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Retiring Worn-Out Wind Turbines Could Cost Billions That Nobody Has (energycentral.com)
schwit1 shared this article from Energy Central News:
Estimates put the tear-down cost of a single modern wind turbine, which can rise from 250 to 500 feet above the ground, at $200,000... Which means landowners and counties in Texas could be on the hook for tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars if officials determine non-functional wind turbines need to be removed. Or if that proves to be too costly, as seems likely, some areas of the state could become post-apocalyptic wastelands steepled with teetering and fallen wind turbines, locked in a rigor mortis of obsolescence.
Companies will of course have the option of upgrading those aging wind turbines with new models, a resurrection of sorts. Yet the financial wherewithal to do so may depend on the continuation of federal wind subsidies, which is by no means assured. Wind farm owners say the recycling value of turbines is significant and recovering valuable material like copper and steel will cover most of the cost of decommissioning... Yet extracting valuable materials from the turbines is not as easy as it sounds... "The blades are composite, those are not recyclable, those can't be sold," said Lisa Linowes, executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industry. "The landfills are going to be filled with blades in a matter of no time...."
Unlike Duke Energy, some of the smaller wind farm companies operating in Texas, with fewer financial resources, may be tempted to just walk away when aging turbines no longer spin a profit. Linowes believes such moves may begin occurring even before wind turbines outlive their useful life as manufacturing warranties on the big turbines expire. "At what point does the cost of maintenance tip over to the point it's not worth maintaining a turbine?" she said. "We're in something of an unknown or uncertain territory... It could be a very ugly situation in the next five years when we see turbines need work, and are no longer under warranty and not generating enough electricity to keep running them."
Companies will of course have the option of upgrading those aging wind turbines with new models, a resurrection of sorts. Yet the financial wherewithal to do so may depend on the continuation of federal wind subsidies, which is by no means assured. Wind farm owners say the recycling value of turbines is significant and recovering valuable material like copper and steel will cover most of the cost of decommissioning... Yet extracting valuable materials from the turbines is not as easy as it sounds... "The blades are composite, those are not recyclable, those can't be sold," said Lisa Linowes, executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industry. "The landfills are going to be filled with blades in a matter of no time...."
Unlike Duke Energy, some of the smaller wind farm companies operating in Texas, with fewer financial resources, may be tempted to just walk away when aging turbines no longer spin a profit. Linowes believes such moves may begin occurring even before wind turbines outlive their useful life as manufacturing warranties on the big turbines expire. "At what point does the cost of maintenance tip over to the point it's not worth maintaining a turbine?" she said. "We're in something of an unknown or uncertain territory... It could be a very ugly situation in the next five years when we see turbines need work, and are no longer under warranty and not generating enough electricity to keep running them."
End the endless wars (military homicide sprees) which we've been involved in since 9/11/2001. Spend part of the money saved on subsidizing clean energy, whether it be wind, solar, or (yes!) nuclear. Put all the out-of-work coalies to work building and repairing clean-energy infrastructure.
Smells like BS
The turbine blades weigh as much as a small car and are 50 feet up in the air. Lawsuit waiting to happen. Better to subsidize clean energy and replace the generators with newer, more efficient hardware. Big government is awesome when it actually helps its citizens, instead of helping the coal lobby and coalies whose jobs became obsolete 70 years ago.
This is the game that Musk taught us. Gambled on 'clean' energy and lost? Wait for a handout!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Most of the decommissioning costs I've seen are a fraction of that. They also seem to be planning to take the tower and foundations away, which makes no sense. Surely you are going to want to put another turbine in its place.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It might have some toxic oils in the transformers, as well as those used to lubricate the generator bearings. But still less toxic than coal slag and mercury belched into the air by dirty-coal power plants.
Agreed. Pretty much every wind farm I've seen has nothing else around it for hundreds of feet, so just put some explosives at the base of the tower and down it comes. Then chop it up and send it off for recycling - seems very unlikely that you couldn't turn a profit that way. Gets a little more expensive if you need to avoid hitting other windmills, but odds are that all the windmills in a given farm are going to be decommissioned at about the same time.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Idon't know what "small cars" weighs in America, but one blade of a wind turbine weighs about 25-30 tonnes and most wind turbines have 3 of them.
Clean coal feeds the mean troll.
Unless we get electricity too cheap to meter, the old wind turbines will be replaced with new wind turbines. These old turbines are located in the best wind resource (and already paid the fixed infrastructure cost to connect to the grid), so the most desirable to repower.
There are many examples in California where turbines were first installed in the 1980s which have already, or are in the process now, of repowering.
If the cost of removing old wind turbines is so high, why wouldn't the operators adopt the same business model the cell companies have used successfully for decades?
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
So what? A little altitude is nothing some explosives at the base of the windmill wouldn't fix. Or a one-time lowering of the turbine to the ground in a more controlled fashion if you want to avoid damaging still-viable components with the impact. You already have a strong enough tower right there, just need a thousand feet of cable and a winch-truck on the ground that's heavier than, and strong enough to support the weight of, the combined turbine and blades assembly.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yeah, but that also means they have as much metal as a small fleet of cars, once you factor in the support post. That's good recycling. :-)
But seriously, nobody in his/her right mind is going to tear down a wind turbine unless global climate change causes the wind to stop. In the worst likely case, when one of these things fails, the owners will temporarily take down the blades, replace the generator portion, and put the blades back up at a much lower labor cost than dismantling it, and at a far lower cost than building a new one from scratch. In the best case, they'll be able to repair it in place.
In other words, this story is pure FUD.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I don't know how this story made it out of Firehose, it's so obviously propaganda from butthurt coal and oil interests.
What is so special about this specific type of power generating infrastructure?
Isn't a water or nuclear power plants just as expensive to retire?
Who sits on those billions?
These wind farms turn a tidy profit, yes? Where is all that profit going? If they stop laundering those profits and bank some of it for future repairs or replacement, rather than holding out a poor beggar's hands and whining for another bailout, the problem is solved.
one blade of a wind turbine weighs about 25-30 tonnes.
That's about the same as a small car in America, yes.
No sig today...
Does anyone do even a tiny bit of quality assurance on submissions? The person being quoted as saying we're in for an apocalyptic landscape littered with turbine blades is from the WindAction Group. That organization's website claims "Industrial Wind Action Group Corp ("The WindAction Group") was formed to counteract the misleading information promulgated by the wind energy industry and various environmental groups."
In other words, it's probably a fossil fuel front group.
Great job, whoever thought this was a good submission.
+1 Informative.
No sig today...
Wind power in Texas is often some of the cheapest electricity you can get. It's picking up momentum, and the incentive to keep it going is pretty high. I smell a slant in this article, likely from someone with money to lose from this trend. Say, coal industries.
https://www.chron.com/business...
The Wind Action Group is nothing but a front for fossil fuel companies. It's corporate disinformation.
When that happens everyone wants "Other People's Money" to design new energy projects.
Other People's Money to select a site, design and build.
To keep production working and ensure a profit so future projects can be provided for.
Then to cover most of the cost of decommissioning.
At some time the projects run out of that free money.
The cost of energy has to allow for all the costs of past and new turbines and set a market price for the full cost.
A gov cant just step in and virtue signals about energy production and offer another generation of "Other People's Money".
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It was submitted almost a week ago, and the pull quote by the submitter was much less inflammatory. If you read the article, it’s a lot more balanced than this pull quote suggests. Imcall bullshit on the /. editors. This is just clickbait.
Landowners in Ok and Tx should have learned this lesson in the 1950s... 60s... 70s... etc... with oil drilling rigs. Iâ(TM)ve advised several family members on wind farm craze. And the big rule is âoenever let them install without an ageeement for handling uninstall, preferably money in escrow, plus the wind company is liable for any cost overruns.â That has to be separate from the profits you are paid. If you canâ(TM)t get such an agreement, you will be screwed, basically guaranteed. Itâ(TM)s the nature of companies to not clean up â" thereâ(TM)s no profit in it â" so you have to make it an up-front cost.
