Is this a 2013 Streisand-Effect finalist?
The UK has decided to build its first new nuclear power plant in 20 years. The UK Department of Energy & Climate Change posted this graphic below in a News Story probably to help justify why it really did make sense to go nuclear rather than renewable. The Renewable Energy Association called it “unhelpful”, and lo, it disappeared from gov.uk.
Credit goes to Emily Gosden’s Tweet, and Will Heaven‘s Blog. Hat tip to Colin.
(Click to enlarge to see the fine print)
The fine print (edited out in the small copy here) says that Hickley Point C “is estimated to be equal to around 7% of UK electricity consumption in 2025 and enough to power nearly 6 million homes.” About onshore wind, the fine print reads: “The footprint will depend on the location and turbine technology deployed. DECC estimates the footprint could be between 160,000 and 490,000 acres“. That’s quite some error margin.
How many National Parks does one nuclear plant save then?
It’s a good representation of just how much of the Earths surface we have to give up if we want to live off renewables at the moment. So who decided it had to disappear?
Were they afraid a few evil skeptic bloggers might use it?
The original graphic is still displayed at Swindon Conservatives, which copied the press release. [Cached by google].
At night, when the wind doesn’t blow, they’re going to need something to keep the lights on.
211
No fear mate, The sun is always shinning in London, Well except at night and when it raining…. And then if there is cooling you get a nice white reflective coat of snow on the Panels. Just makes one green with envy.
240
Just a minor point but I think the wind still blows at night. It has something to do with the sun and the Earth’s rotation.
11
Ah, you have never studied logic, I see.
The truth table for renewable energy is:
(daylight) and (not windy) -> some energy
(windy) and (not daylight) -> some energy
The above two conditions can be reduced to (daylight) or (windy) -> some energy
John is referring to the obverse condition (not daylight) and (not windy) -> no energy.
90
I can’t wait for TonyfromOz to see this and show us all how the above “renewable” solutions in fact would not come anywhere close to the nuclear plant. Nameplate capacity != actual capacity
190
Streisland Effect-> Streisand Effect
—
Thanks! – Jo
10
After this winter,maybe they will get smart and add about ten more Nucs….
90
Meanwhile here in Australia we should continue to build more coal fired power stations as we have plenty of cheap coal. China is doing so on a much grander scale using a lot of our coal. Anyone who is against us from building more must hate Australia.
250
I just added a question:
“How many National Parks does one nuclear plant save then?”
150
Here in the USA the wiki says 59 National Parks that range in size from 6000 thousand to 8 million. Wiki says the mean is 317 thousands.
There are dozens of ways to define the savings. The Wiki for Down Under national parks is not so informative. But the numbers suggest many more than the US. But the US also has state parks. In Connecticut, a rather small state we have 105 state Parks and Forests.
State Parks vary from 10 acres to 24,000 acres. Too get a quick and dirty set of numbers for the parks.
]lynx -dump http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Connecticut_state_parks | grep acres | sed ‘s/\(.*\)\(State.*\)/\2/g’ | P3 | sort -n
That got 90% of the numbers sorted low to high and a quick inspection estimates that 500 acres is likely a good number. That is just for Connecticut. But it may work well even for larger states.
So how do we define the divisor?
So how does one define the divident. 130K for solar or 250k for wind. But if wind is water then one only has to worry about rogue waves or tsunami or the passing of ships in the night.
Does it matter as the size of the quotient of stupidity of wind and solar have no meaning the should be committed green team.
tom
40
Jo, the answer is 0.322 National Parks when compared to wind power and 0.167 compared to solar. 🙂
The calculation is as follows for wind.
Net saving of land is 250,000-430 acres. With 640 acres in mile, this is 389.95 sq miles (1009.97 km2). There are 10 English National Parks with a total area of 12126 sq miles.
This is a low estimate, as wind turbines can only be productively located on exposed areas. There are sheltered valleys between the hills. However, major wind farms would have difficulties gaining planning permission in National Parks or areas of Outstanding National Beauty. Yet the most exposed sites are often the most naturally beautiful, and hence with restricted planning permission.
