Why are we not using more wind power? Nuclear power plants make toxic waste!?

Answer 1

First, you do not state what country you are in, so I have to answer this from the standpoint of someone who lives in the United States.

Second:MODERN WIND TURBINES DO NOT KILL BIRDS!

The older models use to. The blades were shorter, and spun MUCH faster. The modern ones have much larger blades, that spin MUCH SLOWER.

Third: MODERN WIND TURBINES MAKE VERY LITTLE NOISE!

There can be a "whoshing" sound of the blade...quiet often this cannot be heard over the wind itself.

Wind turbines in need of maintenance, specifically grease/oil, can make a wretched loud noise, called "foghorning." Fog-horning is extremely loud (almost exatly like a foghorn), but this is not allowed to go on for more than a couple of hours (overnight if the turbine starts it at night, and the sight does not have a night crew). The turbine is doing damage to itself when this happens. The crews will shut the turbine down, climb the 300 foot lader, and grease/oil the turbines.

How do I know so much about wind turbines? My husband has been working on them for years now.

Now to answer your actual question about why we are not using more of them.

Well, because you can see people are extremely miss-informed about the modern wind turbines, and how they believe they effect birds and bats.

The main reason however is America actually has a rapidly ageing and failing electrical grid. They can build all the wind turbines they want, but the electrical grid system is already at capacity in most areas. The grid simply cannot accept more electricity. So even though we desperatly need more electric, even if it can be generated, the wires are too old, and there are not enough of them to accept the electric.

Quiet a few wind turbine farms have been built, and are unable to run at capacity. One of them near us, my husband concidered working at can only run at 60% capacity. That means every day, during peak wind times, they have 40% of their wind turbines shut off, and not producing any electric, because it would overload the grid.

A lot of people also believe wind turbines are ugly (I do not). Wind turbines prevent urban sprawl, since houses cannot be built under them. Wind turbines maintain wildlife and farming ground....and as a bonus, they provide clean energy!

We live in Idaho. At my husbands site, we have Bald Eagles, Golden Eagles, numerous breeds of hawks, owls (endangered burrowing owls too), and falcons. We even have the endangered Peregrine Falcon hunting the land, among the blades of the turbines.

Of course all the species of birds the raptors prey on. I've watched trumpetor swans, snow geese, and canadian geese migrate through, over and around the wind turbines (NO dead birds). Ducks too, of course.

Under the turbines, a thriving wildlife habitat of moose (VERY common!), black bears (rare), coyotes, red fox, rare desert foxes, marmots, white tail, mule deer, skunks, raccoons, and many other animals live. The men who work the turbines actually have to be careful of the moose, as they are common, and dangerous animals. The wind turbine site is in the high mountain desert (yes desert) area of Idaho.

If the wind turbines had not been built, urban sprall would be reaching the area. Almost all the wildlife would disapear if that were the case. Instead there is a thriving wildlife ecosystem living under and with the turbines. Even the raptors hunt among the turbines very, very well. I've not seen a single dead bird in all the years I've been spending up there.

I'm actually a rather avid bird watcher, and go up there specifically to SEE birds, since there's such an amazing varriety.

Another reason more wind turbines are not being built goes back to the electrical grid again. To build new wind turbine sites, the exsisting power companies are trying to make the investors/builders of the wind turbine farms foot the ENTIRE bill for upgrading the local electrical grids. That can tack tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions of dollars onto the construction/instalation price of the wind turbines. Of course this makes many investors pull out, or at the very least ties it up in court for years while the investors, and the local power companies duke it out in court.

Of course there are also the miss-guided court cases for locals trying to stop the wind turbines, because they think they are ugly, or harm wildlife.

They actually provide safe, thriving and PERMINANT habitat for wildlife. As for ugly....which is uglier? Urban sprawl? A Nuclear power plant? Living the rest of your life without power? Wind turbines, which keep farmland, and wildlife habitat safe?

By the way, while I've been typing this, I've been watching my cat outside my window. He's killed two rodents, and one bird in the time I've been typing. I dare say, he, and all other cats are a site more leathal to birds than wind turbines are.

I live on an organic permiculture farm. Hubby and I grow most of our own food, and even produce our own biofuels for our trucks and tractors. He works on the commercial wind turbines (the main source of income). He and I are very much "into" living a natural life, and being kind to the earth. Our next home will be built by ourselves...straw bale construction. We will grow the wheat, for the straw, harvest and bale it ourselves. A truely home built house.

