ENERGY MATTERS

[Stanley]

Whatever you do, keep warm! Good job I don't live there and I do recognise the stratification problem. My problem is that a furnace that won't perform is a personal challenge! I'd have to keep at it until I solved the problem!

[Stanley]

Good discussion on the late news last night about energy policy. Wonderful how upbeat the Tory contributor was. To listen to him was to believe that all is well..... Meanwhile and industry expert put his finger on the real problems, the market for energy is opaque and broken and needs reforming. Nothing we have done so far as regards 'green energy' has had any appreciable effect on the rate of carbon release into the atmosphere. It's not a bright future!

[David Whipp]

Our downstairs central heating has been on 'all day' during the last fortnight's holiday; back to an hour or so in the morning and during the evening today.

I've put at thicker top on in anticipation.

[Stanley]

Haven't burned any gas at all, the stove keeps the whole house warm and saves leccy as well because I cook on it in old fashioned pans. Funny how a pile of coal, paid for, in the back yard doesn't bug me like a gas bill. Apart from the saving on leccy the cost is about the same for heating and far easier to control. I had a phone call the other day from a nice lady at BG wanting to know why I had cancelled my application for £135 Warm Home Grant when I had already been granted it. I couldn’t be arsed to explain to her the depressing effect means tested benefits have on the recipient. We have to put up with this for the important ones but dealing with BG's snail like, Byzantine administration for this one was a bridge too far! Amazing how I felt so cheerful after getting them off my back!

[Stanley]

Three months energy bills are in. £40 for gas, £83 for leccy and about £100 for coal. So about £220 for three cold months. Not bad and within my means. A house that's warm right through except for the workshop so I am well pleased. Must read the statements carefully to make sure I am not missing a cheaper tariff!

[Tizer]

The news media journalists have reached an all-time low in their attempts to cover `fracking'. The BBC web site tells us `Balcombe fracking ruled out as Cuadrilla plans further tests' and the Today programme got all excited and exposed its lack of understanding about what is happening at Balcombe. The campaigners think they've had a success and have stopped Cuadrilla from fracking for shale gas at the site - but the truth is that Cuadrilla never intended fracking at Balcombe and weren't looking for shale gas, they were doing a test drilling in exploration for oil. There have been over 200 oil wells drilled in the area from Hampshire to Kent since 1902, it's not a new activity and hasn't caused any problems in the past. Cuadrilla are looking for oil-bearing limestone, not shale. All this is publicly available and readily accessible on the Environment Agency's web site and the company's web site and you don't have to be a geologist to understand it. I've referred on here in the past to Chris Darmon's excellent geology magazine called `Down to Earth' which is aimed at everyone from the expert to the complete novice and is easily readable and very cheap to buy - he explained about the Balcombe misconceptions last year and anyone at the BBC could have read it or even phoned Chris who would have given them all they needed to know and for free. But I suspect they wouldn't have believed him, they seem to prefer to get their information from the campaigners instead.

Greenpeace have been a leader in misinformation on fracking and get away with making all sorts of claims, true or false. Their web site says: "Cuadrilla is looking for unconventional oil in Balcombe and the South East, not conventional oil supplies - meaning it’s likely to have to frack there for any reserves it finds, according to papers filed by the company". To support this claim about fracking they give a link to a 27-page Cuadrilla report published some time ago. I've gone through the report and found that there is only one mention of the term `hydraulic fracturing' and that's where the company says it will *not* be using hydraulic fracturing. But there are frequent mentions in the report of using `hydraulic pressure' and I suspect Greenpeace in their ignorance have assumed this means fracking - in fact they are simply references to how the seals in an oil well have to be tested for leaks before it can go into production and is normal for any type of oil drilling (and required by the regulations controlling oil drilling).

The public often think they are being misled by big companies or the government but we've reached a stage were we're being misled instead by other groups: campaigners, some of whom are making a living out of frightening the public; campaigners who get the bit between their teeth and won't admit they're wrong; and the failure of the news media to get their information from reliable sources.

[Stanley]

Peter, thanks for a clear post with simple facts which confirms what I thought but hadn't researched. OG is brilliant for that!
I may be cynical but every time I see the gypsy encampments at protest sites and look at the slightly weird people inhabiting them my crap detector starts to whine warning me that there is something wrong here, no matter how laudable the stated objective. In the case of Balcombe I always understood that they weren't considering fracking but had no evidence. Funny thing is of course that the company told the media that in the first place! They should have had you write the press release.....

[Stanley]

The onset of the colder weather means that the CH is kicking in to supplement the stove but only reaching blood heat in the radiators. House is nice and warm thank you!

[Tripps]

I heard this on the BBC just once, but there does not seem to have been much of a follow up to the story. They were talking in terms of about three Olympic sized swimming pools full of radio active water per drill. It was "industrial effluent, but is now "hazardous waste".

Fracking in Lancashire

[PanBiker]

It was all over our local news last night Tripps. Goalposts been moved on the classification so they now have to re-licence.

Quadrilla bloke says the radioactivy level is the same risk as having acouple of dental X-rays.

