A New Study Shows Seabirds Avoid Offshore Turbines (electrek.co) 110
Matt_Bennett (Slashdot reader #79,107) writes:
Swedish power company Vattenfall released a study on the interactions of seabirds and offshore wind turbines. They used cameras and radar to record the tracks of the birds during daylight hours at Aberdeen Offshore Wind Farm over peak periods of bird activity in 2020 and 2021.
The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades. In 97.7% of the recordings, the birds avoided the RSZ (rotor swept zone).
The company (owned by the Swedish government) spent €3 million on the two-year study, according to Electrek, and now has ten thousand videos of birds flying...nowhere near the wind turbines. Herring gulls avoided the rotor blades by a full 90-110 meters (295-361 feet) while kittiwakes flew even further from the blades — 140-160 meters (459-525 feet).
"By way of comparison, each of these human-related sources kill millions or even billions of birds per year: fossil fuels, deforestation, pesticides, windows, and the common housecat."
The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades. In 97.7% of the recordings, the birds avoided the RSZ (rotor swept zone).
The company (owned by the Swedish government) spent €3 million on the two-year study, according to Electrek, and now has ten thousand videos of birds flying...nowhere near the wind turbines. Herring gulls avoided the rotor blades by a full 90-110 meters (295-361 feet) while kittiwakes flew even further from the blades — 140-160 meters (459-525 feet).
"By way of comparison, each of these human-related sources kill millions or even billions of birds per year: fossil fuels, deforestation, pesticides, windows, and the common housecat."
Who funded the study? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Funded by Big Bird. Obviously. Perhaps you thought it was Big Pharma?
Anyway, the story has potential for Funny, though that FP seems limited.
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Funded by Big Bird.
Why weren't Elmo and the Cookie Monster also consulted?
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Took me a while to see the linkage, but you're right. See, I wouldn't recognize a good Funny joke if it bit me in the nether regions.
I was thinking I should have said "Big Bird, not to be confused with Big Oil, Big Pharma, or Big ."
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The Swedish government did. And they would get (figuratively) eviscerated if they were lying. You are obviously an idiot.
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Vattenfall is state owned but make no mistake, it is a for-profit business that generates revenue throughout Europe. It's a "green electricity" company and so has a vested interest in wind turbines.
I'm not saying the study is wrong but it's definitely a conflict of interest and as such should be taken with a grain of salt.
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Conflict of interest isn't quite the "aha gotcha" people think, because everybody has conflicts of interest. It isn't just "this paper will make me money", it could be "this paper will improve my scientific reputation", or even "this will show that upstart". Plenty of misconduct has been motivated by that kind of petty egotism, and you pretty much take it for granted it affects any research project's agenda.
Science isn't predicated on scientists being inhumanly objective. It's predicated on transparency
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Conflict of interest isn't quite the "aha gotcha" people think,
In fact, it is not a "gotcha" at all. Most research has conflict of interest and all researchers do. Scientific practice has reliable ways around that, even if they are not always used. One is that the data gets published so others can verify the findings. Another is to have studies conducted by somebody else with minimal conflict of interest, but a lot of reputation at stake. Another one is peer review. And yet another one is checking reproducibility for important things. Also note that bad scientific misc
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Vattenfall is not the most moral company. They also run pretty questionable nuclear, for example. But this study is widely published and will be controversial, so there is very high risk in any inaccuracies or lies. My take is the study is scrupulously honest because they really cannot afford anything else.
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Evolution is a harsh mistress.
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The Department For Looking Only At Money Rather Than Commenting On The Substance Of A Study.
Now do you have anything else to comment on or are you a ad hominem one trick pony?
Think of it as evolution in action (Score:1)
nft
Only 2.3% of birds splattered... success! (Score:1)
And we have the usual, "other bad things happen and are much worse so this lesser bad thing happening on top of the worse bad things is ok" argument.
Just because one person committed murder doesn't make someone else's assault and battery ok.
Re:Only 2.3% of birds splattered... success! (Score:5, Informative)
From TFS:
The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades.
So it's 0% birds splattered. The 2.3% you're referencing merely did not evade the "rotor swept zone", but they were not splattered as a result.
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I figure that birds likely have a fairly developed kinetic sense. Most sensible birds, IE the adults, probably avoid the zones just as a matter of practical safety. But they're probably also very capable of determining when they can pass through the zone with a comfortable margin from the rotors themselves, so if they want to they can dip through it.
