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rolf westgard

rolf westgard's picture
st Paul, MN
Commenter for
4 years 1 week

Recent Comments

Posted on 04/25/13 at 05:29 pm in response to Legislators should rethink costly renewable-energy mandates

It's those cows belching methane that are the problem.

Posted on 04/25/13 at 08:02 pm in response to Legislators should rethink costly renewable-energy mandates

A gas or nuclear plant gets a lot more energy per construction ton over the life of the plant. Prairie Island will produce 8 or 9 billion kwh/year for 60 to 80 years. The turbines and solar panels will be junk in 25.

Posted on 04/25/13 at 08:05 pm in response to Legislators should rethink costly renewable-energy mandates

The problems for solar and wind are fundamental. They are low density and intermittent. Think of a quiet night when the wind is down.

Posted on 04/25/13 at 08:07 pm in response to Legislators should rethink costly renewable-energy mandates

It is just expensive and intermittent with really low capacity factors.

Posted on 04/25/13 at 08:09 pm in response to Legislators should rethink costly renewable-energy mandates

And it's false, since nuclear plants operate for 2-3 cents/kwh including fuel, it's the cheapest way to boil water.

Posted on 04/25/13 at 08:15 pm in response to Legislators should rethink costly renewable-energy mandates

Nuclear commercial power plants have no relation to weapons. The plutonium that's bred in the power pant is not weapons grade, so it wouldn't work even if you had a billon dollar plant to separate it.
Iran has a nuclear power plant at Bushear. It's not involved in their weapons program. For that look to the plutonium plant at Arak and the explosives facility at Parchin.

Posted on 04/26/13 at 03:33 am in response to Legislators should rethink costly renewable-energy mandates

The 2-3 cents does not include the spent fuel storage issue which remains as the big unsolved nuclear issue. I am proposing that we offer the granite in northern MN as the replacement for the now closed Yucca Mountain. The geologic storage fund has $10 billion to spend; they might as well spend it here. That should start a flurry of comment!
And Eric, Minnesota has better solar intensity than Germany, and of the renewables I think solar is the best long term bet. Advances like...

Posted on 04/27/13 at 09:28 am in response to Legislators should rethink costly renewable-energy mandates

China went that route in the Great Leap forward with backyard digesters and smelters. It almost tanked the country, and those things are junk while China builds lots of new power plants, mainly nuclear.
Amory Lovins convinced CA Governor Brown that soft power was it and to forget central power plants. IMO that led to California's energy crisis, blackouts, soaring rates, and utility bankruptcies.
Today, wind, solar, and geothermal combined are about 1% of our total US energy...

Posted on 05/02/13 at 01:26 pm in response to Legislators should rethink costly renewable-energy mandates

Most of US nuclear plants are PWRs; NOT the same as the Fukushima BWR plants. They were hit with a 50 foot tsunami, not by a mere wave slap. And by far the major damage in Japan was from the tsunami, not from the Fukushima reactors.
We need to replace coal with a non carbon option, and nuclear is it.

Posted on 04/23/13 at 08:16 pm in response to Minnesota needs a bold framework to change its energy picture

Germany is the poster country for roof top solar with more than a quarter million installations
subsidized by $10 billion/year in solar subsidies. In 2012 they produced about 24B kwh or 4% of Germany's total electric demand of 620B kwh. The $10 billion comes from all rate payers and tax payers. The effect is for low and middle income home owners being taxed to pay the wealthy who can afford the upfront cost to decorate their roofs with solar panels. The bill in Sen. Marty's...