"wmbjk" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 13:57:22 -0700, "Roger Shoaf"
wrote:

"wmbjk" wrote in message
.. .

Wind might be able to supply 20% of electric demand.

I think this is a pipe dream. How do you get your numbers?

That's a number often quoted for the maximum wind power contribution
to the grid without additional storage. If it ever gets to 10%, then
it might be possible to know if 20 can be attained.

So who is doing the quoting?

"In 1998, wind turbines in the US produced 3.5 billion kWh. The US
produced a total of 3,367 billion kWh, so the fraction from wind was 0.10
percent --- one part out of a thousand."
scorce"
http://www.energyadvocate.com/big_trbn.htm



Also how many
acres of real estate would be dedicated to wind farms?

Wind towers co-exist nicely with farming and grazing. And a sizeable
number can be off-shore.

"Wind farms in the US produce power at the average rate of about 1.2 watts
per square meter (about 5000 watts per acre). In order to produce an
average of 1000 MW --- the power produced by any large conventional (coal,
oil nuclear, gas) power plant --- would require about 833 square kilometers
(300 square miles) of wind turbines. That's the area of a mile-wide swath
of land extending from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Multiply that by about
30 and you have California's electricity. " scorce :
http://www.energyadvocate.com/big_trbn.htm

Then you still only get power when the wind blows.

First of all each wind turbine would require a concrete base and a steel
tower. then you would need to connect each of these with wire and have a
large bank of transformers servicing them. putting these off shore would
expotentially increase the cost.





Too bad the
carrot of cheap (yeah sure) nukes

They are cheap.

Since when? The existing ones couldn't have been built without massive
subsidy. Investment in new ones will not happen unless the public
agrees to pay a much higher price for the power. Which would still
make them useful IMO. But the nuke industry knows it's game over if
they ever admit that their product is more expensive than it looks.

Consider France.
===============begin quote=======================
Economic Factors

France's nuclear power program has cost some FF 400 billion in 1993
currency, excluding interest during construction. Half of this was
self-financed by Electricité de France, 8% (FF 32 billion) was invested by
the state but discounted in 1981, and 42% (FF 168 billion) was financed by
commercial loans. In 1988 medium and long-term debt amounted to FF 233
billion, or 1.8 times EdF's sales revenue. However, by the end of 1998 EdF
had reduced this to FF 122 billion, about two thirds of sales revenue (FF
185 billion) and less than three times annual cash flow. Net interest
charges had dropped to FF 7.7 billion (4.16% of sales) by 1998.

The cost of nuclear-generated electricity fell by 7% from 1998 to 2001 and
is now about EUR 3 cents/kWh, which is very competitive in Europe.

From being a net electricity importer through most of the 1970s, France now
has steadily growing net exports of electricity, which amounted to 63
billion kWh and EUR 2.6 billion in 1999. France is thus the world's largest
net electricity exporter, and electricity is France's fourth largest export.
(Next door is Italy, without any operating nuclear power plants. It is
Europe's largest importer of electricity, most coming ultimately from
France.) The UK has also become a major customer for French electricity.
==================end quote=========================
From: http://www.uic.com.au/nip28.htm



They are clean.

People have been making that overly simplistic claim for decades. Talk
is cheap, but what's the point if you can't get anyone to agree to
take the waste?

You have not been reading this tread have you?

Notice the number of new plants? That's the reality.

We have not built any new plants in the US, but new plants have been built
overseas. As far as reality goes, politics is the reason we have not built
any nukes recently. Politics can and does change.





(in somebody else's back yard) slows
the acceptance of alternatives.

They can build one in my back yard

Great, I suggest you apply to the NRC for a permit. While you're
waiting a couple decades for your paperwork to be denied, others will
be building wind farms, sometimes in as little as a year between
planning and startup.

I agree that the process to comission new nuclear plants should be
streamlined. By standardizing the dedign, the plant itself could be
preapproved, the only decision would be the site selection. As Gary pointed
out, my making the plants modular they could be easily scaled up just by
plugging in another module. Great economy of scale would result.


--

Roger Shoaf

About the time I had mastered getting the toothpaste back in the tube, then
they come up with this striped stuff.