Protests over wind power farms

[rcpratt]

I assume they had an agreement to sell the power back to the grid or something, I can't imagine a single school using 1-1.5 MW.

And waggy, I just meant that the legal costs were what made it dumb. If there were no crazies in the world I think it's a fine choice.

 

[waggy]

I assume they had an agreement to sell the power back to the grid or something, I can't imagine a single school using 1-1.5 MW.

And waggy, I just meant that the legal costs were what made it dumb. If there were no crazies in the world I think it's a fine choice.

oh yeah. the amount they have spent on legel fee's is outstanding. not to mention they have lost free land because of it.

How big did you say this school was?

A windmill is easily in the 1MW range. I guess a school might use 3 phase power, so that would be 1,000,000 watt / 120v phase / 3 = 2777 amp service? That's huge! You could probably run an apartment building with that much power.

its a small school. 100 kids from K-8th. My son's Kindergarden class (starts in the fall) has 2 students right now! my daughters class has 12 kids.

 

[Texashiker]

Well then I guess we'll need to move the storage containers out of Yucca and put them somewhere else when that happens. Problem solved

No, how about develop an energy source that does not pose a risk to future generations? Whether today, tomorrow, or 5,000 year from now.

 

[rcpratt]

No, how about develop an energy source that does not pose a risk to future generations? Whether today, tomorrow, or 5,000 year from now.

In case you haven't been paying attention for the past 100 years, there are no free lunches when it comes to energy.

 

[Texashiker]

In case you haven't been paying attention for the past 100 years, there are no free lunches when it comes to energy.

Your right, there are no free lunches.

Did you see my above post with a link to the "Green Sahara" article? It was a very interesting read, at least for me anyway. If you get some time, check it out.

Even though we do not have a way to generate power without "some" kind of environmental impact, it would be nice if we moved towards a less harmful type of power generation.


Nuclear waste - stored in cask, who knows whats going to happen over the next 5,000 - 10,000 years.

Coal - contaminate our waterways and fish with mercury. Then there are the green house gases.

Wind - kills birds, but oh well, its natural selection in my eyes.

Solar - whats going to happen to all of those solar cells? Will they be recycled?

Wave - dont know if this is even in application phase yet.

Geothermal - maybe one of the best solutions I have seen. Let the earth supply us with an unlimited supply of steam.

Natural gas from land fills - using our own waste to make natural gas.

 

[ShawnD1]

In case you haven't been paying attention for the past 100 years, there are no free lunches when it comes to energy.

I guess we could go back to burning trees and garbage to generate steam. Wait no we can't do that either because some hippy will say that burning trees is wrong or that burning garbage means you hate the earth.


http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Feb/56309.htm
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/the-ultimate-garbage-disposal

What could be better than a power station that eats up dirty landfill and churns out clean electricity? One facility in Utashinai, Japan, has been doing just that since 2003, using plasma—an electrically induced stream of hot, charged particles—to process up to 220 tons of municipal solid waste a day

Wild. Up until now I was totally unaware that garbage was flammable :awe:

 

[Throckmorton]

I guess we could go back to burning trees and garbage to generate steam. Wait no we can't do that either because some hippy will say that burning trees is wrong or that burning garbage means you hate the earth.

Burning trees to generate power is extremely stupid and wasteful. You know how ethanol is extremely inefficient? Now think about how long it takes to grow a fucking tree.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Feb/56309.htm
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/the-ultimate-garbage-disposal


Wild. Up until now I was totally unaware that garbage was flammable :awe:

In SimCity 4 the waste to power plant creates a lot of pollution.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

I guess we could go back to burning trees and garbage to generate steam. Wait no we can't do that either because some hippy will say that burning trees is wrong or that burning garbage means you hate the earth.


http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Feb/56309.htm
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/the-ultimate-garbage-disposal


Wild. Up until now I was totally unaware that garbage was flammable :awe:

Here's one company that has 8 waste to energy plants.

http://www.wheelabratortechnologies.com/

 

[ShawnD1]

Burning trees to generate power is extremely stupid and wasteful. You know how ethanol is extremely inefficient? Now think about how long it takes to grow a fucking tree.

Takes about 15 years. Every grade 1 student around here is given a spruce tree to plant, and my brother's tree had to be cut down because it became too large.
Potatoes for french fries take 1 year (1 growing season per year) and we never seem to run out

In SimCity 4 the waste to power plant creates a lot of pollution.

Good thing Japanese people are smarter than Sims. They thought to put scrubbers in the stacks rather than dumping raw smoke into the air.

 

[K1052]

The newer plasma arc waste to energy plants are pretty clean and only emit CO2, which is much better than the methane landfills give off.

Not to mention they can be located close to cities and save massive amounts of fossil fuels by avoiding long distance transport of garbage. Also it would be possible to mine legacy landfills and reclaim land in urban areas that have built up around them.

 

[ShawnD1]

Not to mention they can be located close to cities and save massive amounts of fossil fuels by avoiding long distance transport of garbage. Also it would be possible to mine legacy landfills and reclaim land in urban areas that have built up around them.

That's actually a really good point. It's amazing how much work goes into landfilling and recycling. A landfill isn't just as simple as throw garbage in a hole and call it a day. They throw down garbage, put dirt on it, water it, run over it with bulldozers to make it flat, and a ton of other things. It would be nice to just burn that crap and get some energy from it.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Burning trees to generate power is extremely stupid and wasteful.

Most papermills in the US burn wood chips and bark to produce steam/power to run the papermill.

