The Other Mike wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:06:06 +0000, Newshound
wrote:

The whole market is a mess. Caused by the free market. Ultimately
caused by that evil bitch Thatcher who hated coal so much she would do
anything, even hand the country over to the clutches of the gas man in
Russia as long as she could crush them.

I agree with much that you say, but with respect it is *not* caused by
the free market, but by IDIOTS MUCKING ABOUT WITH IT.

Give them the legislative freedom and they will exploit it for their
own ends, not those of the country.

If a simple carbon tax had been introduced twenty years ago, plus some
sort of committment to stability, we would have been building nuclear
power stations for years.

A carbon tax, in a relatively flat country, only leads to one solution
and 100% nukes won't work (or at least with AGR's or PWR's) as they
can't change output rapidly.


They can actually - enough to cope with demand fluctuations in the hour
plus range - dinorwig copes with the sub hour fluctuations.

HOWEVER they are less economically viable operated that way - a nuke at
50% capacity has to somehow charge twice as much to pay the interest and
operating costs.
..
Ideally we would replace coal with nuclear, and have gas and hydro to do
the fine balancing.

More or less how the French and the Swiss do it.

There is also a possibility that off peak surpluses could be vectored
into synthetic fuels and charging electric cars overnight..and of course
if you do storage heat PROPERLY with a **** off heatbank of a sensible
size, there is that way to use it, as well.

What nuclear cant do is balance intermittent renewables - and there is
no reason to do it either. Offsetting uranium burning with wind achieves
no carbon reduction.

The lowest cost lowest carbon scenario is about 45-50GW of nuclear,
(about 30 - 35 stations) the existing couple of gigs of biomass and
hydro, and about 15GW of gas oil or coal most of which would be on cold
standby most of the time.

Plus the couple of gigs of interconnector we have already.

The lowest COST scenario is actually repalce 'nuclear' with 'coal' and
proceed as above.

Renewable is neither the lowest cost nor the lowest carbon. That is of
course why its the green party choice.

"If its green, its expensive, and its almost useless"



We need diversified generation,

No, we don't. There is no reason to diversify just for the sake of it.
Its another green buzz word that is absolutely meaningless.


We need cheap base load. Base load is either coal or nuclear, because
they are the cheapest options really - gas is going sky high.

We might as well use what biofuel we have that's cheap, and what hydro
is cheaply built. So far this is not diversifications for its own sake,
its just using up useful stuff that's cheap to capture and does a
functional job.

On top of that we need low capital cost plant to 'cover the gaps' - and
that's gas.

We don't need a single renewable of the intermittent sort on the grid
whatsoever.


Any more than we nee horse drawn cabs or sail powered underground
trains, or coaches pushed along by elephants.




not too far away from we had from the
1960's to the late 80's. Coal, Oil, Nuclear, Pumped Storage, a bit
of Hydro. Tweak the mix a bit, reduce the coal and oil increase the
nukes to replace those coming to the end of their life, increase them
more to cater for time expired coal and oil plant, maybe even add some
gas but ONLY where waste heat can be used for industrial processes. A
wholesale shift from coal to gas with zero nuke new build is a
disaster waiting to happen. Just as well the economy is going tits up
because if it were booming we'd be even more ****ed.


That's not diversified, that's just the lowest cost mix that will do teh
job...the same way you run diesel trains on lines not worth electrifying..


HOWEVER we SHOULD have gas in that mix - not oil really - unless you
regard oil - fuel oil or bunker oil - as essentially scrap.

Personally I'd like to see CHP municipal waste burners as well. And a
lot more co-fired biomass.