ENERGY MATTERS

[plaques]

each resident being able to adjust their heating to suit themselves and each paying their own bills.

This is not always true but its a good guide. Walk round the streets in the middle of winter and see who has their windows open in the lounge with the TV on. I'll bet its not them who are paying the bills.

[Tizer]

A lot of oil and gas is already brought up in the south of England and one company alone (IGAS) has 20 sites and has produced 40 million barrels over many years. There are also the `burning cliffs' of the Kimmeridge Clay on the Jurassic coast. The interesting fact is that none of the public or media showed a blind bit of interest in this gas and oil production until someone started frightening the public with false claims about shale gas fracking.

[Stanley]

Can't you just imagine some editor somewhere thinking "there's a story in this!".

[Tizer]

The southern nimbys (and the northern nimbys) might be quite willing to change their tune when they see that they will paid for having a well below their house:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27529175

[Stanley]

I lit the stove yesterday afternoon, getting a bit chilly and clammy.... Still in this morning burning very low, I shall keep it going today.

[Stanley]

EDF, the operators of Dungeness 'B' nuclear power station, have applied for a relaxation of the safety regulations to allow the reactor to be kept in service for an extra four years. (LINK) I don't think I am a scaremonger but it worries me when something like this is done and said to be 'perfectly safe' at a time when under-capacity is looming on the horizon.

[Tizer]

It's still within what is considered `safe' but it trims a bit off the contingency aspect. What else can we do though when the planners take so long to allow EDF to build the new reactors to replace the old?

[Pluggy]

Several of the old nukes have been derated (the old lowering the boiler pressure trick which Stanley will be familiar with) to extend their life. The government have been pushing decisions regarding what they are going to use to keep the lights on as more stations are closed to the back of the queue for long enough. Theres not much margin above peak load (which doesn't come along very often) left. We haven;t had a heavy load day this winter because its been very mild. Theres a bit more leeway with selective load dumping (some large users who can generate their own or live without for a while can volunteer in return for cheaper power) and then theres the getting the concerns with emergency generation capability (hospitals etc) to feed the grid.....

[Stanley]

'The old lower the pressure trick'. Yes, but in that case the lower pressure was only allowed after a complete external and internal inspection of the boiler including physical measurements of things like corrosion depth and plate thickness and that can't be the case here. Whatever the explanations offered, the original margins of safety have been lowered and this is what bothers me.

[Pluggy]

'The old lower the pressure trick'. Yes, but in that case the lower pressure was only allowed after a complete external and internal inspection of the boiler including physical measurements of things like corrosion depth and plate thickness and that can't be the case here. Whatever the explanations offered, the original margins of safety have been lowered and this is what bothers me.

No, this one is the amount of graphite and its condition inside the reactor, since it can't be changed without opening up the reactor (and all the decommissioned reactors are still intact awaiting the day when they reckon its prudent to open them up) its game over for the power station. Its either adjusting the safety levels or closing down the station and the loss of a sizable lump of reliable low carbon juice at this stage of the game doesn't bear thinking about. Lets hope the designers in the fifties and early sixties knew their game and there's overkill on the safety margins.

[PanBiker]

Decommissioned is a bit of a con really. Ok the are switched off but definitely not safe which is what the word means. I know what you mean regarding the safety margins as well but the word "hope" is not really one that you should be able to associate with a "controlled" nuclear explosion, which in effect is what fission is all about. All these redundant piles knocking about waiting for fire, flood, earthquake or other natural disaster. Scary stuff!

[Tizer]

But if that's scary then we should be more worried about all the other things that are vulnerable to fire, flood, earthquake or other natural disaster. There are plenty of factories and storage depots that could provide us with disasters, even in little old England (we were very, very lucky that there weren't lots of deaths from the Buncefield explosion in 2005). And such disasters occur more frequently than most people realise, in the US for instance. We don't hear much about them here. And I've mentioned before that the biggest potential disaster (in numbers of dead) will be when one of the Chinese hydro-electric mega-dams collapses. Storage of CO2 under pressure below ground as part of carbon-capture for power stations will be another danger that doesn't get much attention.

[Pluggy]

I'm optimistic, the Windscale chimneys will be gone in the next few years and their piles a few years after that. I believe the decommissioned reactors are safe enough, they've been defueled theres only the latent radiation left in them. Fifty years and a bod in a space suit will go in with a gas axe.....

I'm with Tizer, we've bigger things to worry about than nuclear power stations, decommissioned or otherwise.

They should have been considering Sizewell C 10 years earlier with the amount of time they take to get on-line. The Germans are having doubts about their knee-jerk reaction to Fukushime and bringing some of theirs back into service with the price of fuel for conventional stations. The French would be screwed without nuclear since 70% of their electric is nuclear generated.

25 years on from Chernobyl and they let the Top Gear idiots drive round the exclusion zone in old cars.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Top Gear but it doesn't stop me thinking that Clarkson and his ilk are idiots. I wouldn't think putting the future of a money spinner like Top Gear in jeopardy by harming their presenters would be high on the Beebs agenda.

[PanBiker]

If the bod in the spacesuit is into the Windscale piles to sort them out in another 50 years that's only a 120 year fix so that's all right then!

