The American Spectator

Pecos Pete| 2.17.09 @ 7:47AM

Good article. I particularly liked the closing paragraph...now I know where to invest...in companies tearing down wind generators.

It would be helpful if Mr. Tucker would provide more information about solar power in a future article.

Bud Hammons| 2.17.09 @ 7:53AM

When the politicos in charge are given the choice of buying votes or usable infrastructure with a "stimulus", you can rest assured they will take the former. The lawyers responsible for this nonsense have no clue about engineering, economics, and industry, but can count noses of their campaign contributors.

The barbarians are inside the gates.

v/r,

-- Bud

AMightyWind| 2.17.09 @ 8:10AM

Liberals speak in generalities not facts, those are little porky things that just get in the way of the truth.

gp| 2.17.09 @ 9:01AM

Three mistakes in just the first page! 1) It's Barack, not Barrack. 2) "100 miles on a side" is 10,000 square miles, not 100,000. 3) "natural gas prices have gone through the roof" is no longer true; see http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/NG/M

Mike Cazayoux| 2.17.09 @ 9:05AM

I traveled recently throught that upstate NY "windfarm." Those turbines are huge! They tower over the landscape like a dispersed Manhattan skyline complete with twirling beenie caps. To think that the locals agreed to such a montrosity in their midst in return for a few tax subsidies is truely sad.

No way will Teddy allow that kind of visual pollution off of Hyanissport.

How bout them Frenchies by the way. They get a bad rap for their appeasing foreign policy and 35 hour workweek, but 80% nuclear! No more freedom fries for me. As a French-American I have reason to be proud once again. Vive la nuclear France!

John Navratil| 2.17.09 @ 9:16AM

To say that natural gas prices have not gone "through the roof" is true only with respect to the shocks. The underlying trend is that natural gas prices have double in the last decade and at yesterday's close of $4.60 at the Henry Hub, it ain't near as cheap as it was. This is the price which sets the electricity rates as it is the fuel which generates electricity at the margin.

corporate drone| 2.17.09 @ 9:35AM

It kinda begs the question... how about nuclear?

Dustoff| 2.17.09 @ 10:08AM

Maybe Al Bore should read up on EU great jump to wind-machies. Their not chearing about them anymore.

Also on the natural gas. What goes, will go UP!
Since obama has said no to drilling.

rr| 2.17.09 @ 10:26AM

I learned long ago that Liberals abosrb silly ideas like a sponge and never get rid of them. They have their prejudices like an addict has his dope, and they never reject them.
Solar and wind energy as primary sources of energy are fantasies, the stuff of college bull sessions.

Marc Jeric| 2.17.09 @ 10:40AM

When Carter a) nominated a Sierra Club lawyer and a Massachussetts consumer protection advocate to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and b) killed the Clinch River Reprocessing Plant, he in effect killed the nuclear power in this country. France, Russia, Japan, and Great Brittain have no problems with spent fuel and its storage - they reprocess that spent fuel, produce electricity, and generated new nuclear fuel for existing power plants. It is as close as anybody in history of science approached the ideal of perpetuum mobile. The 70,000 tons of nuclear "waste" now destined for storage in the Yucca Mountain Repository contains enough energy for 1500 years of US consumption, including 3% annual growth in demand. But for that we need several new Clinch Rivers reprocessing plants. Instead, we are pursuing solar power (cost $2/kwhr instead of 8 cents) and wind power (cost $4/kwhr) if we count the cost of energy storage when there is no sun or no wind.
It is of interest to note that our "nukelar engineer" Carter finished last in his Navy Academy class, was never allowed to step on a nuclear submarine, and was tasked only to schedule regular turnovers of those submarine personnel. When leaving the Academy Admiral Ricover asked him if he, Carter, did his best. The moron answered "No", and the admiral asked him "Why not?". Carter then wrote a book entitled "Why not the best"? I mean - if that is not the proof of utter idiocy, what is?

