| ▲ | US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified(arstechnica.com) |
| 442 points by rbanffy 6 hours ago | 365 comments |
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| ▲ | tony_cannistra 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I looked into this a little because I was curious. I guess the ostensible "national security" rationale (which clearly is not the only reason!) for this is that turbines severely degrade the utility of radar surveillance along the coastlines. This is particularly relevant for low-altitude incursions and drones. Now, other large governments (UK) have resolved this in several ways, including the deployment of additional radars on and within the turbine farms themselves. So clearly this is politically motivated, and they're using what seems to be a real but solveable concern as a scapegoat. |
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| ▲ | beembeem 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Result first (kill anything not carbon-based), find rationale later. Same applies to how this admin forced layoffs at the green energy (hydro + nuclear) behemoth BPA [1] (which was funded entirely by ratepayers, not the federal government) then claimed an energy emergency to keep open coal plants serving the same geographies, coal plants that were already uneconomical and planned for shut down (or re-tooling to gas in the case of TransAlta's plant in WA). [2] Oh and they already re-hired some of the laid off staff at BPA because they overcut. There is no point in taking these arguments at face value. It's an excuse generated after-the-fact, and in service of one outcome - kill renewable energy. [1] https://www.columbian.com/news/2025/mar/12/letter-cuts-at-bp... [2] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/doe-or... | | |
| ▲ | pbhjpbhj an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | >in service of one outcome - kill renewable energy. Also killing all humans, what idiots. | | | |
| ▲ | brandensilva an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Boggles my mind a bit given much of the oil companies own the new renewable tech too. Why not keep investing in the future. | | |
| ▲ | benregenspan an hour ago | parent [-] | | They might be the "wrong" oil companies. (In the case of Empire Wind, the administration is probably at best indifferent about screwing over the Norwegian state oil company.) |
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| ▲ | gregbot 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | BPA is a federal agency. The Trump administration has been very supportive of zero carbon nuclear i believe they have promised $80 billion dollars to build new nuclear plants. Staff cuts dont mean they oppose using those energy sources. | | |
| ▲ | gardncl 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | US deploys nuclear energy at over $10/watt meanwhile solar and wind are deployed around $2/watt (for levelized cost of electricity) including battery storage which means they are deployed for roughly the same cost as natural gas (so, direct competitors). Don't let comments like this fool you, nuclear is far from being competitive with natural gas. Even in countries like south korea that can deploy nuclear the cheapest it's still $3/watt roughly. Good news? Net new solar and wind plants can come "online" in less than two years. Net new natural gas takes four years. Part of why 95% of new energy deployed last year were renewables in the US, not just the subsidies. | | |
| ▲ | vablings 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Nuclear is insane levels of expensive likely due to overregulation. It is important for base load power and overnight power and should always be the backing of the grid frequency. Total loss of grid frequency is much more difficult to recover from with synthetic inertia. A healthy grid should have all of the following
- Nuclear base load that keeps the grid stable and pick up from low solar - Gas plants for surge power and base load when
nuclear/solar/wind cannot take up the slack - Battery storage for surge/storage during off peak - Solar for very low-cost cheap energy during peak usage hours - Wind for other power source ie when the sun isnt shining as much source: https://grid.iamkate.com/ | | |
| ▲ | bayindirh 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > overregulation. Americans love to remove regulation to make things cheaper (and to enable capitalistic monopolies, but that's a different matter), then cry when people die (or worse). Some things needs to be regulated, esp. if mistakes are costly to the planet and/or people on the said planet. So yes, nuclear should be regulated, and even overregulated to keep it safe. We have seen what Boeing has become when it's effectively unregulated. | | |
| ▲ | hammock 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Americans love to remove regulation to make things cheaper (and to enable capitalistic monopolies, but that's a different matter), then cry when people die (or worse). Different people | |
| ▲ | vablings 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > We have seen what Boeing has become when it's effectively unregulated. I think this is vastly overstated by the media. Boeing is still heavily regulated and has a pretty good safety record compared 20 or 30 years prior. The biggest disaster of recent times (MCAS) was because of the tight regulations around type certification and trying to avoid costs to carriers > Some things need to be regulated, esp. if mistakes are costly to the planet and/or people on the said planet. I absolutely agree. I am not for the removing ALL regulations from nuclear energy but there is a whole political servitude cycle that has taken place for a number of years to make nuclear "safer" when in actuality it has little to no influence on the technology and just adds burden and overhead especially in the new construction of a nuclear power plant Nuclear is this big scary monster because its invisible death machine. Despite us being regularly exposed various levels of radiation in our lives most people are completely unaware of. Some people are terrified of dental x-rays but will happily jump on an intercontinental flight without any second guess. I think arguing in the opposite of "you can never be too safe" is kind of like the whole double your bet every time you lose at the casino yes, its technically true but you need an infinite pool of chips for it to work. | | |
| ▲ | piva00 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > The biggest disaster of recent times (MCAS) was because of the tight regulations around type certification and trying to avoid costs to carriers Meaning they tried to skirt around the regulations, including regulatory capture by pushing self-certification because competition caught up to them while they spent money on buybacks instead of investing in R&D, perhaps even investing in absorbing some costs of certification of pilots into a new type they could develop into the future instead of relying on a design from 60 years ago. Mismanagement is what created Boeing's issues, not regulation. | | |
| ▲ | mlinhares 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Its also bullshit to say the EU has less regulation on developing planes than the US. Boing was just incompetent and mismanaged because of decades of government handouts keeping the business going and MBA wielding idiots cutting costs at every corner. It became a private equity managed business without ever being bought by private equity. | | |
| ▲ | janc_ 27 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Arguing the EU has less regulation than the USA on anything is 99.9999% always wrong. | |
| ▲ | Forgeties79 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Boing was just incompetent and mismanaged because of decades of government handouts keeping the business going and MBA wielding idiots cutting costs at every corner. >cutting costs at every corner Costs like those incurred when adhering to safety standards set by regulations? |
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| ▲ | dctoedt 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Nuclear is this big scary monster because its invisible death machine. Yup: It really is big, it really is scary. | |
| ▲ | Forgeties79 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > and trying to avoid costs to carriers Isn’t that just code for trying to violate regulations without getting caught? | |
| ▲ | seg_lol 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The biggest disaster of recent times (MCAS) was because of the tight regulations around type certification and trying to avoid costs to carriers Lost me right here, MCAS may have been motivated by losing type certification (as it should), but everything they did was not a result of regulations. Including upcharging to make the system actually redundant. Had they actually engineered the MCAS properly, they would have never gotten caught in the first place. |
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| ▲ | ericmay 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There is room between under-regulation and over-regulation. Given that we are experiencing high costs and other barriers to construction, we can do at least two things: reduce red tape where it makes sense or where the risk is acceptable to help lower costs, or the US government can, through a variety of mechanisms ranging from basic research funding to direct subsidies, spend taxpayer money to try and alleviate costs. Given that we supposedly (and I agree) need to build nuclear reactors to help power our country and given that we aren’t building them, we can optionally use both levers to encourage construction. There seems to be this mind virus that has infected many people on the internet that seem to think that regulations are a moral good, and so having more of them must be more good. This is not accurate. Regulations are simply a tool we can wield to achieve desired outcomes within various risk and need-based calculations. More regulations can be good, for example we should ban highway billboards- that would be a good regulation. Or we can eliminate regulations - allow businesses to build more housing using pre-approved designs that meet existing zoning code. Neither is good or bad, except in that it helps to achieve some aim that society has. The regulation or lack there of, of nuclear energy in the United States has absolutely nothing to do with Boeing airlines screwing up some plane designs. Drawing a conclusion that nuclear energy must be regulated (it is) or over-regulated (it probably is or else we would build more), because of a belief that Boeing airliners weren’t regulated enough is, to put it lightly, nonsense, and you are mistakenly using the application of some regulation or lack of causing some bad things to happen, to imply that more regulation in another area would mean good things happen through this framework of regulation == good. And further, if you’re going to suggest that Boeing is effectively unregulated, which is untrue in practice and in principal, then I’d argue that was for the best given that it is a hugely successful company that employs tens of thousands of people and hundreds of millions have flown and continue to fly on their airlines every single day safely and without incident. | | |
| ▲ | Forgeties79 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | With something as serious as a nuclear reactor, I am OK with over regulation. | | |
| ▲ | UltraSane 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Over regulation of nuclear energy in the US made it so expensive we didn't replace all fossil fuels with it. | |
| ▲ | dzhiurgis 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | But why not same scrutiny for coal? | | |
| ▲ | ben_w 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Correct operation of a coal plant has global impact, and therefore coal should be phased out entirely. Absent that, when a coal plant goes badly wrong, the damage is small enough and localised enough to be affordable. When a nuclear plant goes wrong, the upper bound for error includes both Chrenobyl and also "unknown parties stole the radioisotopes" followed by terrorists repeating the Goiânia accident somewhere. Making all the failure modes not happen is expensive. | | |
| ▲ | dzhiurgis 29 minutes ago | parent [-] | | But one is enforced (nuclear security) and coal is not. p.s. ICE cars are literally spewing cancer fumes right into kids faces. 0 fucks given. If anything people try to frame EVs as actual devil. |
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| ▲ | Forgeties79 20 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why do you think I am more generous towards the coal industry? We are talking about nuclear power. If you would like my opinion on coal, I will gladly give it to you. You never asked. For starters: I think clean coal is absolute nonsense (I’ve cited the White House’s outrageous stance on this several times on HN) and people brush away the environmental, social, and general health impacts of coal to their own peril. We know the harmful impacts. We know the body count. We have alternatives and it’s time to move on. I am absolutely 100% critical of the coal industry/power - far more than I am of nuclear. It doesn’t even compare. So to answer your question: > But why not same scrutiny for coal? I’ll give you the same answer I give every person who gives me this tired refrain without ever even trying to suss out what I think about coal: I am. You are misinformed. And it has no impact on my desire to demand the highest safety standards for nuclear power. |
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| ▲ | mlinhares 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There's also the surprise factor that it just never gets cheaper, the newly formed monopolies quickly take over and push prices up beyond what they were before and milk the cow they were given until all customers are bled dry. People that missed the solar bandwagon during the Biden admin are going to regret dearly not having installed it at the price and interest it was back then, we'll never see that again. | |
| ▲ | psunavy03 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This entire comment is conflating "overregulation" with "no regulation" when these are not at all the same things. Oh, and with an extra seasoning of Murica Bad on the side. | |
