Wind power cheaper than nuclear, says EU climate chief

Source: guardian.co.uk

Generating energy from wind turbines at sea would be cheaper than building new atomic power plants, Europe's climate chief has said, in the latest challenge to the crisis-stricken nuclear industry.

Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate change commissioner, said: "Some people tend to believe that nuclear is very, very cheap, but offshore wind is cheaper than nuclear. People should believe that this is very, very cheap."

Offshore wind energy has long been seen as an expensive way of generating power, costing about two to three times more than erecting turbines on land, but the expense is likely to come down, while the costs of nuclear energy are opaque, according to analysis by the European commission.

The nuclear crisis in Japan has led the UK, France and other countries to tell their nationals to consider leaving Tokyo, in response to fears of spreading nuclear contamination. The crisis also prompted the EU's energy commissioner, Günther Oettinger, to say: "There is talk of an apocalypse, and I think the word is particularly well chosen."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/17/wind-cheaper-nuclear-eu-climate

---

6 Standard lies of the nuclear industry
1. nuclear power is cheap;
2. learning and new standardized designs solve all past problems;
3. the waste problem is a non-problem, especially if we’d follow the lead of many other nations and “recycle” our spent fuel;
4. climate change makes a renaissance inevitable;
5. there are no other large low-carbon “baseload” alternatives;
6. there’s no particular reason to worry that a rapidly expanding global industry will put nuclear power and weapons technologies in highly unstable nations, often nations with ties to terrorist organizations.


RENEWABLE ENERGY WORKS NOW

The nuclear industry would have you believe that we NEED nuclear power as a response to climate change. That is false. We have less expensive alternatives that can be built faster for FAR less money. This is a good overview of their claims:
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E08-01_NuclearIllusion

In a comparative analysis by another well respected researcher nuclear, coal with carbon capture and ethanol are not recommended as solutions to climate change. The researcher has looked at the qualities of the various options in great detail and the results disprove virtually all claims that the nuclear industry promote in order to gain public support for nuclear industry.

Nuclear supporters invariably claim that research like this is produced because the researchers are "biased against nuclear power". That is false. They have a preference,however that preference is not irrational; indeed it is a product of careful analysis of the needs of society and the costs of the various technologies for meeting those needs. In other words the researchers are "biased" against nuclear power because reality is biased against nuclear power. We hear this same kind of claim to being a victim of "liberal bias" from conservatives everyday and it is no different when the nuclear proponents employ it - it is designed to let them avoid cognitive dissonance associated with holding positions that are proven to be false.

The nuclear power supporters will tell you this study has been "debunked any number of times" but they will not be able to produce a detailed rebuttal that withstands even casual scrutiny for that claim too is false. The study is peer reviewed and well respected in the scientific community; it breaks no new ground and the references underpinning the work are not subject to any criticism that has material effect on the outcome of the comparison.

They will tell you that the sun doesn't always shine and that the wind doesn't always blow. Actually they do. The sun is always shining somewhere and the wind is always blowing somewhere. However researcher have shown that a complete grid based on renewable energy sources is UNQUESTIONABLY SOMETHING WE CAN DO. Here is what happens when you start linking various sites together:

Original paper here at National Academy of Sciences website: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/29/0909075107.abstract

When the local conditions warrant the other parts of a renewable grid kick in - geothermal power, biomass, biofuels, and wave/current/tidal sources are all resources that fill in the gaps - just like now when 5 large scale power plants go down unexpectedly. We do not need nuclear not least because spending money on nuclear is counterproductive to the goal of getting off of fossil fuels as we get less electricity for each dollar spend on infrastructure and it takes a lot longer to bring nuclear online.

In the study below Mark Jacobson of Stanford has used the quantity of energy that it would take to power an electric vehicle fleet as a benchmark by which to judge the technologies.

As originally published:
Abstract

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition. Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85. Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge. Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs. Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs. Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs. Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85. Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations. Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended. Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended. The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85. Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality. The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss. The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs. The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73 000–144 000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300 000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15 000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020. In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2009/EE/b809990c

Mods this is the one paragraph abstract shown above reformatted by me for ease of reading.




