Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

zeupater

ed110220 wrote: »

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...

Hi

I think that's what the decision relates to ... EDF approached the French nuclear safety agency to request temporary operation with deviation notices in effect in order to complete tests to avoid missing the contractual deadline. It seems that despite their appeals, the relevant safety agency have decided that the answer is 'non' as any other decision could compromise safety, which is more than a little embarrassing for the HPC project consortium ...

Maybe the EU or French government would step in to underwrite HPC funding to ensure the financial viability of the entire EPR project, but to me it's not something that HM Government should get involved in, after all, it's supposed to be a privately funded build using tried & tested (elsewhere) technology with a contract awarded on a guaranteed CFD basis which included pretty watertight conditions which the supplier seems to have been unable to meet ... it'd be interesting to see the full contractual clauses regarding the supplier defaulting before anyone looks to agree any changes ....

HTH
Z

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

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.

Flow temps are wrong they would be closer to 90 centigrade out and 50 in but the 50KWh/ton isn't a bad guess so... The pressure would be somewhere around 5-15 bar so similar to what drinking water is piped around at and of course this would be totally separate from the nuclear water there would be 2-3 loops

-

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

Correct 55 tons/second but it wouldn't be one big pipe to one big location
10GW of heat would be closer to 10-100 pipes

-

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!

Why do you need to impose a limit of 2m/second flow rate?
That's a guide for homes to limit sound in pipes that might be a few centimetres from your bedroom pillow it's not a limit necessary to impose on a hurried in a far away field hot water pipe

I would suggest something like a 10 bar pressure with pumps every 2km or so

So 10GW split into 10 pipes (you would want to use one pipe because if it fails you have lost all your heat for a city the size of London!!) Would need about 6 tons per second per pipe. Using 10 bar pressure and 2km pumping you get a figure of just under 52cm pipes needed.

Nothing like your suggested 6 meter megapipe

-

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! ...

But as noted you only need 52cm pipes.
Even smaller pipes if you opt to pump every 1km rather than every 2km
Even smaller pipes if you opt for higher than the modest 10 bar pressure

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

What's cross rail got to do with 52cm water pipes?

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! ...

Let's just pluck numbers out of our !!!!!! :rotfl:

Why not use the cold water system as a guide surely much better than totally unrelated train tunnels

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 ...

No those are your imaginary costs

The pipeline network would be comparable on scale and scope to the drinking water pipes network plus some cheap insulation. That didn't cost us £3 trillion :rotfl: let's look at Thames water it has a market cap of £12 billion let's use that as a more realistic figure. Sure hot water is two pipes maybe a little bigger but Thames water is more than piping water it's sewerage processing etc

So let's take that as a much much more reasonable guess rather than your nonsense
Thames water is 27% of the market so scale up to UK = about 45 billion to build the pipes

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 ...

Your guesses are nonsense
Cold water piping for the UK is around 45 billion market cap
Sure hot water will be marginally more difficult but then you don't need to do all the things cold water companies do like clean !!!! unblock sewers reprocessing water building and maintaining massive reservoirs etc etc so it's not a bad guess and much better than your nonsense of trying to figure out water piping costs by looking at cross rail :rotfl:

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 ...

How does the solar help with winter heating?
Who sells and installls heat pumps for 4k?
What do you do about the national grid winter demand going from 50GW to 100+ GW
What happens when the wind don't blow?

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:

I want to say your guesswork was foolish which it was, but to be fair it's a good first attempt

Now refine your model
Try not use train tracks to figure out water piping costs when water piping companies and infrastructure exists for comparison
Try to be more realistic of the direct and indirect costs of your heat pump idea

Then come back and retell your store

:j

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

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

So in summary what your saying is piping hot water around is gona cost us £2-3 trillion with your basic science logic and understanding.....

When the cold water piping system (which includes waste processing, huge amount of space and land for reservoirs, pipes clogging due to the !!!! people flush and chemicals used etc etc) costs less than £50 billion......

