Off the coast of Redcar where we live they are planning to put huge wind farms, now personaly i think they are a great thing, they are clean they are practically noisless and i really do think they look good.
The view of the ne coast is very beautiful even with the steady flow of ships going into teesport, i'm not quite sure how many i think 10-15 was mentioned, now apparently i am in the minority, i have heard people say they are a blot on the landscape i cant see that when they are building nuclear power stations which produce waist that they cannot get rid of, useing fossil fuels to the point of exhaustion just to mention a couple.
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is there really any argument
Russ
Respect to all, be kind to all and you shall reap what you sow.
old tree man,
aka..... Russ
I can see a wind farm from the top of my garden, on a clear day I can happily stand there for ages just watching the blades (sails??) go round and round - mesmerising and beautiful. There have been 2 more big windfarms planned within 25 miles of us as well, each has been announced that it will be the biggest in Britain (one was announced 8 months ago, the other last week.)
Ann Pan
"Some days you're the dog,
some days you're the lamp-post"
Nuclear power works, wind farms dont. I find that reason enough to oppose one and support the other.
The "carbon cost" of building a wind turbine, errecting it and maintaining it are well beyond any "carbon saving" is generates.
Modern Nuclear reactors create minimal waste, provide plenty of power and provide it all the time, not just a 4am on tuesday morning.
I'm not a hippie, I'm a realist.
I think everyones English
DominicJ wrote:Nuclear power works, wind farms dont. I find that reason enough to oppose one and support the other.
The "carbon cost" of building a wind turbine, errecting it and maintaining it are well beyond any "carbon saving" is generates.
Modern Nuclear reactors create minimal waste, provide plenty of power and provide it all the time, not just a 4am on tuesday morning.
AS I understand it the minimal nuclear waste is is active for a thousand years and the technology not doe's not exist to render it harmless and is likely to take sometime to find an answer to the problem, so the minimal waste could turn out to be a lot, which is to be buried in disused mines and vast under ground storage facilities Fine, now my question is, as I understand it a major problem with disused mines is methane gas as it is with old oil drilling's.
So ,I ask myself what happens if due to a seismic occurrence taking place and and triggers an explosion within these storage dumps.
Of course this will never happen because we have been reassured by our Scientists and Government.
Methinks I prefer Windmills. Even at 4am on a Tuesday morning
I can't do great things, so I do little things with love.
I've invested in a wind farm in the UK, and I also invest in companies that make the turbines. The returns are pretty good. The problem with nuclear is that nobody wants to invest in it, so the nuclear industry insists that everybody is forced to through their taxes. If the market were left to decide, there would be no nuclear to support.
That's an interesting point Rod. We have good energy but all the green energy only accounts for a small proportion of the total. Too many people don't mind or care about nuclear. Some anti turbine neighbours say they prefer nuclear - their reason - It's in Cumbria! That's alright then!
OH (who is a grumpy old man and remembers all the fanfare when the first nuclear stations opened) says it was never really about power when it was started but about weapons!
We have some new turbines 3 miles away. They look closer - it's hard to visualise just how big the are! I think they're a worthy sucessor to all the windmills we used to have and def a good thing.
We wanted to have our own but we've turbulance issues so we were advised to buy good lecky from someone elses turbine!
Terri x
“I'd rather be a little weird than all boring.”
― Rebecca McKinsey
I heard that when they first started producing nuclear power the prediction was that all electricity would soon be free.... how much are prices predicted to rise by in the next 12 months?
As I keep saying to everyone, what's the point of a wind farm in a place which already has more than enough wind? Mind you, I suppose the same could be said for sewage farms.
The secret of life is to aim below the head (With thanks to MMM)
marshlander, I've posted this a couple of times, but I don't have any relationship with them - I just think they're a good solution. Motorwave
The turbines are so cheap that it doesn't matter about turbulence and other efficiency issues. Also, I believe that other more expensive turbine makers have come up with solutions that work in turbulence. (If'n you're still interested in getting something...) Of course, the Japanese nuclear bodies are looking at developing home nuclear reactors, so you could always wait until they're on the market.
I suppose you could say that nuclear power works, in that it does actually generate electricity.
But at what cost?
The cost of building a nuclear power station is enormous. The cost of enriching uranium is enormous. And remember that uranium ore is a non-renewable fuel, just like any other. It takes a huge amount of uranium ore to make a tiny amount of enriched fuel.
The cost of decommissioning a station is - yeah you guessed it - enormous, as is the cost of reprocessing and storing spent fuel.
If you want the real cost per kw/h generated from nuclear, all the above must be taken into account. Already it is a lot higher than conventional power stations, and that's assuming it's safe, which of course it isn't. Even if the chances of an accident are near zero, such an accident would be so catastrophic that no-one is going to insure you.
