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Comment by once_inc | Hacker News Reader

Without having checked the study because I can't open the link on this machine: does it also take recycling of the metals into account? There's also cost in placement (which are very significant in places like the North Sea for instance), and digging up the rare earth minerals and such.

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No, no mentioning of recycling. It only look at average energy output, converts it into what a natural gas power plant would do to get the same amount, and compare it to an estimation of green house emissions from producing the turbine. They do mention creating the estimation of production emissions from 28 wind turbine LCA studies of 22 on- and 6 offshore locations, so it sound like they include placement costs, but I can't say for sure. on- and offshore turbines may not be built identically.

The fundamental question that the study ask is if the wind turbine would replace an existing natural gas-fired power plant, how much less green house gases would it produce compared to keeping the natural gas-fired power plant, and how does that compared to the production emissions of the wind turbine.

Why not a nuclear power plant? And how about the battery backup that the wind power needs to be reliable?

Nuclear is so expensive the only reason anyone builds them is governments wants a source of nuclear trained people around for military purposes (either bombs or navy ships).

Battery backup isn't a needed as much as many thing in the real world. Those gas power plants we already have are not going anywhere, so we still use them when there isn't much wind. Though battery is something we should be building instead (and are).

Wait, what? There are also a number of countries that operate nuclear plants purely for civilian electricity production. Military applications are not the primary motivator.

Instead, civilian energy demands and energy independence are the motivating factors. Look at how Ontario leveraged its electricity supply in the early days of the trade war.

I said build not operate. The world situation has changed, 50 years ago nuclear power was a good idea to build. If you have a working nuclear power plant I'd generally keep operating it, and do small upgrades over time. However building a new one is something you should only do if you have military needs. (note that showing off is sometimes a military need)

CANDU 9 and Advanced CANDU reactors were developed and built during a time when Canada had no active military nuclear program.

both cancled actording to wikipedia thus proving my point. both were started near the end of when of when making a civial nuke might make sense

There are 12 CANDU 9 units: Bruce A & B, and Darlington. Both either undergone recent refurbishment or refurbishment underway.

We even know how to feed gas turbine with hydrogen, and how to make hydrogen thanks to renewables' overproduction ("green hydrogen").

Nonsense, by that logic Lithuania should have been a #2 military power long time ago (having built nukes from a civil nuclear reactor) (it used to operate #2 largest nuclear reactor in the world, now it would be #4).

I mean Lithuania's nuclear reactors were built while it was part of the #2 military power in the world and have since been shut down.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

In most of Europe, nuclear is cheaper than anything else but coal, natgas, and classic hydro.

When you also add the cost of battery backup.

Spain and Portugal have just experienced the first taste of that fact.

Most of the cost of nuclear is in construction so extending the life of existing nuclear power stations as long as possible makes sense. However new nuclear in Europe has been much more expensive and even France has lost the ability to build new nuclear capacity cheaply.

You can do the same with a nuclear power plant and calculate how much power it generate and how much green house gases that represent if it was produced by a natural gas-fired power plant. Fuel cost is a thing, but to my knowledge they are fairly minor in terms of greenhouse emissions when compared to burning fossil fuels.

Batteries/storage do not produce energy so they don't displace any energy in this kind of calculations. They can be viewed as a small efficiency increase of existing wind turbines, in which case they do have a form of greenhouse gas payback time, although the energy must not be counted twice for both the turbine and battery, and the increased wear and tear on the wind turbine may impact the result.

Wind generally has an production rate of around 50%, which mean that countries like Denmark that has already reached over 100% wind production still only have energy for half of their consumption. This mean the storage need is fairly massive, which they currently solve by importing energy from fossil fueled thermal power stations, nuclear and hydropower from nearby countries. Constructing more wind power at this point does not seem economical for power companies, and any storage solution like lithium, reverse hydro, and so on are also not economical (as in, there is basically zero investment into it outside of government subsidized initiatives). As such, wind has in that location seem to have reached its ability to displace any more fossil fuel.

Because nobody is lobbying to build nuclear power plants instead of windmills because of the lifecycle emissions of the windmill production.

It would be laughable to compare nuclear with any alternative based on the cost of externalities.

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