:rotfl: you and your 'science' :rotfl:

Let's go with £45 billion for the hot water distribution system I think it would be less but whatever
You then need probably another £50 billion for 100GW of thermal nuclear heat

~£100 billion to solve heating

The cost of running it would be low as nuclear heat costs are very low
Plus it's an actual solution for 30 million homes and the millions of other businesses shops offices
UK electricity demand would also fall as you convert the current electricity heated homes

You won't even be able to install 35 million heat pumps for anything close to £100 billion
Let alone the huge grid upgrades
The 50 big additional CCGTs for backup
The 100GW of offshore wind to power this additional concentrated winter demand
And the hope that you never get a windless week or mountain sized batteries or mountain sized hydrogen hope industries....

And the nuclear heat industry and the distribution pipes will last a hundred years. How long will your heat pumps last and how much to maintain repair and replace? Once every 15-20 years?

GreatApe

This is why I give some time to this underpowered discussion board
While I don't get much value out of most of you, even your silly posts make me think and my own thinking gives me good insights

£3 trillion for pipes....

No probably less than £50 billion as that's what the water distribution and reprocessing industry 'costs'
Actually probably less as moving water around (hot in warm out) is a lot easier than piping water into homes and businesses which mix it with all sorts of !!!!! which needs to be piped/pumped back and reprocessed back into drinking water.


Having said all this I still accepting we won't be doing nuclear heat even though about £100 billion and 10 years would solve heating at probably very good prices (my estimate is below £350 for the average home per year). Could achieve 100% non fossil heating

We will in fact try electrify heating with a mix of heat pumps and resistance heaters at much higher costs and with probably only 70% wind power 30% backup CCGT or dirty biomass

Martyn1981

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

Yep, the UK can withdraw loan guarantees for HPC if Flamanville doesn't come on line by a set date (I think it's end of 2020). So the plan was to use the reactor lid with the cracks they've found, commission it (go critical), then shortly after shutdown again for several years to replace the reactor lid.

The full 'get out clause' for the UK is if HPC doesn't start generating by 2035. It's supposed to start around 2025/26, but I tend to suggest 2028 since EDF announced the project was well over budget and nearly 2yrs behind schedule, about 6 months after the build began.

Option '3' is to pay the poison pill of £22bn if the UK cancels the deal anytime between now and the end of the 35yr CfD.

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Yep, the UK can withdraw loan guarantees for HPC if Flamanville doesn't come on line by a set date (I think it's end of 2020). So the plan was to use the reactor lid with the cracks they've found, commission it (go critical), then shortly after shutdown again for several years to replace the reactor lid.

The full 'get out clause' for the UK is if HPC doesn't start generating by 2035. It's supposed to start around 2025/26, but I tend to suggest 2028 since EDF announced the project was well over budget and nearly 2yrs behind schedule, about 6 months after the build began.

Option '3' is to pay the poison pill of £22bn if the UK cancels the deal anytime between now and the end of the 35yr CfD.

HPC should never have been built, instead the resources should have gone to upgrading and uprating the French nuclear fleet.

The same number of reactors might have been able to be increased from 63GW capacity to 70GW. With the additional Interconnectors being built to the UK/Spain/Italy (5.4GW France to UK) and with running at USA fleet capacity factor this 70GW could have produced annually 560TWh up from just under 400TWh so an additional 160TWh significantly more than the 26TWh HPC will produce

NigeWick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Option '3' is to pay the poison pill of £22bn if the UK cancels the deal anytime between now and the end of the 35yr CfD.

I'd take that now and RUN AWAY!

Martyn1981

NigeWick wrote: »

I'd take that now and RUN AWAY!

:rotfl:

Kinda agree, but, I don't think EDF could cope without the UK loan guarantees, they are simply too stretched already, with enormous debts, so if Flamanville can't be commissioned till 2022, then the 'Flamanville clause' may get us out without paying £22bn.

