Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

JKenH

Boris Johnson has announced the funding of the world’s first nuclear fusion plant, which could power entire towns without creating greenhouse gases or radioactive waste.

The Government will spend £220 million on the project, which it hopes will play a key role in reducing the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

Nuclear power currently comes from the fission process.

Fusion power is a zero-carbon, combustion-free source of energy that generates electricity using hydrogen.

It is the technology behind the hydrogen bomb, but scientists have been unable to produce a reactor capable of harnessing fusion power in a viable manner.

The Government is hoping its investment will allow the UK to build the world’s first fusion plant by 2040.

Andrea Leadsom, the Business and Energy Secretary, said: “Today’s announcement is a bold and ambitious investment in the energy technology of the future.

“Nuclear fusion has the potential to be an unlimited clean, safe and carbonfree energy source and we want the first commercially viable machine to be in the UK. This long-term investment will build on the UK’s scientific leadership, driving advancements in materials science, plasma physics and robotics to support new high-tech jobs and exports.”

The world’s largest nuclear fusion research experiment is housed in Culham, Oxon, at a research facility that Mr Johnson visited within days of becoming Prime Minister.

Scientists at the centre warned in 2016 that changes to free movement rules after Brexit could make it difficult to attract and retain world-leading researchers, but Mr Johnson reassured them that the Government’s new immigration policy would include a fast-track visa scheme for such workers.

He said: “What we want to see is a greater openness to top talent from around the world. “So we’re going to turn the UK into a supercharged magnet, drawing scientists like iron filings from around the world, to help push forward projects like this, in which we can take not just a scientific lead, but a commercial lead as well.”

The UK is not the only country looking to utilise fusion power in a bid to drive down greenhouse gas emissions.

The construction of an internationally funded facility in Provence, France, reached the halfway point in 2017, and experiments are due to begin using the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in 2025.

However, the project, which has investment from the EU, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States, has been beset by missed deadlines and ballooning costs.

The fusion plant announcement came alongside other green pledges, including plans to introduce new energy efficiency regulations for homes from next year.

Robert Jenrick, the Housing Secretary, said: “The Future Homes Standard will change the way we build and heat our homes forever.”

The Government also announced plans to invest £1 billion in the UK’s electric car industry as well as planting a million trees to create a forest in Northumberland.

Hexane

Martyn1981 wrote: »

No more UK fracking in 2019 as Cuadrilla runs out of time after record-breaking tremor

Thank you for posting this, it is very good news. I was otherwise unaware of this major development; the BBC had previously been covering the issue in detail and regularly, but today it's not in their "Science and Environment" nor "England" sections. Instead you have to drill down (ahem) to the "Lancashire" sub-section to find their story on it.

Solarchaser

Glad to see the fracking getting halted.
Up here the Scottish government played a blinder with banning it without actually banning it (cant ban as it's a reserved power, but did put a moratorium on it).

Nick you would really have to be at a stretch to say 1 is vidicating great troll, I mean really.

Though you could argue stating interconnectors 5 times every other post could be considered as 3, so I'd maybe give you that.

The old "even a broken clock is right twice a day" or once a day if you are ms. Abbot, though I assume she meant a digital clock.... we hope

1961Nick

Solarchaser wrote: »

Glad to see the fracking getting halted.
Up here the Scottish government played a blinder with banning it without actually banning it (cant ban as it's a reserved power, but did put a moratorium on it).

Nick you would really have to be at a stretch to say 1 is vidicating great troll, I mean really.

Though you could argue stating interconnectors 5 times every other post could be considered as 3, so I'd maybe give you that.

The old "even a broken clock is right twice a day" or once a day if you are ms. Abbot, though I assume she meant a digital clock.... we hope

He has been banging on about simple resistance boilers/heaters for as long as I can remember. He's also as besotted with interconnectors as Mart is with windmills/solar - it looks as if between them they've got a big chunk of the solution.

GreatApe

Fracking would be great but it isn't really required primarily because fracking is growing so rapidly in the USA it allowed oil gas and coal prices to be much lower than they otherwise would have been

USA shale oil is now 8.8 mbpd and USA shale gas is the equivalent of 14.6 mbpd so a combined 23.4 mbpd of oil equivalent.....and growing....might even reach 30 mbpd equivalent by mid 2020s which is almost 300% of Saudi energy output

Solarchaser

See when he says things like fracking would be great, surely its obvious he is a troll?

mmmmikey

Solarchaser wrote: »

See when he says things like fracking would be great, surely its obvious he is a troll?

