So many Artillerymen, so many double digit IQs.

There is a hot-rock-Geothermal project being considered in the Hunter valley. The geology is not unlike Sydney.

Oh and winos drank methanol for years before blindness set in. If they drank gasoline they would've been dead in a week. Go figure!

And the best of all: when you consider human overpopulation and the murder of some 6 billion people in 2025. When you consider that the only thing that stands between us and that fate is TOTAL-PBR-NUCLEAR-INDUSTRIES then truly:

SEX is the greatest threat to mankind - to an extent that makes the worst nuclear nightmare scenarios IN-SIG-NIFICANT.

As for the rabid ranting and compulsion to bite that anti-nukes portray, here's a story :

There once was an ant(artilleryman with green power dreams) who fancied an elephant(nuclear power). One day his lust got the better of him and he ascended the elephant's leg to her unmentionable parts where he commenced thrusting.

A monkey(nuclear free party members) saw this and in a fit of jealousy, spitefulness and rage, picked up a coconut and threw it. It hit the elephant in her most tender spot and she let loose a cry that turned the whole jungle to flight.

Well, the ant hearing this was heartened, pumped harder and cried out "take it bitch, take it!"

xoddam,

Whether something is worthwhile depends on its cost, the benefit it provides, and the cost of possible alternatives that provide an equivalent benefit. You cannot just argue that because one thing is worthwhile, another thing of a superficially similar nature must also be worthwhile.

To level the load represented by a house without losing the benefit of the uneven consumption would require hugely expensive local energy storage, so it makes sense to provide cabling to handle the peak load.

The benefit from wind farms consists almost entirely of a reduction in CO2 release. There are cheaper ways of achieving that, so on a rational cost benefit analysis wind farms would not be built. This makes it difficult to find a justification for building any transmission capacity for them at all, let alone capacity to handle their peak output.

Sylvia.

"The benefit from wind farms consists almost entirely of a reduction in CO2 release. There are cheaper ways of achieving that,"

Sylvia

You have alluded to cheaper ways of achieving reductions of CO2 a couple of times.

Can you clarify those methods you allude to, please?

Dickie,

With respect, I think other things than pollution by radioactive materials may share responsibility for increased cancer and chronic disease rates: contaminants from decaying plastics and other chemical agents; respiration of microparticulate pollution from diesel engine exhausts; increased cohabitation with dust-mites due to wall-to-wall carpets.

I can tell you a few cheaper ways (than wind turbines) of reducing emissions myself.

First I'll repeat that wind power *has a capacity value* (so its net benefit is greater than mere fuel-saving), and at low penetrations doesn't necessarily require any more backup than pre-existing peaking capacity provides.

Lower-cost emissions reductions include:

Retirement of old inefficient electrical appliances and industrial equipment, replacing with more efficient designs.

Energy-efficient new buildings and refits, including cogeneration and absorbtion cooling driven by waste heat (as opposed to compression cooling driven by electric motors).

Replacement of all electric space heaters with fuel-burning equivalents (using cogeneration where scale permits).

Replacement of all electric hot-water heaters with solar or fuel-burning equivalents (cogeneration ditto).

Provision of quality public transport to areas of high car-use, persuading people to drive less.

Replacement of industrial furnaces with cogenerating equipment, and waste-heat power-recovery (bottoming cycle) cogeneration where heat is exhausted to the environment.

At the cost of a little labour, mid-to-large-scale heating and cogeneration can be done with biomass fuel (wood or processed-straw pellets) instead of gas. This is not only cheap and efficient, it's carbon-neutral.

Replacement of large coal-fired steam-turbine power stations with smaller combined-cycle gas-fired ones. Capital equipment is cheaper and emissions are lower, but fuel costs are higher; on the other hand fuel-saving measures are cheaper to integrate since CCGT can handle variable-power situations responsively and efficiently.

Retirement of older petroleum-guzzling vehicles, replacing with more efficient designs.

Wind power is more visible than most of these measures, but it is not therefore deserving of a greater share of funds.

On the other hand, today's wind power is a cheap fuel-saving measure by comparison with contemporary nuclear power technology.

KAEP,

You appear to be in the throes of neural meltdown.

Dickie,

Our base load generation is currently predominantly coal, including the worst carbon emitter of all - brown coal.

Generation based on natural gas produces significantly less than half as much CO2 per unit energy generated as does brown coal generation.

When wind farms are running, they displace natural gas powered generation, so the CO2 benefit is limited.

For a given desired amount of CO2 reduction, it is cheaper to retire brown coal generation and replace it by an equivalent amount of natural gas generation, than it is to build wind farms.

Sylvia

And even the 2006 Ziggy Switkowski report states that wind power is three times more greenhouse-friendly than nuclear power...

In any case, see http://beyondzeroemissions.org/solutions regarding clean, sustainable base and peak load power.