40
Not nearly as many or as often as clearing the undergrowth and controlled burning would.
140
What is the link between these two??
04
Good point from Backslider, are these “nameplate” or real production figures.
Onshore wind in the UK averages about 25% of nameplate, offshore around 33%.
PV varies from jack-all to 23%.
130
On the link, look left Tables/Graphs
Generation By Fuel Type (table)
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
Bear in mind that the UK government has decided that all our coal fired power stations are to be shut down.
40
It’s much worse than you think.
The wind farm vs nuclear footprint ratio is too low by a factor of twelve.
The solar farm vs nuclear footprint ratio is too low by a factor of six.
The solar acreage is too low. Using as a real operating reference the Nellis Air Force Base 14 MW 1-axis tracking array on 140 acres and Nevada’s 8.8 hours/day full sun average, the array puts out about 0.2 GWh/acre per year. The sunny bits in the UK get about half the sun hours of Nevada, so expect about 0.1 GWh/acre per year. To generate 26,000 GWh per year as the Nuclear plant does, requires about 260,000 acres, or twice that shown in the picture.
For wind farms, the National Renewable Energy Lab in the US estimates 85 acres per MW of capacity. With 25% average capacity factor, that comes to 340 acres per MW average. To generate about 3,000 MW as the Nuclear plant does, requires about 1,020,000 acres of wind farms. This is 4 times more than what is shown in the picture.
Finally, the Hinkley nuclear plant’s listed acreage of 430 acres includes construction space. Once operational, the land area drops by almost a factor of 3, to 165 acres, according to the brochure.
280
chris y:
“The National Renewable Energy Lab in the US estimates 85 acres per MW of capacity” is a bit optimistic. From my calculations the best sites would average 95 acres per MW capacity (delivered). A more practical figures might be 123 acres per MW actual capacity.
I think they may have allowed for the Capacity Factor when drawing the diagram, but not for the variation in capacity factor from year to year. This could be, and has been, as low as 21%. Also they are not allowing for diminishing returns, i.e. as the best sites get used up, more turbines will deliver less and drop the average capacity. Already at least one ‘farm’ in England is running around 15% but those subsidies still make it profitable.
And to take up John Riddell’s comment (no.1) what happens on a very cold winter’s night? Demand will be at a maximum, but the experience of the last 5 years is that the turbines won’t be working at all. Neither obviously will solar. Massive blackouts will follow.
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Chris Y
This seems a much more reasonable calculation of the area required for solar and wind farms. On this basis, my revised estimated answer to Jo’s question
is, for England, 0.335 for solar power and 1.314 for wind power. Calculated as above.
20
What about the cost.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70626000/jpg/_70626287_renewable_fuel_624_flat.jpg
from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24604218
The cost of the power from Hinkley Point C in 2023 will be less than those renewables are going to cost this winter??
00
John Riddell makes a good point.
I propose a new cartoon with a wind farm and a solar farm, properly scaled for capacity factor and solar insolation. Then, place the nuclear plant somewhere in each farm, and play ‘Where’s Hinkley’, similar to the ‘where’s waldo’ drawings.
170
When a special interest activist group like the a Renewable Energy Association says something is “unhelpful”, the translation is :”for God’s sake, get rid of that now you don’t want the great unwashed to learn the truth about us.”
290
Indeed.
The British Establishment has this amazing propensity to cock things up in ways that no other nationality can. I put it down to the British class structure and centuries of inbreeding.
Notice that here we have a supposedly private or semi-official Association “having a word” with a Government Department that then jumps to obey instructions. Rational decision making does not enter the mix, it is who went to school with whom, that is the important thing.
270
I once fought the good fight against the British Establishment after I had been totally stitched up.
I took advice with a top QC, who told me: “Yup, you will wind the case hands down, but it will go to appeal. The cost? Approximately £750,000.” Of course, it was a fight I could not afford.
And you are definitely right about the inbreeding. Britain’s elite surrounds itself with high priced lawyers and accountants, who have a policy of zero policy when it comes to anyone challenging their gene-challenged clients. This, of course, is why revolutions are inevitable from time to time.
