You guys just love to ignore capacity factor don't you?

Too bad wind power only makes any juice 30% of the time. Just ask those people in Minnesota how they feel about hundreds of millions of dollars worth of newly installed turbines with frozen hydraulic fluid that are producing ZERO power during high wind conditions!

I'll take my 93% reliable nuclear reactor!

Hello Man Overboard

That sounds to us more a problem with the decision to buy these turbines
rather then any problem with wind power itself. The frozen fluid problem is fixable it's just they didn't consider it beforehand.

Can you point us to where Minnesota spent 'hundreds of millions of dollars' please? On the issue of the frozen turbines we can only find mention of eleven turbines bought at a cost of $3.3 million or $3.6 million depending on which story you read.

Just to reiterate what we have written - the installed wind with the capacity factor and everything in 2009 alone wind provides as much electricity as 12
large reactors. That means capacity factor is taken into account when making that calculation. Nuclear hasn't managed that in the last 22 years. Babies born
that year are now old enough to rent cars!

Also, we could give you dozens of examples where nuclear reactors are anything but 93% reliable.

Of course we factor in capacity factor. Check that graph again - newly added wind in 2009 total for 37,000 MW. Yet we do not say this equals to thirty seven reactors, but twelve. This takes into account how much electricity they actually produce, so this is fair and accurate comparison.

We all know why no nukes have been built in 22 years - you guys will chain yourselves to the bulldozers!

That and your highly paid lawyers will drag things out in court to the tune of millions in legal fees.

What you also didn't mention is all of that added nuclear capacity is without building a single new reactor. That is all upgrades and improvements to existing reactors.

If you want to improve those frozen turbines, you need to heat that hydro fluid, that is energy subtracted from the output of that turbine, if that is even enough, which 70% of the time it isn't. So you will be sucking juice OFF the grid to heat your science projects while my reactor is pumping out MW.

As a pro-nuclear activist that specializes in reprocessing used fuel, I am all for wind power ... if it is available. The fact is: the wind doesn't always blow and this country needs a baseline energy source.

The International Energy Agency/Energy Technology Perspectives 2008 Blue Map that suggests a four-fold global expansion of nuclear by 2050. That’s a massive 1,300 large reactors being built in the next 40 years. Even if that wildly optimistic target were to be met it would cut greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector by just 6%.

Would it be accurate to suppose that the 37,000 MW of installed wind power represents 37,000/4 = 9,250 (approx) wind turbines? If that's the case then around 9,250/12 = 770 turbines would be needed to equal one nuclear power station. Is that practical? It seems like a huge amount of space, metal, concrete etc. would be required, compared to one nuclear plant. I've read elsewhere that a 140-turbine wind farm covers 55km^2, so presumably 770 turbines would require 300km^2. Sizewell only occupies about 1km^2. Where do we have the space to put up these vast numbers of turbines? Surely not in the UK?

You say that 1,300 nuclear plants are proposed in the cited document, so if we're going to decide not to have those and go for wind instead, presumably you would need 1,300 x 770 = 1,001,000 wind turbines. Can we really expect to install over a million wind turbines between now and 2050? Also, wouldn't those million wind turbines only cut CO2 emissions by 6% too, just like the equivalent amount of nuclear power?

As much as I like the idea of wind power on the basis that it's inexhaustible, it seems impractical compared to nuclear power. Why not take the money we would have invested in that wind power and invest it in nuclear instead? We'd use far less raw materials and far less land, and we'd have a less intermittent source of power. Surely the problems of the 'struggling nuclear industry' could be sorted out if we make the investments, couldn't they?

The International Energy Agency/Energy Technology Perspectives 2008 Blue Map that suggests a four-fold global expansion of nuclear by 2050. That’s a massive 1,300 large reactors being built in the next 40 years. Even if that wildly optimistic target were to be met it would cut greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector by just 6%.

Would it be accurate to suppose that the 37,000 MW of installed wind power represents 37,000/4 = 9,250 (approx) wind turbines? If that's the case then around 9,250/12 = 770 turbines would be needed to equal one nuclear power station. Is that practical? It seems like a huge amount of space, metal, concrete etc. would be required, compared to one nuclear plant. I've read elsewhere that a 140-turbine wind farm covers 55km^2, so presumably 770 turbines would require 300km^2. Sizewell only occupies about 1km^2. Where do we have the space to put up these vast numbers of turbines? Surely not in the UK?

You say that 1,300 nuclear plants are proposed in the cited document, so if we're going to decide not to have those and go for wind instead, presumably you would need 1,300 x 770 = 1,001,000 wind turbines. Can we really expect to install over a million wind turbines between now and 2050? Also, wouldn't those million wind turbines only cut CO2 emissions by 6% too, just like the equivalent amount of nuclear power?

As much as I like the idea of wind power on the basis that it's inexhaustible, it seems impractical compared to nuclear power. Why not take the money we would have invested in that wind power and invest it in nuclear instead? We'd use far less raw materials and far less land, and we'd have a less intermittent source of power. Surely the problems of the 'struggling nuclear industry' could be sorted out if we make the investments, couldn't they?

With regards to new reactors that might come on line due to Pres. Obama's promise of loan guarantees I would like to point out that most of the uranium to fuel those reactors is mined in northern Canada... We in Labrador are under threat as I write. There is absolutely no consideration for the environmental and health damage that will be done to our land, animals and citizens.. Tell Obama to back off the nukes and get on with wind.

Oh the same arguments Steward Brand puts out
1) "baseload"
2) Space use
3) use everything

There is a powerful dismissal of these arguments by Amory Lovins see tinyurl.com/lovinsvsbrand

and for the critique of nuclear economics and its failed climate solution see
tinyurl.com/forgetnuclear