UK cuts China from Sizewell nuclear project, takes joint stake The UK government today confirmed it would take a joint stake in the Sizewell C nuclear plant, allowing for "China General Nuclear's exit from the project," which it said was "set to generate reliable, clean electricity for 6 million UK homes." The UK will spend £700 million ($843 million) on Sizewell, a funding figure that …
I'd personally like to see a policy tilt towards local generation on a mix of tech, depending on what's appropriate, and a network of local grids and energy storage.
It's said that 7-10% of energy is lost by putting it through the National Grid. Plus, it's been shown that people consider the amount of energy they use, if they're involved in its generation.
By "decades of government kicking this issue down the road" you mean Labour abolishing the nuclear industry by not building a new nuclear power station after 1995, and then the Lib Dems blocking the building of a new nuclear power station when they held the energy brief in the coalition because it "wouldn't come online until 2021 or 2022".
Of course the Tories aren't blameless either, going along with the centre-left consensus of making decisions that are designed to look good but be harmful - such as the dash for unreliables. And including China in Sizewell C was impressively daft too. And their cowardice in blocking fracking rather than standing up to Putin and the "environmental" NGO's he funded.
Including China wasn't daft. This is daft:
Rishi Sunak saying in his first foreign policy speech yesterday that Britain's "golden era" of China relations is over.Sunak is just aping the foolish tRump-Biden policy of pretending that China isn't a modern economy that everybody needs to do business with. At some level, rich white capitalists really don't seem to understand the basic fact of the 21st Century that China is now back where it was until a few hundred years ago: if not the top dog, then very much one of the top dogs.
Cutting economic relations with China will prove to be a very, very big mistake (probably bigger than Brexit in the long run).
>A lot of the unicorn renewable schemes completely ignore the cost and losses of...
We shouldn't forget that wind turbines (for example) have a design life. Already there are waste heaps of end-of-life turbine blades that currently aren't recyclable. We will in the coming decade see similar waste heaps of batteries.
>or you can just crunch them up and use them as filler for concrete or the such
Which currently seems to be the preferred option.
Obviously, with increasing volume (as more wind turbines go EoL), there is hope better solutions will be found and developed, hence why many are simply stockpiling EoL turbine blades.
Pretty much everything CAN be recycled however sometimes the cost and/or environmental impact are worse.
There is a hoo-har going on in the US about plastic recycling where companies are turning plastic bottles back into raw feed stock using thermal and chemical processes. The results of which are barely better or even worse than simply throwing the bottles away. However it is painted as 'green' as it is 'recycling'.
You can recycle turbine blades (not sure why they don't just re-skin them and put them back?) but the power and chemicals involved are not good. Better initial design would resolve a lot of this.
As you say lithium batteries can be recycled but most small batteries are ending up in landfill as there is no easy way to get them to the recyclers. Things like those disposable e-cigs are just getting binned along with a lot of small electronic devices as it is simply easier for people to bin it.
I foresee landfill mining for metals being a big thing soon.
Turning plastics back into more plastic - at the cost of chemical and energy usage - may yet be better than letting them sit in landfill or floating on the high seas when the entirety of the costs are considered
There has been an underlying problem with rubbish in general when environmental costs of production have not been born by the manufacturer in first place
The issue is that the methods being used to turn old plastic into new plastic sometimes makes worse waste. Some of the byproducts from the replaticification process are being burnt as they are that toxic.
I fully agree that the best method is to simply not use it in the first place. I for one am pretty bad as I can never remember to grab a drink from home and often buy a bottle of water. I did see a cafe in London which had a filtered water fountain for anyone to use for free. Bloody good idea.
>No we won't.
Yes we will see waste heaps of EV batteries, because we are at the very early stage of ramping up Ev recycling facilities - Northvolt themselves recognise this in their blurb.
The environmental benefits of EV's depend upon two big factors: the removal of carbon from the electricity supply chain and the recycling of batteries.
Currently, we don't have industrial-scale battery recycling, but that isn't a problem as there isn't any real need for it today (outside of Norway) - insufficient EoL batteries on which to run a large-scale recycling facility, but come 2030 there will be, which is what Northvolt are aiming at in their business growth plan.
Indeed. Look at the enormous issue of decommissioning nuclear plants. Huge amounts of waste to deal with, some normal, some radioactive. Vs turbine blades, which are environmentally neutral to bury. And even then, companies are now building turbine blades specifically with the idea of being recycled at the end of their use.
And no sun
And no water in a dam.
Who really loves solar, HEP and wind?
Gas companies of course.
They know that when the sun don't shine (at least 50% of the time) and the wind don't blow (which can be for days) what those suppliers are really going to do is start up a big-ass gas turbine, running on gas bought at the world market price.
Gas companies f**king lover renewables.
The trouble is very few options have dispatchability. Giving you how much electricity you want, when you want it.
I don't like any of the current nuclear reactor plans. But this is a start.
That´s why you turn nuclears on, never turn them off, and for the load matching you get to use solar, wind, hydro, gas...
You put them at the base, and leave at it. In fact, you NEED to be sure there is enough of something else to power the cooling of each one of these down while you replace the fuel rods.
Great, it can work when there's no wind. Except, if a nuclear plant needs shutting down for some reason, it takes an average of 40 days to get it back up and running.
As they age, these outages increase. So, not as stable and secure as some think.
Then you have to have a good, clean, supply of water - vast quantities of it.
They're also strategically vulnerable - look at Ukraine. The war has left them with very little power, and risk of huge problems at their nuclear plants is high as they can't get the power needed to run the safety systems.
"Then you have to have a good, clean, supply of water - vast quantities of it."
Depends how you set up the cooling. The French cheaped out and didn't build cooling towers and relied entirely on the river water for cooling. In the UK we mostly use the sea for cooling.
As for Ukraine... depends who you believe either the Russians were shelling a nuclear power plant that they were occupying or it was the Ukrainians doing it.
The new generation of reactor needs non-salt water. That's been made very clear. Hinkley Point C is on a river estuary, so gets freshwater.
