Renewables Are Now Scotland's Biggest Energy Source 235
AmiMoJo writes Government figures revealed that Scotland is now generating more power from "clean" technologies than nuclear, coal and gas. The combination of wind, solar and hydroelectric, along with less-publicized sources such as landfill gas and biomass, produced 10.3TWh in the first half of 2014. Over the same period, Scotland generated 7.8TWh from nuclear, 5.6TWh from coal and 1.4TWh from gas, according to figures supplied by National Grid. Renewable sources tend to fluctuate throughout the year, especially in Scotland where the weather is notoriously volatile, but in six-month chunks the country has consistently increased its renewable output.
Math (Score:2, Interesting)
7.8 + 5.6 + 1.4 = 14.8
Reading and comprehension (Score:4, Informative)
Hence the absence of the word "combined".
Re:Reading and comprehension (Score:5, Insightful)
It's still tortured reasoning; they're comparing all renewable sources combined to non-renewables individually. You might just as well say "Russian autos outselling Toyota Corolla, Honda Accord, Ford Fiesta".
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Well, Scotland is producing more from renewable energy combined than all the fossil fuel based sources combined, which is the importent bit really.
Re:Reading and comprehension (Score:4)
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Several people posted comments in the firehose that the math was off.
Instead of saying "generating more power from "clean" technologies than nuclear, coal and gas." they should have said "generating more power from "clean" technologies than either nuclear, coal or gas."
This would have made it clear that "clean technologies" was an aggregate sum, and that the other sources were counted individually.
Re:Storage vs. Grid purchase? (Score:3)
In addition to transportation, I'm curious about storage. How much "peaking power" comes from renewables (or stored renewables) as opposed to grid purchase (or quick-startup resources such as gas turbine)?
I'm stoked to hear about real-world success in renewable energy, but I see a lot of "fluff" cheerleading in the press without much attention to details about how much this or that project produces, compared to total consumption, and how much power is being consumed by various sectors of society.
As home-bui
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TFA is 190 words long. How is it possible to define this as anything other than a "fluff" piece?
Re:Misleading title (Score:4)
Why on earth would you have a problem with scotland getting their energy from renevables?
He didn't say that anywhere. His problem was solely about whether particular energy uses had been included or not, and whether those *should* count towards the claim made.
You're entitled to agree or disagree with him on that- and I'm not saying I entirely agree- but he didn't say anything about being opposed to Scotland getting its energy from renewables, and it's pretty unreasonable to put words in his mouth on that count.
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In the context of energy supplies, renewable means "there will be more supply tomorrow", i.e. the supply constantly renews itself. New coal and oil are not being produced at any appreciable rate. However the Sun is still fusing, and rain will refill dam reservoirs.
From a physics standpoint, yes, the Sun will eventually run out of fuel, but that's meaningless from a human standpoint. It will last a million times longer than we have had civilization.
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But the summary does use the word "and" where it should use "or":
generating more power from "clean" technologies than nuclear, coal and gas.
Not that using "or" makes it much less ambiguous.
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No, "or" would make it quite clear that the the power generated by clean tech is greater than any *one* of the alternatives. This is what we have the word "or" for.
I've tried offering my services to Slashdot on more than one occasion, but they don't seem terribly interested in having an editor who can actually, you know, edit.
AND, notT OR (Score:2, Flamebait)
They did say combined, although they used the short form of it "and". The only thing close to being literally correct would have been to say "generating more power from "clean" technologies than nuclear, coal or gas". It would still be deceptive though, since they are taking the total of every dubiously clean technology and contrasting that to each individual traditional source.
Nuclear certainly can be clean, particularly if you are not trying to produce plutonium for use in weapons. China, for one, is doi
Re:AND, notT OR (Score:4, Insightful)
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'Decommissioning' is a made-up scenario (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest hand waving always comes with decommissioning
Okay, I'll wave my hands about and gobble about 'decommissioning'.
