Windpower woes
[Hat tip: Instapundit]
Wind power sounds like a wonderful thing, a renewable resource that’s clean and available and could help wean us off our dependence on fossil fuels from sketchy foreign countries. All that’s needed is the will to do it, and to fight the efforts of Big Oil and/or Big Coal and/or Big Evil Fill-In-the-Blanks to block it.
That’s the story, anyway. But when one looks at reality, there are a few problems with the widespread use of wind power, as the starry-eyed advocates of its use in Europe are discovering:
Germany is being horribly caught out by precisely the same delusion about renewable energy that our own [British] politicians have fallen for. Like all enthusiasts for “free, clean, renewable electricity”, they overlook the fatal implications of the fact that wind speeds and sunlight constantly vary. They are taken in by the wind industry’s trick of vastly exaggerating the usefulness of wind farms by talking in terms of their “capacity”, hiding the fact that their actual output will waver between 100 per cent of capacity and zero. In Britain it averages around 25 per cent; in Germany it is lower, just 17 per cent.
The more a country depends on such sources of energy, the more there will arise ”“ as Germany is discovering ”“ two massive technical problems. One is that it becomes incredibly difficult to maintain a consistent supply of power to the grid, when that wildly fluctuating renewable output has to be balanced by input from conventional power stations. The other is that, to keep that back-up constantly available can require fossil-fuel power plants to run much of the time very inefficiently and expensively (incidentally chucking out so much more “carbon” than normal that it negates any supposed CO2 savings from the wind)…
Thanks to a flood of subsidies unleashed by Angela Merkel’s government, renewable capacity has risen still further (solar, for instance, by 43 per cent). This makes it so difficult to keep the grid balanced that it is permanently at risk of power failures. (When the power to one Hamburg aluminium factory failed recently, for only a fraction of a second, it shut down the plant, causing serious damage.) Energy-intensive industries are having to install their own generators, or are looking to leave Germany altogether.
The law of unintended consequences has not been suspended to accommodate good intentions.
The article goes on to state:
…[A] mighty battle is now developing in Germany between green fantasists and practical realists. Because renewable energy must by law have priority in supplying the grid, the owners of conventional power stations, finding they have to run plants unprofitably, are so angry that they are threatening to close many of them down. The government response, astonishingly, has been to propose a new law forcing them to continue running their plants at a loss.
Sound familiar? Sound a bit like our very own president? As I wrote in November of 2008 [please read the whole thing]:
Rather than banning new coal plants de jure, [Obama] plans to drive them out of business de facto, because the environmental requirements of his policies would be so stringent that new plants would be unable to comply and the penalties for noncompliance would be catastrophic. In other words,, any new plants would have to pay penalties so Draconian that they would be bankrupted””and the listener is left to wonder whether even older plants might be required to retrofit in order to comply, and be forced out of business as well.
Obama’s plan is that market forces would dictate that, as new coal production would become impossible, people would be forced to quickly fill in for the lack of power by developing the wonderfully clean alternative sources of energy that he is so sure would be available if only the will were there.
Having Obama as president is a little like playing Whac-a-Mole. Each terrible policy and each new crisis distracts us momentarily (or longer) from the others. But in a second Obama term, expect him to focus on trying to get the US to follow down Europe’s energy path in this respect—except I very much doubt he’ll share their reluctant acceptance of nuclear power.
[NOTE: I referenced Europe’s “reluctant acceptance of nuclear power,” but when I looked it up just now I found that Europe has been shying away from nuclear power lately [emphasis mine]:
Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Germany has permanently shut down eight of its reactors and pledged to close the rest by 2022. The Italians have voted overwhelmingly to keep their country non-nuclear. Switzerland and Spain have banned the construction of new reactors. Belgium is considering phasing out its nuclear plants, perhaps as early as 2015. Although France is frequently heralded as a nuclear commercial model for the world, and nuclear power was supported by Nicolas Sarkozy, President-Elect Frané§ois Hollande has proposed cutting nuclear power’s electricity contribution by more than a third by 2025.
Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann expects anti-nuclear petition drives to start in at least six European Union countries in 2012 in an effort to have the EU abandon nuclear power.
So we see that the coverage of the Fukushima incident has borne the desired fruit (if you’re interested in what I wrote about Fukushima around the time it was happening, see this).
So, was Fukushima a “disaster”? Let’s take a look at the facts:
Major news source reporting at least 2 TEPCO employees confirmed dead [at the plant] from “disaster conditions” following the earthquake. “The two workers, aged 21 and 24, sustained multiple external injuries and were believed to have died from blood loss, TEPCO said. Their bodies were decontaminated as radiation has been spewing from the plant for three weeks.
45 patients were reported dead after the evacuation of a hospital in Futaba due to lack of food, water and medical care as evacuation was delayed by three days.
The Associated Press reported that fourteen senior citizens died after being moved from their hospital which was in the Fukushima plant evacuation zone.
On 14 April 2011, it was reported that the oldest resident of Iitate, a 102-year-old, committed suicide rather than to leave following the announcement of his village’s evacuation.
According to the Japanese Government, over 160,000 people in the general population were screened in March 2011 for radiation exposure and no case was found which affects health. Thirty workers conducting operations at the plant had exposure levels greater than 100 mSv.
In April 2011, the United States Department of Energy published projections of the radiation risks over the next year for people living in the neighborhood of the plant. Potential exposure could exceed 20 mSv/year (2 rems/year) in some areas up to 50 kilometers from the plant. That is the level at which relocation would be considered in the USA, and it is a level that could cause roughly one extra cancer case in 500 young adults. Natural radiation levels are higher in some part of the world than the projected level mentioned above, and about 4 people out of 10 can be expected to develop cancer without exposure to radiation. Further, the radiation exposure resulting from the accident for most people living in Fukushima is so small compared to background radiation that it may be impossible to find statistically significant evidence of increases in cancer.
That will not stop them from trying.
As I wrote shortly after the Fukushima incident, the definition of “disaster” has become quite strategic lately:
But what is the definition of a disaster these days? Surely, by any reasonable measure, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami qualify as an enormous disaster. The death toll will run into tens of thousands and perhaps even a hundred thousand or so before the work of rescue and discovery is over [the actual toll was 15,870 deaths, 6,114 injured, and 2,814 people missing], and the rebuilding will take years and eat up enormous amounts of money. The psychological toll on Japan is hard to overestimate, although the people are remarkably resilient. But in an instant, whole villages were wiped away, and the shock must be profound. It’s frightening even to view it from afar, reduced to a small computer or TV image.
But what of the nuclear power plant problems? That is a projected disaster, a feared and dreaded one. The word “meltdown” is another that’s constantly used in news stories as a likely possibility, and it conjures up images of something cataclysmic. The specter of Chernobyl is raised again and again, even though that plant’s design was profoundly different in critical ways.
As for Chernobyl itself—well, even that larger nuclear disaster wasn’t quite as it’s been portrayed:
Chernobyl was by far the worst accident in the history of nuclear plants, but the initial incident claimed 57 lives. This is tragic and horrible, but not usually the sort of thing that enters into “disaster” territory, if sheer numbers are the measure.
But what of its residual long-term effects? The main Wiki article on the subject notes, “Estimates of the total number of deaths attributable to the accident vary enormously, from possibly 4,000 to close to a million.” That would certainly constitute a disaster—but are those figures correct?
They do not appear to be. Chernobyl is not only a word that strikes fear into the heart, but it is one of the most-studied environmental incidents ever in terms of its possible effects. The following is what UNSCEAR, the United Nations Scientific Committee of the Effects of Atomic Radiation, has learned over the twenty-five years since Chernobyl occurred:
Among the residents of Belaruss 09, the Russian Federation and Ukraine there had been, up to 2002, about 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, and more cases are to be expected during the next decades. Notwithstanding problems associated with screening, many of those cancers were most likely caused by radiation exposures shortly after the accident. Apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure. The risk of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to its short latency time, does not appear to be elevated. Although those most highly exposed individuals are at an increased risk of radiation-associated effects, the great majority of the population is not likely to experience serious health consequences as a result of radiation from the Chernobyl accident. Many other health problems have been noted in the populations that are not related to radiation exposure.
