Comments on: Mission Impossible

By: David Gillies

David Gillies — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:45:59 +0000

“I have a feeling that nuclear is more economical per watt than wind is on usage of steel and concrete.”

Plus, it’s on ALL THE TIME, which is why it is called ‘baseload power’.

By: Bonus Tim Worstall Stupidity Watch « Alternate Seat of TYR

Bonus Tim Worstall Stupidity Watch « Alternate Seat of TYR — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:08:28 +0000

[...] energy, engineering, fisking, ideology, snark, sustainable, wankers, whingeing, wind power Shorter Tim, Energy Edition: Commodity prices always come down in the end; except when I really want the price of steel to stay [...]

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:35:23 +0000

Timmeh, what is wrong with this argument? Wind turbine projects are more expensive than originally forecast because the industry is running at capacity and steel is expensive. Also, planning permission is a problem.

Therefore, we should build nuclear power stations. Which consist of HALF A MILLION TONNES OF STEEL-REINFORCED CONCRETE around a really big containment vessel made of really expensive high quality STEEL. Which are made by a total of three or so companies worldwide. And which are subject to planning protests that make anything over wind look like a school council meeting.

This is just incredibly stupid and dishonest, isn’t it? Further, you live in Portugal, which is installing wind power to beat the band, and which has not experienced any of the evil consequences (chickens stop laying! the skies darken! the rain goes chubby!) you regularly promise.

Tim adds: For your next piece of numerical geekery please tell us how much power we get per thousand tonnes of steel and thousand tonnes of concrete. If those indeed are the limitations, then we want to use the technology which is most efficient with those materials, do we not?

I have a feeling that nuclear is more economical per watt than wind is on usage of steel and concrete.

By: Roger Thornhill

Roger Thornhill — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:40:48 +0000

The greenies want power cuts. They WANT us to live by tallow candles in a wattle hut.

By: dearieme

dearieme — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 12:51:10 +0000

No, Chris, if you had that the first thing you’d do would be to build cross-connections between those mini-grids. That’s why the Australians have gone to some expense to link the grids of different states.

By: Chris Gilmour

Chris Gilmour — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:34:32 +0000

Would it help if there wasn’t just one National Grid, like if there were smaller local electricity networks running in parallel, powered by private power stations that weren’t so affected by national energy problems.

By: Kit

Kit — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 09:18:41 +0000

On the plus side without a functioning National Grid and rolling brown outs we may be on target to hit the 80% emissions target.