# This puts the Virus into the shadows



## Spectric (15 Feb 2021)

Hi all

Just when you think things cannot get any worse than having this pandemic around some muppets have now decided that West Cumbria is a potential site for a new experimental nuclear reactor next door to Sellafield, the worlds largest radioactive dump. I suppose it is because it is as far away from London as they can get with the Lake district mountains acting as a potential blast wall. The virus is bad and we have the option to avoid it, with a potential solution, with experimental nuclear they are going back to the fifties when they last had an experiment that went wrong and have not learnt anything from Chernobyl or Fukishima either. Again the economy and financial gain has been placed as more important that people or our enviroment. If you think living way down south makes you safe, think again because any fall out will get you and you are probably already being investigated as a potential dumping site for radioactive waste.


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## Yojevol (15 Feb 2021)

FAKE NEWS
The proposed Moorside Power Station is NOT experimental. It is of the PWR variety which is the world's most common design. We have one already at Sizewell and another under construction in Somerset, both much nearer London. What's more Londoners are only 100miles away from the largest, and now aging, nuclear station in western Europe - Gravelines which lies halfway between Calais and Dunkirk.
Fortunately we have learnt an awful lot from the Windscale, 3Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Of those 4 only 3MI was a PWR (an early American nuclear PS). The other 3 have all been abandoned as the basis of viable commercial and safe designs.
As Bill Gates said yesterday, the pandemic is a minor problem for man to solve in comparison to Global Warming and nuclear power will have to be part of the solution for the foreseeable future.
So you'd better get used to it, for our children's sake.
Brian


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## Rorschach (15 Feb 2021)

You are full of nonsense aren't you.


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## Jelly (15 Feb 2021)

I can see why people find Nuclear alarming, and certainly it's very emotive, but I don't find Moorside to be particular cause for concern.

What I would say is that when it comes to any of the emotive issues of the day (Nuclear, Incineration/Energy from Waste, Plastic Waste, Fracking, Carbon Emissions)... it's *very* hard to find good quality information which is both reasonably impartial and accessible to someone who isn't a subject matter expert in that field or a related one; which does everyone a disservice.


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## Woody2Shoes (15 Feb 2021)

Jelly said:


> I can see why people find Nuclear alarming, and certainly it's very emotive, but I don't find Moorside to be particular cause for concern.
> 
> What I would say is that when it comes to any of the emotive issues of the day (Nuclear, Incineration/Energy from Waste, Plastic Waste, Fracking, Carbon Emissions)... it's *very* hard to find good quality information which is both reasonably impartial and accessible to someone who isn't a subject matter expert in that field or a related one; which does everyone a disservice.



I agree. I got heavily involved in such a topic and discovered that for every person who grasps the wrong end of the stick, there is another (sponsored by the vested interests) actively proffering back-to-front sticks (to journalists as well as politicians and private citizens). It was only because I have a couple of STEM-related degrees and spent my formative years reading such edifying material as Scientific American, New Scientist and Wireless World - plus the availability of several man-weeks of time to do my own research - that I was able to make sense of the thing and come to an informed opinion. Nearly everyone isn't so fortunate - in terms of time/effort, education and life experience. The other point is of course that half the population has an IQ below 100!

As far as nuclear goes, whatever we do in the UK is almost irrelevant - to those of us who live in southeast England at least - just take a quick look at how many French nuclear power stations are upwind, in their northern and western coastal areas.


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## Peterm1000 (15 Feb 2021)

Uranium remains dangerous to humans for thousands of years after it has been used in reactors. Fortunately, human history if full of examples of the greatest scientists of the day successfully predicting the future thousands of years in advance. What could possibly go wrong?


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## Spectric (15 Feb 2021)

Hi all

The original was a PWR which got cancelled thanks to the over spend at Sizewell, Toshiba pulled the plug and ran leaving Nugen high and dry.

This new one is not PWR but a new fusion reactor which in theory will not produce waste products that need to be babysat for decades to come but still is not true green energy. Cumbria could be home to UK’s first prototype nuclear fusion power plant - new plans reveal

As for fall out, they have that well covered up here and the probability is that it would on more occasions than not be driven in a southerly direction but then the Chernobyl fall out did land here and make life really bad for the farming community. So far we have been very lucky, Chernobyl turned out to be a bigger financial headache than anything else but it had the potential to go either way, Fukishima was another close call, but how many close calls can you have before your luck runs out.


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## --Tom-- (15 Feb 2021)

Nuclear is such an emotive subject, but every form of power generation has its detractors. I’m pretty pro nuclear - but it needs heavy investment to deliver effectively. All the way from mining the ore, enriching it, harnessing the energy, through to waste disposal and ultimate decommissioning.


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## beech1948 (15 Feb 2021)

The UK has a networked radioactivity sensors in place. Initially from the early French attempts at nuclear power stations and to assuage UK worries. These sensors run from the SE upto the north of Scotland, cover Wales and NI. These sensors are actively monitored and are frequently reviewed and updated.

IF something goes wrong sensors will not prevent it and can only alert us to what is to come but might give timely warning and if necessary create the need to evacuate.

Modern Nuclear Power Stations will be fairly safe and of low risk. It seems that the future of low carbon, low emissions, electric everything will dictate a nuclear future for us.

Several consortia of UK companies are working to design and have available very small nuclear power generators which would be expected to be distributed across the suburbs of the UK. That will no doubt generate every imagined, thick comment from the public about the lack of safety, lack of plans, lack of..whatever. In reality wind and sea power generation will not be enough. Nuclear energy from France via the channel cable will not be enough. We will have to act on nuclear power and soon. We will need 5 to 10 new stations across Britain inc Wales and Scotland and NI.


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## Spectric (15 Feb 2021)

The one thing nuclear has the potential to do that no other power generation method currently has is to give us something in common with the dinosaurs, and that is extinction.


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## treeturner123 (15 Feb 2021)

Sorry Spectric, but burning fossil fuels is currently doing that to the planet.

The only sensible course of action is to go backwards and I'm sure that no one wants that.

BTW, don't forget the cost to the environment of every email and post!!

Phil


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## Peterm1000 (15 Feb 2021)

Spectric - exactly. The point is that if you run it for long enough, every technology will fail.


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## D_W (15 Feb 2021)

I grew up about 20 miles west of TMI. I now live about 20 miles downwind from Beaver Valley. I keep IOSAT and otherwise don't care much about the reactors, but I can tell you absolutely for certain as an asthmatic that the switch from coal to gas here has benefited me a LOT. 

My point is while most people were worrying about potential nuclear problems, coal was causing me actual problems on a regular basis. 

The real issue with nuclear here in the states now is that it's not economically viable against inexpensive natural gas and the producers are requesting subsidies for stations already in operation for many decades. The PWR designs here may have a complement of 1000-1200 individuals working for them - even if they're cheap to run, paying the compensation and benefits is not.


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## --Tom-- (15 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> The one thing nuclear has the potential to do that no other power generation method currently has is to give us something in common with the dinosaurs, and that is extinction.



Nuclear disaster would be a point in time event relatively geographically contained. Fossil fuel derived climate change is adversely impacting large parts of the world. Neither will lead to an extinction level event but environmentally nuclear is less impactful.

Edited as looked up stat
“The total mass of radioactive waste in stock and estimated to be produced over the next 100-year period will be around 5.1 million tonnes. This sounds like a lot, but, for context, the UK currently produces around 5.3 million tonnes of hazardous waste from households and businesses *every year*.”








How much radioactive waste is there in the UK? - Cleaning up our nuclear past: faster, safer and sooner


Real-life views of those decommissioning the UK’s earliest nuclear sites safely, securely and cost-effectively in a way that protects people and the environment.




nda.blog.gov.uk





Before emissions controls soot and acid rain were big issues.
Waste to power leads to phenol emission which are pretty potent biodisruptors.

where should we flood to build hydro?


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## Phil Pascoe (15 Feb 2021)

D_W said:


> The real issue with nuclear here in the states now is that it's not economically viable against inexpensive natural gas ...



Because you frack - the nimbys here won't allow it.


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## Jake (15 Feb 2021)

One of the huge benefits of fusion is that it is inherently far safer than fission.


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## novocaine (15 Feb 2021)

Shame we cant burn bullshit.


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## Phil Pascoe (15 Feb 2021)

We can - but we need energy to dry it.


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## Woody2Shoes (15 Feb 2021)

Phil Pascoe said:


> Because you frack - the nimbys here won't allow it.


Even if we did frack here, the amount of gas produced would be negligible and come at a significantly greater carbon cost than that from the Marcellus. It really isn't an option in the UK.
I'm optimistic that grid-scale storage, combined with our world-class wind and tidal resources, may greatly reduce our future reliance on nuclear until fusion becomes practicable at scale.


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## Terry - Somerset (15 Feb 2021)

There are far more critical issues than risks of nuclear reactor failure.

Even before Covid, a pandemic was far higher risk with a proven capacity to kill millions. Competition over scarce resources resulting in a chemical, biological or nuclear war was a much bigger threat.

Even continued extraction and use of fossil fuels is limited and will ultimately end in conflict preceded pollution related deaths.

I would not want a nuclear reactor built next door - I'm a NIMBY like many others. 

But if humanity wants increasing energy, and does not want to limit numbers to reduce overall consumption, nuclear may be the best of the the many worse alternatives.


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## D_W (15 Feb 2021)

Phil Pascoe said:


> Because you frack - the nimbys here won't allow it.



we had conventional wells here in the old days. Fracking on average has caused less pollution than original wells ever did. The only real issue we had early on was a lack of regulations about who could treat the fracking waters (the municipal water treatment groups would treat and release water that was radioactive from ground sources). 

With the radon issues we have here, there's probably plenty of well water here with enough radium to make a geiger counter click.


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## D_W (15 Feb 2021)

(I'll provide a summary of nat. gas fracking here...

....2006 or so, gas expensive - about $12 an MCF. Gas bill was high, but I'll admit it's a super lazy heat (the furnace doesn't even need cleaning, just inspection once in a while for heat exchanger issues)

fracking comes in and suddenly there are no hotel rooms in rural areas around here. quickly, the capacity gets so high that wells in process get put on hold. 

gas now $2 an MCF (this is a fantastic price anywhere in an organized world). Heating bills slashed. If this doesn't help poor people, I don't know what does. It also makes my retirement account bigger and keeps electric rates in check. 

Enormous amounts of coal generation here go offline, further improving air quality and greatly decreasing the issuance of steroid inhalers and such, etc (and allowing me to recover more easily from colds which can easily turn into bronchitis for me). 

How this is bad for people, I have no idea. There was some mishandling of water on the surface early on and some fallacious movies about the plague of environmental damage and "flaming" kitchen water. For some reason, we see and hear none of that now - it was fantasy. I'm sure it's not pollution free, but nothing is. It's greatly improved the economy hear and provided low cost energy for everyone.


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## Jameshow (15 Feb 2021)

D_W said:


> (I'll provide a summary of nat. gas fracking here...
> 
> ....2006 or so, gas expensive - about $12 an MCF. Gas bill was high, but I'll admit it's a super lazy heat (the furnace doesn't even need cleaning, just inspection once in a while for heat exchanger issues)
> 
> ...



What about earthquakes we have had reports of them here when test fracking....? 

It was stopped for a while not sure of the current state cv-19 etc. 

Cheers James


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## D_W (15 Feb 2021)

Jameshow said:


> What about earthquakes we have had reports of them here when test fracking....?
> 
> It was stopped for a while not sure of the current state cv-19 etc.
> 
> Cheers James



I believe that's in oklahoma where they're fracking oil. We haven't had any here and we've been fracking the frack out of this place until it's fracking out of stuff. 

I'm sure that putting pressure on rocks that want to move will help them move, though. But it's not happening here.


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## Jelly (16 Feb 2021)

D_W said:


> and some fallacious movies about the plague of environmental damage and "flaming" kitchen water.



The flaming water is a real thing... But isn't necessarily linked to fracking.

Apparently the areas where that's been highlighted have aquifers that naturally contain methane hydrates, and the flammable water phenomenon pre-dates the fracking activity.

What it really tells me is that those taps are fed from a private source in an aquifer which probably isn't awful well suited to proving potable water to begin with.

Certainly it's highly unlikely to be treated potable water in the way it's generally understood, as if you attempted to pass methane rich water that off-gasses a flammable atmosphere through a water treatment plant, the municipality running the plant would soom know about it in dramatic fashion...

Between the enclosed spaces with electric motors, agitation with air, and injection of Chlorine Gas followed by UV light exposure, there's a number of ways you could set off a nasty reaction or even explosion (not unlike the time Shell blew up the water treatment plant on one of the UK's biggest gas refineries).


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## D_W (16 Feb 2021)

That's what I'm getting at - there were definitely videos of flaming water, but nobody asked the critical questions - what's causing it and was it the fracking?

If it was fracking (probably not), how likely is it that the rest of us would have the same issue? Not likely. Nobody asked the question after the video "so, we saw that once. If it's really an issue, they should've been able to put together a montage of flaming faucets near wells all over the place". 

I suspect that the flaming water was used as a prop. If there were serious issues here other than outright violations of surface water, we'd know more. 

Early on, we had all kinds of stories about dead cows and all sorts of horror movie rubbish. It's all gone. I guess people lost interest. If it was really happening on a regular basis, it would be awfully difficult to lose interest.


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## gregmcateer (16 Feb 2021)

I would never claim to know any more than "Jack sh** plus 1%" about the energy world, but it seems to me that whatever the pros or con's of e.g. fracking, it is still a carbon based non renewable source and is therefore probably not the best long term plan, whatever the advantage of cheap fuel - or have I missed something here? Genuine question.


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## sploo (16 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> This new one is not PWR but a new fusion reactor which in theory will not produce waste products that need to be babysat for decades to come but still is not true green energy. Cumbria could be home to UK’s first prototype nuclear fusion power plant - new plans reveal


That's... odd.

Currently there's an experimental Tokomak in Culham in Oxfordshire, but that's not intended for actually generating power. The next generation is ITER (in France), but that's also not intended for commercial scale energy production.

So... there's no way a Cumbria plant would be the UK's _first_ experimental fusion facility, and a fusion reactor that produces energy on a commercial scale is a long, long way off. That article seems a bit fishy; or maybe I've misunderstood it.


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## alex_heney (16 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> The one thing nuclear has the potential to do that no other power generation method currently has is to give us something in common with the dinosaurs, and that is extinction.


Neither part of that is close to being true.

If we continue to use fossil fuels to generate power at the rate that has been done previously, then extinction is a certainty, not a possibility.

And there is no real possibility of nuclear power causing an extinction event.


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## Jelly (16 Feb 2021)

gregmcateer said:


> I would never claim to know any more than "Jack sh** plus 1%" about the energy world, but it seems to me that whatever the pros or con's of e.g. fracking, it is still a carbon based non renewable source and is therefore probably not the best long term plan, whatever the advantage of cheap fuel - or have I missed something here? Genuine question.



Fracking provides natural gas, which is the least polluting, most energy efficient fossil fuel for use in static applications like power stations and boilers, and can be switched on and off in a minute or so, even in huge Megawatt sized plants (which itself helps make it less polluting).