But people in their right minds are in very limited supply in the former american republics.
In the worst likely case, when one of these things fails, the owners will temporarily take down the blades, replace the generator portion, and put the blades back up at a much lower labor cost than dismantling it, and at a far lower cost than building a new one from scratch.
Just like every other energy generating plant.
Oh, wait.....
Just because my car is out of warranty doesn't mean I have to stop driving it. Unless maintenance costs exceed the revenue generated by letting a turbine run, why wouldn't you just let it run.
Indeed. Many people keep driving their old cars until the wheel bearings seize, or the transmission stops shifting, or it puts a rod through the block.
I think that was the point.......
I live in Alberta and the rural landscapes are dotted with abandoned oil/gas pumps in farmland or open fields. The cost of removing / clean up and capping is not worth the various companies time or money and they just walk away and let them rot. It seems that the government just says oh well.
"50 feet in the air" and "small car" is at least half and order of magnitude too low. Try 80-100 meters, and 10-15 tons. each.
However most wind farms are designed so that each individual turbine could be replaced with a somewhat bigger turbine without interfering with other turbines. If you're rebuilding a farm at EOL, you already have the cranes and expertise on-site, so the per-tower decom cost will go down.
Additionally in the contract phase of the project landowners should and often do demand decommissioning funds to be placed in escrow before any construction begins.
Blades
The "huge" blades weight is actually a very small amount of the whole weight.
But it's true that composites cannot be "recycled" they
can be broken appart and cut and later shreded and then can be
a.) burned for example in the cement industry the residue being created that cannot burn is normal to this process what so ever.
b.) used as a supplement for tarmac and even concrete
So yes blades are a bit of a hassle. And like anything else nothing is 100% green, what is important is the overall sum.
How can you get rid of a turbine:
Set a charge to the tower foot to cut or buckle it and blow it up
10s later the visible part of the wind turbine is gone.
You should however drain the gear oil beforehand otherwise you have an oil spill.
And well that waste that's now laying on the ground is the most of it is steel and cast iron(easy to recycle), the nacelle cover is mostly composite and can be treated like the blades, you can recycle the transformer(copper). Converters are electric waste.
What really is of a hassle and what's expensive to remove is the foundation made from reinforced concrete, for example in germany just the top of the foundation is grinded off.
The foundation however has a sealing effect on the ground so it would be better to remove it. But to put it into perspective the amount of sealing a turbine foundation does is realatively small compared to for example roads and highways.
In germany its regulartory that you as the owner/operator of a turbine need to create an escrow fund to have the turbine removed when the lifetime has ended.
it's going to cost (lose) $50K
No. You walk away. It'll cost the bank $50K. You aren't an entity that can be touched by creditors. More likely a Texas company set up to pass subsidies through. And can evaporate as quickly as a puddle in El Paso.
Have gnu, will travel.
The only meaningful subsidy is to get a market started. Once really going, it needs to survive on it's own. Wind is already established. At this time, ALL wind companies should be setting money aside to take them down. And what is missed here is that most towers are fine. As such, bring down the old wind plant and put up a new , more efficient, and cheaper plant. As to the old, recycling works wonder.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I can't make out whether this is some SJW bemoaning "something" or some alt-right wanting to somehow make a $$$.
I can say this, it is frigging Texas! And trust me if there is a dollah to be made by recycling those things the meth-heads will find a way to bring it down.
Sure, along the way a few meth-heads will get killed, but hey that's a double bonus right there!
Caution: Contents under pressure
So you thought that decommissioning costs applied to only the one industry you don’t like?
I’m not that concerned about decommissioning wind turbines, because each tower contains a trove of industrial metals, including such goodies as a big hunk of neodymium, that can be recycled. The problem I see is maintenance. Intricate mechanical gearing and electronics, high off the ground, in many cases lashed by that salt spray that has a history of ruining everything. The good news is that maintenance will mean lifetime employment for a lot of Germans.
The bad news is that metal thieves have already become a problem for European wind farms.
OK, then a small bus? Or perhaps a train car?
have teams compete to topple them as fast as they can, any way they can. Like a reality TV show. Do you want the 20 pounds of C4 or the blow torch. Maybe use the monster trucks from Idiocracy's Rehabilitation night. You'd make money.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Surely this is not different that the high tension power lines or old dams or old skyscrapers. I don't see anyone panicing.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Does wire and steel age in a large generator? Do the bearings give out? Does it cost too much to clean the blades periodically and filth accumulation on the blades makes them less efficient?
They seem oddly unconcerned about tering down old coal plants full of asbestoes, PCBs, and radioactive ash and slag.
Talk about a hazardous and expensive clean-up.
Vortex Bladeless is an emerging alternative (to turbines) technology for generating electric power from wind:
https://vortexbladeless.com/
In Germany wind tubine owners have to deposit money for the decommissioning. Not sure how this is handled in other countries.
Of course there are still open questions regarding the recycling of components.
This looks like a market that is ripe for some serious innovation. This seems to be mainly about the turbines and the blades because there's no apparent reason why the towers would need removal. (The article also seems a bit anti-wind. Its not the most reliable or convenient source and I can agree with being anti subsidy but they are in place and should be used and maintained.) In any event this presents an opportunity for someone to come up with better turbines, better blades, automated maintenance, whatever. I would think that there would be plenty of $ out there for someone who can seriously lower the operational costs associated with wind.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
For big companies, have them set aside money in an external fund or buy insurance to cover the cost of removal if the company goes bankrupt, and require that the company have a decommissioning plan in place prior to building.
For smaller companies, either do the same or decide, as a local government, that the community is willing to take on the risk of paying for abandoned equipment if the company goes under.
Either way, don't leave the land-owner with the legal responsibility to pay for removal.
Do the same for any other privately-funded infrastructure that is likely to require removal at the end of its life.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How much does it cost to decommission an offshore oil rig? How much to clean up contaminated ground water near a fracking site? How much to decomission an old nuclear plant? How much to restore the land around a coal mine?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I use to live near “The Boobs” (San Onofre) and that plant’s decommissioning is going to take 30 years and billions of dollars. $250k is like a low end Lamborghini. It would take decommissioning 4,000 wind turbines to equal $1 billion.
Not to mention the bank doesn't lose, because it was probably a Federally-backed loan in the first place so they still get their money. It's just tax money to be spread around, after all...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
We replace cars because they cost $50 to tow to a dump.
But we do not tear down and replace a building or a hydroelectric dam merely because it is old.
Yes, repairs are costly, But the tear down cost is $200,000, then guess what, repair becomes a better option.
I think most wind turbines will end up being repaired multiple times, probably once every 10 years or so. But their lifespan, including repairs will probably be in excess of 50 years.
Note, the repair business will also mean that when we tear down the ones that really can't be repaired, those expensive composite blades will be checked, and if in good condition, used to cheaply repair other turbines whose blades failed. They will end up stockpiled, just like airplane parts, not dumped.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I just checked what I could find about wind turbine recycling in Germany. First, as I had expected, the cost of removing the turbine after its end of life is factored into the costs from day one. So when the time comes, the owners have to have reserves set aside to pay for the destruction and removal of the turbine. Second, many turbines can still be re-sold and get a second life in another wind park. Third, even today there is a complete recycling chain in place for everything from the concrete or steel of the towers to the blades. The blades are shredded and are used as fuel for cement manufacturing. No landfills involved, except for the ashes. The metals that can be recycled are covering a lot of the actual recycling cost, so most operators donâ(TM)t even spend all the money set aside for removal. Improvements in recycling will further increase the overall profitability.
