From what I understand, wind and solar are among the cheapest sources of power today.
Then you understand incorrectly.
I just saw a US government projection that there will be 20 GW of new natural gas electrical generation built his year. How much wind and solar? Well, there's been installs of solar of as much as 50 GW per year, and 12 GW of wind. Wind and solar are also highly subsidized. Does natural gas get subsidies? I'm sure they do. There's no mistaking though that solar and wind installations depend highly on the rate they get their disproportionate subsidies. If wind and solar were so cheap then why do we keep subsidizing it? If it's so cheap then why haven't they displaced natural gas on new construction?
Oh, and natural gas doesn't need hydro storage to be viable. That's because fuel is storage. I keep hearing on how wind and sun is "free". Well, natural gas is "free" too. Just like wind and sun that natural gas costs just as much as it takes to collect it. The costs to collect natural gas are quite low and seem to keep going down.
I did see this article linked from a popular technology blog about Bill Gates wanting to bring a new molten salt fast neutron reactor to market by 2030. I believe the website was called "Slashdot", perhaps you've heard of it?
The claim is that the reactor will use a high temperature molten salt for heat transfer and storage. That way it can use efficient Brayton cycle turbines, follow changing loads, and not need water cooling. It's the same technology they use for solar thermal energy storage, so it must be working. If this molten salt thermal technology doesn't work then all those claims of cheap solar thermal is just a bunch of bullshit.
So, which is it? Will this next generation molten salt storage work or not? If it does then we have nuclear power cheap enough to compete without subsidies. If it doesn't then there's no future in competitive solar without subsidies either.
I'm thinking that if we can get cheap solar by 2045 then we can have cheap nuclear by 2045.
But then this is all bullshit from politicians anyway. If the promise is beyond their existing term in office then it's a promise written in sand.
Coal and natural gas are still exceedingly cheap. Nuclear may cost 2x, 3x, or even 4x, of some wind and solar right now but it has the "storage" built into it. Fuel is storage. Remember that...
Fuel is storage.
Hydroelectric dams have an inherent storage ability in the water held up behind it. This water though is not unlimited, even with pumped storage, if that water is used for drinking and irrigation. I keep hearing that "the wind and sun is free." Well, natural gas and uranium are just as "free" as the wind and sun. Just like the wind and sun you get energy from uranium, natural gas, and coal, by building the devices to collect it and turn it to something useful. This is especially true for uranium, there's plenty of "free" uranium in even common topsoil and certainly plenty in seawater, all you have to do is build the devices to collect it and turn it into something useful. That's another thing to remember...
Fuel is free.
Even if you can turn this "free" wind and sun into electricity we get back to the costs of storing it. It may be "free" to anyone that goes out to get it but if you have to store it for when the wind and sun isn't there then it's not so "free" anymore, now is it? But fuel, whether in the form of uranium or coal, is storage and is also free to anyone that collects it then the storage is "free" too. That's something else to remember...
Wind and sun are cheap until you have to store it.
But your premise is that wind and sun will be all California needs once the batteries are cheap. But batteries don't care where the electricity comes from, they'll charge up on coal just as well as solar. Steam plants run best when run nice and "piping" hot all the time. They get real efficient, and therefore cheap, when run at or near max capacity. So take that cheap battery, charge it up with cheap coal or uranium fuel at night to meet the peaks through the day. If fuel is storage and fuel is free, then the only advantage batteries have over fuel is the potential for the more efficient use of that fuel. Wind and sun still vary day to day, season to season, and even hour to hour, on the availability. There's no futures market on wind and sun, but people can buy coal and uranium now to consume later. If no one digs it up then that fuel is still there in the ground. We are still talking about comparing an effectively unlimited supply of uranium, all stored up in the dirt and water from which people can draw from at any time and at any rate they choose, to wind and sun that can only be collected when and where nature has the whim to put it.
Good luck with that clean energy plan, California. I suspect you'll end up in the warm embrace of nuclear power when reality slaps you in the face.
The next step, if any, will be for the Feds and/or states to address the legality of shipping firearms without a license.
A firearm schematic is no more a firearm than the photo on my driving license is a person.
I know that doesn't make any sense, but neither did, "Cody is violating firearm export..."
The government used a law on the export of militarily valuable information to prevent these files from being posted on the internet. While there are bits of data with significant value for national security this is not one of those bits. They didn't call the schematics a "firearm" but they certainly tried to create some kind of equivalence between a representation of the thing and the thing itself.
What about my right to bear nuclear weapons? Isn't the government suppressing my rights by not selling me nukes?
This is a First Amendment issue. This is about the right to "keep and bear" documents and information. If you want the schematics on building a nuclear weapon then you can certainly find them on the internet, at your local library, and in book stores. If you want schematics on building a machine gun then I know where you can get them, the United States Patent Office. They also have schematics on building a handgun far more durable than what Defense Distributed is offering. This whole case is quite silly and it appears Cody Wilson is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame from it.
There's laws on building nuclear weapons, and on building handguns. This case is not about building either of those, these laws were not being challenged.
I got my APR (advanced pressurized reactor) confused with my ACR (advanced CANDU/Canadian reactor). There's many variants of both the APR and ACR, and there's a an ACR design that has an output temperature "high enough" for whatever uses you propose. Your original complaint was that we'd run out of bodies of water to cool these "inadequately hot", or whatever, nuclear reactors. We simply will not, both because there is a lot of water out there and we have designs right now that get as hot as any solar or coal plant.
Never once have I said that nuclear power plants have a technical problem doing load-following. The problem is entirely economical.
Yes, I noticed that. And I replied that you are just speculating. I have Bill Gates' word against yours that this can be done economically. I believe Bill Gates.
Hundreds of thousands of years? You know what has a half life of 100,000 years? Calcium. Calcium-41 to be precise.
No one is interested in benign isotopes. People are interested in the ones that are toxic and energetic radiation emitters. Try to stick with the radio isotopes the nuclear industry produces from its industrial processes. They're the ones that cause transgenic disease, cancers, reduced brain weight, failed pregnancies and everything else.
Do you know what the definition of a benign isotope is? The definition includes isotopes with a half-life of over 100,000 years. The longer the half-life the more benign the isotope.
