Windmill nonsense.. Tilting at Wind mills

[Andy Hall]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:39:26 +0100, Guy King wrote (in article ):

Really. Hopefully they all have season tickets with Specsavers....

That would always be worthwhile.....

[Andy Hall]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 23:12:36 +0100, [e-mail] wrote (in article ):

I don't think that it's trivial at all when one begins to realise that none of this is for altruistic reasons.

When one reads about the threats by Scottish Power to invest elsewhere than Scotland because the planning processes were taking longer than they cared for it becomes abundantly clear that all is not the sweetness and light being claimed. When one further reads that planning authorities are effectively acting as judge and jury in their own cause, the whole thing starts to smell rather badly. Actually rather worse than a red herring.

Trying to pretend that these things are graceful and attractive is a nonsense. In effect they are and will increasingly become a distributed industrial site with very poor return considering the amount of open space that would be defaced.

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:35:16 +0100 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-

The letters pages of the Herald and Scotsman contained the usual suspects, making their usual false claims.

Your personal opinion.

The scale of projects is at

"Myth: Tens of thousands of wind turbines will be cluttering the British countryside "Fact: Government legislation requires that by 2010, 10% of electricity supply must come from renewable sources. Wind power is currently the most cost effective renewable energy technology in a position to help do that. Around 3,500 additional modern wind turbines are all that would be needed to deliver 8% of the UK's electricity by 2010, roughly 2,000 onshore and 1,500 offshore."

To get these numbers in perspective the current Beauly - Denny transmission line consists of about 800 pylons. The proposed replacement would consist of about 600 larger pylons.

Which bit of, "Wicks highlighted the positive findings from the first DTI commissioned NOP survey ? published today" do you have difficulty understanding?

I am sure that you won't mind me

So far you have not managed to highlight any bullshit, just like a number of your predecessors.

I can recall when the same patronising comments were made about wind generated electricity.

Ah, a trade interest group. Incidentally one with a long history of forecasts which were in time shown to be inaccurate.

[David Hansen]

On 10 Jul 2006 12:23:23 -0700 someone who may be [e-mail] wrote this:-

Coal, for producing electricity, is burnt largely as it comes out of the quarry. Larger lumps may be reduced in size to make them suitable for feeding into the crushers. Colliery waste tips largely date from the days when small bits of coal were called slack and could not be sold as they don't do a lot on a fire grate. The ash after burning is inert and is often used for building materials.

The ore uranium comes from has to be put through many energy and materials intensive processes before it is turned into a fuel rod.

If one is mad enough to reprocess the spent fuel rod then this is energy and materials intensive too. One ends up with large amounts of highly radioactive acid. This is currently stored in one of the largest terrorist targets in the world, the infamous waste tanks at Windscale. The Tomsk-7 explosion indicates what effects a problem with such a tank is capable of. In theory the contents of the waste tanks are to be turned into glass blocks. However, the last time I checked, a few months ago, the three glass block plants have still never run at anything like their designed capacity. IIRC even if they did manage to run at their design capacity it would take decades to deal with the existing waste.

[David Hansen]

On 10 Jul 2006 12:28:14 -0700 someone who may be [e-mail] wrote this:-

I think it is.

I note that the point remains unanswered.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:02:24 +0100 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-

Please name the planning authority that is also building wind farms.

Who is pretending?

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:54:30 +0100 (BST) someone who may be "Dave Liquorice" wrote this:-

Both are talked up by the anti-wind lobby. However, they have been demonstrated to be nowhere near the problems that the antis claim they are. For example the latter was a minor problem at Whitemoor, but this was soon solved. I doubt if the OP is close enough for there to be any effect.

It is more expensive to build offshore. One of the reasons for this is that the turbines have to be designed to cope with the salt, for example by using pressurised nacelles. However, in theory these extra costs are outweighed by the ability to use larger turbines.

Offshore turbines can only be built when government grants permission. They only did so relatively recently and the first offshore wind farms are now operating.

[meow2222]

The pros and cons list goes on... for example coal releases more radioactivity than nuke plants etc. Heavy metals also. And these translate into disease and deaths.