And then there's the question of what is done with the spent fuel. Well surprise surprise it's the main source of weapons grade plutonium. Who'd a thunk it.
No, the day they start putting my tax euro into nuclear power is the day I stop paying tax.
Is it windy all the time?
No it is not.
Therefore wind power does not work.
Ok sure, its ok for some of us who have off grid battery system, but for a country?
Its simply doesnt work that way, electricity simply cannot be stored for future use on that level. I'm not sure about you, but I cant sit around in front of my computer waiting for a strong breeze to last long enough for me to do some work.
Nuclear Power had problems, but 85% of Frances electricity comes from nuclear, their power is much cheaper than ours, and how many nuclear accidents have there been in France?
Modern nuclear power creates very little waste, research breeder reactors if you wish to check.
Nuclear Power neither wants nor recieves any subsidy, the issue with uclear power is how to fund disposal of the site, but thats an economic issue that goes way beyond anything I could discuss here.
As for "green" tarrifs.
Go check your small print.
It will say something along the lines of, for every unit of electricity you buy, the power company buys one unit of green electricity. Sound simple, you buy green off them, they buy green from windmiller, its not.
You buy and use coal generated electricity at 3pm on a wednesday, they then buy and dump wind generated electricty at 4am on the thursday.
I'm not a hippie, I'm a realist.
I think everyones English
I don't think anyone is suggesting we move all our production over to wind.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that wind is not intermittent.
There is no reason we can't combine wind, solar, wave, tide and hydro electricity. Between them, the supply should even out somewhat, and yes you can store energy in many ways. Storage technology in improving all the time. Here in Ireland, the power company has been running a pumped storage station for several decades. Basically they pump water up a hill when there is surplus supply, and let it down through turbines when needed. A little primitive but not bad for 1974.
the issue with uclear power is how to fund disposal of the site
That is a cost issue. At present it is taken up by the taxpayer, thereby artificially deflating the cost of nuclear energy.
Quizmaster
I own shares in a pumped storage station in wales, two actualy, and yes, they're brilliant. They also use vast quantities of concrete and steel, they arent green in the slightest.
The UK almost depletes its pumped storage every day.
So, lets say 10% of our energy comes from wind, we need pumped storage for, how many days power? If its calm for 10 days, we need pumped storage for an entire days worth of power.
We currently have pumped storage for 6 hours, and they're the biggest infrastructure projects the UK has ever set upon.
Where are we going to build all these stations? I suppose we could flood wales.
I'm all for green power, well I'm not, I'm all for power. We could build thousands of medium scale hydro dams, they're already built in fact, we just need to hook up a generator, but the EA blocks them at every turn. Solar is brilliant, well, not brilliant, but works, we could put solar panels on every house in the UK that generates power at the time its most wanted.
Wind doesnt even come close. The only thing wind has in its favour is an organised lobby that has bought the EU.
As for nuclear disposal.
How much will it cost to dispose of a nuclear site in 70 years?
Bear in mind that the First World War, which ended 90 years ago, cost less than the current wind farm plan, considerably so, in nominal terms.
You cant answer that question, there is no anwer, there never can be, so its pointless asking it. When you consider that the current crop of reactors are being built in the same location as the last, an answer becomes pointless, because its a question that will never need to be answered.
I'm not a hippie, I'm a realist.
I think everyones English
Countrywide grids are a bad idea for a start, so we're starting from the wrong place. The intermittency problem is mirrored by its opposite - the all-night running of thermal power stations, and the solutions to both will be very similar. But the latter problem is largely ignored at the moment, even as it melts the icecaps.
A quick search shows that as for France's nuclear accidents, they had "86 level-1 incidents in 2007, and 114 in 2006".
What does a level-1 incident look like?
"The incident prompted authorities to ban the consumption of well water and the watering of crops from two polluted rivers, as well as fishing, swimming and water sports. Local authorities said the leak happened during the washing of a tank."
This is the French government and owner of the nuclear industry 'self-reporting' by the way.
Another French 'nuclear accident' occurred when they let off a series of nuclear bombs underwater in Pacific atolls that 'belong' to France. Oops! Why worry about nuclear terrorism when the official owners will happily let off a few?
They can't help pissing in their own water and other people's too. That's why private investors are thin on the ground.
Here in Norfolk, we've got windfarms galore. When all is said & done,whatever the pro's & con's, to provide enough power for this country we would have to cover it with turbines (& that's with them all working). Invariably,approx 10% are out of action at any one time. We have to have alternatives, & having worked at Sizewell, i would say that nuclear is the best & cleanest.
it's either one or the other, or neither of the two.