| ▲ | CamperBob2 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So yes, nuclear should be regulated, and even overregulated to keep it safe. Here's what overregulation of nuclear power has done for us over the past several decades: "We can't risk releasing radioactive pollution in an accident, so we'll build coal plants that spew it into the air during normal operation instead." | | | |
| ▲ | ToucanLoucan 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Americans love to remove regulation to make things cheaper Americans have no broad idea how anything works. Decades of attacks on our education system have left us civically illiterate (and for a lot of people, actually illiterate too.). | | |
| ▲ | stuffn 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The dunning Kruger effect on full display here. I love the mix of anti-American sentiment and BBC-tier soundbite nonsense. | | |
| ▲ | gregbot an hour ago | parent [-] | | People who attack the “public education system” as an argument pretty universally agree with every destructive neoliberal policy the American government pushes on the West. |
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| ▲ | stuffn 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Regulation, I’d argue, is a far more efficient route to monopoly than “unchecked capitalism”. If you have enough money you can gain regulatory capture. If you pay close attention the majority of “evil capitalists” the far left bitches and whines about so much are masters at this. Last mile service, car manufactures, medicine, law, construction, power, water, technology, banking, housing, etc. Most of the world’s billionaires got their money through fucking over the average person with regulatory capture. This must present the leftist with a conundrum they simple ignore because it doesn’t fit their paradigm. More government leads to more control of wealth by fewer people. This isn’t to say all regulation is bad. However, the line between over-regulating and under-regulating is so thin it’s often better to err on the looser side. Otherwise, in many places, small business is immediately crushed and “late stage capitalism” is the result. | | |
| ▲ | whoknowsidont 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >I’d argue You could, but it's without any basis or evidence. | |
| ▲ | root_axis 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Regulatory capture is not an argument against regulation, it's an unavoidable externality that has to be managed. |
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| ▲ | stephen_g 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Grid forming inverters for providing virtual inertia are only going to get better and better, there's no reason that as those control systems improve why synthetic inertia won't be able to be basically identical to real spinning mass. In the meantime while that technology matures, synchronous condensers can provide grid inertia without needing nuclear or coal, we already have about four in Australia supporting our grid and will probably have another dozen or so built over the next decade or two. | |
| ▲ | epistasis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Nuclear is expensive because of the large amount of high-skill labor, including welding, that's required. For less economically advanced countries, that labor is cheap. For more economically advanced countries, that labor becomes more expensive. Regulation is a red-herring being pushed as an excuse, mostly by startups that are desperate to get the next round of funding, because it plays very well to the investor class, but it's not based in reality. I ask about this all the time and even if there are some half-baked critiques of things like ALARA, nobody has a path to actually making the Nth build of a reactor cheaper from changing regulations. Even France, which is known for having far lower construction costs than the US on big projects, and for being very good at building out their nuclear fleet in the past, is at ~$12/W with their newest round of 6 reactors. And that's before they have even started construction: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/frances-edf-estimate... This is roughly the cost of the latest US nuclear reactor at Vogtle, which is viewed as unrealistically expensive energy. And even the most optimistic plans for reducing the cost of nuclear from the Liftoff report in 2023 from DOE doesn't place regulations as having much of a role in lowering costs: https://gain.inl.gov/content/uploads/4/2024/11/DOE-Advanced-... There's significant political interest in having regulation be the reason that nuclear is expensive, but I find almost zero people in the nuclear industry that are able to articulate where regulations increase the cost of builds or whether there's anything that could or should be changed about the regulations. | |
| ▲ | Retric 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Nuclear is inherently expensive even with zero regulations you have the full costs of a coal power plant + more expensive lifetime costs for fuel + extra costs associated with nuclear such as more and more highly educated workers. Meanwhile coal is dead because it’s already more expensive than the market is willing to accept. The only hope for nuclear is massive subsidies, deregulation on its own isn’t going to work. | | |
| ▲ | jeltz 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | How come Sweden as cheap nuclear power? The main reason electricity is kinda expensive in Sweden is because the EU forces is to export our cheap nuclear energy to Denmark and Germany. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Subsides, the cost to produce electricity and the cost charged for that energy end up very different. | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Paid off nuclear plants produce quite cheap electricity. The problem is that it takes 10-15 years of building and then 40 years of paying $180-220/MWh to get a paid off nuclear plant as per modern western construction costs. | | |
| ▲ | Retric an hour ago | parent [-] | | In terms of pure operating costs ignoring everything else it can look good vs other sources that include all costs. However, ‘Paid off nuclear’ in terms of construction costs still needs to worry about decommissioning, and their maintenance costs keep increasing every year. Several power plants have looked at going offline for potentially years and spending billions at around year 40 to get to year ~60 as not being worth the investment. That’s the issue with projecting those long lifespans, the buildings/containment structure/cooling tower may be fine but that doesn’t mean the pipes, pumps, turbines, and control systems etc are still fine. | | |
| ▲ | janc_ 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | And don't forget the cost of storing nuclear waste for the next 10000 years, which is never included in the "cost of nuclear". |
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| ▲ | cperciva 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Nuclear is insane levels of expensive likely due to overregulation. It's not just a matter of "overregulation". ALARA, aka As Expensive As Reasonably Achievable is an explicit goal of nuclear regulation. | |
| ▲ | sdenton4 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Or maybe it's expensive because it doesn't scale. The per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high, making it hard to get economies of scale in building more of them. And if we /do/ hit economies of scale, uranium availability is likely to become a problem... | | |
| ▲ | vablings 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > The per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high, making it hard to get economies of scale in building more of them. I disagree. building big infrastructure projects always scales well. As stated by the project managers at Hinkley Point C (the most expensive nuclear reactor ever) they estimate that build times and cost will be significantly reduced for the second reactor due to the knowledge and expertise baked into the workforce. Frances nuclear revolution during the 1972 oil crisis also shows the same thing with construction cost getting lower the more reactors built. There are other reactor designs that do not use uranium that have been tested and hypothesized. | |
| ▲ | jandrewrogers 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > per-unit cost of nuclear power plants is extremely high Unless you are the US Navy. It probably helps that they churn out dozens of the same few cookie-cutter designs without needing permission from NIMBYs. | | |
| ▲ | epistasis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Those reactors were also very expensive, though, weren't they? I've heard lots of people look to them as a reason that SMRs might work, but not because the naval reactors were cheap. Plus they use uranium enriched to levels that we typically don't allow in civilian reactors... | | |
| ▲ | jandrewrogers an hour ago | parent [-] | | Even at military contracting prices, estimates put them at $100-200M each IIRC. That's not terrible. The highly enriched fuel is used because it simplifies the design and maintenance. It eliminates all the machinery you'd need to support things like operational refueling of the reactor. Old designs still needed to be rebuilt every 25 years but the new ones are sealed systems that are never supposed to be cracked open over their design life. I think the main reason we don't use HEU in civilian reactors is non-proliferation concerns, valid or not. Ideally you'd want maximally simple, sealed reactors for the same reason the US Navy does. |
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| ▲ | vablings 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Honestly not a terrible idea. Just have your reactor on a huge barge and if it goes meltdown just drag it out into international waters and let the fish deal with it /s | | |
| ▲ | larkost 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | An actual meltdown at sea would have the now-molten uranium come in contact with seawater, which would instantly flash to high-pressure steam, throwing the uranium into a cancer-causing cloud that the world has never yet seen. This is absolutely a terrible idea about how to deal with a meltdown. | | |
| ▲ | cbm-vic-20 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Doing the math, it looks like the amount of uranium in pre-disaster Chernobyl is 200 metric tons. Apparently, that can bring 333ML (133 Olympic sized swimming pools) of room temperature water to a boil. |
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| ▲ | wahnfrieden 4 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | nuclear also has a very limited lifespan if we go all-in on it. we will run out. | |
| ▲ | sheikhnbake 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I suspect geothermal is going to quickly replace Nuclear as the most viable option for base load stabilization. Tech has come a long way towards letting us access it away from hot zones and it uses a lot of the same infrastructure and expertise that the oil industry has already developed. | |
| ▲ | immibis 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Is there a comparison of how much nuclear costs versus the number of cities destroyed per year? Say, if we allow 1 meltdown per year does it become comparable to solar or does it require 10 meltdowns per year? | |
| ▲ | lawlessone 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Nuclear is insane levels of expensive likely due to overregulation. Would to prefer underregulating it? How would you find the exact amount of correct regulation? | | |
| ▲ | vablings 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Would to prefer underregulating it? No > How would you find the exact amount of correct regulation? Difficult problem. The issue right now is that nobody wants to be seen to remove a regulation from a nuclear.
One of the biggest things is that ALARA/LNT needs to go away. It is not useful, and it is not based on good modern science Creating new assessments based on modern research would be good and there is already a ton of evidence around that could be foundational for making real science based changes | |
| ▲ | AlexandrB 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Changes to bring regulation in line with actual risk would be a good start: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gzdLdNRaPKc |
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| ▲ | fasterik 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This comment is also misleading. First, $/watt is not how levelized cost of electricity is measured, you need to use $/watt-hour (or more commonly, $/MWh) over the lifetime of the project. By definition, levelized cost of electricity does not include storage. The cost is also affected by the percent of energy coming from wind+solar+batteries vs. from natural gas. Wind+solar+batteries are cheap when they are used to supplement natural gas. If they were supplying 95% of generation (Levelized Full System Cost of Electricity 95%, LFSCOE-95), then the price of wind+solar+batteries would be $97/MWh compared to $37/MWh for gas, and $96/MWh for nuclear. For LFSCOE-100, the price of wind+solar+batteries increases to $225/MWh, compared to $122/MWh for nuclear and $40/MWh for natural gas. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#... So yes, natural gas is much cheaper than nuclear. But that doesn't mean that nuclear shouldn't play a large role going forward. The moral of the story is that the price of energy is complicated. It's likely that a combination of nuclear, wind, solar, and battery backup would be the best option in terms of price and carbon emissions. | | |
| ▲ | gardncl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My comment is not misleading, you're just using outdated data from 2022. Sure, happy to quibble over units. The most recent mid-2025 data is from lazard here, it echos exactly what I'm saying. Website: https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e... PDF of report: https://www.lazard.com/media/5tlbhyla/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... Go to page 8 of that PDF and you will see these ranges for LCOE: * Solar $38-$78/MWh * Solar + battery $50-131/MWh * Gas combined cycle (cheapest fossil fuel) $48-107/MWh Yes, we are finally at price parity for the technologies. | | |
| ▲ | belorn 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | When they calculate that Solar + battery would cost $50-131/MWh, how is that number reached? What is the number of charge cycles and over what time span? It seems obvious that the cost of producing, installing and operating a 1MWh system of solar and batteries will cost more than a one time payment of $50-131. Most of the time when I try to find any data there is the underlying assumption that the charge cycle is a day and night cycle, where the day produce the energy needed during the night, and not a seasonal storage that basically has a single charge cycle per year. | |
