The Natural Philosopher wrote:
John Williamson wrote:
tony sayer wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
scribeth thus
harry wrote:
On Mar 12, 6:59 pm, tony sayer wrote:
In article

ps.com, Andy Dingley scribeth thus

On Mar 12, 8:40 am, harry wrote:
The age of gas is finished.
I have some sympathy with this view, but are you going to nip into
your Tardis and go back to tell Thatcher not to build our energy
generating capacity on gas too? If you follow the web links
that TNP
has been posting lately, it's amazing just how much of total grid
output has been coming from gas of late.
If the gas is finished, or if Putin turns the tap off again, not
only
will the heating go off, but the lights will too.
I'm quite surprised that a fuel like Gas is being used up much faster
than what it ought be whereas coal is plentyfuel..
--
Tony Sayer
Gas power stations are much cheaper to build than any other sort.
No boilers etc. just a gas turbine. They can be quickly started too in
an emergency. (Thought this is undesireable)
Wrong on both counts. CCGT sets do have a boiler and a steam turbine
on the back and are in fact designed as fast start emergency backup
as well as continuous operation.

All as maybe.. but the Gas now is coming from the other side of the
channel, the coal is here under our feet....

And, according to what I've been told by people who should know,
because of the way the pits were closed, it will not be economically
accessible at any time in the foreseeable future.

The pits round here were closed with what was then a couple of
centuries of accessible reserves, but which is now totally unusable
due to tunnel collapses and the possibility of digging a bit too far
and letting water in with a head of a thousand feet or more from a
tunnel they don't know about.

Yes. In california they are now trying to reopen a neodymium mine. It
will take TWO YEARS to pump the water out first..

Thats the trouble with relatively inaccessible reserves. Cost of
extraction.

The problem in the UK generally is that when they closed the mines, they
turned off the pumps. Which meant they couldn't maintain the tunnels, so
they collapsed, and are still collapsing, which means the water *can't*
be pumped out.

Keeping an open mine clear of excessive water and maintaining it is
(relatively) easy. Even maintaining a mine for a decade or two is cheap
compared with the cost of trying to re-open it.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.