- Thread starter Ross365
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Farside
Badly Welded Man
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No shortage of crinkly coastline in Wales, Scotland and the Wesht of Ireland.Surely there must be some remote valley up in the wilds of Scotland that could be blocked off and used as a massive pumped water storage, storing the power from windmills. The Chinese did something similar with the Three Gorges dam. Not everybody was happy about it though.
Three Gorges Dam | Facts, Construction, Benefits, & Problems | Britannica
Three Gorges Dam, dam on the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) just west of the city of Yichang in China. The largest dam in the world, it allows the navigation of oceangoing freighters, generates hydroelectric power, and may offer flood protection. Learn more about the Three Gorges Dam.www.britannica.com
Every time I propose the flooding of some useless part of the terrain, people object.
Well then, sit in the dark and freeze.
Or just build more nuclear power stations.
Maker
Most folk just call me; Orange Joe
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Yeah just build more. Just pull together 30 billion quid. Just find a suitable site to build it. Just build something to keep the country powered for the 15 years it'll take to build.
8ob
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Dont you mean £30 billion with a fifteen year build time that will end up costing £60 billion and a thirty year build time which will render it out of date on completion.
Bob
PhillipM
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The problem there is, it really isn't, consumers are seeing it more just because phones and batteries got a lot bigger and li-ion became available at scale, but in terms of actual energy density it's taken a long, long time to even get the improvements in them that we have over the last 30 years. Most of the improvements were made in the 90's and it's only been really refinements since, charge/discharge rates and lifetime has got better lately but actual capacity, not so much. Even the more realistic chemistry alternatives don't end up much more than about 30% improvement in density and most aren't viable at commercial scale yet anyway.
We can't really count on battery improvements adding a whole lot to capacity, our big leap was getting Li-Ion working in the first place.
Tbfh we'd be better finding more places for pumped hydro storage.
Morrisman
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Cancel the HS2 white elephant and build 3 nuclear power stations with the money, that way the whole country can benefit, not just a couple thousand a day.
Ross365
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To all intents and purposes, I think that HS2 has been cancelled. Doesn't it now stop at Birmingham, and that section of the route has already committed the spend to the extent that you couldn't save anything by doing less?Cancel the HS2 white elephant and build 3 nuclear power stations with the money, that way the whole country can benefit, not just a couple thousand a day.
Then considering that we no longer have the capacity to build our own nuclear stations, are you sure you really want to get in to complex deals depending on the cooperation of people who are not our friends.
Morrisman
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They've trimmed the northern leg off of HS2 apparently now, from Derby up I think.
It was also supposed to be linked to my home town, Stafford, seeing as 'we' have allowed it to carve and hack its way through our county, but now they're talking about saving money and leaving us unconnected.
Small fry compared to how much is spent on renewables.
SMRs will cost 2 billion each. Much faster to build. Nuclear submarine reactors basically.
It’s not that it’s too windy @8ob , it’s that there is too much generation for the load. The NG could turn off the gas turbines instead, but what happens then if a load of cloud comes over and the wind drops?
So more wind and solar is going to do what? Make the problem worse..
Also, If you’re wind turbines are not generating due to no wind, doubling the number of them is going to do what exactly?
The only answer is long term storage, but that is not likely to ever get there. So light up the nuclear option then.
wait tilll every one trys to plug their car in at six , and turn the kettle on too ,,, melt down.
Ross365
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Yep, some SMR concepts (for all of them are concepts only at the moment) are derivatives of submarine (PWR) reactors. But here's the issue you have to think about; the Americans put reactors in subs back in the 1950's, so why on Earth didn't land-based SMR's follow on close behind? Of course, with any loss of coolant, large PWR's go in to meltdown pretty quickly. You'd have to imagine that with smaller mass, a small PWR would go in to meltdown super f****** quickly.
SMRs aren't as good as a full sized reactor. But they seem less sensitive politically and are far cheaper than the equivalent wind farm. They are also generate 365 days a year of course.
Maker
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An SMR is £2 billion (Apparently) and puts out about 470MW, Dogger Bank C is estimated to cost 3 billion and should put out 1.2GW.
365 days a year ignores maintenance and refuelling too, I'd imagine a SMR can be refulled faster than a big one, but Sizewell B is currently off for refuelling and won't come back online until the end of April.
Yeah but the operator can’t decide when to turn Dogger C on, only Morris y Gwynt can do that.
(Morris y Gwynt is the welsh name for the wind - from an old rhyme).
Dogger bank C is expected to put out about 6,000GW/h in a good year - One SMR about 4,200 any year.
But no matter how wonderful wind is what happens for those vital periods when there is no wind? I would be all in favour of wind power IF we could store the energy. But we can't!