Re:Only 2.3% of birds splattered... success! (Score:4, Interesting)
Just look at birds sitting at the edge of a road waiting for cars to pass so they can go back to eating road kill. Those bastards know EXACTLY where the cars will and won't go.
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Yes, but they also seem to play games with cars, perhaps riding their wakes or something, and it gets them killed. I've hit several small birds which were doing this. My father had a '62 Chevy that had a habit of eating them, they went right into the grill.
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Blackbirds in particular seem to either show off to potential mates by diving in front of moving cars, or practicing to lose a hawk who'd either smack against the car or have to break away to avoid such a fate.
I'm talking more about magpies, crows, and the like. They'll sit a single step from the asphalt, close enough their feathers get ruffled from the wind as cars pass, but they very clearly know that the cars won't leave the asphalt.
Smart Birds (Score:2)
Well, Crows, magpies, and such are Corvidae, commonly known to be among the smartest birds.
And yes, I've seen them not even bother to fly when getting out of the way of traffic. They see me coming, just turn and give a hop or two up onto the curb and wait for me to go past.
When eating roadkill, I've also seen them drag the kill off the pavement so they can eat uninterrupted.
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Crows also know about traffic lights. They drop nuts etc. on the road to get them crushed/broken by cars. When the lights are about to get green they run to the side or lift off and let the cars pass.
I mean: they drop the stuff directly at the traffic lights, e.g. pedestrian crossings.
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I've had to hit the brakes to avoid smacking both ravens and crows, so they're either not as smart as you think, or smart enough to know I'll brake for them
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There are basically two kinds of birds - except from birds of prey ofc. ,and that includes crossing roads or fly in "car height" along the road.
a) seeds and plant eaters - they like to fly low, and their escape tactics is to fly close to the ground
b) insect eaters, most famous are swallows and similar birds that fly high, and the escape tactics is to stay high and fly zig zag if needed
Crows and related might actually do/try wake surfing - never heard about it, but they do pretty odd stuff for fun, e.g. ridi
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Just look at birds sitting at the edge of a road waiting for cars to pass so they can go back to eating road kill. Those bastards know EXACTLY where the cars will and won't go.
Yeah look at the live ones, not the dead ones they are eating. When you see me standing on the side of the road not j-walking and waiting to cross the road when it's clear, don't assume humans are immortal / magically avoid cars, instead question your observer bias.
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That is not at all what I said. I said they understand where cars will and will not go (within really high probability, anyway). I didn't say they were perfect.
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What about the hours of nighttime? Were the stats any different?
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In other news - 2.3% of the seabirds are mavericks and show offs. And they are sure to get it when their mom finds out.
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Nice way to cut short the quote.
"The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades. In 97.7% of the recordings, the birds avoided the RSZ (rotor swept zone)."
So in 2.3% of recordings the birds did not avoid the RSZ. Splat. As stated.
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Slashdot has a lot of selective reading, but you really seem to be the master of it. From your own quote:
"The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades."
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Stated is: no splat. You quoted it yourself: The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades.
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Huh? It says right in the summary:
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Full quote, "The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades. In 97.7% of the recordings, the birds avoided the RSZ (rotor swept zone)."
2.3% in splat zone.
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2.3% in splat zone. ...
No, 2.3% close enough, but no splat
Re:Only 2.3% of birds splattered... success! (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no perfectly green power generation method yet. None.
Just building something so far requires diesel powered machinery, which definitely kills or poisons something during the production of the fuel. We might approach perfection some day if we get to the point where trucks, cranes and industrial equipment all switch off from fossil fuels, and the factories that make them are renewable powered, and the machines that extract lithium and such are also all renewable powered, and we take care not to kill anything as we mine, and we take care not to poison anything as we do processing.
That's not a complete impossibility, but that day is very far off in the future. For now the only choice is in the amount of damage that is caused. There's certainly much better and much worse things to pick from, but right now nothing is perfect.
So yeah, some birds are going to die. That's likely to be far better than the available alternatives.
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"And we have the usual, "other bad things happen and are much worse so this lesser bad thing happening on top of the worse bad things is ok" argument."
Do we? The article is literally about no "lesser bad thing" happening.
"Just because one person committed murder doesn't make someone else's assault and battery ok."
Even though there was no assault and battery.
Right-wingers are so predictable. And definitely not "SmarterThanYou". They even choose handles that tell you have dumb they are, but then "SuperKend
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Triggered by a silly online handle. No point in responding to anything else the sensitive nerd types say after that.
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And if you could fucking _read_ you would not claim such bullshit!
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Can you?
