GB's cheap Chinese nuclear plant -v- solar

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

GB now has 7.5GW of solar

Great. Vast quantities of money spent on power plants that produce power when its least needed - summer days. It might be different if we had a large demand for air conditioning, but the American and Spanish experience suggests that even this is questionable.

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

Power plants in large countries fail! Stop the presses!

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

Oh I am well aware of it. I am also aware of what are by now logic defying contradictions permeating your shared positions, between each other, between yourselves and other environmentalists, and the facts, like water through a strainer.

Yes, having wholesale prices that are violently unstable and can plummet as low as -€100MW per kwh (that's right you generate power and have to pay €100 a kilowatt hour to get it taken off your hands). That kind of thing does indeed tend to scare power plant builders away, and I am fully aware that this could be a real phenomenon and the harm it could do.

Contradiction 1:
But wait a second: hasn't Capt'nMidnight spent this entire thread reassuring us all that installed thermal plant will never be a problem? That there will always be a market for renewables backup and there will never be a shortage of installed traditional plant? That if we ever again have a crisis like Xmas 2010 we can all put on our electric radiators and other electric heaters and not have to worry about being bankrupted or crashing the grid?

How will that be if we take everyone's money in subsidies for counterproductive renewables and leave no business case for traditional plant, who might spend more time paying grid managers to waste their power than helping in such a crisis?

Contradicition 2:
And why are you quoting the wholesale price in Germany when it has nothing whatsoever to do with what people pay on their electricity bills? Actually, it has a negative relationship: People are paying stupid levels of money in renewables subsidies so that the government can foul up the wholesale market.

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

Ah yes, France.
Contradiction 3:

I keep being told by the Captain that France requires the co-operation of the rest of the continent. In particular, I've been told that France relies on the rest of the continent taking its night time surplus. If so, then why did France just place restrictive laws on night time lighting? Surely if France had the traditional utility problems of night time - keeeping demand high so as to avoid a fall-off in demand requring too much output reduction from the baseline, then such a law would have been deeply counter-productive and totally ill-advised. What's going on? I'm being told one thing here, but the French legislature is saying the exact opposite! BTW, Captn'Midnight has yet to explain the 40% figure for French hydro. What on Earth is going on over in the Fifth Republic? Your posts on this matter - were they to be taken seriously - would confuse any rational person confronted with the facts.

Contradiction 4:
The oppportunity cost of gas. I keep being told that my assertions about the opportunity cost of using gas for power are not based in reality, that it isn't really useful for much other than "energy." Leaving aside that I consider this to be absurd to the point of incredibility, considering how varied our energy needs are and how large the problem is, this claim is in direct contradiction to the Sierra Club who agree with T. Boone Pickens that gas (whether CNG or LNG or LPG or whatever) would be better used in transport than in power plants. Again, what the Hell is going on?

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

LPG, like diesel is an oil distillate. And like diesel it's price is determined by demand and tax.

Contradiction 5:
Then how come Wikipedia says the exact opposite?

According to 2010–12 estimates, proven world reserves of natural gas, from which most LPG is derived, stand at 300 trillion cubic meters (10,600 trillion cubic feet). Added to the LPG derived from cracking crude oil, this amounts to a major energy source that is virtually untapped and has massive potential.

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

Well I've just seen evidence to the contrary regarding the liquidification of gas, plus there is also the option of compressing natural gas to make CNG.

Hinkley C will be getting 170m a year in grid support. AFAIK clean up costs are not included

My understanding, from the press reports at the time the policy was first announed, was that the government intended the operator to pay for decommissioning, in what would be a deviation from previous practice. Though that was a long time ago, my understanding may be out of date on that specific point.

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,

No, I don't. Your claims on this have been shown to be logically inconsistent with the facts on a number of key points, like the 40% hydroelectricity in France that doesn't exist, and the 2013 French lighting law, all of which point to a reeality of a grid much more flexible than you would have us believe.

I really have to ask, has anyone thought about all of this in any meaningful way?

The TLP one will be interesting - the projected cost has already gone up significantly since it was first mooted - there is also the possible issue of silting and dredging costs inside the lagoons - and while the power produced is totally predictable - and to some extant dispatch can be delayed - it can't be entirely synced to demand .
But if the system works there could be vast potential in it -

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

some of June's crop of unreliable Nuclear power

...

UK military snafu
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-33051905

Yes, because military nuclear installations working with submarines submarines are comparable with civilian reactors for energy production. Your list also included transformer failures, which if my basic engineering is accurate, is something that can happen not only in other power plant types, but indeed anywhere in the electricity distribution system.