I can stick to isotopes produced by nuclear reactors if you do. There are very few radioactive isotopes produced in a nuclear reactor and those with long half-lives are benign by definition of having long half lives. They pose some minute heavy metal poisoning hazard but to get that much you'd have to be sucking on the fuel rods. So don't do that. This would be no different than taking up any heavy metal in the environment, regardless of the half-life. A good rule of thumb is if the isotope has a half-life longer than the half-life of a human then it poses no health risk from the radiation. The lack of a radiation risk does not mean it doesn't carry a risk of being toxic. If you are somehow consuming so much iodine as to be a risk to your health then the presence of long lived iodine-129 isn't adding to that risk. Stop sucking on the fuel rods if you are taking in that much heavy metals.
You act as if Fukushima is the only one. Chernobyl, Windscale, TMI, Lake Karachy, Mine tailings, DU and so many more. We know very little about the Syrian Nuclear Reactor that was bombed and how much radio isotopes released, mainly because very few people know about it.
If you see someone building reactors based on 60 year old designs then ask them to stop, because we have far safer designs now. When it comes to bombed reactors then that's just an act of war, and bad things happen in war. We can ask bad people to stop doing bad things but that doesn't seem to work all the time, sometimes you have to put warheads on foreheads to make bad people stop hurting good people.
I fail to see why bad people doing bad things with nuclear reactors has anything to do with good people doing good things with reactors. There's a shortage of Pu-238 for deep space exploration, and a shortage of medical isotopes. As someone that has had bone scans to diagnose the extent of my arthritis I kind of like the idea of having more medical isotopes. We aren't going to get those without nuclear reactors, and while we're splitting atoms to get these isotopes then we may as well get some energy from the process.
The best place to site solar panels is still over the top of parking lots, or on commercial roofs where access is easy (unlike residential rooftops).
No, that's not the best place. The best place is close to the ground, at least as far as costs are concerned.
Either way you gain an additional benefit from the shade they cast.
That may be but I have a document on my desk from the International Energy Agency that shows commercial PV is on average more expensive than utility (ground mounted) PV. The error bars on both are large enough that it may be possible to keep the price difference minimal but it's quite clear that commercial PV is not "best". If you want to preserve land for crops and forest, get low CO2 energy, and keep costs low, then it would be preferable to use wind, hydro, or nuclear, over solar.
Solar is already behind wind on cost and danger to life, elevating the solar collectors above a parking lot adds costs and probability of injury or death to the people that install and maintain those collectors. If there is some need to use solar then keep costs low by keeping the collectors low.
The APR-1400 reactor runs at 890K, so what are you talking about?
All your complaints on "current designs" of nuclear are not in fact based on current designs. The APR-1400 and other "Gen III+" reactors are operating now. The articles on the DOE web site say that this MCFR can load follow, provide process heat and electrical generation, and more so I'm inclined to believe them. All of your complaints don't hold up. This is especially true with your mention grid connected batteries. Whatever benefits batteries provide they apply to nuclear power as well as any other source.
Nope, totally false. The tests are constructed in a way that they test nothing of knowledge. They test only intelligence. Any knowledge required for the test is provided as part of the test. There is, of course, some prior knowledge required that is age appropriate, such as the ability to read and speak English for adult IQ tests in America.
Even then the people that created these test have fine tuned IQ testing to the point that only the instructions must translated to the language of the person tested. After that the questions are in the forms of symbols and mathematical representations that need no language skills. For testing of language ability there is, as I stated before, great care taken that no prior knowledge but an age appropriate grasp of the native language is needed to perform the testing.
The scores and testing translate very well across locations and cultures. We know this because IQ testing has been a formal discipline for over 100 years with many people taking great care in its creation, implementation, and application. The scores have been tested against real life performance for decades and have been shown to be highly predictive and repeatable.
Quite simply there is no longer any cultural bias in IQ testing and they translate perfectly across any border you can come up with. We know what intelligence is and how to test for it. Anyone that says different is racist, sexist, and bigoted.
I believe you have no understanding whatsoever on the futility of any gun control laws.
There are more firearms in the USA than there are people. Very few of them are registered, and the registrations that exist are decentralized and error prone. We have now reached a level of technology that any attempt to create a kind of "ballistic fingerprint" or other means of identifying firearms are trivially defeated. This same technology is to the point that people with minimal machining skill can construct a functional firearm if they so choose. We are simply one small step from where constructing a firearm from raw materials is literally child's play.
Pass whatever laws you like on controlling firearms and they will do absolutely nothing to prevent those with intent on homicide and/or suicide from being successful in obtaining a firearm. These laws simply do not work any more. They will never work again, we've advanced technologically beyond any kind of effective enforcement. Attempts to enforce such laws will be met vigorously and potentially violently. To keep people from building a firearm now would require severe restrictions on what people may say or do to the point it would interfere with people doing so much as change a tire on their car. The tools to do the most basic of repairs are now indistinguishable from those to produce a firearm, that's how interwoven this technology is in our lives.
Give up already. Your gun grabbing ways may still win a battle here and there but in the end the war is lost. You are simply going to have to get more creative if the intent is to limit crime and suicide, such as treating the actual disease rather than the tools used in the acts.
After decades of complaints on the possibility of cultural bias in IQ testing the people that write these exams are acutely aware of this and go to great lengths to remove such bias. How do they do this? I'll go through one example.
First thing to do to test for cultural bias is to gather data on how the testers identify their culture. Have them take the test. Look at the answers on the tests and look for correlations on culture to answers. If people in a certain group consistently answer incorrectly then examine the question for possible means on how bias may exist in the question and rewrite it, or simply remove the question from the exam. There's other things to take into account to avoid simply removing questions from a pool because of confounding factors. This can be done by comparing questions of suspected cultural bias to questions of similar difficulty and testing for similar intellectual capacity.
The problem is if the test authors assume that every culture must have an identical distribution of intelligence then the testing can have a "reverse bias", and introduce questions that favor a culture that might otherwise score poorly on an unbiased exam. The other problem with assuming identical intellectual ability among all cultures is removing questions that are of sufficient difficulty and quality to test for higher intelligence that the exam loses any ability to give an accurate representation of the individual's intelligence. In other words, if we assume all cultural populations have an average IQ of 100 and then remove any questions that show a "cultural bias" then the more intelligent people will never be able to demonstrate their higher than average intelligence with the exams. The process of eliminating and rewriting the questions will simply become a downward spiral until everyone just gets a score of 100 for taking the test.