140
Rereke,
It happens here too. My local government has hopped into bed with a UN-inspired little nasty that used to be ICLEI, now “Local Governments for Sustainability”. Rate payers, without being asked, have provided funds to the NGO set up to take money for the Local Governments for Sustainability scheme.
This scheme, among other matters, requires the participating Councils to lodge sustainability planning details with the NGO and asks for progress reports. One of the preoccupations of the scheme is to confine city growth inside tight borders so growth is up more than out.
If you try to find out why the Council is giving money to an NGO, and how much money, you could well be met with the wall of silence that I’ve met with.
IMO this is a potentially crooked scheme worth investigating and publicising if your Council is involved.
60
I often wonder if the abysmal* state of UK politics may be attributable to the use of mutagenic substances as WWI poison gases. Mustard gas, in particular.
* “…outside the Palace of Westminster London was enjoying its first October snowfall in 74 years. But then 463 MPs voted for the Bill, with only three against, plus two tellers.” –Christopher Booker, Climate Fools Day Talk to British MPs, Committee Room 10
27 October 2010
00
Peter Miller
Or maybe they don’t find the truth helpful.
I leave it up to you to decide why they wouldn’t find truth “helpful”.
Cheers,
Speedy
10
So, they disappeared the graphic? Do they really think that folks are not going to notice the actual panels and turbines?
It’s rather like in Catch-22 when Yossarian changes the graphic (line on the map) in order to change the reality (position of the battlefront).
40
Reality is now subjective, in the new world order. I listened to an interview with James Cameron, a few weeks ago, and he was saying that 3-D movies were so much better, because they could supplant reality for the viewer. Supplant = Replace. WTF?
70
Well, the adage about keeping them in the dark and feeding them
shaetdoes the job. The real World is being pervasively swapped for a virtual World.40
We might be seeing a subjective reality imposed via mobile computer devices, everyone walks around with the anticipation of a sound of their choice will prompt them into a certain action associated to that sound, very self “Pavlovian” really. 🙂
20
Might be seeing? I have to take evasive action several times a day on the street. It’s already here. There’s always some idiot so completely engrossed with prodding at his little electronic toy that he’s oblivious to all human and vehicle traffic around him.
OTOH, it can be fun sometimes watching objective reality, usually in the form of street furniture, trumping their subjective one. 😀
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The solution is simple. Simply hold fast and let them run into you and watch their precious device fall to the ground and smash into pieces. If you were a brick wall would you move just for them?
30
I have adopted this approach. If I see some idiot who clearly is going to walk right into me I stop and brace and just wait for the inevitable collision. I bigger boy than most of them 🙂
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Phone zombies I call them. Google glass is an attempt to overcome his problem.
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Sorry that comment was meant to be for Rereke @ #12.1.1
But yes guys phone zone out is very dangerous, a while back I was riding my FXR in the city and a motorbike in front was all over the road doing strange things, I thought they were either drunk or in trouble and when I pulled up beside them yep you guessed it the bloody idiot was trying to text!
20
The nuclear option is just another example of the British Government’s energy policy folly. The proper comparison is not on the land saved, but the extra costs imposed on my family and 20 million others.
The Con-Lib Coalition has guaranteed until 2058 an index-linked strike-price of £92.50 per Mwh, or almost twice the current price £55.05 per Mwh for coal/gas. For 26Twh per annum that is £2.40bn (A$4.10bn) a year of guaranteed index-linked income for 35 years.
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That’s only 108 € per MWh. Considering that the French sell nuclear energy around Europe at 69 € per MWh, it is only a 50+% markup. Very reasonable considering the cost of the new power plant, Director’s fees for friends etc. and the position the UK Government was in, even if they supplied their own barrel.
It’s only about £35 billion profit, and think how much it will stimulate the French building industry and the champagne producers.
OR perhaps it’s revenge for Waterloo?
40
In the UK I understand household power consumption (2005 – 2011) has been reduced by 25%. On the other hand, the cost of power has doubled in the same period.
If the cost of power doubles again, which assuming no change in the rate of increase could occur by 2021 or thereabouts, consumption will drop again possibly by an even larger portion.