I am not saying that this is not a problem in the U.S., but it is a problem others have solved with the right accounting principles and technologies.
How can you possible say this is B.S.?
We already have huge fields of dead rusting wind turbines in California, and the south of Hawaii. Too expensive to remove so they just sit there, aging....
Given this is ALREADY A PROBLEM...
BECAUSE IT IS B.S.
Those huge fields of dead rusting wind turbines in California, and the south of Hawaii don't exist - or rather they only exist in the propaganda of the more unhinged climate deniers/fossil fuel shills who don't just distort the facts, they simply make stuff up.
I notice that when you repeat this B.S. you never provide links to your "alternative facts".
Note here is a lengthy in-depth discussion of the origins of this lie. It started with a climate denier doing the old distorted facts game - pointing out initially a large number of turbines were installed at the fields in California and Hawaii - but that there many fewer now. But omitting the correct explanation that it was because they were replaced by fewer, much larger, more efficient turbines. And no, the old ones are not just left there, they are removed over time. The actual percentage of non-operating turbines at any given time is about 2%. The fantasy version where there are dead fields (to say nothing of huge dead fields) is the result of climate deniers taking the original BS claim, and extrapolating from it in their imaginations, then posting it as if it was a fact.
I drive through two of the three California fields frequently, watched them go up and evolve, and they are impressive with the huge new towers spinning slowly, but producing far more power than the old ones - which have disappeared. Fields of abandoned turbines are nowhere to be seen. But who should I believe, citation-free climate denier rants or my own lyin' eyes?
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
big government decides how you will help it, not how it will help you. It's not simply whether it has control. It's the attitude of the people running it.
Except nuclear. For nuclear, the cost of ripping out the old one far exceeds any cost savings from being able to reuse the existing building, because you have to safely store all of the removed material for millennia, which means building a building or bunker or whatever. It is cheaper to just pump the whole thing full of concrete and entomb it in place, then build on a new site. Of course, they don't do that because they are not allowed to do so, but cost-wise, it is almost certainly the most effective solution. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
In Alberta, there is a huge problem with abandoned oil wells, run by shell companies that go bankrupt when the oil drys up. Coming up are the abandoned bitumen mines that are really ecologically horrible.
Down the road from me, there's hundreds of millions being put into a small dam that was built a hundred years back, cheaper to refurbish it then tear it down.
Getting away from energy, there are a lot of mines that were abandoned and need to be cleaned up. Some of which left some really toxic shit around.
It's the story of capitalism, it's more profitable to abandon things then to clean them up after their useful life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
... plants that you and your buddies can decommission in two weekends and a little gear your pick up at the next rent-a-tool.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Crony capitalist big business is not capitalism.
Capitalism means a truly free market (read: no subsidies for anyone).
The left (and neocon right) love bailouts for their favorite crony industries: banking, environmental fascism, and the military industrial-complex.
Solyndra 2.0
I had a big wind company who spent years courting me. They wanted to put 24MW of 400' tall wind towers on our farm's mountain ridge lines. We're in an ideal location at the end of a funnel of mountains. But, in the end I said no.
1. Their business model was based on the energy credits, not based on generating power. I only would get paid for power generated. Their presentation was grandiose but I'm good at math and the reality was I was going to see very little income from the project.
2. The turbine blades would throw ice 1,000' in an arc down wind covering extensive portions of my farm and forest. This ice would damage the trees I raise and endanger the lives of myself, my livestock dogs and my livestock as well as damaging my buildings and fences. They accepted no responsibility for this risk.
3. I asked them about end-of-life provisions and insisted that they setup a fund for decommissioning the system at the end of the 25 year lease or if they went out of business. They refused. They claimed that at the end of that time I would have very valuable equipment. I disagree.
I declined to work with them for these three reasons. I'm very pro green energy and all that good stuff. I farm organically. But the wind towers have too may problems, at least with how they were proposing.
All nuclear power plant projects are required to have a fund to decommission the plant. No funds to decommission means no license to build the plant.
One reason the utilities run these nuclear power plants for so long is because each plant is potentially billions of dollars in sunk costs, after running for 40 years it's been paid for. Another reason is that each reactor produces somewhere around one gigawatt of electricity, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, with short shutdowns every few months (maybe years) for inspections, refuel, and repairs. Shutting a nuclear reactor down and not having another to replace it means they have to keep running it or they run short on electricity generating capacity by one gigawatt.
In the USA there are about 100 nuclear reactors producing power. Nuclear energy produces about 20% of the electricity we use. Losing a single reactor might not be a big deal because that's only 0.2% of the nation's electrical generation capacity. But what happens if we shut down 10 reactors? That's 2%. Perhaps not a big problem but it's starting to get in the territory of a concern.
You think that can be replaced by wind power? Wind takes 10 times the concrete and steel per generating capacity over nuclear. Does that sound like too much to you? Consider that for every tower sticking up in the air there is a very large block of reinforced concrete buried in the ground to hold it up against the wind. Also consider that those big concrete domes you see over a nuclear reactor is mostly hollow.
If the problem of getting rid of those old nuclear power plants concerns you then there's a really easy way to speed up the process of shutting them down. All the government would have to do is allow for replacement reactors at those sites.
We now know how to build reactors that can burn the spent fuel from those old reactors. These fuel rods still have plenty of fuel in them, it's only that the old light water designs we've been using are not efficient enough to use up what is left. Have the replacement reactors be heavy water designs, molten salt designs, or whatever else we have now, and they can dispose of the spent fuel on site by burning it more completely. We'd be getting energy without having to make any new fuel.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
the maintenance costs are not properly calculated... which is why despite being told repeatedly that this tech is economically competitive, no private money wants to invest in it absent heavy public support as an investment. Sure, companies might build solar or wind as a publicity or good will campaign move... but to make money?
To be very clear, I want renewable energy to be competitive and efficient and for it to replace most of our grid power.
Appreciate what I just said there.
I want that.
But... if we are to do things responsibly and sustainable then it is very important to not lie on the funding proposal sheet. It may get us to build more things in the short term but it will reduce trust in future proposals and will incline programs that could have been successful to fail because problems could not be addressed early.
In effect, the people pushing this stuff past its legitimate place are sabotaging future more ambitious projects. If the maintenance costs are 50 percent higher than we were initially told, then we need to know that so that we can alter the plan to avoid that problem.
Maybe some wind turbines are better for that then others. It depends. Its something we have to do... put it all in an excel spread sheet and go through a few different scenarios.
What bothers me about these projects is that people believe so much in the "the cause" that they feel they have to lie about the numbers.
You're not helping when you do that. Please stop lying. We can afford to build these things at a loss. And we often go into these projects with our eyes open that it isn't the most economical option. That's okay. But if you lie about the numbers on top of that then it makes everyone very suspicious, nervous, and generally avoidant regarding these projects.
You'd have bigger buy in if the reports were more reliable. Consider that.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Or you could watch a video of a wind turbine being assembled. Start at 7:20 for the blades, in this case they are attached to the hub before being lifted.
And they are big, I passed a 3-blade convoy yesterday while driving in west Texas.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I'm pretty sure most windmills have locking mechanisms to prevent them from spinning in excessively high winds, when the stresses would risk damaging them. Not quite sure how those torques compare to the that of an off-center blade though.
However, if you could lift a single rotor straight up, then you can probably suspend the second rotor at an angle almost as easily, so that the third rotor is left hanging straight down
Okay, found a video of a wind turbine being assembled in Norway with an 83m (272ft) tower - looks like they put the generating nacelle on top of the tower, and then lift the fully assembled three-blade assembly into place as a single piece. Makes sense I guess - it is nicely balanced that way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
But who should I believe, citation-free climate denier rants or my own lyin' eyes?
The answer is obvious - your eyes have been hacked.
