GB's cheap Chinese nuclear plant -v- solar

Capt'n Midnight · 23-03-2015 8:32pm

djpbarry wrote: »

You’re telling us that nuclear is cheap, yet Hinkley Point C is going to be phenomenally expensive. Construction costs are estimated at £24.5 billion and EDF have been guaranteed a massive strike price of £92.5 per MWh.

and don't forget that price is index linked, so it could be a whole lot in ten years time when the plant might start generating power. And it's a reasonably safe bet that the plant will be late and over budget.

Markcheese wrote: »

Solar costs are plummeting and 7 to 9 cent per kW may be comparable to gas except it's the system costs that counts-
A solar system needs other components to balance out peaks and something to provide power at night -
A gas based system doesn't - ( but who wants all their eggs in one basket )
So if you had a lot of solar on the grid ( Germany / southern USA ) you really want smart meters as well . So day time around noon would be off peak - 2 or 3 am would be expensive -
I'd also argue that payment for solar / renewable should be based on peaks as well - lowest payment around mid -day highest payment in morning and evening -

That's what's happening.

Solar has decimated the market for pumped storage in Germany. Previously pumped storage could rely on peak prices at peak demand but wind and solar have reduced the margins.

According to the study, the revenue prospects of pumped storage plants will only improve over the long term – at least a decade – when the share of renewable energy in the power generation mix has expanded sufficiently

http://www.icis.com/resources/news/2014/09/03/9817356/german-pumped-storage-in-crisis-as-solar-crushes-economics/

Unless you have oodles of hydro, and France's 20GW isn't enough, you need gas to backup nuclear or wind or solar or stuff like the 3GW surge in demand in the UK after the 1999 eclipse.

During the eclipse Germany organised lots of backup to cater for the loss of PV and managed through a 15GW drop while Italy just took the safe option and didn't take power from any solar farms bigger than 100KW.

SeanW · 27-03-2015 10:55pm

Macha wrote: »

One enormous caveat on retail prices is they hide subsidies so they're not a good way of judging technology costs. Actually they're probably one of the worst ways to be honest.

I put it to you that you would say this, since the measure shows your preferred choice in a very bad light.

djpbarry wrote: »

What are you talking about? The cost of solar is plummeting. Grid-scale solar in the US can deliver electricity for about 7 – 9 cents per kWh – that’s competitive versus gas:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/topaz-turns-on-9-million-solar-panels

You could make the solar panels for free, it wouldn't make a jot of difference because you can't rely on them. There may be no correlation between the output of a weather based renewable and demand. You can't make a reliable power system based on this. That's why the cost of electricity in Germany and Denmark is comparable only to places like Niue and the Soloman Islands.

You’re telling us that nuclear is cheap, yet Hinkley Point C is going to be phenomenally expensive. Construction costs are estimated at £24.5 billion and EDF have been guaranteed a massive strike price of £92.5 per MWh.

I don't recall claiming that it was "cheap" per se, just not so stupidly expensive as electicity costs in Germany, Denmark, Tuvalau, the Cook Islands and suchlike places.

In any case, that's not even the main point. From an environmental perspective, with the current hysetria about global warming, nuclear power should look a lot more attractive to the Environmental Left even if the costs were as ridiculous as some claim them to be.

Why? Again, look at France.

They say a picture speaks a thousands words, and for this I really shouldn't have to spell it out, but I will anyway.

France has <10% fossil fuel reliance. Gas in paticular accounted for 3.69% of power consumption in France in 2012. There are only two ways to do this:

Be a country naturally blessed with massive fjords and geothermal resources.
Embrace nuclear power unreservadley.

The only alternatives I've seen from the Environmental Left all include either massively leaving peoples businesses and lives dependent on the weather (demand shifting?) or deciding to invest heavily in natural gas technologies, or more likely both. In particular, there is no way for a country not blessed with geothermal/hydro resources to have <10% fossil fuel reliance. To be more pointed, a figure of 3.7% reliance on gas in Ireland will never be possible.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

During the eclipse Germany organised lots of backup to cater for the loss of PV and managed through a 15GW drop while Italy just took the safe option and didn't take power from any solar farms bigger than 100KW.

That's the other reason Germany's electricity costs are so stupidly high - the old business models of traditional plant operators are no longer viable.

Instead of building plant for continuous use, you have to build power plants to cover solar eclipses and polar vortexes when the government spends everyone's money on windmills and solar panels. That limits the plant types that can be built (only combined cycle gas can respond to the violent fluctations in supply/demand caused by renewables) and the plants are only viable if they can sell power for some stupidly high cost on the irregular and sometimes unpredictable intervals that it is required. You can't just assume that the thermal plants will just be there as backup, they have to be paid for, their capital costs and staff costs.

Macha · 28-03-2015 8:31am

SeanW wrote: »

I put it to you that you would say this, since the measure shows your preferred choice in a very bad light.

Nope, it's just true.

This report by the European Commission explains how prices are set and the different components: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/20140122_communication_energy_prices.pdf The main components are the cost of generating electricity, network costs and then taxes, exemptions, levies etc. A change in any sub-section of those main components can change the price consumers pay, assuming prices are unregulated, which they are in Ireland.

In addition to the many, many other subsidies that the nuclear industry enjoys in France, electricity prices are regulated by the CRE meaning they set the price. For a long time, the CRE (and the French government) has obliged EDF to sell its power at prices cheaper than the cost of generation.

This keeps retail prices artificially low but the difference accrues to EDF's balance sheet. For this and other reasons, EDF's debt is growing every year, as the newly appointed CEO found out when he started. Indeed, when the French government overruled a proposal to increase prices by 5% last year, it knocked $5 billion off the share price of EDF.

This doesn't even go into the impacts like a price cap acting as a barrier to new entrants thereby reducing competition etc. France remains a huge problem in terms of market concentration and the resistance of the French government to make EDF really compete with other companies with different generation portfolios.

So yes, there's SO much going on underneath the headline retail prices (that doesn't even take into account the number of units being consumed, eg how energy efficient a country is) that comparing retail prices in different countries is a really, really bad way to figure out the costs of different energy system, let alone of a specific generation technology.

Capt'n Midnight · 28-03-2015 12:00pm

SeanW wrote: »

You could make the solar panels for free, it wouldn't make a jot of difference because you can't rely on them.

[citation needed]
Weather forecasting advances about a day a decade. At present we can give predictions 5 days out.
http://www.met.ie/forecasts/5day-ireland.asp
For solar eclipses we can predict to within a second for the next thousand years.

I don't recall claiming that it was "cheap" per se, just not so stupidly expensive as electicity costs in Germany, Denmark, Tuvalau, the Cook Islands and suchlike places.

In any case, that's not even the main point. From an environmental perspective, with the current hysetria about global warming, nuclear power should look a lot more attractive to the Environmental Left even if the costs were as ridiculous as some claim them to be.

Until a nuclear plant has been operation for years, and the figures on this are as muddled as the economics, you won't recover the increased the CO2 emissions from it's construction or mining and ore processing. An extreme case but at one stage in the bad old days something like 7% of the USA's electricity was used by isotope separators.

That's the other reason Germany's electricity costs are so stupidly high - the old business models of traditional plant operators are no longer viable.

No shít, Sherlock :eek:
Tell that to the pumped storage operators in Germany
or the coal operators who are running out of time
or the French who import lots of German renewables
or the UK who import from the French

Nuclear isn't cheap.
But more importantly nuclear hasn't been able to deliver what is promised. Cost overruns and delays are the norm.

If you owe the seven three grand it's your problem,
but if you owe the bank seven billion then it's the banks problem because they'll have to keep bailing you out if it's the only way to get repaid

Instead of building plant for continuous use, ... (only combined cycle gas can respond to the violent fluctations in supply/demand caused by renewables) and the plants are only viable if they can sell power for some stupidly high cost on the irregular and sometimes unpredictable intervals that it is required. You can't just assume that the thermal plants will just be there as backup, they have to be paid for, their capital costs and staff costs.

LOL
Our demand fluctuates over the day. 2GW at night another 1GW in the day , another 1GW in winter. Another 1GW for peak demand and at least 1GW for redundancy.

The reality of the situation is that we only have 2GW of continuous demand but have several times that amount of despatchable generators. (and I'm being generous here when I say 2GW because that's minimum demand of 1.75GW AND 0.25GW into Turlough Hill)

So MOST generators will be off MOST of the time.
In comparison wind here averages half of what the grid can accept during winter.

Only base load plants can be considered for continuous operation. And even then only if they can produce power at the most economic price.

Nuclear has an ABSOLUTE requirement for spinning reserve of the size of the largest plant. For Solar or Wind this just isn't an issue because individual farms are smaller, actually it's an issue because Solar and Wind are levied for a level of spinning reserve they will never need.

Also staffing and capital costs for fossil fuel plant is a fraction of that for nuclear.

There are whole industries like tourism and retail and farming and fishing that are seasonal. Possibly a contract with minimum hours and overtime rates would suit some of the employees , I'm thinking part time farmers.

Re spinning reserve and cycling, here we run gas turbines at 2/3rds power so can ramp up 33%. Also gas turbines can idle at low power instead of a full trip depending on running costs , maintenance costs and payments . It's all very complicated stuff. You may not understand it because - the old business models of traditional plant operators are no longer viable

Using gas as base load means you can just ramp up. Using Nuclear means you can't unless you pay extra to have gas as spinning reserve. It's another hidden subsidy to Nuclear.

There's been a lot of FUD on gas O&M so a reminder that running at 70% means high efficiency with room to ramp up.
http://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/ndt/faq-what-are-the-factors-influencing-maintenance-intervals-for-gas-turbines/

Peak load operation will have in excess of a six fold effect on the life of the blades compared with base load operation. Similarly, a trip from a full load will be equivalent to 8 normal starts in terms of cyclic life consumption.

Operation at part load, say 80% load, will reduce the turbine inlet temperature on an open cycle plant by as much as 10%. However, for combined cycle re-heat plant, the inlet temperature needs to be maintained by controlling the variable guide vanes, and therefore part load operation does not significantly influence the turbine inlet pressure until load reduces to around 70%.

TBH the business model of Nuclear generation for the last 60 years has been simple, keep the plant running at close to full power all the time to pay off the crippling debt. Everyone else has had to load balance around them.

djpbarry · 28-03-2015 5:11pm

SeanW wrote: »

I don't recall claiming that it was "cheap" per se, just not so stupidly expensive as electicity costs in Germany, Denmark, Tuvalau, the Cook Islands and suchlike places.

You said “countries that embrace green technology end up paying through the nose while countries with nuclear have cheaper power”. We’ll ignore for now that this is a ridiculously over-simplistic statement (most countries obviously have a mix of generation sources). You seem to be a big fan of the French and their energy industry. Well, EDF are building the new reactor at Hinkley Point and it’s going to be stupidly expensive, as you put it.

Explain?

SeanW wrote: »

In any case, that's not even the main point.

For me, it is the main point – the economics of nuclear power just don’t stack up. Never have. I have lost track how many times I have challenged you on this very point and every single time you just avoid the question.

SeanW wrote: »

The only alternatives I've seen from the Environmental Left...

Another of your favourite debating techniques – when all else fails, attribute some argument to the nebulous “environmental left” to add weight to your own baseless claims.

Capt'n Midnight · 31-03-2015 1:04am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The reality of the situation is that we only have 2GW of continuous demand but have several times that amount of despatchable generators. (and I'm being generous here when I say 2GW because that's minimum demand of 1.75GW AND 0.25GW into Turlough Hill)

Of course what I forgot to say was that of that 2GW minimum demand, 1GW can be satisfied by wind depending on the weather.

So for nuclear to sell power continuously it would have to target that 1GW when when it's windy and it could only do that when backed up by lots of fossil spinning reserve which would also be sending power in to the grid so nuclear wouldn't be able to displace that much fossil fuel, and that's before you include the grid stability rules of keeping large generators being kept online near the major cities.

Operational Constraints Update
4th February 2015

There must be at least 3 high-inertia
machines on-load at all times in
Northern Ireland. Required for dynamic
stability.
...
There must be at least 2 large
generators on-load at all times in the
Dublin area. Required for voltage
control. This assumes EWIC is
operational.
...
There must be at least 2/3 generators
on-load at all times in the South West
area. Required for voltage stability.
...
There must be at least one Moneypoint
unit on load at all times. Required to
support the 400kV network.

