the 3 biggest euro offshore wind farms combined are less than 1 sharon harris

nice shot at back tracking there though

[Edited on March 14, 2011 at 2:56 PM. Reason : s]

3/14/2011 2:56:12 PM

You know what makes more energy than wind farms? Nuclear power plants.

3/14/2011 4:07:22 PM

3/14/2011 4:08:00 PM

My company is working on what will be the largest offshore wind farm in the world and it is still only going to be 500MW and the total design and construction cost is going to come out fairly similar ($/MW) to the 2700MW nuclear expansion we were also working on (now Shaw has it) in Texas that is simply an expansion on an existing site meaning no extra ground being taken up...it was already purchased and on the current site waiting for a future expansion.

[Edited on March 14, 2011 at 4:15 PM. Reason : .]

3/14/2011 4:11:08 PM

guess your company hates birds! you bastard

3/14/2011 4:12:32 PM

or the client who is paying us

3/14/2011 4:15:22 PM

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/14/us-japan-quake-industry-idUSTRE72D73O20110314

Quote :

"(Reuters) - Investors hammered companies that build nuclear reactors and supply them with fuel on Monday as Japan struggled to avert a meltdown at a stricken reactor, on fear that the whole sector could be in for a downturn, in the short and medium term at least. But analysts said the industry could recover from the stock market setback as negative perceptions fade, and the current price slump might be a buying opportunity. "Meltdown is a very big word in people's minds, so I think that the public sentiment is probably going to swing against nuclear power," said BMO Capital Markets analyst Edward Sterck. "But I don't think this is the end of the nuclear industry." "With the hype that some commentators are making that this is the end of the nuclear energy, I think we're going to possibly see an overreaction in the stock prices. At some point there will be value there." Japan's crisis, already the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, hit shares of industry giants like General Electric (GE.N) and Hitachi (6501.T), along with uranium producers Cameco (CCO.TO) and Areva (CEPFi.PA), and power utilities like Entergy (ETR.N) and Exelon Corp (EXC.N). The Japanese reactors were designed to withstand earthquakes, but Friday's quake was a record for Japan, and a devastating tsunami knocked out backup power, causing and deepening the problems. With the 24-hour news agenda focused on the possibility of a meltdown at one or more reactors in Japan, analysts said the market will need time to recover from losses. "We need to see those reactors brought under control before people start to review the situation with a little more perspective," Sterck said. Nuclear power accounted for about a third Japan's of energy generation before the quake, and the damage has raised concerns about future of the industry there. The country has shut 11 of its 54 reactors since the quake, reactors that Dahlman Rose analyst Anthony Young said consume about 340,000 pounds of uranium a month. The facilities in Japan, while over 40 years old, are designed very differently from the Chernobyl reactor, with additional containment vessels to prevent a lethal explosion. On Monday, in response to public pressure against nuclear development, some European countries announced delays or changes to their nuclear energy plans. Analysts said countries with contracts in place to build new reactors would face expensive break fees if plans were canceled, and future energy plans for numerous nations are dependent on the addition of nuclear power. "We remain extremely optimistic on the outlook for uranium and nuclear fuel generation," Young said in a note. "We believe the reactor buildout that is occurring in China, India and Russia will continue." NUCLEAR CANADA Uranium miners were the four most active stocks on the Toronto Stock Exchange by volume on Monday .AV.TO.. Shares of Cameco, the world's second largest uranium miner, were down 14 percent at C$31.29, while Uranium One (UUU.TO), Canada's second largest producer, was down 27 percent at C$4.36. TD analyst Greg Barnes said Cameco sells 10 to 15 percent of its uranium to Japan. If, in what he said was a worst case scenario, Cameco lost 10 percent of sales, it would translate to a 21 percent drop in earnings per share. Shares of utilities that use nuclear power also fell. Entergy dropped 4.7 percent to $70.20, Exelon fell 1.2 percent to $42.62, and Southern Co (SO.N) was down 1.46 percent at $37.72. General Electric, which manufactures nuclear power plant equipment, declined 3 percent to $19.74, while its Japanese partner Hitachi fell 16.19 percent on Monday. (Additional reporting by Steve James and Euan Rocha; editing by Janet Guttsman)"

[Edited on March 14, 2011 at 4:21 PM. Reason : two pgs]

3/14/2011 4:19:43 PM

I just want to say, I hope you all are ready for dynamic pricing of electricity.