Then we have the economic analysis from Cooper:
The Economics of Nuclear Reactors: Renaissance or Relapse
This graph summarizes his findings where "Consumer" concerns direct financial costs and "Societal" refers to external costs not captured in financial analysis.

Cooper A Multi-dimensional View of Alternatives
Full report can be read here: http://www.olino.org/us/articles/2009/11/26/the-economics-of-nuclear-reactors-renaissance-or-relapse


Another independent economic analysis is the Severance study:
http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nuclear-costs-2009.pdf


The price of nuclear subsidies is also worth looking at. Nuclear proponents will tell you the subsidies per unit of electricity for nuclear are no worse than for renewables. That statement omits the fact than nuclear power has received the lions share of non fossil energy subsidies for more than 50 years with no apparent payoff; for all the money we've spent we see a steadily escalating cost curve for nuclear. When we compare that to renewables we find that a small fraction of the total amount spent on nuclear has resulted in rapidly declining costs that for wind are already competitive with coal and rapidly declining costs for solar that are competitive with natural gas and will soon be less expensive than coal.
http://www.1366tech.com/cost-curve/


In other words: subsidies work to help the renewable technologies stand on their own but with nuclear they do nothing but prop up an industry that cannot be economically viable.
Full report: http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf



What plans are out there? Here is one where achieving 100% renewable energy is described:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030


Here is a PDF link for another such plan by:
The Civil Society "Beyond Business as Usual"
http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org/media/pdfs/Beyond%20BAU%205-11-10.pdf

Their website has lots of information:
http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org/


Also see these other papers by Amory Lovins
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly


http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E77-01_EnergyStrategyRoadNotTaken

Anyway, how is $0.05/installed watt of wind less then $1.50/installed watt of nuclear? Huh?

...wonder why?

:shrug:

http://greenmonk.net/smart-grid-heavy-hitters-jon-wellinghoff-chair-of-us-federal-energy-regulatory-commission-part-1/

Jon Wellinghoff is the Chairman of the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) – the FERC is the agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. As such, the FERC was the agency which Google Energy applied to for its licence to buy and sell electricity on the wholesale market, for example.

Shortly after his appointment as Chair of the FERC in 2009 by Barack Obama, Chairman Wellinghoff made headlines when he said

No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States… renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands.

A chance came up recently to have him on this show, so I obviously jumped at it!

We had a great chat – so good, in fact that I turned it into two shows rather than edit any of it out.

See part one of interview here:
http://greenmonk.net/smart-grid-heavy-hitters-jon-wellinghoff-chair-of-us-federal-energy-regulatory-commission-part-1/

And part 2 here:
http://greenmonk.net/smart-grid-heavy-hitters-jon-wellinghoff-chair-of-us-federal-energy-regulatory-commission-part-2/

post the URL link to your Facebook page as you would anything else.

In this case, the Facebook blue link "SHARE" is at the top of the article mentioned.

Click that, and it will bring you into Facebook.

Hope that helps!

Could it be that they are nuclear industry trolls who only read and post in the E/E venue?

Nuclear reactors, oil wells and mountaintop removal for coal mining, are so much more attractive than all those wind turbines that make the views so ugly.

And the former are soooooooo much safer for wildlife and the environment. Oh yes..and they provide sooooooooo many more jobs.
:sarcasm:

Thanks!

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

In a worst-case scenario, we could be looking at an entire flock of seabirds being knocked right out of the sky! :sarcasm:

too!

}(

And expensive. And unnecessarily risky.

An unnecessarily expensive (and not just in monetary value) method of boiling water.

Personally, I wish we would redirect all nuclear subsidies into all forms of alternative energy production, not just the most popular ones.

www.helixwind.com

This one is about $11K and generates 2Kwatts peak. It is capable of spinning your meter backwards alowing you to sell power back to the grid. There is also a $20K modle that generates 4.5Kwatts peak. In CA this unit could pay for it self in under 5 years.

They could also serve as an additional source of income for commercial building owners, much as cell phone towers do.