And in future we could accommodate more than 50% renewables and with the use of smart appliances to reduce demand dynamically to load balance so it non-renewable demand will probably fall below 1GW at times.

To provide spinning reserve you need to replace 75% of the load within 5 seconds.

The more I look at it the more I'm convinced that Nuclear is a dinosaur.

Capt'n Midnight · 31-03-2015 9:57pm

It takes a long time for a nuclear power plant to even begin to approach carbon neutral when you take into account all the inputs during construction and mining. http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0810/full/climate.2008.99.html

According to Sovacool's analysis, nuclear power, at 66 gCO2e/kWh emissions is well below scrubbed coal-fired plants, which emit 960 gCO2e/kWh, and natural gas-fired plants, at 443 gCO2e/kWh. However, nuclear emits twice as much carbon as solar photovoltaic, at 32 gCO2e/kWh, and six times as much as onshore wind farms, at 10 gCO2e/kWh. "A number in the 60s puts it well below natural gas, oil, coal and even clean-coal technologies. On the other hand, things like energy efficiency, and some of the cheaper renewables are a factor of six better. So for every dollar you spend on nuclear, you could have saved five or six times as much carbon with efficiency, or wind farms," Sovacool says. Add to that the high costs and long lead times for building a nuclear plant about $3 billion for a 1,000 megawatt plant, with planning, licensing and construction times of about 10 years and nuclear power is even less appealing.

Note: €3Bn and 10 years is very optimistic compared to European costs. Argentina's Atucha II plant came on line last July. Construction started in 1981.

And you have to take into account the relatively large % of nuclear plants that don't get completed or shut down early. Also take into account that production of solar panels is getting more efficient so that future ones will have a lower CO2 level.

n the nuclear world there's been plenty of talk of self contained 300MW reactors and commercialising them. The world's navies have used 100's of them since the 1950's and still there's only talk of commercialising them.

In comparison here what promises to be yet another step change in PV production costs, awaiting commercialisation.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2901612/stanford-breakthrough-could-make-better-chips-cheaper.html

Next, the uppermost disposable layer is etched so that the many circuits become individual chips. Then, an infrared laser blasts the infrared-absorbing layer, breaking it down so the chips can be separating from the underlying wafer. The remaining wafer is cleaned and is then ready for the next batch of chips.
...
Because the resulting chips are made out of a thin layer of gallium arsenide rather than a full wafer, they are cheaper to produce. As a side benefit, they are also flexible.

It means instead of wasting material slicing it with a saw or laser you can reuse the same wafer up to 100 times. GaAs isn't cheap but it's used to make cells for concentrators and mirrors are cheap. Transplanting this technology to silicon or other pV materials would be very interesting.

Birdnuts · 31-03-2015 11:49pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It takes a long time for a nuclear power plant to even begin to approach carbon neutral when you take into account all the inputs during construction and mining. .

Sounds like people in glasshouses throwing stones - the damage done to the environment by the mining of rare earth elements for wind turbines and their installation(40 tonne concrete bases, roads, substations and pylons etc.) on fragile upland habitats like peat raise serious questions as to just how green this source of power actually is in this country

SeanW · 01-04-2015 12:34am

Apologies in advance this might be somewhat long.

Macha wrote: »

Nope, it's just true.

This report by the European Commission explains how prices are set and the different components: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/20140122_communication_energy_prices.pdf

I would say it's simply not true. I suggest very simply that when a country follows Green policy on energy, costs unavoidably rise.

Again, taking reference to global energy costs, on the one hand we have Capt'nMidnight and others telling us how cheap green energy is, then we have the reality on the ground in Germany and Denmark where costs are similar to those of microscopic Pacific islands like Niue, Tuvalau and the Cook Islands that most people have never heard of.

Very simply, I put it to you that somehting has gone very badly wrong in Germany and Denmark. Very badly wrong.

In addition to the many, many other subsidies that the nuclear industry enjoys in France, electricity prices are regulated by the CRE meaning they set the price. For a long time, the CRE (and the French government) has obliged EDF to sell its power at prices cheaper than the cost of generation.

Evidently, whatever the subsidy costs may be, they're manageable. They must be well within the bounds of reason, and IMO are money well spent - again, pay reference to my graph demonstrating that France is a country not dependent on any fossil fuel, especially gas.

This doesn't even go into the impacts like a price cap acting as a barrier to new entrants thereby reducing competition etc. France remains a huge problem in terms of market concentration and the resistance of the French government to make EDF really compete with other companies with different generation portfolios.

The funny thing is that most people would assume that the whole point of having competition is to reduce prices, sort of like in the days Aer Lingus had a monopoly on flights from London to Dublin. I've always considered competition a means to an end, not an end unto itself! Ditto for the "different generation portfolios" ... their system is 90%+ non-fossil so who cares?

that comparing retail prices in different countries is a really, really bad way to figure out the costs of different energy system, let alone of a specific generation technology.

Perhaps in limited cases but we have specific trends. Technologies promoted by the mainstream environmental movement cost a lot of money in subsidies and they only produce power when the weather is co-operating. Two powerful factors that drive up costs. We also see the results of this in action: Germany and Denmark have electricity prices comparable to countries like Niue - given that these countries have followed the Environmental-Left's policies to the letter it would be ridiculous to the point of obscenity to claim that these things are not connected to one another.

Re spinning reserve and cycling, here we run gas turbines at 2/3rds power so can ramp up 33%. Also gas turbines can idle at low power instead of a full trip depending on running costs , maintenance costs and payments . It's all very complicated stuff. You may not understand it because - the old business models of traditional plant operators are no longer viable

Using gas as base load means you can just ramp up.

Frankly, this whole section of your post seems like a love letter to the natural gas industry. This is not just bizarre, but deeply disturbing.

Building a power system that relies on natural gas carries with it, AFAIK 4 major problems

Gas is still a fossil fuel, burning it still release piles of CO2 into the atmosphere, supposidly cooking the planet, which we're supposed tobe going El Nutso to try to avoid.
Gas is among the least sustainable fuel source that there are, it took me about 2 minutes on Google to find out about Reserve to Production Ratios, both oil and gas are fuels that we will run out of in this century. Taking the most liberal view of oil 80 years, the world will run out of gas first in 59 years. Needless to say that any large scale increase in the use of gas will reduce this figure.
Using gas on power generation is wasteful - because gas is so flexible, using it for any one purpose carries with an an "opportunity cost" of not using it for something else. Gas can be used for power, heating, cooking, transport, it's the most flexible fuel for each of these uses. Uranium is better for power generation because it carries no such opportunity cost, coal having only some.
Imported gas must usually be purchased from very nasty people. Two of the main sources are Russia (which has spent the last two years fighting a proxy war to destroy the Ukraine, murdering countless civilians including the passengers and crew of MH-17 in the process) and Qatar, which has certain blurred lines in a relationship with the Islamic State or Daesh a thoroughly evil group that has committed mass muders, genocide against the Yadizi people, and the destruction of mankinds cultural heritage on a scale unprecedented in modern times. This is yet another hidden cost to using gas for any reason, yet it does not feature in any of the above analyses. I find that strange.

djpbarry wrote: »

You seem to be a big fan of the French and their energy industry. Well, EDF are building the new reactor at Hinkley Point and it’s going to be stupidly expensive, as you put it.

The retail price of electricity in Denmark is US$0.40 per unit. Even including the difference between wholesale and retail, and currency exchange, there is still a hell of a difference between 9.25p and 40cents. Also in theory that's supposed to include decommissioning and everything. The "stupidly expensive" prices follow Green policy, not nuclear.

Again, look at the chart I posted earlier showing that France having less than 10% reliance on fossil fuels. This is accompanied by sensible power costs. The downside, whether that be subsidies or something else, would have to be extremely serious to counteract the positive results of the French approach. But so far as I can see, it's just not happening.

Another of your favourite debating techniques – when all else fails, attribute some argument to the nebulous “environmental left” to add weight to your own baseless claims.

The "Environmental left" is a description of a position that I consider to be common to many of the posters here and for example major world Green parties, and other entities like Greenpeace, who share the same policies - (among others) climate change alarmism, promotion of energy taxation, promotion of weather based renewabe power, opposition to the use of nuclear electricity despite the aforementioned climate change alarmism ... these are things one associates with a mainstream environmental ideology, that has traditionally been considered a Left-of-Centre point of view.

I imagine most of the residents of this board would consider the above to be at least mostly accurate in describing their own views, and it is my view that this view is extremely common. Thusly, while I could repeat the above spiel every time I want to question the ideology, I suggest the term "Environmental Left" is a useful, time saving summary.

If I were to peg a label on my own position, at least in this area, I'd call myself "Environmental Right" because although I accept the need for mankind to be good stewards of the Earth, I'd favour things like nuclear power which is traditionally something of a right-wing point of view. I'd also prefer a policy of energy security vs writing out blank cheques to Vladimir Putin and Daesh, which again makes me a rightie.

Capt'n Midnight · 01-04-2015 1:06am

Birdnuts wrote: »

Sounds like people in glasshouses throwing stones - the damage done to the environment by the mining of rare earth elements for wind turbines and their installation(40 tonne concrete bases, roads, substations and pylons etc.) on fragile upland habitats like peat raise serious questions as to just how green this source of power actually is in this country

LOL

some pictures of the environmental impact of nuclear - don't forget about the mining or the soil heaps or leachate
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-05-11/does-nuclear-power-produce-no-co2

Nuclear plants use a LOT of concrete. Sizewell used more than 40 tonnes 10,000 times over. And then there's the concrete used for the waste etc.
http://www.westminster.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/160237/SizewellPamphlet_lo.pdf

At its peak, there were over 2,000 workers employed on the construction of Sizewell A
power station. This included different types of machine operators, fitters, carpenters, concrete
gangs, electricians, welders, platers, laggers, scaffolders and many other categories of
operative. The process of building the station involved the shifting of around 700,000 cubic
yards of earth, and the application of approximately 300,000 cubic yards of formwork,
5000 tons of steel and 200,000 cubic yards of concrete.

Birdnuts · 01-04-2015 1:09am

SeanW wrote: »

Again, taking reference to global energy costs, on the one hand we have Capt'nMidnight and others telling us how cheap green energy is, then we have the reality on the ground in Germany and Denmark where costs are similar to those of microscopic Pacific islands like Niue, Tuvalau and the Cook Islands that most people have never heard of.

Very simply, I put it to you that somehting has gone very badly wrong in Germany and Denmark. Very badly wrong.

.

A similar pattern emerging in the US

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/10/17/electricity-prices-soaring-in-top-10-wind-power-states/

Birdnuts · 01-04-2015 1:17am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

LOL

_

I don't find any of this funny

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/clean-energys-dirty-little-secret/307377/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution

Macha · 01-04-2015 1:27am

SeanW wrote: »

Apologies in advance this might be somewhat long.

I would say it's simply not true. I suggest very simply that when a country follows Green policy on energy, costs unavoidably rise.

Sorry but you're objecting to basic facts of how the energy market works. Costs are just not the same as prices. That's why the European Commission called it's report 'Costs AND prices'. If you can't grasp how things like subsidies, exemptions and regulated prices can distort the true cost of energy in retail prices, I really can't help you.

I get that you're trying to argue that renewable systems are more expensive than others but you're doing it in a way that shows glaring gaps in your understanding of market mechanisms like price setting, government interventions, externalities etc

By the way, I find your association of nuclear with right wing politics quite amusing as it is the energy technology that has benefitted the most in the past from state support and even today cannot survive without enormous public subsidies, not to mention the costs of waste disposal and decommissioning coming up as Europe closes down its fleet of old reactors.

As an industry that cannot survive without the state and likes to socialise its costs, I associate it more with communism. No surprise that two of the few big nuclear players in the world are Rosatom and the Chinese state nuclear company. Very right wing indeed...

Capt'n Midnight · 01-04-2015 1:44am

SeanW wrote: »

Paraphrasing

We are only getting 1,664 MW of fossil fuel power being replaced by wind at the moment blah blah blah

Ignore the actual cost and focus on the retail price blah blah blah

Gas has problems because
Nuclear is so slow to respond to demand it has an absolute requirement on gas for load balancing in exactly the same way renewables have.
Nuclear reserves in soft rock are running low , soon the EROEI will be marginal but let's pretend that we haven't found all the easy uranium ( thanks to radioactivity you can locate ores with low flying aircraft )
Let's pretend that Norway isn't supplying more gas to the EU than Russia and that Lithuania won't be importing LNG from the USA.

