Clean power to overtake fossil fuels in Britain in 2019

[hugh2121]

5 hours ago, Pilotman said:

and at what cost? It's easy to meet targets like this if you don't care how much the consumer has to pay, also pay odious amounts of cash to the senior managers of utility companies and destroy the natural environment with millions of ugly wind generators that do bugger all when the wind doesn't blow.   Meanwhile, India, China and the US continue to pollute the earth with impunity, while good old tiny UK lead the field. No well done from me, more like 'get real folks and let everyone else do their bit first'.  

Sounds like ignorant jealousy. Clean energy is much cheaper to produce and is kind to the environment. 3% of UK energy now produced from polluting coal. Asia please take note,

 

[thaibeachlovers]

27 minutes ago, Pilotman said:

I think you will find that the Singaporeans built them after Independence. Most good things, where good things happened at all,  seemed to have happened in the former Colonies after the UK had left. 

LOL. I lived there long BEFORE independence, and they had the same sort of drains in the 70s as before.

Edited June 21, 2019 by thaibeachlovers

[Chomper Higgot]

1 minute ago, attrayant said:

I would be better to say that accidents can be prevented or reduced, the more we adhere to best design practices and embrace technological improvements.  While Chernobyl and Fukushima were ecological disasters, the impact footprint was tiny compared to that of fossil fuels.  Sadly, these incidents created a nuclear boogeyman, and he has effectively paralyzed progress in making better and safer plants.

 

Using Chernobyl as an argument against building a nuclear reactor with today's technology is like using the Hindenburg disaster as an argument against building an airplane today.

Technological improvements are by no means a guarantee against accidents. 

 

What are your predictions for the stability of societies over the toxic lifetime of the waste from nuclear plants? 

 

Your arguments wrt to the geographical impacts of nuclear accidents v the impacts of fossil fuels ignore the fact that the nuclear impacts are rapid, extremely severe, irreversible and with very few exceptions there are populations within the radius of their impact. 

 

We might also argue, in the context of this UK news thread, that the UK has no nuclear power plant industry, it needs to import this technology, an import that comes at political costs - Refer Theresa May's U-turn on Hinkley B in the face of instruction to U-turn from the Chinese. 

 

Add to that, renewable energy sources are increasing in diversity and create local jobs across whole nations, rather than the concentration of a few 'economically extremely expensive' jobs in a very few locations. 

 

 

 

 

[connda]

4 minutes ago, attrayant said:

I would be better to say that accidents can be prevented or reduced, the more we adhere to best design practices and embrace technological improvements.  While Chernobyl and Fukushima were ecological disasters, the impact footprint was tiny compared to that of fossil fuels.  Sadly, these incidents created a nuclear boogeyman, and he has effectively paralyzed progress in making better and safer plants.

 

 

I see the boogeyman has gotten to you.  Using Chernobyl as an argument against building a nuclear reactor with today's technology is like using the Hindenburg disaster as an argument against building an airplane today.

 

 

 

The all have a major design problem, the same one that screwed the pooch for Fukushima: the cooling pumps rely on external energy sources.  And the external energy sources supplying the pumps have a major design flaw: no redundancy in the primary grid. 

One Cornal Mass Ejection of the right size and all of the ~450 nuke plants globally lose the power to cool their cores.  A major CME will be a world population culler that should make eugenicists sing.  The resultant melt-downs will be extinction events for most surface dwellers with the exception of the elite ground-burrowers who plan to ride out a Morlock existence given human or natural EMP events. 
Global warming?  <laughs> 

[Pilotman]

11 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

LOL. I lived there long BEFORE independence, and they had the same sort of drains in the 70s as before.

Yes, they went independent in 1965, so the 1970s is after the UK left?   I remember them building the vast network in 1976, before than Singapore City was prone to flooding.    

[thaibeachlovers]

11 minutes ago, Pilotman said:

Yes, they went independent in 1965, so the 1970s is after the UK left?   I remember them building the vast network in 1976, before than Singapore City was prone to flooding.    

I left Singapore for good in 1974, but I always compare the flooding in Pattaya because of poor drains to Singapore when I was there.

