Economy Germans Revolt Against Wind Power – As Power Prices Spiral Out of Control

[jefferz]

You should see the Hanford Clean Up Site. It's the largest U.S. Department of Energy Project. I think the number is $17 Billion a year. My company works on data and metrics for the site. I will say, they are doing a fine job of reducing the footprint of the waste from the Cold War reactors that produced our nuclear arsenal, but the cost is huge.

You can actually visit Reactor B as a National Monument via bus tour into the restricted zone, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you are a nuclear geek like me.

That's the problem with nuclear, when things go bad they go really bad. If a wind tower gets damaged, the worst thing that's going to happen is flying fiberglass that won't contaminate the soil making it uninhabitable for thousands of years.
I'm not a nuclear geek but I do enjoy the topic. I usually watch Plainly Difficults channel and then do research from there.

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about fracking?

 

[Cid]

You've clearly never seen the massive wind turbine and blade dumps. Also, the footprint on the landscape is terrible.

Nuclear is incredibly safe here in North America. I include Canada, because they do Nuclear very well.

You've clearly never done a lap of reactor 4 in shorts and a t-shirt.

 

[Whippy McGee]

You've clearly never done a lap of reactor 4 in shorts and a t-shirt.

Nope. But, I have been on most of the U.S. Commercial Nuclear Sites, at Hanford, and at Y12.

 

[Hadron90]

Wind power is very expensive and not so good for vast spaces in the environment. Solar is also expensive when done as a "farm", but can be smart locally (homes, buildings, parking lots). The best "Green Energy" is nuclear by a mile. Cost, Amount, Footprint, etc... it's a winner with its zero carbon emissions. If you truly fear Global Warming (Man made or not), then you should embrace nuclear.

I'm skeptical of the home solar panels. Its a large initial investment, and they would need to run at a very high efficiency for a long time to pay for themselves. I'm skeptical that they are as durable as they claim.

 

[Whippy McGee]

I'm skeptical of the home solar panels. Its a large initial investment, and they would need to run at a very high efficiency for a long time to pay for themselves. I'm skeptical that they are as durable as they claim.

Localized panels on structures and soon to be built into roads can be very beneficial. The real hold up is better fuel cell technology "batteries". Solar has its place, but it cannot be a baseload energy like nuclear, neither can wind. So, we have to ask ourselves Natural Gas, Nuclear, Coal, or a combo? Gas is the cheapest initially, but nuclear surpasses gas around the 20 year mark.

 

[jefferz]

Localized panels on structures and soon to be built into roads can be very beneficial. The real hold up is better fuel cell technology "batteries". Solar has its place, but it cannot be a baseload energy like nuclear, neither can wind. So, we have to ask ourselves Natural Gas, Nuclear, Coal, or a combo? Gas is the cheapest initially, but nuclear surpasses gas around the 20 year mark.

Solar panel roads are never going to happen. They're better off lining the roadways with the panels than trying to put them in the road.
Any attempts at a solar roadway thus far have been colossal failures.

 

[Whippy McGee]

Solar panel roads are never going to happen. They're better off lining the roadways with the panels than trying to put them in the road.
Any attempts at a solar roadway thus far have been colossal failures.

I see the people pushing it at conferences about once a year. They keep claiming they are close to pulling it off, but I have heard they make the roads too dangerous.

 

[rob mafia]

What environmental impact? Those reports that they kill 1/10000th the amount of bird life that domestic cats do?

whales, for starters.

solar's made a lot of developments in recent years. at least, maxeon sure has.

 

[Strychnine]

I used to live in Germany and I've never heard one of my drinking buddies complain about windmills.

Have you ever been to Wyoming? There are acres of windfarms there. I aske a guy "Where are all the cattle?" He said, "Montana. We have wind farms here because we make so much money off what they generate and we sell all of the power to California."

 

[jefferz]

I see the people pushing it at conferences about once a year. They keep claiming they are close to pulling it off, but I have heard they make the roads too dangerous.

You have to make something that provides enough traction to cars but lets light pass through. And it also has to stand up to the constant abuse of cars weighting 3000+ pounds constantly driving over them.

 

[Renard]

The issue with nuclear plants is that they're extremely expensive and long to build and it takes decades of operation for the investment to merely break even. Even if we started building these new-gen plants now, they would be made obsolete within a few years of service by rapidly improving solar tech. They wouldn't even pay for themselves.

 

[Cid]

whales, for starters.

solar's made a lot of developments in recent years. at least, maxeon sure has.

Windmills impact whales?

 

[Cid]

The issue with nuclear plants is that they're extremely expensive and long to build and it takes decades of operation for the investment to merely break even. Even if we started building these new-gen plants now, they would be made obsolete within a few years of service by rapidly improving solar tech. They wouldn't even pay for themselves.

Aren't some of the new gens supposed to run off nuclear waste from the old gen? That should result in quite a large reduction in costs.

@Whippy McGee want to shed some light for us on this?

 

[rob mafia]

Windmills impact whales?

yes.

 

[Cid]

yes.

 

[Whippy McGee]

Aren't some of the new gens supposed to run off nuclear waste from the old gen? That should result in quite a large reduction in costs.

@Whippy McGee want to shed some light for us on this?

Sure. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) can use the waste from our current plants as their fuel. We have about 150 years of fuel for them with that alone. They have no melt down capability and can be placed nearly anywhere you need them, eliminating power lines through forests.

 

[BIKES!]

At least in 1994 we finally came to the conclusion that throwing 90,000+ barrels of nuclear waste off our coasts was a bad idea. It only took 50 years to come to that conclusion.

And replaced it with 3 billion masks and counting. Ocean is much happier now

 

[Hearse Lightning]

Plus all of the Germans sound like prepubescent Darth Vaders now.

 

[ElKarlo]

Not really. It's dangerous when stupid people do stupid things like building a nuclear plant without a containment vessel (Chernobyl), or having a meltdown and not venting off the hydrogen and pressure for over 16 hours before an explosion (Fukashima failed for who knows what reason vs. Three Mile Island did this exactly right).

Nuclear is incredibly safe in The Western World.

Fukushima failed because they built it in the sea. It didn’t have a real tsunami wall that protect it from the occasional massive waves. The generator that was the backup for when the power went off was I a place where it got hit by the tsunami and it was knocked out. So they basically had no ability to stop a meltdown due to location and a dumb location for their backup generator

 

[ElKarlo]

Tr

The issue with nuclear plants is that they're extremely expensive and long to build and it takes decades of operation for the investment to merely break even. Even if we started building these new-gen plants now, they would be made obsolete within a few years of service by rapidly improving solar tech. They wouldn't even pay for themselves.

True but there was some push back in the 00s to build them when energy prices were up. They would be online by now and would be providing low cost and clean energy now and would give us a chance to wean of petroleum