Full quote, fourth time for the blind and illiterate, "The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades. In 97.7% of the recordings, the birds avoided the RSZ (rotor swept zone)."
2.3% in the splat zone.
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The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades.
So? You can read it or not?
2.3% in the splat zone.
And they escaped all with a significant distance from the actual blades, as: no as in noneor even narrow escapes where recorded.
Seriously annoying that dumbasses like you are allowed to vote.
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Seriously annoying that dumbasses like you are allowed to vote.
Indeed. Dunning-Kruger far-left side, i.e. moron with delusions of being super smart.
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I can read. _You_ cannot. And you are stupid in addition, because "2.3% in the splat zone" does in obviously in no way mean "2.3% killed or hurt".
In fact "The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades.", which just proves you cannot read and you cannot think successfully. And you cannot even do so when your gross mistake is pointed out to you. Pathetic. Arrogance is not a valid replacement for actual mental abilities.
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Ah, so you're avoiding the use of any electricity made in any way that might harm a bird?
So how did you post anyway?
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Lol, third time for you, now, full quote, "The study observed no collisions or even narrow escapes between birds and rotor blades. In 97.7% of the recordings, the birds avoided the RSZ (rotor swept zone)."
You guys and your careful editing are hilarious. Anything to make me wrong.
2.3% in splat zone. As stated.
Bats are a bigger problem (Score:1, Troll)
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Seems like it would be easy to add some kind of sonic warning to keep the bats away.
But I keep thinking that if this was a real problem, they could just put screens around the rotors. Not going to bother the wind.
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But I keep thinking that if this was a real problem, they could just put screens around the rotors. Not going to bother the wind.
They keep trying, but Home Depot still says the giant screens are backordered until at least 2024.
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The better joke and I hope it gets the Funny mod, but maybe my own fault for being a poor straight man... Maybe it could have been funnier as a reference to big computer screens? Best Buy rather than Home Depot?
Looking at the story again, I wonder how many birds (and bats) learned from a close call and how many learned just by watching the flock. Seems birds ought to have evolved to learn about hazards from each other...
Re:Bats are a bigger problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that the pressure near the turbine is very low, and basically it bursts their lungs. They're not actually HITTING anything, they're dying from being NEAR them.
There are fairly simple mitigations, most of which involve lowering the speed of the turbines at night during migration season. Turbine operators aren't always amenable to the prospect of losing money by turning down the turbines, though. I dated a bat researcher whose area of expertise was just this, and wind power operators don't want to talk to her anymore. She acknowledges that wind power is an important energy source and we should definitely do it, but they should be moved away from migration routes, or they should be required to perform these mitigations when possible.
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Thanks for the additional information.
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The problem is that the pressure near the turbine is very low, and basically it bursts their lungs
Just lol.
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Just lol.
What are you laughing at? Your own ignorance? https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
Instead, 90 percent of the 75 bats the researchers ultimately dissected had been killed by burst blood vessels in their lungs, according to results presented in Current Biology—suggesting that the air pressure difference created by the spinning windmills had terminated them, not contact with the blades.
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The problem is that the pressure near the turbine is very low, and basically it bursts their lungs. They're not actually HITTING anything, they're dying from being NEAR them.
WTF? Can you point me to any material that discusses this? That sounds untrue to me.
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Considering the colour of the blades, the sky and the water, it is conceivable that a bird might "not see" the rotor. That a bat neither "sees" nor "hears" it, is impossible.
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The other branch went into some detail, but maybe it's impossible for the bats to recognize the threat? Not a lot of brainpower there. The closest match might be to the wall of a cave, but cave walls aren't moving at speed.
But the original story was about offshore turbines and now I'm wondering how many bats want to fly over water.
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I'm pretty sure you get a Nobel Prize in Botanics, if you make a convincing video about Bats eating Insects dozens of kilometers offshore around wind plants ...erm, plants are botanic, or not?
Makes sense (Score:2)
Sea birds flying over open water probably want to... fly over open water. With the turbines it becomes a radically different local environment, and not their place.
Land birds expect to see trees and other objects sticking up out of the ground. Many tend to stick near trees as cover.
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Indeed. The whole thing is absolutely plausible. Well the "green energy baaaad" cave-men will just find some new lie to push.
And land birds... (Score:2)
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Over land. Maybe. There are several ways to warn them away in testing. Over water, these are obviously not needed.
What color blade markings were tested? LED lights? (Score:4, Interesting)
Military aircraft have had propeller tips painted for a very long time.
Tip color vs. fuselage color is a long-known consideration:
http://www.clubhyper.com/refer... [clubhyper.com]
Every few years some asshat walks into one anyway but the markings do make a difference.
