Power generation hole ahead.

[Ferdinand]

9 minutes ago, joe90 said:

They should have built the Severn barrage many years ago. The latest feasibility study cost what it would have cost originally to build!

 

AH the planning system :-)

 

The average U.K. House price in 1980 was 24k.

 

It is easy to spend that much now on Planning and Ologists for a single self-build.

 

F

 

 

[Ferdinand]

A friend who supervised the construction of one of the offshore wind fields hinted that his company would not be doing any more .. I think. But it may have been the last one they were doing in current licensing rounds.

 

Does anyone know if more offshore wind will be built around the UK?

 

Ferdinand

[jamieled]

There are a few 'subsidy free' offshore farms in development although who knows if they'll go ahead. Subsidy free onshore is a lot more viable.

[jack]

1 hour ago, scottishjohn said:

I just don,t see lithium batteries as any real solution ,not until they can recycle it cheaply ,

at this time very little or any of it is recycled ,cos its cheaper to use new

and it is a finite resource 

 

That's the current situation - as you say, it's a finite resource, which means it will ultimately become more difficult and expensive to extract. The rising price will push research into recycling, so that will become cheaper and more efficient.

 

Of course, by then, we may have other storage possibilities that reduce the demand for lithium batteries.

[scottishjohn]

28 minutes ago, jack said:

 

That's the current situation - as you say, it's a finite resource, which means it will ultimately become more difficult and expensive to extract. The rising price will push research into recycling, so that will become cheaper and more efficient.

 

Of course, by then, we may have other storage possibilities that reduce the demand for lithium batteries.

I,m sure they said that about nuclear waste as well--

It has not 

[jack]

16 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

I,m sure they said that about nuclear waste as well--

It has not 

 

That's hardly the same thing. Used lithium is still fundamentally lithium. Used nuclear waste is an entirely different set of atoms.

[scottishjohn]

7 minutes ago, jack said:

 

That's hardly the same thing. Used lithium is still fundamentally lithium. Used nuclear waste is an entirely different set of atoms.

and nuclear waste is still aradio actve substance ,except when it was in the gorund it was not so concetrated

you want to eat some then ?,where you going to dump it ,who's picking up the tab for that 

Its exactly the same this disposable way of life cannot continue

Edited February 5, 2019 by scottishjohn

[jack]

6 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

you want to eat some then ?,where you going to dump it ,who's picking up the tab for that 

Its exactly the same this disposable way of life cannot continue

 

Yes, the way we consume things is unsustainable, but the rest of your post is completely off point.

[scottishjohn]

1 minute ago, jack said:

 

Yes, the way we consume things is unsustainable, but the rest of your post is completely off point.

hardly --that surely is the point we know better by now so we should not be making problems for the future  that we don,t need to 

[jack]

You replied to a comment about it becoming cheaper to recycle lithium by saying:

 

39 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

I,m sure they said that about nuclear waste as well-- 

 

That is, you are way off point.

 

Feel free to have the last word - I'm out.

 

[Ed Davies]

1 hour ago, scottishjohn said:

and nuclear waste is still aradio actve substance ,except when it was in the gorund it was not so concetrated

Most nuclear waste was not radioactive before it got bombarded by neutrons. If there was only what's left of the original uranium to deal with the problem would be a lot simpler.

[Jeremy Harris]

I came across depleted uranium a lot in one place I worked.  It was used for non-explosive armour piercing shells, because of its high density, as it significantly increases the available kinetic energy at the target for a given size of round.  The stuff isn't a problem in terms of radioactivity (it's barely radioactive at all) but like all heavy metals it's pretty toxic.  All the precautions we took when handling DU were with regard to its toxicity.  Apart from being used in shells, DU has also been used in other applications where high density is an advantage, like counterbalance weights in the tails of aircraft (including a fair few civil types) and racing yacht keels.

 

As @Ed Davies mentions, the really big issue with nuclear waste is the high volume of material that's been made radioactive as a consequence of neutron bombardment.  Pretty much everything inside a reactor core, including all the removable parts, like fuel rod cases and handling gear, will become pretty radioactive.  Much of it has a fairly short half-life, so just storing it for a time reduces the problem, but there is still a lot of highly active waste that has to be dealt with.

 

Having said that, it's worth putting the hazards associated with nuclear power into perspective with those associated with other forms of energy generation.  Oil, gas and coal all take their toll on human life, both in extracting the stuff and with respect to the toxic effects of combustion.  One bit of trivia worth noting is that coal fired power stations release far more radioactive material into the atmosphere than nuclear power stations.

[Dreadnaught]

4 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I came across depleted uranium a lot in one place I worked.  It was used for non-explosive armour piercing shells, because of its high density, as it significantly increases the available kinetic energy at the target for a given size of round.

 

Fascinating. I read that DU also has an usual physical characteristic helpful for munitions: self sharpening on impact, related to the sheer characteristics of the material. I wonder, can you confirm this?