Sizewell is not on an estuary. The developers have themselves made it clear that water is a huge issue for the project, with them setting up a temporary desalination plant during construction, with no actual plan in place for permanent supply yet (as the area it is being built in has serious water supply issues already).
Yes, inside the reactor it needs very clean water but that system is closed loop in normal operation.
The final cooling of the turbine steam condensers is open loop and uses sea water.
https://www.geplus.co.uk/news/hinkley-point-c-second-offshore-tunnel-completed-14-10-2021/
"These tunnels will allow 120,000l of sea water to flow into the water cooling system every second, once complete."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sizewell_nuclear_power_stations#Sizewell_B
"Cooling source North Sea"
The issue the French had over the summer is the rivers were a) low b) too warm for efficient cooling and c) the outflow would have been FAR too hot to put back into the river. Cooling towers are expensive and need space but they allow you to re-use the water (minus the % that evaporates as part of the cooling process) or put it back into the river at a much lower temperature than would otherwise be possible.
Indeed. Look at the enormous issue of decommissioning nuclear plants. Huge amounts of waste to deal with, some normal, some radioactive.
The NHS probably produces more radioactive waste than our nuclear industry. All those patients given thyroid treatments and having to poop their radioactive waste into containers for safe disposal. Nuclear plants practically aren't that difficult. Shut it down, manage the heat from any decay, lock it up with big 'KEEP OUT!' signs until radioactive decay does it's thing and drops to safe levels. Which would be even easier if 'safe' levels were redefined. But the nuclear industry is rightly safety paranoid. Bigger problem is overcoming decades of radiation FUD from our ecofreaks who don't understand they're getting more radiation exposure standing outside an NPP than they would inside.
Oh, and what about solar panels? Disposing of those is rather more challenging because of the toxic materials used in them. And of course producing them, but that's done overseas, so not a problem for our 'environmentally conscious' ecofreaks.
I can see my comment was rather too succinct...
Wind turbine blades have a circa 20-year life, and the fixed structure (concrete base and typically steel tower) circa 25 years; much shorter than the circa 60 years for a modern nuclear power plant.
Additionally, with the rapid development of higher-output wind turbines, it is questionable how much of the fixed structure can be reused in situ.
So when comparing "unicorn renewable schemes" with say a nuclear power station, we do need to be a lot more careful in our calculations to ensure we really are comparing like-with-like.
In some places the blades have a sub 10 year life. I think they have improved the layup now but there are cases where the leading edges had worn completely through. And it seems cheaper (probably due to subsidies as well as the logistics of working on something that big) to simply replace the entire thing with a new and higher output unit rather than repair.
>And it seems cheaper ... to simply replace the entire thing with a new and higher output unit rather than repair.
This is an interesting article from MDPI:
Seems the upgrade to higher output might be a contributor to a surprisingly high failure rate of the concrete foundations.
Transmission losses are indeed a thing, but please attribute the losses to the respective networks appropriately.
Approx 1.7% is lost on Transmission National Grid TO network. A further 5-8% is lost in distribution (so, NGED, UKPN, etc.) Source: https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-transmission/document/144711/download
Reducing losses at Transmission level is not at all simple. Under "normal" operation the networks are running at relatively low temperatures anyway - parallel circuits mean low currents and therefore low temperatures & resistances. Distro networks are worse because, besides sheer volume of equipment connected, they also include long-runs to small demands on single circuit. E.g. the low voltage connections covering long distances to the wilds of Scotland - lossy, but not cost effective to run a parallel cct on. (Barely cost effective for a single cct TBH, but that is a different argument!)
If all generation came from "green" sources then the losses wouldn't technically matter. I do agree that distributed generation is a really good way to reduce demand on the networks; and by extention demand for gas/coal/imports. But home generation systems are not subsidised (beyond being zero-VAT) and the now-paltry FIT that doesn't remotely reflect the resell price of the energy generated.
I sort-of agree on the "people involved" argument. My parents had a completely off-grid place for a while; and they very quickly learned to work within the limits of what the windmill-and-battery could do rather than run the diesel at huge cost. They've moved elsewhere since, but the subsequent owner hasn't a clue and apparently has the diesel on practically all the time.... Noting that with current energy prices, running Red Diesel would be more or less cost neutral to buying retail (and noting that legally you should not be putting red diesel in a generator anymore).
The reasons for central generation still apply, it is still more cost-effective than having lots of lower efficiency units everywhere.
The main 'advantage' of getting folks to do so is more of a voluntary taxation arrangement to reduce stress on the centrally managed system. In strict economic terms it does not pay.
With retail prices as they are, it is barely more cost effective...
The system is pretty well managed in the grand scheme, but the retail market that accompanies it is a dividend-fest and most definitely price gouging compared to it's actual costs. (Particularly among renewable generators).
>The reasons for central generation still apply, it is still more cost-effective than having lots of lower efficiency units everywhere.
...
In strict economic terms it does not pay.
Depends on what you are using locally and pricing...
Solar panels combined with a battery pack are proving to be a very good investment, even though they might be of "lower efficient" to a central nuclear power station...
I see a UK housing association has realised that because they own a multiple neighbouring houses they don't actually need every house to have solar panels, as one set of panels can gainfully charge multiple sets of batteries.
Central government, likes centralised generation as it facilitates taxation...
"one set of panels can gainfully charge multiple sets of batteries."
I'm afraid that's not the case at this time of year. We have a battery, and at the peak of summer, our array creates 2 to 3 kWh excess electricity above and beyond what we need in a 24 hour period, so yes, in summer, we could keep a second battery topped up for when the weather is bad. However, on a good day in in winter, our array supplies up to about half of our daily needs, so our battery never gets full unless we charge it from the mains.
"The reasons for central generation still apply,"
Electricity used to be small local generation which resulted in different voltages etc in different areas, one thing that the central generation gace us was a standard voltage and frequency and the ability to share the load across the country.
The central solution also has to keep the system stable, and for that you need lots big base load turbines - wind/solar cannot do that alone.
The NY grid is interconnected and that didn't stop 2 (or is it now 3) MAJOR blackouts.