Switching from other fossil fuels to gas, or ensuring we can remain on it, is a positive in terms of air quality and helps to give us a bit more time to get to carbon neutral, by supporting closing down older coal plants, and because it can act as a standby to pick up the shortfall from wind or solar generation until battery storage is realistic.



Fracking as a technique for preparing geological formations for gas extraction is definitely needed on the UKCS (UK continental shelf) if we want to remain independent around our gas supply until we reach a point of no longer needing gas, and has a history of successful use by North Sea Operators dating back to the invention of the idea...

But "Fracking" the big bad thing which is actually a byword for Onshore Oil and Gas production in locations proximate to people's houses... Is probably not that important all told, a number of the operators had downgraded expectations of reservoir size based on more detailed geological surveys, even before the moratorium was put into place.

I think we can probably move away from gas before the North Sea is completely exhausted at this point, as the pace of change when it comes to renewables just keeps accelerating.



We may need to continue extracting oil and gas after that point in a limited capacity as a feedstock for chemicals to make everything from glues and dyes, to pharmaceuticals and flavourings in fruity sweets... 

But I've always contended that oil and gas extraction isn't all that bad compared to burning it as a fuel rather than treating it as an immensely useful source of materials for all the things which make modern life possible... 

Our grandkids might end up cursing anthropogenic climate change, but not half as much as they will be cursing us for burning up the one resource which made cheap and plentiful access to polymers, disinfectants, pharmaceuticals etc. possible.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Nuclear depends on continual servicing and control by a stable and skilled workforce.
A simple thing like the next pandemic, if not the current one, could end this overnight and be catastrophic.
The higher the technology the greater the potential fall. And fallout.


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## Jonm (16 Feb 2021)

This is all very confusing, some on here say it is experimental, others say it is not. 

There have been a number of proposals relating to this site including, in the past the involvement of Toshiba. Current proposals include EDF energy and I attach a link to one of their brochures dated 30 July 2020. In the energy world it now seems that you should never call a spade a spade. An incinerator is now a “renewable energy biomass power plant”. In this case the proposal is not for a nuclear power station, it is called the “Moorside Clean Energy Hub”

Looking at the EDF publication, amongst all the verbiage, buzz words and abbreviations the second paragraph gives the proposals which I interpret as follows

A. One number 3.2 GW UK EPR power station. EPR is a “European Pressurised Reactor” or an “Evolutionary Power Reactor”. It is a third generation pressurised water reactor.

B. Unspecified number of “small modular reactors” (SMRs). These are fission reactors which are “small” and “modular” which allows them to be manufactured in a factory and brought to site to be assembled. 

C. Unspecified number of “advanced modular reactors” (AMRs). Difficult to know what these are. I include a link to a government website. I think they are not pressurised water reactors but they are modular.

I hope the above clarifies what is proposed. It is a matter of opinion whether you classify an AMR as “experimental” but there is some justification for it.

EDF joins companies and unions promoting Moorside Clean Energy Hub

Advanced Modular Reactor (AMR) Feasibility and Development Project


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## Woody2Shoes (16 Feb 2021)

D_W said:


> I believe that's in oklahoma where they're fracking oil. We haven't had any here and we've been fracking the frack out of this place until it's fracking out of stuff.
> 
> I'm sure that putting pressure on rocks that want to move will help them move, though. But it's not happening here.


The worst earthquakes in Oklahoma have been created by pumping waste water back down underground at high pressure into disused wells. Because the geological formations are able to store quite a bit of mechanical energy (they're made of relatively strong rock), the eventual release of that energy causes relatively large tremors. The fluids pumped down there provide extra energy and 'lubricate' faults which allow them to move and release pent-up energy.


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## Droogs (16 Feb 2021)

You guys are aware that switching over from coal is basically done. There will be only 4 operational coal fired power plants in the UK by 2025. These are Drax, Ratcliffe, West Burton and Kilroot in Northern Ireland and are only kept for emergencies.

edit to add a bit I deleted by accident


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## Jonm (16 Feb 2021)

Jonm said:


> C. Unspecified number of “advanced modular reactors” (AMRs). Difficult to know what these are. I include a link to a government website. I think they are not pressurised water reactors but they are modular.


I have just looked up the attachment to the link I gave to the government website. Contracts have been let for studies in to the following reactor types, stable salt, lead cooled, uranium granules embedded in graphite, sodium cooled metallic fuel and gas cooled. Experimental yes, but no proposals as yet for Moorside, but a stated intention to build them, whatever “them” is.


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## Woody2Shoes (16 Feb 2021)

Jelly said:


> Fracking provides natural gas, which is the least polluting, most energy efficient fossil fuel for use in static applications like power stations and boilers, and can be switched on and off in a minute or so, even in huge Megawatt sized plants (which itself helps make it less polluting).
> 
> Switching from other fossil fuels to gas, or ensuring we can remain on it, is a positive in terms of air quality and helps to give us a bit more time to get to carbon neutral, by supporting closing down older coal plants, and because it can act as a standby to pick up the shortfall from wind or solar generation until battery storage is realistic.
> 
> ...


Arguably, we have squandered all that North Sea gas by burning it (to generate electricity)!

It would be an enormous mistake to try and read across from the US to the UK for all sorts of reasons. The Marcellus shale under Pennsylvania covers an area similar to that of the whole of the UK, and the geology is much less complicated than that of the UK. The economics of coal, oil and gas are all different.

For me, a key measure is the marginal cost of production. The Saudis can produce a barrel of oil (or its gaseous equivalent) at a marginal cost of about $5. It is almost certainly impossible to produce a barrel of oil (or its gaseous equivalent) in the UK (or on the UKCS) for less than ten or twelve times that.

It is technically possible to grow bananas (a staple food?) in the UK - but it makes no economic sense since it is much cheaper to ask our friends in hot countries to grow them for us. The sooner we wean ourselves off hydrocarbons - yes, even gas - the better!


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## Anthraquinone (16 Feb 2021)

Where did anyone get the idea that there were plans to build a fusion reactor ??. These offer some hope for the energy crisis that is coming but are probably decades away from commercialisation. Any planned reactor will be based on fission. There was some recent talk about using a fission reactor to generate hydrogen for use as a fuel - perhaps that is were people got confused.

I am not sure it matters to much though while the world is almost certainly vastly overpopulated compared to the resources available. There is no way that the vast majority of the earths population can have living standards like the developed world has at the moment but that will not stop their efforts to achieve this and who can blame them. There are estimates of the sustainable population that range from 2 billion to 11 billion but no-one really knows. It is not just food and water that will be in short supply but many other raw including the rare earth elements that mainly come from China.

I will not be around to see what happens but my grand children probably will - and how will they look back on our generation. 

We have seen how easily and rapidly things can be stirred up and degenerate by politicians only after their hold on power. If minor things like voting can cause this how much worse will it be if there is a real crisis that really effects the global population or the standard of living of the developed world.


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## Woody2Shoes (16 Feb 2021)

D_W said:


> (I'll provide a summary of nat. gas fracking here...
> 
> ....2006 or so, gas expensive - about $12 an MCF. Gas bill was high, but I'll admit it's a super lazy heat (the furnace doesn't even need cleaning, just inspection once in a while for heat exchanger issues)
> 
> ...


Air quality improved in the UK enormously in the 1970's and 80's as we made the transition from coal to "natural gas" from the North Sea - and we all benefited hugely from cleaner air (including the Scandinavians who objected to the 'acid rain' we created by burning sulphur-bearing coal downwind of them).


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## Woody2Shoes (16 Feb 2021)

gregmcateer said:


> I would never claim to know any more than "Jack sh** plus 1%" about the energy world, but it seems to me that whatever the pros or con's of e.g. fracking, it is still a carbon based non renewable source and is therefore probably not the best long term plan, whatever the advantage of cheap fuel - or have I missed something here? Genuine question.


You've missed nothing! The other point is that, as we are forced to exploit increasingly meagre resources (literally scraping the barrel, because all the easy pickings have been exploited already), we are on a curve of diminishing returns - each new barrel of oil becomes increasingly "expensive" (in resource/$/carbon-pollution terms) to extract.


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## Jonm (16 Feb 2021)

Yojevol said:


> FAKE NEWS
> The proposed Moorside Power Station is NOT experimental. It is of the PWR variety which is the world's most common design. We have one already at Sizewell and another under construction in Somerset, both much nearer London. What's more Londoners are only 100miles away from the largest, and now aging, nuclear station in western Europe - Gravelines which lies halfway between Calais and Dunkirk.
> Fortunately we have learnt an awful lot from the Windscale, 3Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Of those 4 only 3MI was a PWR (an early American nuclear PS). The other 3 have all been abandoned as the basis of viable commercial and safe designs.
> As Bill Gates said yesterday, the pandemic is a minor problem for man to solve in comparison to Global Warming and nuclear power will have to be part of the solution for the foreseeable future.
> ...


It is not “fake news”. Yes there is a proposal to build a third generation pressurised water reactor however, EDF energy have stated their intention to build Advanced Modular Reactors on the site, these are definately not PWR’s. If you look at my comments elsewhere on this post you will see my justification for this statement.


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## Woody2Shoes (16 Feb 2021)

D_W said:


> That's what I'm getting at - there were definitely videos of flaming water, but nobody asked the critical questions - what's causing it and was it the fracking?
> 
> If it was fracking (probably not), how likely is it that the rest of us would have the same issue? Not likely. Nobody asked the question after the video "so, we saw that once. If it's really an issue, they should've been able to put together a montage of flaming faucets near wells all over the place".
> 
> ...


We will probably never know what caused the flaring water. Because of the coal measures, and gas-bearing shale, under most of Pennsylvania, it's been leaking gas for thousands of years - although I'm sure human activity helps here and there. I think that the use of domestic boreholes for potable water (even in quite suburban areas) is something that would be much more unusual in the UK.

I think that if gas genuinely substitutes for coal (as it seems to have done in your area) then there are some benefits, but gas is still far from ideal - not least because all fossil fuel extraction involves the creation of 'fugitive emissions' of methane and other gases to the atmosphere - methane being a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2 all things being equal - but also because it's a hydrocarbon.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Anthraquinone said:


> .........
> 
> I am not sure it matters to much though while the world is almost certainly vastly overpopulated compared to the resources available. There is no way that the vast majority of the earths population can have living standards like the developed world has at the moment but that will not stop their efforts to achieve this and who can blame them. There are estimates of the sustainable population that range from 2 billion to 11 billion but no-one really knows. ......


Natural selection favours the gene pool rather than the individual. 
Increasing reproduction is one basic survival mechanism across the animal and plant world when under stress.
It follows that reducing stress will reduce populations, if we choose to.
But "over population" is fine for the species - there will be survivors even if 99% of the population is destroyed.


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## Jelly (16 Feb 2021)

Woody2Shoes said:


> For me, a key measure is the marginal cost of production. The Saudis can produce a barrel of oil (or its gaseous equivalent) at a marginal cost of about $5. It is almost certainly impossible to produce a barrel of oil (or its gaseous equivalent) in the UK (or on the UKCS) for less than ten or twelve times that.



I don't think the argument around cost of production taken alone ports well from Oil to Gas, moving LNG other than via a pipeline is comparatively hard and costly, compared to oil; so the economics make more sense for local production.




Woody2Shoes said:


> The sooner we wean ourselves off hydrocarbons - yes, even gas - the better!



Can't disagree with that though... 

Gas has been a great stepping stone, but it's just that a stepping stone.

Arguably the UK was 30 years ahead of the US in that energy transition, and we're currently well ahead in a green energy transition too... 

We should not squander the potential benefits of our lead in the area.


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## D_W (16 Feb 2021)

Woody2Shoes said:


> We will probably never know what caused the flaring water. Because of the coal measures, and gas-bearing shale, under most of Pennsylvania, it's been leaking gas for thousands of years - although I'm sure human activity helps here and there. I think that the use of domestic boreholes for potable water (even in quite suburban areas) is something that would be much more unusual in the UK.
> 
> I think that if gas genuinely substitutes for coal (as it seems to have done in your area) then there are some benefits, but gas is still far from ideal - not least because all fossil fuel extraction involves the creation of 'fugitive emissions' of methane and other gases to the atmosphere - methane being a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2 all things being equal - but also because it's a hydrocarbon.



"town water" has pretty much taken over here. There are some small towns, especially in mountain areas, where there are only something like 50 households in an area and they may still have individual well and septic, but only in the old areas. My parents live in a rural area where each person has about 20 acres, but they're being mandated to town sewer first, water later. You can refuse initial hook up (which is subsidized, but still expensive), but have five years then to do hook up later and you bear the full cost. 

But, like I said - if only 2% of suburban and town dwellings remain on water, the filmmakers will find a house that has fiery water, and justify disinformation by "this is so important that we don't need to tell the truth". 

The nimby areas here still have no gas drilling, but they've been sued (townships with very wealthy property owners). The stupidity of that is all of those townships are on public water and sewer, and the drilling areas are nowhere close to the residences - they're essentially in non-buildable areas. The result of the suits is proper - that locales can't introduce rules that supersede land and and mineral rights. They can implement some restrictions, but nothing absurd. 

Same crew of "no walmarts" types. Several residences, multiple international vacations each year, 4 large SUVs but they have a google thermostat in their houses and one hybrid car just to show they're eco.


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## D_W (16 Feb 2021)

Jelly said:


> I don't think the argument around cost of production taken alone ports well from Oil to Gas, moving LNG other than via a pipeline is comparatively hard and costly, compared to oil; so the economics make more sense for local production.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



You guys are probably ahead in green energy by percentage due to your fossil costs. As woody said, the coal here is a different dynamic. A friend used to work for a european mining equipment company who refused to listen to the customer here. Their emphasis was on slower but tougher machines to deal with issues when the coal seam isn't clear. The only problem with that is the seams are clear here and speed is the need. They left the market. That's one of the things we notice about the Germans in the states - they tend to like to tell the customer what the customer needs, and sometimes it's to their detriment (all of the german cars sold in the states are garbage - even worse for reliability than the worst of our domestics, but they keep selling them on the stupid "superior engineering" narrative and then complain that they don't know why their automakers are losing market share). 

It's hard to find much of anything made in continental europe sold here these days, despite the fact that labor is cheaper in continental europe than it is here.


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## D_W (16 Feb 2021)

Forgot to complete the thought on renewables - we have a capacity of something like 800 terrawatt hours in the US, or about 20% of the grid (hydro, wind, solar and biomass -and a very small allocation of geothermal, I guess in places near volcanoes). It appears from the google monster that about 40% of UK electricity is considered renewable, though the categories don't look to be identical (120 GWH as of 2020, or about 1/6th nominally of the US).

Something doesn't line up unless the average person in the UK uses half the energy - perhaps that's possible due to the lack of temperature extremes.

Solar and wind are being installed here at a high rate because they don't require much subsidy at this point. We sold our farm last year (270 acres). It nearly went to a solar company, but ....wait for it...

....the township denied permits to us and several other farms because residents convinced the township boards that variances for solar would ruin the rural view.

