The country’s first offshore wind farm, built 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, was welcomed by the Biden government, but a better alternative would have been a nuclear power plant, according to Time magazine “Held der Umwelt”.
Michael Shellenberger said the 800-megawatt Vineyard wind energy project, touted as part of the government’s goal of generating 30 gigawatts of energy from offshore wind by 2030, would likely produce only half the energy of a nuclear reactor.
“The performance of the wind farms would be intermittent,” he said during a Zoom talk organized by the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “Actually, having to adjust to very unreliable, intermittent wind energy puts a heavy load on the (electricity) grid. So you have to maintain a natural gas backup … you don’t need that if you have nuclear power plants. “
Wind farms also pose serious risks to birds and endangered North Atlantic right whales, said Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
Pam Bechtold Snyder of the New England Aquarium said there were now only 360 North Atlantic right whales. The number has declined over the past four years due to ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear, she said. It is believed that these pressures cause female right whales to give birth less often and at an older age.
All of these things turned Shellenberger from a supporter of wind energy to an advocate of nuclear power, he said.
Nuclear energy provides “cheap and reliable electricity that is also carbon-free,” said Shellenberger.
But when nuclear power plants fail, they fail with devastating consequences. Ten years after an earthquake and tsunami killed over 18,000 people and triggered a meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, more than 40,000 people are still unable to return home, most of them from areas near Fukushima Daiichi where the triple meltdown, the immediate evacuation of 160,000 people.
“Nuclear power does not emit CO2, but it does require significant amounts of water, environmentally friendly degradation of raw materials, and the transportation and disposal of radioactive waste,” said Stu Webster, senior director of the American Clean Power Association for Wildlife and States.
“After more than 20 years of addressing concerns from government, conservation, private and academically funded research,” he added, “there is no evidence that wind energy has had an impact on bird populations. In addition, offshore wind developers and government regulators have taken similar measures to reduce the impact on marine mammals, including whales. “
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