Somebody selling PV panels said:
A PV roof adds value to a property so you get your money back if you sell.
Zokes - the historical record on nukes is plain to see - unreliable, dangerous and polluting. Sizewell b - our best performing reactor has down time and is running well below capacity now.
Please tell me how to deal with the waste?
You call me for pig headed and blind - but why will you not accept the argument is not between nukes and coal ad you keep claiming- because properly developed efficiency and renewable and other sustainable tech will easily close the gap.
Your position is a defeatist one.
Dibbs - Member
And as for Hydrogen, I work with it on a daily basis and I'm sure most people don't realise just how explosive/dangerous it is. Remember that a lot of the damage in Fukushima was caused by a Hydrogen explosion.
I realise this - its also difficult to store.
zokes - MemberI wonder how many other users/potential users of this (otherwise excellent forum) he dissuades from posting.
Sadly, plenty. Last time the effect his posting style has on other users was discussed, he 'flounced' for a while, but now sadly seems to be back to his old self
Ok - I'll stay away from these threads again . I had intended to do so but got sucked into this one to correct the rubbish you keep spouting
Tehre simply is no need for nukes when with the same amount as the nukes would cost spent on energy efficinecy and renewables the small amount of energy we get from nukes could easily be covered by these two things
It might help with pointing them more directly at the sun in the winter, but even here we get 30 degree incidence angles in summer, so you'd lose a lot of efficiency then.
Would make more sense to optimise for winter would it not, when the incidence is weaker and usage is greater...? Or is it just a case of writing off the winter?
Just thought of it because our house has no South facing roof, but a huge blank 3 storey south facing wall..
I suppose you take the roof tiles with you when you move house, Higgo. You are typical of the anti-rewable mob, inventing problems that don't exist. Why would selling a house with PV panels on be a problem? The new owner can use or sell the production as he/she wishes.
There are real headaches with nuclear that are currently making themselves felt and the best you can come up with a bout PV is that it would complicate selling a house.
Most people go for the highest yearly output, Molgrips, which means 30-40°. With vertical panels you'll get less total return but will produce more in the morning and evening, and in the Winter.
[s]TJ is Antony Froggatt and I claim my £5[/s]
Actually Antony is nowhere near negative enough about nuclear to be TJ.
By Antony Froggatt Senior Research Fellow, Chatham House
Given that only a few decades, rather than millennia separate the accidents at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island (which were also thought to be at minimal risk of core damage) it is clear that nuclear operators and/or regulators are significantly underestimating the inherent risks associated with nuclear technology.
For nuclear power to play a significant role in meeting future energy demand a significant scaling up of its use will therefore be required, amplifying many-fold the existing problems of nuclear safety, siting and waste management, as well as causing new worries about the proliferation of nuclear materials.
Numerous studies have shown that renewables along with energy efficiency can deliver all or virtually all of our global energy needs, and that therefore nuclear power does not have to be part of the future.
that is pretty much exactly my position in that piece -
and the best you can come up with a bout PV is that it would complicate selling a house
That's not the best we can come up with against PV. The best is that it doesn't work at night, the second best is that it doesn't work very well in the winter at northern latitudes, the third is that it's really expensive.
Significant issues to be overcome there. I desperately hope they are overcome mind, and soon.
Numerous studies have shown that renewables along with energy efficiency can deliver all or virtually all of our global energy needs
Also strikes me that numerous studies have shown the opposite too.
I suppose you take the roof tiles with you when you move house, Higgo. You are typical of the anti-rewable mob, inventing problems that don't exist.
I think you may have misread me or I was unclear (possibly because someone replied while I was typing). Of course I wouldn't take my roof tiles with me. And if the house had a PV roof I'd consider it an asset when selling the house.
Also, I'm not part of any 'anti-renewable mob'. I'm all for renewables - my favourite is tidal (but I have to admit that's largely because I like the sea and all things to do with it!)
that is pretty much exactly my position in that piece
Has he mentioned how those energy savings are going to be achieved, or what happens when there's no wind in December (or indeed no wind in the UK between October and March)? I'm also not desperately keen on "virtually all" if the plan is to have nothing to fill that little gap.
