Eh?
Nuclear: It produces power all the time at a predictable and controllable level. And it produces a lot of power in not a lot of space.
Renewable: Power as and when it's windy or sunny, and a lot of space for a little power.
ISTR reading that the fly ash from coal power stations is about as radioactive as nuclear waste, but nobody worrys about that much becase it's not come out of an evil nuclear power station.
Nice post.
Backup generation via gas-turbines works: the carbon footprint is low because they only run when there is not enough/too much wind.
This is probably cheaper than building 3x as many windmills. Since they run so little, one can possibly do without the steam generation part and run them at lower thermal efficiency. You have to pay for the capital cost of the plant of course - but the combination looks quite good to me (maybe not compared to nuclear or maybe nearly as good?). Arguably cheaper than coal+sequestration?
The message from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:
ISTR that Selby closed down because of unexpected geological problems. The is still plenty of coal underground. Some estimates put the UK reserves at 300 years worth before it became expedient to consider the carbon content of fuel.
In the long run irt is probably cheaper not to use it at all.
I am sure I saw a piece on the BBC not so long ago about a tin mine where the miners were back in preparing to restart production in the not too distant future.
On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 11:27:20 -0000 someone who may be "Doki" wrote this:-
Not quite.
However, those with an open mind will note the differences between Germany and the UK and thus avoid the elementary mistake of thinking that Germany is precisely the same as the UK. This is summarised by the following critique of their report of a few years ago, in "Wind Power in the UK" the references to which I provided in another thread.
"A critique of the E.oN Netz study
"A recent report from the German network operator E.on Netz, ?Wind Year 2003 ? an overview?, appears to suggest that capacity values are much lower, and additional balancing costs much higher, than the figures quoted above. The report also highlights a low energy productivity of German wind. It claims that the utility needs reserve capacities amounting to 50-60% of the installed wind power capacity, and that the extra balancing costs (for 6% wind) were about ?12/MWh of wind ? over six times the estimates of Figure 6. On closer inspection, there appear to be several reasons why the numbers are quite different from the ?consensus? data discussed above.
"Firstly, low wind speeds in Germany mean that the system operators will experience more fluctuations in wind output than in windier regions. To illustrate this point, assume that the average capacity factor across Germany is 15% and the corresponding capacity factor in Britain is close to its long-term average of about 30%. To generate 8.5 TWh of wind in Germany requires 6250 MW of wind plant, whereas only half that amount of plant would be required in Britain. The power swings from 6250 MW of German wind would therefore be higher than from 3125 MW of wind in Britain.
"Secondly, it appears that some of the apparent difficulties the utility has with wind are more to do with administrative procedures and barriers; the network operators tend to operate independently, so some of the benefits of an integrated network are lost.
"Thirdly, plant commitments are made several hours ahead, and the extent to which schedules are revised nearer to ?real time? is not clear. The concept of a ?one hour gate closure?, as in Great Britain, or revising a schedule up to one hour before production, appears not to be used.
"It may also be noted that the report does not discuss the all-important question of the interaction between variations in consumer demand and variations in wind output."
I will add that we already know how at least 8% wind works in Scotland. I think we can conclude that Scotland is rather more representative of the UK than Germany.
The message from TheOldFellow contains these words:
IIRC they produce plutonium which is only available for use after reprocessing and then it could be more attractive as a bomb component than as reactor fuel.
In the 1980s? And the rest!
MBQ
On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 11:36:38 -0000 someone who may be "Doki" wrote this:-
Using a search engine will reveal any number of stories which show that this claim is incorrect.
I am most interested in what is able to predict the level of output in a nuclear station, when they have a history of sudden failures. Like any other bit of equipment they can suddenly fail for a host of reasons. The unpredictability of nuclear stations is the main reason why the pumped storage schemes were built, at considerable cost. However, the pumped storage schemes are one of the few good things to come out of the nuclear electricity programme. Their flexibility is vital in dealing with sudden failures, for example when the coal conveyor fell down at Longannet (the second largest coal fired power station in the UK and perhaps Europe).