So how does one "test the test"? That is it is measuring IQ and not something else. By examining scores on the IQ test against other more complex indicators of IQ, such as academic achievement in high school and university. If we define IQ as one's ability to collect, interpret, and apply information then this will be exposed in things like performing such tasks in their education, work, and generally in life. IQ tests are supposed to be predictors of performance in the world so see how they perform in the world and correlate that to the ability to answer the questions on the test.
Maybe decades ago there was perhaps some validity to the claims of cultural bias in IQ tests, such complaints have no validity today. The people creating these tests are highly tuned to such complaints and now go to great lengths to remove any such bias.
That's why wind is better than nuclear. Because although it is possible to develop nuclear in a safe way, it will never happen, because humans. The same also applies to wind power.
However, if a wind turbine fails catastrophically, the worst case scenario is that a few cows get beheadded. Maybe.
If a nuclear reactor fails catastrophically, the best case scenario is that hundreds of people die within a few hours, hundreds more die within a few days, weeks or months, thousands of people and families are uprooted, chased from their homes and lose everything, and hundreds if not thousands of square kilometers become inhabitable for tens of thousands of years.
The worst case scenario of a wind turbine failure is not a few cows getting beheaded, it's high winds hitting a windmill, the windmill having a mechanical or electrical failure (from being hit by lightning perhaps), the turbine begins spinning wildly in the wind, the brakes fail and over heat or there's an over voltage on the wiring, there's a spark then a fire, the fire hits the dry vegetation below, the fire spreads, dozens of people are killed fighting the fire, hundreds of people evacuated, homes are destroyed, and large areas rendered desolate for years.
But you say that this doesn't happen often, and I would agree. Just like nuclear meltdowns as you describe don't happen often. Here's the thing though, one nuclear power reactor produces as much energy as 1000 or 1500 windmills. As it is now windmills produce very little of our power and we've already seen incidents like I've described. The power we get from wind now was a rounding error compared to what we got from nuclear power until very recently. How much carnage can we expect from wind power in the future? I doubt it will be only a handful of beheaded bovines.
The genetic damage is permanent and hereditary, and is expressed even in animals raised in labratory but that whose parents were exposed. Through 10+ generations.
First, a combination of radioactive decay and natural selection will eventually resolve the issue. It's called radioactive decay because it goes away at some point. Any genetic "damage" that is permanent is not detrimental. You exist today because of a long series of events causing permanent genetic "damage".
Second, Chernobyl did not even meet the safety standards of the day and no one would even consider building another reactor like it today. Using this as an example of safety problems of nuclear power is like saying we should not fly because of structural problems of the de Havilland Comet, or drive a car because of the Ford Pinto fuel tank fires.
You need a nearby body of water to get rid of the heat.
Again, if the solar thermal facility in the desert at Ivanpah gat get sufficient water then any nuclear power plant can get water. There's plenty of viable places to put nuclear power, we are not going to run out of sites for them. Talking about district heating and such is moving the goal posts.
It is basic economics. The fuel is free. The maintenance is practically unaffected by lowering load (or made slightly worse because of the problems with reactor poisoning with byproducts at low loads, but that is a minor distraction). If you run at less than maximum power you are throwing money down the drain. Don't do that.
And no nuclear power plant exists in a vacuum. Natural gas costs money, as do the turbines that burn it. If a nuclear power plant is capable of load following as well as natural gas then the utility doesn't need to invest in natural gas. No one runs a nuclear power plant at 100% all the time. They keep a reserve for emergencies and to reduce wear. If needed for short bursts of peak power then they can use some of this reserve at the nuclear power plant for that. If this means not burning natural gas then it's a money saver.
Modern combined cycle natural gas (or coal for that matter) plants can certainly load-follow, as in they can be backup for wind or solar and handle the peak cooking load. They take up to hours to go from low production to full production, but that is not really a problem. Power demand and renewable production is well predicted on the hourly scale. They don't react fast enough to handle grid failure, for that you need gas turbines or engines.
Technically they can but for economic reasons they rarely do. All steam power can load follow, including nuclear, but because of the stresses on the plant this is done only as a last resort. Load following with steam is very hard on the equipment, including combined cycle. Load following with combined cycle reduces efficiency, as you seem to already know from your description on how this works, and therefore there's no cost savings over open cycle turbines. Load following is simply expensive because of the fuel that is wasted. With nuclear, as you admit, the fuel is essentially free, so why not use nuclear to load follow? You didn't explain that except on capital expense grounds. Well, turbines are a capital expense, and by not having to buy them means money saved.
I don't know where you got the idea that they are cheap though. You actually need to run them a decent fraction of the year to make them worth building.
Nuclear is "cheap" because the fuel costs nothing, as you admit. Molten salt reactors promise to be able to load follow at low cost. I believe this is possible because Bill Gates tells me so. You can say that this won't work economically but I'm going to take the word of Bill Gates, the US DOE, ORNL, and the NRC over yours.
Those only need to run for a few hundred hours a year. It sucks that they waste energy, but for now the problem is more the methane they leak than the CO2 they emit. By 2030 they'll mostly be replaced by batteries.
Batteries can be charged by nuclear power too, you know that don't you?
If batteries are what you believe will save solar power in the future then I believe you will be in for a surprise. Solar has a capacity factor of about 30% and will get very "peaky", necessitating large batteries, large charge/discharge currents, and just plain large batteries. Nuclear power can just putt-putt along at a seasonal/daily/hourly average and let batteries and hydro soak up the peaks and valleys. This means nice gentle ramp up and down of the nuclear if needed, which even old boilers can handle. No expensive turbines, no stressing of steam boilers, and unless solar collectors can get far cheaper by 2030 then they might find themselves replaced by nucl
It should not be difficult to fathom that much of the pollution in most every part of the world is from burning coal and liquid petroleum fuels. This is primarily from generating electricity and transportation. People don't burn these fuels because they want pollution, they burn them because they are cheap and convenient. To get cleaner air we need energy that is not just clean but also cheap and convenient. How shall we do this?
To get an engineering plan start with the cheapest electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Geothermal comes out on top. Natural gas is second. What's the next three, tossing out dirty coal? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.
