Price of Petrol (and Diesel)

[smallfry]

9 minutes ago, reb78 said:

Trouble is, I think if anyone does the sums, sustainable sources are not as green or as sustainable as they are made out to be. They might be, but would like to see some honest calculations (a bit like the EV vs ICE argument the former has a shorter lifespan and is only clean at the point of use rather than zero emissions people seem to think). I saw a picture the other day of the fibreglass sails of wind turbines being buried when they reach the end of their ten year lifespan - I guess its inert but we are still just creating waste for someone else to deal with one day. How do we deal with burying them when they become the main/only source of energy and we cant dig holes deep enough? Could chuck em in the sea I suppose or burn them to generate electricity...

We can dump them in the huge open cast holes they are digging in Africa to get Lithium for batteries !

While we are there, we can dump all the nuclear waste there too !

Backfill with waste plastic, and cover with a layer of untreated sewerage.

There ! All sorted. As usual it will become a "Third World" problem for someone else to sort out later.

I think this is, using the latest political soundbyte, called "kicking the can up the road" , which is basically what using all the current renewables is doing.

[monkie]

24 minutes ago, reb78 said:

Trouble is, I think if anyone does the sums, sustainable sources are not as green or as sustainable as they are made out to be. They might be, but would like to see some honest calculations (a bit like the EV vs ICE argument the former has a shorter lifespan and is only clean at the point of use rather than zero emissions people seem to think). I saw a picture the other day of the fibreglass sails of wind turbines being buried when they reach the end of their ten year lifespan - I guess its inert but we are still just creating waste for someone else to deal with one day. How do we deal with burying them when they become the main/only source of energy and we cant dig holes deep enough? Could chuck em in the sea I suppose or burn them to generate electricity...

You raise some interesting questions there. 

I follow a climate scientist who is based in Scandinavia (Sunniva Rose). She has co-written a really good article which raises and answers some great questions. It is quite long, but for anyone interested, it is a good read and contains some interesting numbers and comparisons. 

https://energy.glex.no/feature-stories/net-zero-emissions-require-fact-based-actions-not-wishful-thinking

 

[mad_pete]

Renewables share of electricity generation was 37.3 per cent in Quarter 2 2021, falling under fossil fuels' generation share, this was largely a result of much less favourable weather conditions for renewable generation with lower wind speeds and fewer sun hours.
 

plenty of renewable there. Don’t think all business use is opting green just so I would expect much of that is on the fossil stuff.

[FridgeFreezer]

This shows you how much of everything is being generated live - and on nice old Smiths gauges too

https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

 

[Snagger]

10 hours ago, Daan said:

Nuclear would be ideal, if only we did not have to deal with nuclear waste...

Read up on thorium reactors.  They would use up the waste and produce almost none.  They are also intrinsically safe in operation.  They just need more help on research for the materials that’d resist the hot salt corrosion, but are otherwise ready to build.

[missingsid]

11 hours ago, smallfry said:

We can dump them in the huge open cast holes they are digging in Africa to get Lithium for batteries !

Add that to the tree destruction in order to mine the titanium needed to make the white paint for the trendies white cars.

[Simon_CSK]

Any power generation is going to cause problems somewhere down the line. Either in production or in the destruction we cannot get something for nothing.

If we take all the energy from the wind there has to be a negative impact somewhere likewise with solar. We need to find a balance. 

[Nonimouse]

14 hours ago, reb78 said:

I never get the buy your green energy from us argument either. I would wager that 'green' electric is sold in greater quantities than it is produced and so I think scam is right. When you see the big companies like EON advertising green only (sure I have seen that) it makes you think that there cant be enough green energy out there for all of their users. Who is getting the dirty stuff?!

