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Nuclear Is Not the Right Alternative Energy Source
New plants are risky, costly and unnecessary
Luminant Energy, formerly TXU, is proposing to build two Mitsubishi nuclear power reactors at its Comanche Peak site, where two reactors are already in place.
This is part of a national wave of new commercial reactor proposals after a three-decade lapse in new orders - eight in Texas alone. Having failed miserably to deliver on the 1950s promise that nuclear electricity would be "too cheap to meter," the industry now says it will save us from climate change. If you don't like coal, you have to take nuclear, goes the nuclear establishment's hopeful mantra.
That's a false choice. Replacing coal with nuclear is risky, costly and unnecessary.
Renewable energy sources are quite sufficient to provide ample, reliable electricity. For instance, Texas has greater wind energy potential than its present electricity generation from all sources; it is greater also than the output from all U.S. nuclear power plants combined. And it has barely captured a whisper of its potential.
Wind energy is competitive with or more economical than nuclear energy - about 8 cents per kilowatt-hour in good areas. A recent independent assessment by the Keystone Center, which included industry representatives, estimated nuclear costs at 8 to 11 cents.
Intermittency is not a significant issue until very high levels of penetration. For instance, a 2006 study prepared for the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission found that an increase of just over 2 percent in operating reserves would be sufficient to underpin a 25 percent renewable energy standard supplied by wind.
Meanwhile, Solar energy is somewhat more expensive today, but costs are coming down rapidly. Last December, Nanosolar produced the first solar panels costing less than a dollar a watt at its factory in Silicon Valley.
In January, MidAmerican Energy Holdings, which is owned by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, dropped plans to build a nuclear power plant in Idaho, on the grounds that it could not provide reasonably priced energy to its customers.
New nuclear plants would add to the country's problem of nuclear waste. The federal government has long been in default of its obligations to existing nuclear plant operators to take the waste away from their sites. Nuclear utilities have had to take the government to court to recover added storage expenses, which will cost the taxpayers billions or possibly even tens of billions of dollars over time.
To imagine that the federal government will take charge of waste from new plants where it does not even have contracts is wishful thinking. Much more likely, Texas will be stuck with it.
And then there is the problem of cooling water. The two proposed reactors would consume about 40 million gallons of water per day. Even assuming that the water is available, Texas is risking a less reliable power system, given that droughts are estimated to become more extreme in a warming world.
For instance, last September, a nuclear unit at Browns Ferry belonging to the Tennessee Valley Authority had to be shut down for lack of water. In contrast, solar photovoltaics and wind-generated electricity do not need water.
Luminant's two reactors are already discharging significant amounts of tritium-contaminated radioactive water into the Squaw Creek reservoir. New reactors would only add to those discharges.
Before proceeding with new reactor proposals, Luminant should at least investigate how it might reduce existing tritium discharges. Tritium is radioactive hydrogen, which displaces ordinary hydrogen in water to form tritiated water, which becomes radioactive as a result.
The notion that renewable energy cannot supply the electricity requirements of the United States has been widely put forward without careful technical evaluation.
On the contrary, it is nuclear that is the risky course. Texas can remain an energy leader in the twenty-first century - but only if it steps out ahead of the coming renewable energy revolution.
Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and author of Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy. His e-mail address is arjun@ieer.org.
© 2008, The Dallas Morning News, Inc.
52 Comments so far
Show AllAn excellent article that highlights many of the key reasons that nuclear power is a poor choice for the future. To those who think that if we don't start building nuclear plants we're going to have to go back to living in caves, I'd recommend this recent article from Scientific American: "A Solar Grand Plan" (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan).
Someone here in an earlier discussion turned me on to this article in Scientific American magazine earlier this year. Sci Am is very reputable, and this article is very easy to read, not their usual fair.
Here are two links. I think everyone should read them and send them on to Obama, Nader, and, just in case, Clinton.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=F304542B-E7F2-70F7-E6CAEF1C8B401080
It even answers Grover Norquist the butt-head.