#DeleteChrome
Those huge fields of dead rusting wind turbines in California, and the south of Hawaii don't exist
I have been to them personally, both in Hawaii (drive to the southernmost point of the U.S.on the Big Island and they are all around you) and in California (though as that article notes, there are probably less than a 100 derelict windmills left, there used to be many more).
Even the article you linked to just argues about the NUMBER of them, not the existence.
But who should I believe, citation-free climate denier rants or my own lyin' eyes?
I would ask you the same question since I have travelled the world, past many more windmill fields in multiple countries than you have. California may be finally removing a fixing a lot of what they have but just like most Californians who think CA is representative of the world, what you see in CA is not the same as what the rest of the world sees. In did, your CA based eyes are indeed lyin'.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
how much did right-wing / "big oil" interests pay for this submission?
____
of course there's costs associated with decommissioning a wind turbine.. you idiot..
but the thing is. . the thing you choose to ignore, is...
coal, gas and other fossil-fuel plants and nuclear reactors cost more to decommission, pollute more when decommissioning, leave more pollution behind, and are less reclaimable/recyclable than wind farms of comparable power output...
that's on top of fossil fuel's higher pollution above and below ground, and nuclear's extreme start up costs and even more extreme environmental costs after.
Indeed. Many people keep driving their old cars until the wheel bearings seize, or the transmission stops shifting, or it puts a rod through the block.
A car that breaks down to the point of not being worth the repair is having to call for a tow to a scrapyard and taking a walk/bus/cab/whatever home. There's enough metal and parts in the car to pay for the tow, and often enough left over for the first payment on a replacement car. You mention a bearing seizure as a possible mode of failure on a car. Do you know what a seized bearing looks like on a windmill? There's videos of them that are not too hard to find. You do not want to run a windmill to failure if you can help it.
The problem with windmills is that, unlike the car, people might not be able to find enough spare parts and scrap metal in the old windmill to pay for it's disposal.
I think that was the point.......
I'm not sure you got the point. I'm not sure I got it either.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
> The problem is that neoliberal free market capitalism isn't exactly delivering flowers and unicorns
Point of fact: It is delivering flowers and unicorns
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw...
Would you like next-day delivery, or free three-day delivery?
One of the things that would improve Facebook would be some kind of quality-based selector for the first visible comment after each story. That "first post" tends to direct the conversation, but more often than not, it directs the conversation in some nonproductive direction, amplified by the brokenness of the moderation system that quite often gives the FP an insightful moderation. (Many discussion systems attempt (halfheartedly) to implement a solution with sort-order selectors.) Yet another example of the kind of feature I would be interested in helping to fund if only Slashdot had such a funding alternative--and if you disagree, then you could fund other features or none at all.
Anyway, returning form meta to my primary reaction to the article, this story is obviously a framing lie (Level 3). You can approach the reality ("machines wear out") from the perspective of a problem that needs to be solved, for example by making wind turbines that last longer and are easier to repair, or from the perspective of a new business opportunity, but this story quite deliberately frames the situation in apocalyptic terms.
Now I'm going to look at the rest of the discussion. Of course I'm seeking "funny", but with the slimmest of hopes these years. I'm also going to look for insights such as the real motivations of whoever published this story. Were I a gambling man, I'd bet on Exxon right out of the gate, but that particular corporate cancer has become rather clever about hiding the money trail...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
HHAHHAHHAHHHAHHHHAHHAHAHHAHAAHA. Thanks, i needed a good laugh.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinene...
More recently, the 556 MW Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant in eastern Wisconsin was shut down in 2013. Kewaunee’s operator, Dominion Power, anticipates nearly $1 billion in total costs using the SAFSTOR method and estimates that work will not be complete until 2073.
That $200,000 is looking pretty good put up against that $1 BILLION plus....and 60 years to complete.
The capacity factor of a wind turbine is about a 1/3rd. The biggest wind turbines are about 2 megawatts. Kewaunee had a lifetime capacity factor of 84% for it's 39 years of service.
To replace Kewaunee's output with wind turbines, you would need 631 of the largest wind turbines available, for a cost of about 2 billion dollars. Since wind turbines last perhaps half as long as nuclear plants, figure $4 billion. That also doesn't count added costs with spreading them out geographically far enough to get reliable generation from them; nor have we touched the tremendous amount of land they need.
At a $200,000 per unit decomissioning cost for wind turbines, the total cost would for scrapping two generations of a 631 unit 'wind farm' would be $250,000,000, less than Kewaunee's billion..... but now you're starting to compare apples to apples.
New nuclear plants are double the output of Kewaunee- while they're admittedly expensive, they have the tremendous benefit of power-on-demand- something that's vital for a stable electrical grid.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
They should be required to put money in a government-managed escrow fund to pay the costs of the removals/cleanups. Walking away is too easy (same can be said for owners of abandoned malls, mines, fracking sites, etc).
to take apart the turbines?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
https://www.glassdoor.com/Revi...
It's just people publishing garbage to make some money and make their own names. It's not serious journalism.
Subsidies for uneconomic power technologies that were put in to make people feel good about saving the planet and not to generate electric power.
I have never met a green that could either see past their nose, or wasn't flat out lying about the problems of their religion.
Always blindsided by what anyone with a braincell can see
http://reason.com/blog/2017/09...
wow switch to renewables your power availability goes down and your prices become the highest in the world
or closer to home
https://www.pge.com/en/about/n...
and oddly enough your rates in the golden state are going way up
https://abcnews.go.com/US/stor...
Really if you live in CA and you run into someone advocating renewables do yourself a favor and knock out a few of their teeth.
One says to the the other "what kind of music do you like?"
The other replies "Well I like all sorts but I'm a big metal fan"
Decommission them with a bid system. I don't see how a scrapper could not make money on it, even the ones on the sea, almost everything about it is easily recyclable. Oh the blades aren't ... big whoop, grind them down, forget about them. What the fuck planet is this girl on when she thinks decommissioned windmill blades are going to fill our landfills? Drop in the pond.
The same thing is going to happen in Solar, eventually too.
Sure! Years and years of "free" power.
Then megatons of trash nobody has the money to haul away or the landfill to occupy.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Wow. So tearing down 1000 1-GW windmills costs $200million (most parts recycleable). Compare to cost of decommissioning, tear-down and cleanup of a 1-GW nuke. Cheap!
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
... syndrome.
I've been arguing the 2nd law of thermodynamics for years regarding wind turbines.
We don't get something for nothing.
TFA makes the point of end-of-life where the cost of tear down and recycle is a bitch.
Advocates ignore the other end, as well where we inject fossil fuels into the processes of extraction, transportation, refinement, transportation, manufacturing, more transportation to assembly plants powered by fossil fuels ... we can all follow the fossil fuel path to a wind turbine standing tall as the Sun glints off it in full glory.
We ignore its dirty genesis.
During its productive life, it needs inspection, maintenance, and repairs -- all done using fossil fuel.
In total, we shit in our mess kit producing a shiny object.
[I don't object to the manufacture of wind turbines, but I do object to the unrealistic worship of the shiny object to the point of ignoring science.]
The lesson of the shiny object is that it's dirty.
While the ENERGY is renewable, the goddam shiny object isn't. ~ CaptainDork
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
All nuclear power plant projects are required to have a fund to decommission the plant. No funds to decommission means no license to build the plant.
They do. With a completely fictional amount that is orders of magnitude too low.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What about externalities from fossil fuels, that isn't fully coated either.
Donald Trump knows what it means.
Yes, clean indestructible coal.
How do you use a fuel that's indestructible?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Actually, the big concern is that nobody wants to buy the power from them, as alternatives keep springing up. This gets them antsy as the reactors need to distribute the power, and they are useless without being able to do so. And that means...no funds to retire.
