http://www.jackliftonreport.com/2009/11/the-rare-earth-crisis-of-2009-part-2-the-green-wind-blows-from-china/

I think cancer is VERY serious, more so for man-made causes, but the credibility for them is very low in Kiev due to the huge financial stake the government(s) there have in keeping “it going.”

I also doubt that the UN can be characterised as a particularly pro-nuclear body.

The 4000 was a wrong press release. If you have read the UN report they talked about 9000.
But then you can ask Ukrainian radiation control who will tell you that they have reached a number of over 100.000.
17.000 Families get social money because fathers died as consequence of liquidation.
There are 107.000 people that receiver invalidity pension because of working in liquidation.
Thats the facts.

There are 800.000 former soviet people that have been sent/ordered to the site and are not really traceable, they live or died in several eastern countries after that.

The real death toll is unknown but you have to be realistic and at least allow for a tolearance between 30.000-200.000.

People should also question the role of the UN whos agenda is pro-nuclear.

Greenpeace…well if you don`t like them fine. Maybe you get some other people out there battling the japaneese whale slaugther….

Add Adelaide’s springtime 43C (109F) and I wonder if the PM is starting to grasp the magnitude of the problem.

I noticed the cars and trucks on the clean green island seemed to run on fossil fuel. Maybe each man, woman and child there had a million dollars worth of infrastructure. Try exporting that model to the Third World. The Danes are apparently going to try for 50% windpower, not just 20%. They must try doing it with a lot less coal and without electricity imports .

The long delayed Mackenzie Valley pipeline, in Northern Canada, is now estimated to cost C$17 billion = US$15.7 billion.

It is expected to deliver 1200 MMCF/day or 15.1 GW of avg. thermal power.

The Arctic NG supply reserves are estimated at 6 TCF, or 14 yrs supply for the pipeline.

Energy loss in pump NG turbine energy would be 3.1% of supply @ 1% loss every 400 km.

So overnight capital cost of the pipeline would be $1126 per kwhth.

Average NG production cost I get is 2.9 cents per kwhth. It will be higher in the Arctic.

So financed with a 5% 14 yr bond, that NG production cost present value would be $2852 per kwth @ 10% NG loss

So total would be minimum C$3978 per kwth.

Compare with a Hyperion Nuclear Reactor @ C$32 million for 70 MWth = $463 per kwth.

And the Hyperion would be perfect to do the same job that the Arctic NG would do, that is supply process heat in the Athabasca Tar Sands. Except without the CO2 & methane emissions.

Also, what I wonder is NG total leakage losses, including venting & flaring, are estimated to be 6-10% of production.

And methane is rated at 21X the GHG effect of CO2 over 100 yrs in the atmosphere.

With methane combustion = 1 part CO2 to 1 part CH4 gas volume.

So 6-10% X 21 = 126% to 210% of the GHG effect of the NG CO2 emissions. Which would make NG as bad or worse than Coal.

Am I missing something?

“By the time the gas gets to its European customers, 40-45% of the original gas has been used pushing the rest of it down the line”

Can you give me a reference for that figure. I knew there is considerable leakage but had not realised the scale of the problem. It would mean that producing electricity in Europe from gas may be worse than from coal (1 kg of methane burnt in the power station requires nearly 2 kg extracted at the well head. Part is used for pumping and part leaks out as methane, which is far worse the CO2 that results from the burning)

Nobody’s saying that wind and solar shouldn’t be used, though as David Walters pointed out there are plenty of wind and solar advocates trying to foreclose the use of nuclear power (see Germany, Green Party, and many individuals and groups in other countries)

The list goes on and on alas. I just looked at two prime examples today. Try reading chapter 3 (“The Three Poisons”) of David Freedman 2007, Winning Our Energy Independence, or chapter 12 (“Is nuclear energy a possible solution?”) of Mark Diesendorf 2007, Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy. The first is stunningly vituperative towards nuclear power, and the second is laced with unjustified anti-nuclear hyperbole and at times borders on hysteria. It lowers the tone of the whole book.