"Virtually all" is wrong IMO
The gap currently filled by nuclear and more? Feasible
Sizewell b - our best performing reactor has down time and is running well below capacity now.
I've just checked and Sizewell B was running at 100.5% of reference unit power at 08:00hrs, my maths may be bad but I don't think that can be described as any way near well below capacity.
Oh and I'd just like to clarify something. If someone expresses doubts about the current capability of renewables to provide the country's energy needs, it doesn't mean they are 'anti renewable'.
I am very much pro renewable, but I don't think we could just switch now and all would be fine... I do think that nuclear could help slash our carbon emissions to where they need to be, and would cause much less damage in the long term even with an accident a decade or so.
With vertical panels you'll get less total return but will produce more in the morning and evening
Surprisingly enough, not - at least not for more than a few days either side of the 4 months or so when you get better incidence angles at mid-day with a vertical rather than 30 degree panel. The issue being that the sun veers Northwards in the morning and evening, thus making the incidence worse on a vertical panel. Check the numbers in
[url= http://www.nrel.gov/midc/apps/spa.pl?syear=2005&smonth=1&sday=1&eyear=2005&emonth=12&eday=31&step=60&stepunit=1&latitude=52&longitude=0&timezone=0&elev=0&press=1000&temp=10&deltat=64.797&azmrot=0&slope=90&refract=0.5667&field=3&zip=0 ]vertical panel[/url], [url= http://www.nrel.gov/midc/apps/spa.pl?syear=2005&smonth=1&sday=1&eyear=2005&emonth=12&eday=31&step=60&stepunit=1&latitude=52&longitude=0&timezone=0&elev=0&press=1000&temp=10&deltat=64.797&azmrot=0&slope=30&refract=0.5667&field=3&zip=0 ]30 degree panel[/url] - smaller numbers are better, numbers more than 90 are below the horizon.
What about slightly angled panels on a vert wall?
Roof panels would be useless on our house.
Dibbs - MemberSizewell b - our best performing reactor has down time and is running well below capacity now.
I've just checked and Sizewell B was running at 100.5% of reference unit power at 08:00hrs, my maths may be bad but I don't think that can be described as any way near well below capacity.
Was sizewell b not offline for a large part of last year? And a chunk of 2008 - both unplanned?
Was its out put not reduced permanently a couple of years ago to 70~%or so of its rateing because of boiler cracking or am I confusing it with a different one?
Hinkley was downrated not sizewell. My mistake.
~Still stand tho that it has been unreliable
Decommissioning: "its costing hugely more and taking longer than anticipated"
Yes that may be the case, and I don't dispute it. I only disputed TJ's error that it had never been done. And his error about Sizewell; and his anti-commercial bias; and... 😀
Edukaor{A 3kW PV installation cost me 20 000e but would be a bit cheaper now as costs are coming down. I get 3200kWh a year decreasing to no less than 2700kWh over a 25 year period and hopefully longer. About 0.3 euro/kWh assuming some maintenance costs. You might find that expensive, I don't[s]}
so TJ commented only 70% availability so looking at the above quoted PV figures they are only 11% efficient... still not selling it...
so you need 6 1/2 times as much pv etc or something else when the sun doesn't shine + a means of storing it.... sound mighty expensive to me..
Can't help but think that quite a lot of people on this thread should read this....
A few numbers and facts about the viability fo supplying energy in the future as opposed to politically motivated positioning...
Still stand tho that it has been unreliable
Not compared to any conventional power station measured over the whole of its life it hasn't. Prior to the recent problems it was well ahead. Let's not even mention unreliability of wind, eh?
What about slightly angled panels on a vert wall?
Why don't you try putting some numbers in yourself and see?
http://www.nrel.gov/midc/solpos/spa.html
(bung in your location, 0 for "Surface azimuth rotation" and your panel angle in "Surface slope", where 0 is horizontal 90 vertical, select "Surface incidence angle" as output - alternatively edit my links, replacing "slope=30" with your panel angle, and "latitude=52" with your latitude).
Though bear in mind that even if you have a moving panel tracking the sun, you're still trying to make use of a pretty scarce resource up here for a significant chunk of the year (ie 4 months worse than Edu's worst day).
