Wind Turbines

[FrenchieBoy]

If you look at a group of them (farm or plantation?) there always seems to be quite a high proportion, say 1 in 10, not going round for one reason or another?.

Around our way if you only see 1 in 10 that aren't operating at any time then you are very very lucky. It's often more like 3 or 4 out of every 10 (Or higher) that aren't operating at any time!
I personally don't have any problem with seeing wind turbines! The problem that I do have is that we were led to understand that they would meen cheaper energy - I have yet to see that reflected in my electricity bill - Has anyone seen reductions in their electricity bill yet?

 

[rodp]

I was told, but don't know how true it is, that the blades are so finely balanced that damage from a bullet or even catapult can scrap a blade ? This in turn throws the whole lot out of balance ?

True / false ???

 

[wildfowler1]

Around here in Northants we have sea's of solar panel's popping up all over the place as well as Wind Turbines.Wf1

 

[Southern]

I know they are ugly and inefficient, more research is needed but renewables have to be the future , fossil fuels are not really an option and nuclear is just to hazardous to even consider.

"Renewable" is an adjective, now converted to a noun, and applied to forms of energy generation which are not renewable, like wind and solar machines.

They require a lot of energy to product the components and to ship them. That is energy which they are themselves incapable of producing.

They wear out and need repairs or scrapping long before they have recouped their costs.

The free market, if left to price all forms of energy, goods, and services, will sort out the most efficient technologies, means of production, shipping, and location.

Tens of thousands of ranches and farms, like mine, used windmills for decades to pump water. But when hydroelectric dams were built and distribution grids extended into rural areas, we all went to electric pumps - more reliable and less expensive than windmills.

 

[private fraser]

I hope someone comes up with fusion power (been watching Iron Man) soon. And I hope he is a Scot (been watching original Star Trek).
Then we can scrap all these ugly gadgets and get back to having countryside.
Prof Brian Cox did a really good program on fusion power a year or so ago. There are a lot of resources going into research. Its a real pot of gold.
Of course every radical new invention creates serious waves. Fusion power would definitely come into that category.

 

[Southern]

I have friends who worked on nuclear fusion, long ago. They had it working, but propaganda campaigns of fear shut it down. They are working on it again in the USA right now.

The Small Nuclear Reactor program, where you have one which can be built in a factory and sit in a small cargo truck, and power 30,000 homes, is promising. If anything goes wrong, the reactor naturally goes to sleep, shuts itself down.

The current administration here in the USA is very anti-science, anti-nuclear, slowing as much as possible the conversion of former nuclear weapons into fuel ( MOX ). Nuclear really is pretty "renewable", in that only about 5% to 10% of the power in fuel rods is consumed over several years. They can be reprocessed, reconstituted to match the reactor, with some new isotopes added in for replacement, and these could be from former weapons isotopes (about 5% in the mix), and power an industrial area with 1,000,000 people for 3 years.

 

[bogtrotter]

I have friends who worked on nuclear fusion, long ago. They had it working, but propaganda campaigns of fear shut it down. They are working on it again in the USA right now.

The Small Nuclear Reactor program, where you have one which can be built in a factory and sit in a small cargo truck, and power 30,000 homes, is promising. If anything goes wrong, the reactor naturally goes to sleep, shuts itself down.

The current administration here in the USA is very anti-science, anti-nuclear, slowing as much as possible the conversion of former nuclear weapons into fuel ( MOX ). Nuclear really is pretty "renewable", in that only about 5% to 10% of the power in fuel rods is consumed over several years. They can be reprocessed, reconstituted to match the reactor, with some new isotopes added in for replacement, and these could be from former weapons isotopes (about 5% in the mix), and power an industrial area with 1,000,000 people for 3 years.

Or wipe them all out.

 

[old man]

Quite a few sprouting up here, personally make me feel green anyway.

 

[Mick9abf]

I recall watching a programme one night about the various options on power and the decommissioning of a Nuclear plant in the UK. I could be wrong here but seem to think one of the scientists said there was two types of Nuclear power available.

The type that produces weapons grade depleted uranium and another type that is far more 'eco friendly' but didn't produce the same bi product, or at least one not as volatile as the other - I could be talking complete **** tho!!