Solar installers were willing to pay about a 25% premium on the land for anyone willing to contract due to the chance that permitting would fail, or take a couple of years (sale contingent on approval of installation, of course).

Gas is a major headwind here for everything as far as energy production goes - it's 4 cents a KW/hr for profitable gas production (vs. subsidizing wind) and the types of power plants being set up are actually pressuring nuclear out of business. They can run base load or turn on and off regularly without issue, and that makes it very easy for them to draw contracts (generation is mostly private here, distribution is public - that combination has made for low cost electricity but a reliable grid). As renewables get cheaper, they'll probably match gas and pick up speed in regard to implementation - the advantage that you have in the UK toward renewables isn't really virtue, it's cost of other options.


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## billw (16 Feb 2021)

When it's time to recycle nuclear materials we'll just deposit it in the most convenient third world country, which by the time to recycle the stuff comes will probably be ... England.


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## MarkDennehy (16 Feb 2021)

Woody2Shoes said:


> As far as nuclear goes, whatever we do in the UK is almost irrelevant


Ahem.

Just don't make a bags of it lads, I have LED lighting in the shop already, I don't need it to glow in the dark


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## D_W (16 Feb 2021)

billw said:


> When it's time to recycle nuclear materials we'll just deposit it in the most convenient third world country, which by the time to recycle the stuff comes will probably be ... England.



If the currency drops enough, it will eventually be economical to reprocess the waste. hah!

We'll pay you to do it with ours, too - .....

...except our currency will probably be in the toilet by then, too, and maybe we'll make stuff to export to china.


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## Peterm1000 (16 Feb 2021)

If you accept the idea that the solution is to generate more power then nuclear MIGHT be a possible choice. There are some good arguments made for it on here. But I am depressed by the idea that anything that has the potential to cause so much damage is considered a good idea. Surely the long term solution is to make things more energy efficient rather than to generate more power.


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## rafezetter (16 Feb 2021)

Yojevol said:


> FAKE NEWS
> The proposed Moorside Power Station is NOT experimental. It is of the PWR variety which is the world's most common design. We have one already at Sizewell and another under construction in Somerset, both much nearer London. What's more Londoners are only 100miles away from the largest, and now aging, nuclear station in western Europe - Gravelines which lies halfway between Calais and Dunkirk.
> Fortunately we have learnt an awful lot from the Windscale, 3Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Of those 4 only 3MI was a PWR (an early American nuclear PS). The other 3 have all been abandoned as the basis of viable commercial and safe designs.
> As Bill Gates said yesterday, the pandemic is a minor problem for man to solve in comparison to Global Warming and nuclear power will have to be part of the solution for the foreseeable future.
> ...



the Bill Gates bit I said myself not long ago in the thread about how it was all the old peoples fault and... got shot down as usual. They (" the greens" and those younger generations that will need it the most) don't want it because they believe as spetric does and have been brainwashed into thinking geen energy is a VIABLE power source NOW and it's just a matter of putting it into place.

Nuclear isn't "the best" solution I grant you, but it's proven and what we have NOW, while the green systems catch up to a place where we won't need to cover the green fields of England with windfarms and solar.

Speak to anyone in America that has had to live with power shortages recently, as I have, and you'll get a different perspective.


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## smugdruggler (16 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> Hi all
> 
> The original was a PWR which got cancelled thanks to the over spend at Sizewell, Toshiba pulled the plug and ran leaving Nugen high and dry.
> 
> ...


Please feel free to correct me but as far as I am aware "Fusion" reactors are the holy grail and no one has yet perfected one large enough for commercial use in fact I don't think anyone has even constructed one that has exceeded unity in other words produced more power out than has been put in.

I apologise if the OP meant to say Fission.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Peterm1000 said:


> If you accept the idea that the solution is to generate more power then nuclear MIGHT be a possible choice. There are some good arguments made for it on here. But I am depressed by the idea that anything that has the potential to cause so much damage is considered a good idea. Surely the long term solution is to make things more energy efficient rather than to generate more power.


Yep. Just looking for hi-tech solutions to enable us to carry on as usual just postpones the endgame, with probably a shorter and sharper collapse when it finally happens.
We need to work out how to do things sustainably, which means doing them very differently, starting now if it's not too late already.


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## rafezetter (16 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> The one thing nuclear has the potential to do that no other power generation method currently has is to give us something in common with the dinosaurs, and that is extinction.



haha wow.

I think you might need plans for a bigger tinfoil hat.

Sorry but have you EVER really LOOKED at the planet and what's happening? There are seriously unstable countries with nuclear arsenals at thier disposal and that's just for starters of the things we have no control over in the UK, that are a bigger threat than using nuclear power stations.

So are you suggesting we in the UK just go back to how it was 100 years ago when electricity was scarce, because we are only using green energy that just doesn't provide, and won't for many decades yet, thus we devolve into a 3rd world nation while other countries with a smaller "snowflake" population thrive.

Sure we'll be green but at what cost - you want electric cars in the road? NOPE, not enough juice for everyone. (so back to petrol or nothing**)
You want all children in schools to have access to computers, the internet and mobile learning on tablets? NOPE, not enough juice for everyone.
You want to be able to walk at night with well lit streets? NOPE, not enough juice for everyone. (or go back to gaslamps**)

Enjoying using your home computer are we Spectric? Won't have that if we did as "the greens" suggested.

and on and on.

Then there's the Kyoto Accord and that quite a few big countries have not signed up for it, and still burning fossil fuels and a ridiculous rate - protip - google how much coal Australia is exporting each year and where it's going, if that isn't enough to make you realise that "greenifying" the UK's power at the cost of a SIGNIFICANTLY reduced standard of living will be utterly pointless as we share the SAME ATMOSPHERE as the rest of those countries. sheesh.

All the while STILL being a target for those aforementioned ICBM's

**seems your plan for greening isn't really working is it?


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## Jelly (16 Feb 2021)

billw said:


> When it's time to recycle nuclear materials we'll just deposit it in the most convenient third world country, which by the time to recycle the stuff comes will probably be ... England.


I mean up until ten-ish years ago BNFL and it's successors were actively selling reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel at Sellafield on the condition that whoever sent them the material for recycling took back all the active material waste and useful fuel alike.

If you're looking to point at a nuclear dumping ground of sorts, Mayak Chemical Combine in Russia or the Hanford Site in Washington (State) are the places that come closest to the dystopia you're envisaging... And it's still reasonably well controlled (now).

The reality is much more banal, that we're likely to have to expend small but not insignificant amounts of money and resources on containing and securing waste and storage locations for an almost inconceivably long time, although most of the really nasty radioactive waste gets markedly safer in the first 30-50 years, and the bigger issue is actually around security of fissile materials for non-proliferation reasons.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Jelly said:


> ....... the bigger issue is actually around security of fissile materials for non-proliferation reasons.


I think the bigger issue is the continuity of technical infrastructure and personnel. 
Imagine an unknown virus suddenly arriving unexpectedly!


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## Spectric (16 Feb 2021)

Hi Some very interesting views, and again it is very clear that it is another problem we have created but this time very unlikely to resolve. Yes taking nuclear out of it then we are on borrowed time with fosil fuels and global warming but we need to only move forward, no more fosil fuels would be a fantastic step forward but replacing one bad fuel with another is not the solution. The real problem is over population and that so many countries are basically going through the same industrial revolution that we have gone through but now with much reduced natural resources. We do tend to feed our habbits rather than do the right thing, ie households are using more energy now than say thirty years ago but why, because we want dishwashers and other gadgets to make life easy and have electrical everything. I bet many on here can remember parents using washing boards, mangles and then the luxury of the twin tub. 



alex_heney said:


> And there is no real possibility of nuclear power causing an extinction event.


That is wishful thinking, the issue is that the human race thinks it is so clever and to many people believe it. Ignorance will not protect.



Jacob said:


> Nuclear depends on continual servicing and control by a stable and skilled workforce.
> A simple thing like the next pandemic, if not the current one, could end this overnight and be catastrophic.


Jacob is spot on, we are now living on a planet thats survival depends upon these plants being maintained and under constant control, bearing in mind the age of many then if say some virus takes out the personel how long do you think you have before an incident. Yes there are safety measures that should keep things safe but they only work if maintained.



sploo said:


> So... there's no way a Cumbria plant would be the UK's _first_ experimental fusion facility,


well lets hope so because they seem to believe that they have the nuclear expertise, god help us.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

rafezetter said:


> .......
> 
> **seems your plan for greening isn't really working is it?


Nature's plan for survival is working and it looks like greening is definitely on the cards, whatever form it takes.


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## Jelly (16 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Yep. Just looking for hi-tech solutions to enable us to carry on as usual just postpones the endgame, with probably a shorter and sharper collapse when it finally happens.
> We need to work out how to do things sustainably, which means doing them very differently, starting now if it's not too late already.



I agree with you in principle, but it's not an either-or choice, the necessity is to do both.

We have to cut consumption to levels which can be supplied without exhausting natural resources and find the technologies which allow us to maintain a certain level of resource use (ideally in a closed loop) which will maintain the advantages of modern life which few if any would be willing to surrender.


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## Spectric (16 Feb 2021)

rafezetter said:


> Sorry but have you EVER really LOOKED at the planet and what's happening? There are seriously unstable countries with nuclear arsenals at thier disposal and that's just for starters of the things we have no control over in the UK, that are a bigger threat than using nuclear power stations.


Yes but we are talking nuclear power not weapons, we do have some say or control but weapons is another ball game because their very design is to result in extinction, nuclear power is just the accident waiting to happen.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> .....The real problem is over population ....


Not at all - over population is the evolutionary natural selection solution. It's a very crude mechanism but increases the probability of there being survivors.


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## Jelly (16 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> I think the bigger issue is the continuity of technical infrastructure and personnel.
> Imagine an unknown virus suddenly arriving unexpectedly!



When talking about waste storage and containment, it's not hugely technical and the infrastructure is comparatively simple and robust. 

Humanity has been good enough at capturing and transferring knowledge, that we would be able to retrain individuals in fields like radiation protection/monitoring, civil engineering etc. Orders of magnitude quicker than the infrastructure would decay.


Your point is valid with regards to actual reactors and fuel processing plants; a total or significant loss of skilled personnel could result in a plant getting shut down in a manner which was safe but irreversible, although because they're generally left for decades (to allow radiation levels to reduce) before decommissioning begins in earnest we would still have time to develop new skilled individuals to make the site safe in the long term.


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## D_W (16 Feb 2021)

Peterm1000 said:


> If you accept the idea that the solution is to generate more power then nuclear MIGHT be a possible choice. There are some good arguments made for it on here. But I am depressed by the idea that anything that has the potential to cause so much damage is considered a good idea. Surely the long term solution is to make things more energy efficient rather than to generate more power.



Compare your consumption to that of your forefathers.

My ancestors used less efficient homes, vehicles, etc, but still consumed less energy. Probably by a long shot.

Efficiency doesn't amount to much if utilization is high. What was the average SF lived in 100 years ago? It may not have been too different for the upper middle class, but the big difference for my relatives (who did have a large living space) is that only part of it was heated in the winter. The water supply was kept in the heated area, and the rest of the house was "dry" so that climate control wasn't needed.

Ever have a relative born around 1900 use air conditioning (i don't mean around 1900 - I mean I didn't see them use it all the way through the end of their life in the 1980s)? I sure didn't. Trips to town (for people of means) was once per week, and traveling 30 miles was considered a long trip.

Every single thing in my house is more efficient on a per item basis, but to my spouse, a 5 degree difference in one part of the house is far too much. Didn't even have A/C in the house as a kid until I was about 14 (we used fans in the summer, and trust me, it was hotter where I grew up than anywhere in the UK, and same for colder in the winter -we heated only half the house during the day, and the upstairs was heated for two two hour swaths - starting about an hour before bed to an hour after, and then turning on again an hour before waking.

All of the old houses had doors dividing different parts of the house so that you didn't have to heat the entire house. What do the new energy efficient floor plans look like? They're open except for bedrooms.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Jelly said:


> When talking about waste storage and containment, it's not hugely technical and the infrastructure is comparatively simple and robust.
> 
> Humanity has been good enough at capturing and transferring knowledge, that we would be able to retrain individuals in fields like radiation protection/monitoring, civil engineering etc.


That's a wild guess. Another pandemic could change the picture over night. The likelihood of pandemics is increasing rapidly, not least due to increased population but also under the shadow of increasing resistance to antibiotics


> Your point is valid with regards to actual reactors and fuel processing plants; a total or significant loss of skilled personnel could result in a plant getting shut down in a manner which was safe but irreversible,


They thought that before Chernobyl, which could have been a world changing catastrophe. Do you really thing Chernobyl was the last major nuclear disaster ever to happen?


> although because they're generally left for decades (to allow radiation levels to reduce) before decommissioning begins in earnest we would still have time to develop new skilled individuals to make the site safe in the long term.


Not necessarily so! A very optimistic view.


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## Rorschach (16 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> A very optimistic view.



I am sure you will no doubt be shocked to hear this and you might want to sit down before reading further, but optimistic people do exist, they aren't just characters in TV shows, they are living, breathing people. Crazy, but true!


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## pils (16 Feb 2021)

Yojevol said:


> FAKE NEWS
> The proposed Moorside Power Station is NOT experimental. It is of the PWR variety which is the world's most common design. We have one already at Sizewell and another under construction in Somerset, both much nearer London. What's more Londoners are only 100miles away from the largest, and now aging, nuclear station in western Europe - Gravelines which lies halfway between Calais and Dunkirk.
> Fortunately we have learnt an awful lot from the Windscale, 3Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Of those 4 only 3MI was a PWR (an early American nuclear PS). The other 3 have all been abandoned as the basis of viable commercial and safe designs.
> As Bill Gates said yesterday, the pandemic is a minor problem for man to solve in comparison to Global Warming and nuclear power will have to be part of the solution for the foreseeable future.
> ...


Thank God for Bill Gates:


----------



## sploo (16 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> well lets hope so because they seem to believe that they have the nuclear expertise, god help us.


Yea, I don't really understand the intention of that Cumbria article. Commercial fusion reactors will be available "20 years after you fund it properly" (that's been the same answer for decades).

What experimental reactors there are currently are hugely expensive, and generally international collaborations; so the idea that £220 million would produce anything (let alone something by 2024) is not in the realms of reality. For comparison, the ITER site preparation was in 2008 (13 years ago) and it's still not finished. It's also expected to cost north of 20 billion Euros.


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## Spectric (16 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Not at all - over population is the evolutionary natural selection solution. It's a very crude mechanism but increases the probability of there being survivors.


Yes that worked when people died younger, there were more wars and we lived and worked in a more hazzardous world but now we live longer and have reduced life threatening hazzards so populations expand freely and everyone wants the better life, so population rising whilst natural resources decline and polution and enviromental damage grows. Something is going to have to give eventually because we cannot keep meeting demands, the only solution is going to be global and when we all trust each other enough to work as one and not keep thinking of the profit, look at how fast the vacine has been developed so pooled resources and stop wasting money on pointless projects and who knows what could be developed.


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## sploo (16 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> They thought that before Chernobyl, which could have been a world changing catastrophe. Do you really thing Chernobyl was the last major nuclear disaster ever to happen?


