Re: [Vo]:Wind energy vs NxtGen Fission

[Jed Rothwell]

Jones Beene  wrote:

> On average, wind requires about 200 times as much steel and concrete
> structural material as a natural gas turbine plant of the same capacity.
> Factoid: a two-megawatt (faceplate) wind turbine weighs about 250 tons (or
> more), including the tower, nacelle, generator housing and blades, but it
> only works near full capacity about 40% of the time. . . .
>
The average power year-round is around 30% of nameplate for most land
locations, and 40% at sea.

You are talking about the energy payback time. A wind turbine takes 5 to 8
months to generate enough energy to build another wind turbine. See:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140616093317.htm

That's about the same as a conventional gas or coal generator plant. It is
much less than a nuclear plant.

The PV energy payback time used to be years, but it has greatly improved in
the last 10 or 20 years.



> It requires about half a ton of coal to make a ton of steel.
>
A lot of steel is recycled these days, with a much lower energy cost.

-  Jed

Re: [Vo]:Wind energy vs NxtGen Fission

[mixent]

In reply to  Jones Beene's message of Wed, 26 Jul 2017 19:21:03 -0700:
Hi,
[snip]
>On average, wind requires about 200 times as much steel and concrete 
>structural material as a natural gas turbine plant of the same capacity. 
>Factoid: a two-megawatt (faceplate) wind turbine weighs about 250 tons 
>(or more), including the tower, nacelle, generator housing and blades, 
>but it only works near full capacity about 40% of the time. It requires 
>about half a ton of coal to make a ton of steel. Add another 25 tons of 
>coal used in making the cement to secure the tower against strong gales 
>- and in the end, you’re talking 150 tons of coal used per real MWhr of 

I think you mean MW not MWHr. MW implies that the 150 tons of coal is spread
over the lifetime of the wind tower (which it is), whereas MWHr implies that 150
tons of coal is consumed for every 1/2 hour that the tower produces 2 MW (which
it obviously isn't). You only get a true comparison of these things when you
calculate total usage over the lifetime of a system, divided by that lifetime.
Clearly a coal burning power plant will use vastly more coal over its lifetime
than a wind tower of the same capacity.
The same is true of gas fired plants, if you look at CO2 production over the
lifetime of the plant.

>capacity for the structure. And the ash from the coal used to make the 
>wind turbine is more radioactive than nuclear waste - see:
[snip]
Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk

http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html