japan earthquakes aftermath

... ok.

Dunno about you guys but I'd love to have my own wind turbine. Getting off the grid is one of my ambitions before I retire. They will eventually be realistically within the private sectors reach. Before long average citizens can buy them.. Assuming you got enough bucks I reckon.

Takes off shoes and does figures.

I figure I'll have to live another 87 years to redeem the upfront cost for a turbine in power generated.

KOOL!!!

There's a lot of more subtle renewable methods as well that people can take on at a more local level. With solar panels on your roof, or ground source heat pumps to provide your heating, you can make pretty major reductions in how much power and gas your house uses. If these things become the norm it'd surely make a massive difference to our power demands. But it's tough for people to justify the up front expense when the savings take years to counteract.

Yeah boy.. The solar panels here are relatively cheap (160.00 for 45 watts generation) but the batteries and inverters are high. We are getting those too but the topic was currently on wind turbines so I tried to keep it there for a short bit.

Good call Duncan.

well, my parents looked into doing the whole off-the-grid thing for retirment:

Solar panels are only really usable for heating and warm water - then they are really effective though and can save at least 60% gas, 90%+ if the sun is good. Needs a good water boiling and keeping system and isolation on the house though.

Wind is pretty much useless in their area. The wind needs to go at least 4 m/s iirc, and that's not the case for the position of their house. If you have enough wind, good windsystems have the advantage though that they are silent and small and for building self supply you can use horizontally aligned ones instead of vertical ones, which will also reduce the shadow-popping, which many people suffer from when they live to close to the wind turbines (high frequency shadow popping when they turn).

We are fortunate. In winter the wind blows 28 out of 30 days on average. In summer we have way more clear days than not so we are hopeful that between the two we'll do ok. Sadly the initial out of pocket costs for each is steep.

Good to know others are trying to. Mayhap we can get an "Off the grid" hotline forum going someday.

Orpheus, are you *that* Orpheus?

Since shortly after 2001 people asked me "Are you that Orpheus from Snarkpit"

I started wondering if I was some step child and no one told me I was adopted.

I'm praying that the reactor doesn't explode... it doesn't bare thinking about what would happen if that occured.. *shudder*

Quote from JeanPaul

If anyone ever thinks Chernobyl was a result of anything but the inherent problems in the USSR at the time, then you are poorly educated on the subject. Nuclear power is fine.

[Blocked Image: http://blood.wiki-site.com/images/3/3a/Caleb-Blood-2.png]

"A perfect example of typical Soviet construction..."

Quote from D3ads

I'm praying that the reactor doesn't explode... it doesn't bare thinking about what would happen if that occured.. *shudder*

It's not going to explode. Hydrogen gas might explode, except that there's no longer a roof to keep it in so it builds up. The bad thing with the reactor is it melting into a big solid uranium puddle in the bottom of the reactor, which would be pretty difficult to cool and impossible to fix, so they'd just bury it in a sarcophagus. This isn't very likely of happening either. The main thing they're worried about is the spent fuel rod pools becoming dry, resulting in the spent fuel rods overheating, which would oxidize the rods and release a bunch of scary radiation.

Quote from D3ads

[Blocked Image: http://blood.wiki-site.com/images/3/3a/Caleb-Blood-2.png]

"A perfect example of typical Soviet construction..."

whats that from?

Quote from JeanPaul

whats that from?

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/one_unit_whole_blood

Quote from Sentura

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/W…an_firefighters forming a suicide corps to cool down the reactor 24/7... i have the utmost respect for these people

sadly, things are still looking pretty grim over there

Poor guys. I don't think they had a choice really. If they fled, their family would probably get affected by the radiation too anyway.

I really hope their effort is not in vain and they can control this situation.

Deepest respect for anyone that risks their life to try and save another, and even greatest honors to those that are mostly certain of not making it back.

This is terrifying: street level footage of a japanese town washing away

Quote from Jetsetlemming

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/one_unit_whole_blood

Actually it's from Blood II The original quote is ""A perfect example of typical Cabal construction..." when Caleb falls off of a wooden bridge that breaks.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/259nm.jpg]

Goddamnit Germany. Why is your media so abysmal.

Haha! What does it say? I get the gist but what's the highlighted parts?

Quote from dux

Haha! What does it say? I get the gist but what's the highlighted parts?

My German is really bad, but I'm pretty sure "Wolke" is cloud, so they're taking about the "radioactive cloud" from Japan.