 

[ShawnD1]

Most papermills in the US burn wood chips and bark to produce steam/power to run the papermill.

And you know they wouldn't be doing this unless it made economic sense to do so

Like what else are we supposed to do with it? Throw it in a landfill? Come on now. That's just moving garbage from one location to another. And yes paper and raw bark are garbage when we're talking about large quantities. Tree bark can't be dumped anywhere you want.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

They also burn the bleaching liquid after it's be used several times. Black liquor recovery boilers.

 

[Throckmorton]

Most papermills in the US burn wood chips and bark to produce steam/power to run the papermill.

Yeah, which is using scraps to fuel an operation that doesn't require much power. Do you know how much wood it would take to power a even small town?

 

[Throckmorton]

Takes about 15 years. Every grade 1 student around here is given a spruce tree to plant, and my brother's tree had to be cut down because it became too large.
Potatoes for french fries take 1 year (1 growing season per year) and we never seem to run out

Corn takes 1 year to grow and we're using 40% of US corn production to dilute our gas by 10%.

 

[Darwin333]

Most people do not realize how bad burning coal really is. They watch the tv commercials about how safe coal is, and the believe it.

For those that dont know about coal and mercury, here is an example. This is what you get by burning coal - you can not even eat the fish anymore.

The waste is still there. How many tens of thousands of years for it to break down? After the next ice age or 2?

Lets say it takes 10,000 years to break down. 5,000 years from now the next dominate species comes along and says "lets open these things up and see whats inside." Or better yet the cask is damaged by some natural even and spill their contents out.

My main complaint with nuclear waste is that it takes so long to break down. We are not talking a couple of decades, or a couple of centuries, we are talking thousands of years.

So you would prefer to just put the waste, including some nuclear waste, into the atmosphere as we go?

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Yeah, which is using scraps to fuel an operation that doesn't require much power. Do you know how much wood it would take to power a even small town?

The papermills where I've worked produced more power than would be used by a small town. They had two or three generators that produced between 15MW to 25MW for a total output of 45MW to 75MW.

 

[Darwin333]

If the earth never changed, if we never had climate change,,,,,, then things might be fine storing waste in a desert.

About 10,000 years ago the earths rotation changed just a little bit, and rains moved into the Sahara desert. Over several hundred years there was enough rain for trees to grow and animals to move into the area. Humans also moved into the area. The earths rotation turned back to normal and the Sahara changed back into a desert.

Green Sahara article - interesting read

What might be desert right now, might very well forest in a few thousand years, or even a few hundred years.

Who really knows whats going to happen tomorrow or the next day, much less 5,000 years from now.

I do not think its fair to future generations to leave poisoned capsules of nuclear waste anywhere.

I have faith that our future generations in a thousand years will be smarter than us. Its not like we are just leaving it scattered around for little kids to open up and play with and it is much less harmful than the alternatives.

You illustrated some of the dangers associated with coal but you don't seem to understand that those are your choices. Coal or nuclear, which do you prefer?

 

[Texashiker]

You illustrated some of the dangers associated with coal but you don't seem to understand that those are your choices. Coal or nuclear, which do you prefer?

I would prefer nuclear, but only if its not a weapons grade plant. You would not want anyone getting ahold of some weapons grade plutonium now would you.

Coal has probably poisoned our planet more then anyone will ever know. A couple of months ago there was an article about how fish all over the world are testing positive for mercury. Even from remote lakes in Canada that are nowhere close to a city, the fish are testing positive for mercury. Our dependence on coal is slowly poisoning our food (fish) and water supplies.

Its really sad when my kids and I go fishing, and we can not eat the fish. The picture of the fish advisory I have been posting in this thread, I took that picture.

Corn takes 1 year to grow and we're using 40% of US corn production to dilute our gas by 10%.

Corn only takes 60 - 90 days to grow, not 1 year.

Source - aggie-horticulture corn

 

[Throckmorton]

So you would prefer to just put the waste, including some nuclear waste, into the atmosphere as we go?

A few more decades of coal and natural gas burning as we switch to solar and wind isn't going to make a big difference.


The problem with nuclear power is that it IS in our back yard-- the risk of failure (How much do you trust industry? How's that deep water oil drilling workin out?), and the waste storage. But there wouldn't be any benefit to global climate. Not at all. China is going to keep burning coal aren't they?

 

[rcpratt]

A few more decades of coal and natural gas burning as we switch to solar and wind isn't going to make a big difference.

You. Can. Never. Switch. Entirely. To. Solar. And. Wind.

Ho-lee crap.

 

[Throckmorton]

You. Can. Never. Switch. Entirely. To. Solar. And. Wind.

Ho-lee crap.

Right, because the sun is going to stop shining. Are you a fucking moron or what?

You know we have huge expanses of desert in this country right? You know we can store energy right? And that our ability to store energy is only going to improve?

 

[Texashiker]

You. Can. Never. Switch. Entirely. To. Solar. And. Wind.

Just like man will never fly, we will never land on the moon, and the earth is flat.

If history has proven anything, its that mankind has almost unlimited potential.

Today, and maybe tomorrow we can not switch to wind or solar, but there is always next week, next year, next decade, next century.

 

[rcpratt]

Right, because the sun is going to stop shining. Are you a fucking moron or what?

What the fuck? Do you live in a world where the sun doesn't set?

You know we have huge expanses of desert in this country right? Not everywhere is a burnt out ghetto HIV ridden frozen third world shithole like your city. You know we can store energy right? And that our ability to store energy is only going to improve?

Solid, personal attacks. Now I remember why I don't waste my time in P&N. Have a good day.