UK power generation

they need to bear in mind that in Denmark - a country entirely supplied by wind - a few Christmasses ago, the wind stopped. All their power had to be imported. Mostly it came from Germany wqho in those days had a surplus of nuclear energy.

Reply to
charles
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Er no. It has coal and gas power as well. It never shut down any of it - it couldn't.

It also has CHP - a lot of which burns rubbish.

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- a few Christmasses ago, the wind stopped. All their power had to be

Nope. they pulled hydro in from sweden IIRC as well.

If you want to look at the relative CO2 emission of say Denmark, Germany the UK and France, the 2009 figures (pre German nuclear shutdown) are

Germamny 570 Demmark 581 UK 490 France 87

That is the most CO2 emitting countries have lots of windmills.

The lowest have more nuclear.

IN fact sorted by intensity all the lowest countries have hydro nuclear or a mixture of both as the largest component of their grids.

Those with high investment ion wind and solar show no significant reduction in emissions at all.

The conclusion is that if people were really concerned about emissions and based their policy on evidence, we would be as near all nuclear as possible

Since we arent, we can conclude that emissions reduction is not the aim of renewable energy protagonists.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

They simply do not understand things like that, they just have this fundamental belief that all power can come from renewables.

Nuclear is very very bad because of radiation and they make bombs from it and you cannot get rid of it.

Trying to explain the simplest things about that to them they just glaze over and do not what to hear anything different. Bit like questioning any fundaments of religion..

Or even how do you back up wind generation , cos thats simply the wind is blowing "somewhere" all the time. That may be but its not somewhere useful thats making the power required or anywhere near it..

Perhaps this is the new belief system?..

Reply to
tony sayer

some years ago, my younger daughter applied for a job - for which she was well qualified - with a left wing local authority. Unfortunately she had worked in the Ministry of Defence, so she was not chosen -"because you know about bombs and things"

Reply to
charles

It may fit in better with your world view, but apparently not that of the WNA, upon whose figures I based my worst case analaysis. So I don't know why you should think it's an odd statement for him to make. However, see below ...

nuclear spent fuel legacy rather than world supplies of fuel. Further, it is dated March 2011, but the article March 2012, so it seems rather strange, if it is the SOLE basis of the article, that the Gruaniad should be reporting it a year late. Also, later in the article we have:

So it seems likely that the report is NOT the sole basis for the article, and that Sir David's quote headlining the article, the one you think is suspect, came from elsewhere - an interview with him, telephone conversation, or whatever. I suppose the only way to resolve the matter would be to mail the journalist and ask her for the context of the quote.

That is your right, but, as far as I can see, the figures given in the article, though incomplete compared with the report, are correct where they have been quoted from it.

In drawing from the report, the article is clearly focussing on the Pu as being more 'newsworthy', rather than the report's conclusions as a whole, and in that sense I would agree that it is misleading if the ostensible purpose of the article was to report the report. But, as deduced above, I don't think it was.

Reply to
Java Jive

Reply to
Java Jive

But following on from your impractical and perhaps rather bigoted suggestion of dividing the country up into green and non-green areas, it would be a perfectly feasible area to generate all electricity from green sources.

It hasn't been becalmed for more than two days here. There's scope for almost continuous tidal power generation at minimal expense, and there's plenty of running water to dam for hydro from small to large scale.

Keep awake at the back there! That IS part of our energy policy in the UK:

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I haven't finished reading this yet, but ...

There's something for and against most arguments put forward by most people here, myself not excepted. The statement I would most dispute is (p50) ...

" Although there is a finite supply of uranium available, this will not be a limiting factor for investment in nuclear capacity for the next 50 years."

... which runs counter to the WNA's own figures quoted previously.

Whereas the anti-green, pro-nuclear lobby here are probably not going to like a great deal of it, for example (p49) ...

"Onshore Wind. Estimates of the resource potential for onshore wind typically include judgments about limited public acceptability of this technology. An assessment on this basis is that it could provide around 80 TWh/year (i.e. around 15% of projected 2030 demand).

Offshore Wind. Offshore wind resource is estimated to be over 400 TWh/year, with significant potential for generation around Scotland and the East and West coasts of England.

Marine. The UK has significant potential for wave, tidal stream and tidal range generation. The practical potential for wave energy is considered to be 40 TWh/year, while that for tidal range exploitation around the UK (including the Severn) is also estimated at around 40 TWh/year. The tidal stream resource is the most uncertain of the marine resources due to uncertainty around the correct physical estimation methodology, with estimates ranging from 18-200 TWh/year.

