The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades?...

[mistermack]

Also, predictions made in good faith, and in light of all the best information available at the time about what will eventually happen can be several magnitudes off the mark. In the early 1950s the designers of nuclear power plants prognosticated that the electricity generated by those plants will be so cheap that it won't be worth metering the consumption by domestic customers. Rather than go through the process of installing metering devices it will be more profitable to just levy a periodic service charge. And they had the figures to back their claim up with too.

... many a slip twixt cup...

I wonder where the costs went wrong? Was it an unexpected hike it the price of Uranium, or inaccurate estimates of the handling costs of nuclear waste?
Or maybe it's just that the price of gas and coal has kept far lower than they could have expected. Whatever, none of it is so cheap as to be not worth metering.

Anyway, metering will soon be so cheap, with smart meters, that it will always be worth metering. It's already done online, or by phone, by the customer, in the majority of cases these days, and it's computers, not people, that do the bills.
They could never have forecast that, in the fifties.

[Hermit]

Basically, it was a massive overrun in both construction and operating costs due to an almost total ignorance about just how dangerous radiation is and what it takes to control it. The blowout was exacerbated when it was discovered that early investors and owners were happy to play fast and loose with those risks, which made it necessary to introduce massive amounts of regulations, inspections, design complications and so forth in order to avoid catastrophic meltdowns. Remember that Marie Curie had died barely two decades earlier. She used to routinely carry test tubes of radium in her pockets while researching it. In the 1950s people were not as oblivious to the dangers of radiation as she was, but they were by no means aware of the full extent of them and the cost implications they implied.

[mistermack]

Basically, it was a massive overrun in both construction and operating costs due to an almost total ignorance about just how dangerous radiation is and what it takes to control it. The blowout was exacerbated when it was discovered that early investors and owners were happy to play fast and loose with those risks, which made it necessary to introduce massive amounts of regulations, inspections, design complications and so forth in order to avoid catastrophic meltdowns. Remember that Marie Curie had died barely two decades earlier. She used to routinely carry test tubes of radium in her pockets while researching it. In the 1950s people were not as oblivious to the dangers of radiation as she was, but they were by no means aware of the full extent of them and the cost implications they implied.

I'm still in favour of it.
The more time goes by, the more we should get safety matters understood and sorted.
And in the end, the cost comes from paying people for work, which is not a total disaster for the economy.
You also have energy independence, if you have plenty of fuel in store. You are a bit insulated from the markets.
The French invested heavily in Nuclear, and it hasn't hurt them.
They might pay a bit more for their power, but it's mostly going into French pockets, and not hurting the balance of payments.
And they make money, from the export of their expertise.

[Hermit]

Basically, it was a massive overrun in both construction and operating costs due to an almost total ignorance about just how dangerous radiation is and what it takes to control it. The blowout was exacerbated when it was discovered that early investors and owners were happy to play fast and loose with those risks, which made it necessary to introduce massive amounts of regulations, inspections, design complications and so forth in order to avoid catastrophic meltdowns. Remember that Marie Curie had died barely two decades earlier. She used to routinely carry test tubes of radium in her pockets while researching it. In the 1950s people were not as oblivious to the dangers of radiation as she was, but they were by no means aware of the full extent of them and the cost implications they implied.

I'm still in favour of it.

So am I. It causes less damage to humans directly and to humans indirectly through environmental pollution than coal, it is a more reliable and consistent supplier of electricity than wind, solar and hydro renewables and it does not withdraw nearly as much precious agricultural and pastoral land from production needed for food.

My post was more in relation to the topic of bladeless turbines and the dangers of listening to overly optimistic prognostications by the people who seek investment funds in order to develop them. I don't trust their construction cost estimates at all, though I don't think the promoters are being dishonest, and I am very sceptical about their running cost estimate as well.

[mistermack]

I'm not sure I'm with you on the ''dishonest'' bit.
They might not be being outright fraudulent, but I don't think they are being entirely honest about how much energy they can get per unit.

The lines between fraud and enthusiastic optimism are easy to blur.

[Seth]

That was sort of the point....

Oh, ok.

My mind reading faculties are a bit under par these days. Especially from ten thousand miles away.

The whole thing is starting to stink.

That's because you've been waving that fish around for over a year now.

[pErvinalia]

Wrong. Fuel is energy.

Wrong.
Ludicrously wrong.

You're kidding, right? Are you really that ignorant? Any type of fuel is merely stored solar energy waiting to be released. If it's not stored energy then it's not fuel since that's kind of the definition of "fuel."

If you're that ignorant of science, there's no point in even starting to explain the difference.
No, fuel is not energy. You need to do about four years of physics and chemistry if that's what you think.

Just for a start, the fuel hasn't even got potential for producing energy, without the oxygen in the air. You might just as well say that air is energy.

But it's best if you look up energy and go from there.

Jesus, why did I even come back to this place?

[pErvinalia]

how far will your car get on a tankful but without spark plugs to launch the chemical reaction that turns the fuel into energy?
how much energy do you get from wood or coal if you don't have a fire to set it alight?

How much energy do you get from wind without a windmill or some such device?

wind is energy in motion, the mill is there to catch it, it's not the same as fuel wich has energy potential but needs pretty forceful treatment (literally being set on fire) to release it.

Not all fuel needs that. You need a new working definition of fuel.

[Svartalf]

fuel is that which combines with the oxydizer to burn and produce thermal energy

[pErvinalia]

You don't have to set diesel on fire. In fact, you don't have to set any fuel on fire. Just apply enough pressure. The three things needed for fire are fuel, heat, and oxygen. It's the fire triangle or some such term.

And that's ignoring other sources of fuel like nuclear. It doesn't need oxygen, or fire.

[Svartalf]

Nuclear "fuel" is a misnomer

[pErvinalia]

Fuel is what contains the energy. Oxygen is only a catalyst to release that energy. Other forms of energy don't require oxygen as the catalyst. Chuck a blob of sodium in water and it explodes with energy. Water is the catalyst in that case.

[JimC]

Fuel is what contains the energy. Oxygen is only a catalyst to release that energy. Other forms of energy don't require oxygen as the catalyst. Chuck a blob of sodium in water and it explodes with energy. Water is the catalyst in that case.

Incorrect, rEv. Catalysts, by definition, increase the rate of a reaction without being used up. Oxygen is a reactant.

[Svartalf]

water is not a catalyst, it actually reacts with the sodium.
the definition of a catalyst is that it enables a chemical reaction without being an actual part of it.

[pErvinalia]

I don't even know why I'm bothering, as it will set the science conspiracy guy off on another lecture about "science", even though he totally misses the irony in that... But Oxygen isn't an energy source. If it was, we could "burn" CO2 in Oxygen, which we obviously can't*. The coal/oil/wood IS the fuel source as it is the part of the process that has stored energy over time.

*edit: I'm actually scared of that pronouncement, as someone will probably point out that it is possible.