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US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

arstechnica.com

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

#421

Post by nandomrumber »

janc_ wrote: post #394
Retric wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of pure operating costs ignoring everything else it can look good vs other sources that include all costs. However, ‘Paid off nuclear’ in terms of construction costs still needs to worry about decommissioning, and their maintenance costs keep increasing every year. Several power plants have looked at going offline for potentially years and spending billions at around year 40 to get to year ~60 as not being w…

And don't forget the cost of storing nuclear waste for the next 10000 years, which is never included in the "cost of nuclear".

What nuclear waste? Where is it?

Somebody must be able to point to the nuclear waste by now. There it is, waving frantically in panic, the nuclear waste! It’s coming right for us!

Something is either highly radioactive for a short amount of time, or not very radioactive for a long amount of time.

But never both highly radioactive and for a long time.

In reality, there is so little nuclear waste that most of it has mostly been stored on site where it was generated, taking up less space than any grid scale solar or wind.

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

#422

Post by xp84 »

vablings wrote: post #121
gardncl wrote: post #106

Earlier 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…

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…

You sound like you know a lot, I’m curious if there’s a case to be made that instead of batteries that take a ton of minerals and need to be replaced, instead using the excess energy to store energy by e.g. pumping water to higher altitudes and letting it generate electricity on the way down later when needed.

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

#423

Post by cyberax »

gardncl wrote: post #205
cyberax wrote: post #182

Earlier 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/…

> That is not correct, and doesn't even pass the sniff test.

These are numbers from the known far-right organization....err... Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-o...

> Solar is deployed at ~$2/watt and you're saying batteries are increasing that cost 2.5x to 10x?

Exactly. And you need closer to 100x for some locations (Germany) for the solar to be reliable enough.

Solar is _very_ cheap when you don't care about reliability, and impossible otherwise. Wind is a bit more nuanced, but in general has a similar story.

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

#424

Post by nandomrumber »

immibis wrote: post #344
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…

Is there a comparison of how much nuclear costs versus the number of cities destroyed per year? Say, if we allow 1 meltdown per year does it become comparable to solar or does it require 10 meltdowns per year?

How many cities per year does solar destroy?

What?

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

#425

Post by politician »

Global human populations are in decline; fossil fuel use will decline along with us.

If humans no longer use as much carbon (because they no longer exist in large numbers), doesn’t that alone adequately address the climate change concerns? Does it really make sense to overhaul the global energy generation infrastructure given these conditions?

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

#426

Post by janc_ »

marcosdumay wrote: post #167
dlt713705 wrote: post #62

Next step is invade Venezuela and pump as much oil as possible

The theory that the US government does those wars to keep oil prices high fits the timing way better than the opposite. I still thinks it's missing important details, but the US making wars to get more oil doesn't fit reality at all.

Venezuelan oil is more about US refineries that can only use very heavy oil, and US wells for such oil running out. Those refineries decided it is cheaper to bribe Trump than to invest into converting their factories. They are using US tax payer dolars (in a war with Venezuela) to avoid having to invest into their own conpanies.

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

#427

Post by scoofy »

hammock wrote: post #395
scoofy wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: https://x.com/michaeljburry/status/2002285483158569147

Why is whatever Michael Burry’s opinion is particularly notable?

The argument, not the man is important.

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

#428

Post by defrost »

politician wrote: post #425

Global human populations are in decline; fossil fuel use will decline along with us. If humans no longer use as much carbon (because they no longer exist in large numbers), doesn’t that alone adequately address the climate change concerns? Does it really make sense to overhaul the global energy generation infrastructure given these conditions?

> Global human populations are in decline; fossil fuel use will decline along with us.

That doesn't follow as the per capita consumption trends are still steadily increasing ... large numbers of people across the planet barely using any resources is far less of a problem than substantially fewer people all consuming like central north americans (which is increasingly the aspiration goal).

> doesn’t that alone adequately address the climate change concerns?

No.

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already problematic and will remain there for hundreds of years (unless removed).

The amount added each year by human activity is still increasing .. it needs to stop increasing, and to fall substantiatly, and probably something done about extraction or other mitigation.

> Does it really make sense to overhaul the global energy generation infrastructure

Yes .. and on the plus side that's already happening thanks to China, the EU, past US administrations, etc. THe current US administration isn't helping .. they appear to be doing very much the opposite of helping given the cosy relationship with existing fossil fuel companies.

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

#429

Post by dalyons »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #242

Is there a similar ostensible classified reason why OCO-2 and OCO-3 are requested to shut down operations? 700+ M invested in space based observatories with ~ 15M yearly operating cost. Just doesn't make sense to disable perfectly working observatories to save less than ~75M in a timespan of 5 years while losing a 700+M investment.

The reason is observatories are woke, apparently

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

#430

Post by dalyons »

Moldoteck wrote: post #65
lateforwork wrote: post #8

The Saudis have enormous influence over Trump through business deals. So does Qatar through the jet they gifted Trump, and the UAE through crypto deals. These oil rich countries are no fans of clean energy. Is it merely coincidence, then, that Trump is canceling wind and solar projects in the United States? Previously Trump also canceled the largest solar project in the United States. Known as Esmeralda 7, the projec…

not just that. Fossils are/were the guarantee of US dollar dominance. Huge $ are made purely by the fact most fossils transactions are in $. It's not in the interest of US to reduce the influence of fossils, especially now when it's the biggest exporter. Trump is ... trump... his actions can be anyway between personal biased hate or US strategical decision...

It’s always personal hate, or personal grift. There is no strategy here
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