World's tallest wooden wind turbine starts turning December 27, 2023  By Jonah Fisher BBC environment correspondent in Skara, Sweden  What is made from the same wood as a Christmas tree, held together by glue and manufactured in a Swedish factory for assembly later? If that calls to mind flat-pack furniture and meatballs, you're wrong. If you answered "a wooden wind turbine", you could be a visionary. According to Modvion, the Swedish start-up that has just built the world's tallest wooden turbine tower, using wood for wind power is the future. "It's got great potential," Otto Lundman, the company's chief executive, says as we gaze upwards at the firm's brand new turbine, a short drive outside Gothenburg. It's 150m (492ft) to the tip of the highest blade and we are the first journalists to be invited to have a look inside. The 2 megawatt generator on top has just started supplying electricity to the Swedish grid, providing power for about 400 homes. The dream of Lundman and Modvion is to take the wood and wind much higher. Steel has limitations.......On the horizon near the Modvion project, several very similar-looking turbines are turning. Steel, not wood, is the key material for them, as it is for almost all of the world's turbine towers. Strong and durable, steel has enabled huge turbines and wind farms to be constructed on land and at sea. But steel is not without its limitations, particularly for projects on land. As demand has grown for taller turbines that harvest stronger winds with larger generators, the diameter of the cylindrical steel towers to support them has had to grow too. In a world of road tunnels, bridges and roundabouts, many in the wind industry say getting those huge pieces of metal to turbine sites has become a real headache, in effect limiting how tall new steel turbines can be.  It is only when we go inside the tower that the differences become clear. The walls have a curved raw wood finish, not unlike a sauna.  At the factory, on the edge of Gothenburg, the thin layers of wood have been glued and compressed together to make the curved sections. Those pieces are then taken on site, glued together into cylinders and then stacked on top of each other to make the tower. "Wood and glue is the perfect combination, we've known that for hundreds of years," Olivegren says. "And because using wood is lighter [than steel] you can build taller turbines with less material."  Siemens Gamesa's efforts are focused on reducing the carbon footprint of the steel it uses, he says. Inside the Modvion tower, I am shown how the wooden modules have been stacked on top of each other and how they are held by steel fittings that are then glued into place. "The industry wants to build turbines with a 300m [blade] tip height, which means a tower which is 200m or more in height. With modularity you can do that," says Lundman. Negative carbon footprint....... Though wind power is cheaper and cleaner than almost all other forms of electricity generation, making steel involves extremely hot furnaces and almost always the burning of fossil fuels. That means CO2 emissions - the main driver of climate change. Modvion says using wood instead of steel eliminates the wind turbines' carbon footprint entirely, making them carbon negative. That's because the trees take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere when they are alive and, when they are chopped down, the carbon is stored in the wood. As long as the wood doesn't end up rotting or being burned, the carbon is not released......read on     https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67718719  

Why Nuclear Power Must Be Part of the Energy Solution RICHARD RHODES Many environmentalists have opposed nuclear power, citing its dangers and the difficulty of disposing of its radioactive waste. But a Pulitzer Prize-winning author argues that nuclear is safer than most energy sources and is needed if the world hopes to radically decrease its carbon emissions. For too many environmentalists concerned with global warming, nuclear energy is today’s Devil’s excrement. They condemn it for its production and use of radioactive fuels and for the supposed problem of disposing of its waste. In my judgment, their condemnation of this efficient, low-carbon source of baseload energy is misplaced. Far from being the Devil’s excrement, nuclear power can be, and should be, one major component of our rescue from a hotter, more meteorologically destructive world. Like all energy sources, nuclear power has advantages and disadvantages. What are nuclear power’s benefits? First and foremost, since it produces energy via nuclear fission rather than chemical burning, it generates baseload electricity with no output of carbon, the villainous element of global warming. Switching from coal to natural gas is a step toward decarbonizing, since burning natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide of burning coal. But switching from coal to nuclear power is radically decarbonizing, since nuclear power plants release greenhouse gases only from the ancillary use of fossil fuels during their construction, mining, fuel processing, maintenance, and decommissioning — about as much as solar power does, which is about 4 to 5 percent as much as a natural gas-fired power plant.Nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source.Second, nuclear power plants operate at much higher capacity factors than renewable energy sources or fossil fuels. Capacity factor is a measure of what percentage of the time a power plant actually produces energy. It’s a problem for all intermittent energy sources. The sun doesn’t always shine, nor the wind always blows, nor water always falls through the turbines of a dam. In the United States in 2016, nuclear power plants, which generated almost 20 percent of U.S. electricity, had an average capacity factor of 92.3 percent, meaning they operated at full power on 336 out of 365 days per year. (The other 29 days they were taken off the grid for maintenance.) In contrast, U.S. hydroelectric systems delivered power 38.2 percent of the time (138 days per year), wind turbines 34.5 percent of the time (127 days per year) and solar electricity arrays only 25.1 percent of the time (92 days per year). Even plants powered with coal or natural gas only generate electricity about half the time for reasons such as fuel costs and seasonal and nocturnal variations in demand. Nuclear is a clear winner on reliability. Third, nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source. This statement will seem paradoxical to many readers, since it’s not commonly known that non-nuclear energy sources release any radiation into the environment. They do. The worst offender is coal, a mineral of the earth’s crust that contains a substantial volume of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. Burning coal gasifies its organic materials, concentrating its mineral components into the remaining waste, called fly ash. So much coal is burned in the world and so much fly ash produced that coal is actually the major source of radioactive releases into the environment. What are nuclear’s downsides? In the public’s perception, there are two, both related to radiation: the risk of accidents, and the question of disposal of nuclear waste. There have been three large-scale accidents involving nuclear power reactors since the onset of commercial nuclear power in the mid-1950s: Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Fukushima in Japan.Studies indicate even the worst possible accident at a nuclear plant is less destructive than other major industrial accidents. The partial meltdown of the Three-Mile Island reactor in March 1979, while a disaster for the owners of the Pennsylvania plant, released only a minimal quantity of radiation to the surrounding population. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,  “The approximately 2 million people around TMI-2 during the accident are estimated to have received an average radiation dose of only about 1 millirem above the usual background dose. To put this into context, exposure from a chest X-ray is about 6 millirem and the area’s natural radioactive background dose is about 100-125 millirem per year… In spite of serious damage to the reactor, the actual release had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment.” Nuclear waste disposal, although a continuing political problem, is not any longer a technological problem.........read on            https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-nuclear-power-must-be-part-of-the-energy-solution-environmentalists-climate     

