Yes folks, its cheaper to heat with electricity!

[The Luggage]

On 5 May, 21:16, Roger wrote: [snip]

But May 5th was a New Moon, so the tidal variation was at its maximum for the month. For Barry, just a week later, the values are 9.2/3.4, a

48% drop in range. For Hunstanton, which is inside The Wash, the values are 5.9/1.8, partly due to The Wash itself, but mostly due to it being sheltered from the Atlantic swell by the rest of the UK. This is hugely lower than is available in the Severn.

To generate all the UK's electricity from tides, you need 20 areas as big as the Severn estuary with the same tidal range, or at least 50 similar areas of average tide height. I lost the reference for it, but ISTR that tidal barrages become less efficient as the tidal range decreases.

OK, so 50 x 185 =3D 9250, not 18000, but it's still an enormous area, requiring infeasible amounts of civil engineering compared with e.g.

30 nuclear power stations.

TL

[Doctor Drivel]

We paid the French to build them?

[The Natural Philosopher]

At what cost of extraction?

The basic point here is that our coal is deep, and hard to get at an dangerous to get at, cheaply. Rightly we have strict safety issues surrounding mining, and that has really priced most British coal out of the market.

Nuclear electricity is already cheaper than oil...and similar to coalon te open international market.

In order to use wood it needs to be grown, which aint fast even with e.g. willow, which is teh fastest biomass generator IIRc, but needs really wet places to do it.

Then you have to coppice it, smash it up and dry it, and then burn it, and then clean up the mess it leaves behind.

And then you get at best about 40% conversion efficiency to electricity.

Ther is certaily a place for pine forests and birch forests in areas of poor soil - and deer too, who provide meat off land not fit to grow anything WE can eat! But don't fool yourself that the problems of hauling it around and processing it all are zero cost.

And I am sure that we will be tapping methane of shit processors ultimately, and feeding that into the gas system as well, but again, the volume of natural gas and oil we consume is staggering by comparison with what we can produce.

To live as we do on bio-fod and biofuel probably takes 10 acres per head of prime farmland. We don't have 10 acres per head of prime farmland AFAICR.

[The Natural Philosopher]

In the sense that we pay a premium for their electricity, yes, Maxie.

[Dan Sheppard]

In my experience, lots of people sitting at PCs on hot days in a state of near dispair thinking "My God, how have I been reduced to this" as they plough through massive, tedious documents, between endless meetings between people who no longer care and are only going through the motions.

With the occassional appearance of a councillor or MP to mandate something which is illegal, incomprehensible, unjustifiable, unimplementable, weird, or confused, only to leave before this can be pointed out to them.

There is no issue that can't be solved by a new section in a template document. I propose:

4.6.1.1 World Peace 4.6.1.1.1 Prerequisites 4.6.1.1.2 Triggering Conditions 4.6.1.1.3 Project Management 4.6.1.1.4 Financial Management 4.6.1.1.5 Establishing the Dynamic Equilibrium 4.6.1.1.6 Maintaining the Dynamic Equilibrium 4.6.1.1.7 Stakeholders 4.6.1.1.8 Dissemination 4.6.1.1.9 Metrics 4.6.1.1.9.1 Geopolitical 4.6.1.1.9.2 Financial 4.6.1.1.9.3 Performance 4.6.1.1.10 Sustainability 4.6.1.1.11 Risks 4.6.1.1.12 Opportunities and Challenges 4.6.1.1.13 Summary Aims and Objectives 4.6.1.1.13.1 Aims 4.6.1.1.13.2 Objectives 4.6.1.1.13.3 cross-aim/objective issues

Things are no doubt better around here.

Dan.

[Dan Sheppard]

AIUI, the EU are protesting that we need to install more interchange capacity to make the electricity market more dynamic.

The easiest way to do this is probably to declare the north as foreign, :).

Dan.

[Dan Sheppard]

I remember, at the age of eight, being the kind of kid I was, reading that there was no need fo a flight from coal to gas, as flue gas desulpharization would save the day. Mrs Thatcher and Mr Scargill would shortly be skipping through meadows together, given the bountiful prospect of near infinite supplies of low-grade gypsum.

It's sometimes hard to trust again a technology which already failed to solve the problem the last time the roof was due to fall in.

Dan.

[Ed Sirett]

Apparently in the top 5 sites in the world for this application.

[Roger]

The message from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

I have nothing against Nuclear power per se, just a concern that the "too cheap to meter" approach is as extreme as the scare mongering about lack of uranium reserves. Limitless reserves are of no use if it takes more power to extract the mineral than can subsequently be turned into power.

I was thinking principally of self help for heating and cooking which would cut out the conversion to electricity entirely.

My neighbour in Stafford back in the 70s used to grow vegetables in his front garden rather than grass or flowers. The is plenty of scope for self help in our gardens. Bloated plutocrats like TNP could be almost self sufficient. :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

So there bloody subsidised windmills become profitable at OUR expense eh?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. The same applues to cioal though.

Nuclear aint too cheap to meter, but its competitive right now with fossil, and its largely independent of uranium prices, since the majority of the cost is in building and decomissioning.

And of course one can build fast breeders and get even more out..

And go back to pre 1953 pollution levels? you obviously weren't there..

We are, on veggies, but man can't live by veg alone. Unless one wanst to look like a staring bangladeshi. And they dont need to heat their houses

[Dan Sheppard]

Isn't that okay, even if you think them useless? If Danish taxpayers are made to pay for windmills in the Baltic which provide little electricity (say) and we buy the (hypothetical) paultry quantities they offer at the going rate, isn't that alright? Asuming you've no Danish alegiance?

I guess the upfront cost of an unused interconnect might be annoying for us, but we'd fill it PDQ, I think, sucking up French nuclear power at inflated rates in exchange for them taking on board the risk of it all going mushroom-shaped. The interconnect has always been a bit of a one-way street.

Dan.

[Doctor Drivel]

What a sycophant of a plantpot. Thatcher got rid of coal for spite. It is still there and we end up having to get it out. The slag went and used our gas reserves for power generation when coal would do it.

[Dave Liquorice]

Neither was I but I've been to places they use solid fuel as the principle energy source and they really are rather dirty, as in dust and poor visibilty. Towns/cities in China 15 years ago were really bad and outside of the town you could see the pall of smoke hanging over them and drifting down wind. More recently pick any coolish day and see the same over any UK town that doesn't have natural gas. Yes, they do exist.

A pure vegan diet ("by veg alone") is not healthy but add diary and all the nourishment the human body requires is present. Meat is not an absolute requirement.

I bet they do in this country.

[Roger]

The message from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

Needs must, and yes, unlike you, I do remember times before 1953.

[Andy Hall]

No you're confused. Slag is a byproduct of coal mining and sits in piles next to pits.

[dennis]

Coal didn't fail as a technology.. it failed when that idiot Scargill turned it into a political weapon.. no government could allow a bunch of thugs to hold the country over a barrel when they started making political demands and coal had to become a minor part of the supply.

[dennis]

No government could allow an idiot like Scargill to dictate policy just because he could cut off the power. When he decided to topple the government rather than get better conditions for the miners he stepped over the line and that was the end of coal as the main source of electricity. Anyone that thinks otherwise is being dumb.

[Dave]

Has he ever apologized for what he did to Britain? No! I thought not.

Dave

[Dave]

Proof required here.

Put on a helmet and lamp, you never know, you might find a tiny brain to fit your tiny head down there :-)

What? The by product of coal production?

Nu laber has been doing the same for over 11 years, so why blame a guvmint that had to make positive changes to the economy that benefited the common man?

Dave