Sadly, almost certainly not, and I believe there is a lot of concern about the poor practices and corner (cost) cutting of some of the companies that run nuclear plants. However, it is worth noting that Chernobyl was a very old design, and modern plants are much safer in their operation.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Rorschach said:


> I am sure you will no doubt be shocked to hear this and you might want to sit down before reading further, but optimistic people do exist, they aren't just characters in TV shows, they are living, breathing people. Crazy, but true!


They were pretty optimistic before Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island! 
The film Chernobyl is a good watch - it's supposed to be a realistic reconstruction. Still makes a good film even if it's all lies. Essential viewing!




__





Chernobyl movie review & film summary (2019) | Roger Ebert


Chernobyl is relentlessly bleak, but it has a remarkable cumulative power.




www.rogerebert.com


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> ....... populations expand freely and everyone wants the better life, ....


They tend to stop expanding when people have a better life.
When the going gets tough reproduction rates increase. Fact of life. Everything, from the amoeba upwards.


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## Jelly (16 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> That's a wild guess. Another pandemic could change the picture over night. The likelihood of pandemics is increasing rapidly, not least due to increased population but also under the shadow of increasing resistance to antibiotics



If a pandemic wipes out so many people that we're plunged back into the dark ages, then frankly any conceivable release of nuclear materials isn't going to be that big of an issue, compared to the daily struggle for survival.

That said the fundimental technology needed for "minimum viable" nuclear waste containment dates back to the Romans (water resistant cement).

In any case the sooner we proceed to start mineralisation in insoluble physical forms and geological storage for nuclear waste, the safer and less technology dependent it will be.

Currently _the fear of nuclear waste drives _politically motivated _decisions to do nothing _which mean it actually _continues to be stored in more dangerous_ (and resource/maintainance intensive) forms and places than it could or should be; *that cannot conceivably serve anyone's aims or objectives regarding nuclear power regardless of if they are pro or anti.*




Jacob said:


> They thought that before Chernobyl, which could have been a world changing catastrophe. Do you really thing Chernobyl was the last major nuclear disaster ever to happen?



They (the state apparatus of the USSR) actually knew that the RBMK design used at Chernobyl was inherently unstable from the very beginning, and the whole reason for the test which precipitated the accident was to verify that operators were able to maintain control when it entered an unstable state.

It was intentionally built to a compromised design, without certain control features which were known to be needed to make it inherently safe (which following the accident were quietly retrofitted to other reactors of the type including the three other units at Chernobyl which ran until 2000).

The decision to then classify the design's safety issues as a state secret rather than share them with the safety regulators or the operators who had to run it was grossly negligent in a way I can't even begin to convey in words.

The decision to then do a live test to see if they could control it when it encountered a fault condition which could cause loss of control, by deliberately creating that fault... Was just completely insane.

The whole thing was an accident waiting to happen, and could have been predicted from the start because it was known not to be inherently safe.

I seriously doubt we will ever see anything even close to that level of incompetence, acceptance of intolerable risks, or complete lack of awareness of consequences ever again. Whilst we have seen serious nuclear incidents since then (Fukushima being the next worst) but nothing even comes close to that level of idiocy, or consequences.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Jelly said:


> If a pandemic wipes out so many people that we're plunged back into the dark ages, then frankly any conceivable release of nuclear materials isn't going to be that big of an issue, compared to the daily struggle for survival.
> 
> That said the fundimental technology needed for "minimum viable" nuclear waste containment dates back to the Romans (water resistant cement).
> 
> ...


So you do believe that that will turn out to be the worst nuclear disaster ever!
Human idiocy is only one of many possible causes and it tends to get the blame only after the event.


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## Trainee neophyte (16 Feb 2021)

Chernobyl was human error. So was Three Mile Island, and so was the placement of Fukashima. No matter how good your design, there will always be monkeys running the system, so there will always be the opportunity for "Oops, my bad. So sorry."

If we want to replace the entire world energy budget with just nuclear by 2050, then the boffins have calculated that you would need to increase the number of reactors worldwide by 10% per annum, starting in 2004. That equates to commissioning a new reactor once a week, every week, from 2004 to 2050. I don't think we are going to make that target.

I have also seen somewhere an estimate that if there were that many reactors running, there is enough fuel in the entire planet's crust to run them all for two years. Nuclear is great, but it isn't the answer. It also hides the non green footprint by ignoring all the emissions from steel, cement, uranium mining etc. 

We are going to fix our CO2 output by running out of affordable oil. Just because you can extract it at $80 a barrel, doesn't mean people can afford to buy it. And when it takes more than one barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil, the party is over.


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## Jelly (16 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> So you do believe that that will turn out to be the worst nuclear disaster ever!
> Human idiocy is only one of many possible causes and it tends to get the blame only after the event.



I think it's extremely unlikely we will ever see something that severe happen again by accident, in the still fairly unlikely event something of that severity did occur again an act of war or terrorism seems more plausible as the cause.

The reason I think it's unlikely is that Humanity is usually pretty good at learning from big, dramatic and scary mistakes, and the more severe the mistake the faster the new knowledge goes in.

That the Soviet Union (not noted for its willingness to accept fault or admit failings) was willing to undertake a huge overhaul of it's entire nuclear industry in the aftermath speaks to that point.


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## Spectric (16 Feb 2021)

Jelly said:


> They (the state apparatus of the USSR) actually knew that the RBMK design used at Chernobyl was inherently unstable from the very beginning, and the whole reason for the test which precipitated the accident was to verify that operators were able to maintain control when it entered an unstable state.


Yes it was a shame that the mechanism designed to advert such an event was itself flawed when used in that particular situation, and made worse by the fact they knew about it but had decided that situation could not occur, correct unless initiated on purpose as a test.

It is also worth noting that you can spend weeks or months listing all potential hazzard synario's and decide on how to mitigate against them but the weak link is the human being, the unpredictable part of an equation.


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## Anthraquinone (16 Feb 2021)

There is still a lot of coal in the ground under the UK and also some shale gas - although no one really knows how much. When the oil finally does start to run out - who knows when- I would not bet against mining being restarted if only for chemical feed stock.


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## Anthraquinone (16 Feb 2021)

While we are in a happy frame of mind there are other things that may go wrong for life as we know it.

Methane clathrates in the ocean. A small rise in deep ocean temperatures could trigger the release of gigatones on methane which would make the current CO2 problems look trival.
Don,t forget the super volcano under Yellowstone that is overdue for an eruption.
Stray and undetected near earth asteroids / comets that we cannot do anything about.

and there are probably many more I have not thought of. On the plus side the cockroaches will probably survive whatever happens.


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## Rorschach (16 Feb 2021)

I never understand why people always seem to think progress is a bad thing and that the future will be bad. By every metric we can measure the present is better than any period in (known) history. Every bit of data we have suggests that things will only continue to get better and that improvement has always been through innovation and advancement. So Cheer up!


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## Droogs (16 Feb 2021)

Dont forget earth crust displacement or magnetic field flipping. also the overdue massive comet strike, oh and andromeda is going to hit us in 4.5 billion years, should be quite a show


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## Ozi (16 Feb 2021)

rafezetter said:


> haha wow.
> 
> I think you might need plans for a bigger tinfoil hat.
> 
> ...


This is cut from a site Dashboard – MyGridGB showing the actual generation in this country, there is a huge amount of research going into "Green" energy and it is working. Back in the 1980s it was well understood that renewable could never produce 10% of our energy requirements "and what about the cold still nights" etc. Two very encouraging developments ongoing as we speak are development of fuel cells and hydrogen by electrolysis. Fuel cells greatly increase the efficiency of generation from gas, when combined with district heating efficiencies in the 90% range have been achieved, there are currently over 500MW of this type of generation being run in the USA of all places. This still produces CO2 but at a much reduced rate. Run fuel cells on hydrogen and the CO2 is gone. When (not if) hydrogen from off shore wind becomes viable excess wind power can be stored as hydrogen then used for everything from domestic heating to electricity generation. Removing our reliance on Gas imports from some very questionable countries. To say it's pointless is saying it's better to give up.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> This is cut from a site Dashboard – MyGridGB showing the actual generation in this country, there is a huge amount of research going into "Green" energy and it is working. Back in the 1980s it was well understood that renewable could never produce 10% of our energy requirements "and what about the cold still nights" etc. Two very encouraging developments ongoing as we speak are development of fuel cells and hydrogen by electrolysis. Fuel cells greatly increase the efficiency of generation from gas, when combined with district heating efficiencies in the 90% range have been achieved, there are currently over 500MW of this type of generation being run in the USA of all places. This still produces CO2 but at a much reduced rate. Run fuel cells on hydrogen and the CO2 is gone. When (not if) hydrogen from off shore wind becomes viable excess wind power can be stored as hydrogen then used for everything from domestic heating to electricity generation. Removing our reliance on Gas imports from some very questionable countries. To say it's pointless is saying it's better to give up. View attachment 103712


Wind + Solar + Biomass = 33%.
Surely that's a huge figure and shows that 100% zero carbon could be achievable, in theory?
A 2/3rd reduction in energy consumption - most of us individually could do that!
Over simplified but the scales of magnitude look good.
One thing which will probably have to go is the idea of individual powered transport - I have doubts about electric cars - not that they won't work but that they won't be economically viable as energy prices go high.
Big changes are possible if we discard the illusion that we can somehow carry on as we are?


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## Jonm (16 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Wind + Solar + Biomass = 33%.
> Surely that's a huge figure and shows that 100% zero carbon could be achievable, in theory?
> A 2/3rd reduction in energy consumption - most of us individually could do that!
> Over simplified but the scales of magnitude look good.
> ...


You are forgetting the huge increase in electrical energy required for heating and transport to replace gas and oil. Your figure of 33% of current energy consumption is probably about 10 to 15 percent of our future needs when heating, cooking and transport are all electric.


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## Jacob (16 Feb 2021)

Jonm said:


> You are forgetting the huge increase in electrical energy required for heating and transport to replace gas and oil. Your figure of 33% of current energy consumption is probably about 10 to 15 percent of our future needs when heating, cooking and transport are all electric.


33% is 33% and on the face of it is only going to rise higher.


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## D_W (16 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Wind + Solar + Biomass = 33%.
> Surely that's a huge figure and shows that 100% zero carbon could be achievable, in theory?
> A 2/3rd reduction in energy consumption - most of us individually could do that!
> Over simplified but the scales of magnitude look good.
> ...



Wind production cost here is 6 cents a kw/hr. Why would energy prices have to go high?

Solar is probably trending lower installed in places like the south and southwest due to the fantastic decline in the cost of chinese panels. I remember not that long ago when a 2kw array for equipment and tie in was $25k, and that wasn't with some kind of scammy brand name something or other installing $4k of equipment for $25k to old ladies. 

Self-installation other than hookup now is in the $1k per kw range (still need to hire an electrician for grid tie in if you don't want the electric company to say "no"). Gas here is profitable at 4, which means wind needs to be subsidized to 6 - but 6 cents a kw/hr to break even isn't exactly expensive. If anyone thinks it is, see how much it costs to generate a kw for an hour on your own premises.


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## D_W (16 Feb 2021)

Droogs said:


> Dont forget earth crust displacement or magnetic field flipping. also the overdue massive comet strike, oh and andromeda is going to hit us in 4.5 billion years, should be quite a show



merging with another galaxy at this point is thought to be unlikely to have any significant effect due to the enormous distance between actual stars. 

late cycle sun poses a problem, though. 

mass extinction events seem to be far more likely before either. At least 3 discovered so far and maybe 5? The last a short what...66 million years ago?


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## Terry - Somerset (16 Feb 2021)

A meaningless, but meaningful thought:

*In a single hour, the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth is more than the entire world consumes in an year.*

From this perspective, green energy from solar, wind and tidal is but a trivial engineering problem (an oversimplification I know).

We make it more problematic through the language used to how it impacts - eg: every hill will be covered in giant intrusive wind turbines vs 98% of views will be completely absent of wind turbines big or small.


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## DBT85 (16 Feb 2021)

So... They want to build another tokamak. Is that all?


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## Ozi (16 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Wind + Solar + Biomass = 33%.
> Surely that's a huge figure and shows that 100% zero carbon could be achievable, in theory?
> A 2/3rd reduction in energy consumption - most of us individually could do that!
> Over simplified but the scales of magnitude look good.
> ...


If you include Nuclear as carbon free which like it or fear it we should the figure was 52.8%, I'm including bio mass which isn't completely correct but should be viewed as low carbon. 

Heating, cooking and transport are all very big problems to solve but are being addressed, current house building standards are way above the efficiency of houses build 30 years ago and there are still practical improvements to make. I don't expect one solution to fix all issues and we need to change peoples attitudes as well, stop heating our homes to tee shirt temperatures all year round, stop flushing toilets with potable water etc. When I go to work I shouldn't be taking a ton and a half of metal with me that sits outside all day. The thing that makes me optimistic is that self interest takes us in the correct direction. I have fitted my house with solar panels and a condensing boiler, we use LED lights not because there good for the planet but because they save me cash. Make me pay the environmental cost of the water I use and I will soon be harvesting rain water, I saw this done in rural areas of New Zealand 30 years ago and the cleaner the air gets the easier it gets. The thing that exasperates me is seeing solar farms set up on good farmland while new build industrial estates leave the roofs unused. Electric transport is becoming more feasible at an astonishing rate, but we need to get away from the idea of having one car for all uses. Most new cars in this country are on HP, it's a small step to go to a contract that lets you hire one small car to commute and exchange it for a larger car for a family holiday or small pick up the weekend you need to take rubbish to the tip. 

Sorry about the rambling essay - do you like my soap box, I built it myself.


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## Phil Pascoe (17 Feb 2021)

... The thing that exasperates me is seeing solar farms set up on good farmland while new build industrial estates leave the roofs unused ...

Yes. I said back in the early '80s when my friend put solar panels in that every new build and major renovation especially shopping centres and industrial estates should have solar and maybe wind and ground source by law. It would be a fraction of the price by now if this had been done.
One of my sister's houses in NZ uses entirely grey water. Apparently it was mooted to M. Thatcher's government that as 98% of mains water was not drunk, it would be cheaper to subsidise the sales af drinking water and not treat mains water to same degree - it was turned down out of hand as it would look third world. Perfectly sensible, I have thought.

I remember many years ago hearing Andrew Neil saying how embarrassed he felt telling American friends that we were short of water ......... on a wet island.


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## NormanB (17 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> current house building standards are way above the efficiency of houses build 30 years ago and there are still practical improvements to make.
> 
> Sorry about the rambling essay - do you like my soap box, I built it myself.



Actually, that is the problem our building standards have not actually improved very much at all. I live in what was a brand new home in 2000 and part from the fact it had double glazing fitted at build and minimal (box ticking) badly fitted loft insulation (cold roof system). The home I left to buy this new home built in the early 60s was built to a very similar standard sans double glazing I cannot comment about loft insulation as I was not the first owner. Of course Like many people I put in DG and Loft insulation.

So, respectfully, I would say there has been no material improvement in UK domestic house building standards in the last 60 odd years, especially when you contrast that with the standards of our friends in Northern Europe. 

