Reply To: Competition from the Thorium reactor

[Rematog]

I believe Aeronaut was talking about wind turbines as well. The politicians pushing them are always using words like “green jobs”. The maintenance and repair of these big wind turbines will be a multi-billion dollar per year industry. Heck, you need a multi million dollar crane just to work on one.

Unless they are subsidized to a ridiculous level, the owners will have to keep them running. I like the fact Congress is at least considering basing the subsidy on the power actually generated.

In the first great wind boom in the 80’s, California offered so great a subsidy that windmills generated tax benefits of over 100% of there installed cost. I clearly remember driving over the Altamont pass and seeing almost every windmill shut down. It cost more to fix them then the power was worth, so the owners just let them sit. They made their money installing them, not running them.

Notice, T. Boone isn’t interested in serving the power needs of customers, only in generating subsidized wind power. When the wind doen’t blow, “..or someone else…” will have to generate the power. As he didn’t mention any plans for the stand-by generation, he’s not building it. Think about it, that would be natural gas based generation, no subsidy, and subject to the risk of gas price increases. T. Boone is no fool, he won’t take on the risks without rewards… so he’ll leave reliability to TXU or others to build, and charge to rate payers.