Does the grid remain economically viable – at least for domestic purposes?
The wider populence will have taken to burning the household furniture, park trees and each other to stay warm. Diner by cooking the odd surviving insect and /or green politician will be de rigeur. National domestic power generation should largely be unnecessary and the mushrooms will be able to charge their hand held devices from solar arrays or centrally sanctioned street outlets.
It is a Brave New World, and it arrived much sooner than the Huxley construct!
40
That’s a beauty. And I didn’t forget to pause and ponder what it says about the UK’s governmental system that I, in the UK, had to learn about it on an Antipodean site. Thanks also to Manicbeancounter for reminding us that this nuclear energy, at least, is far from cheap.
I note also that the graphic claims that Hinckley Point generates something called “terrawatt hours” – 26 of ’em per year, apparently. What’s “terrawatts”, then? Some special “Earth energy” to placate the greens? 😉
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It’s a graphic designer with terrable spelling…
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There’s always some confusion when electrical terms are used.
The upfront Nameplate Capacity is measured in Watts, eg MW or MegaWatts.
The power actually delivered is (naturally) spread over time, in other words the amount of MW delivered over time, hours, or MWH (MegaWattHours).
Now, take out your most recent electricity bill and look at the area which details your actual consumption. See how that is measured in KWH KiloWattHours, and this is the way it is expressed for small consumption levels.
The other terms are expressed in powers of ten, in this case thousands.
WattHour
KWH – KiloWattHour – WattHour X 1000
MWH – MegaWattHour – KWH X 1000
GWH – GigaWattHour – MWH X 1000
TWH – TeraWattHour – GWH X 1000 (or your typical household expressed KWH X 1,000,000,000)
Tony.
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“There’s always some confusion when electrical terms are used.”
What total bullcrap, electrical terms are the most easy to understand, as they are so uniform.
Energy is the capability to do “work”,sometimes measured as Watt-hours Kilowatt hours or properly Watt-seconds, or Joules. Watts is “power” which is the “rate” of energy delivery. All folk understand the prefixes Kilo, Mega, Giga, and Terra, just as they understand that there 3600 seconds in one hour.
What folk do not understand is that they pay for Joules but never get that many Joules of “WORK”. Is this a scam, or can you explain entropy? Most folk refuse to understand “entropy”, so fall victim to any Climate Clown Scam! Why not post something useful?
04
About 97% (note, 97 may replace 42 as the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything) of the folks I know haven’t a clue what Watt-seconds, or Joules might mean. These folks might relate to horse-power, as in my car has more horse-power than your car.
40
A terawatt hours is the amount of power required to inject common sense into a greenie.
It is a thousand gigawatt hours. A gigawatt is not a response to one of Rereke Whakaaro’s jokes but a thousand megawatts.
You probably use 4 to 6 megawatt hours of electricity per year.
60
That is currently a good energy usage per person in modern society. However, power capability of
baseline production must be 10 times that, as peak demand will always be on a cold night with no Sunlight and no wind. Fluidized coal can fill in better than anything, except if your Nuke plant spends most of its power pumping water uphill, most of the time.
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The UK peak demand is roughly 60GWh. i.e. very close to 1kWh per person every hour, or 23+ per day or 9.5MWh per person per year. The figure i quoted above was for Australian households, where peak demand comes in summer (although there is a jump in winter as well).
The peak demand is also very close to the actual deliverable capacity in the UK, thanks to years of dithering. That is why there is panic in Whitehall now, and why there is frantic, and very expensive recruiting/subsidising of industrial diesel generators to boost emergency capacity. Announcing a nuclear power station at this time is Public Relations; expensive and results won’t be seen for many years.
As is the case in Germany politicians are now finding that wind and solar power are not cheap, nor convenient. The idea that they will be blamed “when the lights go out” is sinking in, and they know that they won’t be able to spin their way out of it (not that they aren’t trying). If there was a “CO2 free” way of producing cheaper electricity other than nuclear, that would be the choice. Unfortunately there isn’t and the hysteria whipped up by the Greens over Fukushima has made adoption of nuclear difficult.