Major interconnects should really be for exceptions not the norm. In the way that it is best to rely on having your own cup of sugar 90% of the time but occasionally you need to borrow some. If you constantly rely on borrowing that cup of sugar there can be occasions when it is not available and cornflakes without sugar are just nasty!
To quote Scotty, the more complex the plumbing the easier it is to block up the drains.
There are interconnectors from Texas to the other grids
No, there are not. Texas has its own grid not connected to either of the two major US grids because they don't want to accept the regulation that interconnection would require.
That regulation includes requirements for winterization of natural gas line controls, the lack of which was responsible for their problems during big freeze last year (the loss of wind power also due to lack of winterization contributed, but they could have easily withstood that if the gas generation capacity had remained online)
Had Texas been connected to other grids they would have not have issues every time it gets really cold, because they could draw from other grids which have a surplus in the winter (because northern states electrical demand peaks in the summer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid#Texas_Interconnection
"The Texas Interconnection is tied to the Eastern Interconnection with two DC ties, and has a DC tie and a VFT to non-NERC systems in Mexico. There is one AC tie switch in Dayton, Texas that has been used only one time in its history (after Hurricane Ike)."
So it has 5 connection to 2 or 3 different grids.
Or is Wikipedia wrong?
If you dig a little deeper you'll see that those five interconnections provide a maximum of 1100 MW to the Texas grid, while the interconnections within the two big grids are orders of magnitude larger.
Not sure what the reason is behind the existence of this small number of low capacity (and in at least one case, not really even used) interconnections. Maybe they supply power at the 'edges' where the Texas grid borders the main grids...
Those other grids are also a LOT bigger. As I said, you cannot rely on interconnects as you get out of gaol free card. They are there to help. The NY and London blackouts showed that even trivial small failures cause cascade failures which quickly shut down large sections of the grid. The texas blackout runs deeper than no interconnects or frozen wind turbines.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/ shows the US grid regions but does not show the interconnects.
1) There are interconnectors from Texas to the other grids
That would be new then: last I looked only a small corner of Texas had any kind of connection to outside the state.
The second assertion is half correct: The Texas grid is defined for political reasons (system cost). But the result of that was that the Texas grid was not connected to the adjoining grids, and the result of that was that the grid-interconnect connections did not exist. Why would you dedicate land, local planning approval, design effort and capital to unused grid-interconnect systems?
Texas had decided that they did not want the standards, regulation, and cost associated with grid-interconnect. They may have changed their mind since the last debacle, but if there is any significant grid-interconnect now, that was done on a startlingly fast timeline: getting local planning approval for new HV transmission lines, and acquiring the land rights, is a process that normally takes years, not months.
Wikipedia indicates at least one interconnection was made in 2009. However interconnections cannot save you from utter failure induced by covid restrictions preventing any actual inspections before the cold season. Piss poor planning promotes poor performance.
ERCOT is a frequency island, they operate out of sync with the rest of the US (for whatever reason) which is why most of the interconnects are HVDC. Similar to the 50/60Hz split in Japan. (another of those 'WHY????' things)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection
"The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons,[1] but can also draw some power from other grids using DC ties."
Probably best to do research rather than rely on the spoon fed narrative :)
You are correct that 7-10% of electricity, (often more like 15%), is lost in the grid before it arrives at the consumer's meter.
However, the vast majority of this is lost in the low-voltage local distribution network (where the currents are much higher to carry a given power).
The cable under the street carries about 400 Amps at 230V, and the losses depend *only* on the current, and go up with the square of current (P = I^2 R). So if you try to pull 800A through that cable, the losses will go up by a factor of four. Think about that next time you notice the lights dim slightly when you switch on your 40A (9.5kW) electric shower or your shiny new heat-pump.
The high-voltage transmission network runs at 400kV. Ours is a bit outdated, it's possible to run AC pylons at 750kV or more. The higher the voltage, the more you save in copper to transmit the same power over the same distance. China has some 2MV overground HVDC links.
Very little is lost (2-4%) in the transmission system. Whereas 5-15% is lost in distribution (between large sub-stations and consumers, with smaller sub-stations in between). So siting generators locally actually wouldn't help that much in terms of losses. It may even be worse: e.g. If you use a medium-voltage (33kV) link from the power station to the town, instead of putting a 400kV substation in the middle of the town. These days we can put 400kV cables underground too, so you wouldn't even need to have pylons.
We know they hand lucrative contracts to their donors, friends and family, and don't try to ensure delivery. It's even been proven in court.
If you want less government, then frankly, vote for literally anyone other than the current Conservative and Unionist Party. They've proven that their entire policy is tax and grift.
On monday the National Grid came close to emergency blackouts thanks to low wind speeds. The concern is enough gas to supply the power those monuments dont. Of course it is a shock to see that the coal plants will remain open to provide the reliable energy we desperately need.
Yet still there will be some people under the influence of green madness!
@SkippyBing
"I don't think the answer to a quadrupling in the cost of fossil fuels is greater reliance on fossil fuels..."
But are fossil fuels quadrupling in price? And of course we get reliable energy, the thing we actually want. However we go about it we need to generate the energy we need. That part is non-negotiable. Monuments dont seem to be achieving it so rule themselves out as the answer unless someone can get them to work.
I know how you just love to agree with the EU, but gas really, really is a fossil fuel.
@Androgynous Cupboard
"I know how you just love to agree with the EU, but gas really, really is a fossil fuel."
The point is the misleading comment I responded to. Yes gas is a fossil fuel. But fossil fuels is not gas. Just because one has shot up in price does not mean all fossil fuels have quadrupled in price.
As for the EU, they have little choice. The green madness stands on natural gas. Without it the entire monuments to a sky god idea fails.
Putin funded NGOs to spread misinformation about fracking. As a result, cowardly government blocked fracking in Britain (and Poland). And Putin maintained his stranglehold on Europe's gas supplies.
And no, before somebody taken in by Putin's NGO's chimes in, gas prices aren't global - gas isn't fully fungible which is why gas is cheaper in America.
Yes, pity those gullible ill-informed fools taken in by Putin, like Dr Chris Cornelius, exploration geologist and the founder of Cuadrilla who goes to great lengths to explain why it's not viable in the UK.