Let's pretend that France doesn't import a lot of renewables from Germany during the day and has to sell nuclear back at night. Let's ignore France's 20GW of hydro when I say less than 10% fossil.

and some name calling

same old , same old.

You can forget nuclear as a solution to CO2. A decade to build and another decade to become carbon neutral. And that's if there aren't problems and we don't have to mine granite for uranium. And there's a demand for it on a grid that can accept 75% renewables.

Gas is a stepping stone. Building new Nuclear is a 60 year commitment, decade to build , decade before carbon neutral (maybe) , further decade or two before break even financially. And then running it for another 30 years or so depending on the political climate or competition or price of ore.

Gas plants have shorter life cycles. Less capital tied up. Easier to change tack to new generation sources in future because you aren't locked in for decades. And they'll run on hydrogen that could be got if we can improve PV cells.

Remind us again how many Generation III+ nuclear reactors are in full service without teething problems ?

djpbarry · 01-04-2015 9:31am

Birdnuts wrote: »

Sounds like people in glasshouses throwing stones - the damage done to the environment by the mining of rare earth elements for wind turbines…

Other forms of electricity generation use turbines too.

djpbarry · 01-04-2015 9:35am

SeanW wrote: »

The retail price of electricity in Denmark is US$0.40 per unit. Even including the difference between wholesale and retail, and currency exchange, there is still a hell of a difference between 9.25p and 40cents.

There’s also a hell of a difference between a strike price and a retail price. You seem to be completely unwilling to accept this.

SeanW wrote: »

The "Environmental left" is a description of a position that I consider to be common to many of the posters here and for example major world Green parties, and other entities like Greenpeace, who share the same policies - (among others) climate change alarmism, promotion of energy taxation, promotion of weather based renewabe power, opposition to the use of nuclear electricity despite the aforementioned climate change alarmism ... these are things one associates with a mainstream environmental ideology, that has traditionally been considered a Left-of-Centre point of view.

I imagine most of the residents of this board would consider the above to be at least mostly accurate in describing their own views, and it is my view that this view is extremely common. Thusly, while I could repeat the above spiel every time I want to question the ideology, I suggest the term "Environmental Left" is a useful, time saving summary.

In other words, it’s a lazy dismissal of anyone who’s posts you disagree with.

SeanW · 02-04-2015 1:14am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

LOL

some pictures of the environmental impact of nuclear - don't forget about the mining or the soil heaps or leachate
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-05-11/does-nuclear-power-produce-no-co2

Nuclear plants use a LOT of concrete. Sizewell used more than 40 tonnes 10,000 times over. And then there's the concrete used for the waste etc.
http://www.westminster.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/160237/SizewellPamphlet_lo.pdf

Yes, these are secondary emissions. They apply to all forms of electricity generation without excoption and have been accounted for in a broad range of studies. See a review of 20 or so studies here: http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publications/Working_Group_Reports/comparison_of_lifecycle.pdf

The equivalent of the above for wind mills is the CO2 cost of extracting the rare earth metals for windmills and solar panels, building the things, installing them where they are to operate, often causing a considerable level of environmental destruction in totality for things that will only ever produce small amounts of power and then only depending on the weather.

Macha wrote: »

Sorry but you're objecting to basic facts of how the energy market works. Costs are just not the same as prices. That's why the European Commission called it's report 'Costs AND prices'. If you can't grasp how things like subsidies, exemptions and regulated prices can distort the true cost of energy in retail prices, I really can't help you.

Yes, these things are a part of it, but if prices are stupidly high it's usually for a good reason. Like oh, I don't know, a stupid level of subsidies for wasteful and inefficiency caused by ill-advised energy policy.

As an industry that cannot survive without the state and likes to socialise its costs,

Describing weather based renewables to a tee ...

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Gas is a stepping stone.

Oh, it's a lot more than that - gas like in CCGT plants is the only way to design a power system that co-operate with unreliable renewables. Anything else, including nuclear, is as of yet not flexible enough to deal with the problems that renewables cause.

Too bad that using gas for power generation raises 4 very, very serious problems that have been almost totally ignored.

djpbarry wrote: »

There’s also a hell of a difference between a strike price and a retail price. You seem to be completely unwilling to accept this.

Did you even read what you quoted? I stated very clearly that I accepted there would be a difference between ~9p/kwh and the price on the consumers electric bill. Just not 40 cents worth.

In other words, it’s a lazy dismissal of anyone who’s posts you disagree with.

No, it's my attempt at a succint, accurate description of a common viewpoint, held by a wide variety of principals with little if any deviation from one another.

djpbarry · 02-04-2015 9:42am

SeanW wrote: »

Too bad that using gas for power generation raises 4 very, very serious problems that have been almost totally ignored.

They haven’t been totally ignored, they've been done to death on this forum. To summarize:

Nuclear power is not carbon neutral, not by a long shot.
That source is seven years old. Two words: shale gas. Also, gas is renewable, to some extent. For example, Germany produces about 2.3 GW of electricity from biogas-fired power plants.
There’s not much else that gas can be used for other than generating heat by burning it.
Almost half of the world’s uranium is produced by Russia and two of its satellite states (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).

SeanW wrote: »

Did you even read what you quoted? I stated very clearly that I accepted there would be a difference between ~9p/kwh and the price on the consumers electric bill. Just not 40 cents worth.

Why are comparing wholesale electricity prices in the UK with retail prices in Denmark? It’s daft

I’m asking you why EDF have been guaranteed a wholesale price of twice the going rate in the UK, but you keep avoiding the question.

It’s been suggested that, by the time the plant becomes operational, this could make Hinkley Point the most expensive power station in the world:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/household-bills/10414889/Insane-power-station-deal-will-raise-electricity-prices-for-decades-to-come.html

SeanW wrote: »

No, it's my attempt at a succint, accurate description of a common viewpoint, held by a wide variety of principals with little if any deviation from one another.

No, it’s an attempt to dismiss anyone who doesn’t agree that nuclear power is the silver bullet that will solve all our energy problems. The reality is there are serious questions with regard to the economics of nuclear power, which you absolutely refuse to accept. Any time anyone raises these issues, you avoid the question by dismissing them as a Greenpeace activist and pointing out that renewables are subsidized and their output is variable.

Capt'n Midnight · 02-04-2015 8:39pm

djpbarry wrote: »

There’s also a hell of a difference between a strike price and a retail price. You seem to be completely unwilling to accept this.
In other words, it’s a lazy dismissal of anyone who’s posts you disagree with.

In fairness you can see how nuclear supporters could easily get confused by the difference when Hinkey C has a strike price of 9.25p per unit and Sainsbury's are offering it for 9.36p per unit, retail

I'd love to know the economics of carriage on the The National Grid etc. on those margains.

Capt'n Midnight · 02-04-2015 9:06pm

SeanW wrote: »

Oh, it's a lot more than that - gas like in CCGT plants is the only way to design a power system that co-operate with unreliable renewables. Anything else, including nuclear, is as of yet not flexible enough to deal with the problems that renewables cause.

PSML

Nuclear flexible ???

The existing Flexible power suppliers on on the grid have to respond within 5 seconds. France's reactors are optimised to respond faster than others, at the expense of efficiency and they can ramp up / down in about 6 hours. Within well defined limits.

Back in 1943 General Groves asked for an extended run of the first reactor. This didn't happen because the experts on nuclear knew better. Xenon poisoning affected the first batch of reactors used to breed plutonium in 1944. If you shut down a reactor today you may still have to wait for up to 72 hours to restart.

When you have a grid that can respond to 75% of the maximum outage within 5 seconds the 5 day forecast for wind makes it dependable and reliable compared to something that can go off line without warning, and worse could stay off line for years.

Again a reminder that most of the technologies needed for nuclear also benefit renewables. Cheaper tunnelling technology would help with the waste problem, but it would also make geothermal cheaper too. Materials technology mean better turbines, but since gas and renewables have much shorter life cycles they will benefit sooner.

SeanW · 05-04-2015 12:16am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

PSML

Nuclear flexible ???

I've already conceded the point: in the post you quoted I admitted that nuclear was NOT capable of reacting to the unpredictability of renewables, in fact I accept what appears to be your point that only gas power can complement renewables.

So you not only strawmanned an arugment I never made, but also attacked a claim when I accepted the exact opposite. Way to go!

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

In fairness you can see how nuclear supporters could easily get confused by the difference when Hinkey C has a strike price of 9.25p per unit and Sainsbury's are offering it for 9.36p per unit, retail

If they're going to retail power for 9.36p a unit, it may not be because of Hinkley C (again, I concede it's a bit on the pricey side) but they sure as hell aren't selling it that cheap becuase of green policy which would put energy at about 3 times that cost.

djpbarry wrote: »

They haven’t been totally ignored, they've been done to death on this forum. To summarize:
Nuclear power is not carbon neutral, not by a long shot.

That source is seven years old. Two words: shale gas. Also, gas is renewable, to some extent. For example, Germany produces about 2.3 GW of electricity from biogas-fired power plants.

There’s not much else that gas can be used for other than generating heat by burning it.

Almost half of the world’s uranium is produced by Russia and two of its satellite states (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).

Why are comparing wholesale electricity prices in the UK with retail prices in Denmark? It’s daft

1) Like renewables, nuclear plants produce no CO2 in service, the secondary (lifecycle) CO2 costs are similar to renewables in most studies I have seen, and all are dramatically better than any fossil fuel including gas. They also compare favourably against renewables and dramatically so in fossil fuels in the amount of human deaths caused per X kilowatt hours (e.g. more people will die falling off their roofs to install solar panels per million KWH of solar electricity generated than by the same measure of deaths caused by nuclear electricity). Nuclear also compares favourably to windmills because they don't expose birds (bird strikes) and bats (barotrauma) to their turbines, which are kept indoors in a turbine hall, again for obvious reasons this is not possible with a wind turbine.
2) Accepted on the point of shale gas, not sure how much of the stuff there is, but I'd question the renewability of gas used in vast quantities, I've seen a video of an experiment in Kassel in Germany, biogas comes from farming of corn and suchlike. Again, using farmland and farm inputs (fertiliser, herbicide, fuel for agricultural machinery) for this purpose raises the same Opportunity Costs as are relevant in other parts of the problem: yes, you could use that stuff to grow crops for biogas, or you could all of those things for something else.
3) Seriously, this is simply not credible. You cannot deny that gas is more flexible than other fuels, as such it has higher opportunity costs. For example, you can use gas in your car, and there are people who have converted their cars from refined oils to gas. Gas is also much more useful in central heating systems - you can start it with the flick of a switch and get instant heat - cooking, same properties. It's also a raw material/feedstock in some chemical processes.

Oil has the same opportunity costs for any selected use, coal less so because it can't really be used in a car and is not quite so convenient in central heating, uranium is the "best" in terms of opportunity costs because you can only really use it in nuclear power plants or submarines, there's really nothing else to do with it except leave it untapped. Which is not true of gas, if we stopped burning gas in power plants the price of gas would crash but only for a short time and it would take a very short time for drivers and the motor trade to take notice and eventually pick up the slack.
4) Yes, almost half of Uranium reserves may be in Russia's sphere of influence but you can be sure that's all either going to be used in Russia or sold to China: Russia's on its way to becoming a vassal state of China.
Sources commonly utilised by the West are primarily Canada, Australia and part of Africa. Heck, some energy companies thought we in Ireland had some in Donegal, but we had a Green minister for the environment that denied them exploration licenses :mad:

I’m asking you why EDF have been guaranteed a wholesale price of twice the going rate in the UK, but you keep avoiding the question.

Ok, so if Hinkley C is twice the normal wholesale rate in the UK, that's a premium of, what, 4 and something pence a unit?

That's chickenfeed compared to what green policies add to the price - as they're finding out in Germany and Denmark.

It’s been suggested that, by the time the plant becomes operational, this could make Hinkley Point the most expensive power station in the world:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/household-bills/10414889/Insane-power-station-deal-will-raise-electricity-prices-for-decades-to-come.html

The most expensive power plant maybe, but not the most expensive power source, which will be renewables both directly (in subsidies) and indirectly (in the need to have a full alternative power infrastructure constantly on standby).

