A bunch of academic hippies were working on windmill power in the Netherlands in the 1970s. But with cheap and unlimited LNG it was considered a technical curiosity.
Smart people did predict that gas would eventually run out but by then the country was supposed to have a dozen nuclear reactors like Japan.
Now we can't even build one- and it's not even because of the 40 billion € cost but because of bureaucracy and NIMBYism.
The best thing about wind turbines in the North Sea? Nobody lives there.
I remember an uproar about building a nuclear reactor here in Canada because of a predicted 27 billion dollar cost. 40 billion euros?!
If it's going to be like this then I think net 0 requires a different form of government or for private power generation. There is no reason for a nuclear reactor to cost more than 10 billion US.
Those hippies didn't consider the decommission process of wind turbines. Drove past several farms during my holiday and there were a staggering number of turbines that were either not turning or turning at a fraction of the speed of their peers. I do worry what we are going to do with all the failed gearboxes and blades :\
>I do worry what we are going to do with all the failed gearboxes and blades
There are three companies I'm aware of in the United States who have commercialized, and are, today, right now, recycling turbine blades.
Additionally, there are multiple startups in both the US and Europe who have developed more easily recyclable blades and those are starting to be deployed.
Blade lifecycle is a solvable problem.
The steel in the gearboxes is a problem that solves itself.
It's dumb and a reflection of our business and regulatory environment that it's cheaper/better to invest labor and energy to shred something like blades and columns than to simply truck them away in whole or in part and then use them for other things.
We're basically talking about huge glass reinforced resin cylinders and non-flat sheets here. I can think of tons of potential uses at the right price.
About the only thing I agree with you in terms of repurposability would be the vertical column. And even then, you have to find the right buyer. For everything else, my intuition is the shredding it down for recycling is by far easier than repurposing. I haven't done any math on it though.
A bunch of academic hippies were working on windmill power in the Netherlands in the 1970s. But with cheap and unlimited LNG it was considered a technical curiosity.
Smart people did predict that gas would eventually run out but by then the country was supposed to have a dozen nuclear reactors like Japan. Now we can't even build one- and it's not even because of the 40 billion € cost but because of bureaucracy and NIMBYism.
The best thing about wind turbines in the North Sea? Nobody lives there.
I remember an uproar about building a nuclear reactor here in Canada because of a predicted 27 billion dollar cost. 40 billion euros?!
If it's going to be like this then I think net 0 requires a different form of government or for private power generation. There is no reason for a nuclear reactor to cost more than 10 billion US.
Those hippies didn't consider the decommission process of wind turbines. Drove past several farms during my holiday and there were a staggering number of turbines that were either not turning or turning at a fraction of the speed of their peers. I do worry what we are going to do with all the failed gearboxes and blades :\
>I do worry what we are going to do with all the failed gearboxes and blades
There are three companies I'm aware of in the United States who have commercialized, and are, today, right now, recycling turbine blades.
Additionally, there are multiple startups in both the US and Europe who have developed more easily recyclable blades and those are starting to be deployed.
Blade lifecycle is a solvable problem.
The steel in the gearboxes is a problem that solves itself.
The gearboxes are recyclable, the blades can be buried in a landfill or shredded into fine material to mix in with concrete.
It's really a non-issue compared to burning the remainder of fossil fuels (everything still buried).
It's dumb and a reflection of our business and regulatory environment that it's cheaper/better to invest labor and energy to shred something like blades and columns than to simply truck them away in whole or in part and then use them for other things.
We're basically talking about huge glass reinforced resin cylinders and non-flat sheets here. I can think of tons of potential uses at the right price.
About the only thing I agree with you in terms of repurposability would be the vertical column. And even then, you have to find the right buyer. For everything else, my intuition is the shredding it down for recycling is by far easier than repurposing. I haven't done any math on it though.
Part 2 which is more about the economics and engineering is here https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-did-we-wait-so-lo...
and Part 3 about offshore here https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-did-we-wait-so-lo...
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