LED lights along the leading edge would give a disk effect at night, optimal colors TBD.
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LED lights along the leading edge would give a disk effect at night, optimal colors TBD.
We just need more blades or blades that spin much faster then wind turbines can function as a ginormous billboard and pump ads to us at night. It’s well known that birds shy away from buying an extended car warranty, and the added revenue streams should make electric power even cheaper. That should make everyone happy!
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LED lights along the leading edge would give a disk effect at night,
And with multi-colored LED lights, you'd also get a disco effect!
And another anti-green energy argument is a lie (Score:1)
Seriously. You assholes just need to stop making untrue claims. All you do is harm _everybody_.
nuclear power? (Score:5, Interesting)
I see they didn't include that one in their comparison of deaths by various power-related means. I assume they ignored nukes because the deaths from nuclear power to humans is less than five per year so far even with Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima....
At least they won't get cancer (Score:1)
People Avoided Fukishima and Chernobyl (Score:2)
Do they have a video ... (Score:2)
... of the common house cat swimming out there around the turbines and catching birds?
Thought so ...
new study shows (Score:2)
New study shows exactly what we wanted it to.
Re:Even if... (Score:4, Interesting)
Note that in that last article it's Greenpeace covering for windmill companies, the same group that prevented us from building out more nuclear plants for decades. The larger companies that claim to support a clear Earth have long been corrupted and greenwash the massive damage that many aspects of "clean" energy to date leave on the environment.
Even the founders of Greenpeace seeks to put distance between themselves and the current organization. Greenpeace was founded to protest nuclear weapons, not nuclear power. The founders are actually very pro nuclear power and see it as the most viable option to combat climate change.
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You can try to imagine the millions of dead that would be the casualties of a single modern nuclear attack, but no one looks at the millions who didn't die in conventional warfare because no one will attack a nuclear power.
Re:Even if... (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you under the impression that nuclear doesn't kill anything?
Obtaining uranium is far from squeaky clean. It requires processing mountains of ore, which then has a lot of processing done on it. The machines that do it don't run on nuclear power, they run on gas and diesel. Construction of nuclear powerplants is also a pretty serious endeavor, so far done with fossil fuel powered equipment.
There's no such thing as a perfectly clean power source. At this point no matter what we do, something is going to die, or get poisoned. What we get to pick is how much of that is going to happen.
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never mind the damage to the ecosystem dumping all that hot water into rivers does.
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The water is not boiling, it is lightly warmer. No. Rivers and streams by Nuclear Plants are fine.
No it is not fine. It kills the fish.
And cyano bacteria do not count as a beneficial add on to "bio diversity".
Perhaps you should read a bit about the top. Or stay dumb, as you wish. But refrain to show how dumb you are on the internet at least.
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The operation of nuclear power plants, like all large scale industrial operations, has a negative effect on wildlife in the area. That includes birds, and often fish and other aquatic life too.
You can argue that overall it's better than the alternatives, because it's not like we are going to stop demanding that energy any time soon, but various estimates for nuclear power suggests about the same or more birds are killed, compared to wind.
It's much worse for other wildlife, especially aquatic. Even if the pl
Re:Even if... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Bugs can all die. Fuck those guys.
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In response to the anti-nuclear power FUD spread by the Sierra Club, GreenPeace, et al., who were paid to do so by the petroleum industry [environmen...ogress.org], President Carter proposed using two energy sources.
These were Solar Power (a nascent industry that was not efficient enough to provide significant amounts of power), and COAL [bloomberg.com]
Just a few points on how dirty coal power generation is:
1. Coal exhaust contains Mercury a dangerous pollutant that, as a result has harmed millions of Americans [bnl.gov]
2. Coal exhaust releases Uranium with [scientificamerican.com]
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Coal indeed sucks a lot, and nuclear is indeed much better. But the argument being made appeared to be that somehow nuclear manages not to kill anything, which is not true either.
Nuclear is unfortunately unlikely to work because even though ecologically it's much better than coal, and the safety is good, it's not really economically viable.
IMO, supporting nuclear on web forums is a lost cause. Yeah, it got screwed over by Greenpeace and the like. Yeah, it's a fine technology that can be used safely. But pas
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FYI, the reason that nuclear is expensive are the FUD and nuisance lawsuits filed on the behalf of oil companies by "environmental" groups
This can all go away with laws directed against such lawsuits. It will require some guts though, and specifically exposure of oil company funded PACs supporting GOP politicians
It is not a done deal, expect some movement on it before 2024
btw, that is some mediocre FUD you are pushing. You should not expect anybody here who is not already on team useful idiot to support it
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I don't see how nuclear can be economically competitive simply based on what it's made of.