Two things here...
First, you want me to believe that no one is willing to buy electricity from a nuclear power plant? Bullshit. No body cares where the electricity comes from, especially not a business that has work to do. Saying "nobody" is a bit hyperbolic since there's always some hippy that can't stand nuclear power but such people are also the kind that put solar panels on their roof and go off grid, they aren't paying any utility bills anyway.
Second, if they have no funds to retire, because no one is buying, then they will keep going until the do have funds to retire. If you want that nuclear power plant to have money to shut down later then you buy the electricity now. Oh, and there has to be a plan for these people to keep making money after the plant is shut down, such as being able to build a new power plant.
Sorry, but none of those ideas have panned out. They aren't appealing even with the tens of billions of subsidies they've gotten.
They haven't panned out because the government has never issued a license for them. The government is very risk adverse, to the point of being crippled to make any changes to the rules on licensing. We've been making the same reactor with minor variations on a theme for 60 years. People ask for a new license and the government says, "We don't know if this is safe." The response is, "We'd like to prove to you it is safe by building a demonstration reactor." "How can we know that is safe" "We can do that with these plans and simulations." "We'll need to see a working prototype first." "That's what we are asking for, a license to build a working prototype." "We can't issue a license to build anything until you can show it's safe."
Subsidies are worthless no matter how much is spent without a license to build a real world reactor. The simulations are only as good as the data used to create them and to get that data means building a prototype to get that data from.
Nope. Sounds like scare tactics to me, as you try to create a hysteria over an image, without actual robustness to your examinations.
You can live with your delusions of a nuclear free world only so long, then reality bites. Go read a book or something.
They just can't get those gen 3 reactors to deliver on their promises.
And they can't deliver on those promises until the government starts issuing licenses to build those Gen3 reactors.
Sorry, but it turns out we could have literally built homes for Americans that would have reduced energy costs by more than we've gotten from nuclear subsidies.
Sorry, but a growing population and a shrinking number of operating nuclear power reactors means that at some point those lines on the graph crosses and the space in between the lines is the growing energy shortage. If you want to see an ecological disaster then make energy so scarce and expensive that people will be cutting down every tree in sight for firewood to stay warm.
And that isn't even counting the wastefulness of nuclear subs.
Go take a long walk off a short pier.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Owners of commercial buildings, commercial aircraft, your condo association, and other things figured out long ago that a portion of the operating budget needs to be set aside from the beginning as maintenance/replacement. The building I'm currently in set up from the beginning that certain items, carpet, for instance, would be worn out in a number of years. I think they projected (planned on) 10 years. The owners just completed its 10-year refurbishment.
If government wants to stop subsiding, it is not very difficult to mandate that the last batch of subsiding funds must do to decommissioning.
I think he's talking about these Hawaïan wind turbines. No idea how many there are and the photos date back to 2011 so things may have changed since then.
I did not see any rusty wind turbine in California but it's too big a place to search thoroughly on Google Maps. If someone knows where they are, provide a link, photos, etc.
So you agree that there is a fund to decommission nuclear power plants? Good. I'll take that over not having anything at all like wind power.
The claims have been that the nuclear power plants are not being cleaned up. This can be shown to be false. It may be taking a long time, it may be running over budget, but the mess is being cleaned up. The problem with windmills now is that they've been leaving the mess for others to clean up, and walking away with the profits.
The nuclear power mess would be cleaned up more quickly if the Democrats had not been holding up the construction of nuclear waste storage sites. I'm guessing what would also help is issuing licenses for new reactors on the old sites. They'll get real motivated to clear the site if they know that by doing so they can put a new reactor there. The Democrats have been holding up the issuance of nuclear power licenses too.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
But in TX,itâ(TM)s much cheaper to use wind over nuclear.
Let's just pretend that less than 1% of the world population live in Texas. Let's also pretend that there are lots of people that live on islands, where land is expensive, and the neighbors to this island don't like them very much so they can't just buy their electricity from them. Let's also pretend that this describes many hundreds of millions of people in the world. What then?
We are not going to live in a world powered by wind. We are going to have to figure out how to make nuclear power work. This is going to take a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of effort. We got solar and wind to be far cheaper and therefore more viable as energy sources with lots of time, money, and effort so it's not like this has not been done before.
Mostly what nuclear power needs is practice. The USA has built only a handful of new nuclear power plants in the last 40 years, after building over 100 in 20 or 30 years. These 40, 50, and 60+ year old reactors will have to be shut down soon for safety reasons. We're going to get a lot of practice decommissioning those plants, that should bring down the costs. Something will have to replace them and it will be nuclear power, except for maybe those that live in Texas.
The US used to see a new nuclear power plant come online every 2 months. Estimates are that with growth in demand since then and the retiring of old coal and nuclear we will have to bring one new nuclear power plant online every month. Assuming they last for 50 years then that means we will have to keep bringing one new nuclear power plant online every month because after 50 years of building nuclear power plants we'll have to start replacing those we are building now. That's assuming zero growth in energy demand. Those new nuclear reactors would be replacing only existing capacity.
Maybe Texas can go with wind instead, and Arizona use solar, but for the rest of the USA the only thing cheap enough to replace the aging coal and nuclear plants is new nuclear.
You want to claim that wind and solar will get cheaper? Then I'll just say that nuclear will get cheaper too. Today nuclear is cheaper than solar. Except for Texas we find that today nuclear is cheaper than wind. What will the prices of these energy sources be in 50 years? I don't know, but we know that right now if we want cheap energy then it's going to include nuclear power.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
....is the first post in this list "Insightful"? It's anything but...it's not even addressing the issue about old wind turbines.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
My apologies. The first line of my comment (the one to which I am replying now) says "Facebook" where I obviously intended "Slashdot". I hope my mistake was obvious from the context, but still, there's no excuse. However, the comment does apply with some modification to Facebook, though I think it is much less possible that Facebook could adopt, even partially for any aspect of their website, such a non-profit cost-recovery feature-funding model as I am advocating.
The Subject: is based on a kind of joke, but I can't share it on Slashdot without a perversion of the original language. Yet another feature I wish I could help fund, though I doubt that there would be a large enough group on Slashdot such that the feature would ever get the commitment needed for implementation. (In such cases, I'd just have to pick other features or costs that I'd like to help fund.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
This just in: "Retiring" things that we build someday may have unspecified costs associated. I guess we shouldn't build anything. Oh, wait, unless maybe it gives us free energy literally from the wind for generations... maybe that reason.
How would you prefer to define "quality?"
(Hint: Infinity is quite a long time).
OTOH, if the turbine produces $1k worth of electricity a month, spending $200 to send somebody with a 50c replacement part up it to keep it working for another year or two is a no-brainer....
Oh, wait, so is the president!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Good question. In this context it would be difficult to assess and automate. One approach would be based on a good EPR (Earned Public Reputation) system, sort of karma on steroids. From that perspective, the server might pool all of the early submissions and give first-post position not to the chronologically first comment, but to the early comment from the person with the highest reputation in the dimensions related to insight. Perhaps hourly re-rankings for the first 2 or 3 hours?
However I realize that description reflects my personal bias in favor of insightful comments, even if they seem kind of scarce these days. In response to your question, I now think it should also be related to the reactions to the story. For example, if the story has received a number of "funny" mods, then the featured comments should also be biased in favor of that dimension. (Yes, I know the stories aren't rated at that level, but that's another problem with an obvious solution.)
Unless you've been following my older comments and mumbles, I better clarify that I think EPR (or whatever it's called) should have a dimensional symmetry with the reactions to comments. The dimensions themselves should also be considered more carefully to isolate orthogonal concepts with positive and negative aspects. There should be a simple rating, too, for positive or negative, but that should just affect the magnitude of the direction vector defined by people who were willing to put a bit more effort into clarifying what aspects they regarded as positive or negative. I also think it should be biased in favor of positive reactions over negative, in that you should have to make a bit of extra effort to substantiate a negative reaction...