Wiki also notes that “thyroid cancer is generally treatable. With proper treatment, the five-year survival rate of thyroid cancer is 96%, and 92% after 30 years.” This is not to make light of the stress of having a child thus diagnosed, but in general we can say that the number of additional deaths beyond the original 57 that could be attributable to Chernobyl is small. We can be fairly certain of this because there has been no lack of effort to find them, and no dearth of studies that would be likely to have detected them if they had existed.
But such reports have not eradicated the idea that Chernobyl was a dreadful disaster that caused an enormous number of deaths. For example, Greenpeace jumped into the arena, speculating so wildly based on suspect and non-peer-reviewed studies that even Gregory Hé¤rtl, a spokesman for WHO, “expressed concern that the conclusions were motivated by ideology.”
There is little doubt that the accident had a negative effect on the flora and fauna in the area. But again, it was less than in the popular imagination.
Speaking of imagination: paradoxically, that is what has been responsible for a fair amount of harm. Not only has fear of nuclear power reduced our willingness to build nuclear power plants and continued the world’s dependency on imported oil from the Middle East and all its attendant woes, but this fear may have had an indirectly deleterious effect on the emotional health of the population around Chernobyl:
It also concluded that a greater risk than the long-term effects of radiation exposure is the risk to mental health of exaggerated fears about the effects of radiation:
“The designation of the affected population as “victims” rather than “survivors” has led them to perceive themselves as helpless, weak and lacking control over their future. This, in turn, has led either to over cautious behavior and exaggerated health concerns, or to reckless conduct, such as consumption of mushrooms, berries and game from areas still designated as highly contaminated, overuse of alcohol and tobacco, and unprotected promiscuous sexual activity.”
That is not to say that Chernobyl was nothing. It was most definitely something: a frightening event that shone a light on a large number of mistakes (especially in Soviet power plants) that needed to be righted, and a tragedy from which people and the environment suffered and many lives were lost.
But “disaster” is a word that has been too freely used. It is not exactly clear how best to define disaster—whether by number of deaths, amount of property destroyed, human suffering, environmental damage, or some complex combination of all or some of them. But on the worldwide scale of events, an argument could be made that Chernobyl only qualifies as a major disaster in its lasting legacy of hyper-fear bestowed by those who exaggerated its effects in order to further their own political ends.
Their efforts have been quite successful, I might add. Interview a bunch of your friends and ask them how many people have died as a result of Chernobyl, and see what they say.]
A problem with these calculations is the use of the linear hypothesis of radiation exposure, which is essentially required to be used. It is like defining Pi by regulatory statute. We have a decent understanding of the effects of radiation at high levels for acute exposure but not for low for long exposures.
For example if a population if 10000 people are exposed X amount of radiation are expected to develop 10 additional tumors, then the assumption is that if 10 million are exposed to X/1000, 10 additional tumors will occur. I heard one health physicist said this is like saying if you expected 1 death from 100 people jump off a 50 foot ledge, then you should see 1 death if 5000 people jumped of a 1 foot ledge.
So fuzzy exposure numbers are multiplied by the population of say, Europe, and multiplying the average life expectancy, with the worse case being used by some groups; it is not surprising that big number that are all over the place arise.
Outstanding post, neo. Fear of the unseen (nuclear radiation, CO2, trace amounts of mercury, pesticides, sun’s rays, space aliens, and much more) is a powerful tool for controlling large populations. Not quite what Huxley envisioned, but useful nonetheless. IMO, it’s all made easier as a result of inadequate scientific education coupled with some scientists who are willing tools in the cause.
