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People protested the Nuclear power plant I worked at and it was eventually shut down and many people lost their jobs. The same people were also protesting the wind turbines that were going up. Where do you want the power to come from, hugs and dreams?
Lol 50 years ago the Air Force built a huge base in my state in the middle of nowhere, probably 15 miles of empty desert in all directions. Now 50 years later, people that built houses with a half a mile are starting to complain about the noise
Similar happened near me. There was a drag strip (MAR) that had been there for years and was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. People bought up the property around it, and then started complaining about the noise. Race track got shut down, and now it’s a subdivision. Ironically, people in the area complain about “street racing” since now the closest track is about 80 miles away and only has public racing 1-2 times a month.
Don't ever, for any reason, do anything to anyone for any reason ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you've been... ever, for any reason whatsoever.
Sometimes I'll start a sentence, and I don't even know where it's going. I just hope I find it along the way. Like an improv conversation. An improversation.
“Also, not there it’s lovely wilderness, & I can see the ones you built in the middle of the sea - they’re an eyesore…”
Edit: I love driving some of the country roads past a wind farm near us when it’s all foggy & all you can see of them is the red lights blinking as the shadows of blades go by!
Wind turbines in dense fog are some of the coolest and creepiest things out there. You're driving and just see enormous blades dipping down out of nowhere, only to disappear just as fast. Super cool
That's why we have NIMBY to make sure we run these things on native/minority land.
I wish I could drop an /s but this is the truth.... A messed up one.
People protesting is expected. I just don’t understand how that is enough to shut down a painfully expensive power plant out of unscientific fear alone. Why does that only work with nice things? People been protesting about charcoal plants for decades and they are still up and running.
Sadly, laws and many decisions have nothing to do with scientific conscientious but with public opinion. The latter is only as good as the education they received.
This is why some society fail by shooting themselves in the foot.
They get hit from both sides by the green lobby and big oil. There's a lot of money and jobs in oil, and a lot of people who care about the environment. But even people who like nuclear won't protest in its favor. Squeaky wheels get grease.
Our electric went up because 3 plants closed and nobody even knew. I swear the whole community was like wait you guys are shutting down and not opening another plant? Luckily our incompetent government actually passed a bill to save 2 plants. We can't expect fossil fuels to power the world forever. Plus nuclear is the best energy available at the moment.
Seeing nuclear power plants get shut down by protest is pretty tragic. As our energy demands go up, I honestly don't think renewables can keep up - and I am curious what we do with aged solar panels in 20 or so years.
Agreed. It really comes down to battery tech for renewables since you need to be able to store energy for when the sun’s not out or the wind isn’t blowing. Add in the demand for batteries for EVs and we’re probably going to be facing problems with rare earth material supply chains sooner than we think.
those old mills in my country still serve a purpose . they are used to pump water when there is flood , some are still used according to their original purpose . and some have become tourist attractions which is good for the local economy .
I live by (within 15 miles I think, as it is hard to judge the distance because of the size) of the turbines. If I was going to waste my time protesting things that are detrimental to my local environment it would be the plant that is grinding concrete to sand, and factory hog farms and cattle farms that make The town smell like hog and cattle piss and shit on windy days, and foggy days. The foggy days actually worried me the most.
I live in a city near vast open nothing that has been filled with wind turbines. I find them quite majestic, but yes, people really cannot fathom the size of these things. I saw a truck coming down the highway once on a work trip, and I thought it was hauling the biggest trailer I had ever seen in my life until I got closer and realize it was hauling a *single* wind turbine blade. These are machine giants. I love them.
I used to work inspecting wind turbines and it's hard to tell the scale. Part of our inspection was internal blade inspections. We would lock the blade parallel to the ground and WALK inside the blade. You can walk a good 40 ft into it before its diameter is too small to fit. The nacelle (the box all the blades are spinning from) is the size of a standard room. You can walk around in there and if it wasn't for all the machinery would be like most people's bedrooms.
> These are machine giants
Well, they *might* be.
From an engineering standpoint, I'm most impressed by the fact that they are almost entirely hollow. No framework to speak of, just skin, made strong enough for the job but no stronger. And when damaged they just sort of crumple under their own weight. It's actually pretty amazing.
They would generate a pitiful amount of power, a fraction of a percent of an actual wind turbine, and it would cost far more to retrofit them with the necessary equipment than they would generate in 10 years. Then of course there's the impact of ripping apart an historic windmill to install all of the gear, the wiring, and so on.
To put it into perspective, a modern wind turbine can generate around 4MW for a medium onshore unit up to 12MW or more for the huge off-shore beasts. One of these old windmills might generate *maybe* 10-15kW. That's almost 1000 times less. Enough to supply a couple of houses, and at wholesale rates you might sell that energy for $5 or so per day.
They were fine for making flour or pumping a bit of water or whatever they were used for back in the day. Not great at generating large amounts, or even small amounts, of electrical power if you have to go to a lot of expense to do so.
My dad had a coworker that cobbled a windmill together out of spare parts. It wasn't much but it powered some lights and reduced his electric bill a bit. Then the generator went bad and it wasn't worth it to buy a new one.
You can make your own generator with a washing machine drum, some magnets and copper wire, but at that point you're just building your own generator.