And all of this should be paid for by the users, but only as enough users agree that a particular feature is worth creating. Not sure why, but you've gotten me to start thinking about the credit for features that get retired...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
It's not quite that simple. In order to be cost efficient, wind turbines are practically a one-piece black box. To do extensive repairs you practically have to take it down or replace large parts of it.
Wind turbines, like solar panels are a unit that's only somewhat cost effective if you don't ever have to maintain, recycle or replace them.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
We should be able to mod articles.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
https://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/local_news/retiring-worn-out-wind-turbines-could-cost-billions-that-nobody/article_3a81176e-f65d-11e6-b1bb-b70957ccb19f.html
I just wanted to point out that the original article is from 18.02.2017
This is because of the reactors we are using to generate nuclear energy, there are much better alternatives, also nuclear, but that not only use their fuel more efficiently, but they can actually use spent fuel from today's reactors as fuel. That of course is Thorium based reactors, but there are other Uranium reactor types that are both safer and more efficient, like the pebble bed reactor. So WHY do we keep building the same damn reactors that were built to enrich uranium when we don't need to anymore?
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
For any such project, make sure to secure the funds to repair, replace, or remove. In these cases, whoever failed to do this originally ought to pay up out of their own pocket.
OK, so something like (previous_reputation * pr_multiplier) * (current_comment_ranking * ccr_multiplier) * (1 / age * a_multiplier)?
If pr_multiplier was adjusted 1, and there were some kind of ceiling on it, then you'd be able to avoid using previous reputation to dominate. As long as the age term had some kind of a floor to 1, you'd prevent bots from commenting less than a second and blowing up that term. The middle term is probably already what's in play, but I don't think that's quite what you suggested. I think for the middle term to be as you stated, you'd need to enumerate the different categories of comments, and line it up with an evaluation of how much the story corresponds to that category, and then adjust that multiplier per category to line up with that story. Is something like (current_comment_rank_funny * article_funny_percentage) for each category what you mean here? I'm also not super familiar with the comment ranking, so I'm not sure how the different categories of comment ranks exist.
The only thing I would suggest is changing the way you describe this idea. I wouldn't use the term "first" and instead I'd use the term "top." I don't like how you are eliminating the temporal constraints on "first" even though I think this is a good idea, and I can see your point about how the "top" comment oftentimes does dominate the thread.
Ideally, with enough money, I'd have my software company implement both views - your proposed ranked view, and then a chronological view. I'd set your view to the default, and see what happens, while allowing people to still switch back to the classic view (and set the default view as a user configurable option, on log-in so they don't get annoyed always having to switch it back if they hate your idea.) Then I'd measure how many people switched back to the old view, and left it there, as a percentage of the total.
Just like solar energy. Maybe more people will realize that there's no free lunch.
Here's the "impartial" source of this article:
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Industrial_Wind_Action_Group
Anti-wind power hit piece, no more. The numbers and predictions in it are pure bullshit. This line should have raised a bunch of red flags:
"The blades are composite, those are not recyclable, those can't be sold. The landfills are going to be filled with blades in a matter of no time...."
Why exactly can't the blades be sold or reused? Is there some legislation that bans their resale? Some mysterious physics that make the airfoils not work? Using your worst case estimate for blade life, when comparing the volume of the inert composite blades needing disposal compared to the volume of hazardous chemicals needing disposal it takes to process the raw material and produce the same amount of electricity from coal, oil, or nuclear sources on a percentage basis, how many places after the decimal point is it before we get to a digit that's not zero?
Retiring worn-out wind turbines could cost billions says front for the OIL industry.
OTOH, if the turbine produces $1k worth of electricity a month, spending $200 to send somebody with a 50c replacement part up it to keep it working for another year or two is a no-brainer....
Your ignorance of the matter you comment on is stupefying...
A turbine that generates $1K of electricity a month? That's an exceedingly small turbine.
What worker will go out to, up and down a wind turbine, then back home for $200?
How will the technician know the 50Â part needs replacing?
You seem to think wind turbine repairs are as simple and inexpensive as a dishwasher repair, ignoring the fact that the "dishwasher" is located on a remote ride, we'll outside of town, about 250-300 feet in the air.
Ken
Having worked on wind turbines for a huge company that is selling itself off piece by piece, their wind turbines have a very expensive yearly service. It is the main shaft bearings for the blade shaft. The blade assy must be removed, bearings pressed out, new ones pressed in and the blade assembly reinstalled. That is a $250,000 in 2010 money. Makes it rather hard to justify the "free" energy.
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
Not a huge issue
Not because they'll take up a huge amount of space (they won't, they're hollow and shred easily), but because unless there are environmental cleanup rules they'll be dumped where they lay and that will be the end of it.
What worker will go out to, up and down a wind turbine, then back home for $200?
I hear it's one of the most dangerous jobs out there, so I'd say that we can start with "It's either a very short tower, or a very underpaid (respective of risk) worker."
I'd guess that all the numbers in the post above--$1K worth of electricity a month, $200 labor by one person, $0.50 part--are at least a couple orders of magnitude too small, including the number of people required to do the job safely.
Though, if you can only afford to build and maintain the things via subsidies, it's not actually sustainable. Sustainable should be economically sustainable as well once it's had around a decade to get itself off the ground.
Windpower is free! It shouldn't cost anything to decommission those turbines!
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
I've long wondered why slashdot doesn't have a way to get rid of the frosty piss, first post, etc and other crap. Sometimes I've pulled up articles that are years old, frosty piss is still there. I don't think that's censorship, that's just getting rid of the trash. Could probably set up a tensor to find that and automatically remove it.
Keep the GNAA posts though. They're entertaining. Could also put a SCAA (Stupid Cracker Assoc of America). Equal opportunity offender. If I somehow miss your special group and you feel left out, just let me know and I'll make fun of it.
As much as you want to rant over your imagined enemies, the fact is, those businesses do care who supplies their power, and they are not going with nuclear
They prefer the alternatives.
Is that why nuclear power produces 20% of the electricity in the USA while wind and solar produce what is a rounding error by comparison? I'm quite certain that businesses don't care where their electricity comes from. The customers might care, which is why companies like Tesla and Apple announce efforts to buy electricity from wind and solar. They don't much care if it raises their costs, they just raise the price of their products to compensate.
Nope. Your false claims are showing. They actually did of the building of prototypes and designs and...begged for the government to pay for it. And the results? More begging.
That's why the subsidies are worthless. They never produce results. They claim based on their simulations that miracles will happen, demand money, then fail
Sounds a lot like the subsidies for wind and solar too. They keep begging for subsidies because if they don't get subsidies then the oceans will rise and drown us all!!
We keep hearing of miracles that will come from wind and solar but they have yet to come. Here's the difference though, solar and wind have been allowed licenses to operate while nuclear has not. You say nuclear has not delivered? I say its because the government has not allowed them to even try. They can't prove it viable until the government issues a license to actually build something.
Sorry, but actually the electrical industry is downscaling because they are revising their energy estimates for the future, and that is yet another reason they won't be trying to build nuclear plants. Too much investment, too little return.
How would you know? No one has been allowed to even try for 40+ years. Anyone can go to the NRC website and see that people have been applying for licenses. That means people are willing to invest. The problem is that the NRC drags their feet until the applicants get fed up and withdraw the application. A quick look at a couple of the applications shows it took TEN YEARS to get a license. Maybe if the government got up off their thumbs then we'd have seen more old coal plants shut down and replaced with carbon free nuclear.
If people fear nuclear power more than global warming then I'm not so sure global warming is any real threat. They'd rather wait for solar power to be cheaper than coal, and dump subsidies into that money pit, than see nuclear be successful.