Do you know what the death rates are for each mining operation, coal vs nuke? I dont. Maybe we could then look at relative deaths later in the process, cost and death rate seem to be the 2 prime issues. (I never understand people that object to win generation on the basis of 'looks')

NT

[meow2222]

Its an obviously false point. I wouldnt know quite how to answer it.

NT

[meow2222]

I dont know what you mean at all, but I fail to see how it could be relevant. The real issues behind power generation choices are deaths and cost, planning authority conflicts have little relevance to the real points afaics.

matter of opinion, but even if youre right I'd say its trivial. Would you rather have another 10000 people die or would you rather see windmills?

sure, just like we already have with telegraph poles, telecomms cabinets and so on.

If the only change is the appearance of the lanscape thats a miniscule cost for the very good return of large numbers of people not dying. Someone has to get real.

NT

[meow2222]

Of course its about cost. Offshore wind is probably the future but not until cost has dropped enough to make it compete. Until then its not a q of maximising return but business survival. No-one is going to invest in something that will ruin them.

NT

[David Hansen]

On 11 Jul 2006 00:07:57 -0700 someone who may be [e-mail] wrote this:-

The normal radiation releases with nuclear fuel are before and after they have been in the power station, so the case is not as clear cut as some claim.

I'm not going to give a simple answer, as there is none.

That depends whether one includes the deaths of coal miners in China. One of the interesting facets of the nuclear lobby is that it is happy to discuss these deaths, but not happy to discuss the deaths from the three nuclear disasters at Mayak. I conclude double standards are at work.

On China I suspect that we will eventually find an even worse nuclear mess than in Russia. We do now know rather a lot about the Soviet Union/Russia's nuclear legacy. That includes pouring radioactive liquid into the ground, out of sight but not out of mind as it is a major concern that nobody knows what to do with. In 2004 the liquid was reported as spreading at a rate of 300m per year and

2km from a river tributary that leads to the Arctic.

is a good starting point, but may lead to sleepless nights.

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:04:57 +0100 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-

The evidence of polling is that some of his neighbours would disagree, but not many.

The Sustainable Development Commission's report on the subject gathers many studies on the subject together

[David Hansen]

On 11 Jul 2006 00:20:01 -0700 someone who may be [e-mail] wrote this:-

Defaced is also a matter of personal prejudice. As is shown by

most of the land can be used as before.

[David Hansen]

On 11 Jul 2006 00:09:39 -0700 someone who may be [e-mail] wrote this:-

There is nothing false about the point I made. Getting the ore and turning it into fuel rods involves a fair consumption of fossil fuels and thus greenhouse gas emissions.

Some of the processes do involve electricity and one can claim with some legitimacy that the electricity involved simply reduces the amount of energy extracted from the uranium.

[meow2222]

again I dont see the logic there. What matters is total release, where it happens in the chain does not seem to make a great amount of difference.

If the purpose is to decide which way to go in Britain, then Chinese conditions dont seem directly relevant to that.

Promotion is of little relevance to the choice between power gen technologies afaics.

Sure, just as we have the deaths with mining in china. I doubt we'll duplicate either of these in Britain.

NT

[Andy Hall]

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 05:29:29 +0100, David Hansen wrote (in article ):

According to you.

.. and that of quite a number of people it would appear.

Two THOUSAND.... Geez......

On the contrary. I have highlighted acres of it. You just don't happen to find it convenient.

So this must call into question the whole basis of the SDC reports...

[meow2222]

I fail to see what about this situation isnt perfectly obvious, hence its difficult to reply to it in any useful way.

NT

[David Hansen]

On 11 Jul 2006 01:24:29 -0700 someone who may be [e-mail] wrote this:-

The logic is simple, one must consider the whole process. Simply concentrating on that part of the process at the power station gives a false picture.

I tend to agree; but deaths in Chinese coal mines are often introduced into the discussion by the nuclear lobby, who are not so keen to discuss nuclear operations in China which probably have similarities to that in Russia.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 09:25:56 +0100 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-

Only in your mind.

On the contrary, I find it perfectly convenient to expose the flaws in your arguments. If something else crops up I may not find it convenient to continue exposing the flaws, but that's life.

Not in the least. I note that you have no real response to the point though.