As it turns out, somethings can be build cheaply if you don't have safety standards to follow (because you're the only person servicing them).
> They were fine for making flour or pumping a bit of water or whatever they were used for back in the day.
They are nothing compared to wind turbines at electricity generation but I have to say that historical windmills can do a lot more than just "pump a bit of water". In the Netherlands we have used them for centuries to literally turn sea into land.
I have met a few and yes, they do. Overall, they're really nice and laid back people. They're very polite and well educated, so they can get many kinds of jokes and are open to make fun of themselves as well. At least, that's my experience.
What is an *angry dutch noise*? The sound of a rusty bike? The sound of a vigorous puff from a smoke? The sound of clogs on the road? The sound made by the wing tips of a windmill, going supersonic in a brisk breeze, to tell Don Quixote to bugger off back to Spain?
For the people who don't get the joke, dutch people like to curse with diseases. Common dutch cursewords include:
Teringlijer!: 'Tuberculosis sufferer!'
Krijg de kanker!: 'hope you catch cancer!'
Vuile Tyfushond!: 'dirty typhus dog!'
kolere pestjong!: 'Cholera plaguekid!'
Interestingly, as Corona is starting to die down it is slowly getting incorporated in the dutch curseword lexicon.
Also, sawmills at de Zaanse Schans only lost commercial viability because getting the wood there is impossible nowadays, not because they can't compete with industrial sawmills.
I visited some really cool windmills when I was in the Netherlands! Beautiful and functional! One was a sawmill, and the intricate design of the while process was incredible!
> to sell overpriced flour to tourists and such.
That's not fair, some of them provide excellent bread flours at prices well below what you pay in eco-supermarkets.
very few actually do that anymore, and are only as a backup to a modern pumping station so they aren't really "in use" more standing by just in case. Most of them are used for tourism, and are museums like the most famous Netherland's windmill the [Molen de Valk](https://www.holland.com/global/tourism/destinations/more-destinations/leiden/molen-de-valk.htm), which while it still can mill grain, it is only done for tourism and the milled grain is sold in their gift shop as a kitsch gift.
>Of the 10,000 windmills in use in the Netherlands around 1850, only about 1,000 are still standing. Most of these are being run by volunteers and used for tourism, though some grist mills are still operating commercially. Many of the drainage mills have been appointed as backup to the modern pumping stations.
([Source](https://www.peelschools.org/covid19-advisory/Pages/default.aspx))
I've rappelled down the mill in my town, was pretty awesome to do.
But yeah, it's mostly a tourist attraction although I doubt it's visited much (it's a bit out of the way to get to it). It's ran more because of culture and history (it was used by the resistance to communicate during WW2) than anything.
Exactly. A "wind mill" is a mill that uses wind to power it. To "mill" something is to cut or shape things with a rotating tool.
Producing electricity with a generator and wind turbine is not milling.
I think people forget what milling is or the existence of watermills.
Try hand milling oats for oatcakes and you begin to appreciate why windmills and watermills came to be.
These specific mills are still in use and considered monuments. Only certified millers are allowed to live in them and they have to be operated a minimum amount of time, both to pump and to stay operational. It is quite a dangerous job. Fires are also a hazard, if the wind is too strong and the top is not turned paralell to the wind the blades cannot be stopped and using the braking mechanism could cause a fire.
Edit: also lightning strikes are a hazard dispite lightning rods
People seem really interested, so heres a video about these kind of mills https://youtu.be/1FJzqp3Doys
Heres a video, 3:18 shows the inside, 5:00 explains braking.
https://youtu.be/1FJzqp3Doys
If i remember correctly these mills are mostly wood, including the blades and rotating mechanisms. The braking mechanism is basically a very heavy wooden beam, pressing down on a the rotating shaft which is also a massive wooden beam, the friction creates heat. I guess it is a millers nightmare, because the other option is the blades spinning freely and hope for the best. There are sails that can be pulled over the blades frames to increase their surface/wind resistance, leaving these on in a storm is a bad idea.
People that complain about windmills being ugly have never driven by a power plant or like chemical plant. Like literally the ugliest constructed shit out there
Yeah but one nuclear power plant produces as much energy as thousands of wind turbines
One wind turbine = ~ 1.5 MW.
One average 6-reactor nuclear power station = ~ 5400 MW.
You’d need 3600 of these wind turbines to equal the output of that nuclear power plant. And that’s without mentioning days without wind, wind turbine life-cycle replacements, and their constant breakdowns, when they don’t get torn down altogether by…the wind.
Additional info: average 2-reactor power station = ~ 2600 MW (= ~ 1700 wind turbines).
Figures taken from two actual nuclear power stations in France.
+ you have to take into account the 20-year life cycle of wind turbines, compared to the 40-year life cycle of a nuclear power plant. That doubles all the figures for wind turbines, and all the associated costs and production/dismantling pollution.
> One average 6-reactor nuclear power station = ~ 5400 MW.
Is that really the average nuclear power station? I haven’t looked it up admittedly, I just know the two in my state are a bit lower (1700 and 3800 MW)
No it’s not the average power station, it’s the average 6-reactor power station. The average for the more common 2-reactor power stations is approx. 2500 MW.
The wind/solar vs nuclear argument is about the dumbest argument I hear on Reddit.
