The future of the world?

[Jim K]

that makes two of you

Jim K

[harry]

As usual TurNiP anything you haven't heard of doesn't exist. BTW, you still haven't told us what you were doing at Cambridge (apart from cleaning the toilets.)

[bert]

They are a waste of space if you go nuclear. There is no technical solution to the impossibility of bulk storage of electricity.

[The Natural Philosopher]

no economic environmentally friendly solution. There are plenty of impossibly expensive and massively dangerous or massively environmentally destructive ones.

We could for example build a 1000 foot wall round Scotland and pump the north sea into it. That would keep the rest of the country going a few months of no sun or wind. Wouldn't do a lot for Scotland mind you. Or the north if the wall gave way.

I think the UK electricity comes out at a reasonable nuclear bombs worth of energy every days. The energy contains in e.g. a winters worth of storage to take us through times of no solar power simply don't bear thinking about.

Mmm. I did the calculation. The UK uses about 10 Hiroshima sized bombs worth of energy EVERY DAY and that is JUST in the electricity supply.

Now think about that sort of energy...behind a dam..or in terms of hydrogen..or spinning flywheels, or compressed air...Lets see what stores of energy do we know that are compact and safe to store.

Well there is coal. Hard to burn that at all, or let alone go bang. Or there is uranium. Thats almost impossible to make go bang. Gas in natural underground tanks is good too. Diesel and petrol are a bit dodgy.

Oh dear. Funny. That's what we use already....

[harry]

Nuclear can't be used on it's own anyway. The output can't be altered quickly enough th meet the varying daily load.

[harry]

Funny thing is what fossil fuel remains is getting harder to extract and more expensive. When this recession is over the cost of fossil fuels will rocket.

The true cost of nuclear power is becoming obvious to all but the dullest with the likes of San Onofre nuclear power plant and Fukushima. We have several San Onofres lurking in the background here. And we can see where Hinkley point is headed.

The value of renewable energy is that the fuel is free, so we have to utilise it as much as possible because everything else will be so much more expensive.

[The Natural Philosopher]

More lies. Of course it can. French do it on a daily basis.

The only reason we don't is that uranium is so cheap nuclear makes more money from selling into a night market than it would switched off. It costs the same in terms of build cost and maintenance whether its delivering power or not.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Uranium is free too, harry. God doesn't charge for it and has left it lying around all over the place. So is coal oil and gas. What matters is how much it costs to turn it into electricity. Nothing is more expensive than intermittent renewable energy.

More lies.,

[dennis]

That is easy to fix, just convert all the extra energy to hydrogen, after all that's what the greens claim is the solution to their variable output so it must be OK.

The only difference being that it might actually work with nuclear as you only need to buffer the output for the shut-down and start-up times which are known, unlike wind and sun.

[whisky-dave]

One of the advantages of nuclear is that you wouldn;t need to worry about c hanging loads as you'll have enough.

[Steve Firth]

Or about CO2. Harry's solar panels produce 4x the CO2 emissions of nuclear.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its much easier to fix by moving the control rods in and out of the core.

response speed is similar to coal and gas. i,e minutes

its handy to have a bit of hydro in to do the really fast and short peaks, like the 'tea' peak when everyone makes a cuppa and switches on the soaps.

Hence Dinorwig.

If you look here

You can see all the activity. Hydro and pumped is full of short sharp spikes. They make money selling into short term peak spikes.

yoiu CAN do that with steam plant - open up the steam valves and there is enough energy in the boiler to carry a few minutes before the pressure starts to drop. BUT thenm yuou have to ramp up combustion to get it back up and that teks half an hour or so with coal and nuclear, and about ten minutes with gas.

[harry]

. The output can't be altered

The French import power in peak times.

Full of crap as usual TurNiP

[harry]

Full of crap again.

It has to be dug up and refined. More polluting processes.

Now find me a price for wind orsunshine.

[harry]

,

changing loads as you'll have enough.

Oh? And what happens to the surplus?

[harry]

Clearly you know nothing about steam boilers either. The only quick ones are gas turbines.

[John Williamson]

changing loads as you'll have enough.

Use it to make hydrocarbon fuels for later use.

[Tim Streater]

Looking out of my window now harry, I see no wind. So I can't buy it for love nor money. Come midnight, the same will be true of sunshine (except at the north pole).

[The Natural Philosopher]

about 16p a Kwh hour harvested and delivered Harry,. Or 30p a Kwh if its harvested offshore.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Clealy you know nothing about steam boilers. Or how for an example, steam trains manage to lave the station without madly shovelling coal into them the moment you open the regulator. Or mamage to get up hlss without several hours of shovelling coal first.

PS how exactly did we manage to run the grid BEFORE gas turbines nuclear wind or pumped storage? when it was all coal and oil and big fat boilers.

I love watching you make a complete dick of yourself.

Carry on while I fetch more popcorn.....