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Japan earthquake + tsunami + nuclear problems

gambling_cruiser said:
5-10MW per windmill.
Full-power hours about 3800 per year for off-shore windparks, means you need two MW windmill for one MW nuclear power.
1 MW windmill means about 1 Million Euro investment.
To replace 1000MW nuclear power you need 2000MW wind power.
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Are you sure about these numbers? For example, here in Germany we have an installed capacity of roundabout 27 GW ind windmills. If they would run 24/7, which they obviously don't, it would be 27 * 24 * 365 = 236520 GWh = about 236 TWh per year. But in reality they deliver only a little under 39 TWh per year. So, i get a factor of 6 between produced electricity vs. installed capacity.

Greetings,

Chris
 
If one windmill can power a thousand homes, the math seems easy enough. We can use the existing power plants for peak load, industry and when the wind stops blowing.

Add some solar, (especially solar hot water heating), and summertime you may not need to burn anything for power. Insulation, trees, and reducing our comfort level, we could do with out that 20% of the power that comes from polluting sources.
 
Am I a dreamer or what? That will never happen. Oil and coal and gas are far too much income for them to go down with out a nuclear fight.

:)
 
r-j said:
If one windmill can power a thousand homes, the math seems easy enough. We can use the existing power plants for peak load, industry and when the wind stops blowing.

Add some solar, (especially solar hot water heating), and summertime you may not need to burn anything for power. Insulation, trees, and reducing our comfort level, we could do with out that 20% of the power that comes from polluting sources.
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The windmill can power the houses only a few hours a day. Or less. And then, probably in shorter intervals only. Solar peaks at noon. Before and after that you get very little out. Here in Germany the factor is about 10 to 12 times between produced electricity and installed capacity for solar. That mean you need some storage system, so that you have energy even if there is little or no wind and solar.

"Base load" is the term you want to look up first. And for that we currently have a few choices. Coal, gas, oil or nuclear. Which of these four do you prefer? Surely not Coal and oil, i hope. Leaves gas and nuclear. Gas will run out someday. It also has quite some environmental impact, as well as risks. If we would recycle spent nuclear fuel, it would last much, much longer. And given the data available, it looks like as if nuclear still has less impact than gas. Even counting in the rare cases where something went horribly wrong. And there is no reason to believe that this average would increase massively anytime soon.

The problem is simply that renewables do not scale up in a useful way.

Greetings,

Chris

Edit: And in case you have the impression that you can turn plants on and off by simply pushing a button, or increase/decrease their power output quickly, then you are simply wrong. Wind and solar is too unpredictable to be used directly. It needs some kind of storage to even out the overall availability, especially the more you want to use it and reduce conventional plants for peak use only.
 
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r-j said:
Oil and coal and gas are far too much income for them to go down with out a nuclear fight.
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Not oil so much; that's mostly been squeezed out of the power sector already. Most of our oil goes to the transportation sector, and for nuclear to be a contender in that arena involves a lot more than just power plants.
 
jayh said:
Not likely.

Are you disputing the fact that they typically are connected (often a couple) into a single branch?

Do you expect a cold drink machine (probably the most energy intensive) to be less efficient than a home refrigerator?

Be realistic.
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Put a glass door on your fridge, call me in a month. :)

The math works, and that's for NA vending machines. From what I've seen the Japanese ones are more energy intensive. To what extent I don't know, but I don't come close to using 500W a month in my home.

It's not correct, but it's within the range of possibility.
 
quadraginta said:
This is the claim which needs to be supported, not whether some households might use the same amount of energy as some vending machines.
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Maybe he got a summer average for the vending machines and a yearly average for homes? It looks like a case of some very lazy math.
 
Christian Klippel said:
Are you sure about these numbers? For example, here in Germany we have an installed capacity of roundabout 27 GW ind windmills. If they would run 24/7, which they obviously don't, it would be 27 * 24 * 365 = 236520 GWh = about 236 TWh per year. But in reality they deliver only a little under 39 TWh per year. So, i get a factor of 6 between produced electricity vs. installed capacity.