Germany (in private) has decided to ignore the EU and go back to coal. Wind and Solar are making a mess of their grids.
Poland is already committed to coal, and the French to mostly nuclear.
The Dutch and Spanish have abandoned wind subsidies. The Portuguese, Italians and Greeks can’t afford more wind farms. Even the Danes are realising that more wind generation means more electricity that is sold at a loss.
The Norwegians, the Swiss (and to a lesser extent the Czechs and the Austrians) are getting lots of excess electricity cheaply from other countries to boost their hydro capacity (pumped storage).
That leaves the Swedes who had a good system of 50% hydro balancing 50% nuclear, with a profitable sideline of very cheap wind power from Denmark (even to being paid to take it). They have announced that they will close down their nuclear and switch to wind. I am not sure if this is due to the long dark winters or just a lot of them going berserk.
00
The appropriate time to be deadly serious, is when you are seriously dead.
20
Jealousy is a curse, you make lame comments which you later regret. But I justify it by pointing out that you lot are claiming to have invented Pavlova.
00
A terawatt is a trillion (million million) watts.
26 Twh equates to an average output of nearly 3,000 MW. This is 92.75% of 3,200 MW capacity. Compare this to the current output of the UK Wind farms. According to RenewableUK, the renewable industry lobby group, the capacity of the UK wind industry, both onshore and offshore is currently 10,218 MW. At the DECC long-term capacity factor of 27.68%, this gives 24.8 Twh of electricity. A couple of nuclear reactors, that after construction is completed will occupy just 165 acres, or 94 football pitches, will produce more electricity that 5101 wind turbines over 480 sites.
But I am a beancounter and a UK home-owner. If my family’s living standards are being sacrificed to saving the planet, is it worthwhile?
The Stern Review calculated the maximum cost for CO2e reduction to be £44 (then USD $85) per tonne. Above that and the costs outweigh the benefits.
The BBC states that the current wholesale price of coal/gas electricity is £55 MwH. Nuclear is £92.50 and wind (weight average of Renewables UK Onshore/Offshore ratios) is £120 Mwh.
Coal produces around 1 tonne of CO2 per MwH of electricity and gas 0.47. Assuming a rough 50/50 split, that means coal/gas produces 0.75 tonnes of CO2 per MwH so (on Stern’s assumptions) the costs of switching to renewables outweigh the benefits if the additional costs are more than £33 Mwh.
Hinkley Point C is guaranteed to be at least £37 Mwh more than the current fossil fuel mix. Even on Stern’s extreme assumptions it makes no economic sense. The current rates for wind power are 50% above Stern’s over-the-top estimates.
If you use Richard Tol’s more conventional economic calculations, then the social cost of CO2 is maybe 1/20 of Stern’s.
Alternatively, if you use the latest AR5 report that has low confidence in the prophesies of the catastrophic consequences of warming, then the expected costs of “doing nothing” are much lower, as I have inferred.
If you combine mainstream economics with the “latest science” the social cost of carbon tends towards zero.
40
In the calculations I assumed that on average UK coal and gas produces 0.75 tonnes of CO2 per MwH. I should have followed the DECC guidelines of 0.43 tonnes of CO2 per MwH. That means that policy costs exceed the benefits to the planet when the carbon free electricity price is greater than £19 (44x.43) above the fossil fuel price. In the case of Hinkley C, the benefit to cost ratio is 0.5, and in the case of wind less than 0.3.
10
A useful link for you. British STOR system emergency power generation
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84094
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SteveC,
The cost of nuclear electricity can be split into 2 parts, one being the fundamental cost of plant, fuel, etc., and the other the social cost such as hugely detailed planning processes, over-expensive insurance provisions, over-engineered safety devices. It is instructive to look at costs in China, where the latter component is much smaller than in European or American countries. When the social cost, which includes the cost of deliberate delays, is taken out of the equation, nuclear performs competitively with coal. The price that France sells nuclear to UK includes, of course, a handsome profit – it should not be taken as representative of any fundamental cost of nuclear.
Say thank you to your obstructive green neighbour whose life has been spent devising ways to increase the social cost. What a life!
