|
|
|
- Thread starter dpylyp
- Start date
Admiral Beez
Superstar
I find it interesting that the oil sands firms were fined thousands of dollars for several hundred birds that died after landing in tailings ponds, while across North America wind turbines are killing far more birds every year.
nfitz
Superstar
Wind turbines killing several hundred birds per year in Canada?
That sounds absurd. Proof?
That sounds absurd. Proof?
Admiral Beez
Superstar
I give a fig what you think nfitz, if you want proof, look it up, or don't, I could care less.
For the rest of us http://www.suite101.com/content/do-wind-turbines-kill-more-birds-than-tailing-ponds-a265099 "While problems with tailing ponds are not insignificant when it comes to destroying wild life, a great many more birds and bats are mangled by wind turbine blades each year according to a monitoring report released from Canada's second-largest wind farm, the Wolfe Island EcoPower® Centre." This is not to suggest that tailing ponds aren't nasty, but it does demonstrate that the wind power industry is gettiing more of a free ride, not being subject to fines for bird and bat deaths.
nfitz
Superstar
I appreciate your support!!!
Thanks for the reference.
I guess the most environmentally friendly source of energy is nuclear.
Irishmonk
Senior Member
Check this link for some sobering stats on bird deaths:http://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mortality/
Windows kill 1 billion birds every year in N. America, while our feline friend, the domestic cat, takes another 500 million or so into the great beyond. Which makes the mortality rates associated with wind turbines and the Tar Sands pretty insignificant. There are far more pressing concerns with both of these energy sources than bird deaths--sad as they may seem when pictured on the front page.
Windows kill 1 billion birds every year in N. America, while our feline friend, the domestic cat, takes another 500 million or so into the great beyond. Which makes the mortality rates associated with wind turbines and the Tar Sands pretty insignificant. There are far more pressing concerns with both of these energy sources than bird deaths--sad as they may seem when pictured on the front page.
gristle
Senior Member
The Wolfe Island Eco-Power Centre, which operates 86 wind turbines on Wolfe Island in Frontenac Township, reported the deaths of 1,962 birds and bats in the first eight months of operation. Birds from 33 different species and bats from five different species were killed. The second such report, from July 2009 to December 2009 indicated the deaths of 602 birds and 1,270 bats. Bird deaths included raptors and vultures. That's just from one wind farm in the province.
A single wind turbine typically requires 2.5 acres of open land for operation. The Wolfe Island facility can, in theory, generate 197.8 MW, but it never has produced such an output, and likely never will. Typical output is a quarter of that. And as with all wind farms, there is no predictability as to when it will be producing power. If wind power is to be taken advantage of when it is available, it often requires the expensive scaling back of other generation sources in order to accommodate the electricity produced from wind. This isn't a particularly efficient approach to electricity production.
Interestingly, a new generation of small nuclear reactors from Babcock and Wilcox (mPower) can produce 125MW of electricity, and it does not need to be refueled for five years. Its design is simpler than most existing large-scale reactors, and it conforms to all existing licensing protocols. The safety and cooling system is a passive design, and the reactor is intended to be housed in an underground containment facility equal to about seven floors down. That gives such a facility a truly tiny footprint when compared to the land necessary for a wind farm with a similar generating capacity.
Syncrude was fined $800,000 for the deaths of 1,606 ducks that landed on a tailing pond. The Wolfe Island Eco-Power Centre has never been fined for any past or ongoing bird deaths.
A single wind turbine typically requires 2.5 acres of open land for operation. The Wolfe Island facility can, in theory, generate 197.8 MW, but it never has produced such an output, and likely never will. Typical output is a quarter of that. And as with all wind farms, there is no predictability as to when it will be producing power. If wind power is to be taken advantage of when it is available, it often requires the expensive scaling back of other generation sources in order to accommodate the electricity produced from wind. This isn't a particularly efficient approach to electricity production.
Interestingly, a new generation of small nuclear reactors from Babcock and Wilcox (mPower) can produce 125MW of electricity, and it does not need to be refueled for five years. Its design is simpler than most existing large-scale reactors, and it conforms to all existing licensing protocols. The safety and cooling system is a passive design, and the reactor is intended to be housed in an underground containment facility equal to about seven floors down. That gives such a facility a truly tiny footprint when compared to the land necessary for a wind farm with a similar generating capacity.
Syncrude was fined $800,000 for the deaths of 1,606 ducks that landed on a tailing pond. The Wolfe Island Eco-Power Centre has never been fined for any past or ongoing bird deaths.
Second_in_pie
Senior Member
^^ The pro of wind power is that it can happen pretty much anywhere. You may look at a single farm and talk about it's insignificance, but you have to realize that Southern Ontario could have windmills all over it, whether it be large operations in key areas or just wind turbines scattered along farmland. The same thing goes with solar power.
Nuclear has a big problem that the government is still refusing to recycle spent fuel, which is creating large amounts of waste. Get rid of that problem and nuclear power is actually pretty good, but there are still problems in mining and refining the fuel and the high costs of making and maintaining a reactor.
Nuclear has a big problem that the government is still refusing to recycle spent fuel, which is creating large amounts of waste. Get rid of that problem and nuclear power is actually pretty good, but there are still problems in mining and refining the fuel and the high costs of making and maintaining a reactor.