Yes I agree - his posts appear to be deliberately provocative. I did at one stage think he might be a bona-fide loony (so backed off a bit in case he is) but reading some of the recent posts I think he is just trolling as you say. My policy going forward will be to reply once if I think his comments merit it, but after that to heed the standard "don't feed the trolls" advice.

Martyn1981

The list of necessary actions is nothing new, and is what we are doing, and is what we always planned to do. Though of course we need to keep scaling up towards targets.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself.


Regarding fracking, I have to admit to finding it all a bit surreal.

After bans/moratoriums in the UK (and many in Europe too), we get forced through licencing in England, that both parties agree to, but with a seismic restriction that makes fracking impossible. So a government that supports, but in affect bans it, and an industry that agrees, but immediately states that the restrictions they accepted are unworkable.

Nothing makes sense, I'm completely bewildered by all of it. My only guess is that after their nuclear policy collapsed (not really the Tories fault, just the impact of tumbling RE costs) they didn't want to be seen to U-turn on their fracking policy ...... really weak argument I know, but nothing makes sense here.

But I'm not complaining.


Nuclear fusion is a fun topic. Excellent docu by Brian Cox a decade or so back (I seem to remember). But the problem now is economics, ain't it always.

Solving it is getting closer, though slower than hoped, but looks like it won't be economical v's RE.

My biggest fear is that a technology that never got the support it should have*, in light of AGW, might now be used as a pawn by the FF industry for diversion and delay, like CCS, clean coal, fuel cell cars etc. to maintain the status quo for a few barrels longer.

*Having chatted with a nuclear engineer on another forum, and asked him (a few years back) why he had transferred back to the fission industry from fusion, he explained it was due to lack of funding.

Clearly the UK investment shows that there are money issues, but he went on to explain funding was decreasing not because the technology didn't look viable, but that it was looking less economically viable due to falling RE costs, costs that have fallen considerably since then. And I doubt there are any of us left who still believe the old claim that fusion would deliver leccy too cheap to meter.

JKenH

Martyn1981 wrote: »

The list of necessary actions is nothing new, and is what we are doing, and is what we always planned to do. Though of course we need to keep scaling up towards targets.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself.


Regarding fracking, I have to admit to finding it all a bit surreal.

After bans/moratoriums in the UK (and many in Europe too), we get forced through licencing in England, that both parties agree to, but with a seismic restriction that makes fracking impossible. So a government that supports, but in affect bans it, and an industry that agrees, but immediately states that the restrictions they accepted are unworkable.

Nothing makes sense, I'm completely bewildered by all of it. My only guess is that after their nuclear policy collapsed (not really the Tories fault, just the impact of tumbling RE costs) they didn't want to be seen to U-turn on their fracking policy ...... really weak argument I know, but nothing makes sense here.

But I'm not complaining.


Nuclear fusion is a fun topic. Excellent docu by Brian Cox a decade or so back (I seem to remember). But the problem now is economics, ain't it always.

Solving it is getting closer, though slower than hoped, but looks like it won't be economical v's RE.

My biggest fear is that a technology that never got the support it should have, in light of AGW, might now be used as a pawn by the FF industry for diversion and delay, like CCS, clean coal, fuel cell cars etc. to maintain the status quo for a few barrels longer.

You were doing so well there, Mart, until your last paragraph.

JKenH

Martyn1981 wrote: »

There's another thread now for you to start all your arguments on so please use it. Thanks.

I'll delete this post in a bit, hopefully you can do the same.

Sorry, Mart, I wasn’t tying to get into an argument about whether fusion might be a pawn of the FF industry, I just thought the suggestion was unnecessary, inserted to provoke argument and unrelated to the topic being discussed; similar to when a politician, no matter what question he is asked, insists on getting his political message across. I certainly didn’t post the article as some clever pro FF subterfuge and don’t intend debating the merits or otherwise of your suggestion.

I think what p-o-s was hoping for was that we would stick to the technology and leave the pro/anti FF opinions and campaigning out of it. I may have been wrong.

BTW I could also point out that the previous posts, discussing whether GA was a troll, had been off topic as well and also would have been more appropriate on the other thread as they weren’t really adding much to the RE discussion.

I apologise to other forum members for this intervention but we are still in the early days of cleaning this thread up and deciding by common consent what is and isn’t constructive/appropriate.