We would gladly move to an area and be surrounded by wind turbines. They are clean, they are almost never noisy, they provide excelent wildlife habitat, they would preserve our farmland, they keep urban sprawl at bay. By the way, my husband can make twice as much money working as a helicopter mechanic....but we view the wind turbines as SO earth friendly, the pay cut is welcome, because it's worth it to live/work in ways we believe and suport.

~Garnet
Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

P.S. Just read someone elses post about the grease dripping to the ground. This is an out and out lie. FIFTY modern wind turbines will produce about two 55 gallon barrels of used oil/grease every year. Turbines are kept clean and neat (they are full of electricty, remember?) so there is no chance of them sparking and catching fire. Any grease or oil that spills is cleaned up with special cloths, which are then sent off (at great expence) to have the oil extracted and recycled. Oil and grease does not drip down, nor out of towers...that is absolutely rediculous. The towers would catch fire right and left if this were true, and the landowners who farm the land under them certainly would not put up with that.

Answer 2

It is quite likely a problem of miscalculation from the government.

- Laws can be problematic for the permitting

- Not all utilities are liberalized in the "capitalist free market" US.

- The grid access is still sometimes a problem, especially regarding the long distances

- The specific geographic pattern of the US does not always offer places to compensate the periods when wind does not produce a lot with reservoi-hydro... installing more wind power to the US will in the long term require to install more peak load production (gas turbines)

- and mostly: the incentive programs started late compared to other countries. Germany has the first installed wind park but is also the country still adding the largest capacity per year.


I still want to say that nuclear wastes are concentrated and contained while coal power plants release more radioactive matter (heavy metals which are radioactive contained in the coal) but spread it around the globe

Answer 3

Wind takes lots of land and only works in certain areas when the winds blow. Nuclear power takes less land, we needed it for nuclear bombs during the Cold War and it always works.

Now farmers are finding that they can lease a small plot of land to a power company and install a wind turbine on just a few locations on their farm. With our improvement in technology we find that the generation of wind power is more efficient; it took better generators and more efficient propellers.

Nuclear waste has increased because the US has decided, for political reasons, to not use breeder reactors. If they did then they would create plutonium and burn that as nuclear fuel. But the increase of weapons grade material is considered to be too dangerous so the US doesn't use breeder reactors. That means we have more waste. The Deaf Smith Texas mine is designed to store nuclear waste for over 2000 years; safely. But, it is too small and can only store enough waste that we have currently generated. There is no capacity for growth. So the issue of what to do with future waste is a problem.

Meanwhile, the existing nuclear waste in places like Hanford lies in retention ponds that are leaking into the Columbia River and so entering the water supply of Seattle and the salmon of the river. This has been known since the 1970s. The amount is a trace amount, but that much exposure over that long of a period isn't a good idea.

Some European Countries are sinking their nuclear wastes deep into the ocean. If it is done in the Mid Atlantic Trench then the earth will absorb it, but otherwise it leaves a long term source of radioactivity on the bottom of the ocean that will be a problem for thousands of years.

Nuclear technology was once thought to be the perfect solution to our energy crisis, but that was before we started to worry about wastes of all sorts. Then we found out that recycling nuclear waste isn't politically feasible, and storing it is a long term solution; too long of a term. Remember that the nuclear program started after WW2 and the conservation movement didn't get its start until the 1970s.

There is one other way to get energy out of nuclear waste and that is to use the heat generated to power a thermocouple. Thermocouples use two dissimilar metals that are touching to create an electrical current. The process isn't that efficient, but it is how we power deep space probes like Voyager or Cassini. A source of plutonium is stored on a long boom and the heat energy is used to power a thermocouple; it has no moving parts so it won't break down. The thermo-reactor has to be stored on the long boom so the heat and radiation produced by it won't interfere with the probe. When you go out into deep space like Jupiter solar power isn't enough, batteries are too heavy and we have no other technology that can power our spacecraft.

Meanwhile, we have found that if you submerge the wind generator the tides in some rivers can create electricity as well. The first tests conducted in New York resulted in a failure of the propellers because the current was too strong. This means that New York can use tidal energy from its rivers to provide power.