No, it’s an attempt to dismiss anyone who doesn’t agree that nuclear power is the silver bullet that will solve all our energy problems. The reality is there are serious questions with regard to the economics of nuclear power, which you absolutely refuse to accept. Any time anyone raises these issues, you avoid the question by dismissing them as a Greenpeace activist and pointing out that renewables are subsidized and their output is variable.

I'm seeing the same policies by people who have similar points of view. You can't blame a person for drawing certain conclusions about that.

In fact, if you think the term "environmental-left" is off the mark, then please show me the error. I challenge yourself and Captn'Midnight to show me why your policy on nuclear electricity is different to those of mainstream environmental groups such as the Green Party.

In fact, I'll be generous: (I may regret this

) I'll happily eat my words on the topic of the "Environmental Left" if yourself, Macha or the Captain can show any large, irreconcilable and fundamental difference of point of view between any of you and any European Green Party on any important issue.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

... And they'll run on hydrogen that could be got if we can improve PV cells.

Great, if hydrogen could be made cheaply for power in the lean periods, find applications in transport especially, that would be very useful, you could use lots of renewable power when the weather is cooperating to make the stuff, then store the energy for use in other places (like the way oil is shipped now) or peak power demand times. It would be particularly promising in transport because you could use a variation of a traditional fuel tank, much better than electric cars which will always be limited by batteries. I'm all for continued research, but right now the only way to move decisevly away from fossil fuels involves a heavy nuclear component, or the good fortune to have rivers, geothermal resource etc.

Again, look at France. 90%+ non-fossil, and only 3.7% dependent on gas. All at sane electricity prices delivered to French householders.

Capt'n Midnight · 05-04-2015 12:02pm

SeanW wrote: »

Again, look at France. 90%+ non-fossil, and only 3.7% dependent on gas. All at sane electricity prices delivered to French householders.

25.4 GWe hydro, vs 63.2 GWe, Nuclear.

Load balancing with Germany, Belgium , the UK and Italy.

A huge % of electrical heating to even out demand.

A huge budget for safety improvements. The old plan of having two reactors per site and relying on them to supply backup and cooling power to each other pretty much guarantees trouble if both go offline at the same time.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/France
France will be spending €1Bn on each plant to keep them working for another 10 years. (€55Bn/58 plants) It's not that long ago that the nuclear industry was promising new build for that sort of money. That's about the cost of new gas or a large fraction of the cost of onshore wind.

French nuclear isn't providing cheap electricity either.

In 2014 the rate is €42/MWh, but CRE proposed an increase to €44 in 2015, €46 in 2016 and €48 in 2017 to allow EdF to recover costs of plant upgrades, which it puts at €55 billion to extend all 58 reactor lifetimes by ten years.

The tl;dr version of the Myth of French Nuclear

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/14/edf-france-germany-idUSL6N0UT2F720150114

EDF's new chief executive Jean-Bernard Levy said German power consumers are subsidising French power users via the export of cheap renewable energy to France.

Levy told a senate hearing that France imports German power every day nearly all day, and that part of it is re-exported profitably to Britain, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.

"The weight of German subsidies for renewables, and coal, is such that the German end consumer pays, via his green taxes, a subsidy to the French consumer," he said.

Capt'n Midnight · 05-04-2015 12:32pm

SeanW wrote: »

I've already conceded the point: in the post you quoted I admitted that nuclear was NOT capable of reacting to the unpredictability of renewables, in fact I accept what appears to be your point that only gas power can complement renewables.

The point is that nuclear also has an absolute requirement for gas.

The UK will need to spend £160m extra a year on spinning reserve just to cover the the larger size of Hinkley C over existing power stations.

Over a 50 year lifetime that's an extra £8 Bn subsidy. Just to cover the unreliability of that one plant. ( unless the UK builds larger plants which is unlikely. Tidal would comprise multiple generators over a large area )

You could get a lot of renewables for that sort of money. Wind, Solar , Tidal lagoons not to mention other ways of spreading load matching like interconnectors, Smart Meters, insulation.

Wind needs no such subsidy because it isn't unpredictable. Also since it's distributed power there is no single point of failure. In fact the constraints to cover local grid stability alone more than cover wind.

djpbarry · 06-04-2015 1:45pm

SeanW wrote: »

…more people will die falling off their roofs to install solar panels per million KWH of solar electricity generated than by the same measure of deaths caused by nuclear electricity.

I’m not even going to dignify this with a response.

SeanW wrote: »

…I've seen a video of an experiment in Kassel in Germany, biogas comes from farming of corn and suchlike.

There are several plants here in the UK producing biogas with slurry and sewage.

SeanW wrote: »

You cannot deny that gas is more flexible than other fuels, as such it has higher opportunity costs. For example, you can use gas in your car, and there are people who have converted their cars from refined oils to gas. Gas is also much more useful in central heating systems - you can start it with the flick of a switch and get instant heat - cooking, same properties.

All of which fall under the heading of “energy”. Gas is used for little else other than as a fuel.

SeanW wrote: »

Oil has the same opportunity costs for any selected use…

No, it doesn’t. Oil has infinitely more uses than gas does.

SeanW wrote: »

4) Yes, almost half of Uranium reserves may be in Russia's sphere of influence but you can be sure that's all either going to be used in Russia or sold to China:

Regardless, that still gives Russia a significant influence over the world’s ability to generate electricity from nuclear power.

SeanW wrote: »

Ok, so if Hinkley C is twice the normal wholesale rate in the UK, that's a premium of, what, 4 and something pence a unit?

That's chickenfeed compared to what green policies add to the price - as they're finding out in Germany and Denmark.

Once again, you’re dodging the question.

SeanW wrote: »

The most expensive power plant maybe, but not the most expensive power source, which will be renewables both directly (in subsidies) and indirectly (in the need to have a full alternative power infrastructure constantly on standby).

And again.

djpbarry · 06-04-2015 1:58pm

SeanW wrote: »

In fact, I'll be generous: (I may regret this ) I'll happily eat my words on the topic of the "Environmental Left" if yourself, Macha or the Captain can show any large, irreconcilable and fundamental difference of point of view between any of you and any European Green Party on any important issue.

I'm putting on my mod hat to respond to this.

No poster, mod or otherwise, has to explain themselves to you or anyone else.

Attack the post, not the poster.

If you have to resort to lazy dismissals of anyone who disagrees with you as an "environmental lefty", then maybe your argument is not on terribly solid ground?

SeanW · 10-04-2015 12:29am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

25.4 GWe hydro, vs 63.2 GWe, Nuclear.

Yes, hydroelectricity is a large part of the French system of low CO2 electricity generation.

Load balancing with Germany, Belgium , the UK and Italy.

They export power to most of those countries, no?

That's about the cost of new gas or a large fraction of the cost of onshore wind.

Accepting this claim for the sake of argument, both are worse value for money. So you get gas plant cheaper than nuclear, great, but you're still burning gas. Or wind - great when the wind is blowing. So neither is any better, even if the headline cost is lower.

French nuclear isn't providing cheap electricity either.

The tl;dr version of the Myth of French Nuclear

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/14/edf-france-germany-idUSL6N0UT2F720150114

Funny you should mention this because, again I accept this for the sake of argument, it proves that either:

It shows that either the French grid, with all its nuclear power and hydroelectricity, is dramatically superior to Germany's Eastern neighbors, all of whom are in serious trouble because the instability of the German grid is spilling into theirs.
Either that or the subsidised exports are within France's ability to deal with the erratic oversupply. (Read that article BTW, it explains much better than I could many of the negatives of the Energiewende, including being among many others, a frightening destabilising force on Eastern European energy grids.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The point is that nuclear also has an absolute requirement for gas.

This is simply not true - again, refer to my graph posted earlier regarding France. 90%+ non-fossil sources in France, Gas only accounts for ~3.67% of power supplied. It can be avoided.

You could get a lot of renewables for that sort of money. Wind, Solar , Tidal lagoons not to mention other ways of spreading load matching like interconnectors, Smart Meters, insulation.

some of that could help, to be sure, but there's one big problem.

Demand does not follow the weather. Period. I questioned the ideas for demand shedding earlier in this thread - I believe it would be grossly detrimental to what remains of our industrial base and to human quality of life, but these concerns were not addressed for whatever reason.

djpbarry wrote: »

There are several plants here in the UK producing biogas with slurry and sewage.

Good, but remember that your plans (you, Capt'nMidnight, most world Green parties) are planning on gas reliance on a very large scale. Can these sources of renewable gas take the place of imports?

All of which fall under the heading of “energy”. Gas is used for little else other than as a fuel.

This is very important - our society is heavily reliant on energy, and more importantly energy in useable, conventient and flexible forms. If you're seriously suggesting that gas does not have a higher "opportunity cost" because of its relative flexibility than say coal or uranium, I simply cannot take that seriously.

No, it doesn’t. Oil has infinitely more uses than gas does.

True, outside of energy, oil I think is used as a raw material for lots of things, taramacadam, linoleum, plastics, maybe even phamaceuticals, god knows what else. But as an energy source, it's as convenient and flexible as gas in most uses, and only slightly more useful in transport. That's why both oil and gas have stupidly high opportunity costs when wasted in power plants.

Regardless, that still gives Russia a significant influence over the world’s ability to generate electricity from nuclear power.

Russian and C.I.S. uranium reserves are effectively off the table AFAIK as far as Western nuclear programmes go, they're completely irrelevant to all except Russia, it's allies and sphere of influence.

In any case, even if we were importing Uranium from Russia and satellites we'd have one major advantage - Uranium can be hoarded, unlike gas. So even if we imported all our Uranium from the Russian bloc, we could always hoard several years of fuel and then if the Russians did something we couldn't tolerate like destroy another country or shoot down another passenger plane, we could tell them to go to Hell and have ~2 years or whatever to make alternative arrangements.

We can't do this with gas - if anything goes wrong with Russia and they cut off the taps, Western Europe goes dark in a short time.

Once again, you’re dodging the question.
And again.

I didn't dodge anything - I accepted that based on the evidence you showed, Hinkley C and more plants like it could add to UK energy bills. But I maintain that:

Any increase would be good value for money.
Any increase would be moderate compared to the alternatives more commonly suggested.

djpbarry wrote: »

If you have to resort to lazy dismissals of anyone who disagrees with you as an "environmental lefty", then maybe your argument is not on terribly solid ground?

Fine, I won't use the term "environmental-left" any more. But I continue to believe that there is a common point of view on these and other issues and I most certainly do not concede that point.

Capt'n Midnight · 11-04-2015 12:39am

SeanW wrote: »

They export power to most of those countries, no?

it's not a bug it's a feature :rolleyes:

They export power because you can't throttle back nuclear at night. They don't get the same rates for it as the stuff they have to import back in the day.

So you get gas plant cheaper than nuclear, great, but you're still burning gas. Or wind - great when the wind is blowing. So neither is any better, even if the headline cost is lower.

For the Nth time. Nuclear has an absolute requirement for gas because it can't load balance. Simple as. So even if you upgrade the nuclear plants you still end up paying for gas.

In theory wind is intermittent. In practice we get 25% of our power from it in winter and that figure should go up to 40% when the grid can accommodate more. There's no point in tilting at windmills after the horse has bolted.

instability of the German grid

In theory renewables cause intermitterancy , but the recent eclipse showed that in practice the German grid didn't have a problem with 15GW dropping off the system.

This is simply not true - again, refer to my graph posted earlier regarding France. 90%+ non-fossil sources in France, Gas only accounts for ~3.67% of power supplied. It can be avoided.

LOL
Have you already forgotten the 25.4 GWe hydro, vs 63.2 GWe, Nuclear ??

Hydro is dispatchable upon demand, unlike nuclear which needs a lot of advance notice, if you don't have hydro you'll need fossil fuel.

and this week they've imported an average of 3GW from Germany
http://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/eco2mix-echanges-commerciaux-en

Demand does not follow the weather. Period.

Weather is predicable. Dispatchable sources can load balanced, exactly like they have to do with unresponsive nuclear.

I questioned the ideas for demand shedding earlier in this thread - I believe it would be grossly detrimental to what remains of our industrial base and to human quality of life, but these concerns were not addressed for whatever reason.

For the Nth time grid stability rules dictate backup generation provide 75% of load mismatch within 5 seconds and 100% within 90 seconds. Not the response times of hours typical of nuclear.