Solar. There is significant resource potential for solar photovoltaic (PV) generation in the UK (e.g. around 140 TWh/year based on the resource potential from south-facing roofs and facades), although this currently appears to be a very expensive option (see section 3)."

Another note: One of the bl**dy irritating things about the report is the insane muddling of units, for example GW and TWh/year. Why they can't just stick to GW for power and GWyr for energy only Sir Humphrey knows:

1GW = 24 x 365 / 1000 TWh/yr = 8.76 TWh/yr 1TWh/yr= 1000 / ( 24 x 365 ) GW = 0.11 GW
Reply to
Java Jive

Please don't top post.

Reply to
Huge

You're still ignoring the fact that, as TNP says, you can recover a lot by reprocessing and you can in effect create a lot more by breeding.

Both of these *still* suffer that problems that have been pointed out already:

1) backup for when the wind just doesn't blow 2) same backup only faster for when the wind blows *too hard* and the turbines shut down with no notice.

What do you do when it's dark? What do you do when it's daylight but

*foggy*?

You're still looking at all this in entirely the wrong way. You're seeing that this stuff can potentially produce lots of TWh/year, dividing it down and saying look, on average we can produce of our requirements. Trouble is, none of it is dispatchable. You can't turn it on when needed and you can't store the excess output when it's not needed (not in the UK, anyway).

So you end up needing a many-times over-capacity in renewables so you can cope with the worst case of a large high-pressure in winter producing no wind, fog, and little in the way of waves.

And, to boot, you need a many-times over-capacity grid so that you can do what you are *not* supposed to do with grids, which is to ship power from one end of the country to another.

Got that costed, have you?

Reply to
Tim Streater

In message , Tim Streater writes

We're saved, saved I tell ya

haleleuia

doesn't even walk on water, just sprays a bit of it

Reply to
geoff

Why don't they squeeze it a bit more a liquify the air thus getting the latent heat as well.

Like the cost of a kilowatt (hour?) $1,470...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Some of them do.

Someone should insist the windmill owners install them, as a condition of buying their energy on an open market when there's demand rather than to the detriment of (mainly?) gas-fired generators when it happens to be windy.

Reply to
Andy Burns

You know how hard it is to find old posts in threads. But the WNA say

"Thus the world's present measured resources of uranium (5.3 Mt) in the cost category around present spot prices and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for about 80 years"

Could you remind me where they have a figure similar to the 2023 date attributed to Prof. King by the Guardian?

80 years of course excludes fast breeders by saying "conventional reactors".

Andy

Reply to
Andy Champ

It for sure is. Read Delingpoles book 'watermelons - green on the outside, red on the inside'.

Climate change has been siezed by those who thing an unelected or quasi elected bunch of socialists can run the world better using ideology, than - in this case - professional engineers using sound science and engineering principles. . Not surprisingly the heartland for this green supremacist, movement ins in Germany, and we all know what happened the last time they had a Great Idea about How the World Should Be Run.

Stasi-Jive will be there shooting people who have 4WD cars, come the revolution.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Plonked

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

You're still ignoring the fact that, for the UK "10-15 yr" stockpiles that he cites to last anything like that long, the vast majority of the stockpiles would have to be burnt in FBRs (assuming we can make the technology actually WORK this time), but, AFAIAA, not a single new-build plant is an FBR, they're all PWRs, which require FISSILE material.

The FISSILE stocks that we have are 6,000tHM reprocessed by the Thorpe plant from the spent fuel of AGRs, and the 100tPu already discussed. If these numbers represent stocks that are 100% useful with little or no inert content, then at the current rate of fuel-energy exchange, the maximum electricity this represents is 8100/160 = 38GWyr, or about

5 years worth of the current nuclear contribution, or about 12.5% of the minimum projected 40yr life of reactor plant.

The remainder of the stocks are depleted uranium, which is not usable in fission-based reactors.

Noone here is denying that though.

Ask the committee, it's their report, not mine.

Again, stop addressing me, it's not my report.

Again, stop addressing me, it's not my report.

Reply to
Java Jive

I think the apparent contradiction between different WNA pages may be explained in that the 80 year figure was for current (or then current

- although the page was last updated this year, that sentence could have been written years ago and not updated s>

Reply to
Java Jive

I still don't see it. A quick scan of the PDF suggests requirements of

100,000 tons per annum at most by 2020, and data from elsewhere suggest reserves in excess of 8,000,000 tons. That's the 80 years.

