
Originally Posted by
WMD
Wow, so much wrong here.
Why is efficiency an important metric for wind turbines? What fuel is being wasted when wind is not converted to electricity? What waste byproduct (pollution) is created when wind isn't converted to electricity?
Efficiency does matter when you are burning fuels for electricity, or using uranium. So efficiency matters for fossil fuel and nuclear plants. Yes, when renewables get more efficient we'll need fewer of them, but there is no cost to "wasted" wind or sun.
Nuclear is expensive and slow to build. In the amount of time and money it takes to build one nuke plant we could build a lot of low cost wind and solar - even batteries. Land footprint of nuclear is actually much larger than just the power plant as there are secure perimeters around a site that are off limits to other uses and there and fuel supply chain land needs too. Nuclear also can't meet our peak power needs as it is difficult to ramp up and down quickly , so it is good for base load put not peaking. Batteries are great for peak power needs.
Wind gets mentioned as using lots of land, and it is true wind farms take up a lot of area. But the unusable land of a wind farm is minuscule, mostly just the tower bases. The rest of the land can still be used for whatever. In the west many fields use circular irrigation, leaving 4 corners unused. Those are ideal places to put wind turbines without affecting anything other than the farmer's pocketbook as lease payments could dramatically increase their incomes.
Good info.. I used to farm..and many wind farms, and a few solar farms...have been built in Northern Illinois where I live.... Some cons but many more pros to those power sources... And one of my brothers and a close friend have worked at a nuke plant for 30 years.. Good sources of reality about some of the pros and cons of nuke power.. A needed source of power, but there are so many expenses to building and maintaining those plants.. And the mining of uranium and the disposal of radioactive debris is a decades long shit show...
what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
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