World's largest offshore wind farm

DaveJoyce - 5 years ago [ Reply ]

Super interesting to see the engineering and sheer mass of these turbines up close. But the whole idea of powering the world with wind is a foolâ€™s errand. The energy density of wind will never compare to the energy density of nuclear. Wind has massive land requirements. Nuclear has very little. Wind only runs the turbine for 10-40% of the time, nuclear runs ALL the time. The environmental impacts of wind compared to nuclear is massive due to the sheer amount of resources and land that goes into its creation (not to mention taxpayer subsidies). Generation 4 nuclear is safe, canâ€™t melt down, and cheap. The world is run by idiots.

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spydyrman - 5 years ago

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Not gonna lie Dave, when I saw the words "offshore wind farm" I just started laughing. Anybody want to take odds on profitability?

Heap of atoms (guest) - 5 years ago [ Reply ]

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Yes dave, the world is run by idiots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFv5yY7pMgQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fiD8rbCvjI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining There is more to consider than what you wrote. Is anyone approving Generation 4 power plant? Look at what is happing beacause of the Boeing 737 Max8, just because a new system could be the cause of the crashes.

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DaveJoyce - 5 years ago

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The point is wind and solar are just political vanity projects. Energy demands are only going up. And the future will not be run on wind and solar because the energy density is extremely thin and always will be. Imagine if all the money weâ€™ve wasted on wind and solar was put into something like nuclear that actually has a chance?

DaveJoyce - 5 years ago [ Reply ]

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I just submitted this TED talk video, hopefully it gets posted. It's pretty persuasive in it's arguments against wind and solar, and it's from someone who thinks the world is going to end because of CO2, so there's that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w

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German (guest) - 5 years ago [ Reply ]

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That is interesting indeed. I am from Germany and there still is no permanent storage for the nuclear waste. No one wants to live near nuclear waste, so they canâ€™t agree upon it. Besides that, the gas turbines are only running at 25% because the coal has priority. On the other hand, gas comes from abroad.

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(guest) - 5 years ago [ Reply ]

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Nuclear (fission) is becoming more popular again, but there are four main drawbacks. (1) While newest generation power plants are safer by design they are not very safe in practice. The main threats in ascending order are (a) terrorist attacks (it is just a matter of time until some fanatic flies a plane not into a tall building in Manhatten but into a nuclear plant), (b) earthquakes and natural desasters (Fukoshima) and (c) regular humans with their greed/negligeance followed-up by the desire to cover-up their greed/negligeance (missed maintance to save money or because of lazyness; there are many examples of near catastrophies). (2) Uranium will run out in 200 years at most. To produce low enriched unranium (the kind you need for light water reactors) you need about 10 times as much natural unranium. About 5 millionn tons of unranium have been discovered. Lets be optimistic and assume that 10 more million tons can be discovered if we try hard. Currently the 450 reactors reactors use roughly 75k tons of uranium per year (7.5k tons low enriched). 15 million tons at a rate of 75k will last us 200 years. With China and India (each with a population of 1400 million) building lots of reactors right now, we could end up with a total of lets say 2500 reactors worldwide in a few decades if China/India take clues from France (population 60 million, 45 reactors, roughly 1 per million). 2500 reactors use 375k tons of uranium. We would use up all uranium in 40 years. Uranium can be recyled to a degree, therefore realistically maybe 80 years. (c) Nuclear waste. That shit is nasty, lasts for thousands of years, destroys the ground water and will kill your grandchildren because we humans (cf. greed/negligeance) are shit at keeping stuff safe for 1000s of years. Actually, based on prior examples [Hanford site and Maxey flat, USA (who would have thought that rain is a thing?); Majak, Russia (radioactive storm anyone?); Tricastin, France (should we have build the container to last more than 10 years?); Goiana, Brasil (Who would have thought that people steal that shit?),...] I don't believe we can keep the stuff safe more more than two generations, at most. (4) Nuclear ist expensive. With costs for renewables (photvoltaic, wind is a form of solar energy) going down ineffficiant storage (e.g. converting water to hydrogen) will become economically viable despite their inefficency. Even if you lose 80 %, you still get 20 for nearly free. That is the worst case if we don't invent better battery technology, which may speed up the eventual W for renewables.

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Ch1ll1ng - 5 years ago [ Reply ]

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There are some very good arguments against nuclear as well the waste problem is hughe, the risk of catastrophic failure and therefor hughe amount of land loss are usually just a matter of time the mining of uranium is quite impactfull on nature the refining cost money and energy as well. The subvention needet to keep nuclear alive are way too high. If you take alook at the 5 biggest incidents the risks of loss of human life is way too high. As long as we havent found solutions to this problem we cannot advocate nuclear.

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LazG - 5 years ago [ Reply ]

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Not sure, why my long ass post was not submitted under my account name, but yeah Ch1ll1ng, I totally forgot the environmental impact of mining, too.

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DaveJoyce - 5 years ago [ Reply ]

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Thereâ€™s a lot of misconceptions about the risks of nuclear though. Fukushima is a good example. I think one person has died from radiation, whereas 2000 people have died trying to flee the area out of fear of radiation. Investment in generation 4 nuclear is the way to go as the plant canâ€™t have a meltdown even if a terrorist bombs it, and they can utilize spent fuel. Most of the nuke reactors in use today are generation 2

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Ch1ll1ng - 5 years ago

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6 workers died 13 additional people died couse of the nuclear plant. Still containimated water is circulating there and some still leaking into the ocean as of today. Also this is just the biggest incidents there are thousands of smaller incidents who led to contanimated areas or air or water or whatever. Nah man im fine nuclear is not ready yet. As long as profit is more importand than safety im fine.

heftygrain - 5 years ago [ Reply ]

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Let's just hope nuclear *fusion* power generation is possible some day. Lots of energy and almost no radioactive waste.

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