40
Geoff:
the price of 69 € per MWh quoted is a general one, but I believe the average over a year. While the french nuclear stations can ‘load follow’ they do so rather sluggishly, as do all nuclear stations. The best (cheaper) method is to operate at or near capacity and dump any excess at a lower price wherever it can be accommodated. Fortunately for the French they have a reasonable hydro capacity (~15%) and are linked to Switzerland, Andorra, Germany and through them to the Norwegian, Swedish, Austrian and Czech hydro schemes. They also have the advantage of being linked to Italy and the UK, both of whom pull a good deal of power from France.
(I suspect that a “good deal” does not mean that the UK nor Italy get it cheaply).
It is this sluggish accommodation to varying demand that means a totally nuclear system is not likely, just as a system based on wind and solar is a fantasy.
00
Why is the government deciding how to produce energy anyway?
Presumably the market couldn’t do it because …. no-one would want energy? Huh?
(And these are the people who have just been telling us for the last twenty years that their own choice of energy in the past – coal-fired power stations – was the worst thing in the history of the world. Yeah, they’re really qualified, they are.)
81
Because only the government give out the massive subsidies to make it profitable.
40
As I pointed out on Will Heaven’s blog (UK Daily Telegraph), it’s a shame he wasn’t a bit braver when commenting on the Climategate revelations at the time. It’s taken Will Heaven four years to grow a spine.
60
If 430 acres could power 7% of Britain, or around 5 million people’s needs, then 430,000 acres of nuclear plant could power the world – around 5 billion people.
For the effort squandered building useless wind farms in the UK, greens could have completely decarbonised the global economy.
So why pass up the chance to decarbonise the world?
There is only one answer which makes sense – it was never about CO2.
Greens prefer wind to nuclear BECAUSE wind is useless. Nuclear doesn’t suit their purpose, because large scale adoption of nuclear power would help secure an industrial future. Greens prefer technological solutions which help underme the foundations of the modern world.
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There are 2 issues here. The first is energy density which Jo’s diagram clearly shows. To get equivalent energy from wind and solar requires a huge collection area which is measured in square kilometres. Already we have seen the dumb Greenies begin to appreciate the devastation such huge areas covered by windmills and solar panels can cause; see Brightsource.
But even this comparison where wind and solar installations literally have to cover vast areas of land to produce equivalent amounts of energy is misleading. The reason is wind and solar are intermittent; they do not produce power all the time.
Power produced by an installation can be measured 3 ways. The first is the most generous, for renewables, and is installed capacity [IC], which is what the installation would produce if it were working 24/7; which only fossils, hydro and nuclear do.
The second is capacity factor[CF[ and the third is, what Tom Quirk calls, reliability point [RP].
Tom’s paper is here. Looking at Table 1 we can see the usual suspects; if we use Cullerin range we can see that the IC is 30MW and their CF is 34% or 10.2 MW.
That 10MW is the actual power produced as an average over a period, usally at least a 1/4. This is the CF.
As Tom describes it the RP is the amount of energy that can be relied on for 90 per cent of the time. It is given as a percentage of the installed capacity so that comparative performance can be assessed.
For Cullerin the RP is 3%; so what I take from that is that at any moment the Cullerin installation will only be producing 3% of its IC.
Solar is similar.
So, at any one time wind and solar are effectively useless; that they produce power at all is a statistical sleight of hand produced by the CF.
People who advocate wind and power are literally thieves.
111
That’s “to get equivalent nameplate capacity”. Tony has given us the numbers below. Keep multiplying to get to equivalent energy (which in practice you never actually could).
00
Are there any charts comparing the effect of coal fired CO2 on food production to the effects from Fukushima?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2jJr–ehMQ
00
Even UK green lunatic George Monbiot accepts that Fukishima has proved nuclear power is safe enough to user.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima
If greens really believe civilisation and possibly the human race is at risk if we don’t decarbonise the economy, the risk of the occasional meltdown should be seen in this perspective.
10
If a lunatic say it is safe then…
Hmmm?
00
The only route to decarbonisation we find remotely acceptable is nuclear power.