Opposition of course says the problem is tantamount to Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or the Fukushima meltdown.

[Stanley]

I wonder how Strontian in Scotland goes on? The whole place is radio active because of the Strontium ore in the granite!

[David Whipp]

We have background radiation everywhere. Isn't a dental x-ray equivalent to a small part of the exposure by taking a plane journey?

In Barlick, we have to contend with radon, though not to the extent of Cornwall.

[PanBiker]

I wonder how Strontian in Scotland goes on? The whole place is radio active because of the Strontium ore in the granite!

I have camped there back in the 80's, not noticed myself glowing yet.

[Stanley]

WARNING! Radio active pic! Mary at Strontian in 1991.

[hartley353]

Recently I watched a program where a chap was fishing in the cooling ponds of Chernoble power station, he had to get special permission to do this and carry a radiation detector, the surprising thing was he was catching fish and plenty of them, and they still looked like fish. From this it could be deduced that it would not be cockroaches that inherit the earth but fish and the cycle of evolution could start again.

[Stanley]

Rock bottom energy matter being attended to this morning. I have clinker welded to my grate! It will be clean before this morning is out, I have burned the fire off and am going to attack it now....

[Stanley]

See this LINK for evidence that British Gas was making 11% on its gas sales. At last it looks as though someone has dug through the spreadsheets and found some real evidence of this broken market. Question is why couldn't Ofgas or whatever it is called not have done the same analysis?

[Stanley]

The stove is doing a wonderful job keeping the core temperature over 18C and so no CH. Funny how I feel so much better about energy costs when using a coal stock, all paid for, in the back yard. I can see exactly where I am with usage and cost. All right, I'm old fashioned!

[Tizer]

I wonder how Strontian in Scotland goes on? The whole place is radio active because of the Strontium ore in the granite!

I must have been away when this was posted in January. To avoid OGFB being sued by strontium supporters I should point out that natural strontium compounds are not harmful to health and the low background level of radioactivity from granite is due to the usual suspects such as uranium compounds. I have lumps of celestine (strontium sulphate) and strontianite (strontium carbonate) sitting by my desk. The association of strontium with radioactivity is due to the strontium-90 isotope which is a product of nuclear fission and occurs in fall-out from nuclear explosions and Chernobyl.

[Stanley]

So the glow I had was down to Mary's presence?

[Tizer]

She was radiating charm!

[hartley353]

I wonder how Strontian in Scotland goes on? The whole place is radio active because of the Strontium ore in the granite!

I must have been away when this was posted in January. To avoid OGFB being sued by strontium supporters I should point out that natural strontium compounds are not harmful to health and the low background level of radioactivity from granite is due to the usual suspects such as uranium compounds. I have lumps of celestine (strontium sulphate) and strontianite (strontium carbonate) sitting by my desk. The association of strontium with radioactivity is due to the strontium-90 isotope which is a product of nuclear fission and occurs in fall-out from nuclear explosions and Chernobyl.

Does my memory serve me well. didn't we get strontium in our milk during the 50s after an accident at a nuclear plant in Westmoreland.

[PanBiker]

Windscale reactor meltdown 1957. Countries worst nuclear accident (rated 5 on a scale of 7), it's still burning underground capped off with concrete, as there is no decommissioning solution yet.

Windscale Fire - Wiki

We covered it in another thread at some point, could have been on the old site.

[hartley353]

During my career I worked many hours at Sellafield, it always amazed me that due to contamination they erected chain link fencing, one side is dangerous and one side is safe. They were extremely lucky with that accident, one mans descision to use water to cool it down, and the bravery of the men who poked unburnt pots out of the reactor with scaffold poles. All that in a race to make bombs. Also from memory there was an air accident at an American air force base, where a fire as a result of the accident set fire to a storage shed containing Nuclear weapons, there was many tons of tnt in these weapons and should they have exploded and set in place a reaction the S.E OF England would be totally different now. Probably the worst one was in Austrailia where as a result of uranium extraction the waters of a tailing lake escaped and polluted a large area this is still being felt today. A quick web search brought up a chronological list of nuclear accidents up to Japans recent problem, there is an awful lot of them.

[Pluggy]

Since radiation is more dangerous the closer you are to the source, chain link fencing makes perfect sense to keep humans / animals away from the source. Its to deny access, not to stop the radiation.

The Windscale fire isn't still burning, it was put out within a few days of the accident. Theres a whole pile of damaged fuel rods still in there, they're leaving them to decay over time to make them safer to move. Many decommissioned nuclear power stations still have their reactor in place awaiting a time in the future when the radiation level has dropped so its safer to remove them altogether. Many of the nuclear isotopes involved have quite short half lives and 50 years or so will significantly reduce the residual radiation levels. Final decommissioning of the 2 Windscale Piles is due in 2037. All of the fuel has been removed from the undamaged Pile 2, about 15 tonnes remains in Pile 1.

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013 ... tation.pdf

Nice piccies of some of the fuel thats left in Pile 1 and the Graphite core.