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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.'"
So... Japan set up a giant radioactive fan offshore and the Philippines gets hit by an incredibly powerful hurricane...
Tsunami's tend to only be bad where they hit coasts or shallow water. In the open ocean and deep water they move very fast but wave height is usually never more than a meter.
@de_machina
The "unproven" part is the floating platforms. And, in this case a floating transfer station as well. But it is true that these installations are becoming more common. And they seem to have an advantage in installation and maintenance since less rugged tow boats can be used for installation and maintenance can be done on shore. Eventually, I expect that these will be used to charge floating flow batteries or synthesize hydrocarbon fuels is the highest wind resource areas such as south of Iceland which are too remote for grid hookup. http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas
You're wrong. Fukushima is still leaking fissile material into the sea: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/world/asia/with-a-plants-tainted-water-still-flowing-no-end-to-environmental-fears.html?_r=0
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.
True and do the math as well.
New Wind farm 2 mega watts with 7 more coming soon. And someday it maybe on gigawatt.... Someday.
The Fukushima Nuclear Plant when working. 4,696 MWs Installed and over 7000 MW planned...
So the windfarm is making less than 1/500th the power of the nuclear plant.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I was in Hawaii about 17 years ago and during my time there I took a tour around the island of Oahu. There was one location with many large wind turbines that were derelict. The tour guide told us about how the maintenance on those turbines far outstripped the value of the energy they reaped. I am sure technology has advanced since then but salt is still very corrosive and maintenance costs are still high. I'd say it's not proven until they've been up and running at least a decade or so.
The platforms are moored. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_wind_turbine
At 20 km offshore, the first 30 meters (100ft) of the turbine would be below the horizon for viewers at ground level.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
True and do the math as well. New Wind farm 2 mega watts with 7 more coming soon. And someday it maybe on gigawatt.... Someday. The Fukushima Nuclear Plant when working. 4,696 MWs Installed and over 7000 MW planned... So the windfarm is making less than 1/500th the power of the nuclear plant.
Don't forget that the reactors were able to provide that power reliably and predictably, something which wind power could never dream of doing.
As a friend of mine once said "Environmentalists might bat early, but physics bats last".
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.
Indeed several people survived the Indian Ocean tsunami while in a small fishermen boat just a few miles off shore from areas that were completely devastated. They described a minor brow passing under them, without even realizing that it was a major tsunami.
Same holds for the massive Sanriku Tsunami in 1896: "Fishermen twenty miles out to sea didn't notice the wave pass under their boats because it only had a height at the time of about fifteen inches,"
The radiation is a few hundret times higher than background radiation, or why exactly is there 20km forbidden zone and a 40km evac zone? ... food grown in that area is not safe for children and young adults, people try to avoid it.
In a 200km zone young couples get urged by authorities not to get children
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Here's what the Japanese 2011 tsunami looked like a few miles out at sea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdhfV-8dbCE
And also miss the entire name of the place and the news about it: The nuclear power plant has gone unexpectedly offline.
Unless you're trying to claim that they PLANNED for the power station to go critical, your statement:
"Don't forget that the reactors were able to provide that power reliably and predictably"
Is completely asinine.
The capacity factor for Japanese nuclear power is zero and prior to the accident it was around 0.8.
I'd say it's not proven until they've been up and running at least a decade or so.
Today is your lucky day. From wikipedia:
The Middelgrunden offshore wind farm---with 20 turbines the world's largest offshore farm at the time it was built in 2000
which is more than a decade ago.
Really? FLOATING wind turbines are a proven technology?
YES. Ocean engineer here. It seems that wind turbines are not your concern, but the structure upon which it sits? Wikipedia has a decent summary of some of the offshore structures that are used (traditionally for oil platforms, but they can be used for anything). TLPs are a typical approach for something like this.
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.