While not a pollutant I'll take a short diversion and look at CO2 output of the different energy sources for electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and solar make a good show as well. Natural gas isn't great but it is far better than coal.
Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment, because long term this will reflect on the cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... If we toss out dirty oil and coal we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and natural gas make a good show as well.
Let's look at the safest energy sources, because even if we clean the air for health reasons it doesn't help if people are dead. https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... Hydro, nuclear, and wind top the list, solar certainly does well, and there's a wide margin to the rest. Geothermal is not on the list for some reason. Natural gas isn't great but better than coal and biomass fuel.
By my estimation we need to use hydro, nuclear, and wind for electricity. Until I can see more about geothermal I can't recommend it. Solar simply costs too much, is not very convenient/reliable, and isn't all that great on safety, so I can't recommend it unless all others are unavailable. Wind and nuclear need a little help to load follow and hydro works well for this. If there isn't enough hydro around then the obvious choice is natural gas.
When it comes to transportation we should electrify as much land transport as we can, cars and trains mostly. What do we do about vehicles where electricity is not practical? Mr. Pickens has a plan, natural gas. http://pickensplan.com/the-pla...
Pickens admits that that natural gas is a bridge fuel. A bridge to what? Maybe synthesized fuel from hydro, nuclear, and wind, that's my guess. Natural gas burns far cleaner than gasoline, diesel, and marine fuel oil. Natural gas is a proven technology, cheap, plentiful, and can be adopted fairly quickly. At least adopted quickly for most transportation on land and sea. For air transportation we'll need to continue with kerosene until we find something better.
Natural gas is as convenient as electricity and gasoline combined for personal cars. People can fill up at a filling station in minutes like gasoline, and at home if you have natural gas service for heating and cooking. Maybe the best could be from a natural gas/electric hybrid.
At sea we can adopt more nuclear, beyond just warships. Perhaps even resurrect the windjammers, sailing ships built in the last days of sail using steel hulls and other modern materials.
I keep seeing articles on the problems of dirty, CO2 emitting, dangerous, and expensive energy. Let's talk solutions. Here's my solution... Wind, hydro, and nuclear with a little natural gas.
I would so much rather a criminal attempt a public shooting with a flimsy piece of shit that's as likely to explode in his hand as it is to hurt someone else than with a rifle with a modified lower receiver. These stupid trinkets are not an issue, actual firearms are easier and cheaper to obtain than a damn 3D printer. Priorities, people.
The people trying to block this are fully aware of their priorities. This is not about a plastic gun that will likely fail after the first shot. This is about people making firearms at home without serial numbers. This technology is one small step from people mass producing firearms with machines and tooling that cost less than some people spend on a TV set.
I can already see people making a working metal firearm with a common 3D printer. It's called investment casting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The printer doesn't print the part, it prints something from which a mold can be made. If done properly the mold can be reused many times. Even a method that involves destroying the mold every time, required for complex shapes, won't slow someone down that can simply print a shape from which the mold is made. Soft metals like aluminum and brass can be melted with pretty simple backyard forges. Something that can melt steel is perhaps moderately more complex.
The focus has been on the plastic guns but the lawsuit is also over plans that are used to program a small CNC mill to produce firearm receivers, milled from blocks of common aluminum. The kind of aluminum used to make beer cans.
Given all the overhead in producing a legal firearm today it is quite possible that very soon it may be cheaper to assemble your own from parts made yourself than to buy one that's been mass produced. That's what concerns these people behind this lawsuit.
I have a question, how many beer cans would someone have to melt down to make an AR-15? I'm asking for a friend.
The tiny little concrete pad you see in the photos are just the tip of the iceberg beneath the surface. A quick google search gave me this as a reference on how big that concrete anchor might be: http://www.aweo.org/faq.html
That webpage seems to try to make the windmill look like as bad of an environmental impact as it could. I'm guessing that the stated facts are all true, the concrete anchor for this windmill is likely 30 feet across and several feet deep, they just buried all but the part that you see sticking up from the ground. The windmill with the tall steel tower, generator on top, and huge blades attached, likely weighs at least 150 tons, and it has to hold up to typhoon force winds. That is going to take a lot of concrete. The tower is going to be attached to the base by many bolts, and they likely simply sheared off under the stress.
I've seen other windmills fail in the wind and usually the tower breaks roughly in half and the pieces fall nearly straight down. Keeling over like this did seems unusual to me. I'm no windmill engineer or anything, just someone that lives in America's "wind corridor".
They covered large portions of Japan with radioactivity that will remain there for hundreds of thousands of years?
Hundreds of thousands of years? You know what has a half life of 100,000 years? Calcium. Calcium-41 to be precise. It exists in your bones, and is spread all over the environment. That's just one example of many isotopes in the environment that have long half lives. They pose no real threat because a long half life means a low radiation flux from it. Many isotopes of plutonium also have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years. That doesn't mean it's necessarily safe since it is a heavy metal that can accumulate in the bones but unless you have a habit of licking spent fuel rods or nuclear weapon cores the threat to your health is pretty minimal.
The problems from accidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl were mostly from radioactive iodine, that has a short half life which makes it dangerous but also means it was all gone in a month. If incidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl frighten you then you not only have a poor grasp of the chances of it killing you but you also fail to realize that no one builds reactors like it any more. You are far more likely to die from a windmill falling on your head than any radioactive contamination from a nuclear power plant. Here's some proof of that: https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
New nuclear is far safer than new windmills. I'm quite certain my saying this and linking to that article won't convince you of anything but I thought I might at least try.
First it was struck by lightning. Second it was blown over by strong winds. So they'll but a new one up. That one will be knocked over by an earthquake.
... and sink into a swamp. Just like the castle I built. And the two castles before it. But the fourth one stood up!
Slashdot Mirror
From what I understand, wind and solar are among the cheapest sources of power today.
Then you understand incorrectly.
I just saw a US government projection that there will be 20 GW of new natural gas electrical generation built his year. How much wind and solar? Well, there's been installs of solar of as much as 50 GW per year, and 12 GW of wind. Wind and solar are also highly subsidized. Does natural gas get subsidies? I'm sure they do. There's no mistaking though that solar and wind installations depend highly on the rate they get their disproportionate subsidies. If wind and solar were so cheap then why do we keep subsidizing it? If it's so cheap then why haven't they displaced natural gas on new construction?