Not surprisingly they predict a price rise.

But this does not tie up with the Guardian's "Global supplies of uranium will begin to run out in 2023 when UK will rely on domestic nuclear supply, predicts Sir David King". Which is 11 years.

Andy

Reply to
Andy Champ

As with all; such things, there is a wealth of difference between selecting

- known reserves that are in production, no recycling policy, no fast breeder reactors, high nuclear build rate (the green pessimism scenario)

and

- exploitation of all viable economic reserves

- exploitation of new reserves

- full fuel recycling and burn up

- full breeder reactor program.

You can if you cherry pick your date get between 15 and 5000 years.

Recycling multiplies the fuel productivity by 100 times on its own.

Breeding probably gives you another 100 times .

Neither are cost effective at the moment because yellowcake is diort cheap at the moment.

But the aim of the greens is to declare that recycling fuel is bad dirty and dangerous because then we get left with a nice bogey man of spent fuel rods that will cost a fortune to get rid of.

Remember the aim of the game is to completely shut down all nuclear programs and ensure that we burn gas, with a few windmills thrown up to look green, but not actually do anything.

That way Russia has effective control over Europe.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Well, all I can say is that's not my recollection of the report from when I read it a while back. For example, the section numbered 8 beginning p3 (printed numbers), 13 (pdf numbers):

"Production from high confidence RAR is projected to be adequate to meet all requirements in the low demand case. Therefore, deficits are not projected to be a factor in the low demand case. As we progress to the middle demand case, relatively high confidence known resources fall short of market based production requirements by only

146 000 t U, or by less than the annual demand in each year from 2041 to 2050. With the addition of lower confi- dence (undiscovered) EAR-II, resources actually exceed requirements by about 2 million t U. However, a combi- nation of timing when production centres will be cost justified and the size of their resource base precludes full utilization of resources, resulting in a projected shortfall of 844 500 t U between production from known resources and market based production requirements.

The deficits are even more dramatic in the high demand case. For example, known resources fall short of market based production requirements by 2 394 000 t U in the high demand case. A shortfall of 2 950 350 t U is projected between production from known resources and market based production requirements in the high demand case. The first deficit between production from known resources and requirements is projected to occur in 2026 in the high demand case, compared to 2035 for the middle demand case."

They then go on to discuss that if the market price is high enough, then other currently speculative resources (SR) might be available to meet demand, and that exploration might be triggered, which may find further resources, some of which may be easy to exploit.

As a relevant aside, the WNA page that you linked talks about the relationship between exploration and discovery, and claims the fallacy of assuming that known reserves are all there is, and this is certainly true. However, it's also true that the low-hanging fruit get picked first, and we can see some evidence of that even in their own data, in the graph entitled Known Uranium Resources and Exploration Expenditure, where in recent years at the right hand end of the graph the expenditure on exploration has risen sharply, but there is a shortfall in discovery of cheaply exploitable resources - the graphs are diverging quite significantly now.

I should also point out that for nuclear power the actual cost of the fuel is a relatively small part of the cost of the resultant electricity. Nevertheless, the greater portion of our electricity comes from it, inevitably the greater our vulnerability to price increases. Further, we have already seen, I have linked to the article(s), that over the last year or so the utility companies who are tendering to build the nuclear plant want certain 'assurances' from government, in other words, they want certain costs to be underwritten by government, or in other words, they want hidden subsidies.

This suggests that the economics of nuclear generation in this country are borderline at best.

King's quote as reported by the Guardian matches pretty well the graph at the bottom of the WNA page I linked, and in the IAEA document with Fig 16 at the bottom of p39 (printed) 49 (pdf), though the latter only displays RAR, not the less assured resources.

So, given these predictions, that we have no indigenous resources to fall back on, and that already the economics are doubtful, is it wise to commit such huge sums on a massive new nuclear build? I cannot be convinced that it is.

Further, we are buying in these PWR solutions. There seems little opportunity for us to be anything but clients. There will be no hi-tech industry spawned in this country, etc.

Surely it has to make more sense to spend most or all of this money enabling us to use reserves that we do actually have? This will also give us an opportunity to become world leaders in a new industrial direction - rather than buying-in solutions from the world, we might end up selling solutions to it instead, a far more profitable place to be.

Reply to
Java Jive

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