Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

NigeWick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Kinda how I feel about nuclear, it is incredibly safe (no sarcasm) right up till it isn't.

As you are aware, I am totally against nuclear generation. Firstly on the possible risks if somebody naughty decided to bomb a plant, secondly if it stops working a lot of people could be without electrickery, thirdly there's the cost of decommissioning and disposing of the waste.

And, now fourthly there are cheaper renewable alternatives. It's that last one that will get peoples' attention. What many don't get is that renewables plus storage are cheaper than new nuclear plants. I see the French Flammable effort is already about ten years late and some three times over the original estimate. And, they've discovered that the welding was not up to standard so they've got to redo it. I believe we should suck for the present costs and bin Hinkley Point C to save money over the supposed 35 years of its life.

NigeWick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

RE works, of course it does, but to get into higher and higher percentages (70%, 80%+) of UK generation it requires a wide mix of inputs and locations, and storage.

Storage is the sticking point at present.

"Professor Sadoway's invention is radically different from anything else in the market: It uses liquid metals and molten salt."

May be part of the answer.

GreatApe

Reed_Richards wrote: »

In Canada the weather forecasters like to make things worse. So in winter they report the actual temperature but also a lower temperature when the "wind chill factor" is taken into account. In summer they report the actual temperature but also a higher temperature when the "humidex" is taken into account. So the idea of a heat/humidity index is a very familiar concept in some countries.

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Thanks. I'm glad it's not just me that spotted that any praise comes with a corresponding attack on another part of the RE 'package'.

RE works, of course it does, but to get into higher and higher percentages (70%, 80%+) of UK generation it requires a wide mix of inputs and locations, and storage.

Even the word storage has multiple sub divisions, be it batts (stationary, BEV's, different capacities etc etc), perhaps over capacity is 'storage' (having reserve capacity), bio-mass/bio-gas thermal generation on-site storage and so on, etc, etc..

But what we mustn't miss, is that each form of RE generation, and each form of storage falls down on its own, but as a broad mix becomes far greater than the sum of its parts.

Many countries will be able to rely on PV as their backbone, due to low cost (overcapacity), and daily reliability, but obviously in the UK, the price won't be low enough for that, especially given the greater seasonal variation, and less reliable daily generation.

We, in the UK, need a reliable balance of generation, and sadly (for us) PV is not the backbone, so the package needs to include everything economically possible*, and that simply excludes nuclear now due to cost changes in RE (and storage) this decade. Those that can't, or won't revise their opinion on this simply aren't open to the fact that things have changed dramatically, and continue to shift in favour of RE and storage.

*Start off including pretty much everything in the package, at the review stage, then exclude the most expensive parts that are not essential to the mix. Effectively the package should pit options against each other to find the right mix of technologies and their individual scales. At this stage I struggle to see what nuclear brings to the table, since alternatives to the nuclear part will be cheaper, faster and safer.

Weirdly, I don't think such a discussion/argument is negative. I find the route forward now, to be a really fun and promising thing to talk about, as the news is all good, I believe, now ........ having rationally, economically (and peace of mind) excluded nuclear from the picture/package.

The grid is already solved with what exists and what is under construction and the commitment to 30GW offshore by 2030. So move on the discussion for the grid is over and no additional new nuclear is needed. The bulk of the future UK grid is going to be offshore wind and imports

With the grid solved the remaining challenge for the UK is going to be how to solve heating

There are only two realistic options

1: nuclear heat via distributed grids. About 90% overall efficiency no need for storage as the nuclear fuel is controllable. Overall electricity demand falls (as even today a significant number of electrically heated homes flats showers etc exist which can be converted to nuclear heat). UK demand would probably fall to 300TWh or less and peak winter demand would fall towards 45GW

2. Electrify heating via a mix of heat pumps and resistance heaters (perhaps ratio of 2:1)
The problem here is you add some 200-300TWh demand to the grid which is huge
Maybe we can generate a lot more wind power you would say but that demand is not baseload but highly concentrated in the winter months. You go from a peak winter demand of about 50GW to over 100GW perhaps even 150GW on particularly cold days. And what do you do when electricity demand is 125GW and it's a windless week?? You would have to build backup CCGTs and fire them up. You'd have to build 30 million heat pumps. You'd have to massively upgrade the grid at every level. And you'd end up paying 15+ pence per kWh for electricity plus the cost of installing maintaining and replacing an expensive heat pump every 15-20 years