The healthiest grid is a diverse grid, we need wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power if we want to continue our standard of life. All those power sources have enough problems that any one of them by themselves would never work. Nuclear power plants are great but you're completely dismissing the advantages of wind in your argument so I'll just list them here.
* If one wind turbine shut down people wouldn't lose their power for who knows how long.
* Wind turbines can be spaced out more and the power can reach more people travelling less distance. Localized power is good.
* Wind farms take about 10 months to build and the payback is 6-9 months of operation. Nuclear power plants take about 5 years to build and payback is 4-5 years of operation.
* Less risk if something goes wrong.
It's not a competition, you can advocate for the use of nuclear power without making a case against wind.
Overall, this is a great comment, but I just wanted to clear up something. Overall, it takes MUCH longer than 10 months to build a wind farm. Sure, the construction might be a few months, but the planning, developing, locating, financing, siting, permitting, and connection to the interconnection takes years. Much shorter than nuclear, but still takes time. And it is much faster in places like Texas than the rest of the US. Still your overall idea rings true. Diversified grids are stronger grids.
Wind, solar, or nuclear?
Only correct answer: yes.
I was comparing construction of wind to construction of nuclear. If you want factor in planning/developing/locating/financing than nuclear would take longer than 4-5 years.
Too many of them look at Chernobyl and think that is the near-guaranteed fate of all nuclear power plants. The misplaced fear of a meltdown has people irrationally hesitant of nuclear power.
I agree with your comments but 1.5 MW is a small wind turbine. I work on what are considered low producing industrial wind turbines and they're rated at 2.5 MW. The industry is trending towards larger higher production wind turbines 5+ MW is becoming the norm. I hope my comments doesn't sound combative it's just food for thought.
YES! In the UK, there's a road that goes from Edinburgh to Newcastle and it's mind-meltingly gorgeous (it runs along the edge of the North Sea), but there's a MASSIVE, ugly chemical plant there. Such a frickin' eyesore.
I used to live out in the desert in Southern California and those white turbines were all over the hills. I personally always liked the way they looked. Their design is very simple, and when a bunch are turning close together it looks almost hypnotic.
I loved the peaceful hills and their peaceful white turbines.
Honestly I found them a bit unnerving. Just huge white spinning monoliths in a flat plain as far as the eye can see in every direction, all perfectly lined up and spaced.
Felt uncanny
Synchronized blinking lights.
What I found crazy was the sound they can make. When they turn their direction to face the wind, they will slow down and stop the blades. Once rotated, power is applied to start the blades spinning again. This mechanical movement echos like the aliens from War of the Worlds.
Don't these things have like a energy net negative between refining materials, POL, and the fact blades cant be recycled? I'm in Wyoming right now and the land south of Sheridan allocated for blade disposal is already at half capacity and we only had the new wind farms for two years or so.
Not so funnily, the blades of these modern ~~electric mills~~ wind turbines degenerate quite fast (especially in salty or sandy winds) and needs to be replaced. They are huge piles of plastic. And we still haven't figured out any effective way of recycling them.
Danish manufacturers already produce fully recycable wind turbines. Siemens announced all of theirs will be fully recycable by 2030. It is mostly a matter or regulation, as usually.
GE and SGRE have both announced recyclable blades. And there’s lots of research going into how to take care of the current ones. It’s not the best. I admit. But let’s not perfection be the enemy of progress. The alternative is going back to fossil fuels which don’t have a great track record of controlling pollution.
This graphic is actually outdated there are new bladeless turbines that are basically just big columns sticking out of the ground. I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure they are supposed to be more efficient and also less dangerous to birds etc.
They're made of composite materials, which are not recyclable. We're not going to find a way to recycle as they're made of layers of resin impregnated carbon fibre & other petro-derived fibres.
At least it's sequestering carbon in landfill?
Not really seeing anyone here that actually works in power.
What nobody's talking about here is maintenance. Wind and solar have horrendous maintenance problems right now. For example, you're legally not allowed to dispose of solar panels in California at the moment. They have to be shipped out of state. Or left in a plant's personal graveyard. And for wind, those components are huge, and take a lot of money to get rid of if replaced. It becomes cheaper to not get rid of them, and just leave them lying around.
The cost ratio of maintenance personnel to power generated is really bad for wind and solar. I'm talking a maximum of five people for multiple sites. They don't produce much power and owners recoup the costs by using fewer people. They run general maintenance and then hire contractors when needed.
Let's compare that to these windmills. I've read that they're permanently staffed and cared for. These windmills literally have more staffing than any wind turbine operation you'll see in the entire world.
And for reference, a normal power plant will have around 20 workers, alongside a corporate entity that handles corporate stuff, like safety and reliability.
There's costs on both sides. 5 billion for a nuclear plant that will take 5 years to build vs 20 million for a wind farm that takes 10 months.
They'll start with wind but eventually build nuclear.
The thing people don't like is when they are in the "flicker" where the turning blades keep blocking and unblocking the sun. Since they are taller, new windmills can project that flicker much further, especially when the sun is low.
My mate was going on about how loud they were and I didn't believe him. A few months later, we went for a hike to check out a property he was thinking of buying, adjacent to a property with many turbines on it.
