{"id":103202,"date":"2020-08-04T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2020-08-04T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=103202"},"modified":"2020-08-04T09:47:37","modified_gmt":"2020-08-04T13:47:37","slug":"power-plants-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=103202","title":{"rendered":"Power Plants Planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As the UK and Euro zone people are slowly finding out, and we’re slowly beginning to realize, wind and solar plants are not necessarily the best choices for power generation for a large populace.\u00a0 They are not reliable. They are easily damaged, destructive of the environment and wildlife, and when the parts have to be replaced, e.g., the turbine blades, they cannot be recycled so they end up in landfills and unfortunately do NOT deteriorate into anything. They either have to be burned or tossed. They are not material that can be recycled.<\/p>\n

From the article:\u00a0…while the energy generated by wind turbines is clean and green, outdated turbine blades are not. With blades spanning up to 260 feet and weighing an average of 36 tons, old or broken blades pose a difficult disposal problem in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Currently, there are two common disposal methods for turbine blades \u2013 burning them or throwing them in a landfill. According to NPR, more than\u00a0720,000 tons of blade material<\/a> will be disposed of over the next 20 years. With an increasing dependence on wind-generated electricity and the ever-growing size of the turbines themselves, the issue of waste from wind turbines is one that cannot be ignored.\u00a0 – article \u00a0https:\/\/www.chooseenergy.com\/news\/article\/wind-turbine-blades-cause-issue-with-waste\/<\/a><\/p>\n

In Germany, 46% of the Black Forest has been demolished to provide heat to the populace.\u00a0 https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/future-looks-dark-for-germanys-black-forest\/a-1439662#:~<\/a><\/p>\n

From the article:\u00a0 \u00a0Future Looks Dark for Germany’s Black Forest<\/h4>\n

Germany’s best-known tourist attraction, the Black Forest, may be losing some of its luxuriance as a new environmental report warns of dire damage in the region wrought by pollution.<\/p>\n

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\"TheThe idyllic region is environmentally ailing according to the report<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Klaus von Wilpert points to a clump of spruce trees in the middle of the plantation. For him, it typifies the gradual decline of the Black Forest, one of Germany’s biggest tourist draws.<\/p>\n

“That’s the most visible effect of pollution. The trees began yellowing in autumn and have progressively lost their needles,” says the researcher from the German FVA forestry office, which supervises the Black Forest.<\/p>\n

Black Forest badly damaged<\/strong><\/p>\n

The agriculture ministry too acknowledges the problem has become acute. In a report this month, it said that Germany’s woodlands have never been in such bad shape.<\/p>\n

\"Bonndorf<\/div>\n

One in four trees is damaged, and the number of those worst hit has increased by eight percent over the last year, the report said. The development is particularly disturbing in the Black Forest, which is considered to be 40 percent “damaged”, the worst attrition rate since 1983.<\/p>\n

The number of unhealthy trees in this southwest corner of Germany near the French border has risen by 10 percent over 2003, due in part to a drought last year whose effects are being felt with some delay. – article<\/p>\n

Here is a good article explaining all sides of the nuclear power plant issue:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/energysource\/2012\/02\/16\/the-thing-about-thorium-why-the-better-nuclear-fuel-may-not-get-a-chance\/#1fbac81e1d80<\/a><\/p>\n

From the article:\u00a0\u00a0This conversation \u2013 “nuclear good but uranium dangerous” \u2013 regularly leads to a very good question: what about thorium? Thorium sits two spots left of uranium on the periodic table, in the same row or series. Elements in the same series share characteristics. With uranium and thorium, the key similarity is that both can absorb neutrons and transmute into fissile elements.<\/p>\n

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That means thorium could be used to fuel nuclear reactors, just like uranium. And as proponents of the underdog fuel will happily tell you, thorium is more abundant in nature than uranium, is not fissile on its own (which means reactions can be stopped when necessary), produces waste products that are less radioactive, and generates more energy per ton.<\/p>\n

So why on earth are we using uranium? As you may recall, research into the mechanization of nuclear reactions was initially driven not by the desire to make energy, but by the desire to make bombs. The $2 billion Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb sparked a worldwide surge in nuclear research, most of it funded by governments embroiled in the Cold War. And here we come to it: Thorium reactors do not produce plutonium, which is what you need to make a nuke. – article.<\/p>\n

The Army did have a plan a few years ago to have these small nuclear reactors as part of its contingency basing plans\u2026 and just awarded a contract to develop them.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/smr\/nuclear-arsenal\/2020\/03\/09\/pentagon-to-award-mobile-nuclear-reactor-contracts-this-week\/<\/a><\/p>\n