Also, nuclear power would not be a viable option unless one of the two following happens:
1. All regulation is dropped, thus allowing the industry to build something cheap and flimsy.
2. The government provides huge guaranteed loans. The industry can't get funding because they fear that a problem would prevent them from recouping their investment.
Of course, the conservatives that generally push for nuclear would have no problem with guaranteed loans for nuclear, but they would for solar or renewable. What's up with that? It's ok for uncle sam to spring to help bad infrastructure that is in their hands but not good infrastructure they won't be able to control? Go figure.
I agree that nuclear power is a bust. On the other hand, even wind power has fallen afoul of some environmentalists because wind towers chop up birds and spoil the scenery. Solar power would also cause problems. For example, covering large tracts of land would deny sunlight to wildlife, and manufacturing the tiles probably creates toxins.
Petroleum is actually a great resource because it burns more efficiently than coal or wood and has been very cheap to extract. Unfortunately, we have really overused and abused it. Assuming runaway global warming doesn't sterilize the Earth first, running out of petroleum will force us to switch back to coal and wood, meaning strip mining and more horrifying deforestation than we have today.
The only real solution is for 99% of humanity to die out and the pitiful remnant return to a mix of hunting, gather and subsistence agriculture.
Sorry to say, qbaldsmoove, expansion of nuclear power needs to be addressed in the present tense..ITS HAPPENING FAST.
The loan guarantees you mentioned were included in the recently approved energy bill that purports to reduce US dependence on imported oil. The original bill even called for US taxpayers to make up the difference if the cost of producing nuclear power was more than the market was willing to pay. I am not sure if that provision made it in to the bill.
Ever since Cheney's 2001 clandestine energy policy meetings, the nuclear industry has rapidly mobilized and many plants are designed and now going through the permitting process. Since the loan guarantees passed many investors from mom and pop to Warren Buffet are now sinking money into nuclear power.
The industry has also conducted a very successful PR campaign and most politicians and voters have already "drank the kool-aid". Edwards, Kucinich and Nader have been the only potential presidential candidates to even question the expansion of nuclear energy.
None of this should come as a surprise in a nation where only 10% of the population is aware that radiation is harmful (according to a recent National Science Foundation survey).
Surprise, surprise. Not one mention of the extraordinary possibilities that exist with INDUSTRIAL HEMP. INDUSTRIAL HEMP could provide for not only 'energy' as it were, but also food, fiber, medicine, ect, ect, ect, ect. not only could it be grown in places like Georgia, where they are seeing massive drought due to cotton farmings unsustainable reliance on huge amounts of water, but could be grown from sea to shining sea. INDUSTRIAL HEMP, the logical solution.
google HEMP FOR VICTORY, WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE OR WHEREVER, AND THEN DECIDE, we should ask our congresspeople to get off their fat asses and DEMAND THE RIGHT TO ONCE AGAIN GROW THIS AMAZING PLANT!!
what about sea water? we're not about to run out of that. as to radioactive hydrogen, this is a very serious assertion. i wonder about it though, because we've been using lakes for years to cool fission plants and as far as i know no one has established ill health effects from the water. Lake Anna in the Washington, DC, area is an example of a body of water where a nuclear plant and recreation facilities have been happily co-habiting for many years. email me (kloro2006@gmail.com) if you've got contrary info.
This article appeared in the Dallas Morning News today. Dr. Makhijani has appeared locally to address these issues, and also on public television. His clear, concise and well thought out message couldn't come at a better time here in Texas, and also Nationally. Even though it may seem as though voices such as his, and others like Lester Brown, are only faintly audible through the wilderness of distraction around us, change is possible. It is imperative the next Administration gets it right. Let's all pitch in to be sure the candidates get the message.