However, leaving building standard aside the actually execution of the building process and checking to see if the build conforms to any sort of quality standard is pretty woeful. The quality of ‘as built‘ UK homes is, to be frank is, shockingly poor UNLESS a private individual has commissioned a bespoke build.


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## bansobaby (17 Feb 2021)

As far as I can make out (it’s actually quite difficult to know what information is reliable and unbiased), the power generation capacity in the UK has actually decreased over the last 10 years or so. This is also likely to get worse before it gets better. Hinckley Point C will not come on line for years (and the agreed cost of the power it supplies is another issue), several older nuclear stations will go off line in the same period and whilst renewables are increasing rapidly, they are unlikely to take up the slack.
The situation is, I believe, similar in the US as demonstrated by the recent weather events in Texas and the mid west leading to power rationing. I don’t believe this is down to failures particularly, more demand outstripping supply.
I have lived in various countries in Africa where daily power rationing (also known as intermittent unplanned power cuts) was a way of daily life. There the normality of the situation and particularly the climate made it simply an inconvenience. BUT the byproducts (everyone who could afford one ran a generator, and most fridges ran on gas) would make Greta Thunberg wince.
Modern day life in most of the Western World would simply not cope with such a situation.
This is always brought to mind when people bang on about the EV situation. Just back of the envelope calculations suggest to me that we require at least a 10% increase in generating capacity to be even close to being able to charge the EVs that will be needed if we are to meet stated targets. That’s above and beyond any increase required otherwise. Admittedly, power demand per capita could go down but its not a given....
Dont get me wrong, I’m all in favour of anything we can do to decrease pollution, but it’s been a while since you heard about the lights going out being a serious option.
I think that certain parties are being very economical with the truth.
Incidentally, our extended family are going to holiday on a remote island with no electricity for a couple of weeks next year. It will be interesting to see who copes best, the teens and twenty somethings or those a few decades older......


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## Phil Pascoe (17 Feb 2021)

While we're on power, I'll start another thread on the A.S.A.


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## Jacob (17 Feb 2021)

bansobaby said:


> ......
> Modern day life in most of the Western World would simply not cope with such a situation.


We may have no choice


> ....
> Dont get me wrong, I’m all in favour of anything we can do to decrease pollution, but it’s been a while since you heard about the lights going out being a serious option.


The serious option is the collapse of civilisation as we know it. It's not about pollution - the issue is climate change. Having the lights going out would be nothing in comparison!


> I think that certain parties are being very economical with the truth.
> .....


Truth staring us in the face. Biggest problem is people choosing to ignore it.


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## sirocosm (17 Feb 2021)

If the panic porn media hadn't scared the public off nuclear power in the 70s, the UK would already be zero carbon on electricity, there wouldn't be windmills and solar panels soiling the countryside, and energy would be cheap. There is (mostly) no such thing as nuclear "waste". Nowadays "waste" from old reactors can be processed as fuel for new reactors.

For those worried about a nuclear apocalypse how about this, supply the power at 1/2 price within a mile of each reactor and see how many people want to live near them. Serious question, would house prices near reactors go up or down?


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## bansobaby (17 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> We may have no choiceThe serious option is the collapse of civilisation as we know it. It's not about pollution - the issue is climate change. Having the lights going out would be nothing in comparison!Truth staring us in the face. Biggest problem is people choosing to ignore it.


I agree wholeheartedly, I think people’s expectations of what modern life looks like will have to undergo a serious review, particularly with regards to use of resources. The waste of water in the west in particular really upsets me, given how fundamental and scarce it is for people in other countries....


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## sploo (17 Feb 2021)

bansobaby said:


> As far as I can make out (it’s actually quite difficult to know what information is reliable and unbiased), the power generation capacity in the UK has actually decreased over the last 10 years or so. This is also likely to get worse before it gets better. Hinckley Point C will not come on line for years (and the agreed cost of the power it supplies is another issue), several older nuclear stations will go off line in the same period and whilst renewables are increasing rapidly, they are unlikely to take up the slack.
> The situation is, I believe, similar in the US as demonstrated by the recent weather events in Texas and the mid west leading to power rationing. I don’t believe this is down to failures particularly, more demand outstripping supply.
> I have lived in various countries in Africa where daily power rationing (also known as intermittent unplanned power cuts) was a way of daily life. There the normality of the situation and particularly the climate made it simply an inconvenience. BUT the byproducts (everyone who could afford one ran a generator, and most fridges ran on gas) would make Greta Thunberg wince.
> Modern day life in most of the Western World would simply not cope with such a situation.
> ...


For EVs remember that it's the peak power requirement on the grid that's the issue. There is work in progress (Google "HCALCS") to control charging of such high draw devices; such that the power use can be smoothed out overnight (where there's traditionally low load on the grid).

Power issues in the USA are an odd situation. There's a great chapter in Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" that details some of the corruption present in the US power industry. I think it's that chapter that details how energy companies were deliberately sabotaging their own plants, as their contracts allowed them to charge a higher unit price in the event they had to fall back to using one of their older (and less efficient) stations; but the end result was that they then often couldn't meet peak demand. I'm sure many other countries will have similar tales of corrupt behaviour.


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## Droogs (17 Feb 2021)

I think the problems in Texas were mainly down to the following facts:
In winter they take a 1/3 of their generation capacity off line for servicing - Texan demand is in summer for AC not heating in winter
No de-icing systems are fitted to Texan wind turbines generealy - it never gets cold enough and they don't rely on wind in winter as there is less of it
The sudden massive demand for heating had caused the supply pressure in the pipe system feeding the gas generation station to fall below that needed for them to operate and they automatically started shut downs - This is reported as due to pumps at wells having valvles freeze there not able to regulate flow.

A very interesting article on "Flipboard" yesterday about it all


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## Jacob (17 Feb 2021)

sploo said:


> For EVs remember that it's the peak power requirement on the grid that's the issue. There is work in progress (Google "HCALCS") to control charging of such high draw devices; such that the power use can be smoothed out overnight (where there's traditionally low load on the grid).
> ....


Can't see how mass EV use charging could work until they switch to removable batteries which could be charged overnight. Drive in, swap battery, drive out.


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## sploo (17 Feb 2021)

sirocosm said:


> If the panic porn media hadn't scared the public off nuclear power in the 70s, the UK would already be zero carbon on electricity, there wouldn't be windmills and solar panels soiling the countryside, and energy would be cheap. There is (mostly) no such thing as nuclear "waste". Nowadays "waste" from old reactors can be processed as fuel for new reactors.
> 
> For those worried about a nuclear apocalypse how about this, supply the power at 1/2 price within a mile of each reactor and see how many people want to live near them. Serious question, would house prices near reactors go up or down?


Not sure that really matches the available evidence. The original industry claim of "power too cheap to meter" has been around for decades with regard to nuclear, but the reality is still that nuclear plants costs huge sums of money and take years to build.

The "no such thing as waste" surprises me too - at least, I understood that there are still problems with dangerous waste products.

I'm not inherently anti-nuclear; but (fission energy generation, at least) doesn't appear to be a panacea.


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## sploo (17 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Can't see how mass EV use charging could work until they switch to removable batteries which could be charged overnight. Drive in, swap battery, drive out.


The modern high voltage charging can fill up a battery very quickly (allowing for concerns about reduction of battery life), but, assuming you can park overnight then it doesn't matter if it takes 1 hour or 8 hours to charge.

Granted that doesn't solve the problem of people without driveways.


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## Rorschach (17 Feb 2021)

sirocosm said:


> If the panic porn media hadn't scared the public off nuclear power in the 70s, the UK would already be zero carbon on electricity, there wouldn't be windmills and solar panels soiling the countryside, and energy would be cheap. There is (mostly) no such thing as nuclear "waste". Nowadays "waste" from old reactors can be processed as fuel for new reactors.
> 
> For those worried about a nuclear apocalypse how about this, supply the power at 1/2 price within a mile of each reactor and see how many people want to live near them. Serious question, would house prices near reactors go up or down?



I'd live closer to a power station if my electricity bills were lower.


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## bansobaby (17 Feb 2021)

Yes, the idea of spreading power demand to match available supply is nothing new. As a student I had a VIP trip around Dinorwig (apologies for the spelling).
This is particularly relevant to wind and solar, so there are plenty of theories from electrolysis to hydrogen to storing compressed air.
As ever though, time is pressing and you can’t use a theory to charge your smartphone or EV....


sploo said:


> For EVs remember that it's the peak power requirement on the grid that's the issue. There is work in progress (Google "HCALCS") to control charging of such high draw devices; such that the power use can be smoothed out overnight (where there's traditionally low load on the grid).


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## sploo (17 Feb 2021)

bansobaby said:


> Yes, the idea of spreading power demand to match available supply is nothing new. As a student I had a VIP trip around Dinorwig (apologies for the spelling).
> This is particularly relevant to wind and solar, so there are plenty of theories from electrolysis to hydrogen to storing compressed air.
> As ever though, time is pressing and you can’t use a theory to charge your smartphone or EV....


It is pressing, but HCALCS aren't a theory.


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## bansobaby (17 Feb 2021)

sploo said:


> It is pressing, but HCALCS aren't a theory.


Yes, sorry, didn’t mean to imply they were....
Again though, it is in part a solution to a problem that puts a limit of sorts on the use of technology.....someone else made the point about battery swapping, ie treat the batteries in much the same way as we treat petrol now.
if you look at the massive infrastructure involved in petrol distribution and considered applying the same investment in battery swapping infrastructure in the near term we might be getting somewhere, but I don’t mind betting it won’t happen. 
All the eggs will go into the charging basket, which strikes me as being like having supertankers full of oil parked off shore, but no means of getting it into cars....


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## novocaine (17 Feb 2021)

Localised power production such as ITMP or Geopura intergrated hydrogen fuel cell CHP unit, acting as either island or augmented to the grid. both capable of CHP which results in 90-95% energy efficiency with the only waste product being pure water (about 50l an hour for a 100kw ballard fuel cell which is what is inside the magic box) 

it's small time now, it won't be for long, peak power demand for site power (to replace diesel) is already in operation, it will be coming to the road side for EV charging.

as ever though, our limit is storage not production. high pressure storage of hydrogen, oxygen and ammonia are the current options in renewable energy, nuclear isn't a storage solution, it is a viable production solution though and in stout obverse to some of the views decreed in this thread is a clean energy solution (note, clean, not renewable). 
solar has only become viable in recent years with better photovoltaic technology, solar heating (such as the power station in spain that caught fire) is a stand in that isn't on option for most temperate climates. 
tidal is inefficient.
wind is viable if we can overcome the placement and with new technology pointing towards floating turbines we maybe starting to get there although tieback to the grid is somewhat of an issue if we go further offshore with it. 
No one solution meets all the requirements, it will be a mix of all and it is coming and coming quicker than those outside the industry (renewables, oil and gas and nuclear) can imagine. 

as said else where, it will not be an enforced phase shift, "World change isn't a war, its a slow shift of the zietgiest" and it will be your "choice" when it happens. 

used that sound bite twice in 2 days about fairly different topics.


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## Phil Pascoe (17 Feb 2021)

sploo said:


> There is work in progress (Google "HCALCS") to control charging of such high draw devices; such that the power use can be smoothed out overnight (where there's traditionally low load on the grid).



My electrician told me last week he's installing more and more Economy7 systems. The strange thing is that if the desire is to get rid of the usage spikes they're going about it the wrong way - the unit price difference between day time and night time becomes smaller with every year. Mine is now 16p - 11p ... ... a couple of years ago it was 15p - 6p.


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## Phil Pascoe (17 Feb 2021)

sirocosm said:


> ... energy would be cheap ...



No it wouldn't be cheap - it would be too easy to stick huge tax rates on it.


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## Spectric (17 Feb 2021)

D_W said:


> Wind production cost here is 6 cents a kw/hr. Why would energy prices have to go high?


All depends on the price of the wind, someone will try and monopolise the resource.



NormanB said:


> So, respectfully, I would say there has been no material improvement in UK domestic house building standards in the last 60 odd years



Modern housebuilding is a disgrace, sole purpose is to make big bucks for property developers and the thought of having extra thick walls just means they can cram less buildings in.



sirocosm said:


> There is (mostly) no such thing as nuclear "waste". Nowadays "waste" from old reactors can be processed as fuel for new reactors.



Thats like saying you can take your old 5 1/4 floppy disk and put it into a DVD drive. Have you any idea on the toxicity of the waste produced from fuel reprocessing.


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## Phil Pascoe (17 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Can't see how mass EV use charging could work until they switch to removable batteries which could be charged overnight. Drive in, swap battery, drive out.


Yes. 
You should be able to drive up to an exchange point anywhere and switch batteries. It's like VHS and Betamax, Microsioft Windows etc. though, there are better but they come to market too late.


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## sploo (17 Feb 2021)

bansobaby said:


> Yes, sorry, didn’t mean to imply they were....
> Again though, it is in part a solution to a problem that puts a limit of sorts on the use of technology.....someone else made the point about battery swapping, ie treat the batteries in much the same way as we treat petrol now.
> if you look at the massive infrastructure involved in petrol distribution and considered applying the same investment in battery swapping infrastructure in the near term we might be getting somewhere, but I don’t mind betting it won’t happen.
> All the eggs will go into the charging basket, which strikes me as being like having supertankers full of oil parked off shore, but no means of getting it into cars....


Yea, I don't see it as a viable solution (unless maybe for HGVs). Part of the reason batteries have become near impossible to remove on mobile phones is down to compactness of packaging. Designing a car where the batteries could be easily removed would add all sorts of other compromises to the size and weight.

Overnight (slow) charging for those with a driveway is "fine", and the superfast chargers for those on the move should be acceptable - though obviously there aren't enough of them at the moment, and they're often in the "wrong" locations due to the availability of the grid infrastructure.


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## sirocosm (17 Feb 2021)

sploo said:


> Not sure that really matches the available evidence. The original industry claim of "power too cheap to meter" has been around for decades with regard to nuclear, but the reality is still that nuclear plants costs huge sums of money and take years to build.
> 
> The "no such thing as waste" surprises me too - at least, I understood that there are still problems with dangerous waste products.
> 
> I'm not inherently anti-nuclear; but (fission energy generation, at least) doesn't appear to be a panacea.



If the media hadn't scared the public off nuclear, the original claim would have come true, maybe not too cheap to meter (is anything too cheap?) but it would much, much cheaper. It is economics of scale, reactors are expensive because there are very few of them.

Canada designed mini-reactors suitable for district heating (SLOWPOKE reactor). They were intended to be unmanned, but again the public was scared off their use. There is no reason they could not build batteries of small modular reactors, it is all down to regulation which is not so much about safety, but about politics. Fukushima would not have happened if they would have went with the CANDU, again politics.


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## sploo (17 Feb 2021)

Phil Pascoe said:


> My electrician told me last week he's installing more and more Economy7 systems. The strange thing is that if the desire is to get rid of the usage spikes they're going about it the wrong way - the unit price difference between day time and night time becomes smaller with every year. Mine is now 16p - 11p ... ... a couple of years ago it was 15p - 6p.