Down here on earth our laws of physics suggest that the average person probably won't notice if their immersion or storage heater stops heating for intervals of this time. Well insulated buildings should also take longer than this to cool appreciably. Based on the difference between summer and winter demands there's probably 1GW here used for heating. So shedding demand could easily more than match Turlough Hill for short periods.

Good, but remember that your plans (you, Capt'nMidnight, most world Green parties) are planning on gas reliance on a very large scale. Can these sources of renewable gas take the place of imports?

In any case, even if we were importing Uranium from Russia and satellites we'd have one major advantage - Uranium can be hoarded, unlike gas. So even if we imported all our Uranium from the Russian bloc, we could always hoard several years of fuel and then if the Russians did something we couldn't tolerate like destroy another country or shoot down another passenger plane, we could tell them to go to Hell and have ~2 years or whatever to make alternative arrangements.

We can't do this with gas - if anything goes wrong with Russia and they cut off the taps, Western Europe goes dark in a short time.

Actually it's more Norway we've to be nice to.
Even Lithuania is building a terminal so they can import LNG from the US. The UK already do this. Thanks too to renewables the EU is weaning itself off Russian gas.

Like lots of your posts it's almost like you haven't been keeping up with developments in energy over the last decade or so. You'd be surprised at the price of solar these days and it's still dropping and there are many new developments in the pipelines. It's been a very long time since nuclear has demonstrated or proven any substantial technological improvements. And even if there were it would take a long time before they could commercialised.

Any increase would be good value for money.

Any increase would be moderate compared to the alternatives more commonly suggested.

Good value ? Hinkley C is already over 98.5% of the retail price. And The National Grid charge isn't a charity , they charge for carriage. And it would only supply base load power. And since it's index linked it won't get cheaper.

Never , ever forget that while Hinkley C is the latest nuclear technology you have to compare it with what other sources will appear during it's life. So the economics of renewable today can't really be compared to Hinkley in the far future. Except of course that you could install a LOT of renewables for a fraction of the cost long before Hinkley is scheduled to deliver any power.

Gas is a stepping stone towards more renewables. It provides time to develop them. And new gas has less emissions than older fossil fuel plant and you don't have to wait for a decade to see if nuclear will deliver any savings in emissions.

Fine, I won't use the term "environmental-left" any more. But continue to believe that there is a common point of view on these and other issues and I most certainly do not concede that point.

Perhaps the common point of view is evidence based ?

The nuclear industry has consistently failed to deliver on it's promises over the last 70 years, so it's very , very hard to reconcile the spin with the reality. Until nuclear delivers what it promises , on time and on budget there is no reason to believe the propaganda.

Impetus · 11-04-2015 6:16pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

25.4 GWe hydro, vs 63.2 GWe, Nuclear.

Load balancing with Germany, Belgium , the UK and Italy.

A huge % of electrical heating to even out demand.

A huge budget for safety improvements. The old plan of having two reactors per site and relying on them to supply backup and cooling power to each other pretty much guarantees trouble if both go offline at the same time.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/France
France will be spending €1Bn on each plant to keep them working for another 10 years. (€55Bn/58 plants) It's not that long ago that the nuclear industry was promising new build for that sort of money. That's about the cost of new gas or a large fraction of the cost of onshore wind.

French nuclear isn't providing cheap electricity either.

The tl;dr version of the Myth of French Nuclear

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/14/edf-france-germany-idUSL6N0UT2F720150114

A large amount of electricity is wasted in the creation of heat. A good heat pump (eg Daikin A++ rated) provides 4x heat for the power input - ie a heat pump using 700W of electricity produces 2.8 kW+ of heat. I have them installed in a secondary home in damp Ireland. I can arrive in the house after a flight at 23h00. Power on the system while washing my teeth, and get the temperature in the bedroom up to a wasteful 28C in five minutes. The same system cools the air (in the South of the country, in a conservatory that regularly reaches 40C on a sunny day). It can prevent mould and woodworm by automatically turning on for a few hours and reducing the humidity in the room to say 35% - preserving furniture etc.

These systems can be used for air heating/cooling and water heating - which can in part be used underfloor.

French nuclear might look cheap on one's bill (around 10c per kWh), but the long term costs of nuclear are part of the massive French tax bill, which is one of the highest in the world. It is like free domestic water in Ireland. Only a lot more expensive in lifecycle cost terms.

Capt'n Midnight · 11-04-2015 8:27pm

Impetus wrote: »

A large amount of electricity is wasted in the creation of heat.

The best combined cycle gas can convert up to 60% of the heat into electricity. For the older mostly phased out coal plants it was as low as 25%. The new brown coal plants in Germany are hitting 45%. Overall the improvements in fossil fuel efficiency have resulted in greater CO2 savings than using nuclear power.

For wind, solar and tidal the efficiency isn't that critical because they aren't "wasting" heat. Except of course they displace fossil fuels.

Nuclear is similar, but it's down around 35%. 2/3rd's of the energy is wasted before it leaves the plant. Lots of promised technology could increase the efficiency. It's still being promised after attempts to build it have failed. Heat pollution might be a problem, like the crocodiles living a certain hot river in Florida. But the main point to take away here is that nuclear is very very susceptible to cooling water shortages. Like in summer in France when people like to turn on the AC.

While I was looking for figures on Nuclear thermal efficiency I found this.
http://www.atomeromu.hu/download/1722/EPR%20reaktor1.pdf
Please ignore the schedule on Page 9 as none of the last 4 reactors havebeen finished yet.
Page 17 shows steam temp of 328c ( 1600Mw leccy / 4590 thermal = 35% efficiency )
Page 24 shows one large cost of nuclear. Quadruple safety systems. Assume the incident takes out one, and the second is off line for maintenance you then have the third one working and the fourth is the backup. You can't do nuclear safety on the cheap.

Page 40 I LOL'd at "Predictability based on experience" None of the plants listed is operational. Or on budget. And after 7 years of "project preparation" Calvert Cliffs 3 was put on hold a month ago.

page 18 seems to show that the EPR is more flexible than I had thought between 50% and 100% it can change output by 5% a minute. Then again more recently that's been redefined to 60%-100% And that's before they've actually got one operational.

Capt'n Midnight · 11-04-2015 8:48pm

Update 07 April 2015
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Flamanville-EPR-vessel-anomalies-under-scrutiny-0704154.html

Anomalies have been identified in the composition of the steel in certain parts of the reactor vessel of the EPR under construction at Flamanville,

Google translate from http://www.french-nuclear-safety.fr/content/download/96443/693392/file/Pr%C3%A9cisions+techniques+sur+les+anomalies+de+fabrication+de+la+cuve+de+l%27EPR+de+Flamanville.pdf

Areva has made mechanical testing in representative areas, which gave values of
Resilience 1 of 36 J and 64 J, for an average of 52 J, below the regulatory limit (60 J).
Areva also measured carbon content in a central core formed on the cover, which
revealed a carbon content of greater than expected (0.30% for a target value
0.22%).

Regulator has warned other countries where EPRs are built

Impetus · 11-04-2015 9:09pm

Using your 60% conversion ratio for gas > electricity, a heat pump system is a no brainer. ie 4x energy output for a 60 % conversion loss.

http://www.daikin.be/docs/ECPEN14-017-tcm478-310779.pdf

Aside from the gross incompetence of the ejits who work for Daikin Ireland. Elsewhere in Europe Daikain rank with Miele in terms of product quality and installation service quality.

Irish Daikin customers are often victims of Daikin Ireland - paying 2x EUR average premium prices, for exceptionally well manufactured product, which one is forced to purchase via Oirish dealers/installers who couldn't be bothered answering emails / orders for more stuff. Which makes one wonder what the response might be in the hopefully unlikely event of a defect?

djpbarry · 13-04-2015 2:31pm

SeanW wrote: »

Good, but remember that your plans (you, Capt'nMidnight, most world Green parties) are planning on gas reliance on a very large scale. Can these sources of renewable gas take the place of imports?

Are they a silver bullet? No, I doubt it. But why does everything that can’t supply 100% of energy needs have to be dismissed as impractical?

SeanW wrote: »

True, outside of energy, oil I think is used as a raw material for lots of things, taramacadam, linoleum, plastics, maybe even phamaceuticals, god knows what else. But as an energy source, it's as convenient and flexible as gas in most uses, and only slightly more useful in transport.

Oil is only slightly more useful in transport? Then why aren’t we seeing gas-powered cars all over the place?

SeanW wrote: »

…if anything goes wrong with Russia and they cut off the taps, Western Europe goes dark in a short time.

It really doesn’t and besides, it’s not going to happen – Russia needs income from gas exports far more than Europe needs Russian gas. Putin is not holding us to ransom like you think he is.

SeanW wrote: »

I didn't dodge anything - I accepted that based on the evidence you showed, Hinkley C and more plants like it could add to UK energy bills. But I maintain that:
Any increase would be good value for money.

This is a meaningless statement? Have you got some figures to support it? Because I’m finding it hard to believe that this deal represents good value for money at a time when subsidies for renewables in the UK are being phased out.

SeanW wrote: »

Any increase would be moderate compared to the alternatives more commonly suggested.

Again, you seem to be stating this as a belief rather than a demonstrable fact? What are you basing this on?

SeanW · 14-04-2015 12:53am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

it's not a bug it's a feature :rolleyes:
For the Nth time. Nuclear has an absolute requirement for gas because it can't load balance. Simple as. So even if you upgrade the nuclear plants you still end up paying for gas.

But it is not absolute. Even if you actually need all that hydro to cooperate with nuclear, gas is not absolutely required. Again, for the Nth time, France. Does. Not. Rely. On. Gas. Period.

In theory wind is intermittent. In practice we get 25% of our power from it in winter and that figure should go up to 40% when the grid can accommodate more.

Winter, yes, like Winter 2010? Don't know if you were in Ireland for this, but it was nasty. My family effectively did not have a Christmas that year because the temperature went down to -17C. Then our central heating failed, and we had to thrown on everything electric to stay alive. Electric radiators, the oven, possibly a few other things, just to keep from freezing over in two rooms of the house. Fun. And we had to use between 4-8KW almost constantly until the freeze ended.

But that weather bomb also came with a severe anti-cyclone, i.e. no wind. Of course solar wouldn't have been much use either. So we know that we can spend a bunch of money on renewables but they will not be any use when we need them most. If anything they will aggravate the need for usually idle electric plant because the rest of the grid will have to cover every scenario from warm breezy summers weekend day when everyone's gone to the beach, to a Christmas 2010 type case where the average temperature is -10, the wind is dead calm but there's a major rush of demand for heating. Oh and as an added bonus, because its Xmas Eve, everyone that isn't cowering in their houses from the cold is charging up their electric cars to go somewhere.

In theory renewables cause intermitterancy , but the recent eclipse showed that in practice the German grid didn't have a problem with 15GW dropping off the system.

Did you read my link? Germany's electrical instabilities are not just "in theory" micro-fluctuations in it routinely cause massive damage to sensitive industrial processes. Not only that, but the instability in the German grid has been spilling over into its Eastern neighbors.

Again this was all explained in the link I gave above, but here's another source for it: http://www.praguepost.cz/opinion/15258-region-german-green-energy-push-needs-a-rethink.html

So by your account of the EdF chief, France is able to benefit nicely from subsidised forced imports from Germany where the same is causing chaos and critical danger in Poland and the Czech republic.

Hmm. I wonder. Why is this? What do the Frenchies have that the Poles and the Czechs do not? I wonder. Oh, that's right - you pointed it out!

Have you already forgotten the 25.4 GWe hydro, vs 63.2 GWe, Nuclear ??

That's what I was looking for. France has 25.4GWe of hydro, as you pointed out! I wonder if having possibly Terawatt/hours of potential storage in all those hydropower dams might have something to do with France being able to profit from subsidised but unreliable green energy while Poland the Czechs presumably don't have this and seem to be panicked by the danger caused by the same factors?

Hydro is dispatchable upon demand, unlike nuclear which needs a lot of advance notice, if you don't have hydro you'll need fossil fuel.

See above.

and this week they've imported an average of 3GW from Germany
http://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/eco2mix-echanges-commerciaux-en

And they've exported much more than that.

Weather is predicable.

(Citation needed)

Weather forecasting is very complicated (in fact the problem was the basis for Chaos Theory). The UK Met Office is spending nearly £100,000,000 on a super-computer that may make their sometimes way off forecasts just a little bit better.