Oh, and natural gas doesn't need hydro storage to be viable. That's because fuel is storage. I keep hearing on how wind and sun is "free". Well, natural gas is "free" too. Just like wind and sun that natural gas costs just as much as it takes to collect it. The costs to collect natural gas are quite low and seem to keep going down.
I did see this article linked from a popular technology blog about Bill Gates wanting to bring a new molten salt fast neutron reactor to market by 2030. I believe the website was called "Slashdot", perhaps you've heard of it?
The claim is that the reactor will use a high temperature molten salt for heat transfer and storage. That way it can use efficient Brayton cycle turbines, follow changing loads, and not need water cooling. It's the same technology they use for solar thermal energy storage, so it must be working. If this molten salt thermal technology doesn't work then all those claims of cheap solar thermal is just a bunch of bullshit.
So, which is it? Will this next generation molten salt storage work or not? If it does then we have nuclear power cheap enough to compete without subsidies. If it doesn't then there's no future in competitive solar without subsidies either.
I'm thinking that if we can get cheap solar by 2045 then we can have cheap nuclear by 2045.
But then this is all bullshit from politicians anyway. If the promise is beyond their existing term in office then it's a promise written in sand.
No, getting batteries will be insufficient. Look at the costs of the different energy sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Coal and natural gas are still exceedingly cheap. Nuclear may cost 2x, 3x, or even 4x, of some wind and solar right now but it has the "storage" built into it. Fuel is storage. Remember that...
Fuel is storage.
Hydroelectric dams have an inherent storage ability in the water held up behind it. This water though is not unlimited, even with pumped storage, if that water is used for drinking and irrigation. I keep hearing that "the wind and sun is free." Well, natural gas and uranium are just as "free" as the wind and sun. Just like the wind and sun you get energy from uranium, natural gas, and coal, by building the devices to collect it and turn it to something useful. This is especially true for uranium, there's plenty of "free" uranium in even common topsoil and certainly plenty in seawater, all you have to do is build the devices to collect it and turn it into something useful. That's another thing to remember...
Fuel is free.
Even if you can turn this "free" wind and sun into electricity we get back to the costs of storing it. It may be "free" to anyone that goes out to get it but if you have to store it for when the wind and sun isn't there then it's not so "free" anymore, now is it? But fuel, whether in the form of uranium or coal, is storage and is also free to anyone that collects it then the storage is "free" too. That's something else to remember...
Wind and sun are cheap until you have to store it.
But your premise is that wind and sun will be all California needs once the batteries are cheap. But batteries don't care where the electricity comes from, they'll charge up on coal just as well as solar. Steam plants run best when run nice and "piping" hot all the time. They get real efficient, and therefore cheap, when run at or near max capacity. So take that cheap battery, charge it up with cheap coal or uranium fuel at night to meet the peaks through the day. If fuel is storage and fuel is free, then the only advantage batteries have over fuel is the potential for the more efficient use of that fuel. Wind and sun still vary day to day, season to season, and even hour to hour, on the availability. There's no futures market on wind and sun, but people can buy coal and uranium now to consume later. If no one digs it up then that fuel is still there in the ground. We are still talking about comparing an effectively unlimited supply of uranium, all stored up in the dirt and water from which people can draw from at any time and at any rate they choose, to wind and sun that can only be collected when and where nature has the whim to put it.
Good luck with that clean energy plan, California. I suspect you'll end up in the warm embrace of nuclear power when reality slaps you in the face.
I want the Barbara Streisand Edition Drive.
Those were all sold out in seconds.
The next step, if any, will be for the Feds and/or states to address the legality of shipping firearms without a license.
A firearm schematic is no more a firearm than the photo on my driving license is a person.
I know that doesn't make any sense, but neither did, "Cody is violating firearm export ..."
The government used a law on the export of militarily valuable information to prevent these files from being posted on the internet. While there are bits of data with significant value for national security this is not one of those bits. They didn't call the schematics a "firearm" but they certainly tried to create some kind of equivalence between a representation of the thing and the thing itself.
What about my right to bear nuclear weapons? Isn't the government suppressing my rights by not selling me nukes?
This is a First Amendment issue. This is about the right to "keep and bear" documents and information. If you want the schematics on building a nuclear weapon then you can certainly find them on the internet, at your local library, and in book stores. If you want schematics on building a machine gun then I know where you can get them, the United States Patent Office. They also have schematics on building a handgun far more durable than what Defense Distributed is offering. This whole case is quite silly and it appears Cody Wilson is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame from it.
There's laws on building nuclear weapons, and on building handguns. This case is not about building either of those, these laws were not being challenged.
The APR-1400 actually runs at 600K. Read for yourself here: http://euanmearns.com/an-overv...
I got my APR (advanced pressurized reactor) confused with my ACR (advanced CANDU/Canadian reactor). There's many variants of both the APR and ACR, and there's a an ACR design that has an output temperature "high enough" for whatever uses you propose. Your original complaint was that we'd run out of bodies of water to cool these "inadequately hot", or whatever, nuclear reactors. We simply will not, both because there is a lot of water out there and we have designs right now that get as hot as any solar or coal plant.
Never once have I said that nuclear power plants have a technical problem doing load-following. The problem is entirely economical.
Yes, I noticed that. And I replied that you are just speculating. I have Bill Gates' word against yours that this can be done economically. I believe Bill Gates.
Hundreds of thousands of years? You know what has a half life of 100,000 years? Calcium. Calcium-41 to be precise.
No one is interested in benign isotopes. People are interested in the ones that are toxic and energetic radiation emitters. Try to stick with the radio isotopes the nuclear industry produces from its industrial processes. They're the ones that cause transgenic disease, cancers, reduced brain weight, failed pregnancies and everything else.
Do you know what the definition of a benign isotope is? The definition includes isotopes with a half-life of over 100,000 years. The longer the half-life the more benign the isotope.
I can stick to isotopes produced by nuclear reactors if you do. There are very few radioactive isotopes produced in a nuclear reactor and those with long half-lives are benign by definition of having long half lives. They pose some minute heavy metal poisoning hazard but to get that much you'd have to be sucking on the fuel rods. So don't do that. This would be no different than taking up any heavy metal in the environment, regardless of the half-life. A good rule of thumb is if the isotope has a half-life longer than the half-life of a human then it poses no health risk from the radiation. The lack of a radiation risk does not mean it doesn't carry a risk of being toxic. If you are somehow consuming so much iodine as to be a risk to your health then the presence of long lived iodine-129 isn't adding to that risk. Stop sucking on the fuel rods if you are taking in that much heavy metals.