| ▲ | fasterik 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I didn't disagree that there is price parity for the levelized cost. There is still not price parity for levelized full system cost. If we used wind and solar for 95-100% of generation, the price would be much higher. My point is not that we can or should replace wind and solar with nuclear. It's that it is far cheaper to use a combination of nuclear, wind, and solar than it is to use 100% wind and solar. | | |
| ▲ | laurencerowe 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think it’s quite conceivable that nuclear would be cheaper for a 100% carbon free grid. But I don’t understand how the combination of nuclear, wind and solar would be low cost. Wouldn’t you effectively have to build out enough nuclear to cover still cloudy days at which point your wind and solar is not very useful? That sounds expensive. I suspect we won’t end up building much nuclear because we will already have built out so much wind and solar. Nuclear is a poor fit for filling gaps in generation by intermittent renewables because fuel costs are negligible so it costs the same whether you run at 50% or 100% of rated output. To eliminate carbon emissions entirely we will need some green hydrogen for turning into aviation fuel and as chemical feedstocks. Perhaps the gas backup will eventually burn that. | | |
| ▲ | belorn 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Green hydrogen is prohibitively expensive and are still way more expensive than using fossil fuels to create hydrogen (called black hydrogen). Burning green hydrogen for electricity when we have yet to make green steel economical viable is not a good idea. Nuclear is still a magnitude cheaper than that. Green hydrogen has to first prove itself that it can become economical viable. One of the biggest test trials for that is the Swedish initiative, and that one is mostly paid through subsidies and grants. Sadly it isn't looking very great even if the government did decide to continue sending more billions into the project. |
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| ▲ | gardncl 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Agreed. I misunderstood your comment and got too hot-headed. Sorry about that. Yes, the 95% renewables is the number we should be shooting for not 100% as that causes battery backup price to explode. I have been pro-nuclear for a long time, to disappointing results naturally. So, with how well renewables are doing I've really just jumped on this train and seen nuclear as more of a distraction from the critical next 10-20 years given how long it takes to come online. At the end of the day the grid is only about 30% of the emissions problem (depending where you look). | | |
| ▲ | fasterik 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I may have misinterpreted your original post as saying we should be going full renewables. I think we're basically in agreement about prices. We might just disagree about the percent of energy that should come from nuclear. I don't see nuclear as a distraction, I see it as a piece of the puzzle. We will always need a source of reliable, uninterrupted power. Whether that comes from natural gas, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, etc. depends on geographical considerations and what tradeoffs we are willing to make in terms of cost and carbon emissions. I'm still optimistic that small modular reactors are going to see success in the coming decades. | | |
| ▲ | gardncl 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, my opinion on how much should come from nuclear is that current levels (~20%) are enough to fill the rest in with renewables. I'd love to be France (~50%) but there is so much pushback against the technology due to accidents that happened decades ago with generation II plants (chernobyl + three mile island). We're now building tech for gen III+ plants and there is just almost no appetite to build them, we finished the vogles and now are completely pivoting to SMRs, which is fine. SMR is probably what makes the most sense even if they're less efficient because until now the nuclear plants have not been very standardized which increases costs. Why do I think nuclear is a distraction? Because I don't think it's a like-for-like replacement of fossil fuels and this admin knows that. They're willing to invest because it won't disrupt their biggest donors. The time horizon on nuclear is long, and there is a future (I hope) where we have nuclear plants hooked up to carbon capture technology and we pull these gasses out of the atmosphere. But until then what is the cheapest and most efficient path between current emissions and a massive cut in them? Renewables and battery tech (that's currently undergoing very dramatic cost reductions!). |
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| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | First. $120/MWh for new built nuclear power is cheaper than any modern western reactors. Real costs are ~180-220/MWh when running at 100% 24/7 all year around. As based on Vogtle, FV3, HPC, proposed EPR2s, proposed Polish reactors etc. The problem with these ”system costs” analyses is that they don’t capture the direct physical incentive structure of our grids. Why should someone with rooftop solar and a home battery buy $180-220/MWh when they have their own electricity available? Why should they not sell their excess to the grid cheaper than said nuclear power? It is zero marginal cost after all. You can call it tragedy of the commons but new built nuclear power simply is unfit for our modern grids. We need firming for near emergency reserves coming from production with the cheapest possible CAPEX without an outrageous OPEX. Likely gas turbines running on carbon neutral fuels. But only if we determine that they are needed in the 2030s. New built nuclear power simply doesn’t even enter the picture in late 2025. |
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| ▲ | salynchnew 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Don't let comments like this fool you, nuclear is far from being competitive with natural gas. Even in countries like south korea that can deploy nuclear the cheapest it's still $3/watt roughly. People still insist that ecofascists(?) or NIMBYism is what killed nuclear, when the reality is that it was the coal industry. | | |
| ▲ | hunterpayne 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | There is sort of some truth to that but its still pretty disingenuous to phase it that way. The more honest way to say it is that the NIMBYists are (probably somewhat unintentionally) keeping FFs in use by opposing nuclear. Also, you (and everyone else in the thread) are listing capacity costs. Nobody cares about capacity costs except the CFO of a utility. Utilization costs are what matters. And by that (honest) metric, nuclear is quite cheap if you exclude the extra costs due to scientifically illiterate eco-activists and regulators. People like to say that "A diamond is forever" is the best marketing effort of all time. I disagree, the ability of FF extractors to get ecos to do their dirty work for them is far more "impressive" (from a POV lacking in ethics). PS The number of outright falsehoods in just this thread about nuclear should prove my point. Just research about how nuclear pays for cleanup and compare that to some comments in this thread for an example. |
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| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | South Korea which famously had an enormous corruption scandal coupled to their nuclear industry. Leading to jail time and a complete regulatory retake. https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed... The proposed costs for the Westinghouse reactors in Poland and EPR2s in France are pretty much in line with the unthinkably expensive Vogtle costs. They haven’t even started building. | |
| ▲ | cyberax 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > US deploys nuclear energy at over $10/watt meanwhile solar and wind are deployed around $2/watt (for levelized cost of electricity) That's when storage is not considered. Once storage is factored in, the LCOE becomes anywhere between $5 to $20. In the US, solar makes a lot of sense in the southern states, less sense in Midwest and WA. That being said, the US still has plenty of capacity to accommodate more "sewer grade" (no battery backup) solar generation. It will provide easy CO2 savings and it can work well with flexible power consumers (AI training datacenters). | | |
| ▲ | gardncl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That is not correct, and doesn't even pass the sniff test. Solar is deployed at ~$2/watt and you're saying batteries are increasing that cost 2.5x to 10x? So, someone installing a home battery system is paying up to 10x their solar install cost to also have battery backup? No way. Also, battery tech continues to improve rapidly, we're seeing breakthroughs like this rapidly reduce the price: https://spectrum.ieee.org/co2-battery-energy-storage A good video on LCOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-891blV02c | | |
| ▲ | coryrc 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | As usual, explain how you're going to power heat pumps in the Northern half of the country during a 3 week bomb cyclone. There are answers and they cost money. The only answer we're using is to build 1:1 natural gas capability for solar, which is roughly double the cost. That's a solution, but it needs to be accounted for when comparing options. | | |
| ▲ | gardncl 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Alternative to natural gas? Wind, geothermal, or nuclear. Wind is already in the northern half of the country and operates well when winterized, unlike the ones in Texas that broke since they were not winterized during that freeze a while back. Natural gas and fossil fuels are not our only options, they are the easiest options. | | |
| ▲ | coryrc 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's also like to see a comparison to giving people/companies a discount if they have alternative methods of heating for 3 weeks and agree to be powered off. Places like hospitals and universities often have generators and do this. Sand "batteries" (aka electric resistive heaters in a few tons of sand heated to 1000°C) might be cost-effective if standardized. You keep it insulated and hot until the power goes out, then you let it bleed heat out to keep you from dying. | |
| ▲ | coryrc 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Context is solar and pricing. You can't only build solar, because people will freeze to death. So you can't say "solar+batteries is only $X/W!!!” because you're ignoring that you must also have a rarely-used natural gas, or install a rarely-used long-distance transmission line, or install rarely-used storage capacity. Which is fine, but you're being dishonest about costs if you don't. |
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| ▲ | osn9363739 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Couldn't this also be solved with transmission from other parts of the country? or is that what you're saying? | | |
| ▲ | coryrc 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, but you have to pay for a line you don't plan to use much, so its capital costs should be attributed to the generation method requiring it. Which is fine, but not including it is dishonest about the true costs. | | |
| ▲ | osn9363739 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think if you designed and built it with the idea in mind that you're building your renewables in the sunny/windy centre/south of the US to be transported to a these places all year round it's a better idea than it being a backup. But I agree that the cost of over generation should be factored in to comparison pricing. But I also think we don't include enough of the costs in FF infra either. |
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| ▲ | triceratops 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > a 3 week bomb cyclone Sounds pretty windy to me. | | |
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| ▲ | toomuchtodo 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This administration won't last long enough to see any of these nuclear ambitions to any sort of success (its takes at least a decade to build nuclear generators in the developed world). Words are cheap, and regime change is coming. Solar and battery storage is already the cheapest form of generation in most of the world, and will only continue to decline in price, while the US will continue to face system and labor challenges precluding the large scale construction of commercial nuclear. The US currently doesn't have enough labor to build residential construction and naval vessels, so it will be interesting to see where they attempt to source this labor from (assuming the usual labor pipeline challenges where it takes up to half a decade to turn a human into a skilled tradesperson from an apprentice or other form of beginner). Citations: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/batteries-now-cheap-... https://www.agc.org/news/2025/08/28/construction-workforce-s... https://www.nahb.org/blog/2025/10/hbi-labor-market-report https://www.slashgear.com/2034405/us-navy-warship-building-w... |
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| ▲ | jetpks 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | on the nuclear front, the administration has cut investment and reduced action in exchange for cheap promises. judge actions, not words. | | |
| ▲ | gregbot an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > on the nuclear front, the administration has cut investment Fascinating, I haven’t heard this from anywhere else is there something specific you are referring to? Maybe this? https://www.ans.org/news/2025-05-05/article-7001/trumps-fy-2... Its not clear what specific programs this $408 million cut would affect but frankly ARDP and Gen III+ reactor development are not needed. What is needed is large construction investment in existing approved designs like AP-1000 and BWRX-300 which is what the $80 billion pledge is for. “The full details of the $80 billion deal, including the precise allocation of financing and risk-sharing, have not been specified.” With no contract signed your skepticism is warranted.