Whilst this sounds like a cynical response; the purpose of HCALCS and overnight EV charging isn't really to save you money; it's to stop you popping the grid like a ripe tomato 

However, there are moves to create dynamic tariffs; whereby the unit cost can change rapidly across the day - allowing for cheaper power when supply is plentiful.

In theory then, you could have an EV hooked up to your house, and solar panels, and allow your car battery to supply the grid at peak times (and get credit for it), charge the EV from solar when it's sunny, but also ensure that you'll have XX miles of range at 8am on a weekday morning when you leave for work (by the grid guaranteeing that the car will get sufficient charge across the day/night, preferably when the unit cost of power is at its cheapest).

Some years off yet though.


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## sirocosm (17 Feb 2021)

Phil Pascoe said:


> No it wouldn't be cheap - it would be too easy to stick huge tax rates on it.



Or worse yet they would sell it to Europe and drive up the price here. That happened in Canada in Manitoba. They had a huge glut of hyro power in Manitoba and convinced everyone to switch to electric central heating (it gets -40C in the winter). Then they started selling it to other provinces and the prices went up to match the market (ie. gas).


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## sploo (17 Feb 2021)

sirocosm said:


> If the media hadn't scared the public off nuclear, the original claim would have come true, maybe not too cheap to meter (is anything too cheap?) but it would much, much cheaper. It is economics of scale, reactors are expensive because there are very few of them.


I just don't see the evidence for that with the continued cost of building new reactors. Economies of scale aren't really going to make that much difference if you go from a few hundred worldwide reactors to several more hundred.

Believe me; I'd be happy to be wrong though.


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

bansobaby said:


> Yes, sorry, didn’t mean to imply they were....
> Again though, it is in part a solution to a problem that puts a limit of sorts on the use of technology.....someone else made the point about battery swapping, ie treat the batteries in much the same way as we treat petrol now.
> if you look at the massive infrastructure involved in petrol distribution and considered applying the same investment in battery swapping infrastructure in the near term we might be getting somewhere, but I don’t mind betting it won’t happen.
> All the eggs will go into the charging basket, which strikes me as being like having supertankers full of oil parked off shore, but no means of getting it into cars....


I used to think battery swapping was the way forward until working for Jaguar, Landrover. I was an atribute leader in vehicle safety not a battery specialist but seeing the complexity of the systems associated with the batteries and the amount of energy that would have to be consumed in charging and discharging just associated with the swap, I don't think it's practical. One solution that does work is having a battery storage system in the home. This is an excellent use of used automotive traction batteries and has a number of benefits. Firstly you charge your battery bank when demand and hence price is lowest. You can sell back a percentage of stored power when demand is high, combined with solar or other renewables and you get rid of the famous half time power spike. The batteries we used had to deliver a maximum out put of 127 amps, with rapid charging and discharging plus use in extreme temperatures they deteriorate (although this is improving) my figures here are about 3 years out of date but in Germany automotive companies were buying back batteries putting them into blocks about the size of a washing machine to be installed in houses. The draw from domestic use is so low and the temperature issue does not apply so they last for very many years. When I last heard 20000 units were in use which was equated to not building a power station. You will never collect enough solar power to run your car but you spread the draw out over off peak hours or the full 24 hours if need be


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

novocaine said:


> Localised power production such as ITMP or Geopura intergrated hydrogen fuel cell CHP unit, acting as either island or augmented to the grid. both capable of CHP which results in 90-95% energy efficiency with the only waste product being pure water (about 50l an hour for a 100kw ballard fuel cell which is what is inside the magic box)
> 
> it's small time now, it won't be for long, peak power demand for site power (to replace diesel) is already in operation, it will be coming to the road side for EV charging.
> 
> ...


Very much with you on CHP with fuel cells, intrigued to know why you think tidal is inefficient, I know it has a number of serious issues but wouldn't include that, you sound like you know something I don't, please tell.


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

Phil Pascoe said:


> No it wouldn't be cheap - it would be too easy to stick huge tax rates on it.


Sorely no government would be that mean spirited


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## sirocosm (17 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> Thats like saying you can take your old 5 1/4 floppy disk and put it into a DVD drive. Have you any idea on the toxicity of the waste produced from fuel reprocessing.



Spent fuel from previous generation reactors is now be reprocessed for fuel, as are other sources, such as material from decomissioned weapons. The problem is that if you try to learn anything about the subject, all you will find is stupid articles in the media claiming:
"Why nuclear power is not the solution to climate change!" and then they go on to blather about windmills and solar power.


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## Phil Pascoe (17 Feb 2021)

sploo said:


> Whilst this sounds like a cynical response; the purpose of HCALCS and overnight EV charging isn't really to save you money; it's to stop you popping the grid like a ripe tomato



Precisely. They should be encouraging people to use electicity overnight - which is why they shouldn't be making the night time savings less.


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

Phil Pascoe said:


> Yes.
> You should be able to drive up to an exchange point anywhere and switch batteries. It's like VHS and Betamax, Microsioft Windows etc. though, there are better but they come to market too late.


It really isn't that simple. The battery is connected to heating and cooling circuits so there is a lot of plumbing involved and you do not want airlocks in these systems. Many sensitive electrical systems would have to be protected from voltage spikes, safety systems designed to discharge energy stored in components around the vehicle would have to be alerted to the swap in a way that could not be seen in system failure plus the packaging would be a nightmare. I used to be very in favor of this imagining a national standardized battery fleet with people being charged at each swap for the power they had used, I'm not saying it's impossible but it is far more costly in terms of infrastructure and a safety nightmare. Can you imagine swapping fuel tanks, that would be far easier and safer.


----------



## Yojevol (17 Feb 2021)

sirocosm said:


> Fukushima would not have happened if they would have went with the CANDU, again politics.


Why would Fukushima have fared better as a CANDU rather than a BWR?


Phil Pascoe said:


> Precisely. They should be encouraging people to use electicity overnight - which is why they shouldn't be making the night time savings less.


The reason that nighttime differentials have reduced is because there is no longer the need to keep the large coal fired stations ticking over at night. They have been replaced by gas fired stations which are much more controllable. So as as it's now possible to better match supply to demand, there is less need to encourage a nighttime usage.
Brian


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## novocaine (17 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> Very much with you on CHP with fuel cells, intrigued to know why you think tidal is inefficient, I know it has a number of serious issues but wouldn't include that, you sound like you know something I don't, please tell.



OK, should preface this with nearshore tidal is inefficient. basically the energy is to dispersed to collect efficiently. We see small scale tests that give great efficiency but it's simply not directly scalable. 

other tidal generation (estuary) is better but still not great, the strangford lough turbine is a good example but it is very much a local generator (1500 homes, when it works) and scaling of the system is all but impossible, it blocks about a 1/4 of the water way and needs to be in the deepest section of the inlet, adding more across the inlet won't work but an option to run them inline would, however, we have no idea on the impact of wildlife from doing that and each turbine would see less motive power due to the ones in front but also in dispersal of energy across a wider area.
in the UK we could maybe use the tech in 3-4 different locations but that won't happen due to the impact on shipping (they aren't going to do in in the Humber, it could work on the Seven but unlikely to work on the Mersey) . it's also very cyclical, with peak generation only achievable during extreme high tide, which means efficiency is affected simply because we can't turn it at it's peak output. 

offshore tidal is a different thing again and as said with emerging tech of floating turbines we may start to see combined units, but distribution and tie back is going to become a challenge. current technology isn't there for tidal energy and investment in it is somewhat lacking (chicken and egg).


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## sirocosm (17 Feb 2021)

Yojevol said:


> Why would Fukushima have fared better as a CANDU rather than a BWR?


Thermal mass, they would have had much more time to get the power back on. Funnily enough, the only reason the CANDU is like this is that they lacked the technology to build a small pressure vessel when they designed it, it has a much larger calandria.


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

novocaine said:


> OK, should preface this with nearshore tidal is inefficient. basically the energy is to dispersed to collect efficiently. We see small scale tests that give great efficiency but it's simply not directly scalable.
> 
> other tidal generation (estuary) is better but still not great, the strangford lough turbine is a good example but it is very much a local generator (1500 homes, when it works) and scaling of the system is all but impossible, it blocks about a 1/4 of the water way and needs to be in the deepest section of the inlet, adding more across the inlet won't work but an option to run them inline would, however, we have no idea on the impact of wildlife from doing that and each turbine would see less motive power due to the ones in front but also in dispersal of energy across a wider area.
> in the UK we could maybe use the tech in 3-4 different locations but that won't happen due to the impact on shipping (they aren't going to do in in the Humber, it could work on the Seven but unlikely to work on the Mersey) . it's also very cyclical, with peak generation only achievable during extreme high tide, which means efficiency is affected simply because we can't turn it at it's peak output.
> ...


Speaking here from a position of ignorance where everything is obvious and easy I wounder if small scale generation would make sense in areas where we are trying to prevent cliff erosion. I'm imagining a long shore barrier shaped to throw waves up and over into a lagoon behind, taking out the destructive energy, with the water draining back through low head turbines. Not going to power the national grid I appreciate


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## bansobaby (17 Feb 2021)

With regard to the idea of battery swapping and the complexity/safety.... I understand the issues re cooling, electronics etc, but surely we are missing the point to an extent.
Whilst the manufacturers have their interests at heart, there is a case to be made for ‘government’ to dictate within reason certain criteria that must be met for the greater good.
At the moment the makers just want to sell the most units, they are not in it for any altruistic reasons.
Unlike the automobile evolution that occurred over a century or more, the switch to electric cars will happen almost overnight.
In my opinion there is an argument to say that the power pack must be standardised to a certain extent.
But as usual, the laws of economics will dictate that the most complex and ultimately most inefficient way will lead and by the time the mistake is realised it will be too late to change....


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## novocaine (17 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> Speaking here from a position of ignorance where everything is obvious and easy I wounder if small scale generation would make sense in areas where we are trying to prevent cliff erosion. I'm imagining a long shore barrier shaped to throw waves up and over into a lagoon behind, taking out the destructive energy, with the water draining back through low head turbines. Not going to power the national grid I appreciate



now we move away from concerns of efficiency and in to the realms of major environmental damage.  
britainia terrace caused untold irrevocable damage to the Afon changing seabed to fallow pasture and pushing pluvial flooding to other areas of the coast. 
sea defenses can not be considered on the microscale of localised damage, changes made have effect elsewhere, minor changes to places like Dungeness (still one of my favorite nuclear sites, the name is just fun to say, especially with a forced Scottish accent to mimic my old boss) have massive effects further along the coast, we see it on the east coast around Yorkshire where localised flood defenses pushed tides to new heights (the loss of spurn point), although it has to be pointed out this was in conjunction with exceptional circumstances. 

I'm not an environmental specialist by any stretch, and would be happy to take the evidence presented by someone with great knowledge. 

perhaps we shouldn't be trying to prevent cliff erosion and instead, stop building houses in stupid places (same goes for inland flood plains for that matter).


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

bansobaby said:


> With regard to the idea of battery swapping and the complexity/safety.... I understand the issues re cooling, electronics etc, but surely we are missing the point to an extent.
> Whilst the manufacturers have their interests at heart, there is a case to be made for ‘government’ to dictate within reason certain criteria that must be met for the greater good.
> At the moment the makers just want to sell the most units, they are not in it for any altruistic reasons.
> Unlike the automobile evolution that occurred over a century or more, the switch to electric cars will happen almost overnight.
> ...


In some ways swapping batteries would suit the manufacturers it's a very expensive component which is rapidly evolving, renting batteries is seen as an ongoing income, there deterioration is seen as a barrier to sales but when you look into the details it just isn't a good idea


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## MusicMan (17 Feb 2021)

Jake said:


> One of the huge benefits of fusion is that it is inherently far safer than fission.


Exactly. It is totally different from all current nuclear reactors. It uses no plutonium, uranium or any other ore for fuel. If it goes wrong it stops working. Actually, the problem is getting it to start working .


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## Yojevol (17 Feb 2021)

sirocosm said:


> Thermal mass, they would have had much more time to get the power back on. Funnily enough, the only reason the CANDU is like this is that they lacked the technology to build a small pressure vessel when they designed it, it has a much larger calandria.


They lost all their emergency coolant supplies due the 14m tidal wave. I'm not convinced the Canadian design would've been safer. Interestingly, the Magnox and AGR's can survive loss of coolant power because sufficient natural connection sets in. At least that's the theory, I'm not sure we've actually tried it. The Russians did, of course, and it all went pear shaped. 
Brian


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## bansobaby (17 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> In some ways swapping batteries would suit the manufacturers it's a very expensive component which is rapidly evolving, renting batteries is seen as an ongoing income, there deterioration is seen as a barrier to sales but when you look into the details it just isn't a good idea


I’m sure you are right.
We as a society are much more focussed on risk now.
I wonder how the idea of a car would go down nowadays if it hadn’t yet been invented.......
”Here’s an idea....I’ve come up with an design for something that can deliver ten times the kinetic energy of a .50 calibre round, is in the sole control of the operator and will be available to pretty much anyone who wants one.....”


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## DBT85 (17 Feb 2021)

Am I the only one that quite likes seeing a mass of turbines as I drive through Wales?



MusicMan said:


> Exactly. It is totally different from all current nuclear reactors. It uses no plutonium, uranium or any other ore for fuel. If it goes wrong it stops working. Actually, the problem is getting it to start working .


Oh come now. The problem isn't getting it started. It's just keeping it going


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## sirocosm (17 Feb 2021)

Yojevol said:


> They lost all their emergency coolant supplies due the 14m tidal wave. I'm not convinced the Canadian design would've been safer. Interestingly, the Magnox and AGR's can survive loss of coolant power because sufficient natural connection sets in. At least that's the theory, I'm not sure we've actually tried it. The Russians did, of course, and it all went pear shaped.
> Brian


The shutdown itself is not the problem, it is the cooling of the still hot fuel afterwards. If memory serves, they had already shut Fukushima down when the wave hit. The CANDUs can shutdown without power, and they can cool the fuel bundles by gravity circulation. The large thermal mass means that everything happens much more slowly.

There are many other current designs which can also cool via gravity circulation in the event of complete power loss. The problem is again political. When it is time to give a permit to build a nuclear plant, the decision is whether to build one or not, and not so much a discussion of which designs are safest. The CANDU was inherently safer than most designs in those days, but cost more upfront for the heavy water, and produced less power for the amount of fuel they used. However, in practice they sometimes outperformed others as they can be refueled while running, so their uptime is higher. Again, they trade safety for money. The older CANDUs also ran on unenriched fuel, little ceramic pellets that you can hold in your hand (not so much after they are used).


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## DBT85 (17 Feb 2021)

I was under the impression that Fukushima survived the earthquake that was an order of magnitude higher than designed for, but the tidal wave swept away the diesel tanks which were above ground, so the generators couldn't run the pumps for cooling?