People tend to increase over time. Energy use increases over time. Globally we are not even close to providing the whole world with a grid coverage and capacity [slashdot.org] that provides the comfortable existence we ourselves would not tolerate losing. Every renewable dream has us whizzing around in electric vehicles. But this could come true only if the future is nuclear. The renewable numbers just don't work out, even when you imagine a magical solution to the storage problem, and especially when you include ground transportation.
So where did this 'decommissioning fable' come from? When was it decided --- and by whom --- that ~60 or so years hence there must be a desolate public park at every site chosen for a gigawatt nuclear plant, today?
Suggest to anyone that a water or sewage treatment plant cannot cost what it costs, it must also gather funds to fund its own destruction and demise and people will shake their heads. But this is crazy! The sewage will always flow downhill to here. We're not going to move a water plant, tear the pipes out of the ground and route them somewhere else. Oh, it's soo much different.
But is it really? Who is telling us we will be using less energy in the future? Should we listen to them?
Decommissioning funds gathered for nuclear plants may seem like a great idea, but it has also become an awful idea. It does not make nuclear energy any safer. It has promoted technological sloth, dissuaded investors from supporting (and injecting R&D to improve) the only clean base load energy source on the table. It has handicapped nuclear from being THE cheapest source of energy. It has enabled the most short-sighted and fuck-stupid forms of corporate vandalism. This is because when anyone owns or acquires an aging nuclear plant, they are faced with a choice --- whether to re-invest and re-structure to replace aging components, as they would for any other source, or trigger its destruction and unlock the magic chest of decommission funding. Getting a little kick to the balance sheet by rendering a productive energy source into a blight on the landscape, something intentionally broken that cannot be fixed.
Such as the Kewaunee Power Station [wikipedia.org] which went offline in 2013 despite that it is in good condition, has maintained a healthy balance sheet, perfect safety record, operating license extended to 2033 and had six months' fuel left in the reactor. All because Dominion is riding the natural gas 'glut' at this brief moment in time. When the glut peaks out Dominion will invest in some other, dirtier short-term solution.
We should be upgrading these plants and taking them to the next level as we do with every other utility. Given the gigawatt-year track record they have demonstrated It is ludicrous to assume that any nuclear plant operating today deserves to be destroyed rather than upgraded. There are too few of them and they are too precious.
Do not feed the vultures.
___
Please see Thorium Remix [youtube.com] and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate [scribd.com]
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate [scribd.com]
Also of interest, Faulkner [2005]: Electric Pipelines for North American Power Grid Efficiency Security [scribd.com]
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Interesting perhaps, because of your opinion and links, but insightful? Certainly not.
Every renewable dream has us whizzing around in electric vehicles. But this could come true only if the future is nuclear. You forgot to point out why that is so. I would say you are wrong. The electric car does not care from which energy source its battery is filled.
Energy use increases over time.
In developing countries, yes. In developed countries: no. A huge deal of germanies (and rest of europes) decrease in CO2 out
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there's often some unknown technical magic happening when moving from high-grade uranium to low-grade uranium that requires no extra enrichment
I think you meant the other way around. Yes. It is called the Zippe centrifuge. Russia, Pakistan, China, France use this process and the USA is currently switching to it for uranium separation. Back when France still used gaseous diffusion the process was itself powered using nuclear power plants at Tricastin which are now not required and can be devoted to grid pow
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http://www.areva.com/EN/operat... [areva.com]
http://www.neimagazine.com/new... [neimagazine.com]
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More maths: Scotland has a population density of 67 per sq km; England has 407.
It's easy to rely on renewables when you have loads of land.
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If you're feeling a bit cramped, feel free to move up. We've got plenty of electricity to go round. And land.
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Interestlingly, and almost completely unrelated, the USA has a population density of only 40 (CONUS only, since Alaska would severly distort that number, being almost completely unpopulated).
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... plus they don't talk about energy *consumed* in scotland, only generated. It would be more useful if there were a statement that scotland is a net importer vs. exporter of electricity.
