Oh no! look Trump is doing exactly what he promised and everyone is shocked, again
https://www.project2025.observer/en?agencies=Dept.+of+Energy
US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
221–230 of 585 posts
Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
#222I 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…
The problem is that we have a Congress that cares more about in-group loyalty than they do about idiocy.
Meanwhile, we even have Michael Burry pointing out the obvious: we're losing to China because we're not building up every bit of energy capacity that we can. But, sure, why not just ban windfarms in a location perfectly suited to them:
Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
#223I 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.
Youre taking the bait.
Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 s…
My comment is not misleading, you're just using outdated data from 2022.
Sure, happy to quibble over units.
The most recent mid-2025 data is from lazard here, it echos exactly what I'm saying.
Website: https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e...
PDF of report: https://www.lazard.com/media/5tlbhyla/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...
Go to page 8 of that PDF and you will see these ranges for LCOE:
* Solar $38-$78/MWh
* Solar + battery $50-131/MWh
* Gas combined cycle (cheapest fossil fuel) $48-107/MWh
Yes, we are finally at price parity for the technologies.
Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Based on the math in this paper[1] there's enough uranium floating around to keep the planet running on the order of hundreds of millions of years at modern energy consumption levels. The price of the material would go up compared to what it costs currently, but the raw material costs are a small fraction of bottom line anyway.
[1] http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/...
Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> US deploys nuclear energy at over $10/watt meanwhile solar and wind are deployed around $2/watt (for levelized cost of electricity) That's when storage is not considered. Once storage is factored in, the LCOE becomes anywhere between $5 to $20. In the US, solar makes a lot of sense in the southern states, less sense in Midwest and WA. That being said, the US still has plenty of capacity to accommodate more "sewer g…
That is not correct, and doesn't even pass the sniff test. Solar is deployed at ~$2/watt and you're saying batteries are increasing that cost 2.5x to 10x? So, someone installing a home battery system is paying up to 10x their solar install cost to also have battery backup? No way. Also, battery tech continues to improve rapidly, we're seeing breakthroughs like this rapidly reduce the price: https://spectrum.ieee.org/…
As usual, explain how you're going to power heat pumps in the Northern half of the country during a 3 week bomb cyclone. There are answers and they cost money.
The only answer we're using is to build 1:1 natural gas capability for solar, which is roughly double the cost. That's a solution, but it needs to be accounted for when comparing options.
Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
#227Earlier 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…
Or maybe it's expensive because it doesn't scale. The per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high, making it hard to get economies of scale in building more of them. And if we /do/ hit economies of scale, uranium availability is likely to become a problem...
> The per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high, making it hard to get economies of scale in building more of them.
I disagree. building big infrastructure projects always scales well. As stated by the project managers at Hinkley Point C (the most expensive nuclear reactor ever) they estimate that build times and cost will be significantly reduced for the second reactor due to the knowledge and expertise baked into the workforce. Frances nuclear revolution during the 1972 oil crisis also shows the same thing with construction cost getting lower the more reactors built.
There are other reactor designs that do not use uranium that have been tested and hypothesized.
Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if it is a pretense, it is pretty obvious that this would allow ship-borne drones to use the wind farms as an effective screen. Putting radar platforms beyond the wind farms that are as capable as the existing land-based radars would be quite expensive in both capex and opex. Some of the existing land-based radars would likely need to be moved, ideally. No one was really thinking about this type of threat a deca…
The construction on some of these windmill farms started years ago. Before that permits & legal has been in the works for a long time. This surely included security clearances. The orange shrimp pulling the “national security” card now, on the same day as he also creates a new Greenland debacle, is very clearly simply an attempt to strong arm the danish govt into Greenland concessions (in turn simply to please his fr…
This reply doesn't address any core point.
When these wind farms were permitted many years ago, shipborne drones were not part of the threat matrix. It was considered purely hypothetical even a decade ago because it was not an imminent capability for any country even though e.g. the US DoD had studied it. In the last few years shipborne drones have emerged very quickly as a substantial practical threat, largely due to the Russia/Ukraine war. Governments around the world are struggling to adapt to this new reality because none of their naval systems are designed under this assumption.
Whether or not this is convenient for Trump doesn't take away from the reality of the security implications.
Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 s…
My comment is not misleading, you're just using outdated data from 2022. Sure, happy to quibble over units. The most recent mid-2025 data is from lazard here, it echos exactly what I'm saying. Website: https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e... PDF of report: https://www.lazard.com/media/5tlbhyla/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... Go to page 8 of that PDF and you will see these ranges for LCOE: * Solar $3…
I didn't disagree that there is price parity for the levelized cost. There is still not price parity for levelized full system cost. If we used wind and solar for 95-100% of generation, the price would be much higher.
My point is not that we can or should replace wind and solar with nuclear. It's that it is far cheaper to use a combination of nuclear, wind, and solar than it is to use 100% wind and solar.
Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
#230Earlier 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…
Or maybe it's expensive because it doesn't scale. The per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high, making it hard to get economies of scale in building more of them. And if we /do/ hit economies of scale, uranium availability is likely to become a problem...
> per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high
Unless you are the US Navy. It probably helps that they churn out dozens of the same few cookie-cutter designs without needing permission from NIMBYs.