Half of Sizewell B switched off

[Pancho]

You can pay for Scottish infrastructure, I don't trust them. Not to mention transmission.

Have you ever considered generating hydrogen in periods of excess supply? :-)

[Andy Burns]

yes, a more obvious now that today's solar notch has inched-in a bit from the edge of the graph.

[Andy Burns]

The gravytrainicity website talks about storing pressurised air in their mine shafts to get double-duty out of them, perhaps they could generate hydrogen and store that instead of air, to get triple-duty out of them?

[newshound]

Talk is cheap. I believe that cavities in salt deposits (where the salt has been dissolved out) can serve as reasonable pressure containment. Coal deposits in limestone OTOH are pretty porous. Good luck pressurising them without lining the shafts with concrete.

[newshound]

A few million displaced residents might disagree.

[newshound]

Certainly true that EDF have been actively cooperating with Grid by managing load reductions at Sizewell to help grid with stability.

[Andy Burns]

They do talk of having a pressure dome on top and lining them, but the motor/generators will be inside the dome, so good luck keeping the H2 outside the explosive range :-P

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

That sounds like a very sensible idea on the face of it and maybe not that difficult to implement.

[Chris Hogg]

There's this impossibly large scheme for Strathdearn, above Loch Ness, by someone calling themselves 'Scottish Scientist'

[Mike Humphrey]

Loch Ness is fresh water, and is now being used to supply drinking water to Inverness, so probably not a good idea to pump in salt water. Changing the level might cause issues for the canal traffic as well, though I guess it would be possible to modify the locks to cope.

There's already a pumped storage scheme at Foyers (Loch Ness is the lower level). Probably quite a few other hydro stations in the Highlands could be upgraded to pumped storage - but once again capacity of the lines to England is an issue.

Mike

[Andrew]

Or get *paid* to take all that excess crude oil, and pump it back down into the depleted North Sea wells. ?.

[Andrew]

would be an ecological disaster. The 'scottishscientist' idea has already been debunked, from what I gather.

[Andrew]

That would make social distancing on the deep tube lines (that would be flooded) very difficult (or easy).

[Andrew]

There is BIG hole in Fulham where the TBM's being used to bore the London supersewer were lowered down.

Deep hole too, through the clay layer and down to the hard stuff.

[bert]

Mafia have already done it - with somebody's feet in the blocks.

[bert]

I have no wish to live on top of a bomb thank you very much.

[Jethro_uk]

We're starting with a public - certainly in the UK - that has f*ck all grasp of basic science and makes it a positive feature in cultural life. I've lost count of the "discussions" where posters assert that "hydrogen energy" is the future without a single clue that they even understand what "hydrogen" is.

The fact that we have the science and technology to put a nuclear power station wherever we want on the planet - complete with the proven ability to manage the waste - and choose not to does rather support the more whacky conspiraloons.

[The Natural Philosopher]

the solar does drop to zero. but since its added to demand to make the graphs it shoes there as a notch

[The Natural Philosopher]

feasible, bit an equivalent nuclear capacity at one tenth the price and with almost no environmental impact would be saner

[newshound]

So maybe 150m?

Let's say a 20 metre cube of lead as the "weight", mass of around

100,000 tonnes. Stored energy 50 MWh.