3 ms·

8MW sounds nice, but a nuclear power plant will easily have 4 orders of magnitude more power output for the same visual impact, and that's around the clock, whe

8MW sounds nice, but a nuclear power plant will easily have 4 orders of magnitude more power output for the same visual impact, and that's around the clock, whether the wind blows or not. I wouldn't dismiss rod reactors outright, but developing new technology to improve safety and fuel efficiency should of course be a priority. Especially since weapons plutonium production isn't a priority as it was when conventional reactors were designed.

jacquesm 11y ago
Yes, nuclear power plants are bigger. But so what, many windmills equate a nuclear power plant in generating capacity (but as you correctly state not in baseline generating capacity, windmills have 0 of that). The visual impact of a windmill is a different category than the visual impact of a nuclear power plant, it is more distributed so affects more people, on the other hand, some people actually like the windmills. Just windmills or just nuclear power is short sighted, there is an optimum mixture of both renewables and other sources of power.
jerven 11y ago
The real problem is that the nuclear power plant will easily have 5 orders of magnitude construction costs associated with it. And historically a 10 times longer construction period. i.e. you have 7 years no power then a 1 GW is added to the grid with nuclear. While wind parks are much more gradual in rolling into production. This more modular approach to current wind power is also why wind parks tend to end at 300MW nameplant capacity. If you need more power its better to have more tenders for WEPs and benefit from improved technology and economics for the next phase. Nuclear could be modular and cheap but currently you can't buy modular and cheap nuclear solutions if you wanted too. So you end up with multi year areva construction solutions. Nuclear power with its current large plants is not easy on the grid either. In the UK wind was really helped because all the pumped storage build to make the 60&70's nuclear fleet cost effective.
wobbleblob 11y ago
Nuclear power is politically not feasible right now. People who don't want to see windmills are not going to be OK with cooling towers on the horizon either. An irrational fear of the word nuclear is one of the few things that unites left and right, the environmentally conscious and the fossil fuel lobby, the debate on this is pretty much over for the next few generations. Windmills alone cannot meet the total energy need of the Dutch economy, but the neat thing about windmills is that you could potentially plant them almost anywhere in the landscape, without them getting in the way, so it's a nice way to use land that's otherwise being wasted, like dikes, road sides, polders etc.

jacquesm 11y ago

Yes, nuclear power plants are bigger. But so what, many windmills equate a nuclear power plant in generating capacity (but as you correctly state not in baseline generating capacity, windmills have 0 of that). The visual impact of a windmill is a different category than the visual impact of a nuclear power plant, it is more distributed so affects more people, on the other hand, some people actually like the windmills. Just windmills or just nuclear power is short sighted, there is an optimum mixture of both renewables and other sources of power.

jerven 11y ago

The real problem is that the nuclear power plant will easily have 5 orders of magnitude construction costs associated with it. And historically a 10 times longer construction period. i.e. you have 7 years no power then a 1 GW is added to the grid with nuclear. While wind parks are much more gradual in rolling into production. This more modular approach to current wind power is also why wind parks tend to end at 300MW nameplant capacity. If you need more power its better to have more tenders for WEPs and benefit from improved technology and economics for the next phase. Nuclear could be modular and cheap but currently you can't buy modular and cheap nuclear solutions if you wanted too. So you end up with multi year areva construction solutions. Nuclear power with its current large plants is not easy on the grid either. In the UK wind was really helped because all the pumped storage build to make the 60&70's nuclear fleet cost effective.

wobbleblob 11y ago

Nuclear power is politically not feasible right now. People who don't want to see windmills are not going to be OK with cooling towers on the horizon either. An irrational fear of the word nuclear is one of the few things that unites left and right, the environmentally conscious and the fossil fuel lobby, the debate on this is pretty much over for the next few generations. Windmills alone cannot meet the total energy need of the Dutch economy, but the neat thing about windmills is that you could potentially plant them almost anywhere in the landscape, without them getting in the way, so it's a nice way to use land that's otherwise being wasted, like dikes, road sides, polders etc.