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Shetland windfarm - Viking Energy


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Tidal power isn't ready for large scale deployment yet. Maybe in 10 or 15 years time, but not now.

 

In 15 years time 4th generation nuclear reactors will be a reality and the world will look back in bemusement at windmill and waterwheel technology and wonder why we bothered. We should be wondering that today.

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Bring on the nuclear, and the faster the better. It's not perfect, but its the devil we know. It'll be the first that puts an end to this pointless gravy train of prehistoric technology for the few who are benefitting from wind generation, and the endless point scoring cheap shots that have been traded between the pro and anti camps over wind for far too long.

 

For close on 40 years nuclear was hailed a a saviour and generally reasonably well thought of, until a few got sloppy and careless, and made its name Mudd. Close on another 30 years have passed since those days, and nuclear has been plodding away quietly in the background all of that time, without any further negativity. Get over the fact the industry made mistakes and collateral damage ensued, it just proves things go wrong when folk get sloppy. If all the time and energy expended on pushing for or fighting against covering the countryside with rafts of little use windmills was redirected at monitoring the nuclear industry, they'd not be able to breathe out of turn without being hauled over the coals for it, and a perfectly viable source of energy could provide everyone's future needs for quite some time quite safely.

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Tidal power isn't ready for large scale deployment yet. Maybe in 10 or 15 years time, but not now.

 

In 15 years time 4th generation nuclear reactors will be a reality and the world will look back in bemusement at windmill and waterwheel technology and wonder why we bothered. We should be wondering that today.

In 15 years time 4th generation nuclear stations may be ready for deployment, and then we'll have to wait another 10 years while we build the damn things.

 

We don't have another 25 years, we don't even have 10 years. If the world isn't reducing it's total CO2 output by 2020 at the very, very latest then we will have passed the point of no return and will be subject to runaway climate change as the world's natural carbon sinks turn to carbon sources. Once that happens, it's game over for civilisation.

 

There will always be some new technological wonder which is just over the horizon which will make our current technology obsolete, but this time we have run out of time. We have to go with what we have now. It's too late for nuclear. It was too late 10 years ago.

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I am going to have to burst your bubble Arabia Terra, the viking energy wind farm as proposed is not going to save the planet , it's not going to save one single lump of coal or drop of oil.

 

It will have a massive impact on our local environment and the environment of many others , from moving millions of cubes of our hillsides around and digging vast seabed trenches from here to the mainland. Scouring other peoples landscapes for rare earth , copper and other hard to get minerals and metals .

 

It will be just another cog in this capitalist resource consuming machine into which we are all locked, thanks to the monetery economic system of present.

 

Here are a few facts to burst your bubble :-

 

Russia has confirmed it will maintain crude oil production at 500 million barrels for the next 10 years , destroying Siberian rain forest to get at these remote resources

 

Australia has confirmed that the countries coal mining industry will increase production by another 80 % over the next 15 years, most of which willl go to feed the mega giant chineses economy.

 

The offshore oil industry will have a further 100+ drilling rigs added to the global fleet over the next 10 - 15 years as well , with new offshore support vessels being produced at a rate of probably 1 a week. I know of one company that was building at the rate of a new boat every 2 weeks so that is probably a conservative estimate.

 

Thats not to mention offshore windfarm construction and support vessels which are also enjoying a building boom !

 

Our resource consuming civilisation continues undiminished, in fact it will easily take all the remaining resources to create this clean energy utopia of which you dream!

 

More than 300 million Chinese have become slightly better than poor working class and they all want to taste the good life, similarily so do further 100's of million across India and various other developing countries.

They all want a bite of the pie, and who are we living in well fed luxury to deny them?

The increased wealth of these nations has changed the farming & natural landscapes of many other parts of the globe, New Zealand for instance recently announced the cows now out number the human population in their lands , now over 4 million methane belching cows where their were none a short few hundred years ago, similar figures such as these will be found in many other countries where they cow never trod before.

 

So in summary, give up on this Viking energy will save the world crap ! It is a blatant untruth.

 

By the way did you ever watch the whole Zeitgeist movie ?

-http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912#

 

I did expect you to have an opinion on that one?

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good point. were still using steam turbines burning coal so only a slight advance from the windmill and waterweel. those two things may have been used since classical times but it does not mean they are useless. after all if we did not use ancient inventions you would not have concrete or most other things that we think are modern.

just think of the moans if you had 450 of the water turbines around shetland. the dead seals/otters and whales what impact would they have on the marine enviroment with the noise and electostatic radiation affecting the fish. you hear years of complaints over a few divers imagine if it was a pod of killer whales.

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Russia has confirmed it will maintain crude oil production at 500 million barrels for the next 10 years , destroying Siberian rain forest to get at these remote resources

 

Australia has confirmed that the countries coal mining industry will increase production by another 80 % over the next 15 years, most of which willl go to feed the mega giant chineses economy.

 

The offshore oil industry will have a further 100+ drilling rigs added to the global fleet over the next 10 - 15 years as well , with new offshore support vessels being produced at a rate of probably 1 a week. I know of one company that was building at the rate of a new boat every 2 weeks so that is probably a conservative estimate.

 

Thats not to mention offshore windfarm construction and support vessels which are also enjoying a building boom !