You hate the fact that they're useless, don't you?
Those nuclear submarines are quite useful, I'm not so sure about you though. What those nuclear subs are useful for is proving daily that nuclear power is safe. That must really bother you, seeing nuclear power so safe and clean that sailors can be sealed up in a big metal tube with a reactor for months at a time and come out just as happy and healthy as when they went in.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Oh, and there has to be a plan for these people to keep making money after the plant is shut down, such as being able to build a new power plant.
A third coercion! This is why nuclear is failing though, people are wise to the game.
What coercion? Shutting down a nuclear power reactor and not having anything to replace it means the lights go out for the customers of that utility. They will be very protective of that energy producing asset unless they are allowed to replace it with something. I didn't say a new nuclear power plant, I said they'd have to be able to stay in business with any power plant. If you want them to go with solar instead then let them do that. They'd need to have a site to put the collectors and not have people protest over displacing some turtle or butterfly. If you want them to go with wind power instead then let them build windmills without people protesting about birds getting killed.
I like wind power, I think it has a lot of promise. If it's going to be successful then people will need a license to build. Do windmills kill birds? I'm certain that they do. Do I care? Not really. Birds are jerks and I need electricity to run my air conditioner and heat my burritos in the microwave.
I'm wise to your game. You are so concerned about the "environment" that you'd rather protect some worthless bait fish than see a hydroelectric dam provide electricity and water to people. Fuck you and all your ignorant SJW tree hugging BANANAs. If all you got is to say no to everything then expect to be ignored as people get some work done.
(For the acronym impaired that's BANANA for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.)
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
So anyhow, Is there some reason that these wind turbines cannot be maintained? Last time I checked, they had parts like most other things have parts.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yes, I'd reDirect funding from .mil to complete R & D to bring Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) to approval & to market sooner...
Safe Small Liquid-Fuel Nuclear Reactors, eg, IMSR, LFTR, SSR, Thorcon, WAMSR's & the like)
In place of Trump's demand that NATO boost their .mil spending to 2% - we could all do Lots Morefor ourselves & the planet. IF we DROPPED our (USA's) 3.5% .mil spending to that same 2%, that Trump thought appropriate.
Renewables don't work; cf: RoadmapToNowhere.com (which rebuts Stanford Prof Mark Z Jacobson's [100% WWS] plan (a job-creation program? ;-)
Look, with Liquid-Fuel Nuclear (ie, Molten Salt Reactors = MSR) due~2025, the "Nu Clear" path becomes: "Build long-lasting MSRs, located near places where power is needed or is now used"
MSRs offer Sealed, Factory-made Cores (that later become "secure caskets" for their modest amounts of shorter-lived waste: eg, ~300 years vs Today's nukes' ~300,000 years); they need No Refueling across 7 years of operation.
How much down-time do Today's Fuel-Rod based dinosaurs lose, due to lengthy ReFueling stoppages (every ~18 months...)?
It won't be so different, even "newer" SMR designs, like (over-funded, IMO) NuScale - each of whose modules includes, eg, a 50 MW power-generator, & who's greater quantity of waste needs much longer-term secure storage.
I say to Greens who love Renewables: Do the Math.
Even with "Fukushima-era" (ie, Fuel-Rod based) NPP's, Renewables don't stand a chance of providing all the Energy we need, in the space, time & $$ we have to offer.
It gets even better when Thorium (which becomes U-233) replaces Uranium as MSR Fuel:
As if from an IQ test, ask: Which of these is preferable, eg, based on expected worker-injuries & -deaths?
3,000,000 tonnes toxic Coal; ...in that Each of the above quantities of Fuel can be used to make the SAME amount of Electricity.
= 200 tonnes Raw Uranium [in Fuel-Rod NPP];
= just 1 tonne Thorium (in an MSR),
(Source: "Thorium- Energy for the World" (2016, Springer)
It's in the Abstract of the intro by physicist Carlo Rubbia)
(Note: You don't need to buy that co$tly book to get the article; get Rubbia's eye-opening intro. free, eg, in the Amazon's Sample of its Kindle edition.
Concluding:
I Propose: THAT we Postpone all Fusion R+D, & redirect it's funding to MSR R+D Until MSRs are producing all the Energy needed for Fusion R+D
Easy to Predict: If we embrace & propagate MSRs, they will Preclude the need for Fracking (past, present & future), & enable us keep more of Earth natural for future generations, not to mention: greatly reducing the need for (& cost of) secure storage for Nuclear Waste, as well as the period over which it needs to be stored.
And - with the resulting huge reductions in CO2 + other GHG's - we can expect to see a healed Climate sooner, rather than later.
The rest is Commentary... So, go out there & do what you can to Bring MSRs Sooner. ;~)
PS 1: For NuScale's down-sides, hear the ~1 hour-long interview of its (CTO?) in Episode 14: "NuScale's New Scale for Nuclear" by Oregon Dept of Energy here: https://energyinfo.oregon.gov/...
From your response I can't tell if you're an actual mathematician (and I am definitely not) attempting to reply using non-mathematical language or something else. I "felt" a need for some matrix algebra in your reply. There is a difference in the way you write compared to the way most mathematicians of my acquaintance write, but it could be my fault because I lack the ability to express things as precisely as a real mathematician would. However I think I can address two parts of your reply.
The top-post versus first-post thing is largely historical, and you should be aware of that based on your relatively low user ID. However it's possible that you are a sporadic user of Slashdot? Based on my current filtering, I may also have a biased perspective, and mostly I don't even see the actual first posts these years. What I often see at the top of a discussion is a later post, often one that has been modded up, but which seems to be following a direction established by the invisible first post. Sometimes I do back up the thread to see where it started. That research usually feels like a waste of time.
My second reaction was to your comment about running the two interfaces against each other in a giant system-level test. I don't think that is how you can test largely different approaches. I think you have to do things in a more incremental, evolutionary way, and it's even better if you can let some people stay with the old ways they like to do things while letting them be aware of the alternative approaches. However mostly I think you've assumed an injection of large amounts of money. The only way I can imagine that might be as a Kickstarter project that has run amok (as in the case of Diaspora), and I know of no examples where that has worked out well. Rather I think the funding should also be guided by the users' preferences.
Let me try to suggest a possible implementation path. There might be two initial project proposals: (1) A project to make karma more symmetric with the reactions to comments. That project description should make it clear how the new data structure would work alongside the existing structures, essentially as an extension of user identities. (2) A project to restructure the dimensions of rating posts. That project description should describe how the orthogonal and symmetric dimensions will work, including examples that can be compared to the existing dimensions. I think "funny" is a relatively easy example because "unfunny" is relatively easy to understand, but I actually think the dimension should be generalized to something like "made me happy" versus "made me unhappy" on the negative side. Such proposals would then be subject to funding by the members (the users of Slashdot in this case), and after enough members had agreed to chip in, the project would commit. After each project is completed, it would be assessed against its success criteria. Among other aspects, this would help the donors decide if they liked the approach or wanted to try another direction.
The most confusing part of your response was your new terminology. For example, you introduced the term pr_multiplier, which from context would appear to be personal-reputation-multiplier. I would prefer to consider it a weighting factor, but you seemed to be taking age (of the identity) for granted as one of the dimensions of EPR. I have mentioned the importance of that dimension at times, but I usually describe that particular dimension in terms of a "maturity filter", and it is unclear to me if you might be referring to those comments.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Sure. I am sure you are including the "Allowed to emit CO2" as a subsidy.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
I think the sat pics are more up to date.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
When you put a wind turbine up, you factor in the cost of maintenance and eventual replacement. That's what depreciation is: allowing the accrual of replacement costs. This story is the usual bullshit FUD from the fossil fuel industry. To fall for it, you'd have to know NOTHING about how to run a business. I suppose that means Republicans will be particularly susceptible.