Overall Nuclear for heating sounds doable rapid (10 years) and not a huge challenge
Trying to electrify heating is going to be extremely difficult extremely costly and there is a big question mark on what you do when you have cold windless weeks. Storage you say but electricity storage especially bulk seasonal storage outside of hydropower doesn't exist. Overbuilding wind farms doesn't help because a windless week means those you overbuild won't help

Heat pumps plus offshore wind heavy grid might allow you to decarb 70% of heating, at great cost and time (will take 30 years). Nuclear heat can do 100% and do it in 10 years and would be lower cost especially for smaller flats/homes which have lower demand. If a flat needs say 4,000 units of heat then they probably have to do resistive heating at 16p a unit as a heat pump would be too big and expensive for such small demand flat. The nuclear heat would be a flat perhaps 4p a unit. 1/4th of the cost

GreatApe

NigeWick wrote: »

As you are aware, I am totally against nuclear generation. Firstly on the possible risks if somebody naughty decided to bomb a plant, secondly if it stops working a lot of people could be without electrickery, thirdly there's the cost of decommissioning and disposing of the waste.

And, now fourthly there are cheaper renewable alternatives. It's that last one that will get peoples' attention. What many don't get is that renewables plus storage are cheaper than new nuclear plants. I see the French Flammable effort is already about ten years late and some three times over the original estimate. And, they've discovered that the welding was not up to standard so they've got to redo it. I believe we should suck for the present costs and bin Hinkley Point C to save money over the supposed 35 years of its life.

Nuclear can get to 100%

Wind PV can not. There does not exist bulk electricity storage so that part of your post is wrong

However Wind/PV can get to 80-90% which is good enough

And for the UK we will already be 80% non fossil within 5 years so there is no need for additional nuclear because it won't be good at filling in the remaining 20% nor will wind or PV but interconntors especially to Norway will be good and help fill in this remaining 20%


But when you move onto heating
Which is a bigger demand than electricity
UK electricity demand is about 300TWh or even less (we use 335TWh bit a lot of that is electrical heating). UK heating demand is closer to 500TWh so almost twice as much Energy Vs electricity

So how do you solve heating??


Only two methods exist for near 100% non fossil heating
1. Nuclear heat (either CHP to use nuclear waste heat or heat reactors)
2. Massive hydropower
3. A massive upgrade to the grid to be able to handle as much as 3x winter peak demands. Massive additional deployment of offshore wind power (think 80-100GW more of you electrify heating). Need to build 100GW of backup CCGT or biomass. Grid upgrades at all levels. And then you need to fire up CCGTs/Biomass for low wind winter days/weeks.

We don't have #2, most other countries don't either
#1 would be cheap and fast (relatively speaking)
#3 can get far but it's unlikely to exceed 70% clean and the remaining 30% will be dirty. It will be costly and slow relative to #1

So pick your difficult heating road map
#1 or #3

BTW I understand and accept most people 80% plus will pick #3 over #1 but it's the less wise decision

Piddles

Petrol cars banned, no gas heating and meat-free Mondays - life in carbon neutral UK

Good to see the red tops joining the fray. Though the comments section indicates that there's long way to go.

Quite a good piece though.

zeupater

silverwhistle wrote: »

Yep, and even your extrapolated summary made me feel a weary sense of resignation that he posts such rubbish.


Mind you, I suspect more and more posters are beginning to realise it's probably best not to quote him..

Hi

I did have some thoughts about what a heat grid would involve after posting yesterday, so here goes ...

- Thermal efficiency of nuclear generation is around 1/3, so the thermal capacity of something like HPC would be ~10GW

- Whatever the heat-main grid looks like it would need to operate at safe temperatures & pressures to avoid catastrophic failure, so we're likely looking at ~70C initial flow temperatures with a possible return of 25-30C, so around 40C of reheat being required in the system ..

- 1 tonne of water requires ~50kWh to raise the return temperature to that required for flow.

- 10GW/50kW represents an estimated hourly flow rate in cubic metres(/tonnes), so around 200,000/hr or about 55tonnes/second ...

- Keeping within & applying max flow rate recommendation temperatures for hot water systems of 2m/second, the distribution network would require the equivalent of a 6.1m id pipe to transport 55tonnes/second, that's approx the same as the cross-rail tunnels in London (~6.2m) and they're not designed to carry high pressure, high temperature water!