You act as if Fukushima is the only one. Chernobyl, Windscale, TMI, Lake Karachy, Mine tailings, DU and so many more. We know very little about the Syrian Nuclear Reactor that was bombed and how much radio isotopes released, mainly because very few people know about it.
If you see someone building reactors based on 60 year old designs then ask them to stop, because we have far safer designs now. When it comes to bombed reactors then that's just an act of war, and bad things happen in war. We can ask bad people to stop doing bad things but that doesn't seem to work all the time, sometimes you have to put warheads on foreheads to make bad people stop hurting good people.
I fail to see why bad people doing bad things with nuclear reactors has anything to do with good people doing good things with reactors. There's a shortage of Pu-238 for deep space exploration, and a shortage of medical isotopes. As someone that has had bone scans to diagnose the extent of my arthritis I kind of like the idea of having more medical isotopes. We aren't going to get those without nuclear reactors, and while we're splitting atoms to get these isotopes then we may as well get some energy from the process.
It depends very much on where you build them.
Sure.
The best place to site solar panels is still over the top of parking lots, or on commercial roofs where access is easy (unlike residential rooftops).
No, that's not the best place. The best place is close to the ground, at least as far as costs are concerned.
Either way you gain an additional benefit from the shade they cast.
That may be but I have a document on my desk from the International Energy Agency that shows commercial PV is on average more expensive than utility (ground mounted) PV. The error bars on both are large enough that it may be possible to keep the price difference minimal but it's quite clear that commercial PV is not "best". If you want to preserve land for crops and forest, get low CO2 energy, and keep costs low, then it would be preferable to use wind, hydro, or nuclear, over solar.
Solar is already behind wind on cost and danger to life, elevating the solar collectors above a parking lot adds costs and probability of injury or death to the people that install and maintain those collectors. If there is some need to use solar then keep costs low by keeping the collectors low.
Ivanpah runs at 800K. Not 500K.
The APR-1400 reactor runs at 890K, so what are you talking about?
All your complaints on "current designs" of nuclear are not in fact based on current designs. The APR-1400 and other "Gen III+" reactors are operating now. The articles on the DOE web site say that this MCFR can load follow, provide process heat and electrical generation, and more so I'm inclined to believe them. All of your complaints don't hold up. This is especially true with your mention grid connected batteries. Whatever benefits batteries provide they apply to nuclear power as well as any other source.
Nope, totally false. The tests are constructed in a way that they test nothing of knowledge. They test only intelligence. Any knowledge required for the test is provided as part of the test. There is, of course, some prior knowledge required that is age appropriate, such as the ability to read and speak English for adult IQ tests in America.
Even then the people that created these test have fine tuned IQ testing to the point that only the instructions must translated to the language of the person tested. After that the questions are in the forms of symbols and mathematical representations that need no language skills. For testing of language ability there is, as I stated before, great care taken that no prior knowledge but an age appropriate grasp of the native language is needed to perform the testing.
The scores and testing translate very well across locations and cultures. We know this because IQ testing has been a formal discipline for over 100 years with many people taking great care in its creation, implementation, and application. The scores have been tested against real life performance for decades and have been shown to be highly predictive and repeatable.
Quite simply there is no longer any cultural bias in IQ testing and they translate perfectly across any border you can come up with. We know what intelligence is and how to test for it. Anyone that says different is racist, sexist, and bigoted.
I believe you have no understanding whatsoever on the futility of any gun control laws.
There are more firearms in the USA than there are people. Very few of them are registered, and the registrations that exist are decentralized and error prone. We have now reached a level of technology that any attempt to create a kind of "ballistic fingerprint" or other means of identifying firearms are trivially defeated. This same technology is to the point that people with minimal machining skill can construct a functional firearm if they so choose. We are simply one small step from where constructing a firearm from raw materials is literally child's play.
Pass whatever laws you like on controlling firearms and they will do absolutely nothing to prevent those with intent on homicide and/or suicide from being successful in obtaining a firearm. These laws simply do not work any more. They will never work again, we've advanced technologically beyond any kind of effective enforcement. Attempts to enforce such laws will be met vigorously and potentially violently. To keep people from building a firearm now would require severe restrictions on what people may say or do to the point it would interfere with people doing so much as change a tire on their car. The tools to do the most basic of repairs are now indistinguishable from those to produce a firearm, that's how interwoven this technology is in our lives.
Give up already. Your gun grabbing ways may still win a battle here and there but in the end the war is lost. You are simply going to have to get more creative if the intent is to limit crime and suicide, such as treating the actual disease rather than the tools used in the acts.
After decades of complaints on the possibility of cultural bias in IQ testing the people that write these exams are acutely aware of this and go to great lengths to remove such bias. How do they do this? I'll go through one example.
First thing to do to test for cultural bias is to gather data on how the testers identify their culture. Have them take the test. Look at the answers on the tests and look for correlations on culture to answers. If people in a certain group consistently answer incorrectly then examine the question for possible means on how bias may exist in the question and rewrite it, or simply remove the question from the exam. There's other things to take into account to avoid simply removing questions from a pool because of confounding factors. This can be done by comparing questions of suspected cultural bias to questions of similar difficulty and testing for similar intellectual capacity.
The problem is if the test authors assume that every culture must have an identical distribution of intelligence then the testing can have a "reverse bias", and introduce questions that favor a culture that might otherwise score poorly on an unbiased exam. The other problem with assuming identical intellectual ability among all cultures is removing questions that are of sufficient difficulty and quality to test for higher intelligence that the exam loses any ability to give an accurate representation of the individual's intelligence. In other words, if we assume all cultural populations have an average IQ of 100 and then remove any questions that show a "cultural bias" then the more intelligent people will never be able to demonstrate their higher than average intelligence with the exams. The process of eliminating and rewriting the questions will simply become a downward spiral until everyone just gets a score of 100 for taking the test.
