Beelbeebub

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UK production of oil and gas I have - can you tell me how many are in operation today? 2 - one in china that took just over 11 years to build and floating one in russia that also took 10 years to build. And there are 6 or so under construction with intended in service dates sometime before 2030. Ideally we would have gone ahead with the various reactors we had planned back in the early 00's and have several up and running by now, but we seem to be very bad at nuclear construction in the UK. I'm not convinced we will get any better in the timeline we need. We have 2 under construction (hinkley C and sizewell C) with a combined capacity of around 6.5 GW coming online in 2030 and late 2030's. But that only covers the loss from the 5 existing plants shutting down before 2030, and as they are AGR's they are going to be difficult to life extend - not impossible, they will be about 40 years old at planned shutdown and the design has been extended to 50 years at other sites. Without a time machine, nuclear isn't going to dig us out of the hole. Except when they don't keep prices down. Several years ago our gas and elec prices rocketed because a politician 1,500 miles way decided the country next door was his. Our gas and oil prices recently shot up because a politician 3,000 miles away got mad at a country 3,000miles the other way and started flinging bombs about and suddenly, ships with oil bound for us turned round in the ocean and headed to china and the far east because they outbid us. Environmental issues aside, oil and gas are very shaky foundations. We struggled in ww2 for oil. We struggled in the 70's for oil. This isn't going to get better but they don't - they offer (in effect) fixed price deals for capacity. Those prices are lower than a new build gas plant can offer (and that was before the higher gas prices). And whilst there may be a security issue with inverters made in china, in the sense they could be controlled from abroad - and there are strong arguments that the uk or at least europe should be making it's own inverters or at least the software running them - the fact the panels are made in china is irrelevant. Once you have bought them they are yours, they are dumb bits of silicon and glass that create a voltage when illuminated. That's it. Once you have bought them they will last for 25 years or so, churning out power every day. A barrel of oil, on the other hand, can be used one. Then you have to buy a new one. You realise we have wind turbines, right? They tend to do well in the winter. And if the sun doesnt shine and the wind doesn't blow - what will we do? Burn gas in CCGT plants exactly as we do now. The difference is we will be burning gas for a month or two a year rather than all year round. The future energy mix will have nuclear, wind, solar (etc) lots of battery capacity and a good chunk of CCGT plants with gas storage for the times when we need them.

if the SMR was a container sized device that just needed hookup to (ship) power grid, monitoring and cooling - i could see it working if electric drive was used. Then, as you say, the module could be craned on/off fairly easily and exchanged for a factory fresh unit whilst the old one went back to be refueled.

A good friend is an expert (as in one of the guys the MoD call when they want to know about radar) and has specifically looked at this. His answer is "there are effects but nothing that causes a problem". The radar issue is one raised by non-experts (repeatedly) but is not a concern of the people who are actually in charge of operating our radar. And as for birds, cats kill far more than wind turbines (which don't kill many at all)

For the UK the fossil fuels are running low now. Oil and gas are currently 50% of consumption and that will halve or worse *in the next decade*. Not the next 100 or 50 years but the next 10 years. Unless we want to be dependent on importing gas and oil when 20% of the world supply can be cut off at the whim of a power mad dictator we need another way to power the UK. Nuclear takes ages to build. Far longer than the 10 year time frame. Solar farms are the cheapest form of energy generation and they are quick to build. Yes they are intermittent but one thing they do provide is lots of power when it is sunny, which is also when hot countries (which the UK is becoming) also tend to see highest demand due to air conditioning. Batteries are also becoming cheaper year on year. Right now solar is providing 30% of our electricity, 2x that of gas. At a time when gas prices are high we are saving 2/3 on our national gas bill (of which we import abiut half).

From the OP article "The Energy Secretary on Wednesday said he had granted planning permission to the One Earth Solar Farm development to be built on prime farmland across Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire." (emphasis mine) So prime farmland eh? Must be some of the most productive land in the country. We'll starve without the breadbasket of thr East Midlands that is Newton-On-Trent. Let's have a look at the map of agricultural land quality. The project is the area south of Newton-On-Trent either side of the river. As you can see the land is green which is grade 3 "good to moderate" Grade 3 is 2 sub grades A and B the maps don't distinguish but here's the description Grade 3a (Good): capable, but notable limitations that reduce cropping flexibility or consistency. Grade 3b (Moderate): more restricted: typically fewer arable options and/or less reliable output As you can see neither of these could be described as "prime". Every single time anyone tries to build anything on farmland people start banging on about food security and the land as though it were the best soil in all Europe. In reality nobody is going to put their solar farm on grade 1 land when there is lower grade and available.

