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I did some design work on a utility-scale wind installation, and we were in pretty close contact with the bird data. Turns out the hazard is near zero with modern turbines.

The old ones got a bad rap because they used lattice towers (inviting place to perch) and high-speed rotors (invisible while spinning). The crude joke about those old machines is, you could open up a Seagull McNugget stand nearby and serve 'em fresh every day:-).

But the new ones are on smooth cylindrical towers (no place to perch) and turn at 15 - 20 RPM, so the blades are visible to birds. Birds avoid the blades just as they avoid tree branches waving in the breeze, and similar objects.

As far as "appearance" is concerned, I never understood that one. Industrial stuff is cool. Wind towers are cooler because they're huge:-) 300' high is typical of the larger ones. And noise isn't a factor, you can barely hear 'em when standing underneath. People should have more appreciation for the infrastructure that makes their lives comfortable. I think of that when I drive by the oil refineries in Richmond, and the tank farms on the hillsides. Especially at night, they look like something out of science fiction, with lights twinkling amidst the towers and tanks and networks of pipes and so on. I would have no problem living near one of those, or a nuclear or wind installation.

The only real problem with wind is intermittency, even if you're in a class-5 wind area. For that reason, wind can be about 20% of the grid in most places, because other generating resources have to be able to respond to increase or decrease production as the inverse of what the wind generators are putting out. If you have hydro nearby, all the better, because the reservoir acts like a battery, and can respond quickly to changes in wind output and power demand.

It's going to take a lot of wind and a lot of uranium to make the future hum, particularly as oil starts to peak out in a few years. Fortunately the US has good uranium resources, as does Australia, and we don't have to worry about terrorist nutcases taking over in Australia.

When you hear abou the "hydrogen economy," what's implicit is that it will require major nuclear and wind development. Hydrogen is not an energy source, it's simply a transport medium, i.e. a carrier of embodied energy. The energy to produce the hydrogen has to come from somewhere, i.e. wind & uranium. You can take the entire output of a windfarm or a reactor, and put it into producing hydrogen: this lets you site the turbines & reactors in places where the grid is either insuffiicient or is already well-supplied with electricity. So it adds up to a greater degree of freedom of location when choosing places to build the generating facilities.
 
GE

What was stated above is what I have also found from my researach on GE. They have committed support to currently operating Nuclear plants. However,ome new GE plants, from I hear, will be built in Japan using GE's new Advanced Boiling Water Reactor System. They are actively marketing this design in Europe and Asian markets. GE does the design but not the manufacturing. It's a great system..core meltdowns are virtually impossible due to new high temperature ceramic materials and a natural flow emergency core cooling system which will work automatically under no human supervision and no power (e.g. no pumps required). It's a unique system that relies only on natural convection to keep the core cool. The ceramic fuel rods have a higher melting point than the temperatures produced during the fission process. The engineers call it "walk-away" safe. If you have a reactor trip and loose all power to the back up systems you can go home and have lunch and talk about how to fix it. No worries about a melt down or vessel breach. Unfortunately there is still remains somewhat of a anti-nuclear mind set in the U.S. It's not as prevalent as it may appear, it's just that the antinuclear population is so very vocal.

I've noticed my students at the university are very neutral to nuclear power and seem very responsive and postive to my lectures on it. This gives me hope that one day attitudes may change. GE's purchasing of the wind power business was a step in the right direction. But wind power can never be used universally, like nuclear. Yo need near steady winds and it's very land intensive. As mentioned above, it is a great supplemental source of power that can augment other base electrical sources.

BTW, Welch does not have a speech impediment, at least not a physical one (I wouldn't make fun of this for anyone). It's more of a psychological thing with him. When he gets mad at his underlings, he looses control, gets red in the face and screams (literally) he gets to the point where he is so mad he can't speak and his words come out in stutters. It's at this point you know "Neutron Jack" will strike and you'd better be finding new employment.

Anyway, back to appliances. Should GE stay in the appliance industry, I think we will see more outsourcing and purchasing of products from other companies to help ease them out of the actual Manufacturing end. They have closed down many building at their Louisville planat and have only a fraction of the employees they did during their peak in the 1970's. They stopped production of disposals and compactors several years ago. They contract Whirlpool to make their compactors and Annaheim Manufacturing (Sinkmaster) produces their disposal line. Their refrigerator compressors were being imported from Japan, the last I heard,since Welch botched up their new rotary compressor by introducing it before long term relaibility studies had been completed.
 
I am glad GE is still in the nuclear power business-their new reacter design has and shows promise for the industry.May it will be reaccepted .We still need it as a "prime mover"I think the wind power is great to supplement and serve as "load Management' power sources to conventional power.Sounds like the problems with the wind turbines have been solved.What are the towers and propeller blades made from?-and do their generators produce DC power to be stored in batteries and sent to inverters-then to the power grid?I would think their inconsistent speed would pose frequency regulation problems.On GE appliances-sounds like its just a "name" now-they outsource so much of their appliance building to others now.
 
GE stock is in the crapper

They sold the white goods division to Haier to concentrate on their core businesses.
The shareholders voted to approve the sale.
$2 billion was a lot of revenue. Where did it go? Now they have no revenue from white goods either.
I saw a theater commercial about their portable power plants for Indonesia, etc.
They're in wind power also, and solar. Geo thermal?
Whats the problem then?
 
Least repaired

They aren't lying. They just aren't. Rather marketing is playing on consumer myths and per-conceived motions. When these washer do fail, often consumers are advised to just chuck them. Both from the repair cost (these washers are hard to service), the parts cost (its often the most expensive part the blows like the transmission) and the fact the washer will have more problems soon after (due to all around planned obsolescence) that its much smarter to just get a new washers especially when that washer is something like a Whirlpool or Speed Queen. This is exactly why I never take any advertising seriously. They can be telling the truth without actually telling the truth.
 
GE stock

GE is trying to be Microsoft, Apple, Google, ect. Or at least the manufacturing, Gov, Military, corporate, data, robotics, ect version of them. And to be honest I don't see that working out for them. Consumer goods are a much less risking endeavor especially when you perfected them for some time.
 
Yes, and we'll see

if the share price recovers after large investors buy them up cheaper now than they were when healthier. I think it's intentionally manipulated so they can do so.
Are you that trusting?
 
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