We’ve successfully thwarted renewables for 20 years, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Either get behind nuclear, or continue to watch CO2 pour into the sky.
00
“We” (the yobbo society of chinwaggers) do not find decarbonisation either acceptable or desirable. The only changes to the climate that CO2 seems to make are beneficial. CO2 is a plant food and is the obvious way to reduce world hunger and poverty. As poverty goes down so does population growth. So we need to carbonise not decarbonise. Eric as you have stated above but re your push for nuclear as a solution to the non problem.
Why thwart renewables like Abiotic oil?
How will nuclear help to save us from the coming solar cooling?
Surely it is too early for all but the lunatic you cite to tell what the effects of Fukushima have been.
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-children-thyroid-cancer-783/
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/4550
00
You’ll all have to excuse me here, as I have been flat out busy for the last two and a half days, and it will be the same for nearly all of today as well.
I would have loved to get in early on this one, but here will just have to do.
Let’s then look at this.
Hinkley Point C. Nameplate Capacity is 3200MW. Actual power delivered for consumption is 26TWH
ALL UK Wind Power – Nameplate 9200MW – Power delivered is 16TWH
ALL UK Solar Power – Nameplate 1800MW – Power delivered is 1.2TWH
So wind power is the equivalent of 2.9 Hinkleys, and yet delivers only 62% of One Hinkley.
Solar power is the equivalent of 0.57 Hinlkeys and yet delivers only 4.6% of one Hinkley.
Forget how much land all these take up.
Forget that the wind and the solar have cost 7 to 10 times what Hinkley will cost, even at the new huge cost factors, and that’s for an equivalent Nameplate and even that is on the low side.
Forget that Wind and solar will peter out after 10 to 15 years, and their 25 year life span is an absolute best case scenario construct, while Hinkley actually WILL last for 50 years, and can be extended to 60 and then 75 years.
Forget all of that.
Look at the actual power delivered for consumption.
THAT IS THE KILLER POINT every time.
Where’s Salvador and BilB and their responses to this. (Hey look over there, isn’t that Britney Spears?)
Tony.
190
Nice short summary Tony… that’s all we need.
If I could make a million dollars selling garbage I also would do so.
20
Slightly OT – Will Stefan was interviewed on Fairfax Video recently
LINK
At the end of the interview he mentions Sweden and claims that Sweden is reducing it’s emissions faster than anyone else. What he doesn’t tell you is that Sweden gets 47% of it’s power from Hydro, 25% from nuclear and only 12% from fossil fuels.
50
Steffen is despicable and continually getting caught out; in respect of his Sweden comparison see here, here and here.
In my opinion Steffen is worse than Flannery.
50
Steffen is an innumerate joke. At the Ipswich forum he said that climate might change 3 degrees for a doubling and 6 degrees by end of century in the same conversation. which is it Will? Or were you really contemplating a quadrupling of co2 by 2100?
Innumerate, clearly.
30
UK Govt also hiding all of this and lots more in this article:
26 Oct: UK Daily Mail: Steve Bird: Deaths, chilling safety lapses, lawsuits, huge cost over-runs and delays: Why we can’t trust the French with Britain’s nuclear future
EDF’s nuclear reactor plant at Flamanville, Normandy, is beset by financial mismanagement and the deaths of workers
EDF, along with French nuclear group Areva and investors from China, are due to start work on a £16bn plant in Hinkley Point in Somerset in 2017
It will be the first nuclear reactor in the UK in nearly 20 years – and also first European Pressurised Reactor (EPR)
… yet no reactor of this design is yet working anywhere in the world
Flamanville is just a 30-minute drive from the busy port of Cherbourg in north-west France. Two ageing EDF pressurised water reactors were built on the site in the Eighties. Then, in December 2007, the pouring of concrete began for Flamanville 3 — the country’s first European Pressurised Reactor.
But the optimism and excitement of that first day of construction is now long gone.
Since then, the predicted cost of just under £3 billion has rocketed to more than £7 billion (it could go up still further). Not only have costs more than doubled, but the estimated completion time is almost twice as long as was promised: it was meant to start producing energy in 2012, but that has been put back to 2016 at the earliest.
