Beelbeebub

UK loosens Russian oil sanctions as fuel prices rise https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy42x3g7r89o We are having to take action against our national security interests (buying diesel from an actively hostile foreign power that has invaded a European country and deployed chemical and radiological weapons on UK soil twice) because our transport network is critically dependent on a fuel we cannot produce enough of ourselves.... This action would be less neccesary if we had higher EV adoption rates. It's too late for this crisis, but we need to be ready for the next one. Again the NZ policy of strongly encouraging EV adoption - a policy that political parties with strong links to Russia have explicitly said they would reverse - is vital from a national security perspective regardless of any environmental concerns.

If only there was a mass produced technology that could efficiently use electricity to heat and cool a space...

No. That's my point - there really isn't much extra oil/gas left to get out. To a fair degree the argument whether or not to extract the last few % of the Uk's oil and gas is moot from a energy security standpoint. It will make no difference to our energy security if we continue on the projected path (green) or issue new licences (red and orange) What will make a huge difference to our energy security will be how much energy we can produce and use in the UK. So to that end we need to Reduce demand (insulation and public transport) electrifiy heating (heat pumps) Electrify transport (EVs) Increace local electricity production (winds, solar, nuclear, storage etc) All of those are "Net Zero" policies.

Indeed, mad. Still males makes me laugh. We will continue to consume fossil fuels for a while yet. The point is not that we shouldn't produce it in this country it's that we can't. Again, looking at the graphs in the previous post, our production is falling and the difference between our current course and drilling like lunatics is basically sod all.

Fully agree Yes, but I would caveat that with the point it cuts both ways. Certain political parties have made statements to the effect that they "will end net zero madness" and basically halt all renewable projects. We see this with trump who is literally paying companies not to install renewable projects despite causing a surge in fossil fuel prices! In the UK those same parties tend to follow up their "no to renewables" stance with the assurance that the UK will make up for that loss in generation by extracting more oil. In effect saying "we don't need renewables we can become a fully fossil fueled economy *by drilling for more oil*". This is often followed up with the promise that the UK can have lower bills and greater energy security by going this route. This is ideological BS. Yes, there are many ways to skin a cat, but the key point is that UK fossil fuel production is fast declining from only 50% of consumption and there is very little we can do about it. The difference between folloing our current "Net zero" and "drill baby drill" is so tiny as to be irrelevant. It's the difference between the green but and the orange&red bits. For gas in particular it's pretty much a rounding error.

So, No, you can't define it then? Here is the official definition "to be aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)" So throwing "oh look at you - so aware of important facts and issues" as as insult says more about the mindset of the insulter than the insulted. But more importantly to this thread - it has absolutely bugger all to do with net zero policies except as part of the wider right-wing culture war. I'm all fornsunding renewables. But here are some "important facts and issues" The annual tax receipts from north sea production are about £5bn and as we have established production (and hence tax revenue) *will* fall. So the effect of drilling for that "good sweet oil" will be marginal. Revenue might be (at best) 1/4 rather than 1/4 of that in a decade. So say £1.5bn difference. That's chicken feed at this scale. We have also established that increacing out NSea output would not have made any difference in the current crisis. Our volumes are too small to affect world price. But the cost of staying on oil rather than electrifying our cars (for example). In April it was estimated uk motorists paid £2bn more for fuel. It would be better to pay for the renewables from the potential £2bn a month saved than the £1.5bn a year raised. So the "woke" NZ policy of transport electrification that seems to so enrage certain political segments well beyond any rational arguments would be saving motorists billions a year as well improving air quality.

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.

Entirely consistent with the whole purpose of this thread. That we need "Net zero" policies to ensure our energy security. This thread started over a month before the Iran war. At the time gas prices were predicted to fall as more Lng capacity from the gulf and at European Lng terminals came on stream. My point was that if we abandoned NZ policies for a fossil fuel past/future (as some advocated) it would be bad for the UK in terms of energy security/prices - that we would be subject to fluctuations in the gas price that we had zero control over. I think, even you, would agree that I have been proven correct in the assertion that the uk is too exposed to fossil fuel price fluctiaons. Here's a thought experiment. The price of coal has jumped from just over 100USD to just over 130USD? Have you heard anyone in the UK panicking about the price of coal? Are we worried about it's impact on our economy? Are our electricity prices rising because of the price of coal? Nope - because coal is such a tiny part of our energy mix. We should aim to do the same with oil and gas.

The design life of hinckley C is about 30 years or to the 2060's That's a fair old time. We've seen countries dissappear and appear. Alliances crumble and old friends become enimies and vice versa. We've seen giant companies who ruled the commercial sphere vanish to be replaced with companies in sectors that didn't exist. We have no firm idea of what the landscape will be by the late 20XXs, all sorts of things could happen. French revolution, UK breakup, Cold war between Eurasian Alliance and the Anglo-American commonwealth who knows. What we do know is there will be a nuclear reactor that needs an expensive decommissioning process sat in what is currently the UK and that history has shown that companies, when faced with expensive clean up costs after the money making bonanza is over, quite often shuffle away from their responsibilities.

Ultimately the tax payer is the decomissioner of last resort though. You can write all the contracts you want but if EDF go bust what are we going to do? A fair enough point. I would be good to see the cost of backup included, though it is surely just the cost of running on gas/imports. Which does mean we definitely need to also include the cost (climate change impacts) of carbon emissions for fossil fuel plants. That means (at a minimum) the carbon costs that are already factored in

This always happens, when I was a kid "made in Taiwan" was code for cheap plastic crap. About 20 years ago I was working with Hong Kong tool makers (injection moulding tools) for clients. We were the interface and "prime contractor" pulling different disciplines into the process. At first they would make stuff to the drawings you sent them. We had to do all the jar calculations about shrinkage, ejector pin placement, demoulding, split lines. But each time they would offer more services, they could sort the split lines, they would handle the shrinkage allowances etc. About 10 years later and thwy were bidding direct to the clients for the full services and starting to offer design of the actual part as a service.... That said, the UK is still a pretty good (albeit niche) manufacturer. The thing is we can't be anything other than that now. Not every country can be the "workshop of the world". We don't have the population size to sustain it. Even all of Europe will struggle against China and India and Africa. With their much bigger populations. I did see an interesting thought. Low cost energy is an important economic advantage. Solar power is the cheapest power you can get, even more so in places with more reliable day to day and season to season sun.... Like the equator. Africa is poised to be able to offer the cheapest energy possible and, u like oil where we can nick it from the locals and bring it home, it's a hell of a lot harder for us to steal it or compete at home. Africa also has huge resources and massive population. Once (or if) they get going it's going to make China look lackluster. Maybe 100 years or will be poor Northern Europeans floating across the med to get to Africa....