One of the many problems I have with nukes is that, due to transmission losses, large, centralized power plants are inefficient regardless of the fuel source. They kept promising us superconducting transmission lines that would alleviate this, but they have not yet materialized. There are supposedly new nuke technologies like the pebble bed that (unlike the standard fission reactor) can be made small-scale, but again, they have not materialized.

Yes, they easily could serve as additional source of income for Commercial building owners.



www.helixwind.com

This is the 4.5Kwatt. it is $20K installed. This design does not suffer from shifting winds that you would find in a city, and it is very robust capable of handeling gusts exceeding 100mph.

What are rotor startup/shutdown speeds?
The low speed Helix Wind turbine will start generating power at a little over 3.5 m/s (8 mph). It is self-starting and requires no power or input to spin up. It does not need over speed control because of its design and will continue to output power as wind increases up to 35mph. The unit will continue to spin with no damage to the system in winds as high as 80 mph (this is a sustained speed, it can withstand gusts up to 125 mph), however no additional electricity will be generated above maximum output at 35 mph due to restrictions on the inverter. http://www.helixwind.com/en/faq.php#faq-60



What safety features are there?
The Helix Wind is constructed of high strength aluminum and stainless steel for a lifetime of use in extreme environments. The interlocking blade structure provides redundant load paths making a highly damage tolerant unit. The unit has an emergency brake for user initiated shutdown. Under normal expected conditions there is no need to stop the turbine, it will safely operate in 55 mph winds. http://www.helixwind.com/en/faq.php#faq-60

My friend told me about this design, finally I see it.

A professional energy analyst will only recommend them in a very narrow range of applications and then only after careful site evaluations.

Caveat Emptor

There could be a hospital or school where a small wind turbine is a good choice, but it seldom happens.

There are two variables that argue against it. Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind#Wind_energy_physics

First is the altitude; the higher you go the better the wind. A lot of the improvements in cost have been a result of putting the center of the turbine above 300 ft. If you just look at the wind readings it may not look like the difference is a big deal, but it is because of the fact that the energy stored in a given volume of wind means is that there is a cube function in the power formula. That, in turn, makes the effect of increasing wind speed (taller towers) and increasing swept area (longer blades) far larger than our intuition would lead us to believe.

When you have a small turbine 50-60 feet off the ground the production numbers are going to be very low relative to the cost unless you are in an exceptional wind site.

That doesn't mean they are never warranted, however, since there are application specific instances where they are a perfect fit.
if you want to encourage the wind industry, the best way is to contact you provider and tell them you want some percentage of your energy to come from wind.

That's what I'd be worrying about -- !!!

Did Wiki warn us of Enron?

Or Fukushima?

This is a beginning in wind power --

The most important part of this, imo, is to end the monopoly of one large company

dragging electricity over huge grids/lines across the country!!

And, once again, thank you to all of you keeping us informed --

Americans have been told for so long to keep their eye on the birdie of "OIL" that

they just don't realize what else is going on!!

Me, too!!

:)

Wind farms rarely operate near capacity and Nuclear plants always operate at capacity.

Would you mind providing some support for your vitriol?

PS - Where is that 20GW nuke plant located? Wiki says:

"At present, the largest power generating facility ever built is the Three Gorges Dam in China. The facility generates power by utilizing 26 turbines, with 8 more units under construction. Each of the current operational units has a capacity of 700 MW, totalling the installed capacity to 18,200 MW, more than twice the installed capacity of the largest nuclear power."

Did you see the part of the OP that lists "The standard lies of the nuclear industry?

Then nuclear plants are a drain on the entire society, health, money and environment. That has to be factored into the cost.

Even if Japan has a best case scenario from here on out, the current meltdown will cost tens of billions. Worst case, the cost could be in the hundreds of billions.

and no more burning fossil fuels --

Global warming should be factored into the price of coal and fossil fuels, just as nuclear meltdowns should be factored into the price of nuclear energy. Oil should have the cost of military adventures factored in. A true cost accounting would probably show that renewables are very competitive with the alternatives. It would be rational to transition to them once true costs are taken into account.

