My home town is fucked (yet again) as that’s one of the main fertiliser plants that they’re just going to let fold. Presumably Co2 cheaper in India. Red Wall my arse.
The case against nuclear power - does it stack up?
- Thread starter platinumsage
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My home town is fucked (yet again) as that’s one of the main fertiliser plants that they’re just going to let fold. Presumably Co2 cheaper in India. Red Wall my arse.
elbows
Well-Known Member
That also depends on the detail of the pinch you are expecting. Theres probably quite a broad range of expectations about that, and its timing.
Plus other pinches are expected too, eg plenty of analysis implies there will be a period this decade where electricity generation capacity in this country will struggle to meet our needs. And that situation may well end up being a catalyst for a number of things, but I cannot be sure which ones. Our new nuclear build timescales mean it cant hope to prevent that period from arriving, at best it may be part of what gets us out of it eventually. It could either gain or lose momentum as a result of that particular pinch; it might start to look attractive, or its tendency to feature terrible delays to operational start dates may yet cast it in the role of a terrible tease.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Well, for most values of “weather”.
I don’t know much about it but (astonishing ignorance trigger warning), I watched some
videos about historical uses of it and it looked pretty interesting, as did just some old ways of storing energy based on just lifting other really heavy things.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
The decision was reversed and then re-reversed due to remarkably unlucky timing. The original decision was to retire the fleet at the end of their lifetimes (ie by about now, dependng on how long they could credibly patch them up). But at some point (and I really am too lazy to google it
) Merkel announced that she was going to keep nuclear. Then very soon afterwards, Fukushima happened and suddenly the Green Party started getting huge vote boosts in German Lande elections, putting on 20%, and more and Merkel quickly re-reversed the keep-it decision, in fact phasing out the fleet prematurely which as many have pointed out was a really crazy decision because once you've actually got a functioning plant, they do produce relatively low carbon electricity and in Germany, that power was replaced by buying dirty coal from Poland instead which is way worse for the world, or nuclear generated stuff from France which kind of seems to undermine the original point.Nuclear's always been way more unpopular in Germany than any other big European country except maybe Italy so it's had a political salience there it's never had here. But I don't recall absence of expertise being directly raised as a reason for the second reversal. I think it's a dead duck in Germany now, it's politically toxic.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yeah what I was on about was much later. Hard to say more unless I find what I originally read. When failing to find that I did find some suggestion that made me think the skills thing was just an excuse by some entities involved with the power stations that didnt want to extend the closure timetable for other reasons by that point.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Anyway maybe I will just skip over whatever that was and look to more recent sentiments from Germany. I probably need to dig into the following, which is far too brief a story from this source but I dont have time to look for more right now:
www.devdiscourse.com
If Germany is able to throw its weight behind green hydrogen properly then my opinion of what is possible and likely in the years ahead could shift quite a lot.
Merkel sees no future for nuclear energy in Germany | Headlines
Read more about Merkel sees no future for nuclear energy in Germany on Devdiscourse
www.devdiscourse.com
If Germany is able to throw its weight behind green hydrogen properly then my opinion of what is possible and likely in the years ahead could shift quite a lot.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Oh a couple of other things about Germany. I believe that even pre-Fukushima when nuclear was still part of their climate change/transition plans, it was considered as a bridging technology rather than something sustainable for the very long term. So Merkels recent comments arent really a shift from that earlier sentiment. I expect there are many discussions we can have about quite how sustainable some of the sustainable alternatives really are, and that debate stands a chance of being more honest if certain things are labelled as being transitional bridges rather than stuff truly sustainable for the longterm. But that debate would probably lead all the way to considering the extent to which we'll eventually end up in a state not far off pre-industrial times, and if so what the likely timescales are.
I think there is at least one study out there which estimates how many lives have been lost in Germany as a result of increased pollution from non-nuclear generation thats been used to fill the gap in the last 10 years. And I know the likes of Monbiot were keen to point to such things when he took a pro-nuclear stance in the wake of Fukushima. I suspect such arguments have trouble gaining traction because of the very long history of various societies and their establishments managing to downplay some of the health impacts from traditional pollution. Its not like such things are a secret, but in the past various ways were found to turn a blind eye to such realities. There are occasional and specific exceptions, but the overall theme has remained. I expect these blind spots to die out since the entire climate and energy agenda means such aspects stop being inconvenient truths and start becoming convenient ones, part of the material used to drive us in a different direction, but this still seems to be a slow process. When it comes to judging nuclear fairly and in full context, those blind spots were unfair, and I can acknowledge that despite not being pro-nuclear at all myself. And nuclear has to contend with the psychology of radiation, some of which wont be fair to it either. But overall its hard not to see the atomic age as a terrible curse that cast a long shadow over humanity. Even though much of that was bomb related I probably still dont feel too sorry that nuclear power was tarred with the same brush.