In Europe, countries swap electricity. Spain grows the most solar electric and has a huge 'pipeline' over the Pyrenees to France, who then sell some of it to the Germans (who have lots of Dirty Electricity), which helps to reduce their carbon footprint. France has a very low production carbon foot print - mopst of their saleable electric is Nuclear. On a rural level France is the biggest user of localised AD units in the world - in some areas each village of more than 300 population has one. Nuclear has a low production footprint, but a massive initial carbon hole - Hinkley C will need fifty years to offset it's carbon hole - simply because of the build materials and machinery used on site. Nuclear is also people heavy - lots of people to run a nuclear powerstation and then at decomissioning time it's also very carbon heavy.

Lots of information streams. Very, very few people read them all. Many take a view and only follow that, often to the point of detriment

 

[monkie]

3 minutes ago, Nonimouse said:

In Europe, countries swap electricity. Spain grows the most solar electric and has a huge 'pipeline' over the Pyrenees to France, who then sell some of it to the Germans (who have lots of Dirty Electricity), which helps to reduce their carbon footprint. France has a very low production carbon foot print - mopst of their saleable electric is Nuclear. On a rural level France is the biggest user of localised AD units in the world - in some areas each village of more than 300 population has one. Nuclear has a low production footprint, but a massive initial carbon hole - Hinkley C will need fifty years to offset it's carbon hole - simply because of the build materials and machinery used on site. Nuclear is also people heavy - lots of people to run a nuclear powerstation and then at decomissioning time it's also very carbon heavy.

Lots of information streams. Very, very few people read them all. Many take a view and only follow that, often to the point of detriment

 

Absolutely, but I view Hinkley C as a missed opportunity. It is a solid state reactor built on a conventional design so has all the limitations associated with it. However - it does make us less dependant on natural gas.

Renewables like wind and solar are great for helping us move away from coal quickly which is the most carbon intensive form of generating power. To be fair, renewables have helped us decarbonise a good way. The problem is however that we will/have hit a limit with them in terms of getting away from burning stuff. Because they are not energy dense, tend to generate power when and where it isn't needed, you must have back ups in the grid. For us in the UK that is often gas, so in a way wind and solar make us even more reliant on burning fossile fuels and we will never get away from this as long as we keep putting up wind and solar farms rather than start building a lot of nuclear plants - fast. Nuclear breaks this reliance on fossil fuels. If we move to newer nuclear technologies we can overcome the problems you describe with conventional nuclear plants. Most of the concrete used in a nuclear plant of conventional design is actually not a biological shield as many believe, but a pressure containment device beacuse solid state reactors run at low temperature (comparitively)/high pressure. Liquid state reactors run at high temperature/low pressure. Also if you can attain a much better burn up of the fuel as liquid state reactors can, then you need less reprocessing of the fuel and better decomissioning at the end of the reactor's life. So, why don't we use this technology? Part of the answer is because you need a whole new design of plant and part of the answer is because you dont have to reprocess fuel. Reprocessing fuel is big business for opperators of nuclear plants.

[Nonimouse]

2 hours ago, monkie said:

Absolutely, but I view Hinkley C as a missed opportunity. It is a solid state reactor built on a conventional design so has all the limitations associated with it. However - it does make us less dependant on natural gas.

Renewables like wind and solar are great for helping us move away from coal quickly which is the most carbon intensive form of generating power. To be fair, renewables have helped us decarbonise a good way. The problem is however that we will/have hit a limit with them in terms of getting away from burning stuff. Because they are not energy dense, tend to generate power when and where it isn't needed, you must have back ups in the grid. For us in the UK that is often gas, so in a way wind and solar make us even more reliant on burning fossile fuels and we will never get away from this as long as we keep putting up wind and solar farms rather than start building a lot of nuclear plants - fast. Nuclear breaks this reliance on fossil fuels. If we move to newer nuclear technologies we can overcome the problems you describe with conventional nuclear plants. Most of the concrete used in a nuclear plant of conventional design is actually not a biological shield as many believe, but a pressure containment device beacuse solid state reactors run at low temperature (comparitively)/high pressure. Liquid state reactors run at high temperature/low pressure. Also if you can attain a much better burn up of the fuel as liquid state reactors can, then you need less reprocessing of the fuel and better decomissioning at the end of the reactor's life. So, why don't we use this technology? Part of the answer is because you need a whole new design of plant and part of the answer is because you dont have to reprocess fuel. Reprocessing fuel is big business for opperators of nuclear plants.

