Lets Run the Numbers Nuclear Energy vs.Wind and Solar. Nuclear Energy vs. Visio Fibre Patch Panel Stencils Free . Wind and SolarNOTE This is a work in progress.It will be a chapter in the forthcoming bookPower to the Planet by Mike Conley.Four bottom lines up front It would cost over 2.Trillion to generate Americas baseload electric power with a 5.Indiana. Or It would cost over 1.Trillion with Concentrated Solar Power CSP farms in the southwest deserts, on parcels of land totaling the area of West Virginia.Or We could do it for less than 3 Trillion with AP 1.Light Water Reactors, on parcels totaling a few square miles.Or We could do it for 1 Trillion with liquid fueled Molten Salt Reactors, on the same amount of land, but with no water cooling, no risk of meltdowns, and the ability to use our stockpiles of nuclear waste as a secondary fuel.Whatever we decide, we need to make up our minds, and fast.Carbon fuels are killing us, and killing the planet as well.And good planets are hard to come by.LA LA LAND Screenplay.Download as PDF File.Text File. txt or read online.If you think you can run the country on wind and solar, more power to you.Its an attractive idea, but before you become married to it, you should cuddle up with a calculator and figure out exactly what the long term relationship entails.This exercise has real world application.The 6. 20 MW megawatt Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor was recently shut down.The Wind From Nowhere Pdf Download' title='The Wind From Nowhere Pdf Download' />So were the two SONGS reactors in San Onofre, which generated a combined total of 2.GWs gigawatts. But the public didnt suddenly go on an energy diet in the wake of Fukushima, they were just more freaked out than usual about nuclear power.Regardless, the energy generated by these reactors will have to be replaced, either by building more power plants or by importing the electricity from existing facilities.To make the numbers easier to think with, well postulate a 5.MW reactor that has an industry standard 9.MW, sufficient to provide electricity for 5.The key question is this What will it take to replace a reactor that delivers 5.MW of baseload constant power with wind or solar Once weve penciled out our equivalent wind and solar farms, well be able to scale them to see what it would take to power any town, city, state or regionor the entire countryon renewables.The ground rules.The. Solution. Project.Org has a detailed proposal to power the entire country with renewables by 2.Its an impressive piece of work, presenting a custom blend of renewables tailored for each state, everything from onshore and offshore wind, to wave power, rooftop solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, the list goes on.The Wind From Nowhere Pdf Download' title='The Wind From Nowhere Pdf Download' />Costs are offset by the increased economic activity from building and operating the plants.Other major offsets derive from health care savings, increased productivity, lower mortality rates, reduced air pollution and global warming.But since these offsets also apply to an all nuclear grid, they cancel themselves out.Instead of exploring each technology the Solutions Project offers, well simplify things and give them their best advantage by concentrating on their two major technologiesonshore wind and CSP solar well explain CSP shortly.Both systems are at the low end of the long term cost projections for renewables.In our comparative analysis, well be focusing on seven parameters Steel.Concrete. CO2 from material production and transportLand area.Deathprint casualties from power productionCarbon karma achieving CO2 break evenConstruction cost.Most of these are obvious, but deathprint and carbon karma deserve a bit of explaining.Well get into the first one now, and save the other one for later.Deathprint. No form of energy production is, or ever has been, completely safe.Down through the centuries, countless people have been injured and killed by beasts of burden.More were lost harvesting the wood, peat and whale oil used for cooking, heating, and lamplight.Millions have died from mining coal, and millions more from burning it.America loses 1. 3,0.China loses about 5.Although hydroelectric power is super green and carbon free, we too easily forget that in the last century alone, many thousands have died from dam construction and dam failures.Even solar energy has its casualties.In fact, more Americans have died from installing rooftop solar than have ever died from the construction or use of American nuclear power plants.Some people did die in the early days of uranium mining, but the actual cause was inhaling the dust.Proper masks lowered the casualty rates to nearly zero.Although reactors produce nearly 2.Americas power, and have been in use for over fifty years, there have been just five deaths from construction and inspection accidents.Only three people have ever died from the actual production of American atomic energy, when an experimental reactor suffered a partial meltdown in 1.And for all the panic, paranoia, and protests about Three Mile Island, not one person was lost.The worst dose of radiation received by the people closest to the TMI plant was equal to one half of one chest X ray.As we contrast and compare the facts and figures for a wind farm, a solar farm, and a reactor, well cite each technologys deathprint as wellthe casualties per terawatt hour TWh attributed to that energy source.NERD NOTE A terawatt is a trillion watts.The entire planets electrical consumption is right around 5 terawatt hours.One TWh terawatt hour is a constant flow of a trillion watts of electricity for a period of one hour.Any way the wind blows, doesnt really matter to me.Freddy Mercury. Well, it should.Wind power is all about direction and location.The problem is, climate change may also be changing long term wind patterns.The polar vortex in the winter of 2.Large scale wind farms could prove to be a very expensive mistake, but well look at them anyway.At first frostbitten blush, a freight train of Arctic air roaring through the Lower 4.But heres how it works Since the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the world, its air mass is becoming less distinct than Canadas air mass.This erodes the thermal wall of the Jets Streams arctic corridor, and its starting to wander like a drunk, who can usually navigate if he keeps his hand on the wall.But now the wall is starting to disappear, and when it finally goes its anyones guess where hell end up next.In North America, the median capacity factor for wind is 3.Some places in America are a lot more windacious than others.But on average, the wind industry claims that a new turbine on U.S. soil will produce around 3.One difficulty in exploring renewables is that capacity factor numbers are all over the map.The Energy Information Agency disagrees with the Department of Energy, and the renewables industry disagrees with them both.Manufacturers stay out of the fray, only stating what their devices peak capacity is, meaning the most power it can produce under ideal conditions.Your mileage may vary.Because wind, like solar, is an intermittent source ebbs and flows, comes and goes the efficiency of a turbine has to be averaged over the course of a year, depending on where its used.But well accept the wind industrys claim of 3.And we wont stop there.Because if we actually do build a national renewables infrastructure, it stands to reason that well concentrate our wind farms where theyll do the most good, and build branch transmission lines to connect them to the grid.Since the industry claims a maximum U.S. capacity factor of 5.To gather 5. 00 MWavg megawatts average of wind energy in a region with a 4.MWp megawatts peak 5.Lets go with General Electrics enormous model 2.Shepherds Flat wind farm in Oregon, a top of the line machine with a peak capacity of 2.MW. That pencils out to 4.Each assembly is made with 3.China, where its mined with an appalling disregard for the environment and worker safety.And, the 3. 00 ft.NERD NOTE A tonne is a metric ton, which is 1,0.And no, its not pronounced tonnie or tonay.A tonne is a ton.The installed cost of a GE 2.Million, which includes connecting it to the local grid.That breaks down to 1.Million per MWp. In this exercise, were not factoring in the cost of the land, or the cost of a branch transmission line if our renewables farm isnt next to the grid.But figure about 1 Million a mile for parts and labor to install a branch line, plus the land.Renewables, like most things, have their own CO2 footprint.Steel production emits 1.
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