OT: Drax to be turned off whenever it's "too" windy or sunny

Silly question but, why do the media always show pictures of the cooling towers rather than the flues which might actually emit some CO2?

Foe the same reason they always show a picture of the Royal Exchange when discussing the Bank of England, ignorance.

There doesn't seem anything intrinsically wrong with that.

Obviously, we want Drax when there isn't enough wind or solar, so the profit it makes during those periods has to cover the fact it isn't making money when wind and solar are available.

We all know that is the basic economics of having dispatchable generation stations to cover peak periods.

The worrying thing I heard the other day, which I don't have a cite for, is that Labour recently cancelled a planned review/inquiry/analysis of the holistic costs of different electrical generation scenarios.

And where in the scheme of things are these ”cheap, clean power sources”?

I can’t see the effect of them on my energy bills.

I didn't say it was wrong, they currently cream-in the dubious biomass subsidies at times when solar and wind are operating above their long term averages.

Welsh planners apparently put preserving Yaki Dah above replacing Wylfa

Here you are, With one of the blokes that built it.

It doesn't look impressive, given it's not belching smoke or water vapour like the cooling towers

However it is the tallest chimney in the UK . An up-draught to die for.

Brian

In message snipped-for-privacy@b-howie.co.uk>, brian snipped-for-privacy@b-howie.co.uk> writes

When I were a lad, our village photographer had the opportunity to get some pictures from the top of the chimney (around the time it was built), which he duly displayed in his shop window. Rather impressive, but I don't think I would have been comfortable joining him.

Adrian

I note he omitted the word 'reliable'...

And gnarly, wrinkled hands when discussing pensions

But the DRX share price was up over 5% earlier, now about 3% up

I don't think that's possible/practical as it takes a long time to restart a thermal (coal, gas, biomass) power station. Pumped storage and nuclear don't have that problem as I recall.

Irrespecteive we cant do without Drax.

Of course they did. It's not fact driven, its profit and ideology driven politics

The question is, what's the effect, practically and economically, of taking a thermal power plant on and off line, instead of running it throughout and varying the output a little?

Indeed, that's why I mentioned the review.

I heard it in a YouTube interview of Kathryn Porter by Freddie Sayers of UnHerd, "Will blackouts come to Britain?".

She makes a comment that towards the end of their term the Conservatives had been asking probing questions about the costs of renewables, but that the work being done to establish these costs had now been suspended.

She makes the comment at 36:40 in the video.

In general, the interview is just basic stuff, rather than anything profound. FWIW, she agrees with my assertion that we should build traditional big Nuclear Stations rather than SMR, so obviously I like her :-).

In message snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Chris Hogg snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net writes

Cheap, clean, reliable - pick two.

I had a colleague at work, who believed in something he called "an existence theory". If something was possible, it would have been done already. We are where we are , How's the cold fusion doing ?

Brian

Note that Drax has 6 boilers and turbines, so 'a little' is probably 17%.

You can't just start and stop U235 reactors. A major fission decay product is Xe135 which is a massive neutron absorber. As you increase the neutron flux you get more fission and more Xe135 which absorbs a neutron to become Xe136. It poisons the reactor and you have to wait till the fission decay and neutron absorption rates are balanced. Going from 0 to 100% power can take 50-70 hours. The amount of poisoning is a function of the power level the reactor ran at and the change in power. Big changes in power having greater poisoning.

You can see the effect by watching the EDF nuclear status page. When reactors get restarted you can see the power level being ramped up over a day or so.

It's one of the reasons they run reactors at full tilt all the time.

Some of them didn't and don't.