Good luck getting this one across. I’m chief power systems engineer for a large company, and despite knowing something about energy conversion, it holds little weight when debating the actual cost and output of “renewable” energy, with my fellow citizens who have no scientific background or education.
The average person knows all about the sun, the wind, and the ocean, and the limitless source of cheap, free, and endless power they offer up to mankind –if only the profiteers and oil companies weren’t controlling things. They know nothing of how any of those things happen, or of the energy or cost or resources required to manufacture the things that provide the magic power.
If the true costs and efficiencies of these things were honestly reported (like everything else), we could have an honest conversation about how energy is supplied. This country is blessed with enormous energy resources. No single one is enough to supply all our needs. Solar and wind have small roles, but various forms of nuclear can’t be excluded, if we are going to continue to exist as a modern culture. Some form of nuclear energy will need provide the bulk of it. One promising technology is Thorium. It’s radioactive, but it cannot be used to produce a bomb, and won’t cause a meltdown. There are obstacles, and being mildly radioactive, will no doubt be opposed by the same crowd that believes in unicorns and pixie dust.
As long as our educational systems are graduating so many people with poor math and science skills, we will continue to be governed by idiots who serve themselves first, and an electorate that is largely ignorant, or lacking the basic skills to evaluate technology. A majority of our kids are growing up without any fundamental knowledge of phyisics, common sense, or the ability to intelligently evaluate things that affect our common welfare. And there are millions of older citizens in this boat too, but convincing them they are clueless has been in my experience, impossible.
We now have huge amounts of NG, coal and oil. those should form the basis of our energy needs.
Solar and wind don’t make sense except in some nitch uses. Neither is good base power, since it isn’t constant. neither is good peaking power, because it peaks when nature wants, not when we want. Neither is good backup power, for the same reason.
Solar is great for pocket calculators, welders helmets, remote radio repeaters, and the odd off grid shack. Wind is great for powering boats and pumping water for livestock.
Nukes make sense if we run out of cheap coal, oil and NG, or if we really think we need to cut carbon output.
I’m chief power systems engineer for a large company, and despite knowing something about energy conversion, it holds little weight when debating the actual cost and output of “renewable” energy, with my fellow citizens who have no scientific background or education.
My sympathies. Aggravating, isn’t it? I get the same thing re chemistry. All those years wasted, when all we had to do was watch a few segments of Nova.
My favorite re power generation is people thinking that by using electric vehicles they’re not generating any greenhouse gases.
No, they aren’t; the power plant is.
But my very favorite one is the morons who think we can replace electrical power stations with batteries.
Sure. Go with that.
A problem with these calculations is the use of the linear hypothesis of radiation exposure, which is essentially required to be used.
A common problem in the regulation of toxic (and especially carcinogenic) substances, I believe (“no safe threshold level”).
One more comment. Driving through Palm Springs, which has a major wind power project, it struck me: windmils are … ugly.
Sure, one at a time, they’re kind of artsy. But a whole plain full of them is ugly, much like (ironically) a petroleum refinery. They put me in mind of the mycelia of mold growing on a piece of bread.
“The law of unintended consequences has not been suspended to accommodate good intentions.” That’s a great line, Neo – and one I’ll be borrowing.
“I’m chief power systems engineer for a large company . . . .”
I believe that it was this particular commenter to the essay neo cites (quoted by OB above) that also mentioned rising energy costs.
He made the distinction between rising energy costs for consumers and industry but the word he used for rising business rates was “apocalyptic.”
Obama has no knowledge of the fact that aluminum companies use vast amounts of electricity to extract aluminum from bauxite. Futhermore, most steel companies have switched from the old blast furnaces to basic oxygen furnaces which, if memory serves, are electrically run.
Let’s see, apocalyptic power rates = shut down of aluminum prouction, shutdown of steel production . . . sounds like an Obamatopia to me.
Obama has no knowledge of the fact that aluminum companies use vast amounts of electricity to extract aluminum from bauxite.
