US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified • Hacker News Board

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#211

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 9:51 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #208

dragonwriter wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can be effectively renewable for all practical purposes, but there's an aversion to breeder reactors. Breeder reactors reduce long-term waste issues, but they don't make nuclear renewable.

They push the timeline out so far that it's effectively renewable. The sun will burn out at some point, too, but we don't say solar is non-renewable.

We don't say solar is non-renewable because using every single available bit of solar today has no impact on the solar energy available tomorrow. This is not true of nuclear, even if you increase the total quantity of available fission-derived energy by 50 or 100 or whatever the outer estimate is for breeder reactors compared to non-breeder fission.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#212

Post by exabrial » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 9:51 PM UTC

I actually believe the radar surveillance excuse (on a technicalities only), if that's what this is going to come down to. The ocean is a big empty place and prime for picking up radar reflections as the background is pretty quiet.

However... how on earth was this not identified like 10 years ago way before these projects were even started? Seems pretty obvious in hindsight.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#213

Post by standardUser » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 9:52 PM UTC

tony_cannistra wrote: post #21

I looked into this a little because I was curious. I guess the ostensible "national security" rationale (which clearly is not the only reason!) for this is that turbines severely degrade the utility of radar surveillance along the coastlines. This is particularly relevant for low-altitude incursions and drones. Now, other large governments (UK) have resolved this in several ways, including the deployment of additiona…

That you could come up with one reasonable-sounding explanation while they offered nothing makes me wonder if the administration is too lazy, or too inept.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#214

Post by sl_convertible » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

tony_cannistra wrote: post #21

I looked into this a little because I was curious. I guess the ostensible "national security" rationale (which clearly is not the only reason!) for this is that turbines severely degrade the utility of radar surveillance along the coastlines. This is particularly relevant for low-altitude incursions and drones. Now, other large governments (UK) have resolved this in several ways, including the deployment of additiona…

Also look at how defensible having your power generation outside your coastline is. This is creating a big vulnerability in your power grid.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#215

Post by ta9000 » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

consumer451 wrote: post #180

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Midterms are coming up next year.

Don't worry, there is a plan. CNN will be in new hands by that point. Reddit's r/all will be, or already is gone from the app's defaults, and much more to come!

I don’t even know liberals that watch CNN. It’s already irrelevant.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#216

Post by speed_spread » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 9:57 PM UTC

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #67

This is dumb. We are in the midst of an energy shortage that will only get worse. Between MAGA blocking wind and Progressives blocking nuclear, the US is left with solar and carbon. Solar is fine, but it needs a 24/7 base. Unfortunately it increasingly appears that base will remain carbon.

> energy shortage that will only get worse

Worse? An energy shortage is an opportunity to increase prices and make more money! Think about the hyuge profits!

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#217

Post by fasterik » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 9:58 PM UTC

gardncl wrote: post #106

gregbot wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BPA is a federal agency. The Trump administration has been very supportive of zero carbon nuclear i believe they have promised $80 billion dollars to build new nuclear plants. Staff cuts dont mean they oppose using those energy sources.

US deploys nuclear energy at over $10/watt meanwhile solar and wind are deployed around $2/watt (for levelized cost of electricity) including battery storage which means they are deployed for roughly the same cost as natural gas (so, direct competitors). Don't let comments like this fool you, nuclear is far from being competitive with natural gas. Even in countries like south korea that can deploy nuclear the cheapes…

This comment is also misleading. First, $/watt is not how levelized cost of electricity is measured, you need to use $/watt-hour (or more commonly, $/MWh) over the lifetime of the project. By definition, levelized cost of electricity does not include storage.

The cost is also affected by the percent of energy coming from wind+solar+batteries vs. from natural gas. Wind+solar+batteries are cheap when they are used to supplement natural gas. If they were supplying 95% of generation (Levelized Full System Cost of Electricity 95%, LFSCOE-95), then the price of wind+solar+batteries would be $97/MWh compared to $37/MWh for gas, and $96/MWh for nuclear. For LFSCOE-100, the price of wind+solar+batteries increases to $225/MWh, compared to $122/MWh for nuclear and $40/MWh for natural gas.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

So yes, natural gas is much cheaper than nuclear. But that doesn't mean that nuclear shouldn't play a large role going forward. The moral of the story is that the price of energy is complicated. It's likely that a combination of nuclear, wind, solar, and battery backup would be the best option in terms of price and carbon emissions.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#218

Post by SamDc73 » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 9:58 PM UTC

Yes, turbine blades can introduce radar clutter and affect certain military systems; but this has been know since the 1990s and has been engineered around for decades.

China, the UK, Germany, and Denmark operate gigawatts of offshore wind in close proximity to military-grade and NATO air-defense radar without much issue...

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#219

Post by psunavy03 » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 10:00 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #126

vablings wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is insane levels of expensive likely due to overregulation. It is important for base load power and overnight power and should always be the backing of the grid frequency. Total loss of grid frequency is much more difficult to recover from with synthetic inertia. A healthy grid should have all of the following - Nuclear base load that keeps the grid stable and pick up from low solar - Gas plants for surge pow…

> overregulation. Americans love to remove regulation to make things cheaper (and to enable capitalistic monopolies, but that's a different matter), then cry when people die (or worse). Some things needs to be regulated, esp. if mistakes are costly to the planet and/or people on the said planet. So yes, nuclear should be regulated, and even overregulated to keep it safe. We have seen what Boeing has become when it's…

This entire comment is conflating "overregulation" with "no regulation" when these are not at all the same things.

Oh, and with an extra seasoning of Murica Bad on the side.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#220

Post by DFHippie » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 10:01 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #166

Herring wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

He is going to do to America the same thing he had done to his companies - destroy it. Unfortunately, he fails upwards, so he will take over the whole world and then destroy it all.

He will die pretty soon. He's just the first stage of the rocket. He thinks he's a pharaoh letting a thousand pyramids bloom, but he's expendable. He'll be gone. People will chisel his name off the monuments he's vandalized. But the people who granted him power like what he's doing. He's somebody's monkey. The hollowing out of the US and the world order that produced western prosperity and security will continue. The people who call the tune to which he dances will call tunes for the next monkey.