So shedding demand could easily more than match Turlough Hill for short periods.

How short? And to what specific ends? How would this be accomplished? Would immersions, electric heaters etc have to be fitted with devices? How much would all this cost? Where would they get their instructions to turn off?

Actually it's more Norway we've to be nice to.

Wrong again, excluding shale reserves, Russia has by far the greatest proves reserves. Norway is not even in the Top 10.

The top 3 are Russia, Iran and Qatar. All hellholes with abominable human rights records and mostly with a very nasty and aggressive world view. Anything that makes us unnecessarily reliant on these entities is inexcusable.

Even Lithuania is building a terminal so they can import LNG from the US.

Lithuania is scared, and it has good reason to be. Russia has fouled up most of its neighbors with aggressive wars and support for corrupt politicians (Bashar Al-Assad, the last leader of Ukraine) who keep their countries impoverished but within Moscows sphere of influence.

Most of their justification is the Russian colonists Stalin sent to those countries in attempt to extermine those nationalities. Ukraine and the Baltic bloc were all badly affected and all now have sizeable Russian populations who are often disloyal and are used by the Kremlin to justify doing whatever the hell it wants to those countries. So the Lithuanians are building an LNG terminal. Great. But it remains to be seen how much good it will do them.

The UK already do this. Thanks too to renewables the EU is weaning itself off Russian gas.

Wrong again, on both counts.
As of 2012, the 2nd largest source of UK gas was LNG imports from Qatar. Renewables are not weaning the EU off Russian gas, they're doing the opposite, as the experience of France vs. Poland/Czech showed above when dealing with dumped exports from Germany, more fast dispatchable plant is required.

Perhaps the common point of view is evidence based ?

It's been the same since the 1970s and possibly earlier. Since you're all the time talking about how renewables are getting better, continuously over time, they must have been really crap back in '78. Yet the same views were being advocated back then by people who I maintain had similar ideologies.

djpbarry wrote: »

Are they a silver bullet? No, I doubt it. But why does everything that can’t supply 100% of energy needs have to be dismissed as impractical?

I'm merely suggesting that they have to be done on a large scale, especially if the plan is to use more of the resource. If a system of making gas is only going to produce at artisan levels, what's the point?

Oil is only slightly more useful in transport? Then why aren’t we seeing gas-powered cars all over the place?

Inertia. Oil has first movers advantage. All the cars are oil powered, so all the fuel stations sell fuel oil (mainly petrol and diesel). A different fuel would need to be radically better to break this cycle. But gas is usable, some people have converted their cars for LNG/CNG and the like, and T. Boone Pickens, American oil-man, in his "Pickens Plan" (which has the support of the Sierra Club BTW) proposes using windmills to displace natural gas from electricity which could in turn be used in new cars, reducing America's requirement for oil.

Needless to say I think the plan is questionable in parts (especially the part about using windmills instead of gas for electricity

), expensive and impractical, except the bit about gas in cars which could actually work.

It really doesn’t and besides, it’s not going to happen – Russia needs income from gas exports far more than Europe needs Russian gas. Putin is not holding us to ransom like you think he is.

I think the conversation between myself and the Captain has shown that potentially both nuclear and renewables have a considerable requirement for quickly dispatchable power backups, though I still tend to believe it's worse where renewables are concerned. France and Norway are nicely set up with their hydropower dams, but for the rest of us, the power system requires gas. And lots of it. And yes, Putin is a warmongering imperialist maniac.

This is a meaningless statement? Have you got some figures to support it?

Just common logic. Spending a small amount extra on non-fossil energy is something I have no problem with. The figures earlier saying 9.25p/kwh were double the wholesale rate. That means that Hinkley C will be about 4.6p/kwh more expensive than fossil fuel fired power stations. That's not really bad. But of course it's just one plant producing a fraction of UK needs, so it won't add that much to electricity bills on its own.

Again, you seem to be stating this as a belief rather than a demonstrable fact? What are you basing this on?

Accepting previously quoted figures suggesting that Hinkley C would be a few pence per kwh more expensive than fossil fuels, but comparing such a cost to what bill payers in Germany and Denmark must pay in Green taxes, it seems like good value to me. It really is very simple. People in Germany and Denmark pay stupid amounts of money for electricity, comparable only to remote Pacific islands, and I maintain that this reflects the cost of Green policies and are a sign of a policy that has failed, especially when said policies also cause a raft of other problems, some of which I touched on above.

Capt'n Midnight · 14-04-2015 2:03am

SeanW wrote: »

But it is not absolute. Even if you actually need all that hydro to cooperate with nuclear, gas is not absolutely required. Again, for the Nth time, France. Does. Not. Rely. On. Gas. Period.

Yawn.

Of course France doesn't need Gas. The GWe of their Hydro is 40% that of nuclear. AND they have neighbours who will happily import and export to load balance. Yes they get 75% of power from nuclear but there is a whole continent underpinning it.

Winter, yes, like Winter 2010? Don't know if you were in Ireland for this, but it was nasty. My family effectively did not have a Christmas that year because the temperature went down to -17C. Then our central heating failed, and we had to thrown on everything electric to stay alive.

So if we had nuclear the central heating wouldn't have failed ??

Excluding Renewables, Interconnectors and pumped storage, how much dispatchable generation do we have on this Island ?
And how does it compare to Peak demand ?? (which wasn't in Jan or Dec 2010 BTW)
We have surplus generation. It's not an issue, wasn't an issue in 2010 not even remotely.

Again this was all explained in the link I gave above, but here's another source for it: http://www.praguepost.cz/opinion/15258-region-german-green-energy-push-needs-a-rethink.html

An opinion piece from 2013 vs. fact that 15GW just dropped off the grid last month and didn't cause problems. For me evidence based wins every time.

Weather forecasting is very complicated

And that's why it takes a decade to get an extra day forecast. But eirgrid publish the forecasts and the measurements. Throw the numbers in a spreadsheet, it's not rocket science. One crevat though our grid can only accept 50% un-synchronised generators so you have to take that into account when comparing predictions.

How short? And to what specific ends? How would this be accomplished? Would immersions, electric heaters etc have to be fitted with devices? How much would all this cost? Where would they get their instructions to turn off?

The "instructions" come from the changes in the 50Hz mains frequency. No network control or connection needed. Simply reduce demand if freq slows down. http://smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/#all/frequency
As for the cost , you can get microcontroller boards with ADC and USB posted to your door for €1.40. Buying in bulk is a lot cheaper

I think the conversation between myself and the Captain has shown that potentially both nuclear and renewables have a considerable requirement for quickly dispatchable power backups, though I still tend to believe it's worse where renewables are concerned

I'm tired of posting links where nuclear plants have gone off line without warning for extended periods.

If we get a warm summer I predict the Jellyfish will strike again.

Care to predict the chances that the wind forecast two days on eirgrid's site will different to the actual wind by more than the power of a reactor ? ( excluding the grid stability limits that restrict actual wind usage )

Just common logic. Spending a small amount extra on non-fossil energy is something I have no problem with. The figures earlier saying 9.25p/kwh were double the wholesale rate. That means that Hinkley C will be about 4.6p/kwh more expensive than fossil fuel fired power stations. That's not really bad. But of course it's just one plant producing a fraction of UK needs, so it won't add that much to electricity bills on its own.

A , DOUBLE is not a small amount extra.

B , nuclear can only supply base load. Fossil can provide peaking power which can command many multiples of the base load price.

C, so you are saying it's OK to subsidise ONE plant because it won't add much ?
Care to predict to the nearest £10Bn how much the total Hinkey C subsidies will cost over it's life ??

djpbarry · 14-04-2015 10:19am

SeanW wrote: »

Inertia. Oil has first movers advantage. All the cars are oil powered, so all the fuel stations sell fuel oil (mainly petrol and diesel). A different fuel would need to be radically better to break this cycle.

Gas has been used for far longer than oil has, but oil was still the preferred choice for automobiles because it’s liquid.

SeanW wrote: »

I think the conversation between myself and the Captain has shown that potentially both nuclear and renewables have a considerable requirement for quickly dispatchable power backups, though I still tend to believe it's worse where renewables are concerned.

But you continue to avoid demonstrating why. You’re quick to dismiss advocates of renewable energy as “environmental lefties”, but the reality is your own support for nuclear seems to be based on little more than personal beliefs.

SeanW wrote: »

Just common logic.

That’s not a very convincing economic argument.

SeanW wrote: »

Spending a small amount extra on non-fossil energy is something I have no problem with. The figures earlier saying 9.25p/kwh were double the wholesale rate. That means that Hinkley C will be about 4.6p/kwh more expensive than fossil fuel fired power stations. That's not really bad.

100% more expensive than the going rate is “not that bad”?!? Are you kidding? Why is it more expensive at all? You keep telling us nuclear is amazing, yet here we have a situation where the operators of a new facility have to be guaranteed twice the going rate, adjusted for inflation, to convince them to build the facility.

SeanW wrote: »

Accepting previously quoted figures suggesting that Hinkley C would be a few pence per kwh more expensive than fossil fuels, but comparing such a cost to what bill payers in Germany and Denmark must pay in Green taxes…

You keep citing Denmark and Germany as support for your argument that renewables are substantially more expensive to support than nuclear. Ignoring for a moment that retail prices for electricity are heavily influenced by factors other than wholesale prices, explain to me why the operators of a nuclear plant in the UK are being guaranteed twice the going rate for power produced at a time when subsidies for renewables are largely being phased out? Stop avoiding the question. Give me a coherent economic explanation of why it is necessary to provide such massive subsidies for nuclear, bearing in mind that you keep telling us it’s wonderfully cheap?

Birdnuts · 14-04-2015 10:26am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Yawn.

Excluding Renewables, Interconnectors and pumped storage, how much dispatchable generation do we have on this Island ?
And how does it compare to Peak demand ?? (which wasn't in Jan or Dec 2010 BTW)
We have surplus generation. It's not an issue, wasn't an issue in 2010 not even remotely.

If we have surplus generation then why do we continue to build wind farms all over the country that supply little if any usefull power in those conditions. In those conditions it is much more likely we will be importing nuclear and other conventional power sources from the UK and near continent which also experienced those severe weather conditions at the time. All the more reason to review our current crazy energy policies that saw this government sell-off a big chunk of our gas power generation on the cheap. I'd also like your defination of "peak demand" if it isn't on cold, dark winter evenings around the Christmas period when these conditions occured.

PS: We have a tiny amount of pumped storage and that is all we will ever have given the geography needed for it. HP conditions in winter and spring can last for weeks and extend over much of western Europe.

Birdnuts · 14-04-2015 10:46am

djpbarry wrote: »

You keep citing Denmark and Germany as support for your argument that renewables are substantially more expensive to support than nuclear. Ignoring for a moment that retail prices for electricity are heavily influenced by factors other than wholesale prices,?

Green taxes ,subsidies and the cost of wind related pylon sprawl and back up are the main drivers - same in the US. Its a common theme on such grids

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/10/17/electricity-prices-soaring-in-top-10-wind-power-states/

djpbarry · 14-04-2015 1:27pm

Birdnuts wrote: »

If we have surplus generation then why do we continue to build wind farms all over the country...

To cut down on fossil fuel consumption.

Birdnuts wrote: »

In those conditions it is much more likely we will be importing nuclear and other conventional power sources from the UK and near continent which also experienced those severe weather conditions at the time.

Which is why interconnection is a good idea.

Birdnuts wrote: »

Green taxes ,subsidies and the cost of wind related pylon sprawl and back up are the main drivers - same in the US. Its a common theme on such grids

What’s the difference between “green taxes” and “subsidies”? Are they not the same thing? And aren’t they paying for the upfront capital costs of wind power, or “pylon sprawl” as you call it? So aren’t those three things essentially one thing? And don’t those costs essentially disappear once the generation capacity is installed? And for the umpteenth time, can anyone name one form of electricity generation that does not require “back-up”?

Birdnuts wrote: »

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/10/17/electricity-prices-soaring-in-top-10-wind-power-states/

What a wonderfully balanced article.

Birdnuts · 14-04-2015 4:38pm

Far cheaper and more effective to put money into energy saving measures and or converting existing peat/coal stations to gas or sustaineable biomass(forestry/agri waste). The government dances to the wind industries tune in this country far too much and evidence from Germany and elsewhere strongly suggests wind is a rather ineffective and expensive way to reduce emmissions. Wind power needs far more back up too as it is totally non-dispatcheable at time of peak demand, so building ever more across the country, including areas like the midlands makes no sense at all.

