Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 585 posts

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

#451

Post by cosmicgadget »

dboreham wrote: post #41
breakyerself wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously because Donald Trump notoriously hates offshore wind turbines.

Perhaps worth recapping that he hates them due to a specific personal event (the same is true for everything he does, if you dig deep enough to find the reason). In this case he developed a golf resort on the East Coast of Scotland. Meanwhile wind generators were also being deployed immediately offshore. He became enraged that the view from his new development was blighted by the turbines. So it isn't even due to oil…

Much like a certain White House Correspondents' Dinner incident.

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

#452

Post by whatsupdog »

jeltz wrote: post #294
Msurrow wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They were approved before the invasion of Ukraine and before our politicians could see how devestating drones can be. Just because the orange dictator did something does not mean it necessarily was wrong. Even a broken clock is right two times per day.

> dictator

Can we stop overusing this term? It has already lost it's significance. Every political leader you don't agree with is a dictator nowadays. What kind of shitty dictator he is anyways if he is being shut down by courts left and right, and has to shut down the government waiting for the Congress to approve budget? You do know that dictators don't give a fuck about courts and parliaments?

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

#453

Post by janc_ »

nandomrumber wrote: post #421
janc_ wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

I know where the nuclear waste is stored here. Its storage is funded by the government for now (not included in electricity prices) and nobody can actually prove it will be safe for the centuries it will be dangerous.

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

#454

Post by cosmicgadget »

metalman wrote: post #176

drones are invisible to radar.......or clearly russia(or ukrain) would not be dealing with strikes far from the front lines also, hypersonic missles are now a thing, and the hit faster than any radar or interceptor can register but yes if you were worried about Portugal trying a sneak attack, then clearly they would use the wind turbine shielding attack vector from weaponised shipping cans placed on container ships

Drones are regularly intercepted in the Ukraine war. Patriot batteries have intercepted kinzhals.

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

#455

Post by ssl-3 »

hunterpayne wrote: post #412
ssl-3 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know plenty of people personally who can rant about energy prices being high while somehow finding room in the same breath to demonize wind and solar energy and even namedrop whichever foul devil bogeyman it is this week that is said to be the cause of this disjointed trauma that they find so overwhelming. In the next breath, they pick something else from the deck to be upset about: These days, that's usually brown…

"while somehow finding room in the same breath to demonize wind and solar energy " Did you ever consider that all the money spent on expensive renewables is money not spent on cheaper forms of power? Did you ever consider that they are correct and that spending on renewables drives up power costs? Because that's what the data says is happening. Now, I am aware that the amount of FUD on this topic is very different to…

I consider that I'm intertwined in the evolution of a very different friend's very local efforts, with their own hybrid battery-backed grid-tied offline-capable solar power system.

That rig is pretty sweet.

It pays for itself, and in present form and with their present use (wherein: they're not trying to live particularly-efficiently) it is almost entirely capable of keeping them with power even if the grid goes down for an indefinite period.

But, sure: We can talk about games, instead, if what you want to chat about is just games.

What games might you have in mind?

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

#456

Post by somenameforme »

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…

Deployment of radars on the turbine farms themselves? I don't see how that's supposed to be a good idea. In the scenario we're talking about, war, electricity is one of the first targets. And those relatively defenseless turbines themselves are going to be targeted, and not only by air. The enemy getting to knock out military quality radar setups (which tend to be absurdly expensive), at the same time, is just icing on the cake.

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

#457

Post by stinkbeetle »

Tostino wrote: post #231
nailer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There will be an estimated 14 million extra deaths directly attributed to this policy choice: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... 91 million lives were saved over the last two decades. The vast majority of that wasn't "international development" fluff; it was basic survival. We’re talking about stopping tuberculosis, malaria, and starvation. Framing this as getting rid of unwanted "cultura…

[flagged]

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

#458

Post by laurencerowe »

belorn wrote: post #323
laurencerowe wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s quite conceivable that nuclear would be cheaper for a 100% carbon free grid. But I don’t understand how the combination of nuclear, wind and solar would be low cost. Wouldn’t you effectively have to build out enough nuclear to cover still cloudy days at which point your wind and solar is not very useful? That sounds expensive. I suspect we won’t end up building much nuclear because we will already have b…

Green hydrogen is prohibitively expensive and are still way more expensive than using fossil fuels to create hydrogen (called black hydrogen). Burning green hydrogen for electricity when we have yet to make green steel economical viable is not a good idea. Nuclear is still a magnitude cheaper than that. Green hydrogen has to first prove itself that it can become economical viable. One of the biggest test trials for t…

I completely agree that green hydrogen is prohibitively expensive at the moment and it currently makes no sense to burn it for electricity generation. But it will likely be necessary in the future if we are to decarbonise aviation fuel, steel making, fertiliser production, etc. What matters at the end of the day is reducing total carbon emissions for the whole economy.

Intermittent renewables and batteries will get us to 80% carbon free electricity generation for more quickly and cheaply than nuclear. While nuclear might make sense in the very narrow use case of 100% carbon free electricity generation, given we also need to decarbonise non-electrical emitters, it will probably reduce more carbon emissions per dollar spent to instead spend that money on even more cheap intermittent renewable generation capacity and use the excess to generate hydrogen. At the point hydrogen based fuels may make sense to use as a buffer for intermittent electricity generation.

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

#459

Post by nandomrumber »

coryrc wrote: post #289
gardncl wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative to natural gas? Wind, geothermal, or nuclear. Wind is already in the northern half of the country and operates well when winterized, unlike the ones in Texas that broke since they were not winterized during that freeze a while back. Natural gas and fossil fuels are not our only options, they are the easiest options.

It's also like to see a comparison to giving people/companies a discount if they have alternative methods of heating for 3 weeks and agree to be powered off. Places like hospitals and universities often have generators and do this. Sand "batteries" (aka electric resistive heaters in a few tons of sand heated to 1000°C) might be cost-effective if standardized. You keep it insulated and hot until the power goes out, th…

You’re ok if governments give up and simply tell consumers “you deal with it”?

Places like hospitals have back up in case the mains goes out. It’s no longer a back up if used as the primary supply.

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

#460

Post by shimman »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #152
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since 2001 at least.

Since WWII and the bomb. See Bomb Power by Garry Wills

Behind the Bastards had a great series about this too (it was either that book, or another).
Post reply on HN