[RickBradford]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Every nuclear accident was caused by human error, and can be avoided if clever people are in charge.

Till fusion comes along, nuclear fission is the best option.

Yes, but smarter nuclear fission, using thorium.

 

• No potential for meltdown
• You can't make bombs with the stuff
• It only produces 1% of the nuclear waste, which also decays quicker
• It produces 200 times as much energy as uranium per unit weight
• There's more of it, and it's easier to mine.

 

Plus, it's proven technology, having fed power to Germany's grid back in the 1980s.

 

But it seems to have been forgotten, though several countries are now getting interested again.

[CGW]

1 hour ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Stating the consumption of abiogenic fuel consumption continues to rise, is misleading (probably deliberately so). 

 

Renewable energy usage is also increasing each year, as is economic activity. 

 

Referring to single sets of data presented out of context are meaningless. 

 

Your post is meaningless? you are obviously in denial, try a dose of the truth, cures all ???? 

[katana]

The article incorrectly labels nuclear energy as clean energy.
The dangerous nuclear waste stays radioactive for thousands of years afterwards. Then there's also the periodic nuclear accidents we're subjected to.
Also, when you take into account the cost of building the nuclear power stations, decommissioning them at the end of their life and storing the dangerous waste for centuries afterwards, it's also the most expensive energy.
The only way the nuclear power stations are commercial and get built is because the decommissioning and storage costs are written off and paid for by the government ie the tax payer.

 

 

[Chomper Higgot]

9 minutes ago, CGW said:

Your post is meaningless? you are obviously in denial, try a dose of the truth, cures all ???? 

Let's start with the whole truth and not just the bits you want to select. 

 

Away with you are your partial pictures.

[CGW]

1 minute ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Let's start with the whole truth and not just the bits you want to select. 

 

Away with you are your partial pictures.

Is that a note to yourself? 

[thaibeachlovers]

31 minutes ago, katana said:

The article incorrectly labels nuclear energy as clean energy.
The dangerous nuclear waste stays radioactive for thousands of years afterwards. Then there's also the periodic nuclear accidents we're subjected to.
Also, when you take into account the cost of building the nuclear power stations, decommissioning them at the end of their life and storing the dangerous waste for centuries afterwards, it's also the most expensive energy.
The only way the nuclear power stations are commercial and get built is because the decommissioning and storage costs are written off and paid for by the government ie the tax payer.

 

 

Safe storage is possible, but no country wants to make the deep tunnels to do so, probably because of cost. If the present situation is lacking, blame the government.

[thaibeachlovers]

33 minutes ago, katana said:

The only way the nuclear power stations are commercial and get built is because the decommissioning and storage costs are written off and paid for by the government ie the tax payer.

As are many things, like passenger railways. The only factor that should be at play here is if they want to have a non fossil fuel method of guaranteed electricity generation that can provide all the required power all the time, or not.

[xtrnuno41]

So i see 16 Nuclear plants in UK, sadly we have none. 

Its easier cheaper to have power from Norway with 720 km cable in the sea?

Probably is, as we also have those connections.

Cars driving on electricity, very clean, but you have to change batteries every 3 years?!

How much it will cost you as driver? Dont have to change my engine after 3 years.

They dont tell, they only tell to have less carbon emissions.

In meantime as many say, USA, China, India just go on with coal and other fossil fuels. The biggest polluters.

Though i saw a docu about USA and there are people, changing to clean energy.

Here we also need to change , but it will cost YOU 30-40000 euro. Also talking about change heating ways. Very expensive installations. SO UK people will have the same problems.

Shut down gas for all common people, but of course not for the big companies.

IF we change all to clean power here (common people) it saves 0,000017 % or something like that of total.

[connda]

2 hours ago, RickBradford said:

Yes, but smarter nuclear fission, using thorium.

 

• No potential for meltdown
• You can't make bombs with the stuff
• It only produces 1% of the nuclear waste, which also decays quicker
• It produces 200 times as much energy as uranium per unit weight
• There's more of it, and it's easier to mine.

 

Plus, it's proven technology, having fed power to Germany's grid back in the 1980s.

