thanks for that reference to Lester Hendershot – never heard of him. Had a quick look at his circuit diagram and might throw it to an electrical engineer I know.

Some of the comments here remind me of Queen Victoria’s era before oil was discovered – wind power – the Dutch were using it for a long time and seem not to have felt any need to adapt it to the 21st Century.

It is worth thinking about the fact that the largest oil companies are government owned – controlling 96% of the world’s oil.

BUT

the enviros sued to stop the transmission lines from being built that would have sent the power to the large urban centers.

They are also suing to stop drilling NEXT TO park land cause it will DESTROY THE VIEW!!!!!

DUUUUHHHH!!!!!!

No, it isn’t really about clean energy and reducing CO2. It is about returning us to the stone age without the use of stones!!!!

When Nuclear power is given due consideration as a means to cut co2, then we can start to worry that AGW is real….until then only a fool would not be at least a little sceptical.

Compare that to nuclear, which would require only one square mile.”

Wind power is the least land intensive form of energy – you can farm around and up to the base of the turbines, and it doesn’t require much in the way of mines to dig stuff out of the ground – i’d wager the average australian uranium mine is a lot bigger than one square mile, esp when you include the land around the mine that is off limits.

And nuclear has been getting hefty subsidies for a hell of a lot longer than renewables. If half the funding that had been devoted to nuclear research was spent on solar and wind, they’d be even cheaper.

Nuclear is about the same price as wind energy but after a longer development time frame – so if you want to talk disparagingly about wind power because it requires subsidies,you need to apply the same logic to nuclear power.

On grid issues: the advantage of wind power is that it is modular – when you go out and build a 2GW nuclear power station, it will be spending most of its early life idling – you dont think consumer load is constant do you? It goes up and down from day to night, and season to season – this is the disadvantage of baseload power stations that you never hear about, and it is one factor that adds to the cost of nuclear – you need to build it big, but it sits there idle a lot of the time as a result, as do many australian coal power stations.

The fact that an electricity grid has large amounts of reserve capacity and idling power stations means that you can increase the penetration of an intermittent power source like wind or solar on the grid up to a certain point without it having a big impact on the rest of the grid, and without it needing additional spinning reserve. I’ve seen various figures for what than number is, ranging from 10 to 20%. Nobody is arguing that wind can easily do 100% of our power needs, but even 10% is a great starting reduction in emissions.

The stuff you wrote about stepping up voltage etc was nonsense – all power stations incur transmission connection costs, and – at least in australia – have to pay for any new transmission infrastructure required to connect them to the grid. This is factored into the price, and as i’ve already pointed out, wind is competitive with nuclear power. Wind power doesn’t need 745kV. In australia, we have 66kV, 132kV, 330kV, 500kV, and a couple of others, but 500kV is the biggest. Wind farms are typically connected at 66 or 132kV for smaller farms, and 330kV for bigger ones.

Noise – the noise drops down once you are a few hundred metres away. For this reason, wind turbines are not suitable for urban or built up environments obviously. Funnily enough, you tend to see them in farming paddocks, where the noise is unlikely to bother many people at all, especially if placement of turbines is well regulated,as it is in Australia. If you’ve never heard a wind turbine, the sound isn’t mechanical – its like a swishing sound, that tends to get masked once the wind picks up, which is the only time that the turbines are operating?????
There is also apparently a lower frequency whoomp as the blades go past the tower, which i didn’t hear the few times i’ve visited a wind farm – maybe it depends on wind direction, and where you are standing etc.

I’m not against nuclear, unlike some environmentalists, and would be happy to see it – at least in principle – permitted in Australia.

However, i say again. Its one thing to technically allow it, and it is another thing for nuclear to compete.

1. its too expensive to compete with cheap australian coal so, like wind, will require subsidies
2. it will (regardless of whether or not it should) freak people out who live nearby, a problem that wind power also grapples with, though i’d hazard a guess to a much lesser extent. So nuclear developers will have to run the gauntlet of public opinion, and the development approval process to try and find a suitable site, which – as it does for wind power – will add to the cost.
3. nuclear developers will need to pay for any transmission infrastructure they need (which might be considerable if point #2 requires them to site the plant far away)

I guarantee you, and i said it before: nuclear wont happen in australia without massive subsidies and a favourable (not simply neutral) government. The government will need to placate people, and smooth over the development approval process, and just force it on people in some location. If the government allows it just that and doesn’t nanny-state it through, i can’t see how nuclear would succeed.

Further info re. strange alternative energy generators, look up “Lester Hendershot”