You should read it. It's an interesting, apolitical article and you might learn something. Here's a quote that's particularly relevant to your most-definitely-not apolitical comments:
We are not here to disparage fracking and the incredibly important role this technology plays and will continue to play in the global energy transition. But in the case of the UK, there are other low-carbon energy opportunities such as tidal and shallow geothermal heat that are perpetually drowned out by socio-political “fracking soundbites”
>If it wasn't viable
Define viable?
Remember when Cuadrilla started not much was really known about the UK situation, I expect Dr Chris Cornelius would admit that he took an (informed) punt when he founded Cuadrilla.
>If it's not viable then some private firms lose money. Who cares?
You should!
Private firm drills a well or digs a coal mine, loses money and goes bust, the liability for the safety of those disused workings falls on the public purse, not on the directors enjoying the wealth they fleeced off investors...
Private firm drills a well or digs a coal mine, loses money and goes bust, the liability for the safety of those disused workings falls on the public purse
Well that's the fault of the law, which ought to require a company engaging in new drilling or mining to post a bond/insurance sufficient to cover the cost of remediation.
Yeah yeah I know the fossil fuel proponents will claim this is an unreasonable regulation and you aren't doing the same to green energy. Fine, require the same for people putting up wind or solar farms that there is a bond set aside to fund their decommission. Of course, doing that might be the death of nuclear, due to the essentially unlimited liability in the event of a Fukushima scale disaster so if the government wants to encourage nuclear they might have to be the insurer of last resort there.
Can't do anything about the past mistakes, but you can learn from them and prevent future ones from happening.
Another interesting link on this topic
https://dwarshuis.com/aardbevingen-groningen/visualisatie/view/?lang=en is a visualization of the earthquakes - all earthquakes - experienced in the Groningen gas field in the Netherlands - "Europe's largest gas field". I'll sum up for you: at first there were none, then there were lots.
I'm not a geologist so I'm not going to attempt to draw parallels between the UK geology and that of the Netherlands. What's clear is that there were very expensive and damaging consequences of extracting gas under a heavily populated area that were not anticipated by those who approved, or sunk, the wells.
It's a long animation but worth watching. And to put an IT angle on it, it was part of a presentation at CSS days 2022 in Amsterdam.
"Yet still there will be some people under the influence of green madness!"
The overall aim is commendable, indeed required for humanities long term survival.
The problem is that we are playing catch-up from years of nuclear being persona-non-grata to the governments of all colours, and we need power now. Coal is a regrettable short term necessity to cover the cold, still and foggy winters days when most of our renewables are not producing.
I am happy to see that more of the future nuclear build-out funding is coming from within the UK.
Perhaps the thought of nationalisation will stick in many throats, but the utilities and transport ought to be owned within the UK rather than the dividends going abroad on the back of all the years of UK citizens funding to build up the industries in the first place?
Thumbs up, but I would like you to qualify this one...
"The overall aim is commendable, indeed required for humanities long term survival."
What do you mean by "long term", "survival" and indeed "humanity".
I mean, if you take "long term" far enough we could be a floating cloud of ions (or something!?)
Do you think that every single human is going to be wiped out in the next few hundred years if we carry on the way we are? Or even most?
I'm a techno optimist and I think we'll figure out technologies in the coming decades that will make fossil fuels unnecessary, and in the meantime we could scale up nuclear massively.
I'm not sure a couple of hours of storage capacity for 300,000 homes is all that much use, when what we really need is a couple of weeks (or more) storage capacity for 25 million. Look at the weather right now. Very little wind. Very little sunshine. Across much of Europe. They aren't going to be selling us energy, if they are also relying on solar/wind. Morocco can't build enough solar to supply the WHOLE of Europe. The amount of storage we would need to build, to maintain reliable supply, is obviously prohibitively high. Why can't people see this?
"Do you think that every single human is going to be wiped out in the next few hundred years if we carry on the way we are?"
I don't think "survival" is really the issue (short-to medium-term, however you care to define those), so much as human suffering, quality of life and disruption (starvation, mass-migration, etc., and the concomitant social, economic and political instabilities those things engender) caused by drought, flooding, sea-level rise, loss of viable agricultural land, etc., etc.
I too am a techno optimist, but to me "techno" does not necessarily imply big, dramatic high-tech fixes like nuclear fusion, or some whizz-bang wonder-battery. I'm also all for distributed low-tech solutions deployed at scale.
"Morocco can't build enough solar to supply the WHOLE of Europe"
No - and definitely not without the help of Europe.
Perhaps we would be better off viewing solar (and wind, and tidal) as trans-national resources in the same way we do fossil fuels.
Yes, sand/dust accumulation is a problem for solar panels, especially in dessert areas. Maybe these guys have a viable water-less solution...
My main point was a broader one, though - the suggestion that we regard non-fossil fuel resources on a similar footing to the way we do fossil fuel resources. (Although given the way fossil fuel resources have been politically weaponised at various junctures, you'd have to wonder whether that's really such a good idea.)
Because the problem is too big, too complex, for most people to even seen 1% of the true problem. People like simple answers to simple problems, and those don't exist here.
I'd say it's a mix of:
1. failure / inability to understand the science involved,
2. failure / inability to understand the scale needed for wind + solar + storage,
2. the fact that too many people suffer confirmation bias and can't be arsed to find factual information,
4. for those that can be arsed to look separating fact from wishful thinking from outright scam is increasingly difficult.
Plus there's often political skewing based on liberal and conservative stereotypes and / or beliefs.
I hope we could all agree that using an intermittent generating source requires a significant amount of storage to make up for periods of intermittency.
If we don't have enough storage, we need to fill the gaps with dispatchable generating capacity like gas and biofuels. Ideally not coal, though it's physically possible. Nuclear can load-follow in some cases, but it cannot be started from cold in a few seconds.
I hope we can also all agree that providing enough electricity for 8 billion people means we need truly massive generating capacity.
If that generating capacity is purely based on intermittent sources, the corresponding storage requirements are equally massive.