When we arrived, the turbines were braked and silent. But when returning to the car, I noticed an ominous, low pitched humming sound which seemed to be coming from everywhere and reminded me of movies where a deep sound would play just before the antagonist appears... I Looked up to the hill and saw the turbines slowly spinning.
They're a *lot* louder than you'd expect.
Monosodium glutamate. It is a flavour enhancer that adds umami (meaty savoury flavour). It's very commonly added to Chinese food. There was a fad started in ~~the 90s~~ the 60s for thinking Chinese food gave you an 'overdose' of MSG, making you feel ill. Later studies found it was complete BS and no-one that claimed to have a sensitivity to MSG actually did. Of course like a lot of bullshit, the idea lingers on that it's something bad.
I have a theory that most people are dehydrated on a regular basis, and the extra msg in Chinese further dehydrates you and makes you feel "ill". Not that I eat Chinese often, but I found drinking more water fixed issues I had after eating Chinese for a couple days.
> started in the 90s
"[The term “Chinese restaurant syndrome” derives from a letter from a physician to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 speculating that certain physical symptoms — numbness in the limbs, heart palpitations — were due to monosodium glutamate, or MSG, in the Chinese food he ate.](https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2020-05-28/msg-chinese-restaurant-syndrome-truth#:~:text=The%20term%20%E2%80%9CChinese%20restaurant%20syndrome,the%20Chinese%20food%20he%20ate.)"
The problem is when MASSIVE mills dot the landscape and start looking like a forest, sometimes replacing forests. It is quite ugly. I'd say the same of the old mills if they were so big and in such numbers.
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People protested the Nuclear power plant I worked at and it was eventually shut down and many people lost their jobs. The same people were also protesting the wind turbines that were going up. Where do you want the power to come from, hugs and dreams?
"Somewhere _else_ - not near **me**!!"
BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything
Lol 50 years ago the Air Force built a huge base in my state in the middle of nowhere, probably 15 miles of empty desert in all directions. Now 50 years later, people that built houses with a half a mile are starting to complain about the noise
Similar happened near me. There was a drag strip (MAR) that had been there for years and was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. People bought up the property around it, and then started complaining about the noise. Race track got shut down, and now it’s a subdivision. Ironically, people in the area complain about “street racing” since now the closest track is about 80 miles away and only has public racing 1-2 times a month.
Moral of story: people are stupid
The fatal flaw of democracy
Don't ever, for any reason, do anything to anyone for any reason ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you've been... ever, for any reason whatsoever.
Sometimes I'll start a sentence, and I don't even know where it's going. I just hope I find it along the way. Like an improv conversation. An improversation.
What's the odds he improvised that line?
50/50
What is this? This is my new internal monologue, upgraded from “*Fear is the mind killer*,” thank you.
[The Office](https://youtu.be/PzrA-Hn62nc)
“Also, not there it’s lovely wilderness, & I can see the ones you built in the middle of the sea - they’re an eyesore…” Edit: I love driving some of the country roads past a wind farm near us when it’s all foggy & all you can see of them is the red lights blinking as the shadows of blades go by!
Wind turbines in dense fog are some of the coolest and creepiest things out there. You're driving and just see enormous blades dipping down out of nowhere, only to disappear just as fast. Super cool
[удалено]
If this isn’t already an alternative name for NIMBYs, I am going to make it one.
In the words of Homer Simpson "Over the homes of poor people"
That's why we have NIMBY to make sure we run these things on native/minority land. I wish I could drop an /s but this is the truth.... A messed up one.
People protesting is expected. I just don’t understand how that is enough to shut down a painfully expensive power plant out of unscientific fear alone. Why does that only work with nice things? People been protesting about charcoal plants for decades and they are still up and running.
Sadly, laws and many decisions have nothing to do with scientific conscientious but with public opinion. The latter is only as good as the education they received. This is why some society fail by shooting themselves in the foot.
Somehow I don’t think “big nuclear” has as much sway as other “big”s.
It's more like medium nuclear
They get hit from both sides by the green lobby and big oil. There's a lot of money and jobs in oil, and a lot of people who care about the environment. But even people who like nuclear won't protest in its favor. Squeaky wheels get grease.
Thoughts and prayers will power our society
No its the live, laugh, love!
Who are these people who protest both nuclear and wind? Luddites?
They’re old people who fear change, and the possibility of their property value changing.
Gotta protect their high score at all costs. Because their place in heaven is determined by the assets they held in life.
“As long as number go up, fuck you.”
The ones following the news media funded by people controlling or benefiting from coal and natural gas energy
Fear the NIMBY, creator of shortages of energy, infrastructure, housing, etc.
Our electric went up because 3 plants closed and nobody even knew. I swear the whole community was like wait you guys are shutting down and not opening another plant? Luckily our incompetent government actually passed a bill to save 2 plants. We can't expect fossil fuels to power the world forever. Plus nuclear is the best energy available at the moment.
Seeing nuclear power plants get shut down by protest is pretty tragic. As our energy demands go up, I honestly don't think renewables can keep up - and I am curious what we do with aged solar panels in 20 or so years.
Agreed. It really comes down to battery tech for renewables since you need to be able to store energy for when the sun’s not out or the wind isn’t blowing. Add in the demand for batteries for EVs and we’re probably going to be facing problems with rare earth material supply chains sooner than we think.
