Sun 8 Jul 2007
Jay Pasachoff had letters to the editor published in two different sections of the NYTimes today (is that a first?): one on stamp collecting (sort of), the other on global warming.
I am guessing DK will second Pasachoff’s skepticism about the efficacy of wind power as a solution to global warming …
July 8th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Wind is hardly just a ‘minor improvement,’ and Jay’s quip re: wind power is deceptive by a factor of at least 10. Wind power currently and cost-effectively produces over a third of Denmark’s power, close to a tenth of Germany’s, and, despite questions of feasibility and politics, can only be expected to rise.
The average output of current commercially operated wind turbines is 1 MW and often quite higher. Average power plant output is in the 100 MW range, though recent nuclear fission-based plants constructed in Russia and China can peak well above 500 MW. A new spurt of fission plants in the US, which might be the basis for Pasachoff’s comparison, would likely operationally average far less than 1 GW– and bring with them a series of environmental, political, security and regulatory questions (or ‘nightmares’).
ITER-based fusion reactors may peak somewhere in the low hundreds of GW, but even presuming that the design effort remains economically, politically and militarily feasible, we are 25 to 40 years from an operational ITER-based plant.
Less efficient fusion processes are somewhat likely to evolve in the interim, and likely to face stiff competition for tritium from weapons programs; unless the US or China can meet their aggressive schedules for lunar colonization and mining, or someone develops a cost-effective RT to the LaGrange points in the 2020s.
And wind will likely get better in the same period, with new technologies, larger installations, economies of scale and changes in approach, such as floating or tethered mid-atmosphere turbines– and, of course, a whole heck of a lot less fixed capital investment necessary to get in the game.
In short, wind has its place and will almost certainly be part of a complex balancing act; more nuclear ‘as soon as possible’ and ‘with no distractions’ seems to ignore the multiple complexities of the situation, from scientific and economic realities, to political questions and the US’s historical record of managing nuclear power.
As for Jay’s comment on Venus-like temperatures on earth… might we, perhaps, put down the drugs being passed around at Al’s latest ‘consciousness-raising’ world tour, and return to the realm of reason?
July 10th, 2007 at 9:56 am
There’s a tremendous amount to which current regulatory pressures on nuclear plants is unnecessarily high these days. Current reactor setups are designed to be mostly meltdown-proof and are working towards minimizing their environmental impacts. Nuclear fission is perhaps the best and fastest way toward an environmentally friendly transitional energy.
The scientific realities are ready for nuclear fission, and the economic ones are primarily restricted by the current regulatory processes. The questions of energy politics are always extremely complex, but it seems time to reconsider our position on nuclear energy.
Nuclear power has moved on, are we ready to?