Peak wind (nothing to do with diet)

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Hmm, another gainsayer? Why do I keep thinking Wakefield, MMR jabs......

Reply to
Broadland Wanderer

Nothing in the article surprises (certainly nothing about its anti-wind bias, but apart from noting that we'll let it pass).

Noone in their right mind sees wind as the sole renewable energy answer. It always was and still is going to have to be part of a wider system involving many different technologies.

The average output per m2 of land that might be realistically obta>

Reply to
Java Jive

You mean it deals with facts, not hype.

It isn't "still going to have to be". Wind is intermittent and is not dispatchable. Those two together make it useless.

Now nuclear is not (very) dispatchable. But its reliability makes it ideal for base load.

Within the last two weeks or so we had a several-day period when our fleet of turbines "rated" at 7000MW struggled to produce 50MW. Why would anyone think that worth building?

Reply to
Tim Streater

Of course presumably if we fill the seas and other open areas with turbines then the wind will hardly ever blow any more will it.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

No, I mean that instead of just reporting the subject dispassionately and independently it contains emotion and value laden phrases like:

"The pro-wind boffins"

Why only the pejorative term boffins for the pro-wind scientists?

"Both these assertions, however, have been called into doubt - and the first one, that there's plenty of wind power to meet all human demands, is particularly shaky as it ignores the thorny issue of cost. McElroy, Jacobson and their allies tend to make wild assumptions - for instance that it would be feasible to distribute massive wind turbines across most or even all of the planet's surface.

Professor Keith has some scathing criticism for these ideas."

Words like 'shaky'. 'thorny', 'wild', 'scathing' are value-laden. They are prompting the reader towards an opinion based on emotionally laden words rather than the bare facts. It's particularly absurd in this particular case in that the facts alone are probably going to be plenty good enough to do the job.

It would have been better reported as:

"Both these assertions, however, have been called into doubt - and the first one, that there's plenty of wind power to meet all human demands, particularly so as it ignores cost. McElroy, Jacobson, et alia rely on assumptions that may not be valid - for instance that it would be feasible to distribute massive wind turbines across most or even all of the planet's surface.

Professor Keith criticises these assumptions."

The fact that such value-laden words occur tends to devalue the whole report, because it raises questions such as:

How fairly have the conflicting scientific opinions been adjudicated? Have important caveats in one set of work or another been ignored? Have the quotes been selected so as to be unrepresentational? Is the wider context actually rather less clear cut?

We are going to have to learn to use such renewables better, and/or learn how to capture carbon.

It is not reliable long-term in a country that doesn't have any suitable fuel. Nuclear, especially if it's based on U-fission, can no more meet all this country's energy needs in the long term than can wind in the short-term when the weather is calm.

See what I mean, it's called 'bias'?! You concentrate on and exagerate problems with wind, and ignore or belittle problems with nuclear. Both sets of problems exist, and if you were truly unbiased, you'd acknowledge that freely.

We'll have to devise a system that can accomodate wind better, using it to the maximum when it's available, using alternative sources of energy, renewable or not, when it's calm.

Reply to
Java Jive

Define "better". If the wind ain't there, it ain't there.

The wind can't, short term *or* long term. The notion that we don't have huge uranium deposits waiting to be dug up here has been addressed a number of times by, amongst other, TNP. You're choosing to overlook what has been said about that.

No, I state them, noting that you've not managed to say *anything* that ameliorates the problems that wind has.

Which problems are you referring to? Supply (of fuel) is solved, waste (disposal thereof) is solved (technically - but not politically because of the likes of you), decommissioning (of the next generation of reactors) is not that hard.

Today's reactors may well give headaches in decommissioning - but what of that? That is *no* reason not to proceed with tomorrow's designs.

So to do that we need several GW of spinning reserve that can be

*dispatched* quickly. AIUI, such reserve tends to be expensive and means that we have paid twice for the same amount of continuous power. And what you say above about using some alternative form of renewable for when winds fails, means you must know of such an alternative source that is both non-intermittent and dispatchable.

I'm keen to know what that might be.