[Jeremy Harris]

2 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

 

Fascinating. I read that DU also has an usual physical characteristic helpful for munitions: self sharpening on impact, related to the sheer characteristics of the material. I wonder, can you confirm this?

 

Yes, it is sort of "self-sharpening".  What happens is that when a round hits armour, the outside tends to get peeled back, making the impact point cross-section smaller, increasing the force per unit area in the central impact area.  The round may well not fully penetrate the armour, but it tends to deliver enough energy to cause chunks of it to spall off inside, usually at a high temperature, creating a sort of shrapnel fireball inside an armoured vehicle. 

[Onoff]

Isn't DU used on helicopter rotor tips? Something to do with the idea being in the event of engine failure it gives some continued momentum and hence lift. On the basis every little helps when you're hurtling towards the deck.

[Jeremy Harris]

1 minute ago, Onoff said:

Isn't DU used on helicopter rotor tips? Something to do with the idea being in the event of engine failure it gives some continued momentum and hence lift. On the basis every little helps when you're hurtling towards the deck.

 

Yes, it has been.  Helps to keep Nr up during both the immediate transition to autorotation and when flaring during an autorotation landing. 

[scottishjohn]

the "warthog "

a10 thunderbolt carries 1500 rounds of this ammo --weighs 7 tons 

but is a great tank killer 

[Gone West]

15 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

Yes, it is sort of "self-sharpening".  What happens is that when a round hits armour, the outside tends to get peeled back, making the impact point cross-section smaller, increasing the force per unit area in the central impact area.  The round may well not fully penetrate the armour, but it tends to deliver enough energy to cause chunks of it to spall off inside, usually at a high temperature, creating a sort of shrapnel fireball inside an armoured vehicle. 

That has brought back memories from the 80s of modelling long rod DU penetrators v complex armours along with many different CE and HESH rounds.

[Onoff]

6 minutes ago, PeterStarck said:

That has brought back memories from the 80s of modelling long rod DU penetrators v complex armours along with many different CE and HESH rounds.

 

Did you know an MOD photographer Nick Coleman?

[Jeremy Harris]

17 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

the "warthog "

a10 thunderbolt carries 1500 rounds of this ammo --weighs 7 tons 

but is a great tank killer 

 

It was the GAU-8  30mm cannon that I was once familiar with. Very effective against lighter armoured vehicles, but not quite as good against heavy armour.  Not sure about how well it did against reactive armour, as I don't remember seeing the results of any trials against it.

 

12 minutes ago, PeterStarck said:

That has brought back memories from the 80s of modelling long rod DU penetrators v complex armours along with many different CE and HESH rounds.

 

I remember looking at  high speed footage of HESH rounds against conventional heavy armour and being impressed with the amount of material blown off the internal face.  Made me thankful I'd opted for a career in science, rather than as a tankie, a view that was reinforced when I spent a day on Salisbury Plain with 1 RTR, sitting in a Challenger 2 going full pelt during an exercise.  Quite why anyone ever wants to be a loader is beyond me, it looked like a hell of a job.  In fact I don't think any of the crew positions in an MBT looked that appealing, with the possible exception of the driver.

[Triassic]

I was impressed with the HILTI DX460, Firing bolt fixings into steel on site today!

 

 

Edited February 5, 2019 by Triassic

[Gone West]

30 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

Did you know an MOD photographer Nick Coleman?

The name doesn't ring a bell although I did know a couple of photographers at the Fort. I shared a flat with one of them in my youth but I still can't remember their names. That's what old age does for you.

[Gone West]

31 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I remember looking at  high speed footage of HESH rounds against conventional heavy armour and being impressed with the amount of material blown off the internal face.  Made me thankful I'd opted for a career in science, rather than as a tankie, a view that was reinforced when I spent a day on Salisbury Plain with 1 RTR, sitting in a Challenger 2 going full pelt during an exercise.  Quite why anyone ever wants to be a loader is beyond me, it looked like a hell of a job.  In fact I don't think any of the crew positions in an MBT looked that appealing, with the possible exception of the driver.

HESH rounds were too easy to defeat so died out. Spent many times at live fire exercises on Salisbury Plain as well as trials at Potton Island and Shoeburyness. Amazing I can still hear.

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, PeterStarck said:

HESH rounds were too easy to defeat so died out. Spent many times at live fire exercises on Salisbury Plain as well as trials at Potton Island and Shoeburyness. Amazing I can still hear.

 

 

The high speed films of shells vs armour I saw was during time spent at Eskmeals in the mid 1990's, looking at their proofing capability.  We were looking at rationalisation (weren't we always?) and Eskmeals was being looked at with regard to closure.  Needless to say we got a very good demonstration as to why the facility should be retained, despite Chisholm's pressure on us to try and find a reason to either close the place or hive it off back to the centre (which is what happened in the end, I think).

[scottishjohn]

spec sheet of wharthog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II

an aircraft i would like to have flown in real world 

sim games with were fun though 

Edited February 5, 2019 by scottishjohn