The thermal plant (fossil fuel or nuclear) issue during hot weather is more regulatory than technical. These systems have delta T's of several hundred degrees, the increace of 10nornsondegrees at the cold side isn't a major technical problem. But all thermal plants have limits on the temperature of the "used" cooling water. This is for ecological reasons, if you started dumping thousands of m3 an hour af 80C water into a river or the sea you'd kill everything downstream. There are also limits on the amount of water they can take. During hot weather there is a much smaller window between the maximum water temperature leaving and the regulatory limit. This is particularly acute for river cooled plants that may also experience low river flows at the same time.

Great page! Bookmarked

Interesting - where can/did you get those figures? 80% of Scottish demand wouldn't be far off the 2.5GW of wind total?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/09/great-britain-grid-operator-issues-another-warning-over-power-supplies-in-heatwave Interesting bit is how the French are having to curb the output of their nuclear stations due to the high temps. The same issue can also affect gas stations. And as the anti-renewable brigade never tire of mentioning, low wind conditions can coincide with heatwaves and drastically reduce the output of wind farms. Right now (1.30pm 9th July) wind is only producing 2.5Gw, about 10% of it's maximum and 1/3 the current gas plant output. Of course, there is one tech that correlates extremely well with heatwaves.... Solar, and that is currently pumping out 14Gw. My own array is powering my portable air con unit and the battery will continue to do that well into the night. Zero impact on the grid. In contrast to the challanges facing renewables in our winter peaks, solving for the likely summer peaks is much easier. Lots of PV, local and grid scale, lots of batteries, local and grid scale.

Yeah, but the idea is they don't leak the heat away during the day when you're out and then be spent in the evening requiring you to use fan heaters. Storage heaters are a shit idea based on the old idea of "spare" elec always going free at night. Which was true in the days of big coal plants. Less so with renewables, batteries, ev's etc. . But there we go. This is the official EPC system that we are forced to adhere to. I get about half as much effect on my epc for replacing all the single glazed windows with double glazing as I do by just swapping the panel heaters to HHR units....

The EPC system is pretty crap. I just had an all electric flat done - got a poor E score, mainly because of direct electric heating and hot water. The assessor model 2 options for me. Swap to air to air HP or new high heat retention storage Heaters. They both came out the same points, despite the HP option using 1/3 the electricity. Shrugs.

I love airships but I don't think they are the answer apart from some very niche uses. The biggest issue is the slow speeds mean long cycle times. A 737 can cycle back and forth between London and Rome 4 or 5 times a day, so it's capital and operational costs can be split over many passengers. But the airship might do one leg, maybe a return with fewer people and the capital and operational costs would be similar if not greater than a 737. They do look cool though.

No it isn't - but I would put it lower down the list of priorities than the other two items. Those are bigger bang for your (political capital) buck. If we reduce demand for oil (and gas) from road transport there will be more oil available for things like flying. I'm not in the same camp as "just stop oil" - we will need to extract oil for the foreseeable future for chemicals and things where the intra high energy density is critical (mainly aviation, but also some critical "off grid" applications). I just think we should stop burning oil (gas) if we don't have to. Cars and HPs do need more generation and there are some swapping costs (though less if you just replace with electric at the end of normal life) - but again these are problems we have known "mature" solutions to. They are, in tech nerd speak, technology readiness level 9 "actual system proven in operational environment" Low carbon long haul aviation is TRL 4 at best with short haul at maybe 7 (there are some electric float planes operating in Canada for example) Absent some massive break though in creating hydrocarbons from electricity, water and co2 (which would also solve a whole bunch of other problems) aviation will be tied to fossil fuels for a while yet.

You can play all sorts of tunes with the statistics - do you count methane leaks in that gas heating stats? What exactly is the average uk house? How much worse are high altitude emissions? How do you attribute international flights? Etc. But the co2 emissions from flying are several times less than those from gas heating or private vehicles. Even if you 3x them to account for the altitude flying is only equal to one of those other items (in round numbers) We can definitely replace the majority of heating emissions now, today, with proven tech you can literally buy off the shelf. Likewise, we can replace the majority of cars on the road with EV equivalents that are availible today. There would be no major change to lifestyles or functionality. People would still have warm homes and still be able to drive about. (obviously both of those sectors will see a gradual phase out due to the relatively long life cycles of cars and boilers) But there is no currently available way to replicate the functionality of air travel without carbon emissions. Maybe one day there will be (fingers crossed). If there was I would 100% support swapping to that ASAP, in the same way I support EVs and HPs. But until then, I think we should focus on tackling the two sectors that are - much bigger than aviation - much easier - result in minimal disruption to people's lives. Otherwise we will alienate the public even more. The right wing press already bang on about "Greta stealing your holidays" or some such bollocks whenever any free taxes are applied to air travel. Imagine what would happen if we actually tried to ban air travel.