Nuclear requires specialty components made from special materials, with special certifications. It requires redundancy, monitoring and backup plans. And it's not mass-manufacturing friendly. That's all in the "nuclear" portion of the plant, and has nothing to do with any lawsuits. You need a containment building. You need a reactor vessel. You need various systems to monitor every aspect of the system, and to take care
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You are funny, you say funny things
>>Nuclear requires specialty components made from special materials, with special certifications.
Are you suggesting that solar cells are not specialty components, or high power magnets for windmills? Are these things just falling out of the sky with no certifications to reliability?
>>You need a containment building. You need a reactor vessel. You need various systems to monitor every aspect of the system, and to take care of what if X fails. All of that stuff i
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In comparison to nuclear, no, solar cells are not specialty components. They're available on the mass market by the million. You can buy them on Amazon or AliExpress from multiple manufacturers without any paperwork. Any random joe can put solar on their roof by making a few phone calls.
Inverters and other auxiliary componen
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>>Are you familiar with arithmetic? Having to own a generator and ensuring it's not vulnerable to flooding tends to cost more money than not having to own one at all.
Like I said, Dunning-Kruger [wikipedia.org], look it up
Are you familiar with the terms Energy Density [wikipedia.org] and Average Capacity [wikipedia.org]?
Due to the high Energy Density of nuclear power and low average capacity of wind and solar power, the equivalent needed area for wind or solar to match a 1.3 square mile 1GW nuclear power plant is roughly 300 sq miles and 60 sq miles [nei.org]
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Very simply: By not caring at all. See, as a prospective owner of a power plant, my only concern is the profitability of my own business. The grid as a whole is someone else's problem.
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Please explain how you are going to handle such large land area demands in densely populated areas, or transmit power from the open areas of the mid-west to the densely populated areas on the coast where people need power?
And why would he need to explain that?
It was not the topic.
Good luck building a nuclear plant in densely populated areas in our times.
Perhaps YOU should read up about Denis-Krueger, dumbass.
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Fukushima's failure was due to the board of directors refusing to listen to their own engineers and placing the diesel generator fuel supply within a potential flood plain.
Not really, as the quake destroyed the internal cooling system. The fact that the back up generators did not work did not really add anything to the catastrophe.
Are you familiar with Dunning-Kreuger? Perhaps you should read up on this, as it not meaning what you want to imply it means.
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If thats the case why is not affecting the wind and solar farms to the same degree.
Nuclear is virtually always over budget, late and the power produced is expensive and when the profits vs maintenance comes around, the nuclear sites end up being subsidised by the tax payer because the companies walk away once the profits go or it need decommisioning.
an example:- B [thebulletin.org]
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FYI, the reason that nuclear is expensive are the FUD and nuisance lawsuits filed on the behalf of oil companies by "environmental" groups
Those lawsuits costs the constructors, investors and future owners of the plants exactly: nothing.
You are an idiot.
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Are you under the impression that nuclear doesn't kill anything?
Over the entire lifecycle nuclear power kills less people per unit generated than any other power source. You say uranium mining is dangerous, yeah so is coal mining, and we need to do a metric fuck-ton more of the latter to achieve the same unit of energy.
There's no such thing as perfect energy, there's only various sliding scales of "best" for a given metric, and nuclear tops *some* of those scales (they fail miserably on cost, complexity, and operational difficulty).
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Tell us again how humans have natural immunity to COVID, SuperKendall. Your conspiratorial, tribalist insights never get old...or welcome.
It's a shame the Republican Party doesn't number its talking points, it could save you so much typing. Almost "magical".
"Truly Greenpeace will be regarded in the future as one of histories greatest monsters, right up there with Pol-Pot and Stalin."
Great comparison, considering your heroes are best compared to Hitler.
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Even if seabirds are somehow magically better able to avoid windmills than land based birds , what about the whales ?
I'm pretty sure that whales won't swim into wind turbine blades*.
* unless they are sperm whales falling from a great height alongside a bowl of petunias
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Haven't you heard, the most recent FUD against off shore wind power generation is that whales are too stupid to navigate around the foundations and will bump their heads on them [cbsnews.com]
Off course, this is NIMBY handwaving, and correlation does not prove causation [usatoday.com], but expect more of this as the fossil fuel industries seek to reduce the impact on profits due to use of alternate energy source