The idea of off shore power is neat, but the offshore wind in the United States is far more expensive than nuclear power.  Wendy Williams, in an December 9, Op-ed in the New York Times discussed the some of those costs.  A 40-turbine offshore wind project off Long Island was finally scrapped after the price rose to nearly $1 billion.  At full capacity, the facility was rated at 140 megawatts. Even if it produced half of it's rated power the facility would have produced power at 11,000 per KWh.  David, had this been a nuclear facility you would have been screaming bloody murder, but since it is green you ignore the cost issue.  The same Op-ed mentioned the Cape Cod 468-megawatt off-shore wind project which might cost as much as $1.7 billion the project is expected to average 182 MW.  The Cape Cod project is a real deal, only $9,400 per KW.  Cheep enough to make David Roberts jump flips.  

Charles Barton

Great information.  Offshore wind is rated as more expensive than nuclear and IGCC, but are their any IGCC plants with sequestration online?

And of course as fuel and waste disposal costs rise, wind gets cheaper by comparison.  as it shows if carbon is taxed or carbon free energy production credits given, the cost can be equalized right now.  Impelling a huge boom.

He points out too that the US has enough land space for now.  Plenty of installation can be done on the great plains without NIMBY objections or more expensive offshore machines.

I think that by combining floating platforms offshore that collect wave energy and ocean current energy, with wind power.  The offshore cost might even be less per kwh than land based wind.  More kwh per installation.

One thing I'm wondering is he talks about in his other articles is the need to build even bigger wind machines.  Who is working on this now?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

One more consideration, is it cheaper to drill and anchor towers into sensitive marine areas, as in the cape wind project:  or simply tow a floating installation offshore and anchor it, running the power and control cable along the bottom into shore.  The floating installation does very little damage to the ocean bottom and involves no underwater construction.

Another factor, it is much easier to mass produce the floating installations in shipyards.  Remember the liberty ships of WW 2, another great example of industrial might winning the day.

The units are towed out, anchored, and connected to the grid.  If installation is flawed or problematic in anyway, they can easily be moved.  or even towed in for rebuilding.  This is a much easier process than land installation.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Actually, that $74 billion was only the R&D subsidies.

Tack on a few trillion to clean up the radioactive mess, then store it for 10,000 years.  Secure storage.  

Yucca mountain already cost over 50 billion and it is yet to be finished, maybe it never will since it is unsafe.  

How much to build really secure storage?  300 billion?  How much to transport all the cleaned up waste and decommisioned reactor parts to storage?  Trillions?  What about fees to run the storage for 10,000 years?  100 billion per year?  Times 10,000 years?  

Seems like it might be too expensive.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

GreyFlcn wrote: There more

How much more -- another trillion?

Amazingdrx wrote: Tack on a few trillion to clean up the radioactive mess

What radioactive mess are you referring to?

Amazingdrx wrote: then store it for 10,000 years.

Why would one store something for 10,000 years?

...but here in Texas they're already constructing several offshore wind farms, and they sure as heck aren't costing a billion dollars to construct.  Plus, they get built alot faster than nuclear plants do.  Nuclear takes several years to go through the rgulatory process alone, and several more years to construct.  It usually takes at the very least a decade to go from concept to built, and usulally mouch longer.  The offshore windfarms take justa few years to develop.

...several projects currently off the coast of Galveston and Sabine Pass.  That project for South Texas near Padre Island was different one.  There was also some behind the scenes politics for the cancellation of the South Padre project which tainted it's potential alittle.