Vocal Voices

So goes UK energy policy.

EDF is to extend the life of four nuclear power stations, supplying a quarter of UK needs, by 5 to 7 years: up to 2030. Meanwhile it can't afford to continue with Hinkley because the cost is so big. Even with the Chinese on board the 66% of the total funds it needs is bigger than the company is worth.

Drax, on the other hand, wants subsidies to extend it biomass programme at its power plant. Without them phase three at Drax will not go ahead.

That is a lot of electricity to lose when we are on the brink of exceeding capacity, especially in a bad winter. We have been lucky with this one.

Just another bit of news that is indicative of the problems that lie ahead.

I'm beginning to think that the best thing we can do is to stop reading or
listening to the news media on any subjects relating to the future.

They do say that ignorance is bliss.

We have been very, very lucky with the weather in recent winters.

Do we still have any operational oil-fired power stations left in the UK? If we have, should we not be expanding our oil reserves while the prices are cheap? .....

Why bother with oil? Most of the spare capacity is gas and this new supply would happily fill the gap we have.

You know, all that new supply that was not supposed to be there prior to the Independence referendum.....

Is it any wonder Labour and Lib Dems were punished so heavily in the UK elections? They are also going to be massively punished in the Scottish elections this year too....

This was always on the cards. All over the EU and, mainly, the world, they have been re-categorising the existing reactors for extended use. It's interesting that production of new reactors is larger than the net worth of the energy companies. It is no surprise that governments had to build them in the first place. Very few companies have the capital and resources to build them without massive state support.

If you look into the propositions for the new UK nuclear, there was a guaranteed "strike price" for the power of around £90 per megawatt hour. That's wholesale. Currently that is around £45, customers pay around £80 -£90 and those prices are declining with the fall in the price of oil and gas...

Let's face it, if nuclear is our salvation then the government is going to have to build them and then partner with the utilities to operate them. Just as France did in the first place....

And here is another little dose of reality about it from the times...

Equipment worth millions of pounds is going unused as a result of delays to the UK’s nuclear reactor programme and because British suppliers are not winning contracts.

The Nuclear Advance Manufacturing Research Centre, a hangar-sized facility on the outskirts of Sheffield, has received nearly £40m from the government to help build the UK’s next generation of nuclear reactors. But those running the centre say that much of the equipment being made there is not being used. This is partly because new nuclear plants have been much delayed, and partly because developers want to award supply contracts to companies in their own countries.

Really. So our government money is being spent to develop the technologies to be used so we are as advanced as we can be. But the suppliers for building it want to hand those contracts to companies in their own countries!

Personally it would be a pre condition of any UK government money being spent at all, were it up to me. If the technology exists in the UK, then they would have to source it from the UK. Or pay for it all themselves.

We are such a bunch of useless saps we get what we deserve. You can be absolutely guaranteed that French and German government money only goes to French and German companies. No matter what the bid from outside.

Suff wrote:Why bother with oil? Most of the spare capacity is gas and this new supply would happily fill the gap we have.

You know, all that new supply that was not supposed to be there prior to the Independence referendum.....

You must be thinking of some secret reserves still kept hidden from us.

Laggan was discovered in 1986 and licensed to Total in 1995; appraisal drilling was completed in 2004 and development approved in 2010. Tomore was discovered in 2007 and appraisal completed in 2010; development was completed in 2012. Scottish referendum: 2014.

I agree about the cost of new reactors. The expense is huge and the only way to go forward is for governments to stump up the cash; they are infrastructure projects after all. What happens to them once they are completed and up and running is open to debate. There are arguments to be had for all possibilities. However, when the build contracts are offered they should initially be to bidders from the host country if they are capable of carrying out the work; and that goes for tooling, parts and manpower.

Just a word about biomass. We covered the waste from farming a while back where tons is sent to landfill. We also do the same with domestic/industrial waste, much of it combustible material. I remember the days when our bigger cities had their own power stations as well as the National Grid. I wonder how much electricity a city like Leeds could produce from its combustible landfill waste if the will was there?

Workingman wrote:Just a word about biomass. We covered the waste from farming a while back where tons is sent to landfill. We also do the same with domestic/industrial waste, much of it combustible material. I remember the days when our bigger cities had their own power stations as well as the National Grid. I wonder how much electricity a city like Leeds could produce from its combustible landfill waste if the will was there?

The Birmingham "power station" which runs on household waste apparently produces 25MW for entry into the National Grid. I don't know how "significant" this is in the scheme of things, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyseley_E ... aste_Plant

Additionally, there is a brand new facility being built, due to be completed sometime this year, that will be a purely biomass plant (waste wood for fuel) and is said will supply 17,000 homes.

http://www.constructionenquirer.com/201 ... wer-plant/

Ossie, we cannot produce biomass as a primary source of energy production because it reduces our area of food production. However, to use food production waste as biomass fuel is perfectly feasible.

Even if each city only produces a few tens or hundreds of MW it all adds up.

Point taken, WM, but the impression I got is that this new venture isn't a conventional biomass plant like Ironbridge (was) or Drax (is), it's an innovative biomass / gas fired plant using reclaimed wood / old timber as collected from our recycling skips, or as reclaimed from old demolished buildings. I personally wouldn't have thought that there was sufficient "used" timber around to be re-harnessed to such a degree, but there you go. It's not "primary" biomass, it's "secondary" biomass, IYSWIM .....

On an associated point, unlike some Councils, we do not have specific waste food collection bins in Birmingham, but I think it is being quietly mooted (now they've got us "used" to wheelie bins in general). The current power plant burns everything submitted as "household waste", which must be somewhat inefficient and produce a lot of residue such as metals and toxic emissions (Friends of the Earth, for example, have campaigned against the plant). I assume a purely "food production waste" power plant would be a lot more efficient?

Do Leeds still use landfill, then?

We had (have) enough coal to keep power going for years, but instead we have handed our power needs over to foreign companies whose priority is profit for their investors, not providing cheap, safe energy for the UK. Just so short sighted and stupid. It should have stayed nationalised IMO.

Clean coal technologies could have been implemented, and those miners would still be in jobs instead of on the scrapheap.