The true cost of wind...

[tony sayer]

I was asking Java Jive where that was quoted from, least give him the chance to reply and state "where" he got his facts and figures from;!...

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 13/09/13

OH he linked to the article weeks ago and it simply didn't say what he claimed. He is just lying. Its a 'green' thing apparently.

[Java Jive]

How many more times do I have to link this?

Bottom graph entitled: "Reference Case Supply"

The red l>

[Java Jive]

As replied above to Tony, I have explained that the figures came from one of WNA's own graphs showing likely supply and demand.

No, it's a UKIP or pro-nuclear thing apparently, probably both.

[Java Jive]

As replied to Tony, they do.

Is your foot hurting, by any chance? If not it should be, because you've just shot yourself in it! Again!

The report you have linked bears out COMPLETELY what I have been saying. This is unsurprising, since it's a WNA report, and I have been linking to their data:

"[...] the WNA expects demand for uranium to increase considerably up to 2030, resulting in a substantial need for additional supplies of nuclear fuel. [...] about 97,000 tU in the reference scenario. Provided that all uranium mines currently under development enter service as planned, the report finds that the uranium market should be adequately supplied to 2025; beyond this time, new mines will be required."

Yet again, despite many previous complaints - you do this so often that it has to be a deliberate attempt to cause confusion - you fail to clarify that breeding fuel requires a DIFFERENT technology than that currently planned for the UK by HMG.

Breeder technology has been shown to work, but there are only one or two plants in operation worldwide, while the majority have been bedeviled by problems, are way over-budget, and long overdue. In the few cases where figures are given, load-factors have been disappointing.

The UK's only attempt at this technology was Dounreay, which was hardly a reassuring beacon to light the way forward - an almost criminally negligent history in terms of the safety of its containment of waste has resulted in heavy radio-active particles being washed along the coast. One can say for certain that breeder technology is further away in development terms than the current planned new nuclear build based on straight fission technology, and we seem to be having difficulties enough with that. It is true that breeder technology, if time proves it to be sufficiently safe, reliable, and cheap, has a better long term outlook than fission technology, but in the UK's position of having relatively secure supplies of carbon-based fuels, the enormous expense of participating in its development makes little sense.

(p25 pdf) "While Fast Reactors hold out the promise of a considerably more effective use of uranium, their actual deployment to date has been relatively limited, with prototype reactors being built in the US, France, UK, Russia, Japan, Germany, India, Kazakhstan and China. However, although some 20 reactors have been operated, the technology, with its fuel cycle, has not progressed past the prototype stage, and has not benefitted from the 50 years of learning curves and economies of scale that LWRs have experienced while becoming the dominant world technology. [para] The economics of fast reactors are therefore not well understood, but are generally held to be inferior to ?once-through LWR? as long as there are reasonably assured uranium supplies at credible prices. Since the proportion of the cost of LWR power which derives from uranium is small (3% is commonly quoted), rising uranium prices are only a weak incentive to change technology. Reduced security of uranium supply is a more credible trigger for change, particularly for a country such as the UK with no indigenous uranium resources, and no strategic involvement in ensuring the security of uranium supply."

Actually, it says so not only on the page I previously linked but also in the very report you linked above!

[Java Jive]

No, I did not. This is the exchange to which you refer:

So someone asked me "Does it work?" and I gave an obvious example. There was no implication that the same technology would necessarily be appropriate in another situation, merely a statement that it could be done. Later, I went on to quote from my stepfather's biography concerning his own work on the subject which was developed by others into a now widely used, I believe, industrial process.

Nya, nya, nya (yawn) ...

Firstly, nuclear power has nothing to do per se with CC. Secondly, I don't suppose the BBC will ever managed to be completely unbiased to everyone's satisfaction, but I am certain that it is less biased than, at least, several others here, particularly yourself.

[Java Jive]

[Tim Streater]

There's no need for one as nuclear has produced all the electricity it promised. Unlike wind, which was promised to "generate enough electricity to supply xxx homes", but in practice only does that now and again.

[Tim Streater]

Gosh, new mines, eh? Never seen those ever!

Gosh, different technology eh? You mean that if we choose technology A today, we'll be forbidden by the laws of nature from using technology B at some other moment?

[Java Jive]

Which is the impression I remember.

This seems rather contradictory to the paragraph above. However, I have no particular knowledge of the NG other than the general, from programmes like the one I've mentioned and what one or two more knowledgeable people here have posted. From those sources, I'd gathered that there was a significant problem keeping variable supply met from constant sources. Someone more knowledgeable than myself may be prepared to argue the point with you, but unless and until that happens, I am happy to concede it.

[Terry Fields]

IIRC, and I suspect you might have glossed over the point, that the issue arose during what I seem to recall as being a 'CO2 from power generation must be captured at all costs' phase. While the precise exchange might not have linked the two directly, the context was there in the contemporaneous threads that you were discussing.

The only reason I recall this much is that the idea was laughable, and showed that you had done nothing apart from having the (ludicrous) thought in the first place.

[Java Jive]

It would be interesting to add the cost of all its UK subsidies to the UK nuclear units produced, I might try and do that sometime.

However, >

No it hasn't: Where is the "electricity too cheap to meter"?

[Tim Streater]

That waste, IIRC, related to bomb and not electricity production.

And as I have posted before, that related to the possible effects on end-user cost if *fusion* were made practicable. I'm not responsible for whether the phrase went on to be used more generally by people who should have known better, such as ignorant politicos and journos, and you.