 

But it seems to have been forgotten, though several countries are now getting interested again.

Agreed. Thorium is the way forward for nuclear.  Imho which doesn't mean much. <laughs>  

[connda]

1 hour ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Safe storage is possible, but no country wants to make the deep tunnels to do so, probably because of cost. If the present situation is lacking, blame the government.

I used to work out at the Hanford Site in Eastern Washington where they use to produce plutonium.  Scientists working for DOE have been working on storage and containment for decades, and specifically vitrification, or glassifying plutonium manufacturing and other forms of nuclear waste.  Decades  and many major cost overruns and setbacks later the plants to start the process are still not built.  Nor do I think the ultimate 'end-site' storage is worked out either.  

Nuclear is not 'clean' by any stretch of the imagination.  Sure - no CO2.  The trade-off is what to do with highly radioactive by-products.  Most just sit in storage pools onsite at nuclear reactors.  Safe?  You've got to be kidding me.  Proponents downplay the dangers.  Viable alternatives are dismissed.  Why?  Like oil, big money backs this technology.  Stakeholders don't want to lose their share of the pie regardless of the effects of unsecured radioactive waste has on future generations.  

Greed's amazing stuff - it burns human lives and human suffering as fuel and usually develops only short-term solutions for maximum profits.  

[Chazar]

8 hours ago, webfact said:

and nuclear

Mostly is what they actually  mean then, heaven help future generations.

[SpaceKadet]

7 hours ago, dick dasterdly said:

But no reference to nuclear energy - the most expensive and dangerous....

Actually, not the most expensive and dangerous. I will not even bother to discuss TMI and Chernobyl, both more than 50 year old designs, and Fukushima Diichi was just at a bad location. The east coast of Honshu is historically known to have been visited by tsunamis at regular intervals.

 

The new Gen3 and Gen4 reactor designs are much more safer and more efficient, with much longer fuel cycles, less operational issues, and shorter storage for spent fuel (100s of years instead of 100,000s). It is also much more cost efficient than coal/oil/gas but the big mining/oil corporations do not want you to know that. In fact, the biggest foreseeable issue with nuclear, is that we might run out of min-able uranium. 

 

And if the wind doesn't blow and it's raining, where do you get your electricity from?

[petemoss]

8 hours ago, dick dasterdly said:

But no reference to nuclear energy - the most expensive and dangerous....

Neither the most expensive or dangerous.

[petemoss]

2 hours ago, connda said:

Most just sit in storage pools onsite at nuclear reactors.

Not in the UK. Once spent fuel rods are removed, they are broken down and stored in ponds for a matter of months purely to cool them. They are then sent to a specialised reprocessing plant (Sellafield).

[SpaceKadet]

5 hours ago, connda said:

The all have a major design problem, the same one that screwed the pooch for Fukushima: the cooling pumps rely on external energy sources.  And the external energy sources supplying the pumps have a major design flaw: no redundancy in the primary grid. 
...

Actually, you are very wrong. Gen3 and up designs using sodium cooling employ what is termed "Passive Safety". You can disconnect all the cooling pumps (those being EM pumps, no moving parts since sodium is a metal) and the reactor will scram on it's own based on pure physical properties of the materials used. All nuclear reaction will cease within 20 minutes, and the reactor will slowly cool down on its own. It has been done and proven.

 

As well, there is no danger of explosion since the reactors operate at atmospheric pressure inside, and there is no "positive void coefficient" or high pressure steam as in the current Gen2 BWR...

[from the home of CC]

I believe it's a little early to be blowing horns, revisit the numbers in 5 yrs and then see if celebrations (or recriminations) are in order. As an aside, are there estimates of the utility costs to the homeowner and have they remained the same? If not, what are the projections of the cost to the average joe? 

[Chomper Higgot]

1 hour ago, SpaceKadet said:

Actually, not the most expensive and dangerous. I will not even bother to discuss TMI and Chernobyl, both more than 50 year old designs, and Fukushima Diichi was just at a bad location. The east coast of Honshu is historically known to have been visited by tsunamis at regular intervals.

