[ RadSafe ] Wind Turbine Installations Affect Local Environment

[Jeff Terry]

Nuclear Power has been vetted for approximately 70 years now. Yet, the  
modern "clean" energy sources, solar, wind, geothermal have really not  
been significantly studied in great detail. I have been concerned for  
some time over the consequences of removing 40 terrawatts of energy in  
the from of solar or wind energy.

Wang and Prin have recently published the following (http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/2053/2010/acp-10-2053-2010.pdf 
):

"Using wind turbines to meet 10% or more of global energy demand in  
2100, could cause surface warming exceeding 1 C over land  
installations. In contrast, surface cooling exceeding 1 C is computed  
over ocean installations, but the validity of simulating the impacts  
of wind turbines by simply increasing the ocean surface drag needs  
further study. Significant warming or cooling remote from both the  
land and ocean installations, and alterations of the global  
distributions of rainfall and clouds also occur."

and

"While the amount of energy gained from global deployment of surface  
wind power may be small relative to the 860 TW available globally, the  
accompanying climate effects may not be negligible."

Nuclear Energy looks better and better every day.

Jeff