Readers of this organ will know that we have been a fierce critic of wind turbines – and still are. However the news that a Professor Nick Bottom (above) presently employed at the University of Athens has led a team that has developed a means of radically improving the efficiency and lowering the cost of these monstrosities – at least for the offshore ones.
British Gazette readers will of course know that the Most Obvious drawback of these turbines is that the wind does not blow all the time. Thus the stated power output is in practise a mere fraction of that capacity.
Professor Bottom and his team however have developed technology that will cause each of these machines to deliver three times it rated capacity 24/7!
“How!” we hear you ask.
By using a by-product the machines produce when they are working and using a compound present in the seawater surrounding the offshore wind turbines. The idea like most is fundamentally simple and elegant. The wind turbine is essentially a large alternator on a stick. One of the problems such devices have is that they generate prodigious quantities of ozone. At the same time the sea surrounding the turbines contains deuterium or heavy water. Whilst the amounts of deuterium in the sea water are small and normally require huge amounts of electricity to extract the heavy water from the light water, Professor Bottom’s team have developed a device based on the technology of the catalytic converter found on the exhaust systems of our cars to enable a exothermic reaction to take place between the small quantities of deuterium present in the water and the concentrated quantities of ozone generated by the turbine. Indeed, it is the extremely dilute presence of the deuterium present in the water that enables the device to function at all for high concentration would produce a sizeable explosion – and significant radiation from the ozone – such explosions being a quasi-nuclear explosion.
It was in fact their research into catalytic converters at Athens University that led the expatriate professor to this development.
Where is the catch? We hear you ask Dear cynical Reader. Of course! You guessed it. It is because the burn – not explosion is a quasi nuclear one with a modest degree of short half life radiation from the ozone. However since the generators will be located on the seabed adjacent to the turbine’s base and seawater is an excellent radiation shield only the most zealous members of Greenpeace should protest.