Although the fitting of the dome earlier this year was described by EDF as the last ‘critical’ stage of the project, it continues to be plagued by delays, soaring costs, and litigation in both the criminal and civil courts…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477202/Deaths-chilling-safety-lapses-lawsuits-huge-cost-runs-delays-Why-trust-French-Britains-nuclear-future.html
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Just because the Renewable Energy Assocoiation describes the nuclear vs wind/solar comparison as ‘unhelpful’ – why in God’s name does it have to be erased from government documents..?
Aren’t we to be told the truth..?
‘Unhelpful’ – yeah, to the Renewable Energy Association..!
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Land to be used for solar & wind power should NEVER come from parks. This marks the height of climate corruption. I’ve been an environmentalist (not of the stereotypical variety) for most of my life. I would turn my back on anyone professing to be an environmentalist who said we should tear down natural forests to make way for wind & solar power — that is if I managed (in the interest of civility) to restrain myself from spitting right in their face.
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The AGW scare is built on the SSM (standard solar model) of Earth’s heat source. That model of the Sun faced a new challenge today from Professor Robitaille’s new paper:
http://ptep-online.com/index_files/2013/PP-35-16.PDF
Professor Robitaille and I now agree the Sun’s core is a condensed form of matter. Our major disagreement concerns the nature of that condensed matter. Is it
a.) Neutrons in a pulsar core, or
b.) Liquid, metallic Hydrogen ?
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
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Britain is, of course, an extremely large country with much desert and wasteland, and very low population density. Wind power is clearly the way forward and should be recognised as such.
The DECC should never have put the graphic up without checking with the wind industry first. The wind industry is, after all, Britains best last hope, and unhelpful graphics like this could set back this magnificent project. Polls have consistently shown that people living in cities are mostly in favour of wind power built in the country, and it is only people living near the projects that mainly object.
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Best last hope?
Recalls the 1950’s line from Flanders and Swann (when censorship was rife)
What is Britain’s best hope? Rockall, Rockall.
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Windmills…. lol
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This issue of respective power densities for different generating technologies was covered very well by Prof David McKay in his book “Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air”. He looked at the whole gamut of carbon-free technologies and set up a “design your own” energy mix to show the impact of, say, less nuclear and more biofuels.
It shows very clearly that large-scale use of low-density renewables is totally impractical in the real world. One telling comment was that to build anywhere near the projected amount of offshore wind would require an industrial effort similar to the Liberty Ship programme of WWII.
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I watched a TV show a week or so ago two families built a 2.3 MW hydro power plant on a farm in NZ.
The plant is designed to generate a predicted annual average of 12 GWh, and it generated 14 GWh in its first year of operation. You can get a Hydro turbine and all the parts from Alibaba website from China
I wrote a lot of stuff on this then I found a link to an article on it and deleted all my writing http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/01/private-development-of-the-paul-wilson-station-in-new-zealand
I remember Tony Abbot talking about harnessing the water in NT for Hydro power well after seeing and reading this I think they could do it to run small towns etc
Thats my 10 cents
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Thankyou Jo for the post, and thanks to the erudite commenters too.
Very informative and a highly amusing LOL moment for me.
A good Streisand Effect and perhaps a good example of “foot-in-mouth” syndrome, because the available alternatives are all infeasible.
A bonus being the hilarity that there is no coal-fired generation given as an alternative on the infograph, because, well, the Brits succumbed to green pressure and adopted a policy to *not build* any more coal-fired power stations – as had the Germans, I gather (though they have started building them again). Thus leaving the only feasible option as being nuclear power. There is also gas (fracking) – which, together with nuclear, James Lovelock pointed out some time ago as being the way to go.
It’s an ironic situation really, because the only available options left become “the elephant in the room” – that the REA would rather no-one mentioned, and which was literally filling up that infograph, because DECCA had effectively been hobbled (or had hobbled themselves) under ecofascist religio-political ideology and commercial (REA) pressures as regards other *viable* options.
It’s a bit like tying your shoelaces together and then wondering why you keep falling over when you try to walk.
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