Are all the windmills in the Gorge screwing up the wind?

[WMP]

You have to understand.... it's all about that FEELING you get inside when suckered into buying one.... the righteous illusion that you're actually helping to solve a problem.

- WMP

[kmarasco]

[scheller]

Nuclear power and drilling off shore is the answer not only to California's energy problems but also our economy mess. CA has vast oil reserves off our coast—lets go get it. Wind and solar can’t even come close to providing the energy we need and will need. I sail in the Sac Delta and there are now a lot of windmills. (They don’t seem to screw up the wind-pretty good year so far.) A Sacramento utility--SMUD built most of them—they are an eyesore. You can’t live for miles around them, the shadow and noise would drive you crazy. Oh SMUD also shut down their nuke plant because of public pressure. Thanks Jane Fonda.

If we had built the nuke plants planned in the 70’s and 80’s, we would not be burning coal at the rates we are--coal puts much radioactive material in the atmosphere than nukes even will and not to mention the environmental mess the mines make. Just another un-intended consequence of the feel good lefties and non-thinking environmental nut jobs. The total “nuclear waste” that must be storage in order to generate power for a family of four for 10 years could fit in a thimble. Nukes are green!!!!

I worked as an Engineer for 3 years helping build the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in the mid-80s. I had access to the entire plant. It is one incredible machine and operates producing power with very high reliability. And this is 1960-70s technology.

We need to get real. We are going to need even more energy in the future. Nukes and hydro are the way to go. I live in Auburn (I love the river) but, I say built the Auburn Dam now.

Glenn (BAG)

[bjamin]

[kmarasco]

[artnvicky]

Bravo, Ferry! Well said! Here are my 2 cents on nuclear "waste":

In 1986, a couple of weeks before the first and only true nuclear meltdown in history, the Chernobyl disaster, engineers at Argonne national labs' experimental breeder facility near Idaho Falls, cut off all cooling flow to a small prototype breeder reactor called the IFR, or Integral Fast Reactor. As designed, the fast neutron breeder shut itself down passively, with no human intervention, and no damage. But the fact that this reactor was designed to be meltdown proof is only part of the story.

Breeder reactors can take what we now call nuclear waste, and via various reactions, utilize nearly all of the fissionable materials, ultimately resulting in much less dangerous waste with a half-life in the tens of ears, not tens of thousands of years. A typical light-water reactor only "burns" less than 1% of its radioactive fuel; a fast-neutron breeder like the IFR can use up more than 90% of the remaining fuel. Imagine powering the grid by a combination of so-called nuclear "waste" and perhaps de-comissioned warheads for hundreds of years!

The IFR concept was brilliant. All of the "nuclear waste" fuel it would need over its, say, 70-year lifetime would be permanently sealed inside of the containment vessel when the plant is built. Periodically, the rods would be removed and re-processed robotically inside the containment vessel to separate the inert material from the still hot transuranics and other fissionable materials, to be re-inserted into the core. The fuel is inaccessable and fiendishly hot, so it can't be stolen. Proliferation is not an issue.

So why haven't we built a few of these essentially perpetual motion machines in the past couple of decates? And why aren't we using them to get rid of the nuclear "waste"? In the early '90s, then-Secretary of Energy, Hazel O'leary and Senator John Kerry argued successfully, but based on junk-science arguments to have the research discontinued, and the project was cancelled in 1994, three years prior to scheduled completion. A second reason is that such a reactor design would be expensive to implement.

Look it up in Wikipedia. Nuclear reactor research does continue around the world, and some of it is on fast-neutron breeders. It is unfortunate that the legal climate in this country makes building nuclear powerplants difficult and expensive, if not nearly impossible. Now we're the proverbial rock in the streambed. Other countries are proceeding with nuclear. Taiwan is 80% nuclar powered. Sad for us. Our country is blessed with abundant fissile ores.

Art

[tetiaroaxx]

[tetiaroaxx]

[MULLDE102f]

For some reason I thought this was a windsurfing forum.....

[jesusjones]