Back ups could just as easily and for far less spend by tidal, current, AD, micro hydro, refuse etc - so many options. The ONLY good thing about Nuclear and the main reason it is promoted so much, is the build is good for the economy. It simply isn't sustainable and it is far too expensive 

[Snagger]

SMRs should change a lot of that - a scalable system with a lot of built in redundancy on the network and vastly reduced costs because of the economies of scale of building them in factories.

[monkie]

1 hour ago, Nonimouse said:

Back ups could just as easily and for far less spend by tidal, current, AD, micro hydro, refuse etc - so many options. The ONLY good thing about Nuclear and the main reason it is promoted so much, is the build is good for the economy. It simply isn't sustainable and it is far too expensive 

That isn't true. Have a read of that article I posted a link to. Most climate scientists who were once opposed to nuclear as an energy source citing those reasons and others as to why nuclear is a bad idea have since looked at the numbers and the scale of global energy demand and come to the conclusion nuclear is the only realistic way forward.

When you say nuclear isnt sustainable and is far too expensive - that is only considering one nuclear technology which has a poor burn rate of the pelletised fuel and requires massive concrete structures. As Snagger says, SMRs will address some of these points, molten salt reactors can address the other remaining points.

Using other sources of renewables as a back to other renewables simply would not work and would tie us in to burning gas for longer.

[Nonimouse]

1 hour ago, monkie said:

That isn't true. Have a read of that article I posted a link to. Most climate scientists who were once opposed to nuclear as an energy source citing those reasons and others as to why nuclear is a bad idea have since looked at the numbers and the scale of global energy demand and come to the conclusion nuclear is the only realistic way forward.

When you say nuclear isnt sustainable and is far too expensive - that is only considering one nuclear technology which has a poor burn rate of the pelletised fuel and requires massive concrete structures. As Snagger says, SMRs will address some of these points, molten salt reactors can address the other remaining points.

Using other sources of renewables as a back to other renewables simply would not work and would tie us in to burning gas for longer.

Some climate scientists - not most. In fact a small faction.  Most are saying that sustainable energy is the easy way forward and it's cheap.

Nuclear in all it's forms is expensive - it's big, big bucks, in a world with not a lot of bucks and a majority population who struggle to pay bills. Yes , lots of options - hugely expensive options; hence why so loved by government

Gas consumption is going down, fast - sustainables are up - over 40% of UK electricity

It's an 'electric car' situation - enough waffle can blind even the brightest minds

[monkie]

28 minutes ago, Nonimouse said:

Some climate scientists - not most. In fact a small faction.  Most are saying that sustainable energy is the easy way forward and it's cheap.

Not quite, it's shifting rapidly as many scientists come to terms with the scale of the issue and "sustainable" energy just is not practicle.

 

30 minutes ago, Nonimouse said:

Nuclear in all it's forms is expensive - it's big, big bucks, in a world with not a lot of bucks and a majority population who struggle to pay bills. Yes , lots of options - hugely expensive options; hence why so loved by government

Not true for reasons stated above. Governments on the whole don't love it, they are scared of it because of negative views by the electorate. That's why overall nuclear plants are being closed around the world.

 

33 minutes ago, Nonimouse said:

Gas consumption is going down, fast - sustainables are up - over 40% of UK electricity

We are getting locked into burning gas for reasons stated - we need to stop burning stuff. We can't stop burning stuff whilst we confuse the grid with unpredictable supplies of "sustainable" low density energy that often arrives irrespective of demand on the grid.