Nightjar "cpb"@ insertmysurnamehere wrote:
On 19/10/2010 13:24, David Hansen wrote:
On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:15:07 +0100 someone who may be "Nightjar
\"cpb\"@""insertmysurnamehere wrote this:-

None of the renewables can match the generating
cost of conventional or nuclear power

Proof by assertion. No references where we can see where you got
this assertion from.

I assumed it was sufficiently well known not to need references.

http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publica...Commentary.pdf



and, if you do a whole life study,
when nuclear still wins out on cost, wind farms generate a lot more CO2
per MWh than nuclear.

Ditto.

The SD Commission had reports prepared on this
http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=337. The best
it seems possible to say is that nuclear is about as carbon
intensive as onshore wind.

That study goes into great detail about the sources of CO2 from Nuclear
power and concludes, on page 21, that it produces from 2-20 tCO2/GWh,
with an average for European generation of 16 tCO2/GWh. It the asserts
that this is about the same as a wind farm, without giving any figures
or breakdown to support that claim. A 2006 study found that wind farms
produced 14-33 tCO2/GWh (reference 11 in
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Environmental..._of_wind_power ).

So, yes, if you take the average European nuclear power plant and
compare it with the very best wind farm, they are about the same.
However, the worst wind farm produces twice the CO2. The average wind
farm is likely to lie somewhere around the middle of the range, so wind
farms do produce a lot more CO2 than nuclear power.


BUT the fact that the windfarms eed backing up by ineffeiceintl;y run
gas turbines, provabaly muoltiplies that by ten or so.

Wind farms are almost certainly no better thah a good gas turbine set
running efficiently without wind.


Colin Bignell