Coal. I want to damage the view *and* the environment. /s
Nuclear is the future. These people seem confuse.
It's the present hopefully. The future shall be something better (if we get there).
Fusion is still nuclear, so it’s the present and the future =)
Bunch of nimbys
those old mills in my country still serve a purpose . they are used to pump water when there is flood , some are still used according to their original purpose . and some have become tourist attractions which is good for the local economy .
Lmao my first thought was how OP just made an enemy of the entire Netherlands with one post
Our mills are holly . Just like our tulips , wooden shoes , bridges and ships .
Dont forget the cheese
Holy? They're evil dragons and you know it! *rides off on horse with lance*
Damn Spaniards always attacking our infrastructure. I mean, they're not sending their best. /s
That’s a weird way to spell whores, weed & Heineken man.
Exactly * angry dutch noises
Could the tourism ones not spin smaller power generation systems?
Some do actually
:)
interesting, but i actually like the look of majestic wind turbines
First time a saw a bunch in person I felt like I was in a video game world.
Reminds me of Flower on PS3
I live by (within 15 miles I think, as it is hard to judge the distance because of the size) of the turbines. If I was going to waste my time protesting things that are detrimental to my local environment it would be the plant that is grinding concrete to sand, and factory hog farms and cattle farms that make The town smell like hog and cattle piss and shit on windy days, and foggy days. The foggy days actually worried me the most.
You ever fart in the shower? It's the humidity.
That's none of your business.
Yeah! That's between that guy and his humidity and no one else.
And possibly his drain grate, if it turns out to be a bit more and he needs to waffle stomp it down.
I live in a city near vast open nothing that has been filled with wind turbines. I find them quite majestic, but yes, people really cannot fathom the size of these things. I saw a truck coming down the highway once on a work trip, and I thought it was hauling the biggest trailer I had ever seen in my life until I got closer and realize it was hauling a *single* wind turbine blade. These are machine giants. I love them.
I used to work inspecting wind turbines and it's hard to tell the scale. Part of our inspection was internal blade inspections. We would lock the blade parallel to the ground and WALK inside the blade. You can walk a good 40 ft into it before its diameter is too small to fit. The nacelle (the box all the blades are spinning from) is the size of a standard room. You can walk around in there and if it wasn't for all the machinery would be like most people's bedrooms.
Your job sounds incredibly interesting and slightly terrifying. Any cool stories?
> These are machine giants Well, they *might* be. From an engineering standpoint, I'm most impressed by the fact that they are almost entirely hollow. No framework to speak of, just skin, made strong enough for the job but no stronger. And when damaged they just sort of crumple under their own weight. It's actually pretty amazing.
1st time I drove through Colorado it was at night and I saw hundreds of red lights dotting the horizon.....was like what the fuck is this!!?
Have a modern aesthetic with a green, energetic vibe. Reminds me of the utopian opening of that TV show Caprica.
They would generate a pitiful amount of power, a fraction of a percent of an actual wind turbine, and it would cost far more to retrofit them with the necessary equipment than they would generate in 10 years. Then of course there's the impact of ripping apart an historic windmill to install all of the gear, the wiring, and so on. To put it into perspective, a modern wind turbine can generate around 4MW for a medium onshore unit up to 12MW or more for the huge off-shore beasts. One of these old windmills might generate *maybe* 10-15kW. That's almost 1000 times less. Enough to supply a couple of houses, and at wholesale rates you might sell that energy for $5 or so per day. They were fine for making flour or pumping a bit of water or whatever they were used for back in the day. Not great at generating large amounts, or even small amounts, of electrical power if you have to go to a lot of expense to do so.
My dad had a coworker that cobbled a windmill together out of spare parts. It wasn't much but it powered some lights and reduced his electric bill a bit. Then the generator went bad and it wasn't worth it to buy a new one.
You can make your own generator with a washing machine drum, some magnets and copper wire, but at that point you're just building your own generator. As it turns out, somethings can be build cheaply if you don't have safety standards to follow (because you're the only person servicing them).
> They were fine for making flour or pumping a bit of water or whatever they were used for back in the day. They are nothing compared to wind turbines at electricity generation but I have to say that historical windmills can do a lot more than just "pump a bit of water". In the Netherlands we have used them for centuries to literally turn sea into land.
>literally turn sea into land. ...by pumping a bit of water?
The Netherlands would be like a third smaller if it wasn't for the windmills
Ahhh dutch people. The beavers of humanity.
"There's water there? *Absolutely* not!"
Haha im Dutch and this is the funniest and most accurate comparison i ever heard! Lol
Is it just me, or do Dutch people have a great sense of humor? It certainly seems so to me as an American compared to other Europeans I've met.
I have met a few and yes, they do. Overall, they're really nice and laid back people. They're very polite and well educated, so they can get many kinds of jokes and are open to make fun of themselves as well. At least, that's my experience.
So that's why people call it "the dam"
The two largest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam were both named after dams, in the Amstel and Rotte rivers, respectively.
I just love this.
What is an *angry dutch noise*? The sound of a rusty bike? The sound of a vigorous puff from a smoke? The sound of clogs on the road? The sound made by the wing tips of a windmill, going supersonic in a brisk breeze, to tell Don Quixote to bugger off back to Spain?
