Tuesday 6 August 2019

Young Family Members will abhor the ramifications of YOUR activities: On THEIR Lifestyles and THEIR Planet!




Powerful NGOs, well-rewarded lobbyists, industry bosses, influential individuals and Parliamentarians – supporters of renewable technologies, are chivvying for 35 GW of onshore wind:

Onshore wind has by far the lowest capital cost per MWh of generation, of any renewable technology.


Do you have any idea of the capital cost of 35 GW of onshore wind?
What about the capital cost of the equivalent 10.5 GW of nuclear power?


35 GW of onshore wind is 65 Whitelee-sized windfarms. They would have a capital cost £39.00 billion and would generate intermittent electricity, for their 22.5-year lifespan and occupy 3,445 km² of land.


10.5 GW of nuclear power is 3.22 Sizewell C-sized nuclear power plants [npps]. They would have a capital cost of £51.53 billion and would generate 24/7 electricity, for their 60-year design life from sites occupying 2.16 km² [1/1600th of the area].


The capital cost of onshore wind for 60 years of generation increases by a ratio of 60:22.5 and rises to £104.00 billion  
2X the capital cost of nuclear.
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The Capital Cost of a Technology Reveals the dark side!

There is no hiding place! There is no room for obfuscation.

If the capital cost of a technology is high, it tells of:

Unnecessary waste of precious material.
Wanton use of costly resources.
Excessive use of energy - fossil-fuelled for the vast majority of the time.
Unproductive involvement of high-cost labour.
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35 GW of onshore windfarms use an extra 15,180,000 tonnes of steel more than the nuclear power plants.





That will waste 84 TWh of energy
mainly fossil-fuelled energy [the lifespan generation of 2.9 Whitelees].






For all of that steel, 24,290,000 extra tonnes of iron ore will be used and 11,690,000 more tonnes of coal burned.




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For land-wrecking turbine foundations and roads, an extra 28,733,000 tonnes of concrete will be laid.

5.10 TWh of fossil-fuelled energy used ,  
966,000 tonnes of coal burned, 3,278,000 tonnes of COreleased.




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For the sake of the Younger Members of your Family, you need to:

Consider what the future holds for them, in economical and environmental terms, long after you’re gone.

Search your conscience if your support of renewables imposes upon them:

2X the capital cost; 18X the unwarranted waste of precious materials and resources.


The attendant GHG emissions and fossil-fuelled energy use every step of the way, from mining/quarrying, through processing, manufacture and installation.

Envision for them, their experience of 1600X the scenic desecration, ecosystem destruction, species wipe-out and waste mountains.

U-Turn your antipathy towards LOW-CARBON/RENEWABLE NUCLEAR POWER.

Make nuclear ‘happen’ by helping to negate the crippling cost of capital, through supporting Government proposals for pragmatic financing of npps.

Use your good offices and prominence to ‘tell it straight’, to the general public, politicians and the media.


Cease hiding behind the obfuscation and duplicity that defines the renewable technology industries.
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Note: 35 GW of onshore wind is 3.22X the onshore wind capacity required to generate the same total of MWh as 3,260 MW of nuclear power [e.g: Hinkjley Point C]. All of the figures quoted above are 3.22X greater than the calculated data from this link:

Hinkley Point C Vs Whitelee Windfarm: Steel [All Metals] & Concrete

Monday 5 August 2019

Hinkley Point C Vs Whitelee Windfarm: Steel [All Metals] & Concrete


It would take >20 windfarms the size of Whitelee to generate the same amount of intermittent electricity every year as the 24/7 electricity generated by Hinkley [See links below]. But since windfarms only have an average lifespan of 22.5 years, compared with Hinkley’s 60 year design life, that’s equivalent to 54 Whitelee-sized windfarms.
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Steel/All Metals HPC
All site: 230,000 t Rebar + 2(70,903 t [All Metals]/1600 MW] = 371,806 t
Installed Capacity: 3260 MW. Design Life: 60 years. Capacity Factor: 90%.
Electricity generated: 1542.1 TWh

Steel used per unit of electricity generated: 0.241 kg/MWh




Steel/All Metals, Whitelee
Per Turbine: 40 t Rebar + 320 t [Turbine} + 80 t [Nacelle] = 440 t
Total for 215 Turbines: 94,600 t
Installed Capacity: 539 MW. Lifespan: 22.5 years. Capacity Factor: 27%
Electricity generated: 28.7 TWh

Steel used per unit of electricity generated: 3.296 kg/MWh

Per unit of electricity generated:
Wind Power uses 13.7X more Steel 
[All Metals] than Nuclear Power.

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Concrete, HPC
All site: 3,000,000 t
Concrete used per unit of electricity generated: 1.945 kg/MWh



Concrete, Whitelee
All site: Whitelee 120,000 t + Whitelee Extension 100,800 t = 220,800 t

Concrete used per unit of electricity generated: 7.693 kg/MWh


Per unit of electricity generated:
Wind Power uses 4.0X more Concrete
than Nuclear Power.
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54 such windfarms would use 5,085,900 tonnes of steel/all metals.
That's an extra 4,714,000 tonnes of steel [all metals]. 
About Steel – Raw Materials:

20 GJ of energy is 5.556 MWh of energy used for every tonne of steel produced. For the extra 4,714,000 tonnes of steel needed, an extra 26 TWh of energy is required [20 years of Whitelee Windfarm 22.5 years lifespan]. Then there’s the mining of an extra 7,542,400 tonnes of iron ore and 3,629,800 tonnes of coal [770 kg coal/600 kg coke]; this is shipped by 80 – 140,000 tonne bulk carriers.
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54 such windfarms would use 11,923.200 tonnes of concrete. 
That’s an extra 8,923,200 tonnes of concrete.

The extra 8,923,200 tonnes of concrete uses 1.583 TWh of energy [1¼ years of Whitelee’s generation]. Coal use is 300,000 tonnes and CO2 emissions 1.018 million tonnes [1.77 years of Whitelee’s generation].
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“…The CCC has suggested that if the current block was lifted, 35GW of onshore wind could be deployed by 2035 to help to meet the UK’s carbon reduction targets…”
35 GW Onshore wind by 2035
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35 GW of Onshore Wind – That’s 65 Whitelee-sized Windfarms. 
How much avoidable Waste of Steel? 
How much avoidable Waste of Concrete?

Time for another Blog Post!