I'm also aware that there are lots of other procedures in use that could lead to disaster but this does not alter the fact that the nuclear route is fraught with danger and clearly not full understood or managed in some cases. Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are testament to that. The fact that they let folk into the periphery of what is deemed to be the exclusion zone of Chernobyl to act like idiots for a few hours has no bearing on the thousands of people who have been irradiated and are now suffering the consequences with leukaemia and sundry other cancer types. Twenty five years may only be a short time in the vast scale of things but genetic effects last a lot longer than that.

[Pluggy]

The Windscale piles will be gone by 2022. They've already started on one chimney. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR-De ... 09134.html

The real answer to the energy problems is a population cull and enforced sterilization of the remainder, but it doesn't work in a democracy.

Coal mining has killed and continues killing far more people than nuclear power, as have dam accidents.

What would you use to make electricity ?

[PanBiker]

I know that with present technology we have little alternative. This does not alter the fact that you simply can't turn a nuclear power station off. They have a very long term overhead attached to each and every one of them. I doubt if they will be re-cycling the materials used in the chimney that your link refers to. What happens to all the contaminated material from this demolition? The only point I am making is that it's huge mess that has no present solution and it has enormous risk factors attached to the technology.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it would have been much better if the same investment had been put into many of the alternative benign methods of energy production over the last 70 years, wave, wind, solar, thermal or fusion.

I noted on the news today that there is a proposition for thermal energy production in Cheshire. It remains to be seen if anyone wants it in "their backyard" when push comes to shove.

[plaques]

What would you use to make electricity ?

For the UK, my favourite has been underwater turbines. Either from tidal movement which has the disadvantage of a sinusoidal output or ocean currents. The latter would give a more consistent output but are more limited where you could place them. Round the Scottish coast would be favourite but in another 100 days it could mean buying our energy from a different bunch of foreigners.

[Stanley]

The one thing that seems to be a constant in any thinking about energy use is that there should be no limits on how much you can buy if you have the money. Perhaps some differential pricing for non-essential usage would lower the demand. I'm thinking about advertising lighting, flood lighting of public buildings, excessive Xmas lighting displays. Think fuel consumption and cars, can we really afford to give people the right to drive anywhere they want in a car given the traffic problem in big cities? How would differential pricing of gas and leccy affect the problem if the first reasonable tranche was cheap and as consumption rises the price escalates?
Of course, I am an old fart. I was reared without street lighting and under fuel rationing. Funnily enough we survived!
I know that this all sounds reactionary but conditions have changed, we are getting clear signs from every direction, including global warming, that unfettered energy usage is a thing of the past. Perhaps it's time we woke up and smelt the coffee.

[Pluggy]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27779815

[Stanley]

Someone has been thinking along the same lines as me.....

[Stanley]

See this ARTICLE for the latest on the pressure being put on the energy companies to pass on reductions in wholesale energy prices. Does anyone think it will have any effect? The bottom line is that these privatised companies are totally outside government control. In addition, the profits they are making are almost all sucked out of the UK due to foreign ownership. Remember 'the commanding heights of the economy'?
A perfect demonstration of how imperfect the market is and how untrustworthy they are when the well-being of customers is entrusted to them.
The Passport Office problems aren't going away as more whistle-blowers kick in with pictures of meeting rooms being used to store applications, something they say they have never seen before. There is a disconnect between ministerial statements and what seems to be actually happening.
Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, Sep Blatter announces that he will stand for another term as President of FIFA next year despite the mounting evidence of bribery and corruption in the Qatar application. It goes further than that according to PE who lay out a web of insider dealing and favours for Blatter's relatives and friends in FIFA.
Meanwhile. PE have a great front cover. It shows the England Team getting off the plane in Brazil and the pilot is asking if he should keep the engines running....

[Pluggy]

In addition, the profits they are making are almost all sucked out of the UK due to foreign ownership.

Nobody says much about Aldi and Liddell taking money away from Morrisons and Tesco to export abroad. And I'll bet the supermarkets make a lot more than 5% profit, but that's perfectly OK. We won't mention mobile phone providers whose profits are way,way above 5%. but again that's perfectly OK. We have the lowest energy costs in Europe (not quite but we're not far off). France, Germany are much more expensive and the star player Denmark, whose energy prices are astronomical due to their subsidies on their huge investment in renewable energy.

I don't get why the energy companies have been singled out for a vendetta.

[Stanley]

They are the target of the moment, just another example of the 'Sun' level of appreciation of what is actually happening in the country. Example: how many users of Heathrow realise that it is foreign owned, the centre of an enormous tax avoidance scheme and all profits go abroad?

[Tizer]

I've bored you all in the past with predictions that solar cells (PV cells) will soon become cheaper and more efficient. Now here is the proof, and it's happening almost on our doorstep, thanks to Liverpool University. (Ignore the silly business about tofu and bath salts - the University obviously employs some media people to `sex up' the press releases!)
http://news.liv.ac.uk/2014/06/25/watch- ... nufacture/

It's also here on the Beeb's web site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27987827

We still make great discoveries in Britain!

[Stanley]

Good links. Thanks Tiz...