Deborah| 2.17.09 @ 11:08AM

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In this case the road to our country's demise is paved with liberal insanity.

Thanks for the heads up, Mr. Tucker. If the country survives the next several years of liberal rule (and I do mean rule) we'll be carrying on our backs the weight of the decisions made in this "stimulus" bill. Hugo Chavez has nothing on this adminstration.

dcd| 2.17.09 @ 12:08PM

If nuclear is such a profitable idea and government money only messes things up, then why does the nuclear industry want fat government subsidies?

Astro| 2.17.09 @ 12:52PM

In general I agree with the tone and conclusions of this article. However, one statement that tries to inject some facts strikes me as rather vague and unbelieveable:
"The current 345-kilovolt current grid, you see, loses about 10 percent of its power to heat and friction every 200 miles."
Electrical power losses are due to impedance, which can create heat. (Impedance is similar to resistance, with inductance and capacitance also involved.) Saying 'friction and heat' is both incorrect and redundant; while mechanical friction does generate heat, friction is not the same as impedance.
Also, I find the claim that the grid loses 10 percent of its power every 200 miles as an unbelievably large figure, implying a extreme amount of energy loss. But nevertheless, the distance problem is not that bad, since a power station merely has to feed the nearest node in the grid. It's not as though a separate set of powerlines must be built from Colorado to New York for every windfarm there.

American Socialist| 2.17.09 @ 1:42PM

Everyone is so misguided on this Web site.

Come join us! Become a socialist!

http://www.sp-usa.org/

Deborah| 2.17.09 @ 1:56PM

Yeah, that's gonna happen, Mr. Socialist.

Socialism leads to communism. We're not the USSA yet, we prefer to fight.

Freeranger| 2.17.09 @ 2:38PM

Good article.

Marc Jeric: Perhaps you'd like to think liberals are dumb, but they aren't. Political leanings are not correlated with intelligience. Carter did well at the Naval Academy, finished about 60th out of more than 800. Whatever else you think of Carter, he's smart...and so were Marx and Lenin. Never "misunderestimate" your adversary.

John Navratil| 2.17.09 @ 2:52PM

Friction is not the appropriate term, but for the layman it is descriptive. The resistive losses do generate heat (like friction) and dissipate the electrical power. This can be reduced by upping the voltage and reducing the current (explain that to the layman) but at some point corona discharge limits this as well.

The 10 percent every 200 miles bears scrutiny as well as the estimates I have seen are that the grid looses 6% to 8% of transmitted power (40% through line losses and 60% through transformers). However most power plants are not 200 miles away from their major service area. Still a quarter wave length transmission line looks like a direct short and the further away the source is from the demand, the greater the losses.

That said, there aren't that many people living in the Texas Panhandle where this power is generated. So how much of it will get to the end user is a legitimate question.

American Socialist| 2.17.09 @ 3:17PM

Deborah, under socialism, you don't need to fight; we'll be one happy family.

Under Republicanism, your son will die in a massacre outside of Baghdad, his body burned and dragged around the streets of the city, then hanged from the nearest tree.

Oregonian| 2.17.09 @ 4:00PM

American Socialist

It's always refreshing to read what passes for a well-reasoned position in the progressive world. Apparently Keith Olbermann must be on vacation and the Huffington Post must be down for repairs, so you have decided to prove once again to American Spectator readers that "liberal intelligence" is an oxymoron!

American Socialist| 2.17.09 @ 4:07PM

Oregonian, you dimwitted fascist, you can kiss my ass!

Nick| 2.17.09 @ 4:30PM

"AMERICAN socialist" is also an oxymoron!

Oregonian, you forgot Wesley Crusher- I mean Rachel Madcow and Chris Matth-spews.

I would become a liberal/socialist if only it didn't require a labotomy!

whyyeseyec| 2.17.09 @ 4:34PM

American Socialist

Hugo Chavez is looking for a butt kisser......I hear you`re good at that

Mike| 2.17.09 @ 4:41PM

Hey dimwitted American Socialist try to keep your insults straight. Fascism is socialism, as in national socialism. There are no totalitarians over here on the right. Just us warriors for liberty.