Leaperz, regarding the Solar Grand Plan, we should all understand that the $420 billion "to make it cost-competitive" is actually a grand looting because it will not cost anywhere near that much to implement, more like 1/20 that cost, if the government steps in to squelch the capitalist looting job. Here's how the racket works: The capitalists are in control of the government so solar will simply not happen until the capitalists are sure they can control it, i.e. form their "energy groups", concoct out of thin air the $420 billion "bid" and feed it along with filet mignon to the public official who signs off with a smile. The dollar figure has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of the inputs, but only preserves the revenue streams that now exist. Since the consumption slaves are habituated to work X hours/day for their energy, why in hell would a radical capitalist want to degrade such lucrative oppression? Clearly the progressive answer is to cut the capitalist out of the loop entirely. Cage the capitalist at night and shackle him in chains during the day.
The way to go right away is to build hot-rock geothermal everywhere we can (mostly in the west).
I cannot support nuclear power unless it is used to destroy weapons grade nuclear material. The only way to do that is by controlled fission and why let all that heat go to waste. But UNTIL we reach that stage I will not support any nuclear power plant as its just a lousy way to make bombs.
One good SCRAM deserves another...
More than three million people were left without power after a nuclear reactor shut down in southern Florida.
An often unstated facet of the Nuclear power argument is the need to seal off the plants and keep them that way for a length of time that would have mankind go through several stages of evolution (the length of time the Pyramids of Giza have been up is completely insufficient...and the builders of nukes are nowhere near as good as the ancient Egyptians). Any cursory examination of history will reveal that human civilization goes through occasional periods of anarchy and backward steps into barbarism (the USA under Dubya, Cheney, & Co. qualify) where building maintenance is not an overwhelming priority.
"Of course, the conservatives that generally push for nuclear would have no problem with guaranteed loans for nuclear, but they would for solar or renewable. What's up with that? It's ok for uncle sam to spring to help bad infrastructure that is in their hands but not good infrastructure they won't be able to control? Go figure."
The problem is that you haven't yet realized that "conservative" is currently synonymous with "opportunist". Don't worry, it's a common error.
;-)
Right now Miamian's are shitting bricks over the unexplained shutdown of Turkey Point Nuclear Plant.
$40 billion profits by one oil company. That's why nuclear wants the government to support it. They don't want local invention, entrepreneurship, competition or efficiency. Uranium is a non-renewable resource too, guaranteeing esculating prices. PG&E in California is making investments in solar heat generation with storage, so that power is provided even when the sun isn't shining. Companies involved with these sources suggest a square of 92x92 miles in the southwest desert will provide totally clean electrical power for the entire US. Don't be surprised that oil, nuclear and coal will lie to prevent this from happening. And of course conservatives only look at these companies for money, they don't give a flying f**k what is best for the peoples of the world.
Keep in mind that solar isn't limited to cells either. Check out CSP (concentrated solar power) plants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy
"Since the CSP plant generates first heat, it is possible to store the heat before conversion to electricity. With current technology, storage of heat is much cheaper and efficient than storage of electricity. In this way, the CSP plant can produce electricity day and night."
We've barely scratched the surface with solar, and my guess is that cells will probably turn out to be relatively expensive. My money is on heliostats, dishes, and fresnels. Fortunately glass is made from the two most common elements in the earth's crust (silicon and oxygen).
The Dallas Morning News, home of Big Oil, prints an article that tells you nuclear is bad, then it must be true.
It also tells you they are not worried about solar or wind power. Why? What if you have a cloudy and windless day? You need to have backup for those days, and this must be computed into the solar and wind cost, but isn't. They know it is unworkable, while nuclear is a real threat, so they attack nuclear and promote alternatives that are not viable and will keep Big Oil rolling in the dough.
Since mother nature can be fickle weather is not always predictable (sorry kids, no TV for awhile since it has been a cloudier year than normal and our power system has insufficient backup). And who wants to build a gas fired electric plant to operate at full capacity only on cloudy or windless days. Not gonna work unless you socialize the backup power, and that means higher taxes and/or deficits.
The TMI incident was an act of homegrown terrorism by you know who to shut down nukes and support the petrodollar, in fact, FEMA, which was created by Jimmy Carters Executive Order, was called into action on it's first day of operation to control the news. All news feeding the anti-nuclear hysteria came from FEMA spokesmen. How timely.