I think the long and the short of it was the scientist basically said, from a consumer side of things, wind was a waste of time and the only viable option to power the grid realistically was this 'clean nuclear', if there is such a thing.

 

[private fraser]

I once got a "green" person very annoyed by saying of course nuclear power is renewable.. you just shove another fuel rod in.

 

[bogtrotter]

How many on here are old enough to remember Chernobyl the worst nuclear disaster of all time, 400 times more fallout than Hiroshima, a 30 km area around the reactor is said will not be fit to support human life for 20,000 years

However its not just the Ukraine that was effected many parts of Europe also had high levels of fallout the Alps, the Welsh mountains and the Scottish Highlands in particular, not until 2010 were sheep in my area given the all clear and allowed to enter the food chain.

Exact figures are hard to come by but many cases of cancer and birth defects in children here in Scotland can be blamed on Chernobyl.

Depending on which study you read Chernobyl will be responsible for between 41,000 and a million premature deaths world wide.

Don't know about any one else but as far as I am concerned nuclear in all its forms is just to big a risk,

 

[Sauer90]

I have friends who worked on nuclear fusion, long ago. They had it working, but propaganda campaigns of fear shut it down. They are working on it again in the USA right now.

The Small Nuclear Reactor program, where you have one which can be built in a factory and sit in a small cargo truck, and power 30,000 homes, is promising. If anything goes wrong, the reactor naturally goes to sleep, shuts itself down.

The current administration here in the USA is very anti-science, anti-nuclear, slowing as much as possible the conversion of former nuclear weapons into fuel ( MOX ). Nuclear really is pretty "renewable", in that only about 5% to 10% of the power in fuel rods is consumed over several years. They can be reprocessed, reconstituted to match the reactor, with some new isotopes added in for replacement, and these could be from former weapons isotopes (about 5% in the mix), and power an industrial area with 1,000,000 people for 3 years.

Fusion, is just a joke.

The Quest for Viable Fusion
As such, viable fusion is seen as a kind of holy grail energy source. And ever since the 1950s, engineers have been pursuing technical and cost effective means to harness it.
Correction: they have being fleecing the taxpayer since then, knowing that will never work!

They are 'working on it' in quite a few places, thing is if you bother to try and comprehend how fusion works you will understand that it is just a pipe dream. The only thing it has any use for is eating tax dollars.
There have been and are no working fusion reactors, like the ever lasting light bulb, just a conspiracy theory. Nothing about being anti-science - just not possible here on this planet.

As to this;

The Small Nuclear Reactor program, where you have one which can be built in a factory and sit in a small cargo truck, and power 30,000 homes, is promising. If anything goes wrong, the reactor naturally goes to sleep, shuts itself down.

Is that not what a big reactor is supposed to do? (SCRAM) What possibly makes you think they could get that right with all the practice they have had with the big stuff?
Bear in mind the yanks being world leaders in failed reactor design

 

[Mick9abf]

How many on here are old enough to remember Chernobyl the worst nuclear disaster of all time, 400 times more fallout than Hiroshima, a 30 km area around the reactor is said will not be fit to support human life for 20,000 years

However its not just the Ukraine that was effected many parts of Europe also had high levels of fallout the Alps, the Welsh mountains and the Scottish Highlands in particular, not until 2010 were sheep in my area given the all clear and allowed to enter the food chain.

Exact figures are hard to come by but many cases of cancer and birth defects in children here in Scotland can be blamed on Chernobyl.

Depending on which study you read Chernobyl will be responsible for between 41,000 and a million premature deaths world wide.

Don't know about any one else but as far as I am concerned nuclear in all its forms is just to big a risk,

I do remember it and am not advocating it either way but the unfortunate truth is wind doesn't produce and won't ever produce enough to power the country.

Fossil fuels cause pollution and are expensive to run which is the thing that really matters to governments unfortunately.

 

[bruce w]

the Shetland isles are getting lined up for a huge wind farm running down the middle of the main island ,its not going down well with the bulk of the islanders ,but i think the wind farm has now got the go ahead ,the hold up seems to be the cable to the Scottish coast ,its not the sort of thing you can pick up at the local electrical store ,sort of thing the pikies might be able to find for them.