Reply to
Tim Streater

Lets let Germany sort that first then;!...

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Reply to
tony sayer

Like a gas turbine to pick up the load when the wind drop. Why not just use the gas? Oh...

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

Where the Fuck do you think the fuel comes from during the night, when the wind doesn't blow for days on end, or when it's overcast for days on end?

Wait a minute, it comes from dodgy states with appalling human rights records, some of whose inhabitants would as soon blow us up with the bloody stuff as sell it to us to keep ourselves warm.

Fissionable material, on the other hand, is widely available from friendly nations.

If you want to support dictators and failed states then why not go and live there?

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

That seems rather a harsh judgement of Norway, which I don't think many would share.

- Uranium doesn't only come from friendly nations.

- Uranium currently provides 1/7th or less of our average electrical energy consumption.

- Uranium may run out as early as half-way through the life of HM Government's planned new nuclear build.

- Other fissionable material is not relevant as we have no plans to use it.

If you want to live in a country powered by nuclear energy, go and live in France, if they'll have you. Personally, I can think of few people who would seem less suited to get on well with French people as yourself.

Reply to
Java Jive

The most worrying part of that report is:

"Energy-intensive industries are having to install their own generators, or are looking to leave Germany altogether."

I'm still in two minds about Merkel's headlong rush to renewables. If I'd been making the decisions I'd have been trying to change one thing at a time, and make sure everything worked together before moving on to the next, but there again you could argue that actually we haven't the time to be so pretty. Although with her approach the pain is certainly more intense because structural changes are happening so fast, it may yet prove to be of shorter duration, and therefore it may yet be that future generations come to look back upon her as something of a visionary.

But, anyway, apart from the general points made above which are really all that can be said from the sidelines, it is clear that the report itself is highly biased, so much so that even its seemingly factual content cannot be relied upon. Although this was 'Comment', so the need for absolute impartiality is less, nevertheless Booker has done nothing to build a reputation for far and honest reporting there.

To begin with, an electrical supply 24-7 never could be relied upon, at any rate never anywhere that I have lived. In the past, I've had power failures kill computers, routers, alarm panels, etc. So far this winter there have been two power cuts here during gales (those eyesore overhead cables that my mother always wanted buried). That's about the same as used to happen in urban England due to yoofs throwing stolen bikes onto switching gear, someone digging up the road, etc.

There were at least two hospitals/health centres affected, and I don't know how they coped, but, AFAIAA, no-one died. Using a laptop, I didn't even lose any data, which is better than used to happen with my desktops in Reading. I just went to bed earlier to keep warm.

In the light of the above, I found the following rather strange:

"When the power to one Hamburg aluminium factory failed recently, for only a fraction of a second, it shut down the plant, causing serious damage."

Glitches in power for a fraction of a second being presumably as common in Germany as the UK, why did the designers of the plant not build in safe shut down procedures? Why is this being blamed on grid failure, when the real failure was with the plant's design?

There are other aspects of the report that show it is highly biased. Value-charged phrases like:

"green fantasists" as opposed to "practical realists" "?carbon capture and storage? (CCS) ... an empty pipedream" "make-believe CCS" "useless windmills" Etc, etc.

More generally, Christopher Booker has a long and notorious career as something of a loose cannon:

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Sure, there's some good as well as quite a lot of bad in there, that's why I said loose cannon rather than anything more pejorative, but most of the good was a very long time ago, and concerning the more recent stuff, be sure you don't miss these:

"he argues that asbestos, passive smoking, and BSE have not been shown to be dangerous. His views on these matters go against scientific consensus, and as a result have attracted much criticism"

... and ...

"Wilson highlighted Booker's repeated endorsement of the alleged scientific expertise of John Bridle, who in 2004 was convicted under the UK's Trade Descriptions Act of making false claims about his qualifications."

... and ...

"Booker has also argued >

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Reply to
Java Jive

Again, this is a common trait of this bias. Write out 100 times ...

'wind' being 'renewable' does not imply that 'renewable' is 'wind'.