Once they pull the plug on the petrodollar, and that day is coming soon, nukes will rule once again, and we will move on to the IMF/World Bank uranium dollar to go along with the carbon tax (that works out neat).
Bush is promoting nuclear knowing the petrodollars days are over, Obama has said nice things about it as he is owned by the atom lobby, so it's going to happen (and that means our current dollar is toast ).
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/06/20070621.html
I prefer wave power. It is a proven technology, dependable 24/7 and is very cost effective. With several such power plants in tidal waters along both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico, we could shut down every coal fired plant and then start phasing out nuclear plants as the clean energy plants came on line. Billy__4 can retire and teach high school or college courses. I'd love to be one of his students. He plays a ghost at Holloween too, ___ he glows in the dark.
Wave power plants covering a total water area of 44 square miles, would supply far enough electrical power for the entire east coast and inland for 4 to 500 miles, north from Limestone, maine and south to Key West Florida. No pollution, no cost of fuel and no harm to the waters life forms. Very basically, Just a series of huge bobbing bouys.
There is one wave power plant in operation in Europe and Great Britian plans to use wave power gereration with a 24 square mile water area, to supply all of the electrical needs for great Britian.
Iceland is going to use geo-thermal energy to crack sea water and produce hydrogen for vehicles at a very low cost for the fuel. They already heat entire cities in Iceland, including heated sidewalks in the cities, using Geo-thermal energy. ___ And America is number one?
The only universal answer to energy that works everywhere is conservation. But there is no one answer, in many locations solar water heating is great, other places - wind, solar panels, geothermal, farm waste, human waste, wave or other ideas may work.
Nuclear only 'works' if the taxpayer disposes of the waste and takes on all the liability. No sane investor would touch it without that massive subsidy and risk reduction.
Solar panels, and all alternate energy sources have been discouraged by the government because oil, coal, and nuclear energy have subsidies.
Right now the government should push conservation to the max, remove all subsidy to non-renewable energy, then reevaluate the energy situation. FAT CHANCE WITH CORPORATIONS IN CHARGE!
It isn't just the nuclear industry saying nuclear power is necessary. A small but growing segment of environmentalists agree its the most effective replacement for fossil fuels, and numerous governments around the world, including Dr. Makhijani's homeland of India, have ambitious plans for nuclear power.
Nuclear power is growing and here to stay. It is the densest power source with power stations on less than 1000 acres supplying electricity to hundreds of thousands homes and businesses, railroads, factories...
The next generation of plants is safer and more resistant to terrorism. Someone from the nuclear industry should explain how pollution such as tritium, strontium-90 and iodine will be prevented in the future. Is the testing frequnecy good enough? Why so many leaks from ponds, etc? Why such long periods of unknown leakage?
There are designs (fast reactors) that would not make, and could actually consume, long half-life wastes. Some designs would run for years on only a start-up charge of non-enriched or depleted uranium. (The uranium miners might not like that.)
My biggests concerns about nuclear power are transparency and accountability for releases of radioactivity, other accidents and cancer clusters, the handling and disposal of waste, and the eventual demolition of old plants. The NRC was accused of weakness in enforcement even before the antics of Bush administration.
The radioactive garbage left over from early research, and WWII and cold war weapons projects has caused some frightening problems. This is partly why later incidents were covered up or minimized for the public. The government needs to believe the citizenry won't panic if its told the truth about an incident.
Nukes are here to stay, and they will be a key part of greenhouse gas reduction, but we need full disclosure of all incidents and root causes, and how they will be prevented in the future.
bbr-001 wrote:
"Nuclear power is growing and here to stay."
Nuclear power is dying and will take 25,000 years to do so. Technological triumphalists are dumb and blind. Hint: exploitation is no longer an option.
Along with the safety and storage problems no one has mentioned that nuclear generates a lot of CO2 in the mining and refining and transport of uranium (besides scarring and polluting the landscape in places like the Grand Canyon). I believe I've read that it cancels out any net CO2 savings that nuclear supposedly creates though I can't recall the source where I read this (any one else?).
