Largely it seems they do, I looked up eight of their big lignite stations, they seem to have been modernised in late 90s onwards, old units retired, new more powerful units added, FDG scrubbers added, it got kind of boring finding the same story for each of them ...
They seem to be edging past "pilot" to "first commercial scale" ...
snip
Exactly. Reasonable for him, but not for me or you.
Chris Hogg posted
[Let's assume for the sake of this argument that saving fossil fuel and reducing CO2 emissions is good.] Then, even if switching the grid to 5% wind power only allows you to save 1% of fuel/CO2, it would be worth doing, because the wind power is free. Once you have installed it, of course; if you start adding in the carbon cost of building it, then the numbers are doubtless different.I'm not saying I am committed to this argument, just that it can't simply be waved away.
And some here think the status quo is just fine and always will be. Relying on any form of energy which is imported is simply not a good idea
- as history has proved. Time and time again. And nuclear at the moment relies on imported raw materials.
In no way do I claim to be any kind of an expert.
The problem is that those offering all the solutions ain't either.
So your viable alternative is *what*, then?
What you're describing is more-or-less what we have now, and yes, it may save a little CO2, although probably not as much as the pro-wind-farm lobby would have us believe. Is it worth doing? I don't know. I guess it depends on one's definition of 'worth' in this context. One thing's for sure: if global warming is real, and CO2 is a major contributor, then making small savings are only going to make small differences, where big differences will be what's wanted. You'll never get big differences by installing wind power (or any other form of intermittent generation, for that matter), simply because of the equivalent in energy of back-up generators that you need and the CO2 that they emit while hot-spinning on stand-by. If someone came up with an economic means of storing energy efficiently and on a truly massive scale, things might be different.
But as I said before, why not just build nuclear? No CO2, steady base-load output with no fluctuations due to vagaries in the weather, small footprint, long working life and low fuel costs. It's a no-brainer!
Cue fracking for gas?
I had a brief discussion with Java Jive recently over on uk.tech.digital-tv on the availability of future supplies of uranium fuel for nuclear power stations. He was of the view, based on the last graph here
LOL! Since when has that stopped anyone here from offering opinion. Not all are expert by any means (any more than am I), but degrees of knowledge do vary.
Hedge your bets and use a mixture.
In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes
..And it shows
Bu they are a damn sight more expert than you.
Indeed, and he has made similar claims here. However this prediction is based on the assumption that we continue to use new uranium in a single pass through a reactor, and then consider what is left as "waste" (even though 98.5% of the fissile fuel content still remains). For the moment this is the most cost effective process given the cost of reprocessing and the general non availability of other reactor technologies that could use this "waste" as a viable fuel.
With appropriate reactors (fast breeder, liquid fluoride fuel cycle,
It also ignores the fact that thorium is a far more abundant element than uranium - and there are stockpiles of that sat around the world that people can't even give away at the moment (its considered a hazardous waste product produced in any rare earth element mining operation).
Add to that the stockpiles of weapons grade fissile material we have on hand as a result of decommissioning projects and we have
But still resort to making things up. Hardly a definition of expert.
Trouble is the carbon cost of wind isn't zero. There's no fuel cost, but a substantial build cost.
The turbines tend to be made of oil-based synthetics, and there's a lot of concrete too.
Andy
Uranium can be extracted from seawater. The cost is somewhere around
3-10 times the cost of mining, it but since the fuel is an almost insignificant part of the cost of nuclear electricity, that doesn't really matter. There's enough there for well over 10,000 years of use, although it won't all be viable to recover.
JJ would not be persuaded by any of the arguments, but was fixated on his graph, even though it was a speculative projection some distance into the future. He even dismissed the comments of the same organisation that produced the graph, which was quite happy with the long term prospects for uranium supply
JJ is a blinkered twerp - plausible, mind you, a kind of idiot savant.
One could also mention the "radioactive waste" ;-)
(i.e. turbines use large quantities of rare earth materials in their construction, and hence by implication have resulted in yet more throium being dug up)
Chris Hogg posted
I would say rather that it depends on the numbers, which you admit you don't know.
But many small differences can add up to a big difference. The greenies' case for wind power is not that it will solve the entire problem but that it will make a contribution.
That might be true, but to be sure of it you'd need to know all the relevant numbers.
Because of the problem of disposing of spent fuel. It is very well for pro-nuclear people to say oh that isn't really a problem. But it *is* a problem as long as there is no political agreement on how to do it.
All I can say is 'read this':
I meant to add, that if you don't get what you're looking for there, try Prof. MacKay's 'Sustainable Energy - without the hot air'
Prof. MacKay's credentials are impeccable. He's basically 'green', but realises and wants to communicate the limits and practicalities of what we can get from sustainable, carbon-free sources. The only caveat I would make is that he's considering ALL forms of carbon-based energy use, not just electricity generation in it's present form, but use of fossil fuels for transport, domestic heating etc., which means his numbers are rather larger than when simply replacing coal- or gas-fired power stations with wind, solar etc. But this would be necessary if the world is to meet the latest IPCC calls for zero-carbon economies by the end of the century.
This is a myth.
Which still doesn't account for its unreliability and non-dispatchability.
There's no political disagreement on how to do it; you glassify it. The disagreement is on how to dispose of the glass.
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