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## Rorschach (17 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> It really isn't that simple. The battery is connected to heating and cooling circuits so there is a lot of plumbing involved and you do not want airlocks in these systems. Many sensitive electrical systems would have to be protected from voltage spikes, safety systems designed to discharge energy stored in components around the vehicle would have to be alerted to the swap in a way that could not be seen in system failure plus the packaging would be a nightmare. I used to be very in favor of this imagining a national standardized battery fleet with people being charged at each swap for the power they had used, I'm not saying it's impossible but it is far more costly in terms of infrastructure and a safety nightmare. Can you imagine swapping fuel tanks, that would be far easier and safer.



A chinese company is doing it seemingly fairly successfully right now. Personally I think it's probably the only viable solution unless we are able to create a battery that can charge in just a few minutes.









Does battery swapping have a future outside of China?


Back in the annals of EV history, battery swapping was put forward as a way of overcoming the issue around charging time. Tesla tested in over in the USA in 2013, demonstrating its ability to swap out a Model S battery in 90 seconds, but has since abandoned it. However, in China the idea is very...




www.discoverev.co.uk


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## sploo (17 Feb 2021)

MusicMan said:


> Exactly. It is totally different from all current nuclear reactors. It uses no plutonium, uranium or any other ore for fuel. If it goes wrong it stops working. Actually, the problem is getting it to start working .


Though one of the guys at Culham told me that when they lose the containment, the (lithium/tritium, IRC) gas inside the Tokamak - mass approximately that of a postage stamp - slaps the sides so hard that they usually get a call from the local seismology station asking if it was them


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## Spectric (17 Feb 2021)

Most incidents are not the result of a single factor, it is more often than not a sequence of events that completes the loop. Chernobyl had a design flaw, had they not decided to perform that exercise then the incident may never have happened and no one would have been the wiser, it would just be like any other nuclear plant and probably running today. Fukishima was in all accounts a safe, well designed and run plant but during design safety assessments no one thought about a potential tsunami that could take out the cooling system, in all honesty what was the real likelyhood, you cannot foresee all eventualities. The result was massive explosions due to Hydrogen that tore the buildings apart and a partial nuclear explosion in one reactor. 

We may never know the full impact of Chernobyl and certainly not Fukishima but future generations unfortunately will, there were massive leaks of radioactive liquid that went into the pacific, some incredable levels of Strontium, Caesium and other material into the atmosphere and who knows the impact this will have long term.

Now if that was not bad enough the Japanese may well just dump thousands of gallons of contaminated water into the ocean because they have nowhere to store it, tanks all filling up.


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## Jacob (17 Feb 2021)

Rorschach said:


> A chinese company is doing it seemingly fairly successfully right now. Personally I think it's probably the only viable solution unless we are able to create a battery that can charge in just a few minutes.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


If a vehicle on one charge does does say 1/3rd of the mileage and takes 3 times as long to "fill" it follows that to be comparable we would need 9 times as many charge points as we currently have fuel filling pumps.
That would be 9 times the number of filling stations along our roads.
Slightly fewer if home charging taken into account.
We need something like wartime utility standards, rather than simply allowing vehicle manufacturers to keep coming up with elaborate solutions, which has already been a disaster with fossil fuels; massive infrastructure, massive destruction of town and country, massive movement of goods and people who otherwise would have been locally sourced, massive air pollution, unsustainable waste of resources.
Climate change could be a chance to rebuild without making all the same mistakes. Even bigger mistake would be nuclear power IMHO.


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## Jacob (17 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> ...
> 
> We may never know the full impact of Chernobyl ...


Whatever the figure* one thing we do know is that the effects could have been far worse, devastating large areas of Europe, had it not been for good luck with wind and weather directions and conditions.
*Wikipedia: "....... 4,000 fatalities when solely assessing the three most contaminated former Soviet states, to about 9,000 to 16,000 fatalities when assessing the total continent of Europe...."


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## Spectric (17 Feb 2021)

The one point not being made is that for battery swapping to become viable then all batterys need to be the same in both size, charging requirements and connections otherwise there will be chaos. Then it would be a modern version of the horse and carriage where you travel so far, stop at the inn and get fresh horses, in our case batteries. This then causes issues for the manufacturers, it is easier for them to wrap a vehicle round the batteries to maximise space than try to put them in accessable compartments. 

I still believe long term the hybrid is the answer, runs mostly on batteries which can be kept charged by a small highly efficient engine, maybe even a small turbine running parifin.


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## D_W (17 Feb 2021)

It's a bit early to dictate battery standardization, as doing such would be picking winners and losers. If we had done such a thing a decade ago, we'd have a design that may not accommodate thermal regulation, and that regulation is what makes Tesla's batteries something that will outlast the car itself. 

A little more than a decade ago, the pack included in a model S cost more than the car was sold for. 2010 avg cost for capacity was $1,100 per kw/hr, averaging something like $137 for the same capacity last year and google links an article stating that there have been some sales at less than $100 per kw/hr. 

There may not be incentive at some point for fast swapping batteries industrial forklift style. The trouble with the swapping idea is that it will increase the cost at least two fold over having a permanent pack - suddenly, you have infrastructure that wasn't used before, insurance, liability, taxes, regulatory compliance, etc. I don't see it coming to fruition - it made sense only when cars had to be charged overnight. 

There will probably be a secondary market for the thermally managed packs, too. If telsa considers a 100kw/hr pack no longer usable at 90kw/hr, wouldn't you like to have it to manage power? Anywhere here in the states where tiered power is sold (california can have sky high top tier costs for heavy users), such a thing would pay for itself quickly. If you were a generation further in the future with cars and had two used packs installed stationary in your house, pulling power only when it was cheap and kicking on when it's expensive, you could end up with some absurd amount of power on hand - 150 or 200 kw/hr, and the duty for the batteries would be gentler than a car.


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## Rorschach (17 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> If a vehicle on one charge does does say 1/3rd of the mileage and takes 3 times as long to "fill" it follows that to be comparable we would need 9 times as many charge points as we currently have fuel filling pumps.
> That would be 9 times the number of filling stations along our roads.
> Slightly fewer if home charging taken into account.
> We need something like wartime utility standards, rather than simply allowing vehicle manufacturers to keep coming up with elaborate solutions, which has already been a disaster with fossil fuels; massive infrastructure, massive destruction of town and country, massive movement of goods and people who otherwise would have been locally sourced, massive air pollution, unsustainable waste of resources.
> Climate change could be a chance to rebuild without making all the same mistakes. Even bigger mistake would be nuclear power IMHO.



That's why I said we need either replaceable batteries (as they are using in China) or batteries that can charge in say 5 minutes.

If you can charge a battery for 300 miles or replace a 300 mile battery in under 5 minutes then the problem is solved.


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## DBT85 (17 Feb 2021)

Battery tech will evolve especially as more are working on it now that they want to offer the best range and charging speeds. New Hybrids won't be around after the mid 35s.


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

Rorschach said:


> A chinese company is doing it seemingly fairly successfully right now. Personally I think it's probably the only viable solution unless we are able to create a battery that can charge in just a few minutes.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Very interesting article, it doesn't change my mind that it's not a good idea. The big benefit to them is that having very dense urban populations where home charging is almost impossible it is the only way to make EVs practicable, while they are forced into it we are not and have better options. We will see where it goes.


Spectric said:


> The one point not being made is that for battery swapping to become viable then all batterys need to be the same in both size, charging requirements and connections otherwise there will be chaos. Then it would be a modern version of the horse and carriage where you travel so far, stop at the inn and get fresh horses, in our case batteries. This then causes issues for the manufacturers, it is easier for them to wrap a vehicle round the batteries to maximise space than try to put them in accessable compartments.
> 
> I still believe long term the hybrid is the answer, runs mostly on batteries which can be kept charged by a small highly efficient engine, maybe even a small turbine running parifin.


The problem for hybrids is the need to package and carry around both power trains. I am very impressed with MHEV systems, indeed I'm surprised that cars without this are still on sale the gain in efficiency is enormous with the production cost relatively low and the weight difference negligible as they run a smaller IC engine and need a smaller fuel tank. PHEV to me just doesn't make sense and a high proportion of users end up almost never charging the battery after the novelty wears off so run a heavy under powered short range car. It seems a bit like early steam ships still having masts and sails as they couldn't trust the technology.


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## D_W (17 Feb 2021)

Who is the biggest and most efficient company dealing with batteries and battery tech at this point? If it's not tesla, I don't know who it would be. 

In the early 2010s, Tesla mentioned that they were going to offer gigacharging or whatever they call it and battery swapping at same locations. They mentioned lower prices than most residential charging for the electricity and about the same cost as gasoline for battery swapping. 

within a year, they abandoned the idea. 

If tesla doesn't think battery swapping has much of a future, then it's unlikely that anyone will be able to do it economically in the western world. I'm sure the reason for tesla is that they intend to instead offer faster and faster charge rates. 

I don't have an EV, so I don't know what the top rate is right now, but I believe it's about 150kw rate, with something like 1.2mw rate planned for the trucks. 

If I could stop and eat for 20 minutes and wee and get another 200 miles of range, that's plenty fine with me.


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## Trainee neophyte (17 Feb 2021)

_Back to the nuclear thing:




A “manmade” disaster

Click to expand...

_


> : The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties. They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents. Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly “manmade.” We believe that the root causes were the organizational and regulatory systems that supported faulty rationales for decisions and actions, rather than issues relating to the competency of any specific individual. (see Recommendation 1)” — from *The official report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission* (pg. 16)


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## Rorschach (17 Feb 2021)

D_W said:


> Who is the biggest and most efficient company dealing with batteries and battery tech at this point? If it's not tesla, I don't know who it would be.
> 
> In the early 2010s, Tesla mentioned that they were going to offer gigacharging or whatever they call it and battery swapping at same locations. They mentioned lower prices than most residential charging for the electricity and about the same cost as gasoline for battery swapping.
> 
> ...



Super fast charging is likely to be the way forward rather than swapping batteries, but swapping batteries works with current technology quite well, whereas super fast charging requires a new type of battery than can handle those massive loads without damaging it, current Li-Ion batteries can be charged at high loads but it shortens their life considerably, slow gentle charging is what they really like. 

Personally, I think they need to get 300 miles of range in under 5 minutes for it to be practical. Stopping for a wee and something to eat is all well and good when you are doing a long journey but the vast majority of charging is going to be people who drive short distances so they will need it to be just like a petrol station is today, in and out in under 5 minutes.


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## Jameshow (17 Feb 2021)

DBT85 said:


> Battery tech will evolve especially as more are working on it now that they want to offer the best range and charging speeds. New Hybrids won't be around after the mid 35s.


Like most of us! 

I think hybrids are great electric for everyday local driving and petrol / diesel for long distance driving. 
I don't get hybrids you don't plug in. 

Cheers James


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

Jameshow said:


> Like most of us!
> 
> I think hybrids are great electric for everyday local driving and petrol / diesel for long distance driving.
> I don't get hybrids you don't plug in.
> ...


The point of MHEV systems is to improve efficiency. Petrol engines are most efficient at higher loads up to a point but you wouldn't want a car where you were regularly cruising at 80% load it wouldn't accelerate just gather momentum if you take my point. With MHEV you get the small engine working hard and efficient while the electric motor provides the extra power when needed, the batteries tend to be small 48V units and relatively light, recharged by "engine braking" to recover energy normally wasted, if you have ever made the mistake of touching a recently used break disk you appreciate how much energy that is. Just as an example VW claim the Golf blue motion gives 67.3mpg where the Golf MHEV gives 176.6 all be it with lower performance. I used to drive the blue motion and on long runs if I avoided supermarket fuel regularly got economy into the 70s but no where near the MHEV. 

PHEV work best if you let the vehicle decide the mix of power to use, if you try to drive on just one you are lugging the other around unnecessarily better to have a small electric for every day local and a second larger vehicle for long distance or heavy load use. It can only be a matter of time before someone offers a hire contract where you can swap vehicles to suit your need.


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## Jacob (17 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> The point of MHEV systems is to improve efficiency. Petrol engines are most efficient at higher loads up to a point but you wouldn't want a car where you were regularly cruising at 80% load it wouldn't accelerate just gather momentum if you take my point. With MHEV you get the small engine working hard and efficient while the electric motor provides the extra power when needed, the batteries tend to be small 48V units and relatively light, recharged by "engine braking" to recover energy normally wasted, if you have ever made the mistake of touching a recently used break disk you appreciate how much energy that is. Just as an example VW claim the Golf blue motion gives 67.3mpg where the Golf MHEV gives 176.6 all be it with lower performance. I used to drive the blue motion and on long runs if I avoided supermarket fuel regularly got economy into the 70s but no where near the MHEV.
> 
> PHEV work best if you let the vehicle decide the mix of power to use, if you try to drive on just one you are lugging the other around unnecessarily better to have a small electric for every day local and a second larger vehicle for long distance or heavy load use. It can only be a matter of time before someone offers a hire contract where you can swap vehicles to suit your need.


Aren't these just engineers' toys for boys? Both defeat the object by using fossil fuel but will sell on strength of expensive "clever" engineering and token gesture to zero carbon.
What we need is the EV equivalent of the Trabant or Morris 1000 but well made and cleverly engineered. Times they are a changin!


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Aren't these just engineers' toys for boys? Both defeat the object by using fossil fuel but will sell on strength of "clever" engineering and token gesture to zero carbon


Agreed they are still part of the problem but also a step in the wright direction unless we stop using cars tomorrow what do you suggest?


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## Jacob (17 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> Agreed they are still part of the problem but also a step in the wright direction unless we stop using cars tomorrow what do you suggest?


Stopping using cars should certainly be on the agenda!
Perhaps what we need is the EV equivalent of the Trabant or Morris 1000 but well made and cleverly engineered. Times they are a changin!


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## DBT85 (17 Feb 2021)

Jameshow said:


> Like most of us!
> 
> I think hybrids are great electric for everyday local driving and petrol / diesel for long distance driving.
> I don't get hybrids you don't plug in.
> ...


Hey I'll not even be 50!

Hybrids will be gone because its being legislated against. Nothing with an ICE by 2035, earlier in some countries.


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Stopping using cars should certainly be on the agenda!
> Perhaps what we need is the EV equivalent of the Trabant or Morris 1000 but well made and cleverly engineered. Times they are a changin!


We do indeed need small efficient transport, ridiculous to have a 1.5 ton vehicle to move one person

The loosers now will later be last
for the times they change - but not very fast.


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## Rorschach (17 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> We do indeed need small efficient transport, ridiculous to have a 1.5 ton vehicle to move one person



Except our car rarely transports 1 person, it almost always transports at least 2 people along with "stuff" (normally shopping).


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## Ozi (17 Feb 2021)

Rorschach said:


> Except our car rarely transports 1 person, it almost always transports at least 2 people along with "stuff" (normally shopping).


So you wouldn't want a single seater but a lot of people make most journeys alone, typically to work and back with minimal luggage. For myself and my wife it would be good if we had one small family / shopping vehicle with our second car a single seat high economy vehicle doing as little environmental damage as possible. Short journeys to farm shop etc I either walk or use a push bike but there is a need for something in between, it would also make a good first car, you might see a lot less young lads hurt on the roads if they had to have a probationary drivers car that carried one person at up to 50 mph for the first two years, might make their insurance affordable as well.


