Germany's Renewable Plan Faces Popular Resistance 176
diegocg writes "Germany has outlined the details of the new 800km (497mi) high voltage power link that will transport renewable power from the north to the industrial south. It is part of the Energiewende plan to replace nuclear power and most other non-renewable energy sources with renewable sources in the next decades. However, the power link is facing a problem: popular resistance from affected neighborhoods."
the transmission would go further (Score:5, Interesting)
Norway (and Denmark iirc) have plans on laying down more (sea) cables to Germany so I guess this link in reality would connect southern Germany to Norway.
The countries are already trading energy and I would guess they would need this as a mini super grid to make a larger percentage of the energy renewable.
Bonus nerd info. Heres a link to a almost live view of the input and output of electricity and natural gas from Denmark: http://www.energinet.dk/Flash/... [energinet.dk]
Re:NIMBY (Score:5, Interesting)
Give them a choice - Nuclear in their back yard, Coal burning in their back yard or this. The choice of None Of The Above is only an illusion.
Use an underground cable (Score:4, Interesting)
Use an underground cable. They build underwater HVDC lines all the time, so you can build underground lines. One of the nice things about HVDC is that the capacitance between conductors doesn't cause losses, so you can put the conductors close to each other as long as you have sufficient insulation.
IIRC in the past the problem w/ buried HVDC lines is that the cables were so thick, and couldn't be bent too much, so you needed cable reels so big that they could only fit on a ship. I believe that problem has been solved, and you can now use cable reels that will fit on a truck.
Do what the Swedes do (Score:5, Interesting)
Put money where mouth is (Score:5, Interesting)
My algorithm for NIMBY is "I'll let this be in _my_ backyard, for n dollars/euros," where you set n to zero and slowly increase it until you get a combination of bids that can be assembled into a working solution. Then you charge the NIMBYers whatever cost that is, to pay the bids. You wanna pay an extra 7 cents per KWh to have the lines be somewhere else? Ok. You don't want to pay it? Ok, you get the lines, and lower energy costs than your stuck-up neighbors.
How does everyone not win (or at least break even) in such a scenario?
Why is renewable power centralized? (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't need to be and shouldn't be centralized.
I can't power my home with a personal coal power plant or power my home with a personal nuclear power plant. But I CAN power my home with a personal solar array or wind mill or whatever. Renewable power should be decentralized.
Rather then pushing these big renewable plants, instead give home owners a machine that lets they use locally sourced power in their home electrical grid. So the system will take from local power before it draws from the grid.
This makes more sense for a lot of reasons.
1. The land required for renewable energy is huge. But if everyone uses a little of their roof space then its no big deal. And they don't need to supplant ALL energy consumption just some of it.
2. You don't waste energy in transmission or over supply. The point should be to have homes be more self sufficient so they don't need as much power from the grid. Not to supply the grid with their power. That isn't economical. Rather simply have people need less because they produce some of their own power.
3. Personally sourced power is largely immune to price fixing, political blackmail, and other attempts to control people through energy supply. This is because the power is supplied by solar cells and other similar things that can be bought from many sources. The issue with the Russian pipeline is really only the best known example. There are many examples on a daily basis all over the world.
4. Nothing is as likely to get renewable energy installed and maintained then personal participation in it. The world is littered with failed green energy projects on all continents. But the solar power cells on people's roofs... those work. Those are maintained.
etc...
It shouldn't be centralized. Renewable energy should be decentralized.
Re:NIMBY (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe hormesis is true from this:
I was born and raised in Vitoria-ES-Brazil, an hour drive away from Guarapari-ES-Brazil, yep, that city on Pandora's Promise, that shows up to 30 uSv/s on the geiger counter.
I spent all my summers from age 9-19 either in Guarapari or Marataizes (both monazite sand beaches). And I'm not an isolated case. I have many hundreds of family, friends and acquaintances that did exactly the same. I know dozens of people that lived their entire lifes in Guarapari.
My mom spent a good portion of her last 25 summers doing the same. She's 64, and is extremely healthy. She knows a couple hundred people her age that did the same, only a few had cancer, like 2 or 3% cancer rate.
In Guarapari alone, tens of thousands of people are subject to at least 1 uSv/s 24x7, or 30000mSv yearly. That's many thousands of times maximum recommended yearly exposure.
Studies show Guarapari cancer rates within Brazilian average.
Studies also show that people in Denver and Salt Lake City have less cancer than in sea level cities.
Airline cabin crew (pilots and flight attendants) are subject to 2uSv/s exposure while at cruising altitudes.
Please show me studies with elevated cancer levels among airline crew members.
Guarapari is also know as "cidade saude" or "city of health", it's sands are known to have healing properties, people with chronic diseases go there for their healing powers.
What do you think are in the waters of those hot waters Franklin Delano Roosevelt treated himself in Georgia (hot springs), that's right, also radioactive waters. There are hundreds of similar cases.
There's a nuclear reactor in the UK that is nicknamed a shining reactor, because it glows in the night for neutron radiation that is continuously emitted by the reactor, where are the cancers from that ?
There are a few videos on youtube that show some of this information.
The data is concrete. I challenge to be proved wrong.
Finally, please show me cancer studies that show workers from modern nuclear power plants have more cancers that average. I think you will find they have less cancer than average.