There is no reason to suppose that as a country we'll have more or less wind in 10, 100, 1000 years than now, so if we can use it and other renewables better now, it/they will always be there for us.

When examined rationally, there was nothing to overlook. Again your bias is leading you to conveniently forget that The Natural Pillock is very given to making unsubstantiated wave-hand-in-air assertions when he wants to 'dismiss' something without having any evidence actually examined too critically. I disproved at the time those of his claims that I saw quoted by others, but your 'forgetfulness' forces me to regurgitate it all again. It gets very boring all round.

So boring I'll put it in a seperate reply, but, now that my filters are off, I see that there was much more bullshit there than even I thought, so it'll take some time to sift through it all to compile a complete rebuttal of all that needs it, but at least as a result it'll be in one post that can be easily found rather than spread over several threads and myriad posts.

I'm not trying to deny them, and as for amelioration, I think that anyway they are being overstated. See below.

The fact that the UK is planning a new fleet of nuclear power stations based on uranium fission and ...

... according to WNA figures given previously, supplies of fissionable uranium could start to run out as early as 2025, and ...

... not solved, even technically, only in principle, and ...

{

Why are you blaming me, when I'm in favour of a solution? Again, this is bias in the form of an anti-green stereotype of your own creation, which you incorrectly assume that I fit.

IMV, we should reprocess back into fuel as much of the waste as we can, so that the amount of it we leave to future generations is minimised, and put the rest in a geologically and militarily safe repository as soon as possible, so that it is not hanging around with a greater probability of becoming part of some accident. }

... well, I'm not sure that we've actually tried it yet, so the jury's still out on that one - again possibly solved in principle, but no further.

So again, that was bias: you claimed 3 out of 3, but actually when examined in detail it's at very best two halves out of three, and even that's being VERY generous.

The main reason not to proceed with tomorrow's designs as currently chosen by HM Government is that from half-way or less through their expected life we can't guarantee to keep them fuelled.

The only organisations that need to have power maintained all the time are the emergency services, front-line military establishments, continuous process production facilities, etc. These are the only people who need power that can be *dispatched* quickly. Those and others for whom it is a big deal can install UPS and/or backup generating equipment as and if required.

As long as it doesn't last too long, there is no reason why power shouldn't be cut to the rest of us while back-up systems come on-line. Sure, it can be inconvenient, but, if brief, it's not a big deal, and makes a great deal more sense than continually running systems in parallel. That is pointless.

As described in my reply to Tony, so far this winter there have two power cuts here due to severe weather each of which lasted a few hours, not just twenty minutes or so for a switchover, with AFAIAA no lasting ill-effects.

Once when living out in the sticks, in a cottage heated solely by electricity, the area lost power for several days in a deep blizzard. The most difficult thing was hot food, but I had lots of frozen home-made soup and some camping equipment. I always kept a supply of candles and batteries anyway - people of my age and experience usually do. I don't think I even got chilblains. It wasn't good, but it wasn't the widespread disaster that the scaremongers here would have one believe that power failure must inevitably be.

Reread what I actually wrote above, "using alternative sources of energy, renewable or not, when it's calm", which is not what your anti-green bias apparently led you to believe I wrote.

Reply to
Java Jive

So just how much energy, as a %age, do we import from Norway?

Your point is?

Your point is?

No plans as there of plenty of Uramium for thr time being.

I do, my own country.

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

It depends on whether you are talking about coal, gas, or oil. The latter two have been covered before in previous threads, and anyway are certainly available from the web. So why are you asking me to look them up for you?

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We import the vast majority of our gas from Norway, small percentages from elsewhere.

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66% of our oil imports are from Norway.

As I suspect that coal was not in your mind anyway, I'll leave you to oblige us by looking it up for yourself, if perchance it was.

That you can't blithely assume that uranium bought on the market necessarily comes from 'nice' nations. It's probably not much more likely to do so than most carbon energy sources.

That 'nice' nations who sell us uranium don't actually account for a very significant proportion of current generation anyway, whereas 'nice' nations like ourselves and Norway account for the greater part, so the original point is something of a straw man.

