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Government Approves First US Offshore Wind Farm
RobotRunAmok writes "In a groundbreaking decision that some say will usher in a new era of clean energy, US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said today he was approving the nation's first offshore wind farm, the controversial Cape Wind project off of Cape Cod. The project has undergone years of environmental review and political maneuvering, including opposition from the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, whose home overlooks Nantucket Sound, and from Wampanoag Indian tribes who complained that the 130 turbines, which would stand more than 400 feet above the ocean surface, would disturb spiritual sun greetings and possibly ancestral artifacts and burial grounds on the seabed. But George Bachrach, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, hailed the decision, saying it was 'a critical step toward ending our reliance on foreign oil and achieving energy independence.'"
If Christians had said that it messed up sunrise services for Easter would you have been respecting their position too?
Mass transit authorities put trains under cemeteries all the time, why should these guys be any different?
Oh and they have really good leadership too
http://boston.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/campaignviolations021109.htm
"In February 2009 Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe chairman Glenn A. Marshall pleaded guilty to federal charges of violations of campaign finance law, tax fraud, wire fraud, and Social Security fraud – all in connection with the effort to secure federal recognition for the tribe."
Nuclear power does not create all the much waste. Unlike coal, we know where the waste goes.
Nuclear Waste: Amounts and On-Site Storage
"Over the past four decades, the entire industry has produced about 62,500 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. If used fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, this would cover a football field about seven yards deep. "
A study showed that in the Netherlands, one third of the electricity could be reliably generated from wind. There is a link to the Ph.D. thesis at the bottom of the article.
The Netherlands has a long coast line, which makes it a very good location for wind energy. I don't know if the US has enough good locations to place wind farms to produce one third of electricity, but if it does not, then the problem with fluctuations in how much power is supplied to the grid will only be easier to manage.
In other words, you indeed cannot get 100% of your electricity from wind, but this is no reason not to build lots of wind farms today since you're nowhere near the limit yet.
And when the wind stops, make sure you have candles handy...
This may just be a wry comment, and not an attempt at serious criticism, but this point is often brought up to criticize both solar and wind power. And certainly it sounds like a serious problem since, after all, existing power systems are on-line all the time, and having a major aspect of the power system dependent on something as fickle as weather introduces serious unresolved problems into power grid management.
Doesn't it??
No, it doesn't.
The reality is that even "base load" (constant output) plants get shut down for extended periods for maintenance of various kinds, not infrequently unpredictably due to equipment problems. And, due to large fluctuations in power demand across the daily cycle (which can be unpredictable due to weather) there must be special expensive peaking power plants anyway.
It turns out that managing a diverse national power grid has a substantial component of solar and wind power is exactly like managing one that doesn't. A lot of solar and wind power necessarily means many plants spread over a vast geographical area, and while the wind may die (or the sky may cloud over) down in one place, it will be blowing hard (or shining brightly) in others. The power fluctuations are no worse than fluctuation in demand, and both are addressed in the same way - by having peaking capacity in with costly peaking plants, or some energy storage method, and by having redundancy in base load plant capacity.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
> For those of us who are not intimate with American politics -- why is this moderated insightful, flamebait and troll?
Because Senator Edward M. "Swim Bitch!" Kennedy is a very polarizing figure. To people like me he represents everything wrong with Progressivism and the Democrat Party. A repulsive scion of a gangster family who made a career out of demagoguery and debauchery. To them he was sort of a god, the Liberal Lion of the Senate and the last fading glory of Camelot.
But everyone agrees with this much: he was he was a very powerful politician with essentially a lifetime appointment to the Senate who single handedly stopped the Cape Cod wind project cold in its tracks while he lived.
I'm not very green but I certainly like the idea of wind energy in places like that where it is both abundant and close enough to population centers to make delivery simple. That couldn't happen because one wicked yet powerful man stood in the way. He is now safely roasting in Hell and now we can tap a practical source of energy. Yea!
