The Stand- By demon

[Owain]

That's almost so cheap it wouldb't be worth metering ;-)

Owain

[Andy Hall]

So what? If that's where the expertise is, then use it.

It's a very long past the time when the silly UK island mentality of the past makes any sense.

[John Rumm]

Which based on the 777 figures would be a full load of fuel each way - so about 600L per person round trip.

Looking at the amount of fuel used I would expect the plane to be more efficent... you would need a car capable of doing over 90mpg to equal it.

[Derek ^]

Absolutely.

It would appear that the technological lead we thought we had in the late '60s and early '70's came to naught.

But didn't the French adopt the US "Washinghouse" (of Three Mile Island fame) technology, as evidenced by all those reactors al Loon Plage on the ferry approach to Dunkirk ?

DG

[Ian Stirling]

Well - yes. The 'too cheap to meter' claim wasn't really about that. It was more that if your electricity system is 100% nuclear, then metering is less important, as long as you have enough capacity that it can cope with the peak demand. Because it costs not that much more to run a nuclear plant at 90% capacity than it does to run it at 40%, as the fuel costs are so low.

However.

This only really makes sense in the context where you've undergone a _massive_ nuclear building program - somewhere around 20-40 times the current electricity supply (IIRC), and you've switched all the central heating back to electric, and all industrial plants that can run on it too.

Otherwise, as it's unmetered, everyone puts their heating on it anyway, and it all falls over, because it can't cope with the load.

electricity demand is about 400TWh.

Total UK energy demand is 170 ish million tons of oil equiv. At 40GJ/ton is 4*10^10 * 2*10^8 = 8*10^18J, or a staggering 8 exajoules (yes, I had to look up the prefix) of energy. In Wh terms, that's 2000TWh or so. Or electricity is about 1/5th of total energy use.

As nuclear is about 1/5th of electricity use at the moment, we'd need to grow it by 25 times to cope with all our energy needs.

Assuming that pretty much anything that uses gas, coal, or oil, and isn't moving can use electricity as easily.

Neglecting the transport sector, which is about 1/4 or so of total demand, that'd be 18 times the current amount.

Or 19, as you might as well retire the old stations anyway if you're building that many. Hell, call it 20 for a round number :)

[Ian Stirling]

A little more than that.

Airliners tend to fly rather more direct courses than cars drive.

[Andy Wade]

One of mine - a 1998 vintage Grundig - takes about 8 W. This set leaves the main SMPS 'chopper' running all the time, just to power the IR receiver and micro. The designs which take 2 W or less in standby usually have separate low-power PSU circuits for the essential standby functions.

And then there's digital set-top boxes that don't really have to be left in standby all the time, but usually are. 7+ million $ky boxes at ~20 W a piece is a mere 140 MW down the drain. If you assume 16 hours a day unnecessary usage that translates to around 3 PJ (petajoules) of electricity per year, or say ~10 PJ of primary energy (= something like a quarter of a million tonnes of oil equivalent).

[John Rumm]

20 seems a bit excessive.... I spose it keeps the RF/IF/Demod side alive to receive downloads etc.

So Rupert Murdoch really may result in the end of civilisation as we know it... oh hang on a minute, that might happen even without global warming!

[John Rumm]

better over water as well ;-)

[Ian Stirling]

They have to be on all the time for a very good reason. If they were not on all the time, then Sky would have to allocate more bandwidth to the card control channel, that kills peoples cards that haven't paid their bill.

A million tons of oil here, a million tons of oil there, and pretty soon you're spending all your money on oil... (a million tons of oil costs some 300 million. Of which we need to export 300 million of stuff, to stay standing still.)

[Andy Wade]

It's about right though, only the newer designs are doing much better. In most cases the only change in standby mode is that the video o/p's are disabled, along with any front panel display. Famously there was one box which took more power in standby than when on - this had no display other than a red LED which came on in standby...

[dcbwhaley]

Now add in the cost of reprocessing the spent fuels and storing the long half-life waste for several centuries. Oh, sorry, I forgot. That wil be somebody else's problem.

[dcbwhaley]

You are showing your age :-). I bet you remeber Zeta too.

[Ian Stirling]

Well - personally, I would be quite happy to have it literally in my back yard - in deep underground storage.

IMO, anyone in the future who digs down to underground stored nuclear fuels deserves all they get.

Even adding in the cost of reprocessing, the fuel is not a large component of the cost. And to raise the earlier point, if it's reprocessed in the UK, all of the money goes to builders, techs, ... that work in the UK.

[Mary Fisher]

I do! Nobody else seems to though :-(

Mary

>

[Mary Fisher]

So would I.

Mary

>

[Dave Plowman (News)]

They also tend to fly less than full on scheduled services. If you're going to apply the figures for full aircraft do it with cars too. So at least quadruple their MPG.

Air transport lovers always to quote the most economical aircraft passenger miles for their purposes - something like a full 747 on long haul. So I think it only fair to quote a diesel MPV with 8 seats all full cruising on a motorway - say the equivalent of 320 mpg. ;-)

[Tony Williams]

A pal used to do the Atlantic regularly, with BA. On a few occasions the plane flew to the US with less than 6 passengers aboard. He said that as far as Atlantic flights were concerned if a flight was scheduled then it had to fly.

[Tony Bryer]

"In September 2006, [BA] passenger capacity, measured in Available Seat Kilometers, was 2.5 percent above September 2005. Traffic, measured in Revenue Passenger Kilometers, was higher by 1.5 percent. This resulted in a passenger load factor down 0.8 points versus last year, to 78.8 percent."

year I've been to Denver and Melbourne and in each case the plane was all but full. The average car occupancy is 1.x people where x is, I suspect, a fairly small number.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It may be cheaper just to dump the spent fuel rods in a store, and bury the low level waste.