













Comments     Threshold


And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By tigz1218 on 9/23/2010 10:27:01 AM , Rating: 5
...produce about 5x the energy of this entire farm.

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By AssBall on 9/23/2010 11:08:08 AM , Rating: 2
Again, you disregard the energy waste in transfer and maintenance of an offshore wind farm. What you get at the outlet is not the same as what you produce 10 miles out into the ocean on a "OMG ITS NOT WINDY TODAY" day. Your figures are maximum lossless production.

The cost of a nuclear plant is artificially inflated by legislation.

The cost of a wind farm is artificially reduced by legislation.

Wind energy is a fine idea, but don't go skewing the costs and efficiencies with hand picked information.

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By AssBall on 9/23/10, Rating: 0
RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By GreenEuropean on 9/23/2010 12:24:40 PM , Rating: 1
The transmission lines into shore is quite cheap. So I dont see your point. We already got endless amount of powercables below the sea for country to country connections.

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By AssBall on 9/23/2010 12:37:29 PM , Rating: 4
The point is you live in a country that is SEVEN times smaller than my state, which is only the tenth largest in the US. When you have population density and tax rates like Denmark, you can afford to be as inefficient as you like.

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By AssBall on 9/23/2010 1:03:46 PM , Rating: 2
New Yorkers have the distinction of not having to pay 25% tax. This gives them the option to NOT have to pay for 1GBit and artificially inflated energy costs.

I think they even have a word for it... oh yeah... "Freedom".

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By DrApop on 9/23/10, Rating: 0
By AssBall on 9/23/2010 1:47:42 PM , Rating: 4
You get the same run around in Europe too, so call it 70%?

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By clovell on 9/24/2010 3:53:11 PM , Rating: 1
What? It's always windy 10 miles offshore. I realize you're making a point, but there's no need to get hyperbolic about it.

By clovell on 9/27/2010 12:31:16 PM , Rating: 2
Rated down by the nuclear cheerleaders for making a perfectly valid point - get lives, people.

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...







By Zingam on 9/24/2010 1:12:19 AM , Rating: 2
There would be no need for nuclear power if all people were dead!

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By Aloonatic on 9/23/2010 10:54:13 AM , Rating: 2
Yes, but think of the terrrrooooorrrrr!!!!!

Seriously though, it seems that people in the UK are pretty much like people in the US (going by this site), i.e. can't understand why more reactors aren't being built.

There are a few problems though. Firstly, just to get a reactor through planning would take years. Secondly, British energy was sold off to the French (EDF) and I believe that they said that they were going to build more reactors at the time, but no sooner had the ink dried on the contract, they said, nahhhh, forget it.

I have no idea why they [the powers that be] find it so hard to see that nuclear is the only real way to go, or at least the best option for the core of power generation. I'm not sure how much supply/demand/pricing is a factor to be honest. If you build a couple of nuclear power stations and increase the potential capacity for generation, then will that have an affect on how much they can charge?

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...




RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
Being energy indenpendent is the best option ;)



RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...


RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...



RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...





RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By sleepeeg3 on 9/23/2010 3:02:27 PM , Rating: 5
No, one modern nuclear reactor produces about *12x* as much as this entire farm. This wind farm only produces 100MW (average 30% efficiency of wind) and each of Georgia's Vogtle nuclear reactors produces over 1200MW (total 2430MW).

This farm also costs nearly 4x as much as nuclear! ($1,300 million for 100MW of wind vs $367 million for 100MW of nuclear). That's not even factoring in the cost of replacing these turbines 3x as often (20 year lifespan vs 60+).

This wind farm also requires 35 SQUARE KILOMETERS of space! Compare that to the Vogtle power plants, which only take up a few acres.

So what happened to supporting nuclear, JM?

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...



RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By FaaR on 9/23/10, Rating: -1
By Shatbot on 9/25/2010 4:15:33 AM , Rating: 1
Compare that to the 35 sq km x 24 farms = 840 square km of land

Of water you mean, I agree the whole issue of how much area a sea wind farm takes up doesn't really factor into the equation, unless you are talking about costs going between the turbines.

There's a whole lot of ocean. In England there isn't a lot of land.

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By iwanttobehef on 9/23/10, Rating: -1
By sleepeeg3 on 9/23/2010 10:21:21 PM , Rating: 2
Fine, you want to nitpick? I will give you 10 sq km for a nuclear plant, since I could not find any data on it. Compare that to the 35 sq km x 24 farms = 840 square km of land, 37-story wind turbines would have to occupy to output the same amount of power as the two reactors at the Vogtle plant. Does wind still make sense?

Nevermind those pesky cost issues...

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By cannonac on 9/24/2010 5:24:28 AM , Rating: 2
ROFL! 4 sq miles? Have you any idea how stupid that makes you sound?

Looking at Google maps, Sizewell B, Britain's most modern reactor, occupies a plot of land approximately 400x600m. Now, I'm a physicist, but even my maths can't make 400m x 600m into 10 sq km!

Now, where's that new keyboard...

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By iwanttobehef on 9/24/2010 1:40:20 PM , Rating: 1
Is there a reason every one must be so hostile? I only spoke to the plants I have physically been to. Lets look at one of the plants I have worked in. Lasalle county IL. Its cooling pond alone is 2058 acres more than 8 sq km. add in the plant itself and it looks like I was being conservative.
I understand this is wikipedia so here is a link to exelon corp saying it is on a 3055 acre site. or more than 12 sq km.

Now I did your homework why don't you study some more next time.

By Digimonkey on 9/24/2010 2:14:15 PM , Rating: 2
That cooling pond is also referred to as a Illinois state park and opened to the public for boating/fishing. So the land serves another purpose. Just like how you can have windmill farms and still farm the land around them. So actually this whole conversation is rather pointless.

By cannonac on 9/25/2010 8:32:26 AM , Rating: 2
Touchy aren't we?

All of the British plants (apart from Trawsfynydd) are located on the coast, so you could say that they occupy millions of acres, but I digress.

Anyway, I think I misunderstood you purely because we don't use cooling ponds. The only cooling ponds that we use are the fuel cooling ponds, and they are really quite small.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By mars2k on 9/24/10, Rating: 0



RE: And one modern nuclear reactor can...
By WikiChici on 9/25/10, Rating: 0
By cannonac on 9/25/2010 8:41:33 AM , Rating: 3
Interesting that this has been brought up.

Chernobyl was a reactor design that would never be licensed in the West. For one thing it has a phenomena called positive power coefficient, which means that if the temperature of the coolant increases, then the power of the reactor also increases. Western reactors are all designed to operate with a negative power coefficient, so they are basically self regulating, to a certain extent.

In Chernobyl, the safety systems were turned off as part of a test (to improve safety, if you believe it) but the operators and the utility didn't really understand how the reactor was going to behave, again, something that wouldn't happen in the west.

So, with the buildup of reactivity (basically, stored power in the reactor), the positive power coefficient and the lack of training, plus control rods that took far too long to motor into the core, we get a multiplication of the power being produced. If I remember rightly, the power produced was 10,000x the rated power of the reactor for an instant.

This heated up the steam so it reacted with the fuel cladding which started to burn, burning the graphite core bricks and causing a steam explosion. There was no containment, so everything was ejected out of the core.


By kingius on 10/13/2010 4:13:50 AM , Rating: 2
Wind power generates free energy. It's a no brainer, even an idiot can understand this.