It is clear to them, that nuclear power is their enemy, because they know that it’s the large-scale energy option that has the advantages of fossil fuels (and more), and yet is low carbon, clean and sustainable.

The point of my this and my recent article on the solar experience in Germany (and in the comments, that of Spain) is not to say how bad they are, but to make the point from actual data that they aren’t enough for everything we need. You yourself haven’t made such a claim, but many proponents of wind and solar do so (see this month’s cover story in Scientific American for the latest outrageous example). Unfortunately many, many people, including policymakers, are buying that load of tripe, and if they base their policies on it their countries end up like Germany, and I for one don’t want to see my country go down that dead end. Nobody’s saying that wind and solar shouldn’t be used, though as David Walters pointed out there are plenty of wind and solar advocates trying to foreclose the use of nuclear power (see Germany, Green Party, and many individuals and groups in other countries).

One of the wonderful aspects of this blog is that there are a lot of people here who want to weigh the options by taking the stars out of their eyes and looking at hard data. It’s all the better when we can refrain from snark, sarcasm, and/or ad hominem.

By the way, your link to the page about superconductors and wind turbines was very interesting. Thanks for that.

Since power output from wind turbines goes up as the square of wind velocity, being able to squeeze a bit more juice out at low speeds would not produce much compared to optimal operating conditions. Even if you can do it, it won’t add much to overall performance, and only a small fraction of consumers could be supplied compared to when the turbine is at maximum capacity. I suspect that one effect of trying to squeeze that bit extra out of them would be to make the grid substantialy more difficult to balance as the breeze fluctuated over a range of a few kilometres per hour.

is this right? what I was thinking was that the efficiency improvements might allow the turbine to turn easier at lower wind speeds, thus producing some power when it otherwise wouldn’t be. so I thought that would impact cf.

please continue to correct me if it’s not too much trouble.

btw, in Jacobsen’s article, the base power mentioned is not natural gas but geothermal!! Mackay makes a mockery of this (M finds that geothermal could provide globally about 2 kwh per day/person), so I’m wondering what the basis of the claim is in Jacobsen?

Either they are not talking about the same thing, or someone is REALLY WRONG.

Peter, you might be surprised how true that is for Europe. It has been pointed out many times—by you, Barry, me, and others—that natural gas, the darling of the wind and solar crowd, is NOT something we want to keep using. Just in terms of CO2 emissions, if it’s half as good as coal that doesn’t mean it’s benign. Far from it! But that’s only part of the story. Since methane’s greenhouse gas effect is roughly 25 times that of CO2, the very real problem of leaks in transmission and end-point use must be considered, especially in Europe where the gas usually has traveled thousands of miles from Siberian gas fields.

But this incredible distance that most European gas travels entails another very real and astounding cost. The gas has to be pushed through the vast distances of pipe, from one pumping station to the next. The Russians accomplish this with huge gas turbines that run compressors and push it on down the line. The gas to run the turbines is tapped from the line, of course. By the time the gas gets to its European customers, 40-45% of the original gas has been used pushing the rest of it down the line. In other words, that natural gas being used in Germany (for instance) to back up their wind and solar generation is actually producing nearly twice as much CO2 as if it was being used at the point of extraction. So if natural gas only produces about half as much CO2 as coal and that’s being touted as a great benefit of NG (as it so tediously is by the windies), anybody in Europe who’s taking that line ought to clam up, because in terms of CO2 they’re about on a par with coal. Granted, you’re still avoiding all the other emissions of coal (ash and its nasties), but to act as if natural gas is environmentally benign is a cruel farce, doubly so in Europe and to some extent anywhere else where NG has to travel a long distance.

1. the cost of the wind energy must be halved, AND

2. each wind farm must store nearly all the energy it generates and release it on demand, AND

3. the cost of the grid enhancements must be borne by the wind farms.