Not according to the WNA's own figures, as previously shown on SEVERAL occasions:

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Tain't the UK then, that's only a bit less than 1/7th of annual consumption.

Reply to
Java Jive

You can't even interpret the data correctly when it's staring you in the face. We imported 25% of our gas from Norway in the priod covered, now 3 years out of date. I would not call 18.6bcm a "small percentage" compared to the 25bcm from Norway.

Given you ability with figures, I can't be bothered to check.

No doubt because you need someonme else to interoret tha data for you.

Well you have linked to docs that clearly show the sources of other fules. It would not be beyond the wit of man to implement a system of traceability for other fuels such as Uranium. There stil seems to be no point to your comment.

See above about Norway.

We will increase our trade with those nations. The fact that it surrently only 1/7 (or whatever) is irrelevant.

and refuted on SEVERAL occasions.

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

No power cuts at all here, the advantages of being a townie I suppose;)..

I rather expect thats the disadvantage of being fed via overhead line more than much else.

Which give the power companies incentive to reduce routine tree cutting maintenance isn't that surprising.....

Reply to
tony sayer

As per the other post this is a distribution side problem than power blackouts as such, its always been like this wherever the are supplies that are on 11/33 kV overhead lines. Ask Dave from up in them thar hills in Cumbria..

I've lived in a built up area for some years now and power cuts are no problem at all, the longest one was around half and hour where dear old Padraig was a bit careless with his digger just outside our house, but they soon turned up and spliced that again..

And no lost equipment either!...

I would hope that the average health centre could manage a bit without power. The hospital up the road from here, Addenbrookes, has about 4 MW Installed backup capacity and an Oil tank the size of a footie pitch!...

Reply to
tony sayer

Although in "country area" (24 miles from Charing Cross) our local distribution is underground. We've had various failures over the years due to faults on the cables.

Reply to
charles

They are equivalent for all intents and purposes in this country. Unless you know of another renewable that is "rated" at 7GW and is in service now.

More hand waving. I'm still waiting for some definition or description of how we might use renewables "better" (your word, not mine). And I asked you that already two posts ago, and got your usual waffle in reply.

You're easily bored then. He stated that after a fuel rod is used, 98% of the uranium is still there to be used again. Are you saying he's plain wrong, or that is can't be thus reprocessed, or that it could be done but would cost too much, or what?

That is not a problem.

More waffle: "could" "as early as". Is this with or without reprocessing? Is this just the easily accessible ores?

No, as Prof Ion said on the "Life Scientific" program on R4 last Tuesday morning 09.00, not only is it solved, it's been done for all UK power reactor waste for the last 20 years or so. I grant you that *storage* may still be an issue (in the sense of an underground place), but the processed waste is quite safe - no leaks, no nothing.

Oh glory be. And here was us thinking you've been asserting that this is an unsolved problem or can't be done or whatever, for the last number of months. What a set of soppies we are!

Of course not. Hard to try to decommission a reactor that hasn't been built yet. I refer you again to the broadcast, which you should download and listen to.

Course we can.

Like most people at home, then, and most of industry that would take a dim view of being told, sorry guys, but your supplies will now be no better or reliable than they are in Iraq in 2005 or so. So they'll all rush out and buy generators - all of which will be more CO2 polluting than a power station. Very green.

Your stance on this is dismissive and patronising. People pay for continuous supply; you gonna explain to them why they can't have it?

If you have a backup system then you've paid twice for your generation.

Regular and widespread outages are likely to to lead to social unrest. If you live in the sticks, at the end of a long rural power line, you plan accordingly.

Seems pretty clear to me. What is another dispatchable and non-intermittent renewable source that the UK could use? If its not renewable, why mention it? Or are you suggesting that we actually install enough kit of various types (wind, solar, tidal) so that *each* could cover all the UK's needs (30-50GW, depending on time of day), in the hope that at least one of them can do the job at any one time? You want us to pay *three times* for our generating capacity?

I'm still keen to know about your alternative source.

Reply to
Tim Streater

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