Greetings,

Chris
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My first post was a quick and dirty calculation.
3800 full-power hours per year is a value for off-shore windparks taken von wikipedia. Even if this value is true you need about 2750MW wind power (1000MW for consumption and 1750MW pumped-storage power - assuming 75% efficiency - for the remaining 4960 hours)to replace 1000MW base load.
On the other hand the 1750MW pumpe-storage power can be used to deliver peak-load-power which is much more valuable than base-load.
Is this possible in Japan? I have no idea, I just answered the question what would be necessary to replace nuclear power.
The typhoon-problem for off-shore wind parks is also not (yet) solved.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
I personally think windfarms are a lovely sight. Don't know what people have against them.
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When I first saw windmills in the fields years ago, I thought so too, after a while the novelty wore out. Then I saw and heard few of them in a similar place* as in the picture I posted, and got very annoyed. Aesthetically alone, I hope the trend is not growing unless the windmills become as or more efficient than nuclear, if they do I would have to check my priorities again, but in the mean time, it just seems like an awful waste of money, energy and otherwise uncompromised scenery :boggled:

* Afaik the places where you can build a windmill are much more limited than the places where you can build a nuclear plant, otherwise I just don't get why they would build them in the places where I have seen them.

babycondor said:
I'd rather see those than these:

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_181544d8763d65c04c.jpg[/qimg]
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Really? Have you done the numbers, how many windmills would there have to be in order to realistically achieve the same amount of Megawatts as nuclear plants? What about in combination with solar? Have you thought about the locations where you will currently see the nuclear plants vs. windmills? Is there a reason to expect change in future locations?
 
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Last of the Fraggles said:
To be fair, the original post we answered was based on the aesthetics of wind turbines and not their practicality.
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Correct, but it also included the question of windmills becoming more popular. Aesthetically speaking, I agree that comparing 1:1, I would choose a windmill over a nuclear plant. But in reality, we have to take into account the amount of windmills needed as well as their placement in order for them to work properly. This makes it a no-brainer for me.
 
A very surprising article by George Montbiot in The Guardian :


Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power

Japan's disaster would weigh more heavily if there were less harmful alternatives. Atomic power is part of the mix

......

Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry. Yes, I would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were harmless alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy technology carries a cost; so does the absence of energy technologies. Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.
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Monbiot was one of the few hold outs in the climate change community who was against nuclear power.

The surprise is why it took so long.
Bout time you woke up to the real threat there George :garfield:
 
Kuko 4000 said:
Correct, but it also included the question of windmills becoming more popular. Aesthetically speaking, I agree that comparing 1:1, I would choose a windmill over a nuclear plant. But in reality, we have to take into account the amount of windmills needed as well as their placement in order for them to work properly. This makes it a no-brainer for me.
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Thank you, that is a good point.
 
There indeed may be wishful thinkers in the pro nuke camp ( given the uphill battle to convince the great unwashed, little wonder ) but nothing beats the media for being hysterically wrong...

Your laugh of the day courtesy Dr. Brook

I’m reminded of a quote from James Lovelock in “The Vanishing Face of Gaia” (2008):​
In July 2007 an earthquake in Japan shook a nuclear power station enough to cause an automatic shutdown ; the quake was of sufficient severity-over six on the Richter scale-to cause significant structural damage in an average town. The only “nuclear” consequence was the fall of a barrell from a stack of low-level waste that allowed the leak of about 90,000 becquerels of radioactivity. This made front page news in Australia, where it was said that the leak posed a radiation threat to the Sea of Japan.The truth is that about 90,000 becquerels is just twice the amount of natural radioactivity, mostly in the form of potassium, which you and I carry in our bodies. In other words, if we accept this hysterical conclusion, two swimmers in the Sea of Japan would make a radiation threat.​
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part of the update as the situation in Japan improves

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/23/fukushima-10-days-crisis-22-march/#more-4236

in case anyone has further questions about the design ( ignoring the cooling pond issue which IS a weakness.

First, there is a new estimate of the tsunami damage. According to the NEI:​
TEPCO believes the tsunami that inundated the Fukushima Daiichi site was 14 meters high, the network said. The design basis tsunami for the site was 5.7 meters, and the reactors and backup power sources were located 10 to 13 meters above sea level. The company reported that the maximum earthquake for which the Fukushima Daiichi plants were designed was magnitude 8. The quake that struck March 11 was magnitude 9.​
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I mean hell a thousand plus year event and they put the power sources over 10 meters up......

I doubt there is a structure in Japan built to survive anything about magnitude 8 let alone a 9.

I'd say the reactors did quite well and oddly the anti-nuke Monbiot switched sides to pro-nuclear as a result. Some small silver lining as he is influential.
 
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r-j said:
If one windmill can power a thousand homes, the math seems easy enough. We can use the existing power plants for peak load, industry and when the wind stops blowing.

Add some solar, (especially solar hot water heating), and summertime you may not need to burn anything for power. Insulation, trees, and reducing our comfort level, we could do with out that 20% of the power that comes from polluting sources.
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Does anyone know where this claim came from? It seems rather ludicrous to me.
 
Early turbines could do 500 homes. The monster big new ones are supposed to do 2000 homes. That is average, sometimes it's much more power, other times less.

Of course that is from wind power producers, like FPL, so they might be making it up.
 
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