From the article:\u00a0 Pentagon awards contracts to design mobile nuclear reactor<\/p>\n

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By:\u00a0<\/span>Aaron Mehta<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0?\u00a0<\/i>\u00a0March 9<\/span><\/div>\n
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Updated 3\/9\/20 at 12:35 PM EST to reflect the announcement of the contract awards<\/i><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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WASHINGTON \u2014 The Pentagon on Monday issued three contracts to start design work on mobile, small nuclear reactors, as part of a two-step plan towards achieving nuclear power for American forces at home and abroad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The department awarded contracts to BWX Technologies, Inc. of Virginia, for $13.5 million; Westinghouse Government Services of Washington, D.C. for $11.9 million; and X-energy, LLC of Maryland, for $14.3 million, to begin a two-year engineering design competition for a small nuclear microreactor\u00a0designed to potentially be forward deployed<\/a>\u00a0with forces outside the continental United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The combined $39.7 million in contracts are from \u201cProject Pele,\u201d a project run through the\u00a0Strategic Capabilities Office<\/a>\u00a0(SCO), located within the department\u2019s research and engineering side. The prototype is looking at a 1-5 megawatt (MWe) power range. The Department of Energy has been supporting the project at its\u00a0Idaho National Laboratory<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Pele \u201cinvolves the development of a safe, mobile and advanced nuclear microreactor to support a variety of Department of Defense missions such as generating power for\u00a0remote operating bases<\/a>,\u201d said Lt. Col. Robert Carver, a department spokesman. \u201cAfter a two-year design-maturation period, one of the companies funded to begin design work may be selected to build and demonstrate a prototype.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe Pele Program\u2019s uniqueness lies in the reactor\u2019s mobility and safety,\u201d said Jeff Waksman, Project Pele program manager, in a department statement. \u201cWe will leverage our industry partners to develop a system that can be safely and rapidly moved by road, rail, sea or air and for quick set up and shut down, with a design which is inherently safe.\u201d – article<\/p>\n

Mother Earth News had a great many articles back in the 1970s on how to make use of solar and wind energy on a private basis, and if possible, sell the overage to the local power companies. That made a lot of sense, including their notions about battery storage for night-time use, long before the current crop of rechargeable batteries was available.<\/p>\n

Nowhere was there the remotest suggestion that this should become a commercial endeavor and product, with the direst of consequences for the consumer population at large. Nuclear power was never considered a bad idea as it provided genuinely cheap energy for both industry and household use.<\/p>\n

But all that was before the ecohippies and greenbeaners and greedy corporate squabs got hold of the notion that they could sell solar\/wind as being better for the environment on a large scale…. an idea which has been repeatedly proven false, and is now being dissed and repudiated by well-known Greenbeaners such as Michael Moore and Michale Shellenberger, as well as other semi-prominent persons whose eyes have finally opened wide. They can see that they were lied to and have said so publicly, which annoys the money-grubbing clodpoles that think they can tell everyone what to do and how to live.<\/p>\n

Australia’s own power generating systems are not doing well, but the Aussie government is proposing to provide electric power to Singapore via an undersea cable. This is not a joke:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.globalconstructionreview.com\/news\/australia-backs-plan-worlds-biggest-solar-farm-pow\/#:~:text<\/a><\/p>\n

The Australian government has assigned major project status to a proposed A$22bn plan to build the world\u2019s biggest solar farm in Australia\u2019s Northern Territory (NT) and send the electricity through a 3,700-km-long undersea cable to Singapore where, promoters say, it will meet 20% of Singapore\u2019s demand for power.<\/p>\n

The 12,000-hectare solar farm, to be located near the town of Elliott in NT\u2019s Barkley Region, will be visible from space,\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0Sun Cable, the start-up company formed to develop the scheme.<\/p>\n

Electricity will be stored in a 30GWh battery \u2013 the world\u2019s biggest, according to Sun Cable \u2013 allowing transmission at night.<\/p>\n

From Elliott, the electricity will be sent by cable 750km to the coast at Darwin to begin its submarine journey to Singapore.<\/p>\n

Sun Cable, which secured its first round of investor funding in November, believes the operation, called Australian-ASEAN Power Link (AAPL), can be up and running in 2027.<\/p>\n

A final investment decision has yet to be made, and the scheme \u00a0still needs various approvals. – article<\/p>\n

Remember that scene from Ice Age with the dodos chasing a watermelon off a cliff?\u00a0 Heh.\u00a0 It seems that the real dodos may not be extinct just yet.<\/p>\n