They can be controlled in a fashion, though if one of many things have gone wrong it is not possible to make them generate electricity by willpower alone.
One of the main problems with nuclear stations is that their output cannot be varied rapidly, which is the main reason they cannot be used to backup other forms of generation. They can be operated at reduced output after some faffing about, of which Hunterston B is an example . This means they are not as controllable as say a coal fired power station.
There are claims that newer designs of reactor are more controllable. This has yet to be proved, but I'll take them at face value for the moment.
They do indeed. That means that if something goes wrong, with the plant itself or the connections to it, then there is a big hole in the supply. That is in marked contrast to wind generated electricity, where the failure of single items will leave afar smaller hole in the supply.
Africa has always been hungry, and it has nothing to do with climate change. If they learned how to govern themselves and stopped fighting each other Africa could feed itself quite easily. Just look what Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe.
MBQ
No, the biggest favour would be to give everyone access to clean water and healthcare. That would save far more lives than may be threatened by rising sea levels.
MBQ
Guess what's more predictable than the power output from a nuclear power station? The tides. Oh, and that the sun will shine. If either of these two fail, we'll be dead and none of this will matter. Using these vast resources to power our planet is simply a matter of political will. Availability is not in question.
Vide supra.
Citation needed.
Because his Dad didn't go all the way to Baghdad in 1991 and he wanted to be able to say "look Dad I did it!" (and the oil) Tragic isn't the word.
Paul
Why?
The grid is already designed to cope with local outages in generating capacity. there's no need for wholesale upgrade.
We all accept that if Wind Power is used there needs to be plenty of backup capacity in the system.
The power from Galashiels is used locally. Feltham gets its power from somewhere, but certainly not all the way from Galashiels.
It's the same principle that you can buy your electricity from any of a number of suppliers but the power you actually use is always generated "locally".
MBQ
In message , at 22:58:50 on Thu, 6 Mar
2008, "George (dicegeorge)" remarked:If we are reduced to a stone-age existence by a combination of energy poverty and global warming, this is not an issue. You just pile it all in a big heap somewhere like the Isle of Man and tell everyone to keep away.
You can also see that in fact the costs of building enough grid to get scottish wind power down to england, is being hotly disputed.
In that respect scotland is LESS representative the germany. Its remote,unpopulated, and has its own government..
>
The Danish and german experience shows that run in this mode, they generate nearly as much CO2 as if the windmills hadn't been built.
And nearly double the cost of the windpower.
No. Check out the graphs. Nuclear is way cheaper than wind.
Given the unpredicability of wind power, and the transmission problems, I'm not so sure that's true.
For every KWh *used* at final destination is another matter - but the question then arises as to whether the vast areas of wind farms needed to produce that guaranteed supply are a sensible solution, or if there's a better way of doing things...
Bah, just offset that by building more wind farms...
Maybe it will become our public duty when the wind falls to go to the nearest wind turbine and breathe heavily on the blades?
It is *no way* designed to take 60% of the countrysides power needs from one end to the other. Yes it can route round one lost power station, not half the countries capacity.
If the south east is becalmed, it needs to.
The problem here is we aren;t talking bullshit marketing: we are talking realities.
If we cannot use teh wind in one part of the country to cover the lack of wind in another, there is little point in building it.
It is preceisely this issue 'but the wind is always blowing somewhere in the ~UK" that windies use to cover 'but sometimes the wind doesn't blow' arguments.
Basically either you:-
- transport the energy, (large expensive grid)
- store the energy (very large, very expensive reservoirs up hills)
- have enough backup capacity to cover the TOTAL NEEDS of any area ..(basically working well below par efficiency wise,and costing as much as if you didn't bother with the windmills at all).
Large baseband coal and oil steam turbine stations can be made damned efficient..but the price you pay is they cant be spun up and down quickly.
For backup you need gas turbines..nowhere near as efficient.
Result. No net carbon gains.
sure. taking the price to 1200% of any cometition, and covering the entire country with a windmill every hundred yards.
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