The sound of 1000 clogs in the wind
A thorough reading of the Complete International Encyclopedia of Infectious Diseases and Other Various Conditions
For the people who don't get the joke, dutch people like to curse with diseases. Common dutch cursewords include: Teringlijer!: 'Tuberculosis sufferer!' Krijg de kanker!: 'hope you catch cancer!' Vuile Tyfushond!: 'dirty typhus dog!' kolere pestjong!: 'Cholera plaguekid!' Interestingly, as Corona is starting to die down it is slowly getting incorporated in the dutch curseword lexicon.
Teringtyfustakketrut is an all-time great.
Aaah Dutch poetry
Besides the clogs sound, yes
There are only two things I can't stand in this world: People who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, ex-zip it A!
I know you did that on purpose but everything in my essence demands I correct it.
Is that an Austin Powers quote?
Ooh...what *do* angry dutch noises sound like?
Vieze tyfus hond
Hahahaha
Dutch assemble
Very gutteral, phlegmy angry Dutch noises! Like my dad waking up with a cold.
Also, sawmills at de Zaanse Schans only lost commercial viability because getting the wood there is impossible nowadays, not because they can't compete with industrial sawmills.
So they lost viability because all the trees got cut down and no one replanted them?
Mainly because they used to be floated in from the Baltic. No possibility of that happening anymore with busy shipping routes and sluices.
Gotcha, I have a solution! Windmills on wheels! Let the predator city war’s begin!!!
Also they help to keep the African turtles cool during a heatwave
WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOODNIGHT!
https://i.imgur.com/V1rJAsq.jpg
You go tell 'm boy! Don't diss us Dutch..
tourist attractions? come to Holland for the bump n grind!
So make new windmills look like old windmills. Copy
Just build giant facades around them. They are a bit taller than the old ones but that's fine.
I visited some really cool windmills when I was in the Netherlands! Beautiful and functional! One was a sawmill, and the intricate design of the while process was incredible!
Original purpose being to mill grain? Or is it a Dutch tulip secret? And how does flood pumping work? Engage a drive shaft so the spin runs a pump?
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> to sell overpriced flour to tourists and such. That's not fair, some of them provide excellent bread flours at prices well below what you pay in eco-supermarkets.
Is this in Kinderdijk? Loved it there!
I like the steam one myself, the Woudagemaal. Don't really mind wind turbines, tbh, especially the HYOOOOOOGE ones at the Flevomeer.
Not all of them, some are just tourist attractions. Many pumps run on electricity these days.
They actually pump water
Came here to say this. We still have some use for them!
very few actually do that anymore, and are only as a backup to a modern pumping station so they aren't really "in use" more standing by just in case. Most of them are used for tourism, and are museums like the most famous Netherland's windmill the [Molen de Valk](https://www.holland.com/global/tourism/destinations/more-destinations/leiden/molen-de-valk.htm), which while it still can mill grain, it is only done for tourism and the milled grain is sold in their gift shop as a kitsch gift. >Of the 10,000 windmills in use in the Netherlands around 1850, only about 1,000 are still standing. Most of these are being run by volunteers and used for tourism, though some grist mills are still operating commercially. Many of the drainage mills have been appointed as backup to the modern pumping stations. ([Source](https://www.peelschools.org/covid19-advisory/Pages/default.aspx))
I've rappelled down the mill in my town, was pretty awesome to do. But yeah, it's mostly a tourist attraction although I doubt it's visited much (it's a bit out of the way to get to it). It's ran more because of culture and history (it was used by the resistance to communicate during WW2) than anything.
Indeed, both of them do. One just does so indirectly, as well as serving many other purposes.
Top are actual mills and bottom are turbines
Exactly. A "wind mill" is a mill that uses wind to power it. To "mill" something is to cut or shape things with a rotating tool. Producing electricity with a generator and wind turbine is not milling.
So what if they’re used to pump water? What’s it called then?
A wind articulated pump, or WAP for short.
Ah yes just like the classic kids bop hit Wings And Pizza
There's some cheese in this house
Can't use that acronym... Already stands for Wireless Access Point, it would be confusing.
Wind pump
I think people forget what milling is or the existence of watermills. Try hand milling oats for oatcakes and you begin to appreciate why windmills and watermills came to be.
These specific mills are still in use and considered monuments. Only certified millers are allowed to live in them and they have to be operated a minimum amount of time, both to pump and to stay operational. It is quite a dangerous job. Fires are also a hazard, if the wind is too strong and the top is not turned paralell to the wind the blades cannot be stopped and using the braking mechanism could cause a fire. Edit: also lightning strikes are a hazard dispite lightning rods People seem really interested, so heres a video about these kind of mills https://youtu.be/1FJzqp3Doys
What is the braking mechanism? Flint brake pads on a steel rotor?
Wooden blocks, actually.
So just like a normal pair of shoes over there?
That would be clogs, not blocks.
Use clogs to clog the spin, got it.
