Wind turbines get bigger and bigger

Larry,

Which experts are which? There are some who actually know what they are talking about and some scaremongers who just make things up.

George Monbiot who is deep Green Left discovered for himself that the ‘luminaries’ of the anti-nuclear movement are just making most of it up and can offer no evidence for their claims. These are his experiences with Chris Busby and Helen Caldicott:

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/22/how-the-greens-were-misled/

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/13/why-this-matters/

**LINK**

Busby started out with good intentions investigating the childhood leukaemia cluster at Windscale/Sellafield but when he found the radiation levels were not sufficient to be the cause he left the scientific way and started making things up to back up his beliefs. If Sellafield/radiation was the cause the leukaemia cluster would still be there, it isn’t.

Others are now starting to take on this scaremongering, one example is Mothers for Nuclear

**LINK**

They also realised that most of the anti –nuclear information was rubbish and have started trying to add some reality.

Best regards

Roger

I'm not sure this is right Neil.

The carbon cost comes about because of the power necessary in creating the materials and in construction was generated using fossil fuels. If we have got rid of carbon-based fuels then there will, by definition, be no carbon cost in materials or manufacture.

The short answer is that the world post-WWII wanted Plutonium for nuclear weapons which comes from U238 rather than Th232/U233.

It's not trivial and there needs to be REAL money spent on research of these alternative sources before you'll see any reactors.

I went to a lecture once that showed that there was a good correlation between leukemia clusters and military installations. The lecturer then pointed out that the military installations were all iron age forts.

Rod

Repeat after me... correlation does not equate to causation

No, there is still a carbon cost to things like cement making regardless of how you source the power, because of the chemistry involved. Plus there are all the composites that go into construction etc.

You're right about cement - Dooohhh Sorry.

Surely the carbon (dioxide) goes straight back in to the cement over the next 25 or so years as the concrete sets and continues gaining strength? .

Opinions are like arseholes. everyone's got one and for the most part they smell a bit...

For me, I hope to live long enough to see ITER show a positive power flow. I just turned 60 so I probably won't.

On a lighter note the German Police stopped this 'convoy'. I think he will find one of these new blades harder to transport

Afraid not. Raw material is calcium carbonate mainly (around 2/3 of the mix). Cement hydrates to form calcium silicate interwoven crystal structures. Only the fee lime in the cement (not all of the lime in the raw materials is converted to silicates) etc during the ‘burning process’ within the kiln will slowly absorb CO2 and revert to calcium carbonate.

Typical free lime in a cement can vary between less than 1% to about 5%. Some of this free lime may react with other components in the concrete mix - such as fly ash or slag.

There is a difference between setting (a few hours usually) and curing (strength increase).

The early strength increase is derived from the tri-calcium silicate in the cement and later strength is derived from the di-calcium silicates. Both reactions take place (start) at the same time, but the rates of hydration are different.

Hope that changes your ‘oplnion’ on the subject of cement hydration (the clue is in the word ‘hydration&rsquo. 

Edited By not done it yet on 04/04/2018 13:41:23

Ah yes! European traffic law states anything protruding more than 3m must have a red and white coned marker on the end. CONVOY EXCEPTIONAL !!

Edited By Speedy Builder5 on 04/04/2018 13:40:38

Less than that in the UK! Only allowed 610mm overhang, I think. it is the usual striped triangle (or a bit of rag in many cases!).

Dirigibles might be the solution to transporting long blades. Near me some road junctions were remodelled so the blades could get round the corners.

I love some of the quaint expressions and turns of speech brought about by these posts !

Keep it up boys,that,s what keeps the ball rolling !.

Taking long or awkward loads by road has always been fraught with problems. When in the RAF I spent 3 years on a salvage and transportation unit and we transported sometimes huge pieces of aircraft by road. Prior to larger than usual loads being despatched by road a survey was carried out to arrange for telephone and power cables to be removed on the appointed day to allow the load to pass and also to check road widths, bends and low bridges that might be a problem. One such journey we undertook was to transport a fully assembled gnat trainer aircraft by road from a flying station to a group headquarters in order that the aircraft could be the backdrop to a large cocktail party one evening. Yes these things really did happen! On the appointed day the aircraft was loaded into a cradle mounted on a large trailer which was pulled by a six wheeled scammell recovery tractor, a real beast of a machine, the cradle was then rotated so that one wingtip was nearly at ground level and the other way up off the ground, the resulting width of the load was 22 foot 6 inches wide. The surveyed route took us through country lanes and small villages in Oxfordshire and we had to travel at night in order to cause least disruption to the rural life. All went well till about half way through the journey we came up against a tree that clearly was not going to allow our load to pass, problem was it was right in the middle of this picturesque village and we were firmly wedged, as time passed with us sitting there with our scammell’s engine burbling away at 2.00 am it didn’t take long for a good proportion of the villagers to be roused to investigate what was going on. A decision was made that we would have to drastically prune the tree to allow our load to progress, so there we were sawing away large parts of this tree, which was in someone’s front garden, with a growing number of villagers, mainly dressed in pyjamas as it was a balmy summers night, watching this highly unusual night time activity. Eventually we managed to remove enough of the tree to allow us to pass and we moved off accompanied by a round of applause from the attendant villagers. I suspect that the senior person who surveyed the route received some adverse comments back at our base. This took place over 50 years ago and is just one of the memories I have from my time on the salvage unit, I went on to complete more than 22 years service.

Dave W

I have heared Plutonium argument but it seems insufficient.

After all U233 made in thorium cycle is also as good for nuclear weapons as Pu239 would be. Comparable critical mass etc and on the top of it there is no issue with Pu240 which is a nuisance for weapon engineers.

My suspicion is that thorium tech has some hidden issues making it inferior to uranium approach.

Martin

Deleted:- Opinions again...

Edited By Mark Rand on 04/04/2018 22:18:01

I think that one of the major barriers to developing thorium technology is that currently uranium is too cheap and abundant. It is possible to burn thorium in current generation reactors but how you breed it to fissile U233 has some challenges. Ideally you want to avoid external reprocessing so a lot of shuffling of fuel rods would be required.

The other options of the various next generation reactors have some other challenges. The travelling wave system is quite interesting but is currently being developed for the in situ breeding of U238 to Pu239 which is subsequently burnt rather than Th232 to U233.

The molten salt systems have significant materials challenges although Terrestrial Energy is hopping to apply for a construction permit for a prototype by the end of next year.

When the Saudis have their solar panels generating perhaps they could modify all the redundant oil tankers, filling them with battery banks, charge them up and sail to wherever needs power? Fanciful ? Maybe, Who knows where battery technology will be in a few years time. Dogsbody

Or use the solar electricity to produce a liquid energy

Hydrogen is the obvious one but difficult to handle