Talk-Polywell.org

[MSimon]

Fur Da Grater Gud Du Val.
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Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

[Josh Cryer]

MSimon, the paper still points out the time period and cost of building nuclear vs building solar/wind. You can actually ignore the global warming aspect of it, if you wish. Nuclear isn't workable unless you have a massive change in the culture of nuclear production (lower permitting times, faster building times, and so on).

And I find it remarkable that you can say we're due for another ice age when the only evidence you have for that is the same data that suggests we're heating up! It's going to be so interesting when the next decade shows the warming trend validated (so people won't be able to so easily fudge the graph and say because one year is cooler than the rest the data is wrong). I remember reading an interesting national geographic article with this arctic circle zoologist. Not a global warming scientist, someone who just looks at animals. He was noting the ecological changes over time in his 50 years of studies (glacial reduction and the like), and basically said "CO2 is just humanities grandest experiment. We'll see what happens." (This was a perfectly neutral statement, he made no real statement about "global warming.")

We'll see what happens.



Mike Holmes, basically, in a very short nutshell, the paper is pointing out that solar/wind can be built now (and is, extensively, all around the world) with less land area that nuclear, with less cost than nuclear, with less time than nuclear. I'm not being anti nuclear here, I am only accepting the political reality of the paper. So a dozen nuclear plants are being built in the next decade. A hundred thousand megawatt windmills are, too.

[MSimon]

[Mike Holmes]

[tomclarke]

Re comparison,

I have not seen this paper but one difference it may be (deliberately) avoiding is that renewable power is intermittent whereas nuclear power is suitable for base load, so there is an additional cost of storage associated with renewable power.

[MSimon]

[tomclarke]

Yes,

I agree with Simon on greens anti-tech bias. They have a whole load of prejudices, and it makes their responses incoherent.

Specifically, the anti-nuclear stance makes CO2 reductions effectively impossible - and they should be caring about GW.

Unfortunately the anti-nuclear lobby (in UK at least) is not just greens but many other people who see Chernobyl in every new reactor (359 Welsh hill farmers still cannot sell animals without strict radiation checks).

It is a shame that it is so difficult to get across the differences in technology between now and earlier generations of nuclear power.

Best wishes, Tom

[MSimon]

The Green prejudice can be summed up:

Change is bad and what we have now is no good either. " I demand you sacrifice fur da God do Val. Me? I'm all right Jack. Hemp sneakers and I recycle everything. Down with the wasters. Or tax them out of business. Which ever comes first. Vegan all the way. What's your food mileage score?"
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Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

[djolds1]

[Nanos]

I was chatting someplace with some greens about solar panels and they showed me this graph which proves how solar PV production causes so much more CO2 than even nuclear...

Suddenly even solar is looking like its getting a bad name.


(And with me having just fitted one of the infernal devices onto my bicycle to keep my airhorn battery charged..)


Though that was old fashioned panels, so perhaps the new thin film stuff they will not be able to argue so easily with, but I bet the production of it causes some toxic anti-green side effect someplace..

(So far they have been rather mute on the, 'would you object to acres of solar panels?' question..)


I think one of the reasons, at least in the UK for an anti-technology view is that science is taught less and less in schools now, all that dumbing down, I hear they have even stopped teaching about the internal combustion engine! (No more wankel jokes in class..)

[hanelyp]

[Josh Cryer]

I have my problem with the greens, of course. I'm just noting the current political (and economic) reality. Frankly, I would hate to live next to a windfarm (there's a good video circling YouTube about the noise they make). One windmill would probably be fine. But that said, the paper is likely correct.

Here's another paper: http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/7373/2008/acp-8-7373-2008.html

I think I know who's trying to manipulate me and it ain't the scientists.

[MSimon]

[MSimon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6Q59FnkrY8

So 42 db? Peak?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure

A car at 30 ft is 60 to 80 db.

Normal talking at 3 ft = 40 to 60 db. So outside you may have to talk a little louder. Inside - if car noise is not bothersome neither will the windturbine noise be.

Still. I wouldn't put wind turbines in residential areas. Next to a major or even minor highway they would be unnoticeable.

BTW videos of wind turbines are not reliable measures because video cams have AGC built in so that variable levels of sound come out at the same volume. The AGC can be as much as 40 db to 60 db on a very good cam.

What you want is some one talking at 3 to 6 ft with the turbines rotating. That is a better measure.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wind+farm+noise&search=Search

Of course offshore turbines are no problem.
_________________
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

[Helius]