The terminology for commissioned seems to be somewhere beyond having “completed the trial operation period” and other operational milestones by December 2020, and it looks like that is simply impossible now ...... if the news is correct.

Coastalwatch

Martyn1981 wrote: »

:rotfl:

Kinda agree, but, I don't think EDF could cope without the UK loan guarantees, they are simply too stretched already, with enormous debts, so if Flamanville can't be commissioned till 2022, then the 'Flamanville clause' may get us out without paying £22bn.

Is that why they are inviting Jo public to contribute up front for Sizewell C to supposedly assist in lowering the cost of the leccy it subsequently produces.:eek:
Do they think we were born yesterday!:mad:
Surely Sizewell C must be even less likely to go ahead now than even Hinckley Point!:beer:

zeupater

zeupater wrote: »

...
- 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! ...

Hi All

Had another thought related to a UK example after posting that yesterday which provides support to the scale of likely costs ...

The Thames Tideway project is based around a ~7m diameter pipeline (ambient temperature low/no pressure) running 16miles & costing around £5billion on a current cost basis ... so around £300million/mile ... (ref: Cross-rail tunnelling reported by NAO in May this year now at ~£350million/mile!)

Also had a couple of thoughts related to individual existing property connections ...

A couple of years back a friend installed a heat-main connection between a couple of buildings using a twin core pipe, the materials were pretty expensive (around £50/metre), but being rural & having access to 'free' labour/equipment the installation was pretty straightforward .... park this thought for a moment, it'll be needed later ...

Quite often we hear mention of cold water supply pipes needing replacement with horrendous cost implications ... a few £thousand seems to be pretty standard ... so if we were to accept that each property could be connected to a curtilage supply point with large diameter insulated heat-main for the same cost as a small diameter water supply pipe (which is unlikely, but bear with the thought process) we have something to work with ...

Okay, ~£2k for the connection plus ~£1000 (based on 20m average) of pipework gives an approximation of the cost of property tails, so around £100billion just to get the heat from the pavement to the house ... remember, this excludes valves, control systems pressure reduction requirements, connection, smart heat meters (~£500/household?), so likely a figure closer to £200billion would give an idea of the local connection requirement ....

Right then, back to the parked thought .... the heat-main project mentioned needed to include system heat-loss within the heat-main run so as to size the heat source ... from memory the loss was calculated at around 10W/metre for the underground pipe & slightly lower for the unburied sections .... applying this to the approximation used for costs above, we get an estimated thermal loss just in the connections from properties to curtilages which is approaching the total thermal capacity of HPC, so possibly between 2&3 HPCs would be needed just to cope with these connection tail losses on a useful CHP basis .... and that's before calculating local distribution network losses & those involved in the main grid! ...

A national heat distribution infrastructure has staggering costs & staggering thermal inefficiencies, resulting in staggering costs in creating the centralised thermal plant ... that's why CHP/Co-generation is seen as being a local or district heating solution ... I've seen a few district heating solutions in operation & they seem to work well, until they go wrong for some reason that is, then the cost & blame game seem to raise temperatures elsewhere! ...

All starting to look like the pattern that governments seem to get drawn into on large projects .... costs don't seem too bad when the project idea is originally raised by a project sponsor, only to have 'unforeseen' (as if!) costs ramping up after actually committing to the plan! ....

Heat pumps sitting alongside batteries make far more sense ... a 4kW.t ASHP setup running at ~60% capacity on a 24hr basis would probably suit the majority of UK home winter heat-load requirements where insulation is at reasonable levels without impacting on peak-load generation & that's the most likely & most cost effective pathway to follow ....

... now if the heat-pump was integrated into a fuel cell co-gen design using derived bio-gas (or scrubbed air synthetic gas!) delivered through the existing gas grid, we can start to see considerable efficiency gains and a target-able solution leveraging considerable existing assets ... but that's relying on a co-ordinated approach by government, so probably more than a few years down the line! ...


HTH
Z