I'm not sure how well a single tailing pond compares to the second largest wind operation in Canada. I won't dismiss the evidence, but it seems kind of shaky to say that Wolfe Island wind power kills only twice as many birds per year as a single incident at a single tailing pond.
Eug
Senior Member
Should they both not be fined?
gristle
Senior Member
Wind power can happen where there is sufficient wind to make it worthwhile, otherwise the investment isn't useful. As for southern Ontario having windmills all over it, that would look pretty ugly in my opinion. Regardless, you would need thousands of turbines and thousands of hectares of land in order to produce the electricity equal to one nuclear power station, but you have no guarantee that all these wind turbines would be producing electricity constantly. If it's not windy during the day, it sucks. If it's windy at night when there is low demand, it sucks - and it's expensive to take other base load production off line in order to accommodate wind production. Solar is know to be a poor producer at night.
In the case of Ontario, the CANDU reactors used here are the most efficient in terms of uranium use, using 15% less than a pressurized water reactor for each megawatt of electricity produced. CANDU's don't require enriched uranium, so fuel reprocessing is not needed. Reprocessing facilities and waste disposal associated with reprocessing are not required. CANDU reactors can also be fueled with a number of low fissile content fuels (such as thorium), and be refueled while on power. As Canada is the leading exporter of uranium, there is no fuel shortage that demands reprocessing. That being said, the NWMO has taken that issue into full consideration when planning for a permanent used nuclear fuel repository.
As for your remarks regarding reactor waste, all spent fuel is presently stored both on site and above ground at the Bruce, Darlington and Pickering reactor stations. Roughly speaking, spent reactor fuel would occupy a space equal to a hockey rink up to the top of the boards. The high cost of building and maintaining reactors is, to a great degree, regulatory in nature.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
And that's my point, wind turbines seem to be getting a free ride on bird deaths while the tar sands gets fined. Of course windows, cats, and for that matter time itself result in more bird deaths, but no one is fining cats. That said, in Australia IIRC you can be fined if your cat kills Oz' wildlife.
Parsnips
New Member
The Wolfe Island wind farm looks neat in one way, but overall I think it spoils the view. You could say the bonus of a nuclear plant is that you get more energy and it's not sprawled all over a shoreline. Anyone know the ratio of space-energy provided from nuclear compared to wind?
sodapop
Active Member
i think a wind farm would be awesome right in th middle of the lake! but the windmills kill birds so thatsthe disadvantage
gristle
Senior Member
It all depends on how you want to compare. The actual reactor core capable of producing 750 MW would be roughly equal to a medium-size house. But there is far more to a reactor station than the reactor core.
For raw land-use comparison, you can use the Darlington nuclear generating station as an example - which would also likely be the site for a new nuclear build. The total area allocated to the station is 480 hectares, or 4.8 square kilometres. The four reactors at Darlington produce a total of 3,524 MW, which provides about 20% of Ontario's base load electricity requirement (enough for about two million people). The reactor buildings, vacuum building, turbine hall, fuel bays, warehouses, spent-fuel storage, machine shop all occupy only a fraction of the total station land area. This does not include space allocated for the hydro switchyard, transmission line right-of-way, water intake channel and other plant-related facilities (including soccer fields). In fact, much of the Darlington site is made up of unused land. The actual four reactor buildings, turbine hall, fuel bays, vacuum building and tritium removal facility occupy an area of roughly 90,000 square metres (the essential production facilities).
The total land site is large enough to house a new station with four reactors and all their related facilities (including twelve cooling towers if lake water cooling is not used). This new-build would likely result in a station capable of generating from 3,000 MW to 4,800 MW - depending on the choice of reactor design (with each of the four reactors capable of producing 750 MW to 1,200 MW). Should the existing Darlington reactors be in operation when the new reactors come on line, the total output from the station could exceed 8,000 MW. But as the the original four reactors would likely be reaching the end of their service lifetime, such a scenario would be unlikely for any long period of time. So for the purposes of comparison, the 3,524 MW figure will be used.
A wind farm, like the Wolfe Island facility, possesses a total potential to produce almost 200 MW, but due to intermittent winds, the actual production is averaged out to be just under 50 MW. Wind farms are usually described in terms of their total potential, and not their actual output On average, wind farms produce at about 25% of their name place capacity. There are days when there is insufficient wind, and turbines will produce nothing. Each of the 86 Wolfe Island wind turbine is capable of producing just over 2 MW at full generating capacity (with an actual average of 0.5 MW). Each turbine is 125 metres tall, and the total land optioned for the wind farm is just over 2,500 hectares.
Going on a simple, raw comparison, 480 hectares of land is allocated to the production of 3,524 MW at Darlington, while 2,500 hectares is allocated on Wolfe Island to the production of 200 MW of potential power generated from wind, or the actual averaged output of just slightly under 50 MW (note that regardless of the numbers, Wolfe Island is considered to be an excellent wind production site). The 480 hectare Darlington site could easily support a second reactor facility that would more than double the output. In effect, over 7,000 turbines would be required to equal the present output of Darlington.
Woodbridge_Heights
Senior Member
What effect does using a vertical blade generator vs the more typical rotary fan type generators have on bird deaths.