 

Our resource consuming civilisation continues undiminished, in fact it will easily take all the remaining resources to create this clean energy utopia of which you dream!

 

More than 300 million Chinese have become slightly better than poor working class and they all want to taste the good life, similarily so do further 100's of million across India and various other developing countries.

 

A bit o doom & gloom dare. Unfortunately these things mentioned above are facts so no one can disagree with them.

 

However, this advances the argument for the wind farm. As the world as we know it continues to disintegrate Shetland will become extremely vulnerable. Our over dependence on the UK will become stark; it will be difficult getting sufficient supplies, food, services; and power will become ludicrously expensive.

 

We should all become sustainable Shetlanders. Just a tiny change to SS’s policy is necessary: get these turbines up before the global collapse so that we have something to sustain Shetland with.

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In 15 years time 4th generation nuclear stations may be ready for deployment, and then we'll have to wait another 10 years while we build the damn things.

 

China started their first one up last year for test running. The technology is here now. 15 years is ample time for commissioning and testing even for plant as complex as this.

 

We don't have another 25 years, we don't even have 10 years. If the world isn't reducing it's total CO2 output by 2020 at the very, very latest then we will have passed the point of no return and will be subject to runaway climate change as the world's natural carbon sinks turn to carbon sources. Once that happens, it's game over for civilisation.

 

The only way we can achieve that is to start building nuclear facilities now, windmills waterwheels and sunshine will not make any meaningful difference to the global CO2 output.

 

There will always be some new technological wonder which is just over the horizon

 

It's not 'just over the horizon' the technology exists today, see above.

 

which will make our current technology obsolete,

 

Windmills and waterwheels are already obsolete technology IMO

 

but this time we have run out of time. We have to go with what we have now. It's too late for nuclear. It was too late 10 years ago.

 

How long has the VE project been in the pipeline? And when will it be commissioned? The first post in this thread is back in 2006, 5 years ago, and i suppose the project was first mooted some time before that. I understand that VE project will not be commissioned until 2014 at the earliest. Thats a best case total of 8 years, provided of course that it is up and running in three years time. So windfarms don't exactly spring up overnight either. Third generation nuclear facilities no longer take 20 - 30 years to design and build, smaller facilities are fabricated in modular fashion and construction times are closer to ten years, infact some engineers claim 5-6 years, but this seems optimistic to me. To dismiss the nuclear generation technology that exists today as a means of reducing global CO2 emissions because it is 'too late' would be, and is, extremely foolish.

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good point. were still using steam turbines burning coal so only a slight advance from the windmill and waterweel. those two things may have been used since classical times but it does not mean they are useless.

 

Not useless no, just the same as a horse and cart is not useless. They cannot however meet the energy requirements of the modern world, just the same as the horse and cart can’t fulfil the transport requirements of today. A modern gas turbine is a very different machine to the steam engine of old.

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China started their first one up last year for test running. The technology is here now. 15 years is ample time for commissioning and testing even for plant as complex as this.

But 15 years is still too late to make a difference to Climate Change.

The only way we can achieve that is to start building nuclear facilities now, windmills waterwheels and sunshine will not make any meaningful difference to the global CO2 output.

So you are advocating a complete shelving of the planning approval process in order to ram through these new nukes? Good luck with that.

 

Oh, and there's another point at which your nuclear pipe-dream falls apart. We can't just start building these nukes tomorrow, we don't have the engineering base in this country to do so. Thatcher destroyed it, remember. So we've got to start building the engineering base from scratch and training the people who will operate this engineering base. How many years will that take? And you can forget about buying this expertise in, because the few countries which still possess it are using it themselves.

 

We don't just have to build nuclear power stations (45 of them just to satisfy our current power needs*), we have to build an entire nuclear industry first, from scratch. And we have, at most, 10 years to do all of it! Dream on.

Windmills and waterwheels are already obsolete technology IMO

This is just wrong. Hydro is a mature technology which already makes a significant carbon neutral contribution to our power needs, and wind power, solar, tidal and wave just need the grid to be re-designed to accommodate them and they will do the same.

 

* Britain currently has 19 operational nuclear reactors in 9 stations which provide 20% of our power, but these are all nearing the end of their useful lives and need replacement. To supply all of just our current needs this adds up to 45 nuclear power stations, all of which need to be built simultaneously.

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Where does this fighure of 10 years that we must save the planet come from?

In light of the rest of the human civilisations continuing consumption of resources what exactly are you saving?

 

It does not address the problems you claim what so ever

 

And the wealth generation is a complete fallacy, if they cant maitain finance for schools and hospitals etc etc then how can they sudsidise electricity generation on such a vast scale?

 

In fact what the pro windfarm are claiming is this will maintain our wealth of the oil boom era !

 

Wealth for what I ask?

 

To maintain our buying power to keep on consuming !

 

I note you ignored my last post about planetery resource consumtion figures, whats wrong ? Do these facts not fit with this "10 years to save the planet"?

 

By the way that was 500 million barrels oilper year the russians will produce.

 

Another interesting development is the drilling into coal formations that are too deep to mine. They will then pump in some form of acid to form a chemical reaction and hey presto ! hydro carbon gas will come out.

This is coming online soon in Europe.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file19143.pdf

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  • admin changed the title to Shetland windfarm - Viking Energy

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