- The 'Tunnel #3' project to supply New York with an additional fresh water supply uses tunnels of approximately the same diameter so we can apply rough costs based on that system for the long distance heat-main runs, but bear in mind that the flow rate, temperatures, pumped pressures etc would all be considerably lower (as would be the supporting infrastructure!) ... for a 60 mile system, the cost is around $6billion, so around $100million/mile ... however, the project started approx 50years ago! ...

- For reference purposes ..... Cross-rail has around 5 miles of tunnels and cost considerably more! ...

So, let's simply substitute $ for £, add (say) 50% to cope with the hot water & pressure issues (this would likely be at the lower end for rough estimation) and if we take the road distance between Hinckley point & Bristol as being ~50miles, then we're likely talking about an initial £7.5billion for the feed & a further £7.5billion for the return, so a total of ~£15billion for an initial short(ish) run before multiple levels of branching off for local supply occurs! ...

Taking an approach of building a heat-main network alongside the UK motorway network gives an initial stab of ~£700billion, add in the main trunk roads and the initial heat-main backbone cost moves to between £2 & £3trillion ...

Around £3 trillion (low side estimate!) & all we have after around a century of massive scale civil engineering projects is hot water in large diameter pipes and yet to consider the various heat source (nuclear?) costs or linking individual cities, towns, villages & individual premises into the strategic distribution network ...

Against this, a managed project for domestic ASHPs at (say) £4k/household would cost around £100billion in total ... as would supply of solar to every household, as would a battery storage system for each household too ...


Enough said really, a few minutes of thought with basic science, logic, estimated cost & scale applied ... hopefully everyone can follow the thought process & understand that a national heat-main based grid system is simply not going to happen ... :cool:

HTH
Z

Piddles

EDF's Flamanville reactor delayed three years

This is EDF's flagship new nuclear reactor in Normandy, the precursor to Hickey Point C. It's now already more than three times over budget and ten years late.....

That's about all you need to know about the future of nuclear.

Though as an ex nuclear proponent, I do wonder sometimes where nuclear technology would be now if everyone had "done a France", and whether we'd be facing this climate change disaster at all (on the basis that the accelerating speed of technological change would in the future have solved the rest of the emissions problem before it got to current levels).

zeupater

Piddles wrote: »

EDF's Flamanville reactor delayed three years

This is EDF's flagship new nuclear reactor in Normandy, the precursor to Hickey Point C. It's now already more than three times over budget and ten years late.....

That's about all you need to know about the future of nuclear.

Though as an ex nuclear proponent, I do wonder sometimes where nuclear technology would be now if everyone had "done a France", and whether we'd be facing this climate change disaster at all (on the basis that the accelerating speed of technological change would in the future have solved the rest of the emissions problem before it got to current levels).

Hi

Well, if that's the case, it's a big load hitting the fan! .... :whistle:

I'm pretty sure that it was widely reported and confirmed by parliamentary questions that HM Government's funding loan (~£17 Billion? - anyone confirm??) was conditional on the Flamanville plant successfully completing generation trials by sometime in 2020 and there was the option to invoke a get-out clause if this primary condition wasn't met ....

... presents a great negotiating position on the Brexit/Euratom front though, potentially dealing the UK a valuable hand worth £billions more than the funding load if they want (/are willing to) to play it! ...

HTH
Z

silverwhistle

zeupater wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that it was widely reported...

That was my understanding too.

ed110220

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Well, if that's the case, it's a big load hitting the fan! .... :whistle:

I'm pretty sure that it was widely reported and confirmed by parliamentary questions that HM Government's funding loan (~£17 Billion? - anyone confirm??) was conditional on the Flamanville plant successfully completing generation trials by sometime in 2020 and there was the option to invoke a get-out clause if this primary condition wasn't met ....

... presents a great negotiating position on the Brexit/Euratom front though, potentially dealing the UK a valuable hand worth £billions more than the funding load if they want (/are willing to) to play it! ...

HTH
Z

I heard that they planned to start it up temporarily only to close it down again for lengthy repairs in order to get around clauses like this...

The Finnish EPR at Olkiluoto is even further behind. It was started in 2005 with completion planned for 2010 but now pushed back to July 2020(!)

On the other hand both EPR reactors at Taishan in China are now complete after "only" 9 years construction.