In the past fossil plants have been able to provide more than enough margin to allow demand to be completely rigid. Wind power in the US is expected to top out at the amount that they can be used without disrupting the grid next year at the earliest. Don't take my word for it, the EIA is projecting a sharp leveling off of installed wind capacity.

Natural gas will help to provide low capital electricity that can offer the buffer, but it won't be enough, and those combined cycle NG plants also want to be must-run units and lie significantly higher on the bid curve. There is no way, given the trend of capacity additions, that the grid will be able to survive without dynamic pricing or by turning away new renewables.

Japan has given little indication that they're into this idea, but it seems reasonable to predict it given that they're almost certainly under the needed capacity level to supply enough electricity, and not just for the near-term either. The global markets for LNG and coal are going to bite it hard, you all know that Japan is an island and doesn't produce these things by itself, but look at its past usage. Nuclear was only 30% of their electricity. The rest doesn't come from gumdrops and rainbows.

The rolling blackouts are slamming the northern part of the nation hard, and it probably will in the future. I think that everyone can agree with me that dynamic pricing and sudden price shocks where electricity costs 20x as much is preferable to having rolling blackouts.

You can pro-nuke it until you're blue in the face and Japan will still loose several GW of nuclear for the next few years, and probably upwards of 10 GW. If you want to be conservative, you should count on loosing quite a lot more. Even with fairly basic assumptions you can get ready for a commodities shock.

You people who like both wind power and modern conveniences need to man up and start spreading some of the realities we're going to face.

3/14/2011 4:48:39 PM

Quote :

"You know what makes more energy than wind farms? Nuclear power plants. "

try building one of those in the ocean.

3/14/2011 5:56:35 PM

i don't think anyone is complaining about the amount of land a nuke plant takes up here.

also, the navy does a pretty good job of putting nukes in the ocean...

3/14/2011 6:02:27 PM

they should. nuclear energy is extremely land intensive if you count the mining, hauling, and future storage of waste. For security reasons, a lot of the land becomes unusable for anything else. The expansion of Shearon Harris is going to do away with a lot of the remaining unflooded game lands, so unless you can put a boat in that lake it becomes pretty useless.

At least you can still fish around an offshore wind farm.

[Edited on March 14, 2011 at 6:08 PM. Reason : there are a hundred reasons to knock wind energy. Land use isn't one of them.]

3/14/2011 6:05:59 PM

Quote :

"try building one of those in the ocean."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiSKbQ4azhI

3/14/2011 6:18:18 PM

mrfrog linked to a stupid computer animation that didnt show anything of use, and had a link to amputee videos in the "related videos" section

3/14/2011 6:23:52 PM

there are other ideas involving fuel recycling (separation of dangerous shorter life waste product, less dangerous long life waste product, and remaining viable fuel) would go a long long long way to reducing the superlong superbad waste into shorter life bad waste and other not so bad waste. plus the amount of recovered fuel is extremely high on average.

if you're gonna include mining then you're gonna have to pull in all the copper mining and such industrial space for the other components needed for the production of wind turbines as well.

^ it showed a off shore nuke plant

[Edited on March 14, 2011 at 6:29 PM. Reason : s]

3/14/2011 6:28:27 PM

mrfrog linked to a stupid animation of a conceptual nuclear plant built in the ocean, it shows how some stupid engineers want to build a nuclear plant in the ocean, it was on a stupid video sharing website that makes web links

I'm finished here, I really can't pretend I'm 13 any longer than that.

