A side note to the Wind problem, while traveling through Illinois recently on a windy day, I noticed a wind farm inactive. All blades were at a stop while the wind was blowing. Apparently, the turbines can't handle the extra wind power. Sounds counter productive to me...
apparently true but I suspect that can be overcome too.
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http://www.wind-power-program.com/turbine_characteristics.htm*********************************************************
But then it is easier to overcome problems with wind power than nuclear. Such as the following:
Making Wind Power More Efficient: Lessons from Fishpossible game changer in wind technology with an unlikely inspiration
Most of the wind turbines you see driving throughout the deserts and hill country of California look pretty much the same: soaring towers hundreds of feet high with massive, pinwheel-like structures on top, blades churning (or not) as the wind blows (or not).
But there’s another design for generating wind power that, if new research proves correct, could eventually become a far more common sight as California ramps up its portfolio of renewable energy. Vertical axis wind turbines look a little like upside-down egg beaters. They tend to be smaller than traditional turbines, and therefore less powerful. But according to John Dabiri, head of Caltech’s Biological Propulsion Lab, they can be far more efficient at generating power than traditional turbines are when they’re used together in just the right way.
Dabiri said the problem with standard turbines is that the turbulence or “wake” from the turning of one turbine disrupts airflow and reduces the performance of surrounding turbines. Locating them within 300 feet of each other can reduce performance by 20-50%, said Dabiri. That means standard wind farms need a lot of land.
Not so with his egg beaters, says Dabiri.
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From my perspective nuclear is very slow to adapt. Bill Gates supports nuclear power because it has a lot of room for innovation and improvement but big companies and big government both move slowly and like large ships are not very maneuverable. There are very few small business's that are in the business such as Robert Bussard who passed away a year after this presentation:
November 9, 2006
ABSTRACT
This is not your father's fusion reactor! Forget everything you know about conventional thinking on nuclear fusion: high-temperature plasmas, steam turbines, neutron radiation and even nuclear waste are a thing of the past. Goodbye thermonuclear fusion; hello inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC), an old idea that's been made new. While the international community debates the fate of the politically-turmoiled $12 billion ITER (an experimental thermonuclear reactor), simple IEC reactors are being built as high-school science fair projects.
Dr. Robert Bussard, former Asst. Director of the Atomic Energy Commission and founder of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2), has spent 17 years perfecting IEC, a fusion process that converts hydrogen and boron directly into electricity producing helium as the only waste product. Most of this work was funded by the Department of Defense, the details of which have been under seal... until now.
Dr. Bussard will discuss his recent results and details of this potentially world-altering technology, whose conception dates back as far as 1924, and even includes a reactor design by Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor of the scanning television).
Can a 100 MW fusion reactor be built for less than Google's annual electricity bill? Come see what's possible when you think outside the thermonuclear box and ignore the herd.
Google engEDU
Speaker: Dr. Robert Bussard
Caution video is 92 minutes long
