Wind Farms

[mash]

There is so much negative rubbish in the papers about wind farms.Supports have to be factual, anti's spout any old rubbish. Recent surveys suggest that 75% of people in the UK support them. As a Renewable Energy Engineer I support them (although I admit, like all things, they are not perfect). Do you support them? If not can you present credable ways forward for clean energy, most anti's don't feel that necessary!! 

[3Styler]

but the waste remains radioactive for hundreds of years so they can't leave it lying around it must be either buried deep, deep underground which is expensive to di down, or locked in a silo or something (also expensive to build), or they are now experimenting with sending it into space i believe.

[jake-the-peg]

Ah well it depends on what type of nuclear waste you're talking about.

High level nuclear waste is spent fuel and the like . It's highly radioactive but as you say there's not a lot of it.

Low level nuclear waste is IMHO a bit of a joke - it is overalls that have been in a restricted area waste from rubbish bins in that sort of area - it may or may not be radioactive. There is a lot of it but it's no real hazard

The medium level stuff is much more of a problem it's pretty radioactive and there's a lot of it the disposal of this is a real headache.

The big problem is the waste involved in decomissioning reactors. Right now a lot of old reacors need to be decomissioned and this will generate a huge amount of waste.

In the future fusion reactors like ITER will be made of carefully selected materials whos fission products have short half lives. - There is no radioactive waste in terms of spent fuel from such reactors but they would suffer from similar decomissioning issues. However if you're careful about the materials you use you can get the half live down to say 80 years rather than 8000 years which means that when you decomission such a reactor you only have to store the old parts for a comparatively short period of time.

Shame nobody had such technology 50 year ago! 

[Ralph]

It is a shame, jake-the-peg, but IMHO it would be an even bigger shame if another round of nuclear fission sites were to be built using the same technology, albeit improved somewhat over the last 50 years.

We should not build nuclear simply if it does go wrong (and I know there's only a small chance of that), then we've got a large tract of land that's as useful as Chernobyl is now. If wind energy production goes wrong, we've got a dead sheep and some scared picnicers. If current technology isn't sufficient for our current needs, some investment would sort that out sharpish, like the amount spent on a new Type 45 destroyer or two.

Watch TV in the dark, you can see the picture better.

[mongos bird]

I'm for any type of clean energy.  I strongly belive all newly built properties should have their own solar panels for water and electricity and there should be larger incentives from the government to install solar panels on existing properties and businesses. 

[3Styler]

but there really isnt enough sun in the UK for solar power to be the way forward.  Same goes for HEP and tidal power, the technology currently available isnt good enough and isnt llikley to get significantly better.  The way forward could only be wind power (20% potetnially of UKs energy supply) combined with reducing energy demand and hydrogen cars etc, OR just nuclear power on its own, which isnt ideal.

[twiglet4frog]

the only way forward is a sudden invention such as hydrogen power developed to the similar extent of a powerplant (could be years or decades away) or a explosive boom in cost saving such as causing all lightbulb manufacturers to only produce and see low energy bulbs so that the people no longer have a choice of old style bulbs, cheaper realiable and easy to install products such as solar panels on more day to day things such as water boilers etc.

Then there is hydrogen fuel cells in cars that help cut down pollution to 0 and is non petrol using, but at the moment is extremely explosive in its current state!

[hinge1967]

I just think there is something beautiful about windfarms that reconnects me to nature and the elements whenever I see them.