3/14/2011 6:32:14 PM

there's probably just as much copper wiring / busswork in the generators and control mechanisms at a nuke plant as there is at a wind farm, so that's a moot point.

I'm a huge proponent of fuel recycling for nuke plants, but unfortunately it's a long way from being a reality in the US. I think I remember being told once that only 5% of the fuel in a fuel rod is spent during the reaction and the remaining 95% could be reclaimed. That seems like it would go a long ways towards making nuclear energy a lot cheaper.

3/14/2011 6:46:11 PM

sheraton harris people told us that a commercial plane could fly into the building there and wouldnt make it in to the core. so it would fuck up the outside but it wouldnt cause a fallout or any nuclear issue

3/14/2011 6:49:41 PM

Quote :

"I'm a huge proponent of fuel recycling for nuke plants, but unfortunately it's a long way from being a reality in the US. I think I remember being told once that only 5% of the fuel in a fuel rod is spent during the reaction and the remaining 95% could be reclaimed. That seems like it would go a long ways towards making nuclear energy a lot cheaper."

I hear people quote numbers for this often, and I think 3-5% would be more correct. But different fuel is burned to different levels, so if you go by assemblies there's a small difference in how much it's burned, if you go by rods it's much more, and if you look at individual pellets, there is a massive spread.

But it's more important to identify the fertile vs fissile difference. Roughly half, but probably more, of what's burned is the juicy (to neutrons) U-235 and the other half is U-238 that gets transmuted to something and then burns (stale and hard to neutrons). The juicy stuff will run out quite soon, but the difficult nuclear fuel is completely inexhaustible. The fuel is still left with lots of juicy stuff, and juicy stuff that it made from the stale stuff that has yet to be burned, but it doesn't have enough to keep going.

Thing is, less than 5% of it started out as juicy stuff to begin with. So, since the stale stuff is pretty much free, it's a tossup as to whether it's better to combine the juicy stuff in old fuel with new stale stuff from the ground (Thorium), or the stale stuff that's already in it (U-238). But the real issues is the safety analysis of the reactors and the quality assurance anyway.

3/14/2011 7:21:40 PM

I own a mild shit ton of stock in a potential nuclear startup and that stock tanked today. Oh well, not a loss until you sell.

3/14/2011 8:32:19 PM

Quote :

"sheraton harris"

Quote :

"Shearin Harris"

Quote :

"Sharon Harris"

[Edited on March 14, 2011 at 8:37 PM. Reason : .]

3/14/2011 8:34:27 PM

^hahaha

3/14/2011 10:51:30 PM

Quote :

"Oh well, not a loss until you sell."

well... it can become a loss withought you selling.

3/14/2011 11:06:03 PM

3/14/2011 11:11:45 PM

Quote :

"On January 22, 2010 officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the electrical generator from the damaged Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island will be used at Shearon Harris. [5] The generator was refurbished and installed during a refueling outage in November, 2010."

uh oh

3/14/2011 11:14:47 PM

3/14/2011 11:31:41 PM

No. 4 blown up. Time to spray cement.

3/15/2011 12:14:15 AM

Quote :

"so you know what will happen if/when they reach the point where it sustains itself like the sun?"

that would be incredible, since there is not enough fuel to make that happen. nice try

3/15/2011 12:28:29 AM

I believe that any energy source other than fossil fuels is a good one, but do not believe in a magic bullet. Currently, there is simply not one solitary solution that can completely replace fossil fuels. Rather a combination of new technologies is likely the best solution. Wind, Hydro, Nuclear...they all have their places. I also believe strongly that people should begin focusing on generating some power on an individual level. Small wind turbines, photovoltaic, geothermal, solar thermal etc.... Use a combination of those to provide a little energy to the most important things on your property. Then supplement the rest with energy from a major producer.

3/15/2011 2:22:34 AM

oldie but goodie


pigs vs atomic bomb

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYUSKWhb3sk

3/15/2011 3:44:28 AM

What's the latest?

2/28/2020 10:36:33 PM