6 Standard lies of the nuclear industry
1. nuclear power is cheap;
2. learning and new standardized designs solve all past problems;
3. the waste problem is a non-problem, especially if we’d follow the lead of many other nations and “recycle” our spent fuel;
4. climate change makes a renaissance inevitable;
5. there are no other large low-carbon “baseload” alternatives;
6. there’s no particular reason to worry that a rapidly expanding global industry will put nuclear power and weapons technologies in highly unstable nations, often nations with ties to terrorist organizations.

The meltdowns are severely hampering rescue and recovery efforts. It is hard to imagine how many have died from such a diversion of resources under these conditions.

I'll bet that there will be an explosion of interest in distributed generation going forward.

This is a good read on that from National Renewable Energy Lab if anyone is interested.

Background Discussion
Traditional nonutility-generated power sources, such as emergency and standby power systems,
have minimal interaction with the electric power system (EPS). As distributed generation (DG)
hardware becomes more reliable and economically feasible, there is an increasing trend to
interconnect those DG units with existing utilities to meet various energy needs and offer more
service possibilities to customers and the host EPS. Among these possibilities are:
• Standby/backup power to improve the availability and reliability of electric power
• Peak load shaving
• Combined heat and power
• Sales of power back to utilities or other users
• Renewable energy
• Power quality, such as reactive power compensation and voltage support
• Dynamic stability support.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy03osti/34715.pdf.

wind farms produce more electricity than the current grid can handle, so many of them are shut in. But last year, according to ERCOT, wind provided 12% of all the power in Texas for several months, with 25% of the total provided by wind on December 10, 2010.

And wind is projected to quadruple in Texas during the next 10 years.

Why would you want a nice fat target of a central power plant when you can have distributed power less susceptible to the foibles of nature or man?

Recent study the Union of Concerned Scientists shows that it would have been cheaper to have bought power on the open market and given it away than to have gone the way we have with nuclear plants.

I'm also quite sure that at least 60 or 100 years of invention/GREEN energy has

been suppressed.

Frankly, didn't have a chance to actually read the OP in full -- so many things

are happening at one time.

Keep at it!! :)

But some are knee-jerk pro-nuke, they won't believe a thing about alternatives to it. Anyone promoting non-nuke power sources get a lot of abuse. And I do mean abuse.

to do with the polluting of the planet -- the destruction of nature!!

And, Americans seem to just not question it at all!!

Sometimes I think they are watching their TVs quite sure that if there was

really something wrong that the TV host would let them know!

The fascist control of our "news" is so complete that most don't even

realize how serious Global Warming is!!


:)

...problem I'm trying to work on with my research.

It is a tough nut to crack.

If you scaled up the Rosco plant to the size of Bruce the cost would be much more. The cost of Rosco was well over $1B. The nominal capacity is 7.8 Megawatts but it rarely reaches that. My neighbors are simply not willing to pay for it.

Perhaps you would help me out?

You are aggressively promoting the myths, (falsehoods or lies as I also like to say) that the nuclear industry has used a lot of money to insert into the public mind.

Why? The OP gives a full list of extremely valid evidence showing that those propaganda points are false. Why do you choose to reject what is known to be true and when the evidence is right there?

And especially why would you do it now in the shadow of the threat much of my family is now huddling indoors trying to escape?

Why would you do that?

Is empathy that difficult for you to tap into?

"Offshore wind energy has long been seen as an expensive way of generating power, costing about two to three times more than erecting turbines on land, but the expense is likely to come down..."

The Rosco land wind plant cost was much more than Bruce per KW and how often does it run near nominal capacity? It makes sense to spend three times as much for an off shore plant because the wind is more consistent.

He said the People should BELIEVE that off shore wind is cheaper but he provides nothing to support the assertion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/17/wind-cheaper-nuclear-eu-climate

and it tastes like chicken.

The lie is, "Nuclear is the only viable solution to anthroprogenic climate change because renewable energy will take too long".

This implies that nuclear power plants can be built overnight and are a "quick fix!", when in fact they take on average 10 years to build.