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21608646-wind-and-solar-power-are-even-more-expensive-commonly-thought-sun-wind-and

Secondly it is the energy consumer that pays for wind related pylon infrastructure and maintainance. the wind developer only pays for the basic connection of a wind farm to the local grid. Eirgrid wants to spend many billions on the likes of Gridwest to allow more windfarms sprawl across North Mayo. Its all over their literature they send people through the post there, I got some myself recently at my address in Erris.

Thirdly, again you dismiss posters or links that don't conform to your own views on the matter. Is this forum meant for debate or some kind of Eamon Ryan fanpage??

PS: Check out SEAI latest wind atlas. Appears to seriously downgrade the wind potential of the country. Another reason to stop throwing good money after bad at this.

Markcheese · 14-04-2015 4:46pm

If your wind turbines are spinning (and the wind forecast is good) the system needs x amount of spinning reserve - (I assume not the entire amount being produced )
I assume if the winds not predicted to blow much ,the plants that would have been spinning reserve are now producing - but would also need other plants spinning ?
Which is grand if your talking summer, low demand across the system - but what about around Xmas -and massive demand - how much extra installed capacity is there in the system (including wind) to cope with a calm day at peak demand -

Capt'n Midnight · 14-04-2015 11:30pm

djpbarry wrote: »

Gas has been used for far longer than oil has

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Isaac_de_Rivaz

François Isaac de Rivaz (Paris, December 19, 1752 – Sion, July 30, 1828) was an inventor and a politician. He invented a hydrogen powered internal combustion engine with electric ignition and described it in a French patent published in 1807. In 1808 he fitted it into a primitive working vehicle - 'the world's first internal combustion powered automobile'

The speed records for cars a century later is interesting as the first ones were set by electric cars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record

The main advantage of oil is that it stores a lot of energy for it's weight/volume. And don't forget that almost all cars use electric starter motors.

Give me a coherent economic explanation of why it is necessary to provide such massive subsidies for nuclear, bearing in mind that you keep telling us it’s wonderfully cheap?

In fairness SeanW has started admitting that's it's not cheap.

But still claims it's worth paying for. Even though any benefit on the CO2 side from a new build won't appear for a generation or more by the time the thing is completed and the carbon used in construction is accounted for.

And again investing in nuclear means diverting funds from renewables, hobbling the competition.

Capt'n Midnight · 14-04-2015 11:59pm

Markcheese wrote: »

If your wind turbines are spinning (and the wind forecast is good) the system needs x amount of spinning reserve - (I assume not the entire amount being produced )
I assume if the winds not predicted to blow much ,the plants that would have been spinning reserve are now producing - but would also need other plants spinning ?
Which is grand if your talking summer, low demand across the system - but what about around Xmas -and massive demand - how much extra installed capacity is there in the system (including wind) to cope with a calm day at peak demand -

Please read this.
http://www.eirgrid.com/media/OperationalConstraintsUpdateVersion1_22_February_2015.pdf

Been done to death. We've reasonably accurate wind predictions 5 days out and the Operation Constraint listed above mean that backup has to kick in within 5 seconds to cover 75% of the loss. It takes more than 5 seconds for a weather front to move across a single wind farm, never mind a whole country so there's plenty of warning of drops in wind.

And any drop in wind is more than covered by the requirement to provide backup of the largest single generator on the grid.

No drop in wind would come close to having a transformer outage at Moneypoint. And even that would be minor compared to the effect of a nuke tripping out and staying off line for days/months/years/forever as has happened many, many times. And the requirements of large inertia generators to provide frequency control in or around the main cities. ( Read the pdf

) And in the future adding more sensors and software will mean that the wind conditions at each farm and each turbine can be factored in to help predict what will happen downwind.

On a grid designed to handle major generators going offline at the drop of a hat a predicted dip in renewables is easily handled.

Macha · 15-04-2015 1:14pm

Birdnuts wrote: »

Is this forum meant for debate or some kind of Eamon Ryan fanpage??

Ahem. Let's try to keep this civilised and not resort to low brow comments like this one. That goes for everyone.

djpbarry · 15-04-2015 2:04pm

Birdnuts wrote: »

Far cheaper and more effective to put money into energy saving measures and or converting existing peat/coal stations to gas or sustaineable biomass(forestry/agri waste).

No reason why we can’t do the above and invest in renewables - it’s not a zero-sum game.

Birdnuts wrote: »

The government dances to the wind industries tune in this country far too much and evidence from Germany and elsewhere strongly suggests wind is a rather ineffective and expensive way to reduce emmissions. Wind power needs far more back up too as it is totally non-dispatcheable at time of peak demand, so building ever more across the country, including areas like the midlands makes no sense at all.

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21608646-wind-and-solar-power-are-even-more-expensive-commonly-thought-sun-wind-and

Most of the assumptions in the paper on which that article is based are ridiculous:

So what was inaccurate about Dr. Frank’s key assumptions? In his calculations, U.S. solar and wind power are one-third to one-half less productive than they actually were during 2008–13. His calculations assumed that solar power is little more productive on sunny afternoons than its annual average, even though its strong near-coincidence with peak loads is, as he agreed elsewhere, a major source of its value. He assumed solar and wind power capital costs are twice those documented in the 2012–13 U.S. marketplace (and falling fast). Conversely, he assumed combined-cycle gas plants are twice as productive as they were in 2008–13, but did not count methane leakage (which offsets carbon savings) and gas-price volatility (which increases risk and hence cost). He assumed that new nuclear power has half its actual market price per MWh, a construction time roughly half the world average over the past decade, and U.S. operating costs one-fifth what the Nuclear Energy Institute says was the average in 2012. With data like these, his conclusions weren’t surprising—just wrong.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/planetpolicy/posts/2014/09/03-sorry-wrong-numbers

Macha · 21-04-2015 7:55am

New research carrying out a statistical analysis of risk of nuclear accidents. Main findings:

With the current model and in terms of dollar losses, there is a 50% chance that :
(i) a Fukushima event (or larger) occurs in the next 50 years,
(ii) a Chernobyl event (or larger) occurs in the next 27 years and
(iii) a TMI event (or larger) occurs in the next 10 years.
Further, smaller but still expensive (≥ 20 MM 2013 USD) incidents will occur with a frequency of about one per year.
Finally, we find that the INES scale is inconsistent in terms of both damage and NAMS (radiation release) values. For the damage values to be consistent, the Fukushima disaster would need to be between an INES level of 10 and 11, rather than the maximum level of 7.

SeanW · 22-04-2015 12:48am

djpbarry wrote: »

Gas has been used for far longer than oil has, but oil was still the preferred choice for automobiles because it’s liquid.

There may have been good reason to embrace oil back in the day, but now its a case of inertia, any alternative having to face a "chicken and egg" scenario. But if we had to stop or dramatically reduce the use of oil for whatever reason, we could reengineer the national fleet of cars to use gas, many cars can be converted to LPG operation, there's a crowd that will offer to convert a car for €800. The main problem, again, is the chicken and egg scenario. The use of car gas is at artisan levels, in part or whole because there are not many LPG fuelling stations, so a gas powered car is not very useful, while every other street has a fuel station selling oil distillates.

The point is that fundamentally gas is useful in transport (and the Sierra Club and T. Boone Pickens both advocate doing this extensively) - as well as electricity, home heating, cooking as well as a feedstock in some chemical processes - and to claim that the use of gas for any reason does not have an extreme opportunity cost (the foregone option to use it for something else) is something I consider to be both troubling and bizarre.

You’re quick to dismiss advocates of renewable energy as “environmental lefties”,

As I said, I see, and am challenging, what I consider to be a common viewpoint, shared by numerous individuals, groups and entities.

but the reality is your own support for nuclear seems to be based on little more than personal beliefs.

Granted, when I see a country with sod all natural resources going 90%+ non-fossil, I believe that's worth looking at. When I see a nuclear plant able to directly replace coal, I believe that's a good idea. Though as you claim these may be "little more than personal beliefs."

Wasting gas on an industrial scale, making people pay 40cents a kilowatt hour for electricity and accepting the many other very severe downsides (international grid stability, industrial scale killing of birds and bats in windmills just to name a few) to using weather based non-hydro renewables may be the greatest thing since sliced bread. But such a view IMHO is much more open to a charge of being "personal beliefs."

100% more expensive than the going rate is “not that bad”?!? Are you kidding? Why is it more expensive at all? You keep telling us nuclear is amazing, yet here we have a situation where the operators of a new facility have to be guaranteed twice the going rate, adjusted for inflation, to convince them to build the facility.

At Hinkley C there are a few things going on:

The 4.5p/kwh price is largely from fossil fuels. These are very cheap, especially coal, because any fool can stuff a load of coal into a boiler and sell power for relatively low rates.
As the German and Danish experience is showing, low power costs, e.g. 4-5p/kwh have nothing to do with renewables. For someone who advocates copying the Germans and the Danes to complain about how expensive nuclear is, strikes me as being somewhat bizarre.
Hinkley C will have to cover all it's own costs. When the UK gov announced the scheme years ago, it was made clear that the plant would have to cover ALL of its own costs, consturction, operation and decommissioning. I don't know if waste disposal was included in that, but I would speculate this is also included in an all-in price.
Unlike fossil fuel generators, nuclear plant waste is solid, not gaseous, so it must be handled by the nuclear facility where as fossil fuel operators get to spew their wastes into the air.

This is another factor making the costs of fossil fuels (the backbone of the UK wholesale rate) and nuclear very problematic - the cost of waste disposal is levelled onto the public with fossil fuels constituting a massive public risk and health subsidy, the same cost is internalised for nuclear.

You keep citing Denmark and Germany as support for your argument that renewables are substantially more expensive to support than nuclear. Ignoring for a moment that retail prices for electricity are heavily influenced by factors other than wholesale prices,

They're following the Green agenda, spending everyones money on windmills and solar panels. That's why their costs are comparable with Samoa, Niue, the Cook Islands and suchlike places.

explain to me why the operators of a nuclear plant in the UK are being guaranteed twice the going rate for power produced at a time when subsidies for renewables are largely being phased out?

This is fictional. So long as there is any kind of support or mandate for renewables, it will add cost. If there is for example a requirement to use X% renewables, then that amount will have to be used regardless of how much it costs or what affect it has on the proper functioning of the grid.

So in theory the "subsidies" might be phased out (and I'm skeptical even of this) but if renewables are expensive and problematic the utilites have no choice but to pay for it and pass on the cost.

Stop avoiding the question. Give me a coherent economic explanation of why it is necessary to provide such massive subsidies for nuclear, bearing in mind that you keep telling us it’s wonderfully cheap?

You're comparing a 4p premium for Hinkley C to an absolutely stupid cost of subsidising renewables, and telling me MY plan calls for "massive subsidies?" Seriously?

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Of course France doesn't need Gas.

THANK YOU!!!

:D;):D:p

The GWe of their Hydro is 40% that of nuclear.

Which also explains why France is able to benefit from masses of oversupply of German import electricity, when, as I showed earlier, the same masses of dumped electricity have threatened to overpower and crash the grids of Germany's Eastern neighbors.

By highlighting the use of hydropower in France and posting that piece from the head of the EdF about how France is benefitting from the same subsidies German imports that are imperiling Germany's other neighbors, you've shown the logical bankruptcy of your own argument.

You can only benefit from even subsidised renewable power when you have, oh, say, 10% hydro. Like France. Otherwise its an extreme danger. By the way I have no idea where you got your 40% figure from, my chart shows 10.2% hydro and 76.6% nuclear for France in 2012. Where on Earth did you get 40% from?

AND they have neighbours who will happily import and export to load balance. Yes they get 75% of power from nuclear but there is a whole continent underpinning it.

France exports power to all of its neighbors except Germany.

Oh and their grid is not too inflexible as a recent French law on night time illumination has shown. Nutshell, non-residential buildings are now required to turn off lights after the last worker leaves the building and shopfronts etc must have their lights off by 1AM.

Traditionally, the challenge is the exact opposite - to keep power demand up during the night (and down during the day) so as to keep demand as even as possible throughout a 24h period. Yet the French, with all their horrible inflexible nuclear, expect turning off the lights at night to have a positive effect? What's going there?