Roy| 2.17.09 @ 4:46PM

dcd:

Why does the nuclear industry want fat government subsidies? Because everybody wants fat government subsidies who isn't a libertarian ideologue. Above and beyond the socialist economy(where all wealth is put into a pot and distributed by all wise bureaucrats) and the free economy(where all wealth is kept by those who generate it) is the "me" economy(where all wealth is put into a pot and distributed to me). Everybody who is just maximizing their own self-interest will choose the "me" economy and the nuclear industry is no exception.

The question is whether nuclear energy would be profitable without the subsidies, if the government just got out of the way. I haven't hear Tucker make that argument. So it's still about what we can persuade our master, Al Gore(acting through his acolyte, Barack Obama), to let us build. Would it be easier to persuade them to let us build nuclear or coal plants? That's a political/psychological question that has a fairly small amount to do with which source is objectively better.

Dustoff| 2.17.09 @ 4:55PM

American Socialist
+++++++++++++

Yeah, Hilter did such a good job right. O brother.

Bullwinkles| 2.17.09 @ 4:57PM

American Socialist:
" Deborah, under socialism, you don't need to fight; we'll be one happy family.

Under Republicanism, your son will die in a massacre outside of Baghdad, his body burned and dragged around the streets of the city, then hanged from the nearest tree. "
-------------------------------------------------------

One big happy family of those who are not imprisoned. Better Baghdad than Farmingdale.

dcd| 2.17.09 @ 5:25PM

The question of subsidies is where nuclear gets the most interesting. The nuclear industry wants subsidies for construction, operation, waste disposal, and risk avoidence. How can the profitability and efficiency even be assessed with such a distored demand. If they can make money without the government cleaning up their mess than more power to them, otherwise it is as foolish as subsidizing ethanol.

American Capitalist| 2.17.09 @ 5:33PM

American Socialist:

What, are you 12 years old or something that that is your best response to Oregonian?

And you, my friend, are the fascist. All fascist regimes (Hitler, Mussolini) had socialist cores, socialism at the end of a gun. But you probably did not know that being edumacated at a government school. Go back to playing with your Wii.

Avitar| 2.17.09 @ 5:49PM

I'm pretty sure that American Socialist was being sarcastic. At least I hope he was. I realize that there are people who do not that NAZI translates as Patriotic Liberal Labor Union party in English but he seems too intent on pushing buttons to be that ignorant.

Thomas| 2.17.09 @ 5:50PM

dcd,

As Roy pointed out, we live an era of OPM [other people's money]. Why use your money when you can get it from someone else? And the biggest source of OPM is , you guessed it, the GOVERNMENT.

Now, nuclear power has a lot of risk. And almost all of it comes in the form of government intervention. Between environmental impact studies, government permitting and lawsuits filed by the eco-freaks; not only would it take years to even break ground for a nuclear plant, but it might never get built. This all conspires to make financing a nuclear powerplant a bit of a risk.

As to transmission loss over great distances, this is already being addressed by a number of firms. As generation costs increase, transmission losses cut deeper into the bottom line.

Oh, one other thing about nuclear as opposed to the "green" power generation methods. The nuclear footprint is a few acres, at best. Wind and solar are thousands of square MILES. Think about it.

dcd| 2.17.09 @ 8:13PM

As noted above solar is most productive during high demand period, further interesting technologies (see vanadium battery) would permit each house to store and release energy on demand. This along with more built in grid intelligence would permit a reverse auction of energy that could start showing some real gains in efficiency and cheap power.

MisguidedinPhoenix| 2.17.09 @ 10:02PM

American Socialist| 2.17.09 @ 1:42PM

Everyone is so misguided on this Web site.

