiKev

>> Nuclear plants are not responsive enough to deal with fluctuating demand.

Yeah... like wind turbines are. And solar.

Oh, but you throw in “...combined with energy storage technologies...” for wind and solar, but nuke has to stand alone in its “unresponsiveness”.

They have a word for that sort of argument: disingenuous.


24 posted on 03/21/2009 9:44:28 AM PDT by Nervous Tick (Party? I don't have one anymore.)
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To: AntiKev

I don’t have a problem with alternatives as long as it’s my choice to pay for them.

I’ve been considering the possibility of using a small windmill to pump water out of the lake to water my garden and lawn. No electricity just a direct drive to a small pump.


25 posted on 03/21/2009 9:45:04 AM PDT by cripplecreek (The poor bastards have us surrounded.)
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To: AntiKev

Use nukes for your base load. Nat gas for your peaks. They are typically started up and shut down twice a day, they can be up and running within a short time of getting the call.

You always want a mix of sources. Its not a problem; people who live in that world know how to make it all come together. Its not that complicated.


31 posted on 03/21/2009 9:50:44 AM PDT by marron
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To: AntiKev
It takes timeframes on the order of weeks to change the output of a nuclear plant.

Not for the Navy it doesn't. I think maybe minutes to hours, and then it depends on the direction of change. Ramping up the power is not a problem, ramping it down can "poison" the process and it can then take much longer to ramp it up again.

BTW, I too am an engineer, and have even taken a nuclear engineering course, but it was many, many moons ago, like around 420 of them. :)

But in essence you are correct. Nuclear plants are used for "base load", plus filling storage, if you have any.

39 posted on 03/21/2009 9:54:32 AM PDT by El Gato ("The Second Amendment is the RESET button of the United States Constitution." -- Doug McKay)
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To: AntiKev

And your arguments are off the mark too.

Nuclear power is not designed for fluctuating loads. It is used to provide the baseline, steady state component of the power loads. Other sources with faster response times (natural gas, petroleum,hydro,coal) address the peak load requirements.

Spend some time near a windfarm and you will see that dead birds and noise are a problem. Ironically, it’s the envirofreaks that are worried about the dead birds. The noise with its low frequency is particularly annoying after long term exposure.

And if you go to most long standing wind farms, like South Point, Hawaii, or Pincher Creek, Alberta in your own Canada prairies you will see half the wind turbines out of commission and rusting in the breeze.

And the wind doesn’t always blow.


41 posted on 03/21/2009 9:56:14 AM PDT by oldbill
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To: AntiKev
Windmills are athestically the ugliest thing going. It destroys beauty, that's something the commies love, make everything ugly and destroy the soul.

Just drive through California if you want to see how ugly they are and they really don't contribute much of anything toward power.

You want power, just build nuclear plants. The euros are so far ahead of us on this it's funny. The french get 80% of their power from nuclear.

45 posted on 03/21/2009 9:59:06 AM PDT by McGavin999 (How's that change old Hopey Dope promised you working out?)
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To: AntiKev
It takes timeframes on the order of weeks to change the output of a nuclear plant

Tell me more. Either you don't have a clue about what you are talking about OR I need to turn in my Senior Reactor Operator's license :-)

Nucs like 100% power from startup to refueling but they can change power fast/easy enough to load follow but there are other issues that make it easier/more economical for fossil and hydro to load follow. Yes we could have all of our generation by nuclear plants but some of the operators would be busy changing power.

50 posted on 03/21/2009 10:02:41 AM PDT by BILL_C (ANSWER Palin is unqualified with SO IS OBAMA, but Gov.Palin is all American, and is NOT A MARXIST!)
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To: AntiKev
I agree that we should be building nuclear plants. But there are issues with those. Nuclear plants are not responsive enough to deal with fluctuating demand. It takes timeframes on the order of weeks to change the output of a nuclear plant. Wind, combined with energy storage technologies can be responsive to this demand. I'm an engineer. I deal with making the peg and the hole fit together. Putting up windmills for the sake of putting up windmills is a square peg, round hole thing. But putting up windmills with a defined storage strategy that makes them fill a niche in the power generation industry is good engineering and makes use of the resources available to us.

I don't know who sold you this nonsense, but they won on the deal. Solar and wind are both extremely temperamental power sources. They cannot guarantee peak performance when you need it, and storage options are extremely limited for any power they do produce. I also don't get where you say that nuclear is not adjustable. If you simply adjust the dampening of the reaction, you can reduce the power output. Remember those control rod things? You know, how they managed the reactors altogether? Even if it were, say, a pebble bed reactor and didn't have control rods, you don't HAVE to push all the heat energy through the generator turbines. You can just dump heat after all. You simply design design the reactor for the peak load you expect and scale down generation from that point down to need.

Waving being an engineer around as if it were a badge of competence doesn't carry any weight with me. I've got plenty of engineering degrees myself, and have known plenty of engineers which couldn't get the round hole square peg issue down right.
54 posted on 03/21/2009 10:03:41 AM PDT by drbuzzard (different league)
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To: AntiKev

Please tell me about the “ defined storage strategy” for the output from windmills.


55 posted on 03/21/2009 10:03:58 AM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: AntiKev

Solar and wind are better ways to deal with fluctuating demand than nuclear? The opposite is actually true. While the fission reaction may take weeks to spool up and down, the generators are always powered by steam, not by the fission in the reactor. Nuclear plants can easily adjust their output up and down without making *any* changes in the reactor itself,,,its done very simply by managing steam flow.

And what exactly is the problem you are trying to propose “common sense” solutions to? The global warming fraud, or the fraud that oil, gas and coal can’t properly power us? The *only* problem we have in energy is the US Government and its anti free-enterprise policies that lock up our energy.


62 posted on 03/21/2009 10:09:04 AM PDT by DesertRhino (Dogs earn the title of "man's best friend", Muslims hate dogs,,add that up.)
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To: AntiKev

If you can store energy from windmills, you can store energy from nuclear plants too.


100 posted on 03/21/2009 11:21:00 AM PDT by FroggyTheGremlim
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