Indeed. I've been round Ffestiniog in the mid 60s; Impressive. But smalls.. :-( But I didn't want to overcomplicate things. Assume an 'e.g.' placed in front of 'Dinorwig'
There exists about 1.5GW of hydro in Scotland of which 500MW or so is amenable to convert to pumped storage.
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is probably the right geography to just about double our PS. taking it from 7% of our demand for just two hours, to maybe 15% of our demand for two hours.
Or 7% of our demand for 4 hours!
so it's ideal to cover total loss of wind for 4 days or total loss of strong sun for 6 months...
You obviously didn't bother to read even the single post I linked, let alone the rest of the thread.
The post linked demonstrated quantitively that nuclear can't be relied upon beyond the early 2020s, and it would take some years to build and commission new plant, starting now. In addition, other links posted in the same thread show that commercial interests are already unwilling to invest in new nuclear without government 'guarantees' (=underwriting=subsidies). All that means you are wanting to build plant with a projected lifetime of 40 years, but cannot GUARANTEE to be able to use it economically ever at all, and with a reasonable possibility that beyond about a quarter of that, it will become very uneconomic indeed.
I asked a perfectly valid question based on the fact that wind has dismally failed for the last two days, nearly three. It creeps up, now, but is still only 2.4% ok UK demand.
As TNP pointed out, we haven't lived within our energy budget for this country since the population was only a few million.
And TNP comprehensively rebutted any shortage-of-nuclear-fuel arguments, which as I assume you haven't seen due to your head-in-the-sand attitude to his posts, so I'm reposting it for your enjoyment and education:
You never asked for one. That's DECCS own estimate on stockpiled plutonium actually.
I guess you believe everything you read in the guardian.
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since uranium comes at about 1% U235, 99% of all the yellowcake we process is still there as U238 somewhere - if it hasn't been made into armour piercing shells or Boeing jumbo mass balance weights or racing yacht keels.
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its not worth breeding into plutonium. But we could.
So we have a LOT of potential nuclear fuel in the nation already. A huge amount. U-238 isn't even classed as a material that comes under radioactive safety regulation.
"Estimated Future Stocks: It is estimated that the combined stocks of depleted uranium could reach around 106,000 tU by 2020, although this quantity could be reduced according to use. These stocks are thought to roughly consist of depleted uranium from the enrichment of natural uranium (40%), enrichment of reprocessed uranium (20%), reprocessing of spent fuel (25%) and military stocks (15%) "
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you have plonked me for telling a truth you simply didn't want to hear, that makes you a very silly little plonker, when all is said and done.
YOU are the hand wavy not-a-calculation-or-a-fact-in-sight person here, not me.
I see you haven't commented on my reply to your handwavy post complaining that I hadn't cited any sources where I cited three sources that totally endorsed the point I was making, then? Thought not.
you are contemptible. No, you are beneath contempt.
And then you have the bare faced aiudaicity to accuse others of having
'no rational, constructive contribution to make then ...'
in GreenSpeak the truth is what Jonathan Porritt says it is, and if he says we are all going to light our house with the farts from eating brown rice and beansprouts that's the One True Way and you will be dame end to eternity if you even THINK otherwise.
Anyway I'm going back to coding the next blockbuster; "Greens versus radical Islam: the race to the stone age". You pick a team and see who can remove more wisdom, rationalism wealth and democracy from the world whilst maintaining the spurious moral high ground, and kill the most people before reverting to the neolithic.
Indeed. That would be thoughtcrime. And even to have an incredulous look on your face when the next set of wind turbines is described as "providing energy for 100,000 homes" is facecrime.
And I disagree completely - we know nuclear fission works and whilst we've been twiddling our thumbs, some other competant nations have at least been developing it.
We have new nuclear whose builds should be commencing soon which will be available by 2020 ish.
I'd rather spend my tax on that than waste any more money on renewables which simply do not work that well for us as a nation.
I'm not a lover of wind power, but surely on the days when the wind does blow it reduces our consumption of fossil fuels? Which can then be used another day?
A bit but not by an amount equal to what they have produced because you need to have backup plant spinning ready or run plant at less than capacity (which is ineffcient) to take up the slack as the wind varies.
We still do have hundreds of years of coal. If that plonker Scargill hadn't started a fight with the government we might even have been able to get to it.
You have a coal station, with a nice big fire going and a boiler full of hot water running away nicely. Then Mr Fish stands up and says it'll be windy tomorrow, so you put the fire out and let the boiler cool off. Then he changes his mind. so you light the fire again, takes a few hours to get it going, and start heating up the boiler. Turns out he was right the first time, so all that fuel you burned heating it up again is wasted.
There are a lot of similar scenarios which are a lot more likely, but have similar effects, and they happen all the time.
Wind plus hydro works OK - you run the hydro on the windless days, and when it's really windy you can even pump water back up. But your hydro system _on_ _its_ _own_ must be capable of supplying your entire demand. besides, there aren't enough valleys here, might be OK for NZ or Norway but not anywhere else.
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