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Fukushima Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Starts Generating Power
mdsolar writes in with news about a new wind-energy project off the coast of Fukushima. "A project to harness the power of the wind about 20 kilometers (12 miles) off the coast of Fukushima, site of the March 2011 nuclear disaster, began generating power on an operational basis today. The project, funded by the government and led by Marubeni Corp. (8002), is a symbol of Japan's ambition to commercialize the unproven technology of floating offshore wind power and its plan to turn quake-ravaged Fukushima into a clean energy hub. 'Fukushima is making a stride toward the future step by step,' Yuhei Sato, governor of Fukushima, said today at a ceremony in Fukushima marking the project's initiation. 'Floating offshore wind is a symbol of such a future.'"
And nothing has happened. The amount of radiation released from the leak, while the leak should be repaired ASAP, is minute and is still LOWER than the background radiation. http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N13/yost.html If you have taken College Chemistry, you'll know why even the radiation released from the leak is nothing compared to both the background radiation in the ocean due to dilution and not even a drop in the bucket compared to the radiation released from nuclear testing we conducted in the Pacific Ocean.
No, the repairs will take a considerable amount of time. If you knew anything about radiation effects on humans you would know of the Linear no-threshold model - it predicts that exposing a huge portion of world population to small amounts of radiation is guarateed to have some health effects. It's estimated 300 tons of toxic water enter the ocean each day from Fukusima. Only an idiot would say that you can dump that into the environment without any consequences.
And what was the output of the first wind turbine? Wind turbines are not new at all.
The largest wind turbine is the http://www.vestas.com/en/media/news/news-display.aspx?action=3&NewsID=3163 at 8MWs. So you would need 587 of these to match the nuclear power plant. Scaling them up much bigger is really not going to be practical as the blades are already 80 meters long. The idea of churning these puppies out is extremely optimistic Let's say they can make and install one of these monsters a month. To match the nuclear plants output would only take 48 years. Even if it takes 10 years for a reactor you could have 5 plants in operation in that time. Now think about world wide production. Factories that can make something like this will be limited in number. Just shipping the blades will be a huge task. Then the infrastructure of floating wind farms and the under sea power cables and maintaing the wind turbines in a marine environment. This is not as easy you may think and it is not because it is "new" but because of well known problems that intrinsic to the system.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Are you aware that all Japanese reactors have had close to 0% output over the last few years?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You may not be aware but you make several flawed assumptions with out of date information and it seems like you are trivialising an extremely dangerous accident. First of all the article postulates whether or not the cladding of the fuel rods have been split which by understanding the base characteristics of the reactor would reveal that they are simply because that is a consequence of the production of hydrogen in the reactor that caused the explosion in the first place.
It also makes no mention of the spent fuel pools, that the loss of the back up power was because of an act of negligence on the part of the operator and, foolishly, declares that the accident is under control a mere four days after the accident.
It seems ironic that you berate people for Chemistry knowledge because if you understood the true nature of the accident you would realise that the danger comes from the radionuclides as a radiation emitter as opposed to radiation and, that due to the chemical nature of radio isotopes, they bio-accumulate instead of dilute.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.