Plus even if you could make the dubious economic, safety and storage arguments, uranium is a finite resource and will run out like petroleum and we'd still have to convert to renewables at some point anyway. So why not do it directly?
Seems to me the key is to use renewables to generate hydrogen for fuel cells which would solve the intermittency criticism and the problem of renwable generation being located too far from where it is consumed. Does anyone have info on hydrogen from renewables?
Hydro Turbine in Deep Drilled Chanel Ocean based with geothermal steam chanel turbine h2o resurface...
Wind energy is good too, if you put the blades around the whole span, or build the turbines into a skyrise.
We could balloon some up tethered...
String them from building to building...
Neodymium magnets and wire coil works wonders, get some.
Hmmm, to do today, let me buy some total dependence on some other big money corporate energy...
While there is a finite amount of uranium here, it won't cool down for a couple million years I think is the half life... So your argument against nuclear for it being finite is bunk.
Nuclear is though, steam energy. The critical mass metal heats a channel of steam that spins a turbine...
Why gather up all this totally dangerous material? When you could just burn some hemp... Hemp's renewable right? 10 tons of biomass per acre hemp. Grows from the north pole to the south pole hemp.
Is the ideal protein proportion and omega 3 to omega 6 proportion for human diet hemp...
Has brought whole societies through famine hemp.
www.jackherer.com hemp.
0 people have died of Cannabis overdose in the whole of human history.
You can die of uranium overdose without even touching the stuff, lets do the math.
Skip hemp even and use the wind and water motion that is here. There are 0 major hydro power plants being built in the US. This has been the situation for a very long time. The whole of the ocean can be used to hydro energy collect by ocean floor drilled channels, or high tide level tubes as channels to drop the water through. Wind energy over America is worth 2X the amount of energy we use today from ALL sources. This doesn't even account for skyrise wind energy potential, nor wind turbines with more than 3 grossly inefficient blades.
Daniel Vincent Kelley
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
http://lamegame.name
If I don't get some love on here, you people will not hear from me again soon.
Why hydrogen? Do the whole transportation infrastructure over safe. Capsules in tubes on rails coast to coast of every continent. Whip them by electro magnetic propulsion. Guide them by electronics, safe them with quick hardening foam, and design an acceleration channel to enter the main corridor for steady speed travel. We could be moving on the surface of the planet at mach2. All this requires just clean energy, electricity. Harvesting wind motion and hydro and geothermal does well enough. Batteries are old technology as an energy storage medium. As far as hydrogen, steel conducting electricity through water is your hydrogen source. You have to come up with the electricity which means you have to charge a battery or have something spinning your generator, so we're back to wind, hydro, geothermal...
There are other options of course, we could put some cows on treadmills, horses even better right? They might even enjoy it. Health clubs could be using the energy going into their tread mills and stair masters to power their lights and soda machines...
Magnets worthy of electrical generation are in harddrives, microwave ovens, alternators... You can get them online at otherpower.com
Don't trust those people on making wind mills though as they're part of the 3 skimpy blade crowd...
Daniel Vincent Kelley
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
Regarding Green House Gas Emission...
Global warming is OVER people. Ice Age has begun.
Search this site:
commondreams.org for this article
How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age. What was necessary for it to cause ice age has already been done. The oceans have been diluted the ocean current is stalling. The south pole is already in the refreeze, newsflash, antartic ice expanding.
Once industry cuts out, and due World Oil Production Decline, that will be soon, the temperature up here where most of the land is in the Northern hemisphere will crash and there will be a well expected 10000 year glacial forming that will permafrost half of North America and Half of Russia. Food production will crash, governments will murder more people than ever, the financial dominant will try to set on a dark age.
None of this is a joke.
Daniel Vincent Kelley
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
http://lamegame.name
Daniel Kelly -
I'm not a Global Warming advocate. BUT...and this is the big 'but'... There is no logical reason to maintain our dependence on fossil fuels (especially foreign sources).
The wealth of energy resources in this country makes in unconscienable to maintain status quo.