 

The new Gen3 and Gen4 reactor designs are much more safer and more efficient, with much longer fuel cycles, less operational issues, and shorter storage for spent fuel (100s of years instead of 100,000s). It is also much more cost efficient than coal/oil/gas but the big mining/oil corporations do not want you to know that. In fact, the biggest foreseeable issue with nuclear, is that we might run out of min-able uranium. 

 

And if the wind doesn't blow and it's raining, where do you get your electricity from?

Show us the full life cycle costs. 

[bristolboy]

11 hours ago, RickBradford said:

This would be more impressive if the various factions could decide on where to place nuclear power.

 

The National Grid  has conveniently placed it under 'zero-carbon' energy, which is arguably true, but Big Green regards nuclear power as even more satanic than coal & oil.

 

Greenpeace (what a misnomer) likes to crash drones into nuclear plants, or break into their facilities and set off fireworks. In fact, it was protesting against nuclear power in 1971 that got Greenpeace its start, when it was an environmental organisation rather than part of the establishment.

 

These people need to get their stories straight.

Whatever the safety of nuclear may be, the fact is nuclear generated power is expensive. What's more as the cost of solar and wind generated power keep plummeting, and storage capacity was well, why would any rational capitalist invest in nuclear power?

Below is a graph showing the levelized costs of various power sources. (The levelized cost is basically total cost of building and running a power plant over its lifetime divided how much power it generates.)

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2018/

 

 

[SpaceKadet]

2 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Show us the full life cycle costs. 

I could, but I wouldn't want to deprive you from the joy of doing your own research.

 

But when you do, make sure you look at Gen3 and Gen4 reactor designs. The latest to be deployed, and not some antiquated 50-60 year old outdated models.

 

And don't be swayed by the propaganda of the big coal/oil companies.

[bristolboy]

16 minutes ago, SpaceKadet said:

I could, but I wouldn't want to deprive you from the joy of doing your own research.

 

But when you do, make sure you look at Gen3 and Gen4 reactor designs. The latest to be deployed, and not some antiquated 50-60 year old outdated models.

 

And don't be swayed by the propaganda of the big coal/oil companies.

Honorable people back up their claims. They don't ask others to do their work for them.

[SpaceKadet]

1 minute ago, bristolboy said:

Honorable people back up their claims. They don't ask others to do their work for them.

Don't bait me. Been there done that.... I don't have to provide any evidence. I know what I know, and I'm not forcing anybody to believe it. If you don't agree, then so be it. I'm not starting a debate on a topic that has been discussed to death outside of TV on a more technical/ scientific forums and mailing lists.

[Cryingdick]

Who would have thought it? Are they saying you can basically solve the problem by embracing nuclear energy as the future? The nuclear lobbying industry could have wrote the article. I am not against nuclear by any means but the news headline is a bit misleading that way. 

 

One day we can look at pictures of the English countryside before it became a massive wind farm and tell our kids how there used to be an abundance of migratory birds before that. 

 

 

[katana]

11 hours ago, RickBradford said:

Yes, but smarter nuclear fission, using thorium.

 

• No potential for meltdown
• You can't make bombs with the stuff
• It only produces 1% of the nuclear waste, which also decays quicker
• It produces 200 times as much energy as uranium per unit weight
• There's more of it, and it's easier to mine.

 

Plus, it's proven technology, having fed power to Germany's grid back in the 1980s.

 

But it seems to have been forgotten, though several countries are now getting interested again.

Back in the 1950s we were told nuclear power would bring us clean, safe, efficient energy, too cheap to meter.
We were told cars would be able to run on a rice grain sized pellet of nuclear fuel.
Then we had Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukishima.
Now they're telling us Thorium reactors are safe and the next big thing. Yeah right. We've heard all that before.

[bristolboy]

5 hours ago, SpaceKadet said:

Don't bait me. Been there done that.... I don't have to provide any evidence. I know what I know, and I'm not forcing anybody to believe it. If you don't agree, then so be it. I'm not starting a debate on a topic that has been discussed to death outside of TV on a more technical/ scientific forums and mailing lists.

Making an assertion is one thing. Telling someone else to do the research to back it up is quite another.