In the Face of Drought, Hydropower Still Delivers Electricity. Drought-strained hydropower sustains 80 percent average power generation capacity. In 2022, a quick internet search for Lake Mead or Lake Powell returns startling images of drying lake beds and parched land. The megadrought in the Southwestern United States is the driest—and longest—in the last 1,200 years, depleting water reservoir levels to critically low levels over the past 22 years. This persistent drought has policymakers and system planners concerned about the reliability of the electric grid under worsening drought conditions and climbing temperatures. Droughts particularly impact hydroelectric power dams as well as some thermoelectric power plants that require large amounts of water for cooling. But a new report by hydrologists atPacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) suggests thatthe relationship between drought and hydroelectric poweris more nuanced than it might seem. To get an accurate picture, PNNL hydrologists combined 20 years’ of annual power generation data from more than 600 hydroelectric power plants with historical precipitation data from eight distinct hydropower climate regions of the Western United States. Each hydropower region faces unique climatic conditions. Unique reservoir operating conditions also add complexity. Using these data, the hydrologists extrapolated hydropower generation as far back as 1900. They found that, even during the most severe droughts being observed over the last two decades, hydropower has sustained 80 percent of average power generation levels, which equates to about 150 terawatt-hours of renewable electricity—or approximately 20 percent of electricity demand across the West. This flexible power also helps to balance supply and demand in the western grid. “That’s a noticeable dip—but it’s still a lot of renewable energy,” said Sean Turner  water resources modeler at PNNL and main author of the report.             https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/face-drought-hydropower-still-delivers-electricity          

The US is to announce global nuclear fusion strategy at COP28 Valerie Volcovici and Timothy GardnerNovember27 2023 Fusion could have an important advantage over today's nuclear fission plants that split atoms, as it does not produce long-lasting radioactive waste. If deployed successfully, it could also provide a cheap source of carbon-free electricity.  Fusion, the process that powers the sun and stars to generate electricity, can be replicated on Earth with heat and pressure using lasers or magnets to smash two light atoms into a denser one, releasing large amounts of energy.  But there are hurdles to fusion producing commercial electricity. The energy output of last year's fusion experiment at the U.S. National Ignition Facility was only about 0.5% of the energy that went into firing up the lasers, some scientists estimate. Scientists have so far only reached scattered instances of ignition, not the many continuous ignition events per minute needed to generate electricity to power homes and industries. There are also regulatory, construction and siting hurdles in creating new fleets of power plants to replace parts of existing energy systems. Some critics say fusion will be too expensive and take too long to develop to help in the fight against climate change in the foreseeable future. A source familiar with the planned announcement said the fusion strategy will be a framework that lays out plans for the global deployment of the technology that could gain support from international partners. The source said COP28, which runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, will "be the starting gun for international cooperation" on nuclear fusion, which Kerry will tout as a climate "solution, not a science experiment". Despite what scientists say is an urgent need for an energy transition to fight climate change, investment has slowed into many parts of the clean energy business this year due to economic uncertainty and inflation. In 2023, international fusion companies have garnered about $1.4 billion in investments for a total of about $6.21 billion in mostly private money, the Fusion Industry Association (FIA) said, down from about $2.83 billion in new investment last year. But the number of companies getting investments rose to 43 from 33, spanning a dozen countries, according to the FIA, including the U.S., where Commonwealth is one of about 25 companies. Other countries pursuing fusion include Australia, China, Germany, Japan, and the UK.Of the two main types of fusion, one uses lasers to concentrate energy on a gold pellet containing hydrogen.    https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/us-announce-nuclear-fusion-strategy-cop28-2023-11-20/?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=144af3ae43-briefing-an-20231124&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b27a691814-144af3ae43-50628080&mc_cid=144af3ae43&mc_eid=ed8606703f