Democrat delenda est
the U.S. Energy Information Administration would disagree with you there. They claim (data from 2008, report released Jan 21st 2010) that 1.1% of the U.S. electrical power is generated from Petroleum products while 3.1% is generated by "Other Renewables" (solar, wind, etc)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/figes1.html
If that is true and not just made up then why is it that France is building new Nuclear plants all the time? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Nuclear_Power Are you saying the French are better then us at something? Are you saying the French insurance companies know something the US based ones do not? Come on people. Just actually do some research and then stop making shit up when you oppose Nuclear Power on Slashdot. Nuclear is done correctly with new technology actually has the potential to REDUCE the amount of Nuclear waste we have and at the same time can be designed to be passively safe meaning in the event of a complete power failure the system would still not go critical. Now I can honestly say I want Nuclear Power and I WANT it in my own backyard.
Many of the wind turbines at Altamont pass are of the older, smaller variety. The blades on these small wind turbines rotate very quickly and are harder for birds to detect. The larger blades of modern wind turbines are less dangerous to birds. This is probably why the judge made a distinction between the various types of turbines installed at Altamont.
The law you propose to limit liability has already been enacted. Its called the Price-Anderson act of 1957 (described in detail at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/funds-fs.html). It limits the liability of nuclear plant operators, but requires insurance. The current liability limit is about $10 billion. All the utilities pay into a common insurance pool that provides coverage for off site damages in case of an accident, currently up to $8.6 billion. Combined with $300 million in coverage for each reactor, the cost of any accident is insured up to $8.9 billion.
Despite this insurance being covered, it has been Wall Street that has been wary of the financial risk of nuclear plants due to massive cost overruns that occurred in nuclear plant construction in the 1970s along with demand for electricity that did not grow as projected by the utilities.
there is zero chance you'll be able to come up with a convincing case for one oil rig being less dangerous to workers than any practical size of wind farm
The grandparent post is definitely talking out his ass, but it's an interesting question, so I ran the numbers myself.
No question more people die mining coal than running wind power, but since coal is a much bigger industry, I think the fairest comparison is number of accidental deaths per unit electricity produced.
US coal mine deaths, 2005-2009: 30/year
http://www.msha.gov/stats/charts/coal2009yearend.asp
US coal energy produced, 2008: 22.4 quads (or exajoules)
Heat -> Electricity efficiency factor: 30%
https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/energy/energy.html
US energy from coal: 6.7 exajoules/year
Worldwide wind power deaths, 2000-2006: At least 15, avg 2.7/year
http://www.windaction.org/documents/1318
Worldwide wind power installed capacity, avg 2001-2006: 40,000 MW
http://www.wwindea.org/home/index.php
Average capacity factor for wind plants: 25%
Estimated world wind energy output, 2001-2006 avg: 0.32 exajoules/year
Bottom line:
US Coal mining deaths per exajoule electricity produced: 4.5
World wind power deaths per exajoule electricity produced: at least 8.4
Surprised? I sure was! I expect the wind power number to drop dramatically as the industry develops, of course.
The exciting thing is that with breeder technology, the world could run off existing nuclear waste for the next 500 years without opening a single new uranium mine. With breeder technology, even the background uranium and thorium in GRANITE becomes energetically and eventually economically viable (when thinking about uranium supplies in a million years or so).
As Finrod claims:
your a fucking retard, i this is the 3rd hit on google.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I used world wind power and energy stats rather than US-only to avoid problems with small-number statistics.
But this is a fair comparison: for the years in question, *all* fatal wind turbine accidents were in Western countries with workplace safety laws at least as strong as U.S. laws. The majority were in the U.S., Germany, and England, with a few in Denmark, New Zealand, etc.
Comparing world turbine deaths to world coal deaths would *not* be fair, because up till very recently, turbine work was only done in developed countries. I picked these data specifically to *avoid* the bias you describe.
Vertical axis turbines (which is what I think you're describing) aren't as efficient as horizontal axis turbines where every part of the blade on every part of the cycle experiences maximum lift from the wind.
The massive horizontal axis turbines that have a single support column with a rounded top instead of a scaffolding (like the Altamont Pass turbines, which encouraged raptors to nest on them causing much of the problem) are more than good enough with regard to bird strikes
The enemies of Democracy are