[OT] Midnight electricity cost -£73/MWh

[Andrew]

Only if you ignore the cost of decommissioning and dealing with high level waste, but that is the price for near 100% availability

[chop]

Makes no sense to decommission. Design them to be filled with concrete when past their useby date and just build the next one next to it.

Makes no sense to do that either. Given that very little of a fuel rod is actually consumed, it makes much more sense to store used fuel rods in a water pool until it makes economic sense to reprocess them or use them in breeders.

It isn't in fact a significant price compared with the stupid cost of having gas backup for 'renewables'

[Paul]

Mud is abrasive, and will damage the running surface of the turbine (depending on type, as there are low head and high head schemes). It might also attack the fluid bearings (bearings with a normal rating of 1200 years, due to the lack of friction).

Running surfaces can be damaged by cavitation, and water supplies for generators can also have some amount of suspended solids of their own.

If you weren't using a hydroelectric setup, and were using the concrete block on pulley idea, the "life of the rope" is part of your equation. Elevator cables, I don't seem to see those changed all that often.

Storage can also be done with flywheels (just a plug for Popular Mechanics and their fetish with flywheels :-) ).

The Chinese are currently building a battery bank, which has a mix of Lithium (good impedance characteristics) and Vanadium Flow. The Vanadium people, on one of their websites, say Vanadium does not scale up to "grid scale". But yet, the Chinese are doing it on a battery. No, their battery is not "ten days worth". Looks more like an experiment than anything. Maybe this is something a person with a lot of Vanadium does as a hobby.

Paul

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not half as much as it has gone up by putting renewable energy costs on it. The problem is that careful negative regulation has driven nuclear build costs and times sky high. Hinkley was supposed to be £3bn a GW. It is now around £8bn/GW. So at some level around £20bn of capital is tied up, attracting interest, before the damned thing is even switched on. SMRS are supposed to be able to be put in in less than 3 years at around £3.9bn/GW - well that's the reactors. Of course you need a building and some boilers and steam turbines, so lets say £5bn a GW.

We need around 35GW of nuclear right now to eliminate windmills and solar panels, grid scale batteries, STOR , relaince on interconnectors etc etc. And a further 35GW to charge all those leccy cars etc.

So let's say about £175bn right now, and a further £200bn over the next few decades.

There are 20 million households, so each household needs to stump up £8,700 for phase one, and £10,000 for phase two, spread over twenty years.

After that electricity should be less than 2p a unit. Because most of the cost of nuclear electricity is the interest on the loan you take out to build it.

It boils down to about £1000 a year for every household for the next 20 years. About £80/month

[Tim Lamb]

Ok. So where do I sign up? Funding out of current revenue ought to avoid loan interest anyway.

We are going to be stuck with supply variability and load shedding for years anyway. Sell a guaranteed supply at an elevated charge.

[Andrew]

There used to be some double-decker buses running somewhere in the UK that had some sort of flywheel to store energy and provide that ?initial oomph needed to move a 10-tonne vehicle away from rest.

[The Natural Philosopher]

TBH Tim I have often thought that a properly run fund set up to build nuclear power stations would be the ideal vehicle for pensions funds to invest in. *provided* the gummint guaranteed it would not institute poltical measures to stop it happening.

three ways in whuch this has happened to date here are

- refusing to deal with long term waste

- refusing to act as final underwriter to any accident. Whilst insisting on punitive and unrealisic levels of insurance.

- refusing to slim down the regulatory burden, but instead insisting on adding to it, driving up construction costs

- Refusing to grant automatic planning permission like it does for windfarms.

It doesn't matter that the money is all there waiting, but the government speaks with forked tongue.

It SAYS it wants nuclear, but it refuses to lift a finger to help it happen, and instead keeps putting restrictions on it.

Russian and Arab money owns the politicians....

[charles]

I remember Eagle telling about such buses - early 1950s

[Theo]