 

[tozzybum]

we got our first giant ornament about 2 miles away ,derby got 2 of em and they very very rarely work as they dont like high winds <WTF>pointless waste of a few hundred tons of steel and a blot on the landscape.do what is obvious ,every new build and any old build house fit free solar panels and put it all into the grid.we arent the sunniest place but you can get the u.v ones that work in cloudy weather.melt all the turbines down and sell the metal to China the money can pay some of the national debt off.have heat recovery systems in factorys /workplaces and get turbines in the rivers.we sure got a bit of water in britain.not enough water in the south ,so build a few dozen giant storage tanks underground and pipe it down from the coast using desalination plants like Saudi Arabia does.theres simple solutions for a lot of issues but the goverment made a giant pointless cash cow out of wind turbines.get rid ,lets see what Britain looks like free of these carbuncles

 

[Southern]

I am not an advocate of nuclear energy, but have worked on the reprocessing of weapons into fuel ( already run for years, producing commercial power). I think that is a good thing, that we have gotten some of the weapons from the USSR, Libya, and other places.

Comparing Chernobyl to an American reactor is like comparing a Soviet automobile to a Cadillac.

At the height of the Three Mile Island accident, there was more natural background radiation in surrounding homes from radon from the bedrock, than there was inside the TMI facility. All the safety systems worked properly; the workers kept overriding them until the automation shut it all down.

The accident at Fukashima would not have been so serious had the "environmentalists" not blocked the shipment of the spent fuel rods back to the USA for reprocessing, forcing them to be stored in a pool of water while the lawsuits dragged on.

There are already small reactors running. Have been for years. On Earth, in submarines, in spacecraft.

So-called "fossil fuels" are not that polluting. You can remove 95% of the pollution with little loss of energy output, and that level was achieved in the USA in 1975, for industrial plants and for automobiles. The real waste of energy is to try to squeeze out 1% or 2% more of that last 5%. Reducing the population 5% would solve that much more easily, and solve a host of other problems, as well.

Global Warming Theory has been debunked, and was never accepted by but a small minority of academics and government employees. Man-made Climate Change Theory has now replaced it as the excuse for more government control, taxation, spending, and crony socialist "ventures" enriching the well-connected.

 

[private fraser]

I was working in Dounreay as a contractor a few years ago. The reactor was being decommissioned and the control room was empty. After passing the room a lot with never anybody there I decided to have a look in (what's the worst that could happen ).
It was like the set of a Flash Gordon tv program from the 50's. Huge dials, rheostats and switches. Scarily basic.
The station was a research facility that only contributed to the National grid once.
Hopefully they have a better idea these day's.

A funny thing..yards from the control room,not far from the sphere, there was a sign in the toilet that said "no hot water" lol.

 

[Crosshair243]

There's loads near Gibraltar in Spain and just over the water in Morocco. They cause havoc with the bird of prey migrations.
I saw a huge wind farm on the train that goes to the Grand Canyon too- the biggest and most turbines I've ever seen in one group.

 

[Feugh]

Makes the current Scottish land reform issue seem like an amateur dabble too, since it will allow the State to help itself to (or sell) resources that currently belong to the holders of title in the overlying land, without compensation (except for access damage)

Mineral resources underground in the UK don't belong to the landowner, they belong to the government, who will license areas for exploration and exploitation. It has always been thus. This is different from the USA, where landowners own the oil or gas under their land, and this has pushed on the speed of the shale gas revolution there. The only change here is that exploration is being allowed under national parks, nothing else.
Rarely has so much rubbish been written about one subject as has been written about frac-ing. Most people don't understand the process or even what frac-ing is, yet are always happy to give an (usually negative) opinion. That is why it's a sure-fire winner for a political party to write it off at the same time they're promising Santa Claus, the tooth-fairy and the Easter Bunny.

 

[Southern]

In the Western US, the federal government owns most of the land, and has mineral rights under some private land. That is how Clinton and Obama have been able to stop the mining of our cleanest coal... or let it be mined but exported.

Recovery of oil by fracturing was patented in 1948, and has been in wide use since the 1980s, when instrumentation improved. The EPA did an extensive study on it in 1971, when the agency first started, and again in the 1980s, and found no environmental detriment. Suddenly, when billions of cubic feet of natural gas are discovered, then shale oil, dropping the world price of oil by 1/3, the EPA wants more study. It upset the political apple cart.