Lastly, can we all agree that some low-carbon sources are enegy dense, some are not. Those that are not need vast acreage of land to provide enough power, and are more suited to a distributed generating model (local generation, co-generation, whatever you want to call it).Those with a smaller footprint are more suited to centralised generating models where you can get better overall efficiency.
None of this is fast to build, nor cheap to build. It will take a long time and a lot of money to replace and upgrade all the power infrastructure and dependencies that have built up over the past 100 years.
Simply mandating "change must come" without real, viable, costed solutions that don't rely on us all going back to the stone age will not solve anything.
There is no magic bullet. No one-size-fits-all. Amyone who says there is either doesn't know what they're talking about, or is lying.
Agreed in general. Just a couple of observations:
> If we don't have enough storage, we need to fill the gaps with dispatchable generating capacity like gas and biofuels.
I don't think anyone with half a clue (least of all the Green lobby) disputes that.
> None of this is fast to build, nor cheap to build.
As things stand, the same, unfortunately, is true of nuclear (plus the as-yet-unsolved issue of safe long-term disposal of medium- to high-level waste).
> There is no magic bullet. No one-size-fits-all. Amyone who says there is either doesn't know what they're talking about, or is lying."
Absolutely.
"Perhaps the thought of nationalisation will stick in many throats, but the utilities and transport ought to be owned within the UK rather than the dividends going abroad on the back of all the years of UK citizens funding to build up the industries in the first place?"
However much of a capitalist you are there are some things that should be under mostly or complete control of the country and one of those is power. As Germany has found out, putting all your eggs in a basket owned by another country is not clever.
This is what killed off a lot of the 'solar in the desert' plans. Why spend mega ££ on infrastructure that sits in another country that could turn against you leaving you completely stuffed. Apart from the USA and Russia the rest of the world has pretty much grown out of the 'just invade them and take it' mindset. We should have learned that one after Suez.....
Madness? The point is that when the wind is blowing—which is much of the time in (various parts of) these isles—that gas back-up is not being used so much, meaning we need less of it, which saves us money. Even "unreliable" energy is useful.
A broader point, though, is that, since our energy infrastructure is highly integrated and beholden to giant energy companies who (it seems) answer to no-one bar their shareholders, then at least at the consumer end if some fossil fuel (let's say gas) skyrockets in price, all energy costs, as we have seen, and regardless of the energy source, skyrocket with it.
@LionelB
"The point is that when the wind is blowing—which is much of the time in (various parts of) these isles—that gas back-up is not being used so much, meaning we need less of it, which saves us money. Even "unreliable" energy is useful."
Now lets test that 'theory' with reality. Before the war our focus on monuments instead of power generation resulted in ever increasing energy prices. The boon of cheaper energy and saving us money never happened, instead it cost us a lot more. Now the actual source of energy supply has gone up in price and limited in availability we are looking at blackouts and the price of everything shooting up. Seems the unreliable (you can skip the quotes around that) energy isnt so useful, its a cost.
"A broader point, though, is that, since our energy infrastructure is highly integrated and beholden to giant energy companies who (it seems) answer to no-one bar their shareholders, then at least at the consumer end if some fossil fuel (let's say gas) skyrockets in price, all energy costs, as we have seen, and regardless of the energy source, skyrocket with it."
Except that is not the case. Government interference to force their chosen solutions on us results in a lack of energy, extremely high prices and a load of monuments sitting around.
"Madness?"
Absolute and total
We should have batteries for these cases, but of course that is expensive. Not as expensive as fossil fuels, but they aren't free.
And, the big problem is they would mess up the market for the energy companies as they could not get rich with peaker plants.
So why spend money to lose money?
I think you don't quite realise how many batteries will be needed. Nor how big they will need to be to be viable.
You do say that will be expensive, but I don't think you get just how expensive. And it's not just the manufacturing costs. It's a huge number of batteries that need to go "somewhere". Which means buying lots of land.
Preferably distributed, which means buying lots of land in lots of places. Centralised of distributed, thats years, maybe decades of legal cases, CPOs, appeals, injunctions and so on.
Then there's installation and maintenance costs. These things don't just sit there. They need to be cared for, fixed and replaced. So you need easy access to each battery in the fleet, which means you need even more land.
Yeah they can be used more than once, compared to fossil fuels (though you can suck the exhaust from the air and resynthesize the fuel - syngas for instance, but that's also expensive, slow and low efficiency), but there are still massive initial and ongoing costs.
No such thing as a free lunch. Especially with power generation and storage.
I guess that you are a climate change denier. If so then, I have some land in the Florida Everglades to sell you. If you can live with the infestation of Burmese Pythons and Gators, then I estimate that you have 2-3 years before the rising sea level will make it unlivable.
OTOH, if there are any power cuts then they won't affect me. I have invested in technology to keep my lights on in the event of these cuts. I can go off-grid for 2-3 days with ease. If I add in the power from my EV then that can be 7-10 days. I have 66kWh of home battery installed.
Because I charge in the middle of the night, I use very little peak power. In November this will be 9kWh of peak price leccy.
Yes, I believe in climate change and looking after the planet. I also grow my own fruit and veggies and have 10 chickens. One of those will be on the table on Christmas day.
If you truly do not believe that we humans are destroying the planet there are a good number of US States that would welcome you with open arms. Go... Go Now. Florida Everglades is a great place to live.
Ain't you lucky :) You do not need to be a climate change denier to call the rush for intermittent and generally poor renewables a load of crap. You should be glad that there is baseload generation to charge your batteries overnight. All the oil that has gone into your solar, batteries and EV.
@AC
I dont know why you would want to post that as a coward. Your comment seems somewhat reasonable enough to not be the usual troll.
"I guess that you are a climate change denier"
No. I accept the climate changes, it always has and for as long as there is one it will.
"I have invested in technology to keep my lights on in the event of these cuts. I can go off-grid for 2-3 days with ease. If I add in the power from my EV then that can be 7-10 days. I have 66kWh of home battery installed."
Good for you. Sounds like nice planning. I assume you are American so you wont be as affected as here in the UK but that might not be a bad set up here (although I wouldnt recommend an EV personally). We are looking at blackouts and high energy prices because of green madness where idiots stopped thinking (not climate change denying or anything) and decided not to build electricity generation but instead made monuments to a sky god.