https://www.ans.org/news/2025-05-05/article-7001/trumps-fy-2... | |
| ▲ | tehjoker 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | this point is very important. trump will take all sides of an issue rhetorically so you can almost always find some quote of his supporting whatever position you favor but they have a very definite political program that is concentrating control, cutting federal workers, rolling back renewables, doing spectacular stunts to favor racists, and aggression overseas |
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| ▲ | rtkwe 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Promises are cheap with this admin, don't count any money until it's actually being paid out. Used to be I'd say until it's in a bill but this administration claims the unilateral right to cut any funded program. | |
| ▲ | vablings 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So why make the cuts in the first place? There are so many things that could have been changed like getting rid of ALARPA for actual scientifically backed methods other than pointless gratitude's of X dollars for X industry. If the Trump admin truly believed in move fast and break things why is nothing moving More power is always good (see china being 1# in solar, nuclear and wind lol), and it's known that the cost of energy directly correlates with growth right now there is no excuse for cutting any federal workers in the energy industry. |
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| ▲ | bakies 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Seems like "national security" has become a phrase that can be used to circumvent many laws, facts, and balance checks. Just like the word "terrorist." It seems like if these ever get challenged to the Supreme Court the current judges will rule with something like it being at the president's discretion. So obviously the government can spend some of that $1T military budget on fixing their coastal radar. I thought Massachusetts just won in court to get their money or construction resumed, wonder if this means they have to go back to court. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Seems like "national security" has become a phrase that can be used to circumvent many laws By has become, you mean always has been, right? | | |
| ▲ | bakies 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I guess I think it used to be more believable that it was used for security, but maybe I wouldn't if I knew better history. | | | |
| ▲ | BLKNSLVR 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Since 2001 at least. | | |
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| ▲ | sowbug 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Don't forget "war on" something that isn't a nation state. | | |
| ▲ | abirch an hour ago | parent [-] | | I think the Washington Generals have a better record than the USA on “wars on” non nation states |
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| ▲ | GolfPopper an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | >It seems like if these ever get challenged to the Supreme Court the current judges will rule with something like it being at the president's discretion. Given that this is the same Supreme Court that ruled Biden (or Trump) could have them all shot[1], it seems near-certain that you're correct. 1. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf (JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR dissent, pages 29-30) |
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| ▲ | stefanfisk 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Here in Sweden a bunch of offshore wind farm project and even residential PV installations are blocked by the military for unspecified reasons that everyone assumes is that it blocks radar and other signal intelligence. Even though you can partially work around the issue with better onshore equipment or just placing the stuff on the other side of the interfering equipment it is still a step down from not having any interference in the first place. Especially if you want to keep your listening equipment secret. | | |
| ▲ | opello 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm surprised residential PV even interacts with radar -- or is that the other signal intelligence part? | | |
| ▲ | itishappy 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Big flat conductive panels make good reflectors. | | |
| ▲ | dzhiurgis 22 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Wonder if it can be leveraged as for passive radar. Synthetic aperture also comes to mind. I’m clueless in this field tho. |
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| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The best part is that Danish, German and Polish parks are planned mere kilometers away from the denied Swedish ones. The military will need to figure out how deal with off-shore wind no matter what. |
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| ▲ | jandrewrogers 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Even if it is a pretense, it is pretty obvious that this would allow ship-borne drones to use the wind farms as an effective screen. Putting radar platforms beyond the wind farms that are as capable as the existing land-based radars would be quite expensive in both capex and opex. Some of the existing land-based radars would likely need to be moved, ideally. No one was really thinking about this type of threat a decade ago. That said, Democrats have also been trying to stop offshore wind farms for years (e.g. Vineyard Wind), so there is probably bipartisan support. | | |
| ▲ | Msurrow 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | The construction on some of these windmill farms started years ago. Before that permits & legal has been in the works for a long time. This surely included security clearances. The orange shrimp pulling the “national security” card now, on the same day as he also creates a new Greenland debacle, is very clearly simply an attempt to strong arm the danish govt into Greenland concessions (in turn simply to please his fractile lille ego) | | |
| ▲ | jeltz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They were approved before the invasion of Ukraine and before our politicians could see how devestating drones can be. Just because the orange dictator did something does not mean it necessarily was wrong. Even a broken clock is right two times per day. | | |
| ▲ | ineedasername 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >"Even a broken clock is right two times per day." That is incorrect. There are any number of ways in which a clock might be broken such that its hands are not in the correct position even once per day. | | |
| ▲ | onewheeltom an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Should be “a stopped clock is right twice a day” | |
| ▲ | gmac 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not incorrect so much as underspecified? The phrase more commonly starts with a ‘stopped’ clock, which works more clearly. |
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| ▲ | jandrewrogers 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This reply doesn't address any core point. When these wind farms were permitted many years ago, shipborne drones were not part of the threat matrix. It was considered purely hypothetical even a decade ago because it was not an imminent capability for any country even though e.g. the US DoD had studied it. In the last few years shipborne drones have emerged very quickly as a substantial practical threat, largely due to the Russia/Ukraine war. Governments around the world are struggling to adapt to this new reality because none of their naval systems are designed under this assumption. Whether or not this is convenient for Trump doesn't take away from the reality of the security implications. | | |
| ▲ | Msurrow 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, it does. First of all: occam's razor. Political theatrics seems simpler than the US defence/intelligence forces sudenly realizing that drones can be launched from ships. Esp. with the timing involved. Second: Established/traditional radar systems cannot spot drones. Take it from someone living in a country that recently had its airspace violated by (assumingly) Russian drones, affecting national infrastructure. It was considered an attack at the time. I don’t think thats the word we use any more, for political reasons. Third: Trump already shut down one of these windmill farms once this year. Until the danish company building the park sued and got the courts word that the shutdown was illegal, and resumed construction. The current shutdown has much larger impact for many multi-national companies. Usually there is a political process expected between allied countries before such a drastisc move. We havnt seen that ie no attempt to solve a concrete (security) issue before punching the red button ie probably because there was no motivation for a solution ie the security issue was probably not an actual issue) Fourth: Earlier this week the danish intelligence services released a new security assesment of USA (that takes Trumps behaviour on the international scene into account). That probably hurt the little mans ego, and now we see a retaliation. This provides yet another motivation for Trumps action, besides factual, real security concerns. Looking at this purely from the security aspect is naive, and fails to consider the context of the real world. | | |
| ▲ | bluGill an hour ago | parent [-] | | Before Ukrain everyone though drones were easy to counter. Now that has proven false. granted Trump probably isn't thinking that, but the concern should be real. We need better drone defense before someone (Russia, Iran...) starts anonymously shooting down airplanes. |
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| ▲ | alphazard 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Bringing up a map of wind power deployments tells the story; what you will see is a hot vertical strip in the center of the US.
That is where it actually makes sense to deploy windmills, and people will continue to put them there even if subsidies end.
It makes sense for the area, the amount of wind, the serviceability of the deployments, etc. Off shore has always been politically contentious because it's much more dependent on subsidies, it's a battle for/against rent-seeking.
One party is in favor of this particular kind of rent-seeking and the other party isn't (they will be in favor of a different kind, no doubt).
The subsidies are necessary for these deployments to make financial sense, and if they went away, then it would just be a bad place to put a windmill. There is no national security issue, there is no real case for energy infrastructure either. This use case needs government money to make sense, and is therefore sensitive to political fluctuations. | | |
| ▲ | hammock 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Bringing up a map of wind power deployments tells the story; what you will see is a hot vertical strip in the center of the US Idk what you mean by that. I pulled up a map and saw dots all over the place. They are concentrated on the east coast because you can’t build fixed on west coast (has to be floating) but they are pretty much anywhere on the east coast. | |
| ▲ | pbhjpbhj an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why do you say it's rent seeking? Offshore wind is efficient, turbine blades can safely be much larger giving 3x the output, turbine arrays have unobstructed space giving twice the capacity factor. It's more efficient than onshore. You appear to be starting from a premise that wind turbines don't generate profits? | | |
| ▲ | alphazard 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Why do you say it's rent seeking? Because that's what economists call it when you get something for nothing, as is the case with any subsidy.
I'm not going to argue this point; interested readers can look up how these energy projects are financed.
Windmills that are privately funded, including debt and risk show you where it actually makes sense to put a windmill. > Offshore wind is efficient, turbine blades can safely be much larger giving 3x the output, turbine arrays have unobstructed space giving twice the capacity factor. It's more efficient than onshore. Not going to argue with any of this, although you left out maintenance costs, and larger blades means more value at risk.
I'm not convinced that your efficiency calculation is measured in dollars and not windmill hours. I would caution any engineer types reading from pressing their nose too close to the details of a particular energy technology.
Instead, it's better to focus on the business plan or economic shadow that a particular energy project leaves.
Dollars go in and energy comes out.
A bunch of money has to go in up front, then trickles of money slowly over time, and occasionally spikes of money have to go in randomly.
In exchange there is a modest, predictable flow of money out, which eventually is larger than all the in-flows in the bull case.
The question to ask is: how much in and out of dollars and of Joules at each point in time?
How does that compare to hamsters on wheels, people on bicycles, and lighting things on fire? > You appear to be starting from a premise that wind turbines don't generate profits? This was never a stated premise, and my post starts with the opposite sentiment. |
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| ▲ | einrealist 12 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > So clearly this is politically motivated The oil price is too low. Venezuela and now this, it is all part of selling fossil fuels. | |
| ▲ | the__alchemist 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yea... I don't trust the motivations, but can confirm that on AA radars looking low (Where you might find UAS or just low-flying aircraft), wind farms show up as clusters of false hits. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's not like they're moving around though. | | |
| ▲ | the__alchemist 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yea; it will be obvious if you've accidentally locked into one, then look at it with eyes or other equipment. And the 0 ground speed. But UAS could hide in them effectively I speculate? |
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| ▲ | stevage 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | But if they're just false hits it's easy to filter them out, right? | | |
| ▲ | jandrewrogers 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | It is more difficult than you may be assuming. How do you know the hits are false? These "hits" are collections of samples at points in time, not continuous tracks. The "tracks" are reconstructed by making inferences from the samples. Determining whether any pair of sequential samples represents the same entity or two unrelated entities is an extremely difficult inference problem with no closed or general solution. If there is too much clutter, it becomes almost unresolvable. Aliasing will create a lot of false tracks. History has shown that any heuristic you use to filter the clutter will be used by your adversary as an objective function to hide from your sensors once they know you are using it (e.g. doppler radar "notching"). For this reason the inference algorithms are classified but they will degrade rapidly with sufficient clutter no matter how clever. It is a limitation of the underlying mathematics. | |
| ▲ | the__alchemist 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, but it increases the difficulty of finding an aircraft moving near them. |
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| ▲ | IndrekR 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Taiwan strait is filled with offshore wind turbines from both sides. This is not an issue for PRC nor Taiwan. | | |
| ▲ | hammock 15 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Either it is not, or is a huge issue. Those windmills could be deployed on purpose |
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| ▲ | scoofy 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The problem is that we have a Congress that cares more about in-group loyalty than they do about idiocy. Meanwhile, we even have Michael Burry pointing out the obvious: we're losing to China because we're not building up every bit of energy capacity that we can. But, sure, why not just ban windfarms in a location perfectly suited to them: https://x.com/michaeljburry/status/2002285483158569147 | | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > So clearly this is politically motivated, and they're using what seems to be a real but solveable concern as a scapegoat. I approve of this, because they were going to come up with an excuse one way or another, but "it's classified" has been a BS excuse that has received far too much deference to cover for all kinds of nonsense going back many decades, and being sufficiently flagrant about it is exactly what it takes to create enough of a backlash to finally do something about it. | |
| ▲ | pclmulqdq 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | These things are also probably really loud if you happen to have a sensitive set of sonar buoys. I'm not entirely sure how you solve that one, because putting them in deeper water would also make them less effective. | | | |
| ▲ | dfxm12 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So clearly this is politically motivated Trump has been charging at windmills ever since he was defeated in UK courts in a case where he didn't like that wind turbines (that provide enough power for 80,000 homes) could be seen from his golf course. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo | | |
| ▲ | Gibbon1 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Combination of he's vindictive and he's making an example of what happens when you don't preemptively pay him a bribe. |
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| ▲ | Spooky23 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This administration is all about wielding any form of executive power that they can get an unscrupulous lawyer to cook up. | |
| ▲ | calmbonsai 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yep. I worked with France's EDF on their offshore turbines https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/inventing-the-future-of-... . This rationale by the U.S. is total BS. | |
| ▲ | andyjohnson0 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I guess the ostensible "national security" rationale (which clearly is not the only reason!) for this is that turbines severely degrade the utility of radar surveillance along the coastlines. Could it be that they just feel that offshore wind infra is difficult to defend militarily? | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Are they shutting down offshore oil drilling too? | | |
| ▲ | hammock 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Order of magnitude increase in difficulty to defend a wind farm vs an oil rig. Wind farms are dispersed, not continuously manned, harder to monitor/enforce a 500m maritime safety zone of exclusion, have a greater attack surface (subsea cables, substations), and are easier to sabotage with plausible deniability |
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| ▲ | jandrewrogers 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No, they aren't any more difficult to defend than any other offshore platform. They do interfere with long-range land-based radar in a way that is problematic with the emergence of shipborne drones. |
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| ▲ | KaiserPro 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/14/3541/2021/ There is data on what wind turbines do to radar. | |
| ▲ | KoolKat23 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's well known ol' Don Quixote doesn't like windmills, I mean wind turbines. | |
| ▲ | sigwinch 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I feel like the defense against drones is denser, sharper turbines. | | |
| ▲ | reactordev 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This. Also, drones can be jammed pretty easily so making jamming stations on those platforms would be something too. The Brit’s have the right approach, just put radar on them so now you can see past them. | | |
| ▲ | jeltz 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Jamming drones has gotten much harder. Ukraine and Russia have worked hard at defending against jamming. | | |
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| ▲ | tim333 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The drones could fly over them. You could mount interceptor drones on them though. Like https://youtu.be/bsy5xzdKahU?t=80 |
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| ▲ | giantg2 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'd imagine subsurface detection faces issues with the large electromagnetic fields from generation and transmission too. | |
| ▲ | rolph 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | yes i found that take as well, i also found it interesting that potential for an industrial colony, and early warning infrastructure is undervalued. | |
| ▲ | sl_convertible 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Also look at how defensible having your power generation outside your coastline is. This is creating a big vulnerability in your power grid. | |
| ▲ | moomoo11 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Wind seems like a waste of money compared to solar. We aren’t the UK where they are a tiny island holding on. We have a massive land area on which we can build solar and plug it into existing power lines or build that part out. Probably way more feasible and better power generation results than building wind out in the ocean. | |
| ▲ | standardUser 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That you could come up with one reasonable-sounding explanation while they offered nothing makes me wonder if the administration is too lazy, or too inept. | |
| ▲ | bvan 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This administration is entirely founded on lies. Irrespective of any merits, of any, of its actions it has zero credibility. |
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| ▲ | linuxhansl 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What the... It seems we crossed into the realm of intentionally doing damage.