So if we had nuclear the central heating wouldn't have failed ??

Never said that. But we did have to draw 8kwh from the grid and I'm sure we weren't the only ones.

This happened at a time when the country was in a severe anti-cyclone.

Excluding Renewables, Interconnectors and pumped storage, how much dispatchable generation do we have on this Island ?

Don't know, don't massively care. Point is, when you introduce renewables, you have to cover wildly divergent cases:

Minimal draw on the grid, massive production from windmills and solar panels (e.g. a breezy sunny day when everyone decides to go to the beach)
Massive draw on the grid, no production or even a drain from windmills and solar panels. (E.g. Christmas Eve 2010)

To be reliable and logically sound, your plan has to ensure that there will always be the ability to respond to both cases, preferably at sane costs and preferably also with a dramatically reduced CO2 footprint. As a bonus, such a plan should also avoid the many downsides associated with "green" power.

An opinion piece from 2013 vs. fact that 15GW just dropped off the grid last month and didn't cause problems. For me evidence based wins every time.

I've shown very clearly the damage being done both in Germany and its Eastern neighbors. You've just said "oh gee we survived the solar eclipse"

The "instructions" come from the changes in the 50Hz mains frequency. No network control or connection needed. Simply reduce demand if freq slows down. http://smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/#all/frequency
As for the cost , you can get microcontroller boards with ADC and USB posted to your door for €1.40. Buying in bulk is a lot cheaper

So how to do you all the immersions and electric heaters in the country fitted with these things? How long could an end user expect their heater to be down for? Seconds? Minutes? Longer?

I'm tired of posting links where nuclear plants have gone off line without warning for extended periods.

Then don't bother because you're not proving anything. Power plants fail! Stop the presses! You might as well be highlighting that the sun rises in the East or that the sky is blue!

djpbarry wrote: »

What’s the difference between “green taxes” and “subsidies”? Are they not the same thing?

So you admit that German and Danish electricity prices are for renewable subsidies?

And aren’t they paying for the upfront capital costs of wind power, or “pylon sprawl” as you call it? So aren’t those three things essentially one thing? And don’t those costs essentially disappear once the generation capacity is installed?

No they don't - these things will all have to be rebuilt in time. And each time, the money used may have to be borrowed at interest. You don't just spend X billion on renewables and energy grids, they have to be maintained and eventually replaced.

New research carrying out a statistical analysis of risk of nuclear accidents. Main findings:

With the current model and in terms of dollar losses, there is a 50% chance that :
(i) a Fukushima event (or larger) occurs in the next 50 years,
(ii) a Chernobyl event (or larger) occurs in the next 27 years and
(iii) a TMI event (or larger) occurs in the next 10 years.
Further, smaller but still expensive (≥ 20 MM 2013 USD) incidents will occur with a frequency of about one per year.

That's a little bizarre, considering that Chernobyl was a far worse event than Fukushima. Your research predicts a bad (or larger) accident occurs with in 50 years, but a catastrophic (or larger) occurs with 27 years? Where is the logic behind this?

Remember that Chernobyl can be effectively discounted because the manner in which it was designed and run by the Soviet Union means that it really wasn't an "accident" at all, more like recklessness verging on intent. The way the Soviets ran their nuclear programme was the general equivalent of getting into car, off your head on drugs, and then proceeding to run every red light for a hundred miles. It's some claim to believe this is likely to happen again within 27 years, when it's already been more than that since 1986 and Fukushima was the closest thing to a repeat and it was nowhere in the same league.
Fukushima was built in the 1960s and was even older than Chernobyl.
TMI showed that even semi-modern Western style safety systems work - the reactor melted down at least in part but there was no need for any permanent evacuation.

Capt'n Midnight · 22-04-2015 9:40am

SeanW wrote: »

But if we had to stop or dramatically reduce the use of oil for whatever reason, we could reengineer the national fleet of cars to use gas, many cars can be converted to LPG operation,
...
The main problem, again, is the chicken and egg scenario. The use of car gas is at artisan levels, in part or whole because there are not many LPG fuelling stations, so a gas powered car is not very useful, while every other street has a fuel station selling oil distillates.

LPG, like diesel is an oil distillate. And like diesel it's price is determined by demand and tax. LNG, Petrol and diesel can to some extent be cracked/re-formed to each other in a refinery. All are variations on (CH2)n , the differences in CO2 emissions are determined more by the engine cycle otto/atkinson/diesel/ccgt than the fuel itself.

Natural gas, is a totally different beast, not easily liquifyable and having much lower emissions as it's CH4

Granted, when I see a country with sod all natural resources going 90%+ non-fossil, I believe that's worth looking at. When I see a nuclear plant able to directly replace coal, I believe that's a good idea. Though as you claim these may be "little more than personal beliefs."

Renewables here have replaced Oil for power generation. And produce more than coal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_St._Vrain_Generating_Station This was a nuclear power station. It was converted to gas in 1989. And it used thorium. It pretty much sums up all the "new nuclear technology" / "only because gas is cheap today" arguments.

Wasting gas on an industrial scale, making people pay 40cents a kilowatt hour for electricity and accepting the many other very severe downsides (international grid stability, industrial scale killing of birds and bats in windmills just to name a few) to using weather based non-hydro renewables may be the greatest thing since sliced bread. But such a view IMHO is much more open to a charge of being "personal beliefs."

wtf?
We pay 20c here.

At Hinkley C there are a few things going on:

I hope they include making sure they get the carbon content right in the reactor shield, and that prevent cost overruns.

[*]Hinkley C will have to cover all it's own costs. When the UK gov announced the scheme years ago, it was made clear that the plant would have to cover ALL of its own costs, consturction, operation and decommissioning. I don't know if waste disposal was included in that, but I would speculate this is also included in an all-in price.

I've asked you before to guestimate the subsidy to the nearest €10Bn

Hinkley C will be getting 170m a year in grid support. AFAIK clean up costs are not included (£100Bn + for calder hall/windscale/sellafield/whatever they'll call that site next) the costs don't include grid upgrades or carraige fees, and the electricity price is garanteed for 35 years , not only guaranteed but indexed linked , and one of the inputs in the CPI is the cost of electricity. The UK still doesn't have a long term storage repository and as we all know the enviromental regs will only get more stringent in future.

Also I see that you are finally begining to understand that nuclear relies on having massive amounts of other dispatchable generators connected to prop it up since it can't load balance,

compare the Average French demand with the Installed Hydro. And then remember that they import/export to the UK , Germany , Belgium , Spain and Italy.

djpbarry · 22-04-2015 10:07am

SeanW wrote: »

The 4.5p/kwh price is largely from fossil fuels. These are very cheap, especially coal, because any fool can stuff a load of coal into a boiler and sell power for relatively low rates.
As the German and Danish experience is showing, low power costs, e.g. 4-5p/kwh have nothing to do with renewables.

4-5p/kWh has nothing to do with Denmark or Germany? Why do you continue to insist on comparing apples and oranges?

You’re also clearly unaware that investors are being scared aware from the German electricity market because wholesale prices are getting so low:
http://www.dw.de/german-power-giant-rwes-profits-shrink/a-18305030

SeanW wrote: »

Hinkley C will have to cover all it's own costs.

Source?

SeanW wrote: »

This is fictional. So long as there is any kind of support or mandate for renewables, it will add cost. If there is for example a requirement to use X% renewables, then that amount will have to be used regardless of how much it costs or what affect it has on the proper functioning of the grid.

Sources?

SeanW wrote: »

So in theory the "subsidies" might be phased out (and I'm skeptical even of this) but if renewables are expensive and problematic the utilites have no choice but to pay for it and pass on the cost.

Source?

SeanW wrote: »

You're comparing a 4p premium for Hinkley C to an absolutely stupid cost of subsidising renewables…

Source?

I’m tired of going around in circles. Start producing some solid figures to back up your arguments - pretty much everything you’ve stated above is an assumption.

Capt'n Midnight · 22-04-2015 8:11pm

SeanW wrote: »

Don't know, don't massively care. Point is, when you introduce renewables, you have to cover wildly divergent cases:
Minimal draw on the grid, massive production from windmills and solar panels (e.g. a breezy sunny day when everyone decides to go to the beach)

Massive draw on the grid, no production or even a drain from windmills and solar panels. (E.g. Christmas Eve 2010)

Peak demand on the grid was two years earlier. A complete non issue as a drop in wind is predictable days out. Reactors in Japan shutdown on the first tremor ie, no warning.

So how to do you all the immersions and electric heaters in the country fitted with these things? How long could an end user expect their heater to be down for? Seconds? Minutes? Longer?

Did you see any of my posts about the grid having to respond within 5 seconds to power fluctuations ? , even minutes isn't an issue. And the benefit is that people with these devices would get cheaper leccy.

Then don't bother because you're not proving anything. Power plants fail! Stop the presses! You might as well be highlighting that the sun rises in the East or that the sky is blue!

But nuclear fails are faster, harder and longer.

No they don't - these things will all have to be rebuilt in time. And each time, the money used may have to be borrowed at interest. You don't just spend X billion on renewables and energy grids, they have to be maintained and eventually replaced.

Been done to death. Cost of refurbing wind turbines at 20 years to extend their life by another 20 years is about 15% of the original cost.

That's a little bizarre, considering that Chernobyl was a far worse event than Fukushima. Your research predicts a bad (or larger) accident occurs with in 50 years, but a catastrophic (or larger) occurs with 27 years? Where is the logic behind this?

50:50 says jellyfish will take a plant off line this summer

Logic and nuclear in the same sentence

http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303982504576425312941820794

In 1967, Tepco chopped 25 meters off the 35-meter natural seawall where the reactors were to be located, according to documents filed at the time with Japanese authorities.

Look into the history of nuclear and there are many , many examples of design and construction problems that are as a result of cost and corner cutting. Find out just how many have had to be taken offline for them. Genius stuff like building earthquake shields the wrong way around. Actually just look at how many are built on top of nuclear fault lines, and not just in Japan ? Most coastal plants will be affected by global warming too.

The fact that people can make predictions on nuclear incidents shows just how common they are.

Capt'n Midnight · 02-05-2015 12:57am

GB now has 7.5GW of solar

"As in markets like Germany, France and Italy, PV developers and installers in the U.K. try to demonstrate how fast they can build large PV plants, once the paperwork has cleared,” said senior analyst for solar power at IHS, Josefin Berg. "In fact, some of these projects received their permits as late as early February of this year."

http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201504270010.aspx

Taipei, April 27 (CNA) One of the two reactors at Taiwan's third nuclear power plant was shut down early Monday after a fire broke out in the plant's non-nuclear zone, Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) said.

...
At present, only three of the six nuclear reactors at the three nuclear power plants are in operation.

The No. 1 reactor at the first nuclear power plant has been out of service since Dec. 28 due to a component failure, while the No. 1 reactor at the second nuclear power plant has been shut down since April 24 for routine maintenance

Other unplanned outages in April
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-nrc-inpects-calvert-cliffs-20150413-story.html
http://triblive.com/business/headlines/8179437-74/pump-power-shut
http://www.timesherald.com/general-news/20150415/limerick-nuclear-reactor-shutdown-starts-with-a-hiccup
http://www.yournuclearnews.com/xcel+energy+%3A++operators+safely+shut+down+unit+2+at+prairie+island+nuclear+plant_114673.html
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20150416000837

also A shutdown at New Brunswick’s Point Lepreau nuclear generating station was extended to allow for more repairs.
http://metronews.ca/news/canada/1335296/point-lepreau-shutdown-extended-for-work/ http://www.nbpower.com/html/en/about/media/media_release/2015/04-21-15-EN_PLNGSUpdate.html

http://plymouth.wickedlocal.com/article/20150305/NEWS/150309065

Pilgrim was no sooner coming back online when winter storm Neptune hit on Valentine’s Day. This time, Entergy shut down Pilgrim as a “precautionary” measure – an explicit acknowledgement that public safety would be at risk if there was another emergency at Pilgrim. Pilgrim was offline for three days, taking an additional five days during restart to reach full power. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) spokesman Neil Sheehan reported that during the restart Entergy was “working through some non-safety related, balance-of-plant equipment problems. These are new issues and not problems from the 1/27 storm. Such issues are not unusual following two shutdowns and start-ups in a short period of time.”

"taking an additional five days during restart to reach full power." :eek:

GB's cheap Chinese nuclear plant -v- solar

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