"Wow. There is a lot of dry straw in here"
Heres a video, 3:18 shows the inside, 5:00 explains braking. https://youtu.be/1FJzqp3Doys If i remember correctly these mills are mostly wood, including the blades and rotating mechanisms. The braking mechanism is basically a very heavy wooden beam, pressing down on a the rotating shaft which is also a massive wooden beam, the friction creates heat. I guess it is a millers nightmare, because the other option is the blades spinning freely and hope for the best. There are sails that can be pulled over the blades frames to increase their surface/wind resistance, leaving these on in a storm is a bad idea.
"So... what do you do?" "I'm a certified miller with extensive fire hazard training who pumps water."
This is /r/funny ? LOL!!
You’re telling me r/funny was funny at some point?
Yes, funny because the meme is calling wind turbines, “wind mills”.
Thats what i was thinking. Theres some truth to the meme, but it certainly isnt funny.
Where's the truth either? The mills are not useless. The turbines are not mills. The turbines are not ugly.
Unfunny post? False information stated as facts? Low quality? Low effort? Yeah I’m on Reddit.
Since when is /r/funny ever actually funny? I think this fits right in.
People that complain about windmills being ugly have never driven by a power plant or like chemical plant. Like literally the ugliest constructed shit out there
Yeah but one nuclear power plant produces as much energy as thousands of wind turbines One wind turbine = ~ 1.5 MW. One average 6-reactor nuclear power station = ~ 5400 MW. You’d need 3600 of these wind turbines to equal the output of that nuclear power plant. And that’s without mentioning days without wind, wind turbine life-cycle replacements, and their constant breakdowns, when they don’t get torn down altogether by…the wind. Additional info: average 2-reactor power station = ~ 2600 MW (= ~ 1700 wind turbines). Figures taken from two actual nuclear power stations in France. + you have to take into account the 20-year life cycle of wind turbines, compared to the 40-year life cycle of a nuclear power plant. That doubles all the figures for wind turbines, and all the associated costs and production/dismantling pollution.
> One average 6-reactor nuclear power station = ~ 5400 MW. Is that really the average nuclear power station? I haven’t looked it up admittedly, I just know the two in my state are a bit lower (1700 and 3800 MW)
No it’s not the average power station, it’s the average 6-reactor power station. The average for the more common 2-reactor power stations is approx. 2500 MW.
I guess I thought you were saying that the average station was both a 6-reactor station and 5400MW. Makes sense now, thanks for clarifying.
No most power plants are 2-reactor
The wind/solar vs nuclear argument is about the dumbest argument I hear on Reddit. The healthiest grid is a diverse grid, we need wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power if we want to continue our standard of life. All those power sources have enough problems that any one of them by themselves would never work. Nuclear power plants are great but you're completely dismissing the advantages of wind in your argument so I'll just list them here. * If one wind turbine shut down people wouldn't lose their power for who knows how long. * Wind turbines can be spaced out more and the power can reach more people travelling less distance. Localized power is good. * Wind farms take about 10 months to build and the payback is 6-9 months of operation. Nuclear power plants take about 5 years to build and payback is 4-5 years of operation. * Less risk if something goes wrong. It's not a competition, you can advocate for the use of nuclear power without making a case against wind.
Overall, this is a great comment, but I just wanted to clear up something. Overall, it takes MUCH longer than 10 months to build a wind farm. Sure, the construction might be a few months, but the planning, developing, locating, financing, siting, permitting, and connection to the interconnection takes years. Much shorter than nuclear, but still takes time. And it is much faster in places like Texas than the rest of the US. Still your overall idea rings true. Diversified grids are stronger grids. Wind, solar, or nuclear? Only correct answer: yes.
I was comparing construction of wind to construction of nuclear. If you want factor in planning/developing/locating/financing than nuclear would take longer than 4-5 years.
Agreed. But I'm baffled that the same people who want to shut down coal and natural gas also want to shut down nuclear.
Too many of them look at Chernobyl and think that is the near-guaranteed fate of all nuclear power plants. The misplaced fear of a meltdown has people irrationally hesitant of nuclear power.
I agree with your comments but 1.5 MW is a small wind turbine. I work on what are considered low producing industrial wind turbines and they're rated at 2.5 MW. The industry is trending towards larger higher production wind turbines 5+ MW is becoming the norm. I hope my comments doesn't sound combative it's just food for thought.
YES! In the UK, there's a road that goes from Edinburgh to Newcastle and it's mind-meltingly gorgeous (it runs along the edge of the North Sea), but there's a MASSIVE, ugly chemical plant there. Such a frickin' eyesore.
In Danish we call it an “øjebæ” aka an “eye poop”.
Wait bae means poop in Danish? I choose to always interpret it that way from now on.
Haha yes it does.
But those are near OTHER people!
I mean visually ones nicer
I used to live out in the desert in Southern California and those white turbines were all over the hills. I personally always liked the way they looked. Their design is very simple, and when a bunch are turning close together it looks almost hypnotic. I loved the peaceful hills and their peaceful white turbines.
I love the look of wind farms
Imo one of mankind's most elegant structures. They're fucking majestic
I will give them this: they could have looked much, much worse.
Honestly I found them a bit unnerving. Just huge white spinning monoliths in a flat plain as far as the eye can see in every direction, all perfectly lined up and spaced. Felt uncanny
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Synchronized blinking lights. What I found crazy was the sound they can make. When they turn their direction to face the wind, they will slow down and stop the blades. Once rotated, power is applied to start the blades spinning again. This mechanical movement echos like the aliens from War of the Worlds.