I'm reminded of threatening tariffs to successfully derail global carbon levy on ship emissions. Meanwhile China runs away with all the clean energy tech (solar, wind, batteries, etc, etc.) while we hold to fossil fuels to save less than 200,000 jobs. |
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| ▲ | throw0101d 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Meanwhile China runs away with all the clean energy tech (solar, wind, batteries, etc, etc.) while we hold to fossil fuels to save less than 200,000 jobs. If you're talking about coal miners, David Frum joked / observed that there are more yoga instructors in the US than coal miners: * https://www.sfgate.com/columnists/article/Yoga-teachers-vs-c... | | |
| ▲ | canyp 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | That headline really deserves a literary prize. Yoga instructors, assemble! |
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| ▲ | JohnTHaller 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We've been in the realm of intentionally doing damage for a while now. But we got these cool red hats. | | |
| ▲ | Herring 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Blue states need to learn how red states work, because this country is turning into one big red state. Threatening/damaging your population to keep them in line is absolutely par for the course normal and expected, as perfected during slavery. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-024-10000-8 In a nutshell, this is what Trump was elected to do to minorities, women, trans, blue states, Europe, China, everyone. | | |
| ▲ | NewJazz 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Trouble is... You can do it to a few minorities and get away with it. When you act like an asshole to the entire world, well suddenly assholes as big as you are in the minority... Oops. | |
| ▲ | watwut 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | He is going to do to America the same thing he had done to his companies - destroy it. Unfortunately, he fails upwards, so he will take over the whole world and then destroy it all. | | |
| ▲ | DFHippie 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | He will die pretty soon. He's just the first stage of the rocket. He thinks he's a pharaoh letting a thousand pyramids bloom, but he's expendable. He'll be gone. People will chisel his name off the monuments he's vandalized. But the people who granted him power like what he's doing. He's somebody's monkey. The hollowing out of the US and the world order that produced western prosperity and security will continue. The people who call the tune to which he dances will call tunes for the next monkey. |
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| ▲ | andrewflnr 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Intentionally doing damage started with DOGE. So, roughly day 1. | | |
| ▲ | bakies 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | you forgot this is part 2 | | |
| ▲ | andrewflnr 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ok, right. Intentionally doing damage started at least as early as Jan 6 2021. |
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| ▲ | nailer 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Eliminating government waste damages the wasteful and corrupt. https://doge.gov/savings | | |
| ▲ | seg_lol an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | 14 million dead kids. | |
| ▲ | nutjob2 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Those "savings" have not withstood careful analysis. Essentially they're nonsense and with the damage they have done the final bill will be much higher than any savings. | |
| ▲ | amanaplanacanal 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just because they call it waste, doesn't make it so. You could cut anything and then justify it by calling it waste. It's all bullshit. | |
| ▲ | watwut 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The group that was found to be massively lying every time they released stats in easy to catch ways and wasted more money then they saved? |
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| ▲ | pheggs 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | there are at least two reasons trump is pushing for oil: 1) the US has lots of oil reserves, which would lose lots of value if everybody was using renewables
2) oil is the main driver for dollar demand, as oil is paid in dollar, allowing the US to have lots of debt relatively cheaply That's also the reason why he wants to tell Europe to stop using renewables, and that's the reason why he is threatening Venezuela - because they have the biggest oil reserve and started selling it in different currencies. Now whether that whole genius strategy to gain wealth through geopolitics is worth an extinction event is a different story. | | |
| ▲ | Jtsummers 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > That's also the reason why he wants to tell Europe to stop using renewables, and that's the reason why he is threatening Venezuela - because they have the biggest oil reserve and started selling them not in USD. What's interesting is that the strategy you suggest (tell Europe to stop using renewables, attack nations that compete with US oil sales) only motivates other nations to move away from oil. It's a terrible strategy if the intent is to sell more US oil. Renewables are far more sustainable in many regards, and bolster national energy security while remaining on fossil fuels leaves them weak wrt energy security. | | |
| ▲ | jopsen 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Also the US is increasingly proving itself as an unreliable partner. Do you want that for your energy supply? This is just more of that, contracts in the US are suddenly subject to political winds. In the end, this will probably be unblocked by the legal system, and eventually the US tax payers will pay for damages.
But it'll be a long time. | |
| ▲ | pheggs 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | it could very well be that it backfires. I guess time will tell. A lot of his actions seem to be trimmed into this direction, and it's not a new one. He left the paris climate agreement quite a while back as far as I remember. blocking offshore wind construction just fits this agenda, as supporting companies to manufacture these windmills would just make everything cheaper (more demand, rising production capacity etc.) and demonstrate actual use of it. At least that's how I see this. | | |
| ▲ | Jtsummers 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > it could very well be that it backfires. It's kind of hard to see the strategy you outlined as doing anything other than backfiring. Oil and other fossil fuels are consumables. Once burned, they're gone. For strategic reasons, most nations with any sense and the economic ability to do so are turning away from fossil fuels precisely due to this fact. European nations are not exceptional here, the US is actually the outlier. Your suggested strategy is that the US wants European nations to buy more US oil, and in order to motivate them the US is demonstrating how bad oil dependence is. See Cuba (they depend on Venezuelan oil there). How could a demonstration of the flaws of oil dependency possibly motivate the sale of US oil rather than hasten the move towards solar, wind, and other power sources? This is why I said it's a terrible strategy. Only the non-thinking would go for it. |
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| ▲ | aqme28 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There is a third important reason-- For some reason, oil has masculine aesthetics but wind power doesn't. I don't think this is a calculated play | | |
| ▲ | senectus1 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The Aplha Male Energy didnt do so well over the weekend.
One got its jaw broken in two places... the other just got pounded into submission. | |
| ▲ | osn9363739 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How many people actual think like this or are influenced by it? (I'm going to be disappointed aren't I) | | |
| ▲ | llbbdd 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nobody at all, but isn't it scary to imagine? In fact we could imagine and invent all kinds of scary things if we think too much. Ahh! | | |
| ▲ | ssl-3 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I know plenty of people personally who can rant about energy prices being high while somehow finding room in the same breath to demonize wind and solar energy and even namedrop whichever foul devil bogeyman it is this week that is said to be the cause of this disjointed trauma that they find so overwhelming. In the next breath, they pick something else from the deck to be upset about: These days, that's usually brown people, emails, laptops, the American cities that people in frog costumes burn to the ground every night, brown people, guns, laptops, and Hillary. Sometimes, they then take a break to hear themselves talk about baseball, praise the president for getting so much done that he doesn't even have time to sleep, or to complain about the plot from the episode of The Dukes of Hazard -- from 1983 -- that they watched for the 14th time last night on Pluto. After the break, it's time for them to complain about how they can't afford visit a doctor or buy eyeglasses, but they sure as hell don't want them any of those librawls to take any of their hard-earned money so everyone can go to the doctor. Then things shift back to being weirder again: Schools turning boys into girls, kids using litter boxes in the classroom, men wearing dresses, God's Perfect Plan, guns, brown people, groceries, brown people, and blue hair dye. This tiresome process repeats until I manage to escape, or I tell them very pointedly to shut the fuck up (hints don't work). None of the people I know who act this way seem to be particularly bright, but I know them anyway. And they vote. (Yes, I've checked.) |
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| ▲ | unmole 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > oil is the main driver for dollar demand, as oil is paid in dollar This stupid meme needs to die. | |
| ▲ | tagawa 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Maybe a third reason: “Last week, Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social that is majority-owned by the president, said it was getting into the energy business, announcing a merger with a fusion firm TAE Technologies.” Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd74lyr094vo | | |
| ▲ | iszomer 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Coincidentally, TAE Technologies had a product placement baked into the 2021 film named Finch with Tom Hanks, distributed by Apple Original Films. |
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| ▲ | huntertwo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The intention is to make specific individuals a lot of money. It has been since day 1. | | | |
| ▲ | ugh123 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >while we hold to fossil fuels to save less than 200,000 jobs. No, not for jobs. Profits, stock bumps, and bonuses for the execs at oil companies and friends of the admin. | |
| ▲ | simonsarris 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I hope you realize that China's coal and oil use for electricity is at an all-time high and increasing. They have installed more coal capacity since 2020 than the US has total. US coal usage peaked circa 2000 and has decreased for the last 2 decades. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou... | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > They have installed more coal capacity since 2020 than the US has total 80% or more of new electricity generation in China is renewable. They build coal capacity but they don't use more of it. This year their absolute carbon emissions decreased. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292 | | |
| ▲ | simonsarris 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | That article is about emissions, not admixture. If you look at the source of that article, which they link to: https://carbonmonitor.org/variation First off we can now look at the full year instead of 6 months of data, its no longer US +4.2% and China -2.7%, its US +2.0% and China -2.3% China's 2025 YoY emissions decline is almost all due to a decline in industry, not power (1.8% of their 2.3% decline, in other words, most of it). It's understandable to have a lower year if you have an economic slowdown. Russia also had a decline, not for green reasons. | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Their economy grew 3% this year and they cut emissions. https://rhg.com/research/chinas-economy-rightsizing-2025-loo... "economic slowdown" is an exaggeration. | | |
| ▲ | simonsarris 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | A 3% GDP growth this year is a slowdown from 2024. Did you read this paper? I encourage you to at least read the abstract. It discusses whether "China's 2025 economic growth story turns on whether investment merely declined in the second half of the year or collapsed." | | |
| ▲ | ProjectArcturis 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You seem to be confusing first and second derivatives. | | |
| ▲ | simonsarris 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | China had an emissions decline in 2025 that is substantially attributable to a decline in industry, per their first source. The decline in industry is plausible so long as GDP growth in 2025 is lower than GDP growth in 2024, and is additionally supported by the newly introduced source that the commentor did not read. Yes, it is possible to have an economic slowdown and a positive GDP print. In general it's weird to say '"economic slowdown" is an exaggeration' and then link to something that talks about the economic slowdown. |
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| ▲ | stephen_g 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | New coal data is out just a few days ago [1], it's plateaued globally and expected to start to decline. China's consumption this year was about the same as last, and looking to drop a bit, so likely old coal plants were being retired at about the same rate as newer ones were built, and that will start to go the other way (more retired than built). 1. https://www.iea.org/news/global-coal-demand-has-reached-a-pl... | |
| ▲ | timeon an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Article is about US blocking energy from wind. You are (correctly) saying that China is increasing energy from coal and oil. What is your point? Can you elaborate how this is relevant? |
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| ▲ | Moldoteck 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | china runs with everything. They are still expanding coal units for firming and they'll build a ton of new gas units too. But to ban deployment of wind turbines without any explanation is ... expected from current administration... | | |
| ▲ | hopelite 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Being blind with bias is also expected. I don't like what is going on either, but please consider that if it was only about "damaging" as others have implied, it would not just be off shore wind turbines. I can assure you there are other reasons. | | |
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| ▲ | iwontberude 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Reminiscent of how most water which used to melt into the Great Salt Lake is now being used to farm Alfalfa, which only makes up 1% of their GDP and far fewer jobs than other industries. Of course if this continues for another generation, toxic arsenic dust will pollute and force the failure of Salt Lake City and surrounding regions. Luckily this will cause the agricultural industry to fail (after killing many people) and nature will heal itself. | |
| ▲ | wnevets 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > What the... It seems we crossed into the realm of intentionally doing damage. That began almost the moment this administration came into power. | |
| ▲ | vkou 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > What the... It seems we crossed into the realm of intentionally doing damage. He's been doing that since January. | |
| ▲ | dboreham 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > we crossed into the realm of intentionally doing damage That occurred a long time ago with the destruction of USAID and arbitrary firing of large numbers of federal workers. | | |
