The United States built more than 100 nuclear plants in a period of 20-25 years while providing the cheapest electricity in the world.
Suddenly we learn that what has already happened is impossible.
The first commercial nuclear power in the Western world - Calder Hall - came on line in the mid 1950's and shut in 2003. The. First. Nuclear. Plant.
The capital cost of nuclear plants face objections because of the current generation's selfishness and hatred of all future generations.
It is very, very, very clear that with modern computational power, advances in materials science, and with advances in nuclear chemistry that have dwarfed what was known when Calder Hall was built, that it is very, very, very, very clear that nuclear power plants can be built that will last for 80 years, perhaps a century. Of course, I know this because I've spent a lot of time looking into the subject.
You say wind power is "cheap" and easy to build. Really? You may or may not know this, but the Danish Energy Agency maintains a database of every single piece of shit wind turbine they have built.
It's here: Master Register of Wind Turbines
Now, before making cockamamie statements about capital costs, one needs to do what I have done, and look the data.
I have done this several times; it takes about two or three hours of working with Excel functions to determine the lifetime of these wind pieces of shit in that off shore oil and gas drilling hellhole, Denmark.
Now you could do that yourself if you really care, or you can just make stuff up. Or, you can read my work on the subject which is here: Average Lifetime of Danish Wind Turbines, as of February 2018
An excerpt:
If one downloads the Excel file available in the link for reference 29 one can show that the Danes, as of the end of March 2015, have built and operated 8,002 wind turbines of all sizes. Of these, 2727, or 34.1% of them have been decommissioned. Of those that were decommissioned, the mean lifetime was 16.94 years (16 years and 310 days). Twenty-one of the decommissioned wind turbines operated less than two years, two never operated at all, and 103 operated for less than 10 years. Among decommissioned turbines, the one that lasted the longest did so for 34 years and 210 days. Among all 2727 decommissioned wind turbines, 6 lasted more than 30 years...
...Almost three years have passed since I wrote that piece. Having accessed the database again, I thought to update the "survival time" of the decommissioned wind turbines, which as of last night had reacted 3,232, with 505 more having failed since then, a rate of about 168 per year.
I decided to play with the Excel functions to update the data.
I'm amused to report that the average lifetime of failed wind turbines has in fact, increased. It is now 17 years and 240 days. The longest lived turbine made it to 35 years and 240 days, a 22 kw unit commissioned on January 9 1981 and decommissioned on September 6, 2016.
...Of the 3,232 decommissioned turbines, 3 others made it to 35 years, and 14 more than 30 years.
Of course, there are some that never operated at all, and 157 that operated ten or less years.
This data suggests that every 20 years or so, on average, the entire wind industry will need to be replaced
I would prefer that rather than make a very specious argument paying selective attention to capital costs, while conveniently ignoring the capital, fixed, and environmental costs of the gas plants to back this rickety shit up, this on reduced capacity utilization, driving costs through the roof, you make an attempt to examine the
ethics of this situation.
I live in New Jersey. I have lived here for more than 1/4 of a century. For most of my tenure here, much of my power came from the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant, which was shut recently by appeals to stupidity and the argument that dangerous natural gas is "cheap." The Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant was designed when I was a child, and came on line before I left high school. I am now an old man who has lived off the wealth that plant provided, reliable power, produced for generations on a small plot of land.
The Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant was a
gift from my father's generation to mine. Lives were saved because if that plant hadn't been built, a coal plant would have been there, and coal kills people in normal operations, not in accidents.
What are we leaving for kids born today, babies? Wind turbines that will be landfill before they enter college? Aren't we proud of ourselves? Aren't we wonderful people? Fuck our children! Fuck our grandchildren! Fuck every great grandchild to come!
It rather amazes me how nominal "liberals" turn into Ayn Rand Capitalists when, and only when, the cost of building a nuclear plant is mentioned. Nuclear plants built
today all face FOAKE (First of a Kind Engineering) costs because ignorant people deliberately destroyed the infrastructure assembled by some of the greatest minds of the 20th century to engage their
reactionary fantasies about how wonderful Holland was in the 16th century. It is clear to me that people who complain about the alleged cost of nuclear plants, without explaining the history mentioned at the outset, that more than 100 plants were built while providing the cheapest power in the world, know as little about economics as they do about engineering, environmental science and ethics.
Wind power is a disaster. It is not sustainable. It is not clean. It is just more junk we are leaving for our descendants to clean up after we've depleted all of their material resources and left them with a destroyed atmosphere, destroyed seas, destroyed lands, and wilderness despoiled and wrecked by converting virgin ecosystems into industrial parks.
History will
not forgive us, nor should it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