More competitors - note this will cost more than nuclear because they are starting the learning curve, and nuclear has hundreds of reactors and 70 years of military subsidies to bring costs down
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-33053003
The building of a £1bn tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay has been given the go-ahead by the UK government.
Tidal Lagoon Power (TLP) says it will now negotiate how much subsidy will be paid for the energy.

I can think of another reason why it requires subsidies, it's huge! It will require pouring gigatonnes of concrete into the sea, and there are other environmental effects to consider, such as the effect it will have on aquatic life. It will be somewhat controllable though, or at least produce according to some kind of pattern, which does make it 1,000,000 times better than wind or solar.

In any case, I can see you've decided on a strategy for dealing with the issues I raised in my previous post :rolleyes:

Would you be so kind as to address the 5 glaring holes in your arguments that I outlined in the post above yours? http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=95312812&postcount=102

Please stop spreading FUD

peak demand was 5,080MW
please let our readers know what you think our installed capacity was then or admit you are just scaremongering.

I don't care what installed capacity was then because it was clearly adequate. My question relates to the future.

Djpbarry made the argument that builders of traditional thermal plants were running scared from Germany because the "wholesale price" was so "low." Ignoring of course that the German market is so fubarred with green subsidies that it's a worthless guide to costs, and that the "wholesale price" is violently unstable and goes deep into negative values. And that it costs industry a fortune in damage to industrial processes and UPS/APC type mitigating soluitions.

But you want to spend everyone's money on windmills and solar panels that we know mainly produce power when it's least needed and will all be worse than useless in an anti-cyclone that would see a surge in demand.

Say, 20 years down the line, can you guarantee that there will be plenty of backup plant to deal with a crisis like Christmas 2010? If so, by what means do you suggest such a guarantee would be in place?

Been done to death.
It would be nice if electric companies passed on the the wholesale rate to customers. Doesn't happen anywhere , quit pretending it does.

You're seriously telling me that the fact that Germany and Denmark have the most expensive electricity in Europe and both are in the Top 10 globally has nothing to do with thousands of green tax schemes and is only because of horrible evil greedy power companies keeping all the money ...



Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

Remind us what % of vehicles on the road use Natural gas ?

Gas (of any mixture) is not used on the road in any great volume because it has last movers disadvantage. In fact I think that with the stupid levels of regulation on oil based cars these days, any kind of gas would offer not only cheaper fuel, but similar savings again on maintenance on modern cars. Not to mention environmental benefits for everyone.

But it's a chicken and egg scenario in terms of fuel supply stations and the like. I maintain that wasting gas in power plants is just that - waste.

Again I refere you to the difference between LPG and LNG.

LPG, natural gas etc are made of similar kinds of stuff and LPG type fuels are often created as the by-product of both natural gas and oil production.

It's not just Wikipedia that says LPG is closely related to natural gas, I have other sources:
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/lpg.html

About two thirds of the LPG people use is extracted directly from the Earth in the same way as ordinary natural gas. The rest is manufactured indirectly from petroleum (crude oil) drilled from the Earth in wells in the usual way.

http://www.originenergy.com.au/blog/about-energy/what-is-lpg.html

LPG is produced during oil refining or is extracted during the natural gas production process. If you release LPG, gas is emitted.

Though I will grant you that if you read my second link, you will find that LPG is somewhat more tightly defined than natural gas (which can comprise of a somewhat wider variety of substances).

I keep pointing out that our grid has a response time in seconds. If there are any nuclear plants that can react that quickly , especially after Xenon poisoning please let us know.

I could say the same about every other plant type - again thank you for proving my point. Only a certain type of gas plant can respond to sudden failures elsewhere. By the same token, if Moneypoint suddenly failed, how fast could you make the wind blow harder over the windmills or the sun shine more over the solar panels? How fast could you ramp up another coal-fired power plant? Seconds? Didn't think so.

BTW I'm not suggesting building an EPR or similar in Ireland, at least not without multiple links to the UK and a single energy market between both islands.

Remind us of what % of peak demand the lighting law applies to ?

None - which is exactly my point. Earlier you claimed that France's nuclear programme only works because the rest of the continent takes its night time surplus. If that's true, then why did they just enact night time lighting laws that would make that troublesome surplus even larger than it already is? Is the system more flexible than you'd have us believe?

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change Forever

I'd be very wary of such predictions. Most have fallen flat on there face like the one about $200 oil by 2010.