Wind Farms

[jack]

People constantly refer to "unsightly" wind farms. The expected response is that they may be necessary. But simply saying "unsightly" bullies me into conceding the underlying premise, that they are ugly, and the choice is between beauty and necessity.

But now I question that. I certainly understand that if there's existing landscape which is really beautiful, you may not want large industrial changes. Especially if they're loud.

But are wind farms ugly? I think they're really pretty. I certainly think they're prettier than any other form of power generation I can think of. The best alternatives I can think of are some reservoirs. And I can imagine solar panels _could_ be pretty, but I've never really seen them used artistically.

If I had to dot the landscape with something, I think wind farms would be a good candidate. Big, graceful, elegant, white, like large benevolent tripods or triffids.

After all, deforestation, stone walls, hedgerows and windmills were all driven by necessity, not artistry, but now are seen as a quintessential part of the landscape. Even pylons, if never pretty, are commonly accepted.

The other question, is why was I embarrassed to say this? I think because "wind farms are ugly" is such a common part of the dialogue, but seemed so wrong to me, I assumed there must be something important I was missing, not that I might legitimately disagree.

Comments

[naath]

I'd like to see the A14 demolished. But it's not going to happen.

We love our luxuries of modern life too much to give them up; so we need solutions that aren't going to run out or kill us all.

[gerald_duck]

If the A14 was demolished, the knock-on effects on house prices and the prices of goods in shops would likely mean you couldn't afford to live in Cambridge any more. :-p

And if you don't like the A14, just go half a mile away from it and it'll become invisible.

Meanwhile, given technology is advancing exponentially, abstaining from using fossil fuels in the short term is a mug's game. The risk of them running out before we've had a better idea is essentially nil. (The climate-change argument carries a lot more weight for me than the non-renewable one.)

And even fission reactors are a better idea than wind farms. Their power output is gigantic in relation to their size, you can stick them somewhere that's already butt-ugly without any geographical constraints and spent nuclear fuel will cease to be an issue once we can safely fling the stuff into space. (The current 98% launch success rate is fine for satellites, uncomfortable for humans and out of the question for nuclear waste.)

[redbird]

Should we take the current appearance of the areas around Chernobyl and Fukushima into account in this comparison?

Similsrly, how attractive do you find oil derricks and strip-mined mountainsides? Oil pumps and coal mines have to be put where the fossil fuels are, even if we burn the coal 100 miles away and the oil in a car halfway around the world.

There's definitely a NIMBY aspect to this: wind farms have a higher chance of being near the well-to-do people who are complaining, who have already decided not to live near the coal mines.

[gerald_duck]

Sure. The Chernobyl and Fukushima exclusion zones combine to under 4,000 square kilometres. Nuclear power yields 2,731TWh of electricity per year.

Conversely, the world's 200,000 wind turbines yield 350TWh.

By my maths, that means each wind turbine must ruin less than a quarter of a hectare of countryside to break even against nuclear. To quote Wikipedia, "typical modern wind turbines have diameters of 40 to 90 metres", so wind turbines waste more land per kWh than the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents devastated, even before taking into account aesthetic damage to their environs!

I don't think it's fair to characterise this as a class war. People living in Cambridge are paying twice as much for their houses as I am in my quiet rural village. It's more of a town-versus-country war. And well-to-do people can afford houses in national parks, where there are no wind farms.

Meanwhile, I have a friend who lives on top of a disused coal mine up North. The only oddity is that the houses are all one side of the road and the gardens the other, because the land one side can't support the weight of a building. And there's a curious sinkhole behind one of the trees in the garden. But the land's no desolate wasteland. Even back when mining was taking place, I'm willing to bet it caused less eyesore per kWh than a wind farm.

By my understanding, open-cast mining is normally looking for minerals, not fuel.

[ewx]

The Chernobyl and Fukushima zones might be ideal places to build further nuclear reactors, since they're already blighted... (OK, maybe not Fukushima, since it's prone to earthquakes, tidal waves, North Korean tantrums and giant lizards, but apart from that.) Dumping areas for the waste could perhaps be chosen along the same lines.

[gerald_duck]

It's been 57 years since the first commercial-scale nuclear power station opened, and automation has come on a long, long way in that time.

Computers don't know the meaning of boredom. When it comes to staring at dials all day every day to make sure a nuclear power station doesn't go foom, they will soon be able to beat humans, even if they can't already. At some point public acceptance of robotics will become strong enough that they'd rather see a computer running their nuclear power station than a person.

At that point, I fully agree that sticking more nuclear power stations all around Chernobyl would make a lot of sense.

Sooner or later, of course, we'll have nuclear power stations at the top of every space elevator, scavenging surplus CO² from the atmosphere, replacing it with oxygen and sending coal down to earth. Or, if not that, some similar way of getting power to the planet from space.

[jack]

I think nuclear power stations are probably the best option at the moment: avoid the problems with fossil fuels, but fusion and other renewables aren't ready yet.

Is space really an option for nuclear waste, though? I didn't think I'd heard it suggested seriously -- until we develop past rockets, which doesn't seem to be soon, is the amount of nuclear waste even vaguely affordable to launch into orbit (let alone out of the solar system?)

[gerald_duck]

Well, today, SpaceX will place stuff in low Earth orbit for $2,200/kg. There are 121 million kg of high-level waste hanging about. So right now, it would cost $267bn.

That seems a lot, but we've had a lot of power from that fuel. My maths suggests it comes out at less than 1¢ per kWh. That's smaller than the surcharge customers are charged in the UK for electricity from renewable sources.

It's not being suggested seriously because for the moment there's no need. (And, as I mentioned, because one in fifty rockets full of spent nuclear fuel exploding mid-air would be A Shame.)

The problem can wait. The price will come down.

[jack]

Oh, hm. I still have a feeling that it's likely to be completely impossible, but those figures make it look a lot more plausible than I'd have thought. (On a pure cost basis -- I agree we need to wait for reliability! :))

[ewx]

It occurs to me to wonder how that one in fifty rockets worth of waste compares to Uranium and Thorium in fly ash from the world's current fleet of coal burners.

[hairyears]

This isn't as widely known as it should be: fly ash forms the majority of Britain's low-level nuclear waste, by tonnage and by activity; and I am annoyed at the derogation that allows it to be disposed (or rather distributed) without the expensive precautions that accompany 'real' nuclear waste.

Meanwhile, most of the radioactivity goes up the chimney: and its worth remembering that Uranium and Thorium are a *minor* component of the heavy metal load in a coal furnace exhaust.

[jack]

Hm. I assumed that would still be bad, but maybe it isn't. I've no idea of the relative magnitudes. (Assuming my reading of the article is correct that it's not already including nuclear waste retained on site in the comparison.)