I've asked this serious question before and am still waiting for an answer... Currently, how long do large scale solar/tidal/wind farms or geothermal/hydroelectric plants take to build?

That information appears to have gone down the memory hole.

It was always one of the arguments against nuke plants that a less democratic, rigid social order would be required to attempt to do a proper job of securing dangerous waste for thousands of years. Stuff has happened and those who are making a buck just keep saying give us another chance.

Those who are apologists or hysterical about doing without a second's worth of comfort or entertainment, swallow all those lies whole and attack anyone who says what is natural sense. Not convetntional sense, natural or common sense.

There are better ways to manage all of this, and part of that of course calls for more individual decentralized power generation. There are so many alternative ways to heat, cook, etc. that are out there, not high tech, passive, cheap so many of us know about. That's a threat to the corporate social order.

I believe the intense vitriol directed at anti-nuclear folks is due to fear that we can't make it without it and the mass media is pushing this because of their owners (GE, etc.)

Great discussion, I hope this doesn't get shut down for any reason.

I say let's think outside the corporate box which is caged thinking with limited solutions, always enriching them, and get to the new ways of doing things and living and cherishing our home! This is a great planet!

Yes, that is one of the claims they make that is a lie. What I've seen is that the list in the OP is the framework that all the other lies are trying to convince people to believe. In this case the time issue would fall under lies 1 and 2. What is funny is that the reverse is actually true, nuclear takes a big hit because of the "opportunity costs" associated with it taking about 12 years to build. The time to build is a huge factor in the high costs of nuclear power and there will be considerable fewer CO2 emissions if the funding goes to build renewable projects, which generally average about 1-3 years.

6 Standard lies of the nuclear industry
1. nuclear power is cheap;
2. learning and new standardized designs solve all past problems;
3. the waste problem is a non-problem, especially if we’d follow the lead of many other nations and “recycle” our spent fuel;
4. climate change makes a renaissance inevitable; 5. there are no other large low-carbon “baseload” alternatives;
6. there’s no particular reason to worry that a rapidly expanding global industry will put nuclear power and weapons technologies in highly unstable nations, often nations with ties to terrorist organizations.

pity the republicans have never heard of science!

Thanks.

What a galorguy.

:hi:

power plant such as the one supplying the Ormet aluminum manufacturing facility which uses enough coal-fired electricity to power a city?

I ask because, unless there's an aluminum manufacturer, at the present time, whose source of electricity is wind power, it's doubtful that wind power is cheaper than nuclear.


--snip--

On the homefront, Tanchuk is concerned about federal initiatives to restrict or eliminate the use of coal.

The cost of electricity in Ohio and West Virginia has remained relatively low for decades, thanks to companies such as American Electric Power having easy access to fuel for coal-fired power plants. In the local region, Tanchuk said, about 95 percent of all electricity is generated by burning coal.

Since Ormet's electrolytic process for reducing alumina to its basic elements uses enormous amounts of electricity - "as much as a city," according to Tanchuk - an affordable supply of electricity is crucial to the company's future.

--snip--

http://theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/551349/Wanted--More-Metal--Ormet-Focused-on-Growing-World-Demand.html?nav=515


Also: How much "cheap" aluminum is used in wind turbines---at the present time---to make "wind power cheaper than nuclear", "cheap" aluminum such as the aluminum that's dependent on cheap electricity, cheap electricity such as what's provided by the Mitchell-Kammer complex?

For more about the Mitchell plant---including a table of the death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution---see: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mitchell_Plant

power plant such as the one supplying the Ormet aluminum manufacturing facility which uses enough coal-fired electricity to power a city
================================================

You are correct. Electrolysis of aluminum is one of the big industrial demands
for electric power. Steel making is also a big industrial demand as many
steel smelting furnaces are big electric furnaces.

Take a look at the map of where the USA's nuclear power plants are. Even though
you find them all over the USA, there is a concentration in the industrial heartland
of the USA. Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee... the heart of the USA's
industrial base.

That pattern isn't unique to the USA. Other nations too use nuclear to do
the "heavy lifting".

PamW

Here's a wind turbine that I enjoy watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqEccgR0q-o

PamW