As much as we love the idea of renewables like wind and solar, we must keep in mind that Vermont Yankee requires far less land on which to operate. A wind farm would need 145 square miles in Vermont to produce the same electricity that Vermont Yankee does. This option would be an environmental disaster, if it were not so obviously unfeasible.
Editor's Note: Furthermore nuclear power provides requisite base load capacity while wind energy does not.

Gov. Crist has committed the state to developing "green" energy that doesn't harm the environment. Now, he must direct state agencies, especially the Department of Environmental Protection, to stop approving little-tested technologies without setting standards. ...Last week, the state correctly backed off a hasty push to approve Florida Power & Light Co.'s request to build three, 40-story wind turbines on St. Lucie County public beaches. Even a planned April meeting is too soon to reconsider. FPL already plans six wind turbines on its own land. FPL has a booming wind business in other states, where turbines are inland, but little experience with coastal turbines.

When the wind is from the east there is a constant loud whining that can be heard from inside your home and if it is from the west it sounds like a train running. The vibrations are so great from the windmills they rattle the windows in my and other neighbors' homes. The only time there is no noise is when they are shut down.

I live near the Backbone Mountain Wind Project. I would like all your readers to know that you do not have to be within sight of wind turbines for them to have an impact on you and your home and daily life. The Backbone wind turbines are four miles from my home, with hills in between us, but I can still hear them.

Over the past three weeks, with demand for power at record levels because of the freezing weather, there have been days when the contribution of our forests of wind turbines has been precisely nothing. It gets better. As the temperature has plummeted, the turbines have had to be heated to prevent them seizing up. Consequently, they have been consuming more electricity than they generate. Even on a good day they rarely work.

Landowners in northwestern DeKalb County already had profited in another way - by selling tracts to nonfarmers who wanted to build homes. That strategy took advantage of their land's best asset - its scenic hills and woodlands. But by inviting so many people to move into the rural area, landowners made it unsuitable for a wind farm, which needs wide-open spaces.

This landscape is very precious. However, the News & Star supported windfarms, saying Whinash was in the wrong place – so where is the right place?

Wind turbines are NOT planned for Dunedin’s Octagon or the Otago Peninsula; not that we know of. But the computer-enhanced photograph isn’t altogether a joke. Huge turbines exactly like this their height and size shown in correct context and scale could soon dominate the landscape in inland Otago. Meridian Energy, through its Project Hayes, wants to put 176 such windmills, each 160m high, on the Lammermoor range behind Middlemarch; and TrustPower hopes to erect at least 100, slightly smaller, nearby on the Lammerlaw Range. If both proposals go ahead, the two contiguous sites in inland Otago would contain the world’s largest wind farm.

Your electricity bills are going to at least double in the next 10 years and relentlessly rising power prices could easily triple them. ..."the price rises would be driven "largely by the current policy environment, large amounts of renewables being forced into the system, uncosted charges for those renewables given current policy settings, and substantial increases in transmission and distribution costs".

We've been inundated with letters and emails about the plans to site eight 125 metre high wind turbines near Baumber. Here's some of the letters we couldn't fit in this week's paper.

The testing is little more than a bit of performance art, designed to appease those who are ignorant about the ill health effects caused by these industrial monstrosities. The most these noise measurements can show is that turbines comply with a law crafted in 1962 for the purpose of measuring things like the noise created by cars rushing past a residential neighborhood on a new highway.