Looks to be a couple of hours in it as far as I can tell from the BBC tide tables, between Scotland and the South West
You're looking too far afield. Nearly 3 hours difference between [url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast_and_sea/tide_tables/7/249/ ]Lossiemouth[/url] and [url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast_and_sea/tide_tables/7/222/ ]Dunbar[/url] which is just right so that one has peak tidal flows as the other has slack water (not that I'd imagine either of those has decent enough tidal flows, but that's not the point)
not that I'd imagine either of those has decent enough tidal flows, but that's not the point
Not that time no, but it is a good one.
If we took say the top 10 best sites in the UK, would we have enough coverage? And what might the generating capacity ultimately be?
Was its out put not reduced permanently a couple of years ago to 70~%or so of its rateing because of boiler cracking or am I confusing it with a different one?
Hinkley and Hunterston are operating at 70% of original design power but they've both been running for 35 years and would you run a 35 year old car flat out 24/7?
So infact nuclear is unreliable then. size B is the best of our reactors. Shut down for months last year, shut down for a short time in feb, shutdown for months in 2008. The rest of our reactors admittedly old are either shut down or running below capacity because of problems and failures. Thats a good basis to base our energy security on.
Still no solution to the waste issue of course.
Molgrips - tidal - the energy is huge - virtually limitless. The issue is extracting it. The trial plant in the sound of islay is 10 mw. The pentland firth has a potential of 10 Gw Total potential for tidal generation in Scotland is 35 Gw or if my sums are right more than half of the UK needs. Thats just Scotland - include the english sites and you get more
Shut down for months last year, shut down for a short time in feb, shutdown for months in 2008
Do you have similar stats for coal or gas fired power stations?
I ain't looked at them all. Longgannet has has issues on a similar level IIRC,
However it gives lie to the pro nuke folks denial of nuclear poor reliability
size B is the best of our reactors... shutdown for months in 2008
No it wasn't.
The rest of our reactors admittedly old
Hence not really a good basis on which to determine likely performance of future ones - even SB isn't exactly that modern.
However it gives lie to the pro nuke folks denial of nuclear poor reliability
Not if you refuse to compare the reliability with the reliability of other power stations it doesn't. Given nothing is perfect we're just after the best reliability, and (modern) nuclear still does better than anything else.
Though of course we've done all this before - even back before the major shutdown last year when SB's record was almost spotless you were already doing the "nuclear is unreliable" line, presumably in the hope if you said it often enough it might come true?
It is true tho - simply look at the record. 🙄 Sizewells Bs record almost spotless? Pull the other one
You keep saying they are reliable - in the face of the history which shows they are not. If you keep saying it often enough do you think it will become true?
In the light of most of our electricity being in the hands of EdF, what's the record of nuclear in France? They generate something like 70% of their electricity via nukes, don't they? And I certainly haven't heard of any major problems there. There again, they respect engineers.
in the face of the history which shows they are not
Until someone shows me a list of down-time of ALL power stations of a similar age regardless of fuel then we can't say if nuclear is reliable or not. Yes, we understand that there has been downtime.
To make it absolutely clear - I am listening and understanding what you say, but I do not feel that you have supplied sufficient information to conclude your argument in this area. I am asking for this information, not ignoring your argument.
As an aside - anyone know how much fuel a nuke requires on a yearly basis? A coal power station relies on a supply train - mining, transport, shipping etc. How many tons of fuel per year do nukes consume and from where does it come?
In 2008 Sizewell had a [u]planned[/u] refueling shutdown (completed ahead of plan) and a [u]1 day[/u] outage that was nothing to do with the nuclear side of things (I think it was power transmission but I could be wrong). The four day outage in Feb this year was due to a low oil level in a pump, something that could happen in any technology using pumps.
The 2010 outage was unplanned and lasted about 4 months, mostly because the problem could not be fixed using existing approaches so a number of new techniques had to be developed. The event was rated zero on the INES safety scale, with no safety significance.
In itself though, one major unplanned outage is not enough to declare that "nuclear is unreliable". All power generation has unplanned outages so without comparing actual/planned over operational lifespan for all technologies it's a meaningless statement.