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... plus they don't talk about energy *consumed* in scotland, only generated. It would be more useful if there were a statement that scotland is a net importer vs. exporter of electricity.
That's a good point. The power produced by my house is 100% "renewable" energy. However, the fraction goes down significantly when you consider that I am largely dependent upon the electrical grid.
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How should the writer of the article know what you want to know? Especially if that is easy to google?
They are a net exporter: http://www.heraldscotland.com/... [heraldscotland.com]
They doubled the percentage of renewables from 2010 till 2014, all the charts you need but only till 2011: https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
Perhaps you find something more recent ;D I simply googled for: "scotland energy import export"
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Thanks for the links. I was indeed feeling a little lazy.
"How should the writer of the article know what you want to know?"
That seemed like a natural enough question. The writer ought to set the context. If we were talking about only a pittance of generation overall, then its exact decomposition of renewable vs. not would not be interesting. As it is, scotland produces some 15% of the UK total, so not too shabby.
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Too late (Score:5, Funny)
It's too late now. We'll have fusion in the next 50 years. It's a known fact since the sixties.
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How long until we have fusion power is not a function of time, but a function of investment.
Insufficient/deacreasing investment results in increasing the amount of time needed to complete the required R&D.
In fact a Q&A here on slashdot [slashdot.org] covered this. It even provided the following graphic [imgur.com] as clarification of "50 years until fusion":
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That, if it is technically even possible to sustain fusion on a very small scale (which may have to be really big on human scales, but really tiny compared to what's going on in the sun and other stars).
It seems more and more investors are losing faith in the very possibility of producing energy with fusion. Fusion as such of course we know can be done, but sustaining a contained fusion reaction and tapping the energy it produced, that part not so much.
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> It seems more and more investors are losing faith in the very possibility of producing energy with fusion.
[citation needed]
This recent survey of alternate fusion projects says otherwise: http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/... [nextbigfuture.com]
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Who knows where we would be if the nuclear lobby spend as much as they did on hookers and blow for Senators as the did on R&D?
Who knows where we would be if the nuclear lobby didn't eat their own children by demanding the shutdown of the Clinton era thorium reactor project?
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Who knows where we would be if the nuclear lobby spend as much as they did on hookers and blow for Senators as the did on R&D?
There was no need to do anything else, because those old reactors were perfectly safe.
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Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear power has benefited from the near bottomless source of government funds that is called "dual use technology". You know what Sweden, India, Switzerland, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea have in common? They all pursued civilian nuclear power as a pretext for starting a nuclear weapons program. Yeah, that's right, even dumpy old Sweden wanted the bomb, and lied to the world and their own public about it. (They did change their minds, though). That's why everyone assumes Iran is lying. They know they lied.
Same with space exploration. Same with the internet. The way to get research funding in the US (and in lots of other countries) is to suggest that the technology has military relevance - with bullshit if necessary. "This kind of computer network will be very useful after a nuclear war! *snort*"
This is, IMHO, the real argument against nuclear power. Development of solar panels and windmills weren't funded for fifty years over clandestine military budgets. God knows where they'd been today if they were. With nuclear, on the other hand, there's every reason to think that the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and picked clean.
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The way to get research funding in the US (and in lots of other countries) is to suggest that the technology has military relevance - with bullshit if necessary.[...]
[...] Development of solar panels and windmills weren't funded for fifty years over clandestine military budgets. God knows where they'd been today if they were.
Well, the good news is that the military has gotten enthusiastic about "going green" in a big way.
Thanks to extended wars in the mid-east, they've discovered that energy costs are making up a non-trivial part of the deployment cost. Nowadays, the Pentagon is actively defending solar/biofuel/battery research, because that will help free them from the tyranny of extended supply chains that lead to $400/gallon fuel.