Seriously. We have had a couple of decades of heavy green madness investment pushing up energy prices in the good times and now making them cripplingly bad. All for green madness. All of our prices have gone up for pretty much everything because of this expense and schools even consider doing only 3 day weeks. Because of green madness. No other excuse, it is entirely down to the lack of energy generation. A deliberate choice due to green madness. Not sensible decisions of generating energy yet considering the ideas of MMCC theory but instead making monuments.
That is completely insane.
The US appears to be having its own issues. The FIL is staying with us right now and Nevada has been having rolling backouts due to the lack of water in lake mead. Depending where you are in the US it varies from good to pretty bad. The UK at the moment (touch wood) is doing OK.
The rush for 'renewables' has really been driven by profit (govt $$ and quick ROI with low ongoing costs) rather than an actual plan to save the planet.
"I guess that you are a climate change denier"Disingenuous. Now let's talk about time scales of climate change, and drivers behind climate change (or rather, let's not... I seem to recall we've been there already).No. I accept the climate changes, it always has and for as long as there is one it will.
@LionelB
"Disingenuous"
Why? He asked I answered. Does the climate change? Yes. I dont think you are going to deny the climate changes are you?
"Now let's talk about time scales of climate change, and drivers behind climate change (or rather, let's not... I seem to recall we've been there already)."
So to sum up your comment- *waaa waaa* lets discuss *waaa waaa* no lets not discuss. I guess you are confused
Disingenuous. You knew perfectly well what the OP meant (do you know what "disingenuous" means?) There is only one kind of "climate change denier" - but boo hoo, they left off the "anthropogenic" word, so you pleaded pedantry.
And no, I don't wish to rehash an interminable, circular and unedifying debate we've already had. Why would I? Why would you, for that matter?
@LionelB
"so you pleaded pedantry."
Not at all. There are some people who believe the earth is flat. There are those who believe the earth is round. There are those who believe it an ellipsoid. The problem with the climate change debate is the lumping of those who believe it is an ellipsoid with those who believe the world is flat because they dont say the world is a perfect sphere.
"And no, I don't wish to rehash an interminable, circular and unedifying debate we've already had."
Yet again you post to say you wont post. FYI it is as amusing as telling someone randomly that you are not talking to them. You could just not respond to me, especially if the experience was so bad.
"Why would I? Why would you, for that matter?"
I discuss to learn and inform. The exchange of views and information which increases my knowledge and hopefully increases others.
Good for you. You clearly have the funds, geographical location and domesitic situation for that to be a viable option for you.
But many, many people don't.
And for however much it cost you, multiply that by however many homes there are in the work. Hell, even in your own country that's probably running into trillions of your currency.
Ha ha, yes. Anyone remember electric night-storage heaters? (There still seem to be some around.) I arrived in this country in the late 70s, and froze my bollocks off for years because the bloody things were standard in cheap rental accommodation, and were way too expensive to actually use for an impoverished student - and had already been so, I believe, since the 60s. The only affordable alternative was portable gas fires, so you at least had a choice between CO poisoning and hypothermia. (I've still got a rotting blue cylinder at the bottom of the garden... need to do something about that.)
I wonder if the Government and politicians are learning the lesson of insurance - if you don't pay the premium, don't expect commercial entities to maintain the facility.
Aside: Interestingly and concerningly, it does seem we aren't ramping up our defence industries to replenish stocks being rapidly consumed in defence of Ukraine.
Re weapons it would appear due to the boom and bust nature of defence procurement it seems a lot of the sub-sub-contractors no longer exist so getting some niche parts for more advanced stuff like Javelin is basically impossible. So it's basically a case of starting from scratch.
Quote
"Interestingly and concerningly, it does seem we aren't ramping up our defence industries to replenish stocks being rapidly consumed in defence of Ukraine."
According to an old friend brothers who works in that sort of area....
That statement is very much untrue.....
Which statement is untrue: "rapidly consumed" or "not ramping up" ?
I thought the amount of money the UK government were publicly committing was a bit on the low side...
I hope your old friends brother is referring to the UK based defence sector and that the Conservatives are not reverting to form and preferring to spending UK taxpayers monies in the US...
Plus I thought we (at least initially) were mostly clearing down the older surplus stuff and only recently sending the more recent high tech stuff.
Same for Russia of course, I did read (quite some time ago, might even have been a fictional WW3 scenario book) that one issue of a European wide modern war is that the availability of weapons would be a major limiting factor to the duration of the conflict, they quite simply could not be manufactured quickly enough.
IMNSHO, it's a good idea to avoid any dependency with a State like China. We all pay a huge collective cost because our leader trust Russia and believed business would bring democracy (yeah, right).
The German so-called Greens are a bunch of hypocrites. They ask to close nuclear power plants but they switch on coal ones, when the latter are much more destructive in term of lives and environment.
What we need is more nuclear power plants, not less.
== Bring us Dabbsy back! ==
Nuclear Power Plants take 48 hours to power up just for the Xenon cycle to go stable, and SEVEN DAYS to power down, just from Residual Heat Removal and "Time to Boil if open" to put in layman terms. On top of that, they like to operate at 100% because the thermodynamics of the heat exchangers makes them more efficient at 100% power.
No, dummy, you power them on, and keep them on at 100% for 18 months straight if you are lucky enough the water pumps for the steam generators don't trip or whatever.
And China is powering 35 nuclear power plants in 10 years, which is give or take 3 per year, besides their "ecological" wind and solar. No GDP grows 8% without using ALL the available power, including solar, wind, coal, burning cow farts, dissidents on bicycles and whatever they come up with.
And to top it off... bad "things" happen to the steam cycle if a plant operates at 20%, the minimum stable operating point where I used to work... the whole building VIBRATES at a noisy 30Hz rumble that hurts your inner ears even with a earplug and the mickey mouse helmet earmuffs on top of it, and the columns plaster start to chip off.
