Is Rocketing Nuclear Waste into the Sun a Viable Solution?

[mheslep]

The Belgian project I referred to earlier (and is placed on one of the better spots in the world) http://www.c-power.be/applet_mernu_en/welcome/presentatie2/presentatie2.html
tells me that about 46% of the time, the unit is below half of its installed power, and 20% of the time below 1/5 of its installed power (which means it is below its average of 1/3 of installed power - so at that point, one needs an intervention from the backup - 4% of the time, it is totally dead).
The problem is that this simulation doesn't give us a distribution of the consecutive times when this happens, but as I said, typical anti-cyclone situations take 4-5 days.

If Belgium was to plan for some dependence on this system one would target the Capacity rating of ~115MW (35%) and not the name plate rating of 300MW (=60*5MW). The wind dips below that as you say 20% of the time, and is at no power 4% of the time. I am guessing there's a trade off in wind farm design: max energy collection vs max availability, and the Belgians, already having plenty of nuclear backup , swung for the fence.

 

[vanesch]

If Belgium was to plan for some dependence on this system one would target the Capacity rating of ~115MW (35%) and not the name plate rating of 300MW (=60*5MW). The wind dips below that as you say 20% of the time, and is at no power 4% of the time. I am guessing there's a trade off in wind farm design: max energy collection vs max availability, and the Belgians, already having plenty of nuclear backup , swung for the fence.

You have to know that this project is a pilot project in a program to phase out nuclear (of which Belgium has about 5.6 GW installed, which accounts for 56% of its production) and replace it by wind and gas: at least that was the proposition back 5 years ago when socialists and green party which were in the gov. then voted for that law. I would have preferred seeing this kind of wind farm in addition to nuclear (which is existing) to reduce coal-fired plants... I have a hard time imagining they are going to multiply this with a factor of 56. I think they will end up replacing nuclear by a lot of gas and a few windmills.

I'm not against such kind of wind farm, on the contrary. My view is that each KW hour produced in the current situation is a KW hour less produced by coal. But given the situation, I find it stupid to use that to try to phase out partially nuclear, while one is rather well placed to use it to diminish coal consumption.
I have the serious impression that it is oversold and the "300 MW" label is part of that.

 

[vanesch]

In sum the structural support materials cost for wind is going to be all in the steel, concrete relatively nil.

That's apparently the conclusion. I learned something: I always thought that the towers were in concrete...

 

[mheslep]

That's apparently the conclusion. I learned something: I always thought that the towers were in concrete...

To be clear the subsurface bases for these Belgium off shore towers, per the website you provided, are prefabricated concrete with a steel tower atop the waves. So in essence the slab mass of the typical land based buried concrete foundation is still present in the form of these conical subsurface bases. In general wind towers world wide are almost all steel.