The bad news is that Republicans are decidedly unenthusiastic about green energies and they've a
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where does Finland end up in that conspiracy theory though? I mean, fuck, there's plenty of places where nuclear is used just because it's rather cheap and stable. furthermore, it would be fucking easy to argue that Solar panels were funded for the first 40 years ONLY FOR MILITARY APPLICATIONS including military space applications, so there.
and where does Norway end up on the renewables with all their hydro?
anyways, the actual article makes the mistake too of combining the green and not the fossils into one
It will never work (Score:5, Insightful)
It will never work. Just give up.
Oh wait, it's starting to work.
Re:It will never work (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem you have is that you've looked at the power output and gone "Wow, it works!".
What was the nuclear output before we started dialling down nuclear stations and discouraging their use? How much does this energy cost? How sustainable is it? There's at least one out-at-sea wind-farm in Scotland that has such high maintenance costs precisely because of the local weather that it was considered to abandon it.
Nowhere in the article is there a price. If we're doing this, and it makes energy prices continue to rise (don't forget - total energy price is what I pay [constantly rising] as well as what taxes of mine go to subsidise these projects [also rising]).
I'm sure someone will point at a project where the costs of renewable were low but WAS THIS PROJECT? Scotland is a notoriously remote and inhospitable place and just getting that power back to somewhere useful is going to be an enormous cost. Where is this mentioned? Nowhere.
With EU subsidies, UK subsidies, renewable firms willing to be a loss-leader for a while, rising energy costs to the consumer, etc. there's no way to know for sure quite what this is costing. We might be saving the Earth by costing us a less literal one.
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An interesting article, given that the linked government statistics do not include any comparison of pricing whatsoever and I wasn't able to find any on the "open government" gov.uk either:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear... [telegraph.co.uk]
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Re:It will never work (Score:5, Informative)
Scotland gets a lot of income from North Sea oil, but that is eventually going to run out. That is why they are investing in renewable energy now. When the oil is gone they will be exporting their wind power, which geography has blessed them with.
The cost isn't that high, relative to other sources. Coal's costs are mostly external and somewhat hidden. Nuclear in the UK is a disaster. The old plants built by the government couldn't be given away, we had to pay people to take them. Recently they have been trying to build new ones, but no-one is interested. In the end only EDF agreed to build one if we paid them double for the energy it generates, guaranteed for the life of the plant, and if it is built by a Chinese company at rock bottom prices.
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FWIW the Chinese have the most recent experience of actually building nuclear power plants of that model anyway.
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Numbers in summary contradict headline (Score:5, Insightful)
10.3TWh in the first half of 2014. Over the same period, Scotland generated 7.8TWh from nuclear, 5.6TWh from coal and 1.4TWh from gas,
So that's 10.3 TWh renewables vs 14.8 TWh from non-renewable sources.
Interesting numbers game. Certainly only by lumping all the renewables together, and splitting out the other sources, they could make it work. Not exactly a fair comparison. Nevertheless impressive that they are now at about 40% overall coming from renewable sources.
Re:Numbers in summary contradict headline (Score:5, Insightful)
It could also be presented as 10.3 TWh of renewables vs 7 TWh of fossil vs 7.8 TWh of nuclear.
Or another way could be 7 TWh of fossil vs 18.1 of not fossil.
Or 7.8 of nuclear vs 17.3 of non nuclear.
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31.0% - 7.8 TWh - Nuclear
25.1% - 6.325 TWh - * Wind
22.2% - 5.6 TWh - Coal
12.4% - 3.108 TWh - * Hydro
5.6% - 1.4 TWh - Gas
2.3% - 0.585 TWh - * Other biomass including co-firing (this usually means wood burning)
1.1% - 0.277 TWh - * Landfill gas
0.2% - 0.054 TWh - * Solar
0.06% - 0.014 TWh - * Sewage sludge
Sources preceded by a * are classified as renewable.
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Bigger than any other single source of energy, and mostly wind.
Scotland plans to be at 100% renewable capacity by 2020, with a total capacity of 200%. The excess will be sold to other countries.
Blame slashdot... (Score:2)
Non-renewables are still the biggest source (Score:2)
The math is clear
7.8 + 5.6 + 1.4 is greater than 10.8.
