A cockup waiting to happen................

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Lincsbodger

Electricity.

In a typical British winter, electricity demand peaks at around 59 gigawatts. Last year, 45 per cent of that was met by North Sea gas, 35 per cent from coal, 15 per cent from nuclear.

By 2015, we shall need around 64 gigawatts - but by then four of Britain’s ten elderly nuclear stations will have shut down, and North Sea gas production will have fallen by two-thirds from its 1999 peak.

We shall breach every international agreement if we remain big coal-users without using costly and unproven ­carbon-capture technology to clean it. At least a quarter of our generating capacity will have gone.

Read the energy report published two months ago by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE). This presents a terrifying picture of government inertia and folly.

It says: ‘In technological terms there are no choices to be made.’ In order to keep the lights on and meet commitments to a low-carbon economy, ‘the demand is so large that every available technology will be needed as quickly as possible.

‘With over 80 new nuclear or CCS [Carbon Capture] power plants required - around two per year - along with vast increases in all forms of renewables, building the system would require an enormous effort, probably only achievable by monopolising most of the national wealth and resources.

So the Lib Dems had better stop ****ing about, otherwise they may well keep there 'principles' on green energy while we shiver in the dark and industry grinds to a standstill. Remember the Winter of Discontent - when the TV went off at 10 PM by order to force everyone to go to bed and stop using electricity, and factories were on 3 days weeks cos they only had power 3 days in 5 ? We need nuclear power, **** loads of it. and pd ****ing q.
 
Lincsbodger said:
‘With over 80 new nuclear or CCS [Carbon Capture] power plants required - around two per year - along with vast increases in all forms of renewables, building the system would require an enormous effort, probably only achievable by monopolising most of the national wealth and resources.
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What national wealth might that be? We are already £900 billion in debt. We simply can't afford to build such things. We'll have to build windmills instead.

Doesn't it take 15 years to build a nuclear power station?
 
joe-90 said:
Lincsbodger said:
‘With over 80 new nuclear or CCS [Carbon Capture] power plants required - around two per year - along with vast increases in all forms of renewables, building the system would require an enormous effort, probably only achievable by monopolising most of the national wealth and resources.
Click to expand...

What national wealth might that be? We are already £900 billion in debt. We simply can't afford to build such things. We'll have to build windmills instead.

Doesn't it take 15 years to build a nuclear power station?
Click to expand...

You'd be better addressing that to Max Hastings Joe, he wrote it. lincsbodgers just at his usual game of plagiarising others to try and make himself look smart.
 
The three day week was during Heaths day and a result of industrial action by the miners with limited coal getting to the power stations,the winter of discontent was in Callaghans day some five years later where the rubbish was not collected and the dead unburied,brush up on your history.
 
oompah said:
The three day week was during Heaths day and a result of industrial action by the miners with limited coal getting to the power stations,the winter of discontent was in Callaghans day some five years later where the rubbish was not collected and the dead unburied,brush up on your history.
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Thats right, but the analogy is valid, we are running out of power being the point, and that will lead to power cuts, the Winter Of Discontent being the last tiem we had such power cuts, and thats what we will return to without some pdq action. Its not like this has been sprung on us from nowhere, people were warning the labour government for the previous five years.

The fact is nuclear its basically all there is, with coal as a Plan B. To try and generate 17 gigawatts from wind power is absurd, you'd have to cover half the hilltops in Wales with wind turbines. At 1 Mw each, you need 17,000.

What we need is a genetically engineered organism that can absorb vast amounts of CO2 from the coal burners and turn it into something useful, like water and somethign else. If we could invent a way to combine it with Urea ( (NH2)2CO ), you're pretty close to making ammonia based fertilisers, like Ammonium Nitrate ( NH4NO3 )which would be very useful, and far less damaging to the environment.

After all, this is an island literally built on coal, there hundreds of years worth underground, and the price of coal has now risen such its worth mining it again.




BTW, I dont need to brush up on history about the Winter of Discontent, i was there, driving a van through flying picket lines.
 
we're already dumping the carbon back into the depleted gas fields in the north sea..

as for a "genetically engineered organism that can absorb vast amounts of CO2 from the coal burners and turn it into something useful, like water and somethign else.".. aren't they called trees and plants? :wink:
build massive greenhouses filled with oil seed crops ( for bio-diesel ) next to the power stations and pump the CO² into them and leave the lights on..
 
ColJack said:
we're already dumping the carbon back into the depleted gas fields in the north sea..

as for a "genetically engineered organism that can absorb vast amounts of CO2 from the coal burners and turn it into something useful, like water and somethign else.".. aren't they called trees and plants? :wink:
build massive greenhouses filled with oil seed crops ( for bio-diesel ) next to the power stations and pump the CO² into them and leave the lights on..
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You'll need vast greenhouses, its impractical.

What you need is the output gases from the coal plant vented into a cooler then bubbled through a soup of the organism, through a series of tanks, so all that bubblkes out the other end is harmless stuff. Every now and then you drain off the surplus organism, let it die and compost it :D
 
We will see a huge increase in EfW power stations and sustainable energy plants in the future. The UK has to meet UK and European best practises.

Problem then is, people dont like the idea of recovering energy from waste. They see the word 'Incinerator' and they panic.

Nuclear and energy from waste are needed, we have to reduce our Carbon footprint also to meet European regulations
 
Does anyone remember 'Zeta' unlimited power from seawater, cold fusion, never gets mentioned now.
 
Nah cold fusion was ******, it was never going to work. It was as credible as Magic Alex and his hardware data compressor (for those of you around in the 60's )
 
Remember the Winter of Discontent - when the TV went off at 10 PM by order to force everyone to go to bed and stop using electricity, and factories were on 3 days weeks cos they only had power 3 days in 5 ? We need nuclear power, s**t loads of it. and pd **** q
Click to expand...
BTW, I dont need to brush up on history about the Winter of Discontent, i was there, driving a van through flying picket lines.
Click to expand...
Then you would have known that the 3 day week and the winter of dicontent were years apart.
 
One of the problems with this topic is that no one ever has the guts to suggest that maybe just maybe we should be thinking of trying to reduce what we use rather than simply looking at how to keep generating more and more.
Levy taxes on unnessasary electrical items,add an unnessasary transport tax to stop goods circumnavigating the globe, ban standby buttons,and consider rationing petrol and a host of other measures may need to be enacted, not popular possibly but probably needed.
Just this week on radio 4 I heard a conversation with an expert whose name I can't remember on the subject of wind and wave power. Given the enormous potential especially from wave power he predicted that we could, could, become a net exporter of power.
The genetically enginered organism that lincs mentioned was one of the applications being talked about with the recent "artifical DNA" experiments, designer bugs to make fuels and gobble up the CO2. Still a long way off as jet.
 
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