I think there is at least one study out there which estimates how many lives have been lost in Germany as a result of increased pollution from non-nuclear generation thats been used to fill the gap in the last 10 years. And I know the likes of Monbiot were keen to point to such things when he took a pro-nuclear stance in the wake of Fukushima. I suspect such arguments have trouble gaining traction because of the very long history of various societies and their establishments managing to downplay some of the health impacts from traditional pollution. Its not like such things are a secret, but in the past various ways were found to turn a blind eye to such realities. There are occasional and specific exceptions, but the overall theme has remained. I expect these blind spots to die out since the entire climate and energy agenda means such aspects stop being inconvenient truths and start becoming convenient ones, part of the material used to drive us in a different direction, but this still seems to be a slow process. When it comes to judging nuclear fairly and in full context, those blind spots were unfair, and I can acknowledge that despite not being pro-nuclear at all myself. And nuclear has to contend with the psychology of radiation, some of which wont be fair to it either. But overall its hard not to see the atomic age as a terrible curse that cast a long shadow over humanity. Even though much of that was bomb related I probably still dont feel too sorry that nuclear power was tarred with the same brush.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
Just to clarify that last bit, one of my beefs with nuclear is that even if it were actually more benign than many like to think, there is no escaping the sense that its a curse. If for no other reason than the psychology of radiation, which isnt good for peoples mental health. Again the bomb and the threat of mass death is one of the big causes of that, but not the only one, and there have been just enough nuclear power station disaster already that its hard to imagine it ever having a great image everywhere. Massive energy crises that mess up peoples lives in dramatic ways and leave humanity desperate might I suppose be enough to turn attitudes on their head under certain circumstances, but I still wouldnt bank on it. Not that thats expected to be enough to put UK PLC off on its own, and nuclear stuff is an area where its easy to imagine this country ending up on the wrong side of history, a promoter out of step. Although that also means that should a time eventually arrive where we flip to the other side, the UK will be sure to grandstand about its change of heart.
WouldBe
Dislicksick
There's lots if old (coal) mine shafts around that could be used for lowering and raising heavy weights to store energy.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
Tin mines too,,,
UK startup eyes abandoned mine shafts for energy storage - The Engineer
Disused mine shafts around the UK could soon be used as giant gravity batteries, capable of reacting to grid demands in under a second.
www.theengineer.co.uk
elbows
Well-Known Member
Tin mines too,,,
UK startup eyes abandoned mine shafts for energy storage - The Engineer
Disused mine shafts around the UK could soon be used as giant gravity batteries, capable of reacting to grid demands in under a second.
A more modest demo setup generated for the first time earlier this year:
Gravitricity battery generates first power at Edinburgh site
The Gravitricity system acts like a giant battery to balance the electricity coming from renewables.
www.bbc.co.uk
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
A more modest demo setup generated for the first time earlier this year:
Gravitricity battery generates first power at Edinburgh site
The Gravitricity system acts like a giant battery to balance the electricity coming from renewables.www.bbc.co.uk
250kW for ten seconds. That's a lot of steel and construction to boil four kettles, hope it's worth the million quid construction costs in the data they get from it, although Gravitricity have been going for ten years so I'm not holding my breath like the £2 million crowdfunders must be.
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
I’m hoping there’s some way that this could be harnessed to give us more funicular railways though.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
Flywheels are about inertia. Which isn’t really storage. Basically when we had 30 coal power stations and thousands of tons of steel spinning at 3000 rpm that provided lots of benefits to the grid, a main one being limited the rate of frequency change. Wind, solar and interconnectors don’t have any inertia. Flywheels are one possible way of providing it- there are others.
A lack of inertia is bad in and of itself, and doubly bad as we use frequency change rate as the main safety indicator to generators to shut themselves of if they get disconnected.
Also if you want a big chunk of energy for a few seconds a flywheels is good. I think they still have one at Culham for JET although it might have gone.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
Don’t forget roller coasters either…
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
Flywheel energy storage is a thing. You use magnetic bearings and seal it in a vacuum but even still the energy leaks out through friction & eddy currents. They can be drained quicker than batteries, so they get used in applications where that's important.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
That’s what the one at Culham is/was for.
And in non electrical transmission energy storage scenarios, there where experiments with flywheel electric busses.
Gyrobus - Wikipedia
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
That’s what the one at Culham is/was for.
And in non electrical transmission energy storage scenarios, there where experiments with flywheel electric busses.
Gyrobus - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
before reading the article
I bet the gyroscopic effects made it corner weird
8ball
Decolonise colons!
I always wondered about that when they put those boosters in the GP cars (not that I ever looked at the tech in proper detail).
elbows
Well-Known Member
I'm not wildly excited about it, I only mentioned it because someone else did.
Not that I would judge it based on the scale and construction of the demo version. I'd judge it based on versions that could fit our mineshafts, taking into account expected lifetime of the device.
Even then I doubt I would be impressed by the total storage capacity. But maybe it has a role to play in things like grid frequency stabilisation, eg in order to buy a little time for other things to kick in in response to supply/demand imbalances at particular moments in time.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
D'oh!
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
Compressed air storage is also a thing, I believe they were doing a trial on this somewhere out on the east coast using old salt caverns. One of the senior geotechnical guys at my last job was a professor and was doing a paper on it and used my CAD skills to do a couple of the illustrations. I think it was to use surplus energy from an offshore wind farm nearby to power a compressor that forced air into the cavern, which could then be released through a turbine to power a generator during slack periods. From memory it had fairly poor efficiency, but that didn’t matter much as the surplus wind generation was basically free energy, so anything not wasted was a bonus.
This was around ten years ago I’d estimate, so I presume it may have been discounted since.
This was around ten years ago I’d estimate, so I presume it may have been discounted since.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Good luck with Iran and North Korea.
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