So nope, NPPs are designed to go full pelt, and you can add and remove hydroelectrical power in 30 minutes flat. Wind and solar you just need to sync with the grid, 1/60 of a second.
I remember a trip to Fawley oil-fired power station, in the afternoon when they were "switching it on" to meet the evening power demand peak. An hour or so from stopped to full power, if I remember. Lots of water and metal needing to be gently heated up, and heavy masses set spinning.
Nuclear is indeed "base load" - run constantly at full power. Far too expensive and time-consuming to switch on and off.
Hydro is pretty fast to react, in the order of minutes to ramp up to full power. Pumped storage an old proven technology for energy storage and peak demand handling, but needs mountains.
Large-scale battery banks are excellent for load balancing. Instant reaction times, and can be located almost anywhere. Add in vehicle-to-grid to make use of big static electric vehicle batteries, and grid management becomes a lot easier.
This! As someone else pointed out earlier you need a mix.
Something that can react on a second by second basis that lasts long enough for the next layer up the chain to kick in and so on.
Heysham A has (or maybe had as this info is from the 90s) gas turbine backup generators which took a relatively long time to spool up. Heysham B was built with diesel backups which take only a few seconds to come up to load (I'd guess they had block heaters).
There is an exotic option of making hydrogen from electrolysis with the spare power from Nuclear plants in off-peak hours. You either make several tons of gas, or use huge lithium batteries.
No matter if you have nowhere to store it, you can convert it back into clean water or vent it. Hydrogen cells become very interesting all of a sudden if you have plenty of power and nowhere to dump it. Add in the compressors, and you are spending a heck lot of energy to shove pure hydrogen in a tank.
Nothing prevents you from burning hydrogen in an ICE too.
>> Hydro is pretty fast to react
I remember during the tour of the wales "Electric Mountain" that the standby turbines are motored via the generators keeping the spinning and synced to the grid but with air in the water turbine bit, if they needed to generate they let the water in and were running full pelt is something like sub 5 seconds
Energy storage, otherwise known as a pile of coal, or suitable numbers of tanks of diesel on standby. Though certain projects in development might offer viable alternatives in meaningful capacities.
Regarding the Nuke; fag-packet analysis of the data on Gridwatch suggests UK baseload is somewhere around 10 to 15GW; and rising with EV. As such, Nuke generation makes sense to be scaled to equal that baseload; because you do not really want to be turning nukes off and on regular. Given the retirement age of the rest of the nuke fleet; even if Sizewell and Hinckley happen we'll have maybe 8GW of Nuke left in place by 2035 or so.
It's not nearly enough given direction of demand.
Obviously, under any scenario, whatever shortfall is left is covered either by interconnection (unreliable), wind (intermittent) or gas (expensive). Anything to reduce dependence on all of those three are a good thing.
Hydro : capital and land intensive. Most of the best sites already used; those that are left are mega-projects that are unlikely to happen (e.g. Severn Barrage, or damming off a hole Scottish loch).
Solar PV : My 3.2kW system is, as of 13:30 today producing 130W (under more-or-less worst-case conditions 10/10ths cloud). The demand reduction is welcome obviously, and it pays for itself easily under "summer" performance; but it's not a solution for the winter months no matter the quantity installed. Supposing we had 20 million properties times 130W = 2.6GW; it's not insignificant, but not a solution to national demand.
Tidal : very capital intensive for short asset lifetimes. Ships come back from six months at sea ravaged by corrosion. Answers on a postcard for how to build a tidal system that can survive 20 years (roughly the lifetime of an offshore windmill) without also being significantly more expensive than a windmill. Answer: you cannot solve that problem without extortionate budget for exotic materials.
Not anti-renewable here at all, but I am very definitely Pro-pragmatic. As David Mackay pointed out, you have to have a plan that adds up. In terms of generation cost / power delivered windmills are far and away the best right now; particularly so if they can be coupled to large quantities of storage. (Noting that the retail market design does not pass on the price reductions to customers because the last-dispatched generation source is currently Gas or Coal - this is something that I would most desperately like to see changed).
Tidal : very capital intensive for short asset lifetimes. Ships come back from six months at sea ravaged by corrosion. Answers on a postcard for how to build a tidal system that can survive 20 years
The Rance Tidal Power Station in France was built in 1966 which makes it almost as old as I am !
If we had baseload + a bit (+ an extra bit for maintenance etc) coupled with some sort of open protocol for the control of smart appliances (I think Octopus has a scheme that used IFTTT) then we can more easily shift time insensitive non-interactive energy uses to more convenient times of the day for best energy usage. Although the current requests to run the washing machine overnight have caused some headaches with complaints from neighbours about noise.....
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Don't forget that big corporations love the net zero bandwagon, because it nips any potential competition in the bud.
If you want to start manufacturing something, your business likely won't be able to afford the costs and you will not have enough funds to start a plant in China. Then the topic is not talked about but many regions of China are run by mafia types and they can be paid off by big corporations to ensure that even if you had money to start a plant in China, they won't let you.
I'm getting tired of these "enough to power x homes. figures. This article reckons that a home uses only 325W. Here's another where it works out to 1.4kW. And a third, with a not-very-believable 10kW.
What's needed is an El Reg unit for power, an area where the Reg online standards converter is sadly lacking. May I suggest that energy be reckoned in how many olympic-sized swimming pools it could boil (assuming a capacity of 2.5Ml and a starting temperature of 25°C), and power in terms of how fast it could boil such a pool? The calculation is left as an exercise for the reader* (and for Reg hacks in future filings) …
* The back of my envelope seems to have developed a fault.
KE = 1/2 MV^2, so, in the tradition of obscure units, let's use Furlongs Per Fortnight and Mass of a Snail for the new unit of energy?
1 furlong per fortnight, roughly the speed of a snail is 1.663×10^−4 m/s, and the mass of a snail is about 0.005kg; so the KE of 1 snail at speed is 6.91*10^-11 W.
If your average home's demand is 1kW; it has similar energy demand to 1.45*10^13 snails moving at speed.
Is that obscure enough?
Looking at my usage over the past year, I average just over 12 kwh per day so 325 watts wouldn't be out of line for a smaller house or one even more efficient than my already quite energy efficient 3000 sq ft house.
