Wind energy is the dominating renewable energy source. Unfortunately, its unpredictable nature requires supplementary energy sources. One way of balancing the supply and demand is to temporarily store the excess energy of a wind turbine. I would like to propose a new storage medium for this excess energy.
When we look at the energy densities of different materials, energy stored in fissile materials outnumber the rest by a giant margin. Unfortunately, and luckily, fissile materials found in nature are not easily fissile. They have to be in a certain isotope form. To overcome this problem breeder reactors were invented which create fissile material at a faster rate than it uses another fissile material as fuel.
My proposition is simple, but requires some serious R&D. Develop a new generation of wind turbines that are optimized for breeding none fissile materials into fissile ones by the kinetic energy of wind. Kinetic energy can be converted to electricity first and then this energy can be used to make the materials more fissile. Or much better, wind powered neutron emitter to convert Thorium 232 to Uranium 234 or even Uranium 235.
Such wind turbines can be build close to a reactor and supply the fuel or farmed offshore and harvested periodically. These turbines or farms would definitely require patrolling. Therefore, their numbers would be limited.
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