And before you go all nitpicky on me, I have combined all non-renewables (nuclear, coal, gas), in the same way as the original submission combined hydro, solar and wind, all of which have less in common than the non-renewables, which are all thermal power plants, and thus have a lot more in common.
decentralisation of energy supply (Score:5, Informative)
One of the biggest challenges on Scotland has been the decentralisation of energy supply. The grid (high voltage power lines) was built to connect power stations that were usually less than 30 miles from cities and then smaller grid segments out to the less densely populated areas such as the highlands & islands.
The challenge Scotland now faces is that a large amount of renewable energy is being produced in the highlands and islands and coastal projects resulting in power having to be shipped "the other way" through the grid. So Scotland has had an enormous new power line from Beauly in the north to Denny in central region to help. The scandal is that a lot of Scotland's renewable energy is idle or switched off because there is not enough capacity in the grid to use it until the new line comes on board. Nearly every loch in Argyll has some kind of hydro power generation capabuility but it is switched off (except Cruachan [spenergywholesale.com])
The new wave power production systems are fabulous, especially the inter-connected wavenet squid system [albatern.co.uk].
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You've got it backwards. Decentralisation is pretty well the holy grail of grid stability. When things go down you are left with a hole instead of losing half the grid.
totally agree - it's pretty amazing how the investment in the decentralised grid is coming along. However, my point is that Scotland has had to invest massively in the grid to support the new renewable energy production facilities. Scotland is not quite there yet - but hopefully in a couple of years the renewable energy will all be switched on and we'll get to a much higher percentage without affecting "quiet day stability" or energy prices.
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Another thing is there's some form of heat pump electricity generation technology that can only work in the niche of a cold place with a lot of tunnels underground filled with water - which is anywhere in Scotland where coal has been dug up. I forget the name of the project.
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I forget the name of the project.
One of the most popular geotherm projects using a coal mine tunnel is in the centre of Glasgow, there's a report about it here (PDF) [sust.org]. I understand it's a template for lots of other projects.
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heat pump electricity generation technology
Heat pumps are not used to generate electricity.
They use electricity to pump heat from the outside into your house. The principle is the reverse of your fridge, consider the inside of the fridge to be the environment and the heat radiator at the outside of the fridge is the heating for your house.
Isn't all renewable? (Score:4, Funny)
Hell, even oil is renewable. You just need to wait a while.
I remember reading something about so law saying energy cannot be destroyed. ;)
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It can not be destroyed, but the second law of thermodynamics is still a bitch.
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From wikipedia:
The second law of thermodynamics states that in a natural thermodynamic process, there is an increase in the sum of the entropies of the participating systems.
And in what is that relevant to the discussion or your parents post?
Problems with renewable sources (Score:3, Insightful)
Here in Spain, wind turbines have destroyed many beautiful natural landscapes (while affecting also some wild birds and other fauna).
I wonder wether populating a whole mountain range with huge poles should be considered "clean".
Re: Problems with renewable sources (Score:2, Interesting)
Cleaner than strip mining that mountain. Anyonone complaining about renewables spoiling landscapes is an idiot or disingenuous. Welcome to earth. Humans develop and conquer nature. News at 11 for those other idiotss who don't have to deal with the consequences of their horribly destructive lifestyles because they spew their poison into some poorer person's backyard. Hurry for you dick.
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Here in Spain, wind turbines have destroyed many beautiful natural landscapes
Oh yeah? Did it build whole cities in them that the country doesn't need? That worked out really well for China, so you decided to take on the approach at home. But I'm pretty sure the wind turbines haven't leaned over and scraped away any massive patches of natural habitat.
Re:Problems with renewable sources (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks prettier than Canadian tar sands imho. And I imagine less harmful than hydraulic fracking.
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I was once in a superb area of Spain in Andalusia. Mountains, Sierras etc. nice nice.
But stupid idiots built a city there, destroying the nice landscape.
