livescience.com — Thanks to blow-hard winds, the United States has just become the world's largest generator of wind energy. Germany previously held this distinction, though since the United States has about 26 times more land than Germany, the milestone isn't a huge surprise. Nonetheless, we weren't expected to reach this point until late 2009.
Jul 23, 2008 View in Crawl 4
grumpyrainJul 24, 2008
I don't disagree with you about nukes. I would much prefer them over coal, but that is no reason to poo poo wind farms. It is very misleading to say it takes up 100 square miles (or a 10x10 mile square). I visited a wind farm last year, and there were cows sitting in the paddock below the turbines. Apart from the area immediately around each turbine, a couple of service roads and a small amount of land for the DC-AC conversion, most of the land can be used for agricultural purposes. No-one seems to mind the amount of land required by mining for coal or uranium. No-one seems to think of the exorbitant energy required to enrich it to energy grade. Hydro also requires a massive amount of land.The real myth here, is that there exists *any* energy source with now bad sides.
wiseweaselJul 24, 2008
Salt water is corrosive and leaves deposits. You don't really want that in your reactor core.
benjorinoJul 24, 2008
wind turbines dont blow, they get blown.(yeah, I know I'm a pedantic assh**e.)
legendxxJul 24, 2008
Very true. It's a breath of fresh air.
slvrbullet87Jul 25, 2008
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wiseweaselJul 25, 2008
I thought about that after I posted... I mean a closed system with a heat exchange could work (and that's how all nuclear plants cool themselves, not with an open system, so my comment about salt water in the core was stupid), but I'm wondering if even the maintenance on the high-surface-area heat exchange is going to be onerous with the deposits and organic buildup on the salty side of those coils or surfaces, decreasing their efficiency and presenting a cooling challenge if not rigorously maintained. There still has to be a problem with that somewhere down the line, even if the sal****er never actually goes into the core.
grumpyrainJul 26, 2008
All (modern) reactors are closed systems, probably closed systems heat exchanging with other closed systems before heat exchanging with an open system like the ocean or a lake. There is too much risk of a radiation leak any other way. Any operator would want exact knowledge of the chemical composition of the cooling fluid so there are no surprises when they raise or lower the control rods. Even fresh water though has sediments in it, which would be equally problematic for the heat exchange plates.I am not sure whether the heating up of the cooling water is specifically problematic to the reactor, or more correctly, I think that local ecosystems surrounding the reactor would be killed off prior to the cooling water reaching a temperature where it compromised operations. The shutdowns to let the cooling water cool down (that we hear about) are primarily about preventing ecological disasters within lakes etc used for the cooling. In times of drought, this becomes particularly problematic as there is less rainwater to refresh the cooling lakes etc.
xenoz312Jul 30, 2008
It's not a north/south thing. It's whether it's economically viable.Texas has the best wind potential in the U.S., So it makes sense that most wind generators would be there.