So how does one "test the test"? That is it is measuring IQ and not something else. By examining scores on the IQ test against other more complex indicators of IQ, such as academic achievement in high school and university. If we define IQ as one's ability to collect, interpret, and apply information then this will be exposed in things like performing such tasks in their education, work, and generally in life. IQ tests are supposed to be predictors of performance in the world so see how they perform in the world and correlate that to the ability to answer the questions on the test.
Maybe decades ago there was perhaps some validity to the claims of cultural bias in IQ tests, such complaints have no validity today. The people creating these tests are highly tuned to such complaints and now go to great lengths to remove any such bias.
Of course they're smarter: they all have 2 heads. Duh.
But the men only think with one of them sooooo... it evens out?
That's why wind is better than nuclear. Because although it is possible to develop nuclear in a safe way, it will never happen, because humans. The same also applies to wind power.
However, if a wind turbine fails catastrophically, the worst case scenario is that a few cows get beheadded. Maybe.
If a nuclear reactor fails catastrophically, the best case scenario is that hundreds of people die within a few hours, hundreds more die within a few days, weeks or months, thousands of people and families are uprooted, chased from their homes and lose everything, and hundreds if not thousands of square kilometers become inhabitable for tens of thousands of years.
The worst case scenario of a wind turbine failure is not a few cows getting beheaded, it's high winds hitting a windmill, the windmill having a mechanical or electrical failure (from being hit by lightning perhaps), the turbine begins spinning wildly in the wind, the brakes fail and over heat or there's an over voltage on the wiring, there's a spark then a fire, the fire hits the dry vegetation below, the fire spreads, dozens of people are killed fighting the fire, hundreds of people evacuated, homes are destroyed, and large areas rendered desolate for years.
But you say that this doesn't happen often, and I would agree. Just like nuclear meltdowns as you describe don't happen often. Here's the thing though, one nuclear power reactor produces as much energy as 1000 or 1500 windmills. As it is now windmills produce very little of our power and we've already seen incidents like I've described. The power we get from wind now was a rounding error compared to what we got from nuclear power until very recently. How much carnage can we expect from wind power in the future? I doubt it will be only a handful of beheaded bovines.
The genetic damage is permanent and hereditary, and is expressed even in animals raised in labratory but that whose parents were exposed. Through 10+ generations.
First, a combination of radioactive decay and natural selection will eventually resolve the issue. It's called radioactive decay because it goes away at some point. Any genetic "damage" that is permanent is not detrimental. You exist today because of a long series of events causing permanent genetic "damage".
Second, Chernobyl did not even meet the safety standards of the day and no one would even consider building another reactor like it today. Using this as an example of safety problems of nuclear power is like saying we should not fly because of structural problems of the de Havilland Comet, or drive a car because of the Ford Pinto fuel tank fires.
You need a nearby body of water to get rid of the heat.
Again, if the solar thermal facility in the desert at Ivanpah gat get sufficient water then any nuclear power plant can get water. There's plenty of viable places to put nuclear power, we are not going to run out of sites for them. Talking about district heating and such is moving the goal posts.
It is basic economics. The fuel is free. The maintenance is practically unaffected by lowering load (or made slightly worse because of the problems with reactor poisoning with byproducts at low loads, but that is a minor distraction). If you run at less than maximum power you are throwing money down the drain. Don't do that.
And no nuclear power plant exists in a vacuum. Natural gas costs money, as do the turbines that burn it. If a nuclear power plant is capable of load following as well as natural gas then the utility doesn't need to invest in natural gas. No one runs a nuclear power plant at 100% all the time. They keep a reserve for emergencies and to reduce wear. If needed for short bursts of peak power then they can use some of this reserve at the nuclear power plant for that. If this means not burning natural gas then it's a money saver.
Modern combined cycle natural gas (or coal for that matter) plants can certainly load-follow, as in they can be backup for wind or solar and handle the peak cooking load. They take up to hours to go from low production to full production, but that is not really a problem. Power demand and renewable production is well predicted on the hourly scale. They don't react fast enough to handle grid failure, for that you need gas turbines or engines.
Technically they can but for economic reasons they rarely do. All steam power can load follow, including nuclear, but because of the stresses on the plant this is done only as a last resort. Load following with steam is very hard on the equipment, including combined cycle. Load following with combined cycle reduces efficiency, as you seem to already know from your description on how this works, and therefore there's no cost savings over open cycle turbines. Load following is simply expensive because of the fuel that is wasted. With nuclear, as you admit, the fuel is essentially free, so why not use nuclear to load follow? You didn't explain that except on capital expense grounds. Well, turbines are a capital expense, and by not having to buy them means money saved.
I don't know where you got the idea that they are cheap though. You actually need to run them a decent fraction of the year to make them worth building.
Nuclear is "cheap" because the fuel costs nothing, as you admit. Molten salt reactors promise to be able to load follow at low cost. I believe this is possible because Bill Gates tells me so. You can say that this won't work economically but I'm going to take the word of Bill Gates, the US DOE, ORNL, and the NRC over yours.
Those only need to run for a few hundred hours a year. It sucks that they waste energy, but for now the problem is more the methane they leak than the CO2 they emit. By 2030 they'll mostly be replaced by batteries.
Batteries can be charged by nuclear power too, you know that don't you?
If batteries are what you believe will save solar power in the future then I believe you will be in for a surprise. Solar has a capacity factor of about 30% and will get very "peaky", necessitating large batteries, large charge/discharge currents, and just plain large batteries. Nuclear power can just putt-putt along at a seasonal/daily/hourly average and let batteries and hydro soak up the peaks and valleys. This means nice gentle ramp up and down of the nuclear if needed, which even old boilers can handle. No expensive turbines, no stressing of steam boilers, and unless solar collectors can get far cheaper by 2030 then they might find themselves replaced by nucl
It should not be difficult to fathom that much of the pollution in most every part of the world is from burning coal and liquid petroleum fuels. This is primarily from generating electricity and transportation. People don't burn these fuels because they want pollution, they burn them because they are cheap and convenient. To get cleaner air we need energy that is not just clean but also cheap and convenient. How shall we do this?
To get an engineering plan start with the cheapest electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Geothermal comes out on top. Natural gas is second. What's the next three, tossing out dirty coal? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.
While not a pollutant I'll take a short diversion and look at CO2 output of the different energy sources for electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and solar make a good show as well. Natural gas isn't great but it is far better than coal.
Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment, because long term this will reflect on the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If we toss out dirty oil and coal we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and natural gas make a good show as well.
Let's look at the safest energy sources, because even if we clean the air for health reasons it doesn't help if people are dead.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Hydro, nuclear, and wind top the list, solar certainly does well, and there's a wide margin to the rest. Geothermal is not on the list for some reason. Natural gas isn't great but better than coal and biomass fuel.
By my estimation we need to use hydro, nuclear, and wind for electricity. Until I can see more about geothermal I can't recommend it. Solar simply costs too much, is not very convenient/reliable, and isn't all that great on safety, so I can't recommend it unless all others are unavailable. Wind and nuclear need a little help to load follow and hydro works well for this. If there isn't enough hydro around then the obvious choice is natural gas.
When it comes to transportation we should electrify as much land transport as we can, cars and trains mostly. What do we do about vehicles where electricity is not practical? Mr. Pickens has a plan, natural gas.
http://pickensplan.com/the-pla...
Pickens admits that that natural gas is a bridge fuel. A bridge to what? Maybe synthesized fuel from hydro, nuclear, and wind, that's my guess. Natural gas burns far cleaner than gasoline, diesel, and marine fuel oil. Natural gas is a proven technology, cheap, plentiful, and can be adopted fairly quickly. At least adopted quickly for most transportation on land and sea. For air transportation we'll need to continue with kerosene until we find something better.
Natural gas is as convenient as electricity and gasoline combined for personal cars. People can fill up at a filling station in minutes like gasoline, and at home if you have natural gas service for heating and cooking. Maybe the best could be from a natural gas/electric hybrid.
At sea we can adopt more nuclear, beyond just warships. Perhaps even resurrect the windjammers, sailing ships built in the last days of sail using steel hulls and other modern materials.
I keep seeing articles on the problems of dirty, CO2 emitting, dangerous, and expensive energy. Let's talk solutions. Here's my solution... Wind, hydro, and nuclear with a little natural gas.
I would so much rather a criminal attempt a public shooting with a flimsy piece of shit that's as likely to explode in his hand as it is to hurt someone else than with a rifle with a modified lower receiver. These stupid trinkets are not an issue, actual firearms are easier and cheaper to obtain than a damn 3D printer. Priorities, people.
The people trying to block this are fully aware of their priorities. This is not about a plastic gun that will likely fail after the first shot. This is about people making firearms at home without serial numbers. This technology is one small step from people mass producing firearms with machines and tooling that cost less than some people spend on a TV set.
I can already see people making a working metal firearm with a common 3D printer. It's called investment casting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The printer doesn't print the part, it prints something from which a mold can be made. If done properly the mold can be reused many times. Even a method that involves destroying the mold every time, required for complex shapes, won't slow someone down that can simply print a shape from which the mold is made. Soft metals like aluminum and brass can be melted with pretty simple backyard forges. Something that can melt steel is perhaps moderately more complex.
The focus has been on the plastic guns but the lawsuit is also over plans that are used to program a small CNC mill to produce firearm receivers, milled from blocks of common aluminum. The kind of aluminum used to make beer cans.
Given all the overhead in producing a legal firearm today it is quite possible that very soon it may be cheaper to assemble your own from parts made yourself than to buy one that's been mass produced. That's what concerns these people behind this lawsuit.
I have a question, how many beer cans would someone have to melt down to make an AR-15? I'm asking for a friend.
The tiny little concrete pad you see in the photos are just the tip of the iceberg beneath the surface. A quick google search gave me this as a reference on how big that concrete anchor might be:
http://www.aweo.org/faq.html
That webpage seems to try to make the windmill look like as bad of an environmental impact as it could. I'm guessing that the stated facts are all true, the concrete anchor for this windmill is likely 30 feet across and several feet deep, they just buried all but the part that you see sticking up from the ground. The windmill with the tall steel tower, generator on top, and huge blades attached, likely weighs at least 150 tons, and it has to hold up to typhoon force winds. That is going to take a lot of concrete. The tower is going to be attached to the base by many bolts, and they likely simply sheared off under the stress.
I've seen other windmills fail in the wind and usually the tower breaks roughly in half and the pieces fall nearly straight down. Keeling over like this did seems unusual to me. I'm no windmill engineer or anything, just someone that lives in America's "wind corridor".
In fact Australia does not export brown coal at all, to anyone.
I suspect that is true. Australia does export uranium to Japan though. Japan gets about 1/3rd of its uranium from Australia.
They covered large portions of Japan with radioactivity that will remain there for hundreds of thousands of years?
Hundreds of thousands of years? You know what has a half life of 100,000 years? Calcium. Calcium-41 to be precise. It exists in your bones, and is spread all over the environment. That's just one example of many isotopes in the environment that have long half lives. They pose no real threat because a long half life means a low radiation flux from it. Many isotopes of plutonium also have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years. That doesn't mean it's necessarily safe since it is a heavy metal that can accumulate in the bones but unless you have a habit of licking spent fuel rods or nuclear weapon cores the threat to your health is pretty minimal.
The problems from accidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl were mostly from radioactive iodine, that has a short half life which makes it dangerous but also means it was all gone in a month. If incidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl frighten you then you not only have a poor grasp of the chances of it killing you but you also fail to realize that no one builds reactors like it any more. You are far more likely to die from a windmill falling on your head than any radioactive contamination from a nuclear power plant. Here's some proof of that:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
New nuclear is far safer than new windmills. I'm quite certain my saying this and linking to that article won't convince you of anything but I thought I might at least try.
Alright, why don't you move there, with your family, then ?
And sell my house downwind from Three Mile Island? NEVER!
First it was struck by lightning.
Second it was blown over by strong winds.
So they'll but a new one up.
That one will be knocked over by an earthquake.
... and sink into a swamp. Just like the castle I built. And the two castles before it. But the fourth one stood up!
One turbine costs LESS than 1/150th of a nuclear power plant also.
That's likely true but also irrelevant. That's like saying my lawnmower cost 1/150th of my truck, the two are hardly comparable.
A typical windmill produces 1/1500 of the power of the nuclear power plant, so at 1/150th the cost the energy is far more expensive.
(You're kind of a retard aren't you?)
Also likely true, and just as relevant.