[Java Jive]

But WE, in the UK, do not have any say on when and if they will actually be built, nor on what will be the price of fuel coming from them. By contrast, we already know that we can obtain carbon-based fuels from many sources, so if one let's us down there will be others, and also still have major reserves of two out of the three possibilities, and some reserves of the third.

Not by the laws of nature, but we might be forbidden by other laws: - The laws of economics. If we throw away shedloads of money on a dead end technology like fission, subsequently we might struggle to find enough to invest in any other even more expensive technology such as breeder. - The law of unintended consequences. If we throw away shedloads of money on a dead end technology like fission, and then find ourselves struggling to find fuel, there could be such a massive public backlash at the wastefulness that any new nuclear strategy would become politically unacceptable. - The laws of political and corporate inertia. The current UK policy on fission makes no strategic sense for us. If we really think that nuclear is the way to go, there are at least two other technologies which, though farther off initially, make more strategic sense than fission - one is breeding, the other is thorium, but the latter too suffers from the disadvantage that we have no worthwhile indigenous reserves of it. Therefore, if we really do believe in nuclear, we should be looking at breeder technology. There's nothing difficult about working this out; in my day, any O-level maths or science student could certainly have done it. So why is the UK now proposing to throw away £bns on the 'wrong' nuclear technology? A corporation exists to make money for its shareholders, and the way for it to make money is to persuade governments that they need the technology that it can provide, not one that it can't. Most of the relevant corporations in the market know about fission, but little about breeding. Meanwhile, politicians don't look further than the next elections, and make decisions on that basis, so they buy what seems to be the cheapest in the short term. So it happens that the UK decides on fission, strategically the wrong technology. Now, through sheer political inertia, no-one can change tack. The company is not going to say: "Sorry, we made a mistake, we can't supply what is best for your country. You had better sue us to get all your money back!", while the politicians are not going to say: "We made a mistake, and have wasted billions of taxpayers' money on the wrong technology!" It sure as hell is going to be difficult to change things now, even more so if we are unlucky enough that one of these white elephants actually begins to be built.

[Java Jive]

I was and remain in favour of us investing in carbon capture rather than nuclear technologies, because strategically it makes more sense for us, because we have significant reserves of carbon-based fuels, particularly coal and gas, while we have no strategic reserves of nuclear fuels. That was also the context of that discussion, and I stand by what I said in it.

As with so many of your posts, you're remembering it the way you want it to be, not the way it actually was and is, as shown by the quotes I included.

[Java Jive]

demand (obviously)

or supplies if you prefer.

[Java Jive]

I think there may have been some bomb material in it, but it all comes down to the same thing anyway, as excess supplies of military material were released to be processed for use as nuclear fuel in power stations. We're still paying to look after, AFAIAA, all the power stations' waste to date, including all those that have closed. This is how nuclear power extorts subsidies from future generations.

Although these pages attempt to rebuff/apologise for the 'lie' - I quote it because that is the phrase used therein of one of them, but it's not really a lie, just massive hype - there's really no getting away from it, the phrase was used too generally to be linked particularly with fusion. If the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission - Lewis L. Strauss addressing the Ntl. Assn. of Science Writers in New York on 16 Sept. 1954 - claims ...

"Transmutation of the elements, unlimited power, ability to investigate the working of living cells by tracer atoms, the secret of photosynthesis about to be uncovered--these and a host of other results all in 15 short years. It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter; will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history; will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age. This is the forecast for an age of peace."

... then, he cannot escape a very grave charge of high hyperbole on ALL those claims, and it is inevitable, not to mention just, that the electricity one should come to haunt nuclear power's doorstep.

So, I repeat, where is our "electricity too cheap to meter"?

[The Other Mike]

It's not contradictory, the general trend was the load dropping off at 4GW per hour or at a rate of around 50MW per minute, following a very similar load profile to yesterday, possibly close to the same day last week, and not too far away from the same date last year, with corrections for temperature, wind chill etc. Within that general downward trend was a very temporary 221MW pickup, lasting a maximum of 5 minutes.

To cope with the general downward trend conventional generation will have been scheduled to reduce output accordingly, this could be achieved by say 8 x 500MW coal fired units reducing output from 500MW to 0MW by various set times across this one hour period.

This conventional generation that is reducing output is solely working to a set target of MW output, not to control to a set frequency.

Other generation (coal, gas, nuke), that is paid to provide frequency response will attempt to cover any move away from the range of 49.95 to 50.05 Hz by increasing or decreasing output from the current level.

As the 1900-1930 programme ends the temporary load pickup is provided by pumped storage, this is normally a dispatched response, i.e. X MW 'now' or Y MW in 1 minute.

From 1920 to 2030 at 5 minute intervals Pumped Storage output was as follows

1920 684 1925 582 1930 491 1935 817 1940 748 1945 413 1950 387 1955 304 2000 276 2005 276 2010 281 2015 283 2020 333 2025 285 2030 282

So a drop in pumped storage output from 1920 to 1930 of 193MW and then an increase of 326MW by 1935

Against this background of increased pumped storage output there is still the conventional generation ramping down at 50MW a minute to follow the general load profile and to complicate matters still further during this one hour 10 minute period there was a variation in wind turbine output of from a low of 1688 to a max of 2076MW or 388MW.

[The Other Mike]

So if thats the case, let the French buld the new nuke at Hnkley. They get £95 per MWh but can't fuel it. So no generation and no payments. The only problem is the loan guarantees that EdF want. £10 billion or so.

[Terry Fields]

Using lithium hydroxide for power-generation CO2 capture is ludicrous, and you were the one that mentioned it in that a thread of that context.

Last word to you.