Aluminum plants used also to use electricity to keep the aluminum molten while conveying it through the plant, IIRC. One of the targets of the German saboteurs landed on Long Island during WWII was the electrical power to an aluminum plant, because a power outage would cause the aluminum to freeze, necessitating replacement of all the conduits throughout the plant, which would be down for months. No idea if this is still the case.
Great post Neo, but I’m afraid it’s wasted breath. Like many of the other commentators have said, talking to most of these people using established science, and facts is nearly impossible. The only “reality” I’m afraid they will accept is when there are rolling blackouts and $0.75/kwH rates.
“The law of unintended consequences has not been suspended to accommodate good intentions.” I disagree a bit here. It is not so much unintended consequences…. the consequences are easily predictable from basic thermodynamics. Or, as my favorite engineer, Montgomery Scott put it: “Cap’n.. I canna change the laws of physics!”
Okay, every time this subject comes up, I always post this same thing. It’s not “mine” btw: I cribbed it out of the comments section of a blog years ago.
But it’s the best thing I’ve ever read (from a commenter at Roger Simon a couple of years ago). It might be the most lucid yet simple-to-understand analysis around.
(My apologies if a) I’ve posted it here before, or b) you’ve read it before elsewhere. And kudos, again, to “dirtyblueshirt”.)
This doesn’t include a lot of math, but when it comes to energy, you’ve got to have some math lol.
Steven den Beste posted something similar about power generation during the early Bush years, in a discussion about the Kyoto Accords. NOTE: The link doesn’t always work. You can surf to it using his archives, and go to 2002, 06 and look for Kyoto (near the bottom of the page …and yeah, it’s worth a read).
I’d also add the Jerry Pournelle pretty much nailed the problem (capacity), in the mid-to-late 1970’s. Even though it’s old, you could do far worse than read his book A Step Farther Out …it remains inspiring, not too dated, and very, very sad (from our 2012 perspective).
If you are interested in energy debate try this site.
http://www.masterresource.org/
Dr. Manuel Cereijo, an electrical engineering professor, wrote a very good op-ed piece in 2011 about the problems of solar/wind power and the safety of nuclear power particularly in Florida, which has minimal seismic activity. I remember in particular he discussed the inherent loss of electricidad through power lines when energy was traveling from remote areas. Wind and solar tended to be in remote areas. (Who wants that in their back yard? Certainly not the Kennedys, remember?)
I have used his article in class when we discuss technological and environmental issues because it is clear and concise enough for second-language learners to understand. I think that is what is needed to reach the general population btw.
As an aside, I always found that most people like explaining their field to people outside it. One of my happiest experiences was living in a house with a bunch of engineers – electrical, aerospace, etc. If they were a little sleepy at breakfast, I could wake them right up by saying, “I don’t understand why, when so-and-so is walking around upstairs, it creates a ripple effect around the light fixture down here.”
Occam – annoying enough I’ve learned to just change the subject and offer them another beer.
Physicsguy — ignorance of the laws of physics doesn’t preclude being president. Plus Harvard law professors are used to changing laws they don’t like.
I’m not sure, but I think it was the Nobel Prize Energy Secretary, or a colleague, who proposed painting the roofs of all residential homes in the US white, to reflect sunlight back to the bad place it came from, in order to reduce global warming. With a wizard like this running the show, it’s no wonder we can’t have a serious energy policy.
Unless there’s a quantum leap in solar panel techology, it’s a supplemental solution for local, small demand appliances.
Wind is solar energy, and less dependable. Batteries used for grid stabilzation are unbelievably expensive. They have places where they are working as backup power, but they cost several hundreds of millions, and cover several football fields. These can power very small towns for a few hours. Not exactly an answer for 300 million people.
I get that research needs to be done to make that quantum leap, (if there is one to make), but subsidizing marginal solutions isn’t the way to do it. There’s no motivation to produce anything useful if the only way to compete with other technologies, imperfect as they might be, is to rig the game.