| ▲ | nailer 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | But USAID needed to be destroyed. 'AID' never stood for aid, it was
an organization for international development and spent vast amounts of money on cultural programs for countries that didn't want them. | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > vast amounts of money on cultural programs for countries that didn't want them. I don't understand. How do you give someone money if they don't want it? | | |
| ▲ | iszomer 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | More like "if we can't be partners we'll find your enemies and fund them instead." or, "we'll partner with your next of kin who may be more sympathetic [or suggestive] to our concerns." |
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| ▲ | Tostino 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There will be an estimated 14 million extra deaths directly attributed to this policy choice: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... 91 million lives were saved over the last two decades. The vast majority of that wasn't "international development" fluff; it was basic survival. We’re talking about stopping tuberculosis, malaria, and starvation. Framing this as getting rid of unwanted "cultural programs" is a convenient way to ignore the fact that we pulled the plug on the life support system for 30 million children. | |
| ▲ | platinumrad 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | "What is soft power?" |
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| ▲ | nerevarthelame 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >It seems we crossed into the realm of intentionally doing damage. "The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande ... The dismantling of USAID, according to models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children,” Gawande wrote. He noted that the toll will continue to grow and may go unseen because it can take months or years for people to die from lack of treatments or vaccine-preventable illnesses—and because deaths are scattered." [https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...] | |
| ▲ | iwontberude 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Our President allegedly has a fetish to to "suck on the pert nipples of underaged girls until they are red and chafed" and there is video evidence Israel is using to twist his arm, maybe the energy industry has other dirt on him too. What a joke of a country. | | |
| ▲ | bakies 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | not to deny the allegations but every president has had their arm twisted by Israel and sell out to oil. |
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| ▲ | ekjhgkejhgk 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What? They've been intentionally doing damage for a long time. Pardoning criminals is one that comes to mind. | | |
| ▲ | dfxm12 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Pardoning criminals is one that comes to mind. Seriously, the pardons alone make this the most pro-crime administration in my lifetime. Probably ever. | | |
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| ▲ | blahedo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I've been wondering all year about what happens when an executive-branch office issues orders that it is not legally qualified to issue; by and large everybody has just... followed them. This may be another example (I don't know quite enough of the legal specifics in this case, though there are certainly others that are more slam-dunk-y in this respect). What are the enforcement mechanisms here if the states in question---MA, RI, CT, NY, NJ, and VA---just said "no go ahead, keep building"? What happens to the companies if they just keep building? I'm not saying they should but at this point rule-of-law has fallen apart so badly that I literally don't know what happens when the government invents a new rule and people just... disregard it. (Particularly if state-level enforcement decides not to play along.) Do they bring in the FBI? Military? |
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| ▲ | jrmg 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Short term punishment for states: ICE and the National Guard get sent into cities to make people feel unsafe, under the guise of an ‘immigration emergency’. Perhaps also Marines! To punish more fully, just illegally withhold federal funds for whatever is most hurtful. Highways? Education? Healthcare? And to your direct point, I’m sure someone could whip up a reason for the military to take over and shut down the sites if they don’t comply - this _is_ a national security matter after all. Court system stops any of that? Just comply (or pretend to) with the letter of the ruling and try another barely-distinguishable but arguably different illegal method for the next few months while the gears of the court system grind. What is _meant_ to stop the executive branch (meant to ‘execute’ the will of Congress, not just follow its own desires) going rogue is impeachment by Congress, but that seems like a far off prospect. | | |
| ▲ | amanaplanacanal 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Midterms are coming up next year. | | |
| ▲ | consumer451 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Don't worry, there is a plan. CNN will be in new hands by that point. Reddit's r/all will be, or already is gone from the app's defaults, and much more to come! | | |
| ▲ | ta9000 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don’t even know liberals that watch CNN. It’s already irrelevant. | | |
| ▲ | consumer451 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | If it was truly irrelevant, then there wouldn't be billions being thrown at it. | | |
| ▲ | Tostino 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's the airport TV's and doctor's office waiting rooms that they are bidding for at this point. | | |
| ▲ | mgiampapa an hour ago | parent [-] | | The doctors offices want none of it. It's all FoodTV and HGN. There is no utility in pissing off 75% of your customers. I'm thrilled that my kid's doctor doesn't even allow patients that aren't vaccine schedule compliant. | | |
| ▲ | Tostino an hour ago | parent [-] | | I'm in Hell (FL), so more "professional offices" than not have Fox on. Also, we are pushing hard to make sure kids aren't vaccinated at a state level it seems. I wish I didn't have so much extended family in the area that I'd be moving away from if I left. |
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| ▲ | pred_ 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > just said "no go ahead, keep building"? What happens to the companies if they just keep building? As the article also touches upon, this already happened in the particular case of Revolution Wind: There, work, was forced to stop in August, then in September a federal judge blocked enforcement of the block, and work continued: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/22/judge-orsted-revolution-wind... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/offshore-wind-develo... And “what happens” seems to be that rather than appeal, the rule-of-law deniers apparently choose to not care? Work has stopped again: https://orsted.com/en/media/news/2025/12/revolution-wind-and... | |
| ▲ | techgnosis 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I would imagine that most if not all will comply with illegal orders out of fear of retaliation, which is a very valid fear. | |
| ▲ | dmbche 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | These things take large amount of money from upstream, if the money is cut they can "say" what they want, nothing is getting done, from my understanding | | | |
| ▲ | cr1895 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just something to keep in mind - the actual site of these wind farms is offshore in federal waters, and construction is subject to federal (as well as state) permits. | |
| ▲ | bell-cot 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Don't expect any sort of mass disobedience here. Doing anything in offshore wind requires a large, highly-skilled organization and lot of time. One firm "ahem!" from the Coast Guard, Navy, or Treasury, and that kinda org will back down. If things fall apart so badly that the CG, USN, and Treasury don't matter - then who's paying the bills for any offshore construction, and who's protecting anything that is built from looting or seizure? |
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| ▲ | mullingitover 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is a road to serfdom (and/or a road to 1789 France) situation with what's happening to energy prices in the past couple years[1]. The price of new solar+battery and wind should be pushing fossil fuel energy prices off a cliff right now, unless you live in a petrostate. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU000072610 |
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| ▲ | jameslk 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That graph is not inflation-adjusted and basically says to avoid using it like this in the description: > Average prices are best used to measure the price level in a particular month, not to measure price change over time. It is more appropriate to use CPI index values for the particular item categories to measure price change. I’m not doubting that (inflation-adjusted) energy prices have gone up but this graph is misleading to represent it FRED actually has a blog post about how you would go about calculating an inflation-adjusted priced graph here: https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2022/11/fred-gets-real-unles... | |
| ▲ | monero-xmr 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The UK has tons of wind power but prices there are exceptionally high. Offshore wind isn't as cost effective as solar, it's the poster boy for high-cost, low-value renewable energy | | |
| ▲ | KaiserPro 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Offshore wind isn't as cost effective as solar, it's the poster boy for high-cost, low-value renewable energy Its not clear cut. Part of the reason why electricity is so expensive in the UK is that its tied to natural gas prices. some of it is CFD, but most of it is because a lot of our power comes from natural gas. We pay for gas on the open market because we aren't self sufficient for gas any more. Yes solar is cheaper to deploy, but its not as useful on its own. Wind is far far better in the winter. What we should be doing is getting nuclear plants built. Small ones ideally, but a few bigguns will do. Then we won't be so reliant on natural gas. We also need to get those extra transmission cables built. (note we could have built 10 nuclear power plants, well EDF at 2002 power prices, but the present government balked because nuclear is bad yo.) | |
| ▲ | cjs_ac 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | UK energy prices are set by the most expensive energy source in the mix that contributes to the National Grid, which happens to be gas. | | |
| ▲ | Nextgrid 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Which also sets broken incentives where nobody (not even renewables) are actually incentivized to dethrone gas/etc as it would reduce their own profit margin. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | But everyone are incentivized to build another wind farm, solar plant, battery etc to make profit on the current fossil gas based margins. Pushing the price lower for more hours. Equilibrium is met when new production becomes too expensive vs. the existing profit potential. All resource markets globally run on marginal price. The other option for electricity would be that everyone instead does their own research and predicts the clearing price leading to even higher waste and more volatility. |
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| ▲ | willis936 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Now imagine if you paid for a giant wind project that never produced a Joule. Great for energy prices. | |
| ▲ | youngtaff 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Uk energy costs are high because the highest cost marginal producer sets the rate i.e. gas powered stations Many of the new wind farms get a fixed price for energy and when the wholesale price is about that the excess gets channeled into a fund that is used to reduce consumer prices | |
| ▲ | doctorpangloss 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | energy development is complex, but it cannot be your idea, which boils down to, "whatever is cheapest," especially for government policy. it would be cheapest to not use energy at all, which is the exact opposite of the mercenary POV you are talking about, without having to use the word environment at all. | | |
| ▲ | monero-xmr 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | It would be cheapest, and 100% in our control, to construct coal plants. Coal is abundant. China builds insane amounts of coal plants to this day. That would provide bountiful cheap energy. But we don't do this. So all else being equal, I would suggest we reorient towards other types of renewable energy, especially nuclear, if we are longer worried about price | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > It would be cheapest, and 100% in our control, to construct coal plants. Close, but one minor correction. Multiple studies have found that it would be cheapest to DEstruct coal plants. Literally demolishing them and replacing them with battery + solar is more cost effective than continuing to operate them in 99% of cases. | | |
| ▲ | monero-xmr 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | In New England, where the offshore wind is being shut down, there is very little sun right now. How will solar + battery help in New England? | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Germany is mostly north of the 49th parallel and has deployed over 100GW of capacity. New England would do just fine. |
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| ▲ | dragonwriter 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It would be cheapest, and 100% in our control, to construct coal plants. Coal is abundant. China builds insane amounts of coal plants to this day. That would provide bountiful cheap energy. “Cheap” only if you exclude indirect costs due to emissions (both localized effects and less-localized.) > we reorient towards other types of renewable energy, especially nuclear nuclear is not renewable (it is low carbon, a feature that is also true of renewables in general, but it is not, itself, a renewable.) | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > nuclear is not renewable It can be effectively renewable for all practical purposes, but there's an aversion to breeder reactors. Over 95% of the existing 'waste' could also be consumed by breeders. | | |
| ▲ | dragonwriter 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > It can be effectively renewable for all practical purposes, but there's an aversion to breeder reactors. Breeder reactors reduce long-term waste issues, but they don't make nuclear renewable. | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | They push the timeline out so far that it's effectively renewable. The sun will burn out at some point, too, but we don't say solar is non-renewable. | | |
| ▲ | dragonwriter 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | We don't say solar is non-renewable because using every single available bit of solar today has no impact on the solar energy available tomorrow. This is not true of nuclear, even if you increase the total quantity of available fission-derived energy by 50 or 100 or whatever the outer estimate is for breeder reactors compared to non-breeder fission. | | |
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| ▲ | doctorpangloss 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why do you think your particular mercenary point of view does not prevail? Because people are stupid? I like nuclear. The funny thing about nuclear power and the mercenaries promoting their startups about it is, you will still have to convince democrats about it. Because occasionally they are in power, and nuclear, as is often criticized, takes a long time to build and a short time to turn off haha. | | |
| ▲ | monero-xmr 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | The problem is you build all of these offshore wind turbines and none of them are lowering our bills. As a politician I would try and lower my constituents' bills |
