James Lovelock's case against Wind Power:

In this short little essay Lovelock argues that western governments and the Green movement occupy opposite and unstainable extremes, both ignoring solutions available now for several decades:
http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/lovelock-wind-power.html

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I maintain that tidal power is better than wind power, more efficient, more mWh per £ spent and less visual pollution.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

i cannot understand this silly mixed up old fool, Lovelock. One minute talking about Earth as an organism, and next about how nuclear waste is alright

would LOVE to arrange a debate between him and Fritjof Capra, who i recall is VERY gainst nuclear industry, and very ecologically minded www.ecoliteracy.org

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

He's just being a good scientist duendy. Like most people, he thought that a crisis might be averted of we could reduce our dependancy on coal and oil power, by supplanting it with a percentage of wind power. But, having seen the numbers, he knows that wind power cannot supply demand. He has abandoned that idea, because it is not enough. Only dogmatics would keep banging on about a flawed solution.

France gets 80% of it's electricity from nuclear power. It is clean, safe, and will provide funds into fusion reactors, which may lead to even cleaner energy. It can be done, emissions can be reduced, and nuclear power provided safely. Butwe went over this in the thread about nuclear power with Avatar, and you just denied the figures. I guess nothing will convince you, as you are a dogmatic.

Nuclear is the only feasible short term solution. Sure, in 100 years, we may be able to utilise a mixture of wind, wave, solar and geothermal energy sources, but we have to get there first.

 

What does France do with the waste from their plants, and why does the US not want to follow their model?

:m: Peace.

 

There is huge public resistance in France to burying the waste, so it is simply stored in secure locations. Part of the assumption is that physicists will some day find a way of recycling the waste. Nuclear is much safer and less wasteful than it was decades ago and the technology is improving continuously:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html

 

'SOME day' huh..????! and meanwhile. what then?handing over tons and frigging TONS of deadly nuclear waste to our children and Nature for ...HOW long to come. tis attitude is bleedin typial coming from a mechanistic mindset which --especally in last 500 years--seems eager to create a living hell on this planet. still theones making the dosh will assume that when they is dead they are out of it. sos why should THEY worry hey?!

 

Dr. Lovelock presents no evidence to back up his claims, so I see no reason to believe him. Same thing with LaRouche.

 

Wind power is the best option for where i live becaue there is lots of wind. All that stuff about it being an "eyesore" is bollocks, what would you prefer to see, a big nuclear power plant where no animals can graze and where there is a risk of nuclear spill, or a wind farm where the animals can graze around it and it gives off clean, safe energy?

 

But how do you manage supply vs demand? It doesn't get extra windy, just because people switch their TV on. When it is windy, and it's off peak, where do you store the electricity? Batteries have a huge environmental impact, so they have to be ruled out. So what is left? Hydro-electric storage maybe? Pumping water uphill, to release and turn the gravitational potential back into electricity? So a windfarm also needs a damn, which means large scale building, and the diversion of a water course. None of which is without it's impact.

Why can't livestock graze near a nuclear power plant? I have seen cattle happily grazing near one in France. And, while Windfarms are more pleasing to the eye, the noise they make isn't very appealing to livestock, in fact, they are driven away from the turbines, so much so, an environmental impact statement must be sought during the planning phase of a windfarm, to assess how much noise it will create.

You seem to forget that the energy needs transporting, which means power lines, which aren't exactly pretty, and that livestock don't like the noise of windfarms. Nuclear spills are few and far between (20 years since Chernobyl, for example) and coal powered plants emit more radiation due to the Isotope C14 being present in coal, as well as releasing sulphur. Nobody moans about coal polluting the environment with radiation however!

Don't get me wrong, I feel that windpower has a place in future energy supply, but it isn't the sole answer, largely due to unpredictability, and storage issues.

 

Well I'm afraid your beloved earth goddess (Gaia) IS a gigantic nuclear furnace! Proportionally the earths crust is like the skin of an apple, and if you dig down just a few miles it starts becoming exceedingly hot - heat created primarily by the radioactive decay of minerals like potassium uranium and thorium.

High level radioactive waste is in storage for about 40 years, after which it retains only a thousandth of its intial emissions. It is then buried about 500-600 meters underground, which in the US will be deep inside Yucca Mountain as of 2010. Yucca Mountain is about 100 miles from Las Vegas, in the middle of a barren wasteland. Even if the stainless steel storage canisters were to suddenly grow legs and remove themselves from these subterranean crypts, I doubt they would do much harm to anyone - sitting out there in the middle of the desert.

 

Dams are not necessarily the only means of potential energy storage - you can use large reservoirs located on plateaus, hills, and mountains.

 

Without a damn, you cannot divert water through an HEP station. We aren't pumping water uphill for fun.

 

you 'doubt' do you....? i see your willingto to GAMBLE with this toxic legacy for countless generations to come.
I am not so optimistic, cnsidering the history of this typical mindset/worldview

 

Talking abour Toxic Legacies, duendy, have you seen the environmental impact of coal mining? Slag heaps, subsidence, co2 and sulphur emissions, not to mention the radiation released by the C14 Isotopes.

You seem to be under the false impression that nuclear power is dirtier than coal. It's a balance, duendy, and CO2 is the hot topic right now. What is your non-nuclear solution? Wind? Solar? Geothermal? What are the numbers, and more importantly, the timescales by which they could be implemented?

 

Lovelock is quite right, and says basically the same thing as James Howard Kunstler- that nuclear power is the only alternative energy source with the potential to replace our current sources in the near future. Even that might not be possible when oil becomes too expensive, since building them requires conventional construction equipment and infrastructure.

 

Lovelock is right. The total effects of coal mining and burning are much worse then nuclear, but doesn't scare people because the term "radioactivity" isn't envolved.

 

For interest, heres a pic of where most of America's high-level waste will be stored after 2010 when construction is complete. Its about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas and about 75 east of Death Valley I reckon - 1000 feet under Yucca Mountain.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

What do you mean by this?

 

We either;

1, Use an existing natural lake,

OR

2, Build a new reservoir, which usually means damning off one end of a valley and flooding it.


So, option 1, to use a natural lake has less impact, BUT we have to add a damn to control the flow of water out of the system, and to be able to generate electricity, and waterlevels may change which affects the local wildlife.

Option 2, requires a damn building, so the area can be flooded, and to control the water flow out of the system. There will be a larger envirinmental impact as the habitat is denied to it's previous occupants.