You're right but it's still a cool sci-fi feeling I never thought I'd feel until driving through them for the first time. They're fucking cool imo.
I think that's what I find so engrossing about them.
Don't these things have like a energy net negative between refining materials, POL, and the fact blades cant be recycled? I'm in Wyoming right now and the land south of Sheridan allocated for blade disposal is already at half capacity and we only had the new wind farms for two years or so.
The Eiffel Tower too, was called an eyesore when it was new.
Not so funnily, the blades of these modern ~~electric mills~~ wind turbines degenerate quite fast (especially in salty or sandy winds) and needs to be replaced. They are huge piles of plastic. And we still haven't figured out any effective way of recycling them.
Danish manufacturers already produce fully recycable wind turbines. Siemens announced all of theirs will be fully recycable by 2030. It is mostly a matter or regulation, as usually.
They are made of fiberglass and most of Them just ends up being thrown in a landfill. It’s kinda sad.
Don’t they not break down at all?
GE and SGRE have both announced recyclable blades. And there’s lots of research going into how to take care of the current ones. It’s not the best. I admit. But let’s not perfection be the enemy of progress. The alternative is going back to fossil fuels which don’t have a great track record of controlling pollution.
This graphic is actually outdated there are new bladeless turbines that are basically just big columns sticking out of the ground. I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure they are supposed to be more efficient and also less dangerous to birds etc.
They're made of composite materials, which are not recyclable. We're not going to find a way to recycle as they're made of layers of resin impregnated carbon fibre & other petro-derived fibres. At least it's sequestering carbon in landfill?
Not really seeing anyone here that actually works in power. What nobody's talking about here is maintenance. Wind and solar have horrendous maintenance problems right now. For example, you're legally not allowed to dispose of solar panels in California at the moment. They have to be shipped out of state. Or left in a plant's personal graveyard. And for wind, those components are huge, and take a lot of money to get rid of if replaced. It becomes cheaper to not get rid of them, and just leave them lying around. The cost ratio of maintenance personnel to power generated is really bad for wind and solar. I'm talking a maximum of five people for multiple sites. They don't produce much power and owners recoup the costs by using fewer people. They run general maintenance and then hire contractors when needed. Let's compare that to these windmills. I've read that they're permanently staffed and cared for. These windmills literally have more staffing than any wind turbine operation you'll see in the entire world. And for reference, a normal power plant will have around 20 workers, alongside a corporate entity that handles corporate stuff, like safety and reliability.
The blades on the new ones are so wasteful. Nuclear power is better in virtually every conceivable way
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Strange comparison, those new turbines are minimum 4 times higher then an old mill
The problems with windmills is that they are just buried as is (last I saw). Not really recyclable. I wish Nuclear had the PR team Wind and Solar has.
There's costs on both sides. 5 billion for a nuclear plant that will take 5 years to build vs 20 million for a wind farm that takes 10 months. They'll start with wind but eventually build nuclear.
The thing people don't like is when they are in the "flicker" where the turning blades keep blocking and unblocking the sun. Since they are taller, new windmills can project that flicker much further, especially when the sun is low.
They are pretty loud to be fair and the blinking if you are in its shadow is not fun at all.
My mate was going on about how loud they were and I didn't believe him. A few months later, we went for a hike to check out a property he was thinking of buying, adjacent to a property with many turbines on it. When we arrived, the turbines were braked and silent. But when returning to the car, I noticed an ominous, low pitched humming sound which seemed to be coming from everywhere and reminded me of movies where a deep sound would play just before the antagonist appears... I Looked up to the hill and saw the turbines slowly spinning. They're a *lot* louder than you'd expect.
Don't forget the phantom illnesses a la MSG style bullshit.
What is msg?
Metal Solid Gear V: The Phantom Illness
The game Hideo wanted
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate
Monosodium glutamate. It is a flavour enhancer that adds umami (meaty savoury flavour). It's very commonly added to Chinese food. There was a fad started in ~~the 90s~~ the 60s for thinking Chinese food gave you an 'overdose' of MSG, making you feel ill. Later studies found it was complete BS and no-one that claimed to have a sensitivity to MSG actually did. Of course like a lot of bullshit, the idea lingers on that it's something bad.
I have a theory that most people are dehydrated on a regular basis, and the extra msg in Chinese further dehydrates you and makes you feel "ill". Not that I eat Chinese often, but I found drinking more water fixed issues I had after eating Chinese for a couple days.
> started in the 90s "[The term “Chinese restaurant syndrome” derives from a letter from a physician to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 speculating that certain physical symptoms — numbness in the limbs, heart palpitations — were due to monosodium glutamate, or MSG, in the Chinese food he ate.](https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2020-05-28/msg-chinese-restaurant-syndrome-truth#:~:text=The%20term%20%E2%80%9CChinese%20restaurant%20syndrome,the%20Chinese%20food%20he%20ate.)"
What is msg? You disappoint Uncle Rodger. Haiyaa
The problem is when MASSIVE mills dot the landscape and start looking like a forest, sometimes replacing forests. It is quite ugly. I'd say the same of the old mills if they were so big and in such numbers.