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| ▲ | SamDc73 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yes, turbine blades can introduce radar clutter and affect certain military systems; but this has been know since the 1990s and has been engineered around for decades. China, the UK, Germany, and Denmark operate gigawatts of offshore wind in close proximity to military-grade and NATO air-defense radar without much issue... |
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| ▲ | alhirzel 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Years ago, this very subject was an interview question at a national lab (at an undergrad level). The question was roughly: > the ends of windmill blades look a lot like a jet on radar. If you were assigned to this project, what would your approach be to avoiding false positives? This was in 2011/2012. I find it difficult to believe the problem is not solved. |
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| ▲ | dmbche 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Realistically, isn't it a known presence on radar? It's static - you can't just ignore signals from that area in space? | | | |
| ▲ | adleyjulian 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It has been solved. Get rid of all the windmills. Easy. |
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| ▲ | softwaredoug 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The real takeaway is when a big project can be paused entirely due to one presidents very specific / frivolous whims - we won’t be able to do big projects in the current order. We need a shift in the constitutional order where the whims of one person isnt fused with the bureaucracy |
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| ▲ | kylehotchkiss 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Meanwhile, we're in a multi-year shortage of turbines for thermal electrical plants. Electric bill beatings will continue until morale improves. |
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| ▲ | arghandugh 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is because King Pedophile wants to destabilize the American power grid in order to enrich his donors. It was an explicit campaign promise that the tech industry completely endorsed and he is fulfilling it. |
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| ▲ | Havoc 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| US bribery system eh I mean fossil fuel lobby strikes again |
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| ▲ | LgWoodenBadger 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's to reapply pressure on Denmark with respect to Greenland. |
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| ▲ | _alaya 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I'm surprised this isn't mentioned more. Denmark is big in the wind industry and blocking this construction keeps money out of the Danish economy. Another pressure move to get Denmark to give up Greenland. |
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| ▲ | dlt713705 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Next step is invade Venezuela and pump as much oil as possible |
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| ▲ | marcosdumay 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The theory that the US government does those wars to keep oil prices high fits the timing way better than the opposite. I still thinks it's missing important details, but the US making wars to get more oil doesn't fit reality at all. | | |
| ▲ | braincat31415 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Agreed, and it's easy to understand why the US is doing what it is doing in Latin America by reading the new national security strategy. |
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| ▲ | DoctorOetker 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is there a similar ostensible classified reason why OCO-2 and OCO-3 are requested to shut down operations? 700+ M invested in space based observatories with ~ 15M yearly operating cost. Just doesn't make sense to disable perfectly working observatories to save less than ~75M in a timespan of 5 years while losing a 700+M investment. |
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| ▲ | CommenterPerson an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The $445 million campaign contribution / bribe from Big Oil is clearly paying off. |
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| ▲ | Surac 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| i have the feeling the real reason is "drill baby drill". The actual administration does not hide it's love for carbon based energy |
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| ▲ | maxglute 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| TBH the fact renewables haven't or can't cut big cheques to change Trumps mind is a little baffling. Surely he can double dip from big oil and small renewable. |
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| ▲ | lateforwork 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The Saudis have enormous influence over Trump through business deals. So does Qatar through the jet they gifted Trump, and the UAE through crypto deals. These oil rich countries are no fans of clean energy. Is it merely coincidence, then, that Trump is canceling wind and solar projects in the United States? Previously Trump also canceled the largest solar project in the United States. Known as Esmeralda 7, the project planned in the Nevada desert would have produced enough energy to power nearly two million homes. |
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| ▲ | verdverm 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's more the Scottish that caused this than the oil princes, the windmill stuff is all about petty hatred from losing a court case and now one of his precious golf courses has windmills visible out on the ocean for a few of the holes https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo | | |
| ▲ | lateforwork 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | But he didn't just cancel wind projects. He cancelled solar. He cancelled EV tax credits. Then Trump went a step further: He is using tariffs to pressure other countries to relax their pledges to fight climate change and instead burn more oil, gas and coal [1]. The oil princes are getting their moneys worth. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/climate/trump-internation... | | |
| ▲ | verdverm 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | the rest are more "a bonus" than the RCA, which is pettiness at his core and a constant seeing anything and everything as a slight against him how and why the republican/maga party wholeheartedly adopted Trump's grievances as their own is beyond me |
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| ▲ | hristov 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The Arab Gulf states have also been pumping billions into Jared Cushner investment vehicles. https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-says-15bn-qatar-uae-c... | |
| ▲ | braincat31415 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's actually the other way around; the Saudis are only able to sell their oil because the oil money is flowing into US treasuries and other financial instruments, and it has been like this since the 70s. | |
| ▲ | kevin_thibedeau 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > jet they gifted Trump The jet was gifted to the American people. There's no reason why he should be allowed to fly on it. It goes in the library with the rest of the state gifts. | | |
| ▲ | selimthegrim 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Stop giving him ideas. He’s gonna put a hangar right next to the east wing ballroom and shove it in there like the Spruce Goose |
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| ▲ | Moldoteck 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | not just that. Fossils are/were the guarantee of US dollar dominance. Huge $ are made purely by the fact most fossils transactions are in $. It's not in the interest of US to reduce the influence of fossils, especially now when it's the biggest exporter. Trump is ... trump... his actions can be anyway between personal biased hate or US strategical decision... |
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| ▲ | mv4 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Trump Media merging with a fusion energy firm. |
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| ▲ | josefritzishere 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Pure idiocracy. |
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| ▲ | jeffbee 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| haha, amateurs. California is way ahead of the game here. We've been blocking our own offshore wind fields for years, using our own environmental regulations, and we're going to keep doing it for the foreseeable future. |
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| ▲ | shmerl 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Of course they'll classify the actual reason - government corruption. |
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| ▲ | willis936 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's a matter of national security that the public not know the government is illegitimate. |
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| ▲ | meroes 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If fent is a WMD then so are turbines! |
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| ▲ | therobots927 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| All the more reason for me to invest in a personal windmill. |
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| ▲ | derriz 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sadly wind turbines don’t really scale down like PV panels. The energy produced by PV panels is a linear function of their surface area. For wind turbines, it scales with the square of the blade length. | | |
| ▲ | KaiserPro 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is true, but if you already have a battery, getting an extra 200-400w when the sun isn't shining is really useful. (for a UK based house. Not so sure about the USA.) The cost isn't as good as solar though. a 1kw turbine is expensive. | | |
| ▲ | padjo 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They also need regular servicing and proper locating away from turbulence. Micro scale wind makes absolutely no sense economically. | |
| ▲ | MandieD 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wow, that would take care of our usual home office base load (Germany, not using electricity for heating) | | |
| ▲ | archi42 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's a siren call for us techies, but reality is less pretty than our fantasies of "cheap base load". I got an offer for a "essentially free" residential turbine including the pylon (8 to 10 meters, the legal limit for a "Kleinwindanlage") in SW Germany - just had to dismantle it and put it on my lawn. And of course pour a huge foundation [2x2m?] and have an accredited electrician do the necessary alterations. Nope. It didn't even produce enough electricity to offset the maintenance costs - no idea how I should offset the costs for moving it, even with the free capex. And I did the math about 3 years ago: Prices for both PV and batteries dropped a lot since then. For late fall/early spring I would be better off by adding a PV carport (2 cars). I could also finally automate charging my batteries while electricity is cheap during Dec/Jan, might even be worth bumping my existing battery from 28 kWh to 42 kWh. To be fair: The math might work out in the Northern Germany; but I would not bet on it. |
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| ▲ | aidenn0 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Doesn't the area described by a turbine's motion scale with the square of the blade-length, so given a circular area covered by a turbine, the power will scale linearly with that area? | | |
| ▲ | derriz 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes but you’re not paying for the area the blade covers - you’re paying for the blade. Simplifying (to an extreme) for the sake of illustration - a 20m blade costs twice as much as a 10m one but produces 4 times the energy. Obviously, cost scales more than linearly with blade length but it’s a bit like big O - the n^2 factor dominates. This is why wind turbines have been getting bigger and bigger. And why the cost of domestic or small-scale wind turbines remains stubbornly high despite the dramatic fall in the average cost per MW seen for wind turbines - as the falls are largely driven by the ability to manufacture larger and larger turbine blades. While falls in costs for solar PV can be seen at every scale. |
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| ▲ | Rebelgecko 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | YMMV depending on where you live but for MOST people you get more bang for your buck with solar+batteries | | |
| ▲ | beembeem 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Unlike solar, wind at the utility scale virtually always improves load factors, lcoe, and a host of other economics vs a personal installation. Generally utility scale solar buys cheap panels that aren't as energy dense as those purchased by rooftop consumers, so you could make the argument. However, the efficiency and energy density of the ever-growing turbines installed by utilities, particularly off-shore, are far more efficient than anything you would install yourself. E.g. average annual wind speed typically improves with altitude, and having a taller turbine can reach those larger sustained wind speeds. Whereas, utilities and consumers almost always install solar near-ish ground level and see the same sky, perhaps the utility installs in a sunnier corner of geography. Consumers potentially benefit from the shading of panels, and lower distribution costs. |
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| ▲ | dvh 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Putin's orders? |
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| ▲ | ch2026 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| can we setup a polymarket for the number of days until trump blames offshore windmills for hurricanes |
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| ▲ | nextworddev 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Prefer solar over wind |
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| ▲ | lm28469 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Oh no! look Trump is doing exactly what he promised and everyone is shocked, again https://www.project2025.observer/en?agencies=Dept.+of+Energy |
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| ▲ | d--b 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Trump doesn't like windfarms since they built some off the coast of his Scottish golf club. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_International_Golf_Club_... |
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| ▲ | catigula 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's interesting that people are very incredulous of there being a legitimate defense reason for this when we have had unilateral unanswered drone incursions all over Europe and the US. There's obviously some sort of arms race occurring and some of it is public. The world in on the precipice of many technologies advancing at an all too rapid pace. The idea that technology will become tightly regulated isn't inconceivable. FYI Sweden did the same thing last year. There is likely a (drone) reason, it's all but completely clear. |
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| ▲ | pickleglitch 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is part of the problem with having an administration that so obviously corrupt and so frequently tells the most obvious lies and consistently acts with such obvious, naked partisanship. You can't trust them about anything. | |
| ▲ | KaiserPro 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > unanswered drone incursions all over Europe But thats nothing to do with turbines. Its not like russia are hiding behind wind turbines launching drones between them. They are just sitting there, well within radar range launching away. they also have AIS on, so its not like they are hiding. Also if you look at where they are: https://openinframap.org/#8.13/51.48/1.67 there is plenty of overlap for existing radar to overlap. Also they are the perfect platform for extending your radar network. they are tall, well connected and widely spaced. | |
