Beelbeebub

Let's just pretend we are all die hard fossil fuel enthusiasts and are not gkig to have anything to do with renewable generation. Even then, bring gas in a power station, sending it down the network and using a badly installed heatpump at the other end uses 25% less gas than burning it in a gas boiler on site. So out limited gas reserves will go further. But heat pumps are "woke" (but not fridges obviously, they are very traditional and manly because you can store raw meat and beer in them) so real men can't use them.

Can you explain what exactly "woke" is? It seems to be thrown around alot as an insult.

The question then becomes "do the policies of electrfying hearing and transport whilst increacing renewable production negatively affect the UK economy and security?" It boils down to do we think uk renewable power is going to be cheaper and more reliable than importing oil and gas from the world market? I think, and studies on the overall cost per Mwh of the various technologies bear this out, that renewable power is cheaper and is much harder to disrupt. Bear in mind the cost to the economy of transitioning to the NZ position is less than the cost of one oil/gas shock like either of the two we have already had this decade.

An electric one would be sensible! 😁

Even then there is nuance - some countries prioritise keeping business electricity down at the expense of hugher domestic bills (Germany apparently) others the opposite. Some coubtries pay for infrastructure upgrades out of general tax rather than lumoing them on electric bills. Likewise things like green levies etc are on gas or general taxation. My understanding is the 15-20 years ago the thinking was to lump the transition costs on eekcteicty because everyone has electric and electric was, at the time, very co2 intensive so reducing consumption by cost was a good thing. We now have to unwind some of that.

Exactly. Energy and housing costs are basically dead money. Every £1 extra you have to spend on those is £1 less you can spend on a new outfit, a meal out, a holiday, a new kitchen etc.

Yup and whilst there is a fairly steady supply of new entrants to the hospitality workforce the same is not true of generators....

Yes they are. They tend to get rolled together when someone anti renewables days "ah but it costs so much! We should drill the north Sea for energy security and to being down bills" That argument is countered by showing renewables aren't more expensive (which can go back and forth) and more importantly that drilling the north Sea cannot provide enrgy security or bring down bills. Yes but with alot of nuance. For example - our gas is actually towards the cheaper end of comparable nations but our electricity and in particular our business elec is more expensive. This is a combination of multiple policy decisions. Even the much discussed marginal price auction system is not quite so cut a dried as appears. Interestingly gas *used* to be the price setter over 90% of the time. That has fallen to 2/3 the time now and is projected to keep falling. As to wen we can benefit - we already are as renewables have bkunted the impact of the recent gas price rise, but more generally by around 2030 the effect of transmission capacity increaces, older subsidy schemes ending etc are expected to start to bite. Two podcasts with energy policy professionals (climate change committee and OFGEM) are quite illuminating https://youtu.be/mFMPSms6MS4 https://youtu.be/NXjwkvaWclk

Even of the calculations were a fsctornof 10x out for wind turbines they would still be way better than gas plants. But the eco credentials of wind/solar are somewhat moot for this thread (though important of course). The argument this thread started with was that the "Net zero policies" like increacing renewable generation and electrifying heating and transport were worth doing from an economic and energy security perspective as they reduced the impact of world gas and oil prices on our economy. Subsequent events seem to be bearing this out. I listened to a podcast where the head of OFCOM was saying the impact of rising gas prices on electricity prices is less now than in 2022 because of the extra renewables. Electricity still rises but not as much.

They aren't turning because there is no capacity to transport the power they were contracted to (and are able to) produce. If I hire a bunch of workmen for a job but they can't do anything because the materials I ordered didn't arrive they still hat paid (at least if I want to keep my teeth). They turned up, ready to work and it's my fault they can't actually build anything. So yes, they are getting paid for sitting around but if I started sending labourers and trades home without pay because *I* effed up, i"d quickly find nobody would want to work for me. Again, the curtailment issue isn't unique to wind and the bulk of the cost is actually going to gas generators for turning up production.

Ha! 😁 No but I did have to "bunny suit up" amd wear a dosimeter for working on the lab and go through a radiation scanner on the way out each shift. Was an interesting job.

If you were contracted to produce cakes for wedding, you produced them and the customers courier couldn't make the lick uk because their vans were all busy - would you want to be paid? I suspect yes. The curtailment payments are due to the grid not being able to transport the contracted for power - which is a separate issue that is being addressed - and happens to gas (and once upon a time coal) plants as well This is false. The meme was popularised by the series "landman" where billybob Thornton goes on a (wrong) rant about wind turbines. The carbon payback for wind turbines varies from 6-18months. The bases vary depending on ground conditions but typically 100m3 per MW - so between 100-600m3 per turbine. But concrete is not unique to wind turbines. Hinckley C has over 40,000m3 in just one of the two reactor foundations. The turbine blade problem is real but more a function of composites not yet generally being recycled. This is changing but the current best practice it to recycle the blades by grinding them into particles and (you'll like this) using them in concrete..... 😁

This is part of thr high running costs. Nobody can design such a critical bit of equipment not to fail ever. What we can do is have an inspection and testing regime to catch any failure before it is catastrophic. So when they design a weld or a pipe or a valve, it's limits for fatigue, temp cycling, corrosion, embrittlemnt etc are all calculated and an inspection regime is decided. Then the item is inspected to make sure it is to spec, then it"s inspected using all sorts of expensive stuff and the results fed back into the simulations to check it's "on track" and adjustments to inspection regime made on light of the actual performance. It's a huge undertaking

You don't want to know how little planning for decommissioning was done for the early reactors (magnox, agr etc). Lots of stuff inaccessible, an unbelievable amount of stuff undocumented or not to the plans! We did design work for robotic decommissioning - really expensive special purpose robots and manipulator ms to go in and undo a nut or grind off a weld. The sort of thing a man with a spanner or grinder could do in an hour - which I think was the orginal plan when they designed some of these in the late 50's and 60's!

Absolutely, I played a small part in the magnox life extensions (Wylfa in particular) I'm sure the reactors will be kept running well beyond 2060 - which only compounds the uncertainty that EDF or it's successor will be around to honour it's commitment to decommissioning. There is a huge list of giant engineering companies that were around 50 years ago and aren't now.