More on light bulbs ...

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:55:45 +0100 someone who may be Andy Champ wrote this:-

Your "argument" is based on generating all electricity from wind turbines. A straw man.

[<me9]

I had that trouble with the 5' linear frourescent (with electronic starter) in the utility room. You could go in looking for something, and come out again before the light had come on.

Since replacing it with a CFL (6000k from CPC) it has instantly started and given excellent service with no complaints.

[Andy Champ]

We, of course, being mere men can't see the 4th colour. I think it may be called "platinum" :)

Seriously though...

the best wiki article, but gives an idea.

Andy

[Andy Champ]

What large scale non-fossil technologies are available?

Andy

[Tim Streater]

Nuclear is the only one.

[geoff]

In message , Tim Streater writes

There's wave power

get the pope to continually drive around and harness everyone's right arm

[Bob Eager]

Or just harness dennis's right arm...

[geoff]

There is that, yes

perpetual motion

[Adam Aglionby]

Problem is nuclear is fossil fueled , Uranium isn`t mined in the UK, Australia, South Africa and er, possibly soon, Afghanistan...

Fast breeders and fusion that works are all so much science fiction at moment, but dream big

just presuurisd water, uderstood technology , power stations standardised `to the wallpaper and the carpets` , wrong European Presurised Reactor, massively overbudget and overtime in two locations and no one is ordering any more:

wave and solar are all non fossil and look good against this sort of competition ;-)

Cheers Adam

[Steve Firth]

Horsefeathers.

[David Hansen]

On Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:38:33 -0700 (PDT) someone who may be Adam Aglionby wrote this:-

Yes, it is slightly amusing. The first two "standardised" reactors are in fact somewhat different.

It is beginning to look like the AGR, where a series of "standardised" reactors to reduce costs became a series of individual reactors.

Since the first commercial wind farm opened at Delabole in 1991 wind has gone from nothing to 4.756 GW .

At the average UK capacity factor of 30% that is equivalent to plant of 1.43 GW operating continuously.

In 2009 nuclear had a capacity factor of 65.4%

table 5.10. So to get the equivalent of 1.43 GW plant operating continuously one needs 2.19 GW installed. That's roughly a Sizewell B and a Dungeness B .

An additional 1.123 GW of wind is under construction (same source).

It looks like wave and tidal are about to start the same rise as wind has had. Meanwhile hydro is now being developed again, the idea that there are no more sites having been exploded.

There has been no law to stop nuclear plants being built, but the privatised operators have not built any. Since Sizewell B opened in

1995 no new nuclear generation has been built in the UK.

[Arfa Daily]

But the returns from all of these 'interesting' technologies - in this country at least - are so small as to be difficult to justify against the manufacturing and maintenance budgets. To say nothing of the aesthetic impact.

Due in no small part to the continued lobbying of the environmental anti-nuclear brigade, and governments too gutless to stand up to them.

Much to the continued political and financial joy of the Frogs and Ruskies, of course ...

We seriously need to get much more independent of other countries again for our own energy needs, and the only sensible and quick way to do this, is to start a nuclear building program again.

Arfa

[Tim Streater]

In what sense?

Fast breeders seem to work, near as I can tell.

Managed by the EU, what do you expect? :-)

You'll be lucky to get 25% of our national energy requirements from these three. And to get there will cost considerably more than funding ITER.

[Tim Streater]

So where are these sites then, or are you proposing to dam up all the valleys in the Lakes and Scotland?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Damn the channel I say.

Then we can drive to Paris over the top.

[dennis]

How many GW hours? It doesn't really matter what the peak is. I can get 4.756 GW from a pp3 battery and a capacitor.

Rubbish. Where does this mythical 30% come from?

[Huge]

Can all the participants in this debate please go and read "Without Hot Air", and then return with some proper numbers?

At the very least, we might some peace and quiet for a week or two.

if you want to wade right in, start here;

[The Natural Philosopher]

Have done BUT the trouble with Davids book, is that you can take it two ways

(i) Sustainable energy is just possible, at the expense of turning the WHOLE country into a vast energy collecting industrial site. At an un-discussed cost. Ergo we should push ahead with it. Whatever the cost.

(ii) Sustainable energy would require such massive investment in massively disruptive technology that it can't ever practically speaking work at all. And certainly not in the sorts of scales we need, ergo we should abandon it and start trying to make nuclear work properly.

My own opinion is the latter: There is only one form of energy that fulfils all the green criteria and gives us better security of supply, and that's nuclear.

And 'sustainable' energy is a complete waste of time and money.

We have done all the hydro we realistically can do.

As far as pumped storage gioes, just about the only thing that looks halfway sensible would be to take - say - a deep scottish loch, dam it halfway along, and pump water out of one half into the other, or into the sea, and let it all rush back in again.

But its massive and rather silly as an idea. Like the severn tidal scheme. .

[Adam Aglionby]

In that you need a continued supply of a mined resource to continue to generate.

Non local resource at that, which is a concern re, security.

Did you have another definition of fossil fuel?

Not as commercial generating plants unfortunately.

Fair point!

Thing is ITER is eating everyone else`s research budget, if results were guaranteed, 10 X power out than power in, funding would be easy.

Cheers Adam

[The Natural Philosopher]

well, yes and no.

It's complicated by the various breeder reactions available.

Advanced nuclear reactors might be taking all sorts of feedstocks apart from enriched uranium, or plutonium.

And 'fossil' refers precisely to the remains of organic (carbon based) life, which Uranium aint.

Again, its a lot handier to stockpile fissile material than coal gas or oil.

Sustainable energy doesn't work effectively anyway, so you have to use some form or raided energy source that Nature has concentrated a bit better than a light breeze over Blackopool.

Yes. See above.

They can though. Its just they are more expensive to build than a straight uranium reactor, and no one ever had the need to use them before other than in weapons programs.

Oh THAT is guranteed! The problem is, making it work.

The exact reverse from sustainable energy, which guarantees to require huge plant to produce almost nothing in usable form, but can be made to work.