| ▲ | dcminter 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It could in principle be legit. But there's a trail of previous bad faith behaviour around the same windfarms. | |
| ▲ | LastTrain 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | No, Sweden did not ban all offshore wind projects last year. | | |
| ▲ | catigula 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is that the strawman framing of my argument that you want to stick with? https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/11/11/why-swe... | | |
| ▲ | LastTrain 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | You framed it that way. This is an article about how the US shut down every offshore wind farm project. People are here discussing the fact that the us shut down every offshore wind project. You came in and said Sweden did it too. Setting aside the fact that they did not do that, they blocked some projects, not all - you don’t even know what “it” is because the US did not give a rationale. | | |
| ▲ | cr1895 an hour ago | parent [-] | | And, Sweden blocked those projects in early stage permitting, not well underway or even nearing completion. It's not comparable at all. US defence agencies have had thorough involvement in the permitting process of these US developments. |
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| ▲ | cr1895 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There's obviously transparently political antipathy from the Trump administration towards offshore wind development in the US. It's far more likely this is gross political interference by an unserious and vendetta-driven administration. | |
| ▲ | heavyset_go 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They've been crying wolf for nearly a decade now, they aren't suddenly going to have a change of heart and be honest now. |
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| ▲ | metalman 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| drones are invisible to radar.......or clearly russia(or ukrain) would not be dealing with strikes far from the front lines
also, hypersonic missles are now a thing, and the hit faster than any radar or interceptor can register
but yes if you were worried about Portugal trying a sneak attack, then clearly they would use the wind turbine shielding attack vector from weaponised shipping cans placed on container ships |
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| ▲ | mring33621 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The Water Folk put the kibosh on that shit. |
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| ▲ | frogperson 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Fascism is the reason. No need to analyze or debate any further. |
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| ▲ | ChrisArchitect 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355227 |
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| ▲ | nixosbestos 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Can we summon the Trumphole licking HN users that spent their reputation insisting that us "libtards" were freaking out, and get them in here to explain how this fits in the MAGA 4D Chess? Or is it against HN decorum to point out just how much of that shit-headery fart-huffing was allowed and transpired here, on HN? |
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| ▲ | MisterBastahrd 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Reason is Donald Trump. He hates offshore wind production because it gets in the way of his ocean views at his resort. |
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| ▲ | BenFranklin100 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is dumb. We are in the midst of an energy shortage that will only get worse. Between MAGA blocking wind and Progressives blocking nuclear, the US is left with solar and carbon. Solar is fine, but it needs a 24/7 base. Unfortunately it increasingly appears that base will remain carbon. |
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| ▲ | speed_spread 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > energy shortage that will only get worse Worse? An energy shortage is an opportunity to increase prices and make more money! Think about the hyuge profits! |
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| ▲ | iamnotsure 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "colonoscopy" |
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| ▲ | ekjhgkejhgk 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The reason is to own the libs. |
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| ▲ | linuxftw 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| To be fair, there could absolutely be national security issues. One example might be undersea (or even surface) navigation. If the coastline is littered with windmills off shore, this might create a negative of submarine navigation routes. That's clearly information we don't want shared with adversaries. There might be undersea classified cables. There might be classified sonar stations. It might be hard to detect adversary subs within a windmill field due to extra noise, etc. |
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| ▲ | breakyerself 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure. We can always imagine an excuse to avoid dealing with the obvious reality. I don't think it's productive though. | | |
| ▲ | roamerz 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They were approved by a prior administration that prioritized green energy over national security. There are several other comments above that allege other countries have come to the same conclusion regarding offshore wind farms having a negative affect on radar. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Great, then they can explain the reasons. Most transparent administration in history, remember? |
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| ▲ | nailer 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A conspiracy is not the obvious reality. | | |
| ▲ | immibis an hour ago | parent [-] | | Project 2025 is a conspiracy that is obvious, is reality, and includes blocking windmills |
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| ▲ | vntok 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yet Sweden did it too (https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/11/11/why-swe...) and they quote these defense-related reasons. Are they lying, do you believe that Sweden of all countries is under Trump's direct influence re: wind aversion? | | |
| ▲ | breakyerself 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sweden is worried about a hostile neighbor. They're freaked out enough that they joined NATO after generations of non-alignment. Who are we afraid of? If ICBMs are incoming to the Continental United States the world is ending. Regardless of whether we prevent wind farms in any of the 12,000+ miles of coastline. Are we expecting missiles to come from the Gulf of Mexico? People always bend over backwards to justify this administration. It's tiresome. | |
| ▲ | LastTrain 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Sweden did not ban all offshore wind projects. | |
| ▲ | baobun 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > do you believe that Sweden of all countries is under Trump's direct influence re: wind aversion? It looks increasingly like a US vassal state for every year so that part wouldn't be so surprising. Besides, the article you posted does not support your claim that Sweden blocked all offshore wind construction. On the contrary it refutes it by mentioning some greenlit offshore wind construction projects. | |
| ▲ | jopsen 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Defense related reasons canceled projects early in the planning phase. This is the kind of thing you know years before construction is even funded, much less started. This is a US administration being dishonest, whether for stupidity or to apply political pressure who knows. |
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| ▲ | ribosometronome 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If that were the case, why would they have been granted the leases in the first place? | |
| ▲ | cr1895 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >To be fair, there could absolutely be national security issues. Which is precisely why US defence agencies are heavily involved in the permitting and design of these wind farms from the start, to account for these valid issues. | |
| ▲ | jimt1234 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If the US had a normal, rational Administration, then yeah, I'd probably accept the "national security" explanation. But when the Administration claims completing the White House ballroom is a matter of "national security", and Antifa is the current largest threat to "national security", then credibility for these claims is completely lost. | | |
| ▲ | vntok 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > But when the Administration claims completing the White House ballroom is a matter of "national security" All other things equal, opening a literal breach in one of the white house's exterior wall seems like it would cause a "national security" issue if the construction project was not finished and the hole remained gaping afterwards. | | |
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| ▲ | petre 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yeah, especially enemy submarines. A windmill farm presents opportunities for defense: as a platform to mount and power sonar, radar arrays or other early warning systems, the power cables are actual decoys for comms infra, the farm itsrlf is an obstacle for drones and enemy subs. | |
| ▲ | drivingmenuts 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are the areas that we are placing windmills regularly navigated by submarines? And wouldn't windmills cause as much, or more, issues for an adversary submarines? I smell BS. |
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| ▲ | zppln 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This happens all the time in my country. The navy has all kinds of gear deployed in the sea that could be interfered with. Edit: Looks like they were a bit late to veto it here though. |
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| ▲ | breakyerself 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is obviously because Donald Trump notoriously hates offshore wind turbines. | | |
| ▲ | dboreham 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Perhaps worth recapping that he hates them due to a specific personal event (the same is true for everything he does, if you dig deep enough to find the reason). In this case he developed a golf resort on the East Coast of Scotland. Meanwhile wind generators were also being deployed immediately offshore. He became enraged that the view from his new development was blighted by the turbines. So it isn't even due to oil industry bribery. It's personal. | | |
| ▲ | smolder 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't know why people think wind turbines are ugly... Someone who admires gold toilets, no less. I think the opposite. | | |
| ▲ | BurningFrog 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think you just found the compromise: Gold painted wind turbines. Art of the Deal! |
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| ▲ | Swenrekcah 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In that case he would just approve wind farms that fuck with people he dislikes. It seems to me this is very much intentional to keep oil demand up and prices high. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The problem there is that other people don't hate wind farms the way he does. | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I’m pretty sure the list of people Trump outright likes is approximately one. |
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| ▲ | alecco 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Occam's Razor: offshore wind requires a lot of rare earths for their magnets and whatnot. US military-industrial complex needs the little remaining global supply not under China's export controls. |
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| ▲ | KaiserPro 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > offshore wind requires a lot of rare earths for their magnets compared to the general motor market in the USA? I think thats out by a few orders of magnitude. Radar shadow is vaguely plausible, if your radar is shit and needs replacing. it also requires your hydrophone network to not be working that well either. | |
| ▲ | platevoltage 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This could very well be the excuse they're using. The reality is almost certainly more petty than that given the great one's irrational hate of wind power. | |
| ▲ | hristov 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Any electricity produced by turning generators will require rare earths. This includes, every current non-trivial electricity source with the exception of solar. Gas, oil, coal and nuclear all work by heating steam and running it through a turbine that turns a generator that makes electricity. For hydro, the falling water turns the turbine/generator. So any source of electricity that may replace these wind turbines (other than solar) will require about the same amount of rare-earths. And lets face it, Trump is doing his best to hamstring solar as well. He has cancelled all solar subsidies and has hit solar with major tariffs. I think Occams Razor would lead to a very different conclusion. | | |
| ▲ | cesarb 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Any electricity produced by turning generators will require rare earths. AFAIK, not all kinds of rotating generators require rare earths; IIRC, induction motors don't need any permanent magnets. | | |
| ▲ | immibis an hour ago | parent [-] | | AFAIK, modern wind turbines use types of induction motors because it allows them to adjust the rotation speed by applying a counter-rotating stator field (which is a very neat trick) - older turbines had to rotate at a fixed divisor of 3600 rpm (grid frequency). |
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| ▲ | techgnosis 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This feels extremely plausible. I don't see anyone else saying this yet, well done. | |
| ▲ | bongodongobob 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Occams Razor: Trump openly hates windmills and green energy |
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| ▲ | ineedaj0b 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We don’t need offshore wind or onshore. Wish the US focused more on Solar. Seems to be the smartest path forward. China understands and is gunning for Nuclear and Solar. Geothermal and wind are nice but too location dependent. |
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| ▲ | bryanlarsen 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Wind and solar are highly complementary. Wind tends to be peak during evening and morning, and is often stronger at night than during the day. Wind is cheaper than overbuilding solar and adding batteries. | |
| ▲ | michelsedgh 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The big solar plant they made in between Cali and Las Vegas one, it wasn't online more than a few years? It shut down... | | |
| ▲ | martinpw 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It shut down because it can't compete cost wise with ... solar. Specifically solar photovoltaic. | |
| ▲ | jeffbee 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're thinking of an actually quite small solar-thermal plant, which is bankrupt because solar-thermal is a dumb idea. | | |
| ▲ | michelsedgh an hour ago | parent [-] | | If its a dumb idea, why waste billions of dollars on it? Do you know how much pollution that shutted down plant is? It was HugE I've gone past it. So much waste for a "dumb idea" |
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| ▲ | exabrial 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I actually believe the radar surveillance excuse (on a technicalities only), if that's what this is going to come down to. The ocean is a big empty place and prime for picking up radar reflections as the background is pretty quiet. However... how on earth was this not identified like 10 years ago way before these projects were even started? Seems pretty obvious in hindsight. |
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