800 Billion Pounds.....

[The Phantom]

15 minutes ago, monasqueen said:

The latter point may be relevant if you are considering offshore north of the Island - a lot of ships pass that way, including our own, which quite often head that way round to Belfast.

There are some pretty big and shallow sand bars off the NE that are best avoided by shipping generally. 

Bahama Bank is the main one (been a few groundings there over the years) would be where I'd put it. 

Relatively close to Ramsey too for the support vessels etc.

[monasqueen]

22 minutes ago, The Phantom said:

There are some pretty big and shallow sand bars off the NE that are best avoided by shipping generally. 

Bahama Bank is the main one (been a few groundings there over the years) would be where I'd put it. 

Relatively close to Ramsey too for the support vessels etc.

You mean right next to the munitions dump?

[The Phantom]

7 minutes ago, monasqueen said:

You mean right next to the munitions dump?

Nope, that's Beauforts Dyke. Between NI  and Scotland.  A trench, the exact opposite of a shallow sand Bank. And off the wrong coast.

Edited September 12, 2021 by The Phantom

[monasqueen]

Yes, sorry, got the wrong bit of coast. A lot of ships do pass the Bahama Buoy, on both sides. I suppose putting a wind farm on the bank may make it a bit more obvious that the beacon on the buoy ☺️

Beaufort's Dyke would good place to avoid! I wonder how big a hole it would make in Ramsey if it blew up? 😲

The highest known concentration of munitions is in Beaufort's Dyke, a deep trench between Scotland and Northern Ireland, where an estimated 1 million tons of munitions have been dumped since the 1920s.

[ellanvannin2010]

Providing they do not leak, blow up, catch fire, get hit by tsunamis  then nuclear power is currently probably the best option from environmental point of view.

[SleepyJoe]

Nuclear is reckoned to be cleaner, but I'd be suspicious of claims that it's more cost effective than renewables

Nuclear energy is key in fight for climate | Letters | The Guardian

[monasqueen]

How can nuclear be cleaner if you can't find anywhere to dispose of the waste safely?

Why was Windscale renamed?

[SleepyJoe]

Because of the Windscale disaster?

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/min1/

[Non-Believer]

1 minute ago, monasqueen said:

How can nuclear be cleaner if you can't find anywhere to dispose of the waste safely?

Why was Windscale renamed?

And the eventual decommissioning costs.

[SleepyJoe]

There's a bloke here talking to Paul Moulton about a sustainable future for the Isle of Man and how little we know about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe13XvcGd0A

I think he is saying the Isle of Man is small but massively polluting

Myself I think it is Howard Quayle's fault

[ellanvannin2010]

2 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

And the eventual decommissioning costs.

 

4 minutes ago, monasqueen said:

How can nuclear be cleaner if you can't find anywhere to dispose of the waste safely?

Why was Windscale renamed?

Those are both a long way in the future which is something politicians love. 
 

The footprint of a nuclear power plant is much smaller than any of the current renewables and is able to supply power on a much more reliable basis.

No one solution is perfect but to me nuclear is the least worst option of the current technologies. Covering the ocean with windmills is not without environmental cost.

 

[code99]

9 hours ago, The Phantom said:

The nimbys won't allow any windmills (the same ones that don't want sewage plants in Peel and Laxey, then complain about the shit slicks), solar and tidal/waves are a non starter. 

I assume tidal/ waves technology is still developing and is not yet ready to be widely deployed, but the solar energy industry has developed massively in the last few decades... We are now at a point where solar panels can be used to generate electricity almost anywhere i.e., vast ‘farms’ of solar panels are being installed in multiple countries around the world. Quite obviously though, countries which have more hours of sunlight are better suited to harvesting solar energy than we are here. However, ‘less suited’ is not the same thing as ‘won’t work’. Are you saying that these massive investments are all non-starters or just on the IOM? I hope not, because a lot of the future greener world will be reliant on these types of expanding initiatives.

It seems to me that the main obstacle facing green energy is political expediency rather than technical and commercial viability. Am I wrong?

[finlo]

5 minutes ago, code99 said:

I assume tidal/ waves technology is still developing and is not yet ready to be widely deployed, but the solar energy industry has developed massively in the last few decades... We are now at a point where solar panels can be used to generate electricity almost anywhere i.e., vast ‘farms’ of solar panels are being installed in multiple countries around the world. Quite obviously though, countries which have more hours of sunlight are better suited to harvesting solar energy than we are here. However, ‘less suited’ is not the same thing as ‘won’t work’. Are you saying that these massive investments are all non-starters or just on the IOM? I hope not, because a lot of the future greener world will be reliant on these types of expanding initiatives.

It seems to me that the main obstacle facing green energy is political expediency rather than technical and commercial viability. Am I wrong?

Until we solve the problems of mass storage from solar we'll only be able to have the lights on when the sun is out!

[CallMeCurious]

41 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

And the eventual decommissioning costs.

Yes, but don't forget the private company makes the profit while it operates and the taxpayers pay for the decommissioning and cleanup of any accidents. Windscale/Sellafield had a lifespan of 50 years and still has no long term solution for the waste. It'll take 100 years to decommison it and betwenn 1,000 to 10,000 years for the waste to decay.

Can you imagine what one bad accident could do the entire fishing industry in the Irish Sea? You may remember the ban on lamb from sheep grazing on land contaminated by Chernobyl which was 1,800 miles away.  From 1986 until decades later.

Or dumping radioactive milk in the Irish Sea from the Windscale accident.

 

[code99]

32 minutes ago, finlo said:

Until we solve the problems of mass storage from solar we'll only be able to have the lights on when the sun is out!

True, solar panels need to be linked to battery storage (which traditionally has been difficult/ expensive etc). But battery technologies are improving very rapidly i.e., battery storage should become much more viable and practical, hopefully.