I really am not anti-renewables - these are provided for balance:
http://ws9.iee.usp.br/SipdaXI/papersX/palestras/yokoyama.pdf
I'm sure there's plenty of evidence of unreliability in gas and coal too. I suspect tidal is too new to have meaningful history but anything with moving parts is going to have failure.
I really am not anti-renewables - these are provided for balance:
I wouldn't bother, where the word 'nuclear' is concerned, there is no balance for TJ.
I do wonder what his views of nuclear technology would be if he ever needs any medical attention in the form of nuclear medicine. Thanks to moronic views such as his, the medical terminology for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (nothing to do with radioactivity) is known as MRI - Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Quite how anyone intelligent can be scared of a word, but there you go.
In fact, ironically enough, a lot of climate science is based on either chasing 'bomb carbon' about the place, or short-term 14-C tracer studies. The former wouldn't have been possible without nuclear weapons testing, and the latter require a nuclear reactor to make the 14-C.
Thank you for calling me moronic. I think the same of your views in your slavish devotion to nukes despite all the evidence and your dismissal of renewables / energy efficiency despite all the evidence.
Its really simple - nukes cannot be a part of the solution. They cannot be on stream quickly enough, they cannot do anything meaningful on a world scale. The history of nukes shows how unreliable they are.
I have no issue with research reactors. Its just the case for new power stations based on current designs does simply not add up.
Sizewells Bs record almost spotless? Pull the other one
Go on then - if you think it's not, you provide a list of the unplanned outages. Just to save you wasting your time, it didn't have a single one for the 3 years before 2008, so you'll need to look further back than 2005.
You keep saying they are reliable - in the face of the history which shows they are not
The history of 1950s design reactors I presume, as that's what you normally like to use to back up your assertion that any 21st century nuclear power stations will be unreliable? Are you completely incapable of accepting that of those power stations in this country SB is far more representative of any new builds (though still a couple of generations behind), hence it's far more realistic to look at the reliability of that? It would be equally valid for me to suggest that wind power is completely incapable of generating electricity at all, given it didn't for the first several thousand years of use - as opposed to you using the example of reactors designed less than a decade into the use of nuclear power.
If SB is unreliable, then so is every other method of electricity generation - only more so. Yet you consistently refuse to compare reliability of other electricity generation methods. In fact whilst you have some valid points in other areas, given your complete refusal to consider the facts properly on this aspect, your opinions are totally worthless.
Or are you just trolling, given how ridiculous it is suggesting something with >90% availability is unreliable when advocating wind power?
[s]The history of nukes shows how unreliable they are[/s] I haven't got a clue what I'm talking about
FTFY
You're doing it again TJ, reiterating your original stance instead of progressing the discussion...
Pot kettle black. Zokes and Aracer keep doing the same. its the limitation of these debates and why they are useless.
No, zokes and aracer are trying to add more to the conversation. You're just repeating yourself with more and more vitriol (which is totally unnecessary and brings the tone down).
You simply cannot say nuclear is unreliable without comparing it to coal or gas. How can you?
Thank you for calling me moronic
I did not call you moronic, I said that blinkered views such as those you and others appear to portray about the word 'nuclear' are.
You can choose to be insulted if you like - I'll assume the cap fits in that case.
You then spout a load of 'bullshine', backing up my assertion that some of your views are certainly unfounded and totally biased to the point of being totally irrational - probably verging on moronic in an objective person's eyes.
You appear to think the cap fits. You then back this up. Looks like you'd better wear it...
For example - on a world wide scale nuclear only meets a very small % of demand. For nukes to a part of the solution we would need thousands more plants. We do not have the fuel for them to say nothing of the need to build in places of political and geological instability.
On a UK scale we need new generating capacity more quickly than new nukes can be online.
By going for a few huge powers stations rather than lots of smaller ones we compromise our energy security considering the poor reliability record of nuclear plants - which is there and I simply do not believe the nuclear lobby given their record of lying,misleading and obfuscation
There is still no answer to the issues of waste and decommissioning. a toxic legacy for thousands of years
And with that I bow out of this completely. Its just a complete waste of energy as everyone is simply repeating entrenched positions and no one is listening or wants to hear anything that does not fit in with their position.
