Hello all, sorry if this question has been asked before, I couldn't find anything, but then again I'm not particularly good at looking for stuff.

Today I've been having a discussion with a colleague of mine regarding the cost in terms of CO2 emissions, and energy used to produce large scale (250ft+) wind turbines.

Does anyone know how long it would take for a single wind turbine to 'pay back' the CO2 emitted during its manufacturing, construction (plus infrastructure e.g. roads etc), transportation, maintenance and decommissioning?

Have any 'independent' studies been carried out on the subject?

I bet it is a lot quicker than a fossil fueled power generation plant!

"They" are always overly optimistic and their claims inflated. Double them and then halve the wind = x4

The information sign on the Ecotricity windfarm near me, with 800kw Enercon turbines, says energy payback time is about six months.

There's really not very much to them, embodied energy-wise - a few cubic metres of concrete with steel reinforcings for the base, a 65 metre steel tower, three fibreglass blades and the generator. There's some rough roadways made from locally quarried stone and a little brick building.

I would say that these figures are rather skewed in the Fission direction, No sane person could believe ...
1. fuel transport ?
2. to decommission a nuclear plant will cost twice that of a coal plant Sellafield have stated it will take 30-50 years then it all has to be stored infinitum(how can you cost that)
3. to reclaim the site coal, will use 30 times more energy than nuclear !!!!.

them civil servants at whitehall must be barking (always thought so)


Taken from Tom harrigans link:
How much energy is required to build and operate power stations, and how does this compare with their lifetime energy outputs? Some estimates for coal and nuclear stations are shown in the table:


Tera-joules per GW-year of electrical output
coal nuclear
Mining and fuel preparation 1,258 1,288
Fuel transport 1,059 8
Materials (other than fuel) 55 58
Plant construction 61 99
Operation 283 384
Waste disposal and transport - 172
Decommissioning 10 19
Land reclamation 3 0.1
Total 2,737 2,028
Energy Payback Period (yrs) 3.3 2.5

Assumptions:
Plant Size: MW 1,000 1,000
Plant lifetime: years 40 40
Capacity factor: % 75 75

tom

A GigaWatt nuclear reactor gets through about 20 tonnes of fuel a year. So just how many TerraJoules do you think it takes to move 20 tonnes? Seriously, if you think "8" is wrong, then what would be a more realistic figure? That's 0.4 Terrajoules per tonne! Coal seems to be able to be moved for a lot less. GigaWatt coal powered stations use over 10,000 tonnes of fuel a day. That's 3.7 million tonnes a year, transported at a cost of 0.0003 TerraJoules per tonne according to the House of Lords. If you disagree that it's over 1000 times more expensive to move nuclear fuel than coal, please enlighten me as to why?

T