If we are headed toward a solar minimum (which I think we are) we need the regional domestic resources like geothermal, and solar, (even wind in some areas) and use that electrical generation and store it (via hydrogen and battery tech.) in order to maintain a vibrant economy and the healthy living with the longer and colder winters.
If our northern homes and businesses were designed and structured with super-insulation they could be heated and cooled for next to nothing. That is what we need if another litle ice age is coming. Wouldn't you agree?
Wow mililiberal, you are twisted. First of all, screen house your damn wind electrical facilities please, so nice little berry eating birdies don't get chopped into smitherines... Second, 99% die off!? Who are you Bush? Vegan agriculture is capable of supporting a person with just .3 acres. There are 8 billion acres of arable soil worldwide. That means this planets, not account for seaweed which grows 2 feet per day and is 60X more mineral dense than land grown plants, that means this planets carrying capacity for land agriculture alone is more than 24 billion. 6 billion people fit in the state of texas each person alotted 1200 square feet. The real reason solar is no solution is it's exhorbitant water cost. I forget what exactly it is, but it's something like thousands of gallons per 1 inch square solar electric wafer, ridiculous.
I hope your whole post was sarcasm. If you were serious you need to do a bunch more reading on valid solutions. What of industry will much be missed? When we get back to basics, forced by energy constriction, I'm pretty sure what is efficiently enjoyable will surface. The best things in life are free.
The sciam article, btw, is a scam. 2050!? Doctors Duncan and Youngquist predicted Peak Oil to occur about 2008 and to result permanent blackouts across whole nations by the year 2012. Plastic bags are thinner, that's how desperate the powers that be are for a little more time to build robot attack jets.
That's why they would have you wait til 2050 to solve the energy crisis is so they can build enough robot attack jets to eliminate the fly boys.
Who is going to wait 40 years for the same powers who tanked this industrial society to fix this industrial society? I don't think anyone is so foolish.
SmooveBald like a Marine? Like a murderous agent of the state qbaldsmoove?
Unbelieveable how many psywar jobbers there are on this site. Every of the ever life seeking journalists, a tenth of the commenters...
Great debate RAGING here, I hope everyone bought their neodymium magnets and wire coil and figured out what multi phase power is regarding an alternator. You are otherwise quite foolish time wastes. If you haven't built your electrical generator yet, when are you going to have time to fashion your bomb shelter!?
I'll give you a hint, north south north south an even number of magnets around a spinnable disk or wheel. Coil as much magnet wire as will fit near the magnets, on either a disk or if your magnets are wheeled then a wider fixed wheel. For 3 phase use a number of coils divisible by 3. Attach them to each other every third coil. Wind them all the same direction as they will be housed on the disk or fixed wheel. Spin your magnet wheel or disk, you have electricity. Attach each of your phases to a full wave bridge rectifier (fwbr) at about 35amps each of your phases will need it's own FWBR. The FWBR converts the AC current you're feeding into DC, which is then suitable to run into your battery charge regulator. The most expensive item of this whole setup is the magnets, which while they'll cost a hundred dollars or so, that amount is enough to satisfy your every power need if you keep them spinning long enough often enough. You can hook them up to a stationary bike, you can attach them to a windmill, you could dig a whole beside an above ground pool, collect rain water use a rain water drain to spin them, you can build a fire under a pot of water under steam channel under a paddle to make them go. It kinda really doesn't matter what you do to spin your magnets, but get them, and get them spinning.
Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute makes exactly the same argument as Arjun Makhijani. Both are highly respected, but sadly underheard by the the public as well as the politicians who make the policies and hand out the money.
With all these interesting concepts,a lot of them have great potential. It is just a matter of time before some of these concepts, and others, will solve our energy needs with clean sources. Bravo to all the brilliant minds, that are dedicating themselves to this matter.
Having been in the solar industry for six years, the biggest rap from nuclearists (ok, I coined a word) is that solar can't make it without subsidies. The fact is nuclear has been subsidized in one or several forms since the 1950s.