Only boring people are ever bored.
One more thing (as Steve Jobs used to say?): I think the deeper "it" is mostly about the financial models and how they interact and align with the interests of the various stakeholders, even though many of the stakeholders may not be holding financial stakes.
As it applies to the original story attacking wind turbines, the missing information is about the financial model driving that source of those much-too-obvious lies.
As it applies to Facebook, the financial model is more visible to the public, even though the public prefers to ignore most of it: The financial model of Facebook is to generate maximum profit by raping the personal information of the users. In many ways quite similar to the malformed (IMO) financial models of other corporate cancers like the google and Amazon and Apple. [Yes, I think "the google" has special status.]
As it applies to Slashdot, the financial model is again missing or invisible or even nonexistent. Some evidence suggests that Slashdot is more like the charity you described in your "with enough money" paragraph. On one hand, I think charity is a good thing and admirable, but on the other hand I think most charities are fundamentally misguided and unfair in that they are attempting to supply private solutions for public problems. However, that's an entirely different can of worms...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Good point. The sat pics show the wind turbines have all been dismantled, although not much seems to have been done with them. It's not clear how old the images are.
Excellent, my first lol of the day. A little paper gold star for you!
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
But people in their right minds are in very limited supply in the former american republics.
Nonsense. The US is full of right-minded citizens.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
They haven't panned out because the government has never issued a license for them. The government is very risk adverse, to the point of being crippled to make any changes to the rules on licensing. We've been making the same reactor with minor variations on a theme for 60 years. People ask for a new license and the government says, "We don't know if this is safe." The response is, "We'd like to prove to you it is safe by building a demonstration reactor." "How can we know that is safe" "We can do that with these plans and simulations." "We'll need to see a working prototype first." "That's what we are asking for, a license to build a working prototype." "We can't issue a license to build anything until you can show it's safe."
Who pays for these things?
First you state that it takes billions of dollars over and above the substantial construction costs to build these things. They you say that it takes literally 2 generations for them to even start making a profit. Then you say people are lining up around the block to build these things but the government will not let them.
Where are these investors coming from who want to throw away billions upon billions of dollars, so that their grandchildren might make a profit if nothing ever goes wrong in the interim?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I have absolutely no doubt that it would cost the government billions to retire these windmills. As for land owners, they are just huge piles of scape worth many 10s of thousands of dollars.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
First you state that...
I don't know who you are talking about but it's not me, I said none of those things.
Since you asked though I'll answer one of your questions.
I remember hearing of a local family that signed a 100 year lease on some farmland for a shopping mall or something to be built on it. This family has been living off the returns from that for a long time now. This seemed to me to be quite low risk because if anything goes wrong then they have a building they can lease to some other occupants, which has happened, or worst case they can tear everything up and go back to farming the land.
You might say that a nuclear power plant is different from a shopping mall. Let's consider the risks over time. At the beginning of construction the site will have to be cleared and leveled. If it stops here then the site is prepared for anything else, like housing or industry. Then it needs roads, utilities, train tracks, and likely a dock or port of some sort on a waterway. If it stops here then it's a nice industrial site. Then there needs to be an administration building and/or workshop for people to work from. If it stops here then it's still a site worthy of industrial development. Then the site needs a turbine hall, the start of a containment building, cooling towers, and so forth. Maybe it's not a general industrial site at this point but it's got the good start for conversion to a natural gas power plant, iron works, or some such. Then the reactor has to be put in. If it stops at this point then it's still a good start for a nuclear power plant in the future, and we have seen such sites get completed as nuclear power plants before. Even if the reactor building has to be cleared for conversion to burn coal or natural gas then it's still a far better site than starting from nothing. Once the reactor goes critical and starts producing steam then it's making money. So long as it makes money then it's something valuable even with the sunk cost in the land and structures. People will invest in this on the possibility of a return through dividends and/or the future value of the stock upon sale.
Why would people invest billions in something that might not produce a profit until their grandchildren take over? That's what I believe is a false premise. You assume that if an investment cannot pay off it's debt in one's lifetime that it has no value to a person. People buy and sell debt all the time. A nuclear power plant may be in debt for 30 or 40 years but people investing in it will know that it still has value because it can produce more than enough money to pay off the debt because it has an expected operational life span of 50, 60, or even 80 years.
Who pays for these things?
Short answer, people with money. Longer answer, people with money that understand that every investment comes with both risk of loses and a probability of future return. This risk and return is bought and sold like any commodity that can have it's value rise and fall. The ultimate pay out of this investment might not get settled for two or three generations but that doesn't matter if people can ride that wave for even a day through the buying and selling of a portion of that investment.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
>
You seem to think wind turbine repairs are as simple and inexpensive as a dishwasher repair, ignoring the fact that the "dishwasher" is located on a remote ride, we'll outside of town, about 250-300 feet in the air.
You didn't really drill into why this is a problem. Even if it costs $10000 to repair, and that fix keeps it generating $10001 dollars, then it's worth doing.
So unless you got some numbers, I'm going to assume it is exactly lie a dishwasher, car, or coal power plant....
The turbine blades weigh as much as a small car and are 50 feet up in the air.
So like a crane then?
We've already had this argument, way back in 14th Century Europe...
If you are thinking about alternative energy sources, it is a good idea to be sure to include long term plans. Getting your money back isn't a bad thing, but a good engineer knows that every solution is the hotbed for new problems.
Wind power (and water) is the most clean form of power there has been since the start of humanity.
Why would you want to tear down those wind turbines? They are simple machines, which require some maintenance, but can basically keep running for eternity.
I mean, there are still functional windmills from centuries ago, working fine.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I realize I'm replying very late, but for the record:
> schwit1 shared this article from Energy Central News:
No, it's not from Energy Central News. Energy Central News is a news scraper. If you actually look at the link, the very first line clearly states its from the "Valley Morning Star". If you Google that, you'll find its a very small regional paper in Texas.
> said Lisa Linowes, executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which
> studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industry
Ummm, no. As the article points out;
"Its funding, according to its website, comes from environmentalists, energy experts and public donations and not the fossil fuel industry."
Which is funny. This statement is what they say, you can go to the web site and find it. But when you do, you will find that this same page also states that the entire purpose of the group is...
"to counteract the misleading information promulgated by the wind energy industry and various environmental groups."
Ah. And when you poke about a bit more, you'll learn that the Group was formed "by Jonathan S. Linowes, a self-proclaimed Tea Party activist and climate change denier."
Linowes, as in the husband of the person writing the article, as in the founder and co-founders.
So yeah, once again total BS gets onto the front page of /. Thanks fact checkers!
https://checksandbalancesproject.org/lisa-linowes-and-the-disinformation-of-industrial-wind-action-group/
OK. I say that is not true. I have shown as much evidence as you: none.
Oh wait I do have it.
And no, a windmill is not a pole with a box on top of it. The stuff that is in that box is maintainable, just like any engine.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Just curious, what is the decommision cost for coal and other things? I assume that the cost of removing the CO2 from the air is included in that.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industr
See https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Industrial_Wind_Action_Group.
It's a front for Jonathan S. Linowes, a self-proclaimed Tea Party activist and climate change denier,
and is supported by the coalmine barons of the Koch family.
Wind farms keep salaried employees to perform maintenance and inspection, and have a shop/office in the nearest town of reasonable size (5,000+ population), which in most parts of this country is within a 1/2 hour drive of anywhere.
I included lifetime capacity factor for Kewaunee in my numbers and stated so clearly. Your adjustment is incorrect.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
As there's likely to be an increasing amount of turbine maintenance work, it may become cost effective to replace large parts like rotor blades and generators via heavy-lift dirigible.
// DevsVult: The Machines Will It