It is a pest, stones on stones, roofs everywhere black stripes of streets and roads cutting through them and leading outward into the landscape ...
Sigh ... a shame isn't it? Ah, the city is called Granada, some people think it is the most beautiful city in the world.
It is certainly on a top spot on my list ... so: beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.
I do
*Electrical* power (Score:2)
I suspect than one adds transit to the mix, the headline is rather misleading.
By this means, Canada has met this goal since electricity was commercially available (53% of our electricity is hydro, alone).
Renewables Are Now China's Biggest Energy Source!! (Score:2)
where did they get those numbers? (Score:2)
According to the UK government data [www.gov.uk] in the first link in TFA, renewables share of total generation was less than 20% (and falling) in the first half of 2014.
Renewables' share of total generation in 2014 quarter 2 was 16.8 per cent, an increase of 0.9 percentage points on 2013 quarter 2, with a 6.2 per cent fall in overall generation exceeding that of renewables. This was a 2.7 percentage point fall on 2014 quarter 1's record renewables share of 19.5 per cent.
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Insane Society (Score:2)
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It is obvious that if we allow the population to double we will need to double energy production.
No it is not. To double energy needs you need double the houses and double the miles driven etc.
And if strict birth control cuts our population in half we can essentially do fine with half as much energy production.
No you can't. The houses above will still be inhabited, just by less people. The energy need might go down but wont be halved.
Re: Nuclear is Clean (Score:2)
China, they're making as many AP1000 reactors as the rest of the world combined.
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Be interesting to see how it performs.
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It is more than that. China is building more reactors than the rest of the world combined period. They have build most of the currently used reactor types in the last couple of decades. Including the French, Canadian, and US models.
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Nuclear releases less CO2, but kills more wildlife and releases more radiation. The UK has a very poor track record on contaminated material getting out of nuclear plants, and to this day stores spent fuel in open pools where birds periodically pick up the contaminated algae and carry it off.
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Nuclear releases less CO2, but kills more wildlife and releases more radiation
I'd like a source for the 'kills more wildlife'. Even counting just emissions at the plant itself and not the huge amount from coal mining, nuclear power plants emit less radioactive material than coal.
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http://thinkprogress.org/clima... [thinkprogress.org]
Wikipedia has the same numbers on an article somewhere, can't find it now.
Re:Nuclear is Clean (Score:4, Insightful)
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I was comparing wind and nuclear, not coal and nuclear. Even the worst estimate for wind is lower than nuclear.
Wikipedia has some slightly different figures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
Even so, in the worst case wind and nuclear are broadly comparable. Coal is, of course, terrible and no-one wants it.
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There is also an issue with that graph in that it gives raw numbers of bird deaths. It does not take into account the number of different installations of each type and the energy produced by each installation. For example, if twice as much energy is produced by nuclear than by wind then there are half as many birds killed per unit energy produced.
Coal is, of course, terrible and no-one wants it.
Coal produce a lot more electricity than wind or nuclear.
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That's an institutional problem, not a technological one.
Incompetent handling of nuclear power does not undermine its potential.
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You have to solve the problem of incompetence and putting profit before safety if you want nuclear power. You can't just say "don't put idiots in charge", you have to figure out a way to actually do that for 50 years, well beyond your own working lifetime.
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Could you please enlighten me as to how the radioactive nuclear waste created by nuclear power is "sustainable"?
Or how the risks of a nuclear meltdown due to unforseen disasters or intentional sabotage are even worth it?
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Breeder reactors create more fuel than they use. Further, techniques can be used to greatly decrease the amount of waste created.
The risks of a meltdown is zero with modern reactors, they have plenty of passive mechanisms in place.
I suppose you could sabotage a modern reactor, but the best you can do is blow up the whole plant and spread radiation everywhere. The reactor can't be forced to meltdown or anything of the sort.
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They're building one fast breeder reactor, the rest of the new ones are all VVER. It will likely pave the way for future breeder reactