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First Floating Wind Turbine Buoyed Off Norway
MonkeyClicker writes to tell us that the world's first large-scale floating turbine has been installed off the coast of Norway. A combined effort between Siemens and StatoiHydro, this marks the first foray into deeper waters due to restrictions in place that require offshore turbines to be attached to the sea bed. "The turbine in Norway will be 7.4 miles offshore where the water is 721 feet deep. It will be utility-size turbine, with a hub height of about 100 feet, capable of generating 2.3 megawatts of electricity. To address the conditions of the deep sea, the turbine will have a specially designed control system that will seek to dampen the motion from waves."
Of an old saying... "There's power in the motion of the ocean". Though I think that quote referred to something completely different.
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Well obviously there's potential there or they wouldn't have gone as far as they have, but I just don't understand how it doesn't tip over instead of spinning, or how they keep it pointed in the right direction. I'd love to see it in person. And I bet they use them in a future Bond film.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
A nuclear power plant generates about 1000 times as much power as this thing and costs only about 10 times as much (although some built in the 1970s cost only about twice as much).
Well, too many could be a hazard to navigation, plus there's the whole cost-benefit business, and the high maintenance costs associated with anything left in saltwater. But I'm inclined to think such an energy solution is probably worth using where available - it certainly offers an answer to the question of where we're going to fit enough windmills to be useful. This is a problem that all forms of passive energy collection suffer from to some degree.
That being said, I could put your question back at you. Can you give me a credible reason not to build nuclear power plants? And don't just trot out Chernobyl or waste issues without elaborating - show some depth in your reasoning.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
For suggesting that a measure of tidal power could be harvested as well here? After all, kites can be used to harvest power through the tension exerted on their cables, if I'm correct. Similarly, these turbines are going to be tethered, right? How about it?
You mean other than the fact that they're like 100x more expensive than nuclear?
I'm an Australian.. we have one experimental nuclear reactor, 20 MW. It uses about 30 kg of uranium a year. It's used for research.. but not into power reactors. The majority of Australians are afraid of nuclear power. If you ask people on the street why they don't want nuclear power, they'll all say the same, we don't want to have to deal with the nuclear waste. Of course, this doesn't stop us from selling shitloads of uranium. The international community has threatened to prohibit the sale of Australian uranium because we don't store the spent rods, but we do reprocess them. This has non-proliferation consequences. That threat prompted the National Repository/Store Project.. but in 2004 Scrooge McJohnny Howard killed that as he did to every other infrastructure project.
Nuclear is the only option for affordable and ecological responsible power.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You do know it's a prototype, right? The first design to float freely (as opposed to earlier designs that were anchored)?
The first version always costs more. Later versions are built at a fraction the price. Such is the nature of R&D.
So, patience. Expect a solution immediately, cheaply and bug-free, and you will be endlessly disappointed with what real life has to offer. But hey, it'll open up a career in management for you :-P
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
It's the first of its kind, if we are to believe the headline. I'd expect the efficiency/cost ratio to increase with further R&D. Also, a wind turbine doesn't require the mining and transport of radioactive isotopes, nor does it require the disposal of radioactive waste. If we are to look for a "clean" source of energy, wind power is one of the first alternatives that spring to mind.
1. solar power: more than 20 cents/kwh, 10 to 14 cents/kwh
2. wind power: 5 to 7 cents/kwh, 3 to 6 cents/kwh
3. nuclear power: more than 3 cents/kwh, more than 3 cents/kwh
Here, "wind power" refers to wind turbines on land. A wind turbine at sea would surely cost more than a land-based one.
In other worse, nuclear power is still the best solution until we can significantly improve the efficiency of generating solar power and wind power.
We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic. It is too closely tied to illegal immigration. When a faction in the Sierra Club tried to address that issue, the members of that faction were accused of being "racist".
Minor quibble: The mining and transport of fuel for a nuclear reactor is a negligible cost. Uranium ore and fuel pellets are relatively safe items, at least as far as heavy metals go, and you don't need very much fuel for a reactor. Even processing it needn't be that costly, since you can use a heavy-water reactor with un-enriched or minimally enriched fuel. If you are using enriched fuel, it's still fairly cheap in terms of dollars spent per megawatt generated.
Reprocessing the waste does have a cost associated with it, and storing or disposing of the waste you can't or won't reprocess even more so, so that part of your post was correct. And of course the operational costs of a nuclear reactor are pretty high. But then, we don't know the operational costs of these new turbines yet (which is going to be higher than it ought to be, given it's a prototype).
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
You mean other than the fact that they're like 100x more expensive than nuclear?
Building a single windmill prototype like that and sticking it alone in the ocean (with a 10 kilometer power cable) is bound to be lot more expensive per MW than building a whole farm of them. The original article also does not specify how much of that money went into development and how much went to actually building the turbine. The cost should come down quite significantly if that thing actually works as advertized and they start building them by dozens.
Your claim that nuclear is the only option for affordable and ecological power is either pure trolling or rather incredible stupidity and ignorance. I agree that it's propably the best current short term option, but it definitely isn't the only or best one in long term.
I hope they will put it on new navigation maps. But how to update existing maps?
I would be a nightmare for a captain to meet such things in high seas. As far as navigation is concerned it is a new island.
We probably should do exactly that. When the wind is blowing, we can offset combined cycle natural gas powerplants (which ramp up or down easily). To offset coal (by far the majority of US electricity comes from coal -- it's plentiful, cheap, and the utilities don't pay directly for the environmental consequences of burning it by the trainload), you need BASELOAD generating capacity.
Baseload is the "always on" demand for energy, 24/7. Coal and nuclear are ideally suited to meet this demand: large powerplants that operate most efficiently running at 100% capacity all the time. Solar and wind are great. We should be roofing houses with photovoltaics, building solar thermal plants in the deserts, and sticking windmills in the ground everywhere it's appropriate. But intermittent power sources like renewables can't supply the baseload demand... barring some astonishingly unlikely advances in battery technology or super-conducting electrical cables, or other technological breakthroughs that might as well be labeled "magic" or "Star Trek."
Yeah, nuclear has some issues, but they're largely political (i.e. Yucca Mountain phail) and not technical. The WHOLE WORLD'S nuclear waste could be stored outside of Carlsbad, NM at the Waste Internment Pilot Project (WIPP). I've toured the place. It's amazingly robust, and a cunning mixture of low-tech (salt mining is EASY fer chrissakes!) and high-tech (radiation monitoring that regularly detects the fallout from dust storms in the Gobi Desert, but no emissions from WIPP). Frankly, I was impressed.
So, yeah. Energy. You want to limit greenhouse gas emissions? Replace natural gas with renewables wherever possible. Replace coal with nuclear everywhere. Close the nuclear fuel cycle, and push for energy efficiency standards that matter. Transportation energy requirements? That's where things get a little bit tougher...
In the very long-term (barring global catastrophes) humanity will have to start to settle the oceans, and this experiment will give us information as to how we might be able to do that in the far future.
Why?
Habitable space won't be the reason. To settle the ocean would require a fully artificial environment - one where we build every square meter we live in from the ground (or sea) up. If we're going to do that, we might as well build arcologies, and save ourselves the trouble of plugging leaks. Plus, the population growth rate is levelling off, lessening pressure to find new places to inhabit.
Because it's there? Space would be a better choice. Absence of pressure is easier to live with than overabundance of it. Solar energy is plentiful in the inner system. And an offworld colony has the virtue of surviving global catastrophes that would wipe out land and sea based habitats. Added bonus - no local ecology to damage, something the ocean most definitely has. We can colonize both of course, but I'm not sure I'd say we "have to".
Apart from all that, I'd say we already "colonized" the ocean, ages ago when we started building long-haul ships. We just don't live there all the time, or without land-based support. I doubt that will change.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.
Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power. This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs. Currently, the only method of cleaning a nuclear accident is to package and store all the radiated stuff underground. Did you see the article recently about the irradiated mud wasps? That is seriously messed up.
Before sending astronauts into space, every conceivable scenario is considered and plans are made for the just in case. Nuclear proponents never seem to want to finish solving the problems before plunging headlong into them.
Nuclear power isn't perfect. It does have serious problems. These problems need to be definatively solved before the concept as a whole is a valid solution to the energy crisis we face. Cheap power now is NOT worth the deadly problems it WILL bring. Solve the waste problem, solve the security problems, solve the what-if problems, THEN build your nuke plants. In the meantime, we can schlep our way through the problems of other truely clean energy alternatives and not sweat so much when tge mistakes are made. So power is a little more expensive, but the risk of a wind turbine taking out an entire region for generations is non-existant.
The Admin and the Engineer
I missed the word "wind" in the summary and thought they had developed a current turbine. Ocean currents have incredible potential, but maintenance challenges make underwater turbines impractical today. But unlike wind and solar power, ocean currents and waves could actually displace fossil fuel as a primary source of energy.
Because we don't yet fully understand our atmosphere. How will this impact air currents? Will that alter climates? We don't know.
I daresay that you would have to put up a ridiculous number of turbines before they have any effect. I mean, the world seems to have done ok with those other large scale wind blockers commonly known as office buildings....
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
Nuclear power is the only option for affordable and ecologically responsible power
The only reason nuclear power is cheap is the bajillions the governments poured into researching the best way to make fuel for bombs. If a tenth of that had been spent researching solar power, then solar power would be cheap.
Nuclear waste, btw, really isn't all that eco-friendly. The waste is only one problem, and today this particular problem is not solved, but the solution has been postponed. Maybe someday we will be able to safely turn nuclear waste into car tires or something. Or maybe we'll never come up with a better idea than burying it. No one can say. But we are guarunteed that the cost of wind power plants and solar plants will get cheaper. Its an economic fact. But only if we embrace and develop and use the technology. This is how nuclear power got cheap (ignoring the expensive educations needed for nuclear engineers... those costs only go up over time).
No, the only ecologically responsible choice is just about anything but nuclear. And "affordable" is always a relative term. What made nuclear power affordable can be applied to any new energy technology. Take your pick, and pour equal resources into developing it and costs will look better for most of the alternatives because they're all much simpler, easier to understand, and will be to build and maintain.
The Admin and the Engineer
A nuclear power plant generates about 1000 times as much power as this thing and costs only about 10 times as much (although some built in the 1970s cost only about twice as much).
Where did you get the numbers for the windmill? I was unable to find them.
I am all for nuclear (and wind! let's spread out! In different directions!) Anyway, as far as I can tell, the cost of a nuclear plant is very different from a windmill (flotilla, I suppose in this case).
Costs includes construction, fuel, security, maintenance and deconstruction. Of these, it seems likely that nuclear has lower construction and maintenance cost, while windmills (rather obviously) wins in fuel, security and probably deconstruction cost (I suppose they could simply be emptied and sunk, reusing whatever parts are reusable.).
Does anyone know a sensible comparison of these cost? I tried to read one of Bjorn Lomborg's, once, and I nearly fell of the chair laughing. Now there is a man who cannot use a calculator.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
WHAT??? Only ten times more expensive? You've gotta be kidding.
Oh, you were ... 400 million NOK for a prototype v.s. 4500 million Euros (e.g. Olkiluoto 3).
One whale will die, whole project will be shot.
This is Norway. We kill whales for a living.
sigs are hazardous to your health
Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.
Unless "decades of education" was meant to include their high school diploma, I think you're exaggerating. Not that I disagree with your fundamental point; a nuclear plant does pay good money for qualified staff, and that does include paying for some of their training.
You're correct that the level of expertise needed is particular to nuclear power, but it is part of a larger cost associate with staff. No means of power generation is fully automated. Even a system like the one in TFA presumably pays somebody's wages.
Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power. This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs.
"Worst that could happen" for a hydro dam is a major flood. I'd call that unlikely, assuming the engineers and construction team did their jobs right. But then, I'd say the same about nuclear.
I'd agree that nuclear is dangerous, but disagree that the danger should deter us from using it at all. Like all technology that can go awry, caution must be used, safeguards put in place.
I'd suggest reading up on passive safety mechanisms in nuclear power. Look up "pebble bed reactors", which have the means to make the fuel fly apart if it gets too hot, halting the chain reaction. There is never a total absence of risk, but the risk can be made small enough for our purposes. The question is not: is it perfect? - the question is: is it worth it?
If the choice came down to a mix of passive power collection, coupled with either nuclear or coal, which would you pick? Assuming we could not meet all our energy needs with alternative energy alone and we needed one or the other.
Currently, the only method of cleaning a nuclear accident is to package and store all the radiated stuff underground. Did you see the article recently about the irradiated mud wasps? That is seriously messed up.
Didn't see the article. Got a link?
I am very much aware of the risks associated with radioactive contamination. I am also aware that it isn't the end of the world. There are living things in closer proximity to Chernobyl than we though possible; the assumption 20 years ago was that the reactor site and all around it would be sterile for centuries. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both rebuilt and are home to people today, a bare sixty years after being nuked (and it's not like they were rebuilt yesterday either). Yes radiation is scary. No it is not reason enough to convince me that we must abandon nuclear power.
Before sending astronauts into space, every conceivable scenario is considered and plans are made for the just in case. Nuclear proponents never seem to want to finish solving the problems before plunging headlong into them.
On this... I actually agree with you. If new reactors are going to be built, they need to be designed with the utmost care, even if that means raising the cost considerably.
What you may not realize is that even the older, less safe, water moderated reactors currently in use have an excellent safety record. The major accidents - Chernobyl and Windscale - used designs known at the time to be less than safe. The sole accident I can think of for a light water moderated design was Three Mile Island, where the safety systems actually worked. Nobody died, no contamination was released - the worst problem was actually the hysteria associated with the words "nuclear" and "accident" in the same headline.
Nuclear power isn't perfect. It does have serious problems. These problems need to be definatively solved before the concept as a whole is a valid solu
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
For a course on nuclear power, we had to analyse the lifecycle cost of a nuclear plant. The operating costs are about half of the capital costs. Decommissioning was taken as a capital cost in this context, which it at least behaves a lot like. The decommissioning has a low cost in the context raising capital for the project because it happens 30 years or so after the initial investment, so it is heavily discounted, leaving a very small contribution.
Let me see if I can dig out the spreadsheet for this...here we go. The capital costs came to 67% of the electricity generation cost (p/kWh) and the rest was taken up with operation and maintenance, including fuel purchase and waste disposal. The cost we calculated was 2.62p/kWh total, excluding the profit (cost of capital). If you ignore the initial capital investment then the cost is only about 0.8p/kWh.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
But wind is crazy dangerous. It can bury cities in sand, obliterate houses, knock down bridges and blow planes right out of the sky. And there is the lingering issue of what to do with all the spent wind. We should first solve the problems with wind before trying to harness such a volitile energy source. At least a nuclear reaction is reasonably predictable, and we can just bury and forget about the waste. /sarcasm
The Admin and the Engineer
...dampen the motion from waves...
So the waves aren't wet enough yet? Norway has strange oceans.
On the other hand, I think for the first time "inertial dampeners" is the right term to use...
(Yes, to damp is a verb too. Heavily underused. As is "dampers")
Nuclear power stations are driven to improve safety, not to cut costs. Nuclear power will always be crippled by over-regulation and excessive conservatism, because the risks are just too high if things go pear (or mushroom) shaped.
Wind generator manufactures can be a lot more aggressive in cost cutting, because the consequences are a lot less severe.
In the long run, wind generators will drop in price a lot quicker.
to harvest the wave energy as well as the wind energy with something similar to this? I guess you could also slap some solar cells on it. =)
Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power.
The last one really bugs me. Many more people have lost their lives due to damn failure than because of nuclear power plants. You should really investigate your claims.
This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs.
By installing mechanisms aimed at multiple redundancy and self-regulation, we can basically exclude many previously feared MCAs like chernobyl and stamp down other safety breaches to statistical insignifgance. We just need the right safety culture and openness.
Solve the waste problem
The problem with final depository is mainly a political one than the science. If we focus on breeder reactors, we'll need far less space than we do today, which by the way isn't all that much to begin with.
solve the security problems
First define "secure". There are plenty of "security problems" with air travel, but that hasn't stopped us.
solve the what-if problems
Solved for people who have faith in science and the laws of physics.
THEN build your nuke plants.
Even then we will be held up by hysterics and scaremongorers who were forged by popular media, and who neither have any interest in engineering and science or of energy politics.
They will continue to cause damage and will even criticize scientific research because of their fundamentalist ideals that were entrenched in them decades ago.
In the meantime, we can schlep our way through the problems of other truely clean energy alternatives
Let me guess that in the mean time, you will continue to use your cooker, water boiler, TV and computer, and probably a car and enjoy a variety of food and consumer products made possible because of our energy infrastructure.
So power is a little more expensive
That's one fundamental misconception that many people share. The consequances of energy shortage are very dire and severe. Energy policy need to be planned decades in advance, it's not a "supply and demand" problem like you learned in school.
I bet it hasn't once crossed you mind that as little as a generation ago in western countries, there was heavy investment in the electric grid so that people could get out of their backward living conditions and economic burdon.
This required many battles for public money and truly long-term investment.
I know that with time people tend to take things for granted but sheesh.
A dam breaking and flooding a populated valley will basically kill everyone there. A melt-down might kill a few people and will give a slightly increase risk of cancer to many more. A terrorist group, assuming they could get either the fuel or the waste and transport it offsite without dying from radiation poisoning would be unable to much of anything with it, except leaving it somewhere it would irradiate people - they'd cause a lot more actual destruction with conventional explosives.
I'm sorry to say this, but you have it exactly backwards.
A broken dam can't be repaired, it has to be completely rebuilt, possibly redesigned (since the old design broke). And while the flood will be over in a few days, don't forget that many dams also act as water supply to nearby communities. What will they do?
A major dam breaking is a major catastrophe that makes Chernobyl look like small potatoes.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Here in page 15. You can see the amount of land area solar power would require for generating our requirements for the next couple of decades. Only problem is, it is still too expensive to build it.
10 years after a dam breaking you can use the land, 10 years after Chernobyl they where still guarding the wasteland. The real cost of CHernobyl was not the 56 direct deaths but the ~4,000 additional cancer deaths. The loss of a city and the 19 mi exclusion zone around the site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_alienation). Plus the constant low enforcement issue.
PS: The overall cost of the disaster is estimated at US$200 billion, taking inflation into account. This places the Chernobyl disaster as the most costly disaster in modern history.[5] There are a tiny number of dam's worldwide that could damage on that magnitude. However, most of those saves lives due to a reduction in annual flooding and a steady water source so they would exist even if they did not provide energy.
I watched part of a show, I think called "Mega-engineering" or something similar that had computer generated footage of a floating New Orleans (so someone considers it a serious enough thing to spend at least a few tens of thousands of dollars on it).
There is also that cruise ship, I think called "The World" or something. Yep, ResidenSea:
http://www.residensea.com/index.html
Nowhere near a colony, but not quite a cruise ship either.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The "wasteland" is in the process of turning into a forest, and is already a wildlife haven.
How many cancer deaths does the average coal power plant cause during its life?
And only those few produce power on the magnitude of Chernobyl.
They might exist. They might not. Producing power makes money, saving lives doesn't. Isn't capitalism wonderful?
Anyway, you didn't answer my point, despite re-iterating it: in case a dam breaks, what will the communities that depend on it for water do?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
we have plants going for their 2nd round of 30 years. cost of campaigns is negligible. waste doesn't need to be guarded for a million year, it merely needs to be reprocessed because it contains 1% plutonium and breedable u-238, it's golden source of energy. Defense cost is negligible compared to huge outlay we make for petrodollar empire protection. Cost of nuclear accidents has been very small for sane reactor designs and procedures, nothing really major has happened compared to fossil fuel toll on life.
According to StatoilHydro "the floating structure consists of a steel jacket filled with ballast. This floating element will extend 100 metres beneath the surface and will be fastened to the seabed by three anchor piles".
There are plenty of details and videos about the project on their website:
http://www.statoilhydro.com/en/TechnologyInnovation/NewEnergy/RenewablePowerProduction/Onshore/Pages/Karmoy.aspx
To be fair, that's a 4-unit plant. So a lot more power than 1 GW. And, as I pointed out, we've already proven that they can be built for a much more reasonable price.
Actually, you don't have to "guard he waste". The MOX process "burns" (transmutes, actually) more plutonium than is generated. It's used in Europe and it allows France to reduce its plutonium stockpile. The remaining mass is about 600 liters (two barrels) of medium radioactivity waste per reactor per year, which can be stored in a warehouse until their decay sufficiently. Google "nuclear fuel reprocessing mox" for much more details.
I am against the idea of burying waste (especially the nuclear kind) becausereprocessing technology will improve and we'll find ways to neutralize today's unprocessable waste.
The nuclear waste problem is a political one, not a technical one. Get the stupid politics out of the way. Solutions already exist.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
Meanwhile, coal power plants are spewing out radioactive isotopes by the bushel because noone outside of geologists even bother that coal holds many radioactive elements.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
Nuclear power plants are built to deal with radioactive materials, coal plants - not so much.