Our country is literally swimming in energy resources, and we are held hostage by a political class who are perpetually occupied with birth control pills and abortions, who have no time for trivial matters like national energy policy.
It’s exasperating to watch a country debate “energy dependancy”, when it’s entirely self inflicted, and pertuated by public ignorance and political self interest by mostly one party.
Any production resource which cannot be reasonably decoupled from its environment will be unsuitable as a primary energy source.
There is also the matter of environmental and human hazards that arise with recovery of the exotic materials required for the function of so-called “green” energy technology. The Chinese will not forever absorb the consequences of well-intentioned energy policies. And, in the case of windmills, there are several hundred thousands birds and bats which annually meet their mortal end as they fail to run the gauntlet. They can hardly be considered “green.”
The only viable alternative which could be considered as a primary energy source is nuclear technology. Unfortunately, many people have an irrational fear and misunderstanding of nuclear processes, and there are certain political, commercial, and non-profit interests which have an incentive to preserve that emotion and ignorance.
Occam — annoying enough I’ve learned to just change the subject and offer them another beer.
Same here, although I usually am the one having another beer. Let the morons buy their own, I say.
I’m OK with this approach unless confronted with an earnest, sanctimonious ignoramus bleating complete nonsense derived from some half-understood mangling of the topic written by someone who himself only half-understood it. I call this the “Nova effect.”
Sad thing is that over time there ARE places that can benefit from the kinds of tech green latched onto as theirs. but there is no way that even photovoltaics are worth it IF you do a full end to end accounting to note how much energy it takes to make them, what their decline is, and lots of other things having to do with the fact that outside is dirty…
but sadly… there ARE things that would work as offsets, and would not need to be subsidized. they are not huge and fancy, but they have their place…
with all that cash misappropriated, Obama has been the worst on entrepreneurial outputs at 1/4 the others… not to mention other economically engineered things (with socially engineered things) and so on
Courts Not Scientists Sneaked Greenhouse Gas Sham into Law
Even though neither U.S. presidential candidate is talking up man-made global warming behind the scenes courts are hard at work making laws based on controversial greenhouse gas science.
An undemocratic, largely unseen shift in American law is now taking place. You would never know it from the media facade but 2012 has witnessed an inexorable Big Green legal juggernaut driving across America. Judges not voters are at the wheel and by stealthy maneuvering we are being steamrollered by secret government diktat rather than electoral preference. It is happening away from the public political barometer because the mainstream media focuses voter minds on believing the race for the Whitehouse is all about the grassroots economy.
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/courts-not-scientists-thrust-greenhouse-gas-science-into-law/
“I heard one health physicist said this is like saying if you expected 1 death from 100 people jump off a 50 foot ledge, then you should see 1 death if 5000 people jumped of a 1 foot ledge.”
As someone who spent 26 years as a lead rad safety tech in a nuke power plant, I agree with this analogy. Our concept of risk versus benefit is wildly skewed towards risk aversion. 90+% of our safety standards (radiation, chemical, etc.) fall into this category. Fear of what one can not see but only imagined is a handy tool for bureaucrats.
Democrats could care less about a sound energy plan. They just want to unionize and control the huge industry so they can launder money for democrat politics through it.
Good intentions. Road to Hell. Connected, somehow.
““The designation of the affected population as “victims” rather than “survivors” has led them to perceive themselves as helpless, weak and lacking control over their future. ”
Michael Crichton called these people victimized by an agenda driven media” information invalids” way back in 2005. People sickened by bad information.
Occam’s Beard: Rush Limbaugh calls electric cars “Coal Powered cars”…lol….not sure if he came up with that name or someone else did.
“Fantasists” re German energy is the correct label.
Germany is slowly committing national suicide.
They don’t have babies, and they will not have any reliable manufacturing after 2022 (just another ten years!) due to self-imposed power constraints.
I just hope I live long enough to see it, despite the IPAB of Obamacare. Which makes me realize once again that the loss of the election to Obama will securely head us down the same road as Germany.