Come join us! Become a socialist!

http://www.sp-usa.org/

--Come on over to my house ! I have a big surprise for you ! I'll give you a hint as to what the surprise is: It's big, makes a very loud noise, and sure makes a mess of Socialists...!

Astro| 2.18.09 @ 8:56AM

Update on my earlier comment.
I wikipediad the power losses in the US grid. The wiki article used a figure of less than 8% [1995 data] for the entire grid (which is believable), so the quoted value of 10% per 200 miles is too large by far.

Note to American Socialist: Congratulations on your threadjack, you managed to get a lot of people to respond. Nevertheless you're still a moron; try selling crazy somewhere else.
Note to Everyone Who Responded to him: In the long run it's better to ignore trolls so they'll go away; responding to them just feeds them.

John Navratil| 2.18.09 @ 9:18AM

(Picking nits!) An average loss of 8% power across the grid and a 10% loss per 200 miles are both true when the average distance between power station and average consumer is 160 miles.

Most power stations are located near their consumers. If not for the cost of losses, we wouldn't need to transport coal. We would just generate the power at the coal mine.

American Socialist| 2.18.09 @ 12:34PM

Jesus was a socialist, you dumbasses!

Energy analyst| 2.18.09 @ 2:55PM

Is this article serious? There are a shocking number of errors and inaccuracies.

First of all, the wind tax credit is at ~2 cents, not 1.45 cents. Second of all, the tax credit is given based on actual production of electricity, so it is absolutely false to say that developers can make a profit without selling electricity (not to mention that nobody can make a profit selling electricity at 2 cents/kWh except maybe fully amortized hydro projects).

The referenced NREL study is simply making the point that wind alone cannot supply all of our electricity due to its intermittency, and that some amount of baseload generating capacity is still needed. However, this really only becomes a serious issue when wind approaches about 20% of the installed capacity on a grid, and we're far from getting there in the U.S.

Nuclear may indeed be a good choice for sustainable energy production, but it doesn't mean that it is sufficient on its own.

If the author would like to be taken seriously on energy issues, please make some effort to present actual facts. And don't begin articles with non sequiturs about male prostitution.

h| 2.18.09 @ 3:18PM

Nuclear energy needs to reflect the true cost of production. Inevitably omitted is the cost of storing spent radioactive materials safely for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Should this storage cost be factored in to the cost of Nuclear power generation, (instead of letting the taxpayer pick up the bill) how cost effective would it really be?

American Capitalist| 2.18.09 @ 5:12PM

American Socialist:

Too many magic mushrooms seem to have left you addled.

Don't confuse the Christian ideals of charity and service, which are personal acts of free will, with socialism. Using the government to force me to be a slave to others, by taking the fruits of MY labors and giving them to those who did nothing for them, so you can feel good about yourself, has nothing to do with Jesus and is not charity or goodness on your part. Liberals and leftists are good at being generous with other people's money, but are notoriously stingy with their own money. The current administration is a good example.

So why don't you go and change your bong water, have your yearly bath and think about it.

May Pelletier| 2.18.09 @ 7:20PM

Not until a wind farm is allowed where a Kennedy may have to see it, will alternative power be a reality. "Not in my backyard" says the elites Put them with the gun lovin' trailer trash.
There is only one clear solution. Get the conservatives back in or quitchurbitchin'.

Ted| 2.18.09 @ 11:14PM

GP:
"Barrack" was a misspelling. But Tucker's area calculation for a 100 miles squared was 10,000 square miles (not the 100,000 square miles as you assert). That general natural gas prices have subsided (not necessarily the case for California) provides no meaningful counterpoint given the recent overall reduction in demand. So, given your incorrect corrections on the relevant points, do you agree with the author?

Alan Brooks| 2.18.09 @ 11:40PM

Nuke is it

A Dumb down SOCIETY| 2.19.09 @ 7:45PM

Politics is controled by the puppet master. Till people grow up and begin to run their own life, they are lost, fight no war, your war is to survive.

It's the only war worth fighting for. GET YOU GUNS, you may need it.

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