I could see 1.4 kW for older less efficient houses or those with a large family and a lot of incandescent lighting. 10kW is crazy, you'd have to live in a drafty mansion and use electric heat all winter long in a cold climate! Even if you aren't using something as terrible as electric resistance heating, I would obviously be using more electricity if instead of natural gas heat I was using a heat pump of some type. But doing rough calculations based on my gas usage and efficiency comparisons I'd still be under 1 kwh per day (though I'm lumping all my gas usage together, some of it goes to my water heater and stove)
I agree the "energy to power x homes" is a pretty poor unit of measurement, given how wide the disparity of "energy to power one home" you've encountered is.
>> Looking at my usage over the past year, I average just over 12 kwh
13.1 kWh here (and falling) over the last year, so 550w an hour. That actually sounds a lot but factor in the peak loads from the electric oven, induction hob, washer etc is kind of looks respectable.
And yes it is falling as more efficient kit gets installed as the old fails - yes "fails" as you have to take into account the manufacturing cost of anything your replace.
The App was not £37 Billion. That was the total put aside for two years, including all those test kits that were being freely handed out. Is £37 Billion a lot of money? Yes. Was it all wisely spent? Probably not, it was a global pandemic*. Was it all spent on an App? Definitely not.
*If you're one of those types who likes to compare it to a war you should see how much was wasted in WW2 buying aircraft that weren't fit for their intended role and just went to be target tugs or similar.
You are attacking semantics, not the argument. I said an "app" to emphasise uselessness of the project that it turned out to be - just another gravy train for the ruling class. From that perspective, chipping in to build a few more nuclear reactors would have probably saved more lives in the long run (by lifting people out of energy poverty and aiding growth providing jobs and giving people tools to better car for themselves).
Erm, you don't have to be Einstein... with 'millions of smart meters installed', offer something along the lines of the old 'Economy 7' tariff (day rate expensive, night rate cheaper) and you should get a little reduced consumption... certainly more than simply staring at that smart meter and wishing it to go down!
Smart meters are another prong of population control. They give an ability to remotely turn off your energy if the future regime deems it appropriate for instance based on your private communication (aided by Online Safety Bill).
They can also be used to monitor what kind of devices you are using and when (based on their power consumption signature). This can also be linked to your social credit score in the future if, for instance, you put a kettle on rather than watching an important speech on telly about how the party is taking care of you.
> the old 'Economy 7' tariff
It still exists. Cheaper electricity between the hours of 23:00 and 06:00 IIRC[1]. But more expensive than the flat rate tariff at other times. Very much depends on you having a reasonable consumption in the cheaper hours to make it worth it - 70/30 used to be about break even but I haven't checked in several years.
[1] I think the exact time depends on region.
The power consumption for my home (built in 1930 and very well insulated) for November was 9kWh of peak rate and 446kWh of cheap rate. The latter includes charging my EV and heating my home. My total bill was just under £30.00 not inc 5% VAT. Thankfully, my 77kWh EV does V2H very well and even works when there is a Power Cut. makes using it a bit difficult but I have an E-Bike (with cargo trailer) to go to the shops with.
My SWIMBO has already made sure that the other OAP's in the street are aware of our home as a place where it will always be warm.
downvote this all you like but we are helping our community. Are you?
The trouble is that the smart meters aren't that smart.
So for a smart Economy 7 tariff to work, we need more intelligence - although a Rasb Pi is probably an overkill, so that devices I want to run on SmartEco7 are set to run accordingly and can be invoked when the relevant tariff becomes available.
"with some blaming power vacuums created by change in government and the death of the Queen"
AFAIK the monarch in the UK is a figurehead who just gets to sign laws into being and other odd jobs. Also, the passage of the title to the heir is instantaneous at the moment the reigning monarch dies, so Prince Charles became King Charles the moment Queen Elizabeth passed on, and was immediately vested with the full responsibilities of the role (so he doesn't need to wait for the coronation to execute his powers as monarch). The power vacuum was completely caused by the salads at number 10.
On a separate note... " to develop technologies that can store energy as heat, electricity, or as a low-carbon energy carrier like hydrogen."
What's wrong with developing a technology that can store energy as a high-carbon energy carrier? As long as the efficiency of the end-to-end process is high enough, there's no environmental problem with using clean energy to combine H2O and CO2 into hydrocarbons that can be burnt, because any carbon emitted is carbon that has been captured in the first place. Plus, we already have an extensive infrastructure and experience in handling hydrocarbon fuels, and their energy density is the best we have available for mass-sensitive applications like aviation.
> "... Russia is an unreliable supplier, as we have witnessed over the last days, weeks, months, but also because Russia is actively manipulating the gas market."
Oh, and they're also FUCKING WARMONGERS and we should not be giving them another god damn penny.
Fuck Russia and fuck their gas.
I always smile when someone spurts that phrase as justification for the latest sound-bite announcement. So persuasive sounding.
Never a mention that the energy will actually be sold to the global market for maximum profit and the local market can just f*** right off (as BlowJo told business it should).
What they say in public:
> Von der Leyen said at the time: "We are facing an extraordinary situation, not only because Russia is an unreliable supplier, as we have witnessed over the last days, weeks, months, but also because Russia is actively manipulating the gas market."
What they say in private:
https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-war-europe-ukraine-gas-inflation-reduction-act-ira-joe-biden-rift-west-eu-accuses-us-of-profiting-from-war/
> as they were doing nice business with Germany.
Worse than that: they behaved callously and with a complete lack of humanity.
When I visited Yad vaShem, one of the stories that impacted me the most was that of Master Gustav Schröder.
> Then when they did get involved it was on commercial terms.
Let us not forget that it was Germany that declared war on the US, not vice-versa. Funny how Hollywood doesn't tell you that.
>Let us not forget that it was Germany that declared war on the US, not vice-versa.
From the information disclosed from Bletchley Park, it does seem Churchill suspected it was only a matter of time and so Britain needed to hold on until the inevitable happened, at which point the US political establishment would be forced to choose sides and take action.
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