"Many emerging technologies have government help to get them established, but some are never self-sustaining without it. The nuclear industry required massive federal funding to get established. They still require the federal government to provide their liability insurance, as no private insurance company could withstand the exposure. And nobody has figured out a solution to the nuclear waste problem that is economically, environmental, and politically acceptable. Nuclear has never been self-sustaining." From the book "Exponential Solar" by IPESsol, 2007.
MiMiCcS:
Your comment is characteristic of the ill-informed about solar power (photovoltaics or "PV") common in this country but Californians are catching on.
1) About 95% of all PV systems today are connected to their local power grid in a system called "net metering". If a household or business needs more power than is produced by its PV system it simply draws from the utility grid. Conversely,if a system produces more than what is needed, the excess power goes into the grid and the PV system owner gets credit for it. Since power flows both ways as needed, NO BACKUP BATTERIES ARE NECESSARY!
2) Solar panels don't stop working on cloudy or rainy days, they just produce less and more power is drawn from the grid to make up the difference. As for wind power: Simply install wind turbines only in areas with minimum average daily breezes. The U.S. Weather has all such data for every crook and cranny in the country
3) Fact: U.S. electricity is generated from domestic fossil fuels and nuclear power. If just 1% of America's land mass was covered with solar cells, no foreign sources of petroleum would be needed as domestic oil alone would meet our needs. A combination of solar and wind is more likely AND THE TECHNOLOGY IS HERE NOW!
don't forget also that battery and capaciter technology is now to the stage where a household and/or business could store the excess electricity generated as well.
HI Billy, interesting about the sea being like glass three miles out. I've seen that same situation once in my life. However, closer to shore where the waves begin to swell as they approach shore, ___ and they always do, there is ALWAYS wave action, 24/7. Then in areas such as the Chesepeake Bay are there are always waves. ___ Always___24/7.
It also does not require strong wave action for wave generators to work well, just light waves are perfectly adequate. They would work quite well on Lake Huron and Michigan also. Sure do hope they get started on the program and shut down all of those deadly, dangerous nuke plants, which are also apt to shut themselves down for a day and leave everyone without electricity.
A 35 pound sea bass, that's a nice one, I do hope they released the poor thing and didn't eat it.
It would be VERY, very, strange Bill. My father-in-law had a commercial crabbing boat out of Rock Hall Md, so we are very familiar with the Chesepeake Bay area and the Atlantic. I have never EVER seen NO waves. If I witnesed that, it would be very disturbing, for it is not natural at all. I wonder how long that lasted?
I know that happens in the deep Pacific at times, (like the Ancient Mariner story.) Anyway, wave power is a well proven method of developing electrical power and I'm fairly certain it would not be developed in areas where TOTAL calm was anything other than most unusual. I understand even nuclear plants shut down at times for one reason or another.
Shame about the fish, contrary to public opinon, fish do have feelings, just like any pet dog, bird or cat. Can you imagine being hooked, drug out of your home, and then have some barbarian gut you and then cut your head off? ___ What kind of friends do you have?
If there was a stong and steady off shore wind from the west, it may be fairly calm for awhile, but never no waves. Very strange.
I live on the pacific. Have never seen where there has not been at least a little bit of a lap. Doesn't the gravitational effect from the moon, have an influence on the motion? Even when the tide turns, there is very little down time of complete slack. The tide is either coming or going, and either way it generates energy.
i've seen lake michigan's shore get calm, but it doesn't stay that way. we get a well known lake effect snow and a less well known lake effect wind. perhaps there is a way to put wire mesh around a wind turbine to save the birds.
dte allows us to buy offsets to our electricity carbon footprint. it is wind energy from the thumb. now, though, they want to build fermi III (that's three--the first one was featured in the 1966 book WE ALMOST LOST DETROIT). nuclear power is dangerous, poisonous, and unnecessary.
Antinuclear. net`s website,under World Security, shows the nonfiction book,"Goodbye Phoenix Hello Tucson", with the editors comments. Therein are 4 million reasons supporting the antinuclear power reactor methodology for energy