A new generation of water turbines can be suspended in the Gulf Stream; a constant warm water current off the Eastern US Coast. The turbines spin slowly enough to not endanger fish, but the generators are efficient enough to use that energy to create a sustainable electrical current that makes it worth putting them into place. The problem is the start up costs and the additional research and development needed to make more efficient water propeller generators. We already have more efficient propellers that don’t produce turbulence because of the research done in the submarine program. The biggest obstacle is simple willpower to do it.

So we are using more wind power today than even 10 years ago, and we are adapting it for water generated power. We have put a stop on building nuclear reactors and a new one hasn't been built in over 30 years, but we still have the toxic waste.

Answer 4

Politics aside, one of the huge problems is determining the costs of the energy industry. It's extremely complex. I've seen calculations that come out with wind power being half the price of nuclear power (particularly when taking in to account mining...which by the way is where all of nuclear power's real pollution is), and others where it's the exact opposite. It's extremely difficult to determine all the economic, industrial, scientific, societal, environmental factors, predict new future developments, and then quantify them in a way that allows you to compare the two. So one of the big problems is that nobody has their facts straight; you find one source, somebody will show you a source that's just as reputable, with the exact opposite conclusion.

Answer 5

The incident at 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl and probably the movie the China Syndrome made them doubt the safety of nuclear power plants. The United States Navy has been operating nuclear power plants for over 50 years without a single incident, but all they can remember are 3 Mile Island, and Chernobyl.

Answer 6

Nuke plants are, for the most part, fairly clean. They only emit heated water and steam on a regular basis. They do go through uranium once every year or two and need to be refilled, but those spent rods are stored on site in very secure casks (a somewhat tall storage cylinder that doesn't leak). Nuke plants get a bad rep from accidents like Chernobyl and 3 mile island, and as long as they are taken care of they are perfectly safe. I have three reactors all within a half hour of me and I dont worry at all. And one of them is Davis Bessie (who is now being indicted for the recent problems in maintenance).

Wind power is nice, but it does have a few down sides. One, it takes up A LOT of land to produce the same electricity as a small nuke plant. Two, birds of prey, including the Bald Eagle, are dying when they are struck by the huge blades in the air. And the dead birds only attract more scavenging birds. Three, would you want a hundred or so wind turbines blocking the horizon or one nuke plant (they can make them smaller and more efficient these days)?

Answer 7

Nuclear power plants might make toxic waste but so does all other forms of power. Making components to build wind generating equiptment produces toxic waste, so does producing solar energy equiptment to make solar power. So what is your beef?

Answer 8

Good question. For one, convincing enough people to invest, two, they cant just put them up anywhere because there has to be a wind study performed for the area,Three, the cost. four, people fighting it because they say it takes away from the beauty of the surrounding landscape. five, the blades are killing birds. But, even with all that the technology with it is getting better & smaller. The newest model is about as round as a coke can and turns vertical but, not sure if its really out yet in mass production yet.

Answer 9

There are windmills farms near where I live in the Mojave Desert. They are kind of neat to see on the remote hillsides since there are plenty of non-spoiled hillsides left. In this case, wind is a great energy resource.

But, nothing's free. There is a huge windmill in town. These are not the old, rustic, farm windmills. It has a strobe light to warn planes and makes the whole area look industrial. It reduces property values and quality of living for the town.

The underground vibrations from the windmills are driving out wildlife, and I believe plants too.

Finding a way to use sunlight, sound, or fuel cells might be better, but there are drawbacks there too.

Answer 10

The amount of energy required to make one wind mill is immense and takes years to recoup from an operational wind mill. Also, grease (as well as other things) is required to lubricate the parts of the mill, also in vast quantities. This grease drips from the mill into the ground contaminating it for hundreds of years over millions of acres.

That being said this means the cattle eventually wont be able to eat the grass under the mill, and plants will not be able to grow. The environmental damage from wind mills is huge.

I'm not saying Nuclear is perfect, but the amount of toxic waste created in one year from a nuclear plant vs. what is generated from the number of wind mills it would take to supply the same amount power is exponential.

Answer 11

I just saw a TV commercial for the American company Edison, I like these grandiose helicopter views of powerlines, horizons, but they are always a bit green-biased, you always see a windfarm, it's great but we just wish it was true
Most electricity I think is still powerplants and other non-green sources
Yes we must create more wind power. It's expensive to build these turbines but it's the future