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## Rorschach (17 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> So you wouldn't want a single seater but a lot of people make most journeys alone, typically to work and back with minimal luggage. For myself and my wife it would be good if we had one small family / shopping vehicle with our second car a single seat high economy vehicle doing as little environmental damage as possible. Short journeys to farm shop etc I either walk or use a push bike but there is a need for something in between, it would also make a good first car, you might see a lot less young lads hurt on the roads if they had to have a probationary drivers car that carried one person at up to 50 mph for the first two years, might make their insurance affordable as well.



That's fine, if you are lucky enough to have the space to park 2 vehicles. Some people don't even have space to park 1 vehicle.


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## thick_mike (17 Feb 2021)

Ozi said:


> So you wouldn't want a single seater but a lot of people make most journeys alone, typically to work and back with minimal luggage. For myself and my wife it would be good if we had one small family / shopping vehicle with our second car a single seat high economy vehicle doing as little environmental damage as possible. Short journeys to farm shop etc I either walk or use a push bike but there is a need for something in between, it would also make a good first car, you might see a lot less young lads hurt on the roads if they had to have a probationary drivers car that carried one person at up to 50 mph for the first two years, might make their insurance affordable as well.



Like this?


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## Jelly (17 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Stopping using cars should certainly be on the agenda!
> Perhaps what we need is the EV equivalent of the Trabant or Morris 1000 but well made and cleverly engineered. Times they are a changin!



Renault have a thing like that but slightly more to the Peel P100 end of the "small, simple vehicle" spectrum, it's pretty nifty for what it is, but not a complete replacement for a car.

Something like a Nissan Leaf gutted of extraneous gadgetry, and fitted with better battery technology wouldn't be far off fitting the bill of what you're thinking of.



Personally I feel that hydrogen power will win out in the end, partially because of the filling advantsge, but mostly because the elements which are needed in the battery chemistry of most current and next gen automotive batteries are in critically short supply, and decent closed loop recycling is still a good way away meaning that a good proportion of the material currently in cars (and every other battery powered device) will be lost to us forever.

Living very close to the first UK hydrogen filling station (powered by an onsite wind turbine no less), I seriously explored Leasing a Toyota Mirai when work first offered me a car allowance (no way I could afford it out of pocket), but I have to visit some parts of the country where H2 filling stations are sparse on the ground and even with the 650+ mile range, it was too risky.

I'm hoping that Ineos Automotive's proposed H2 powered Grenadier comes to fruition and that the rumours it's part of a wider plan by Ineos to open up the H2 vehicle fuel market (something which makes sense for one of the world's largest Hydrogen producers to do) are true.


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## Ozi (18 Feb 2021)

thick_mike said:


> Like this?



That is brilliant. But balls of steal taking it onto Coventry ring road. Give it another 5 mph and with a battery that small have it plug in like a cordless drill so you have one at home on charge and can take it indoors at night to keep it warm / not nicked and I think were there. 

When we get to no petrol engines allowed these could take off. Can't see the public fleet idea working, to many ass holes would wreck them as the people who tried it with scooters in Coventry found out.


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## novocaine (18 Feb 2021)

We have a small and efficient single person vehicle already. unfortunately it lacks the creature comforts that most of society demands. 
you might have heard of it, it's call a bike, motor or otherwise. now turn on the whingy voice.... but it's cold and it's wet and it's not got a stereo and, and, and, and.......
worse still on a bicycle, you might get a bit sweaty and heaven forbid.


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## Jonm (18 Feb 2021)

thick_mike said:


> Like this?



As a concept that is really good. A practical way of travelling around town/city. Easy to park, room for two people plus shopping. As for use by multiple people, I can see that having issues. Where will it be stored that is convenient, who will make sure it is charged up, what if it is damaged, will it be vandalised etc. 

As a city car the light weight, zero emissions, quiet and low power requirement is great. In fact electric vehicles should make our cities much more pleasant with less air pollution and noise. I suspect that one of the Scandinavian countries or perhaps Germany will show us what improvements can be made to a city to make them more pleasant.

In the meantime I will continue to use my old, large engined, not economical Volvo. Low annual mileage and basically zero depreciation makes this the economical and environmentally best solution.
A new car would dump 20 tons of CO2 in to the atmosphere. My petrol usage creates about 1 ton of CO2 per year, the new car if it were twice as economical would produce 0.5 ton of CO2 per year, so 40 years to break even, far longer than the life of the new car.


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## Jelly (18 Feb 2021)

novocaine said:


> We have a small and efficient single person vehicle already. unfortunately it lacks the creature comforts that most of society demands.
> you might have heard of it, it's call a bike, motor or otherwise. now turn on the whingy voice.... but it's cold and it's wet and it's not got a stereo and, and, and, and.......
> worse still on a bicycle, you might get a bit sweaty and heaven forbid.



I used to cycle to and from work, but after narrowly avoiding being thrown under a bus the 3rd time I was knocked off, I gave up and went back to the car...

To add insult to injury my at the time boss was waiting at the gate for me and launched into his "why the hell are you late" rant, before clocking that he was shouting at a bloke in torn lycras, bleeding from various grazes and carrying a broken pushbike on his shoulder; and it might in fact be coming across as a mite unreasonable.


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## novocaine (18 Feb 2021)

not going to argue with you Jelly, but that isn't really the fault of the bike is it? 

I've been knocked off 3 times in 4 years, not once has it been the fault of the bike or me. 

not the point to the discussion though, so I won't derail it down the line of rubbish drivers, mainly because someone will be along to point out that cyclists make mistakes too and then we just spiral down the same opinionated rants with little to no evidence that this place is known for.


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## Jelly (18 Feb 2021)

novocaine said:


> not going to argue with you Jelly, but that isn't really the fault of the bike is it?
> 
> I've been knocked off 3 times in 4 years, not once has it been the fault of the bike or me.
> 
> not the point to the discussion though, so I won't derail it down the line of rubbish drivers, mainly because someone will be along to point out that cyclists make mistakes too and then we just spiral down the same opinionated rants with little to no evidence that this place is known for.



I would tend to say that given that it's common knowledge that people in general are not great at piloting their chosen modes of transport, it wouldn't be a huge leap to conclude it's best to separate the two camps (and as far as possible pedestrians too)...

Yet we don't seem to have much enthusiasm for the idea as a nation, in spite of our national love for appeals to "common sense".


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## Jacob (18 Feb 2021)

Have cycled 1000s of miles and never been knocked off. Maybe just lucky but I do think there are tactics to learn especially if things get busy - first and foremost being hi-viz. Motorists are on autopilot a lot of the time but that hi viz yellow instantly says be careful: police/road-worker/emergency.
Then other stuff like keeping away from kerb, holding position in centre of a traffic lane, other routines. Maybe there's not enough info, training etc - there's a definite learning curve.


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## sirocosm (18 Feb 2021)

I ride a bike to work, and hope not to die early. In the UK drivers are much more impatient than other places, even towards pedestrians. I can't wait until they are all off the road and we have driverless cars, then we won't even need bike lanes (because the driverless cars will be polite). I think they will force regular cars off the road way faster than people think, and it will be because of the price of insurance.


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## Jelly (19 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Have cycled 1000s of miles and never been knocked off. Maybe just lucky but I do think there are tactics to learn especially if things get busy - first and foremost being hi-viz. Motorists are on autopilot a lot of the time but that hi viz yellow instantly says be careful: police/road-worker/emergency.
> Then other stuff like keeping away from kerb, holding position in centre of a traffic lane, other routines. Maybe there's not enough info, training etc - there's a definite learning curve.



Whilst I was at Uni I commuted about 7000 miles total by bike over 5 years without any issues, but in a rural area and a small low traffic city; only had issues once I ended up in a much bigger city with dense but fast moving traffic.

So I'm not sure how much luck has to do with it, good judgement might be more the factor as I doubt You (or many others) would voluntarily choose to ride the route I had to follow!

All three times were whilst wearing fluro orange cycling gear, and all at the same roundabout which has 3 lanes coming on, in 4 directions, and would have involved a two mile (and three hill) detour, or a one mile detour cycling on a dual carriageway to avoid it ... 

Two were people entering the roundabout on my right after I'd set off with a clear run, and maintaining too fast a speed assuming I could accelerate as fast as a car then clipping my back wheel, and the final time was a transit trying to undertake me on the roundabout and sideswiping me.

I came to the conclusion that there were no appropriate cycling routes where I could be confident in morning rush hour traffic; which was a bit rubbish as I found it really energised me for the day ahead when I did commute by bike.


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## Jacob (19 Feb 2021)

Jelly said:


> Whilst I was at Uni I commuted about 7000 miles total by bike over 5 years without any issues, but in a rural area and a small low traffic city; only had issues once I ended up in a much bigger city with dense but fast moving traffic.
> 
> So I'm not sure how much luck has to do with it, good judgement might be more the factor as I doubt You (or many others) would voluntarily choose to ride the route I had to follow!
> 
> ...


Worst one ever I nearly got stuck in one of the middle lanes and couldn't cross back to get to the exit, with huge wagons passing on either side. Big roundabouts with fast traffic are not bike friendly!
Since then I've occasionally got off and pushed around roundabouts like that, or pedalled cautiously around the outer edge, making a dash across the exits.


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## Robbo60 (19 Feb 2021)

So I'm guessing my prospective purchase of a 4.2 supercharged Range Rover wouldn't go down well?


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## Jacob (19 Feb 2021)

Robbo60 said:


> So I'm guessing my prospective purchase of a 4.2 supercharged Range Rover wouldn't go down well?


Wouldn't want to separate boys from their toys!


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## Jelly (19 Feb 2021)

Robbo60 said:


> So I'm guessing my prospective purchase of a 4.2 supercharged Range Rover wouldn't go down well?


I mean I'd depends if it's a Range Rover, or one of the modern monstrosities which looks indistinguishable from every other car in the JLR lineup...

You'd get a pass for aesthetic and historical reasons if it's original...


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## Jelly (19 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Big roundabouts with fast traffic are not bike friendly!
> ...
> Pedalled cautiously around the outer edge, making a dash across the exits.



Agreed!

York has been experimenting with putting physically separated cycle lanes round the outside of roundabouts using two different designs, one from Amsterdam and one from Utrecht.

Both which facilitate the approach you're talking about but with a big kerb to discourage traffic getting too close making it feel a little less sketchy!

It's quite a bit more pleasant as a cyclist and actually draws your attention to think about the cyclists as a driver, without getting in your way at all if there aren't any using it.


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## sploo (19 Feb 2021)

Jelly said:


> Agreed!
> 
> York has been experimenting with putting physically separated cycle lanes round the outside of roundabouts using two different designs, one from Amsterdam and one from Utrecht.
> 
> ...


I wish we had more of that sort of stuff in the UK. As someone who enjoys driving and cycling I don't have an "us vs them" mentality; just an appreciation that the speeds and needs of cars and bicycles really don't mix well, and generally just result in both groups getting annoyed with one another (and accidents).


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## Jacob (22 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Whatever the figure* one thing we do know is that the effects could have been far worse, devastating large areas of Europe, had it not been for good luck with wind and weather directions and conditions.
> *Wikipedia: "....... 4,000 fatalities when solely assessing the three most contaminated former Soviet states, to about 9,000 to 16,000 fatalities when assessing the total continent of Europe...."


Low tech gets lost in the argument. Not all silly, but may not appeal to techie types!
Is there anything in this idea? Would You Cycle For An Hour Every Day If It Powered Your Home For 24 Hours?
Other low tech suggestions:
1 fill empty quarries and mines with plastic waste and wood - returning carbon to the carboniferous strata we've stripped.
2 Tax plastic production out of viability but buy back waste to dump in holes
2 store surplus wind farm energy by winding massive weights up old mine shafts, to be lowered whilst powering generators. Sounds daft but could work around here where we have old mine shafts all over the landscape, and wind generators.
3 Choose a date when all fossil fuel use will stop, globally.
4 Ban all street parking everywhere (except when stopping to load, unload of course)
5 Impose country wide 50 mph speed limit
6 A very big one could be to ban meat eating.

hmm, could go on! The point is - we have to think outside the box and not just hope that somehow things will carry on the same, thanks to 100% safe nuclear power or other mirages!


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## Rorschach (22 Feb 2021)

@Jacob You missed number 7, pick a day and everyone drinks the coolaid. Problem solved.


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## Spectric (22 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> Motorists are on autopilot a lot of the time but that hi viz yellow instantly says be careful:


Yes I do question Yellow as the best colour for Hi Viz, I suppose it depends upon the background. In towns and cities yellow does stand out but what about in the country with a more green/yellow background, then I think that orange is probably the better choice. Also note that the railways use orange hi vis and also the bright pink worn by female cyclist also stands out but I cannot see it catching on for general use.


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## Jacob (22 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> Yes I do question Yellow as the best colour for Hi Viz, I suppose it depends upon the background. In towns and cities yellow does stand out but what about in the country with a more green/yellow background, then I think that orange is probably the better choice. Also note that the railways use orange hi vis and also the bright pink worn by female cyclist also stands out but I cannot see it catching on for general use.


It's not just the brightness it's the association of hi viz yellow with police, emergency services, road workers, etc. 
High viz orange does the same for rail workers - it's not the colour alone, its the message. That's what cuts through the auto pilot. 
Pink won't do it, even if covered in polka dots


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## Spectric (22 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> That's what cuts through the auto pilot.
> Pink won't do it, even if covered in polka dots


But what about who's wearing it !


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## Jacob (22 Feb 2021)

Spectric said:


> But what about who's wearing it !


Pink means girls!
Could be distracting and cause accidents!


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## Amateur (22 Feb 2021)

Its the size of the population and all the junk we run on electricity which is the problem.

I've taken the tumble dryer off the wife, along with her heated rollers.
I've made a start.


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## sploo (22 Feb 2021)

Amateur said:


> I've taken the tumble dryer off the wife, along with her heated rollers.


So.... your clothes are dry and your hair is lovely and curly?

(I'll get my coat)


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## MikeJhn (27 Feb 2021)

Fascinating from high visibility to ban meat eating, where next girls.


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## D_W (1 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> Worst one ever I nearly got stuck in one of the middle lanes and couldn't cross back to get to the exit, with huge wagons passing on either side. Big roundabouts with fast traffic are not bike friendly!
> Since then I've occasionally got off and pushed around roundabouts like that, or pedalled cautiously around the outer edge, making a dash across the exits.


 
For years here before I moved, I lived close to a slow traffic combo use area. I rode a bike about 80 miles a week. Great. 

Took the bike back to where my parents live and I swear (rural area where they don't like seeing bikes on roads with nearly no shoulder) I felt the breeze off of every car mirror that went by and each was unsettling. 

Boss at my first job had to head to the center of the state as his triathlete brother was out riding and knocked off (deceased). Drunk driver (as a kid, we used to assume the roads were unsafe friday and saturday night, but we weren't drunks and couldn't fathom the idea that drunks drank during the day mid-week). 

The more avid bikers here get more and more bold riding in areas not really suited because they're zoned in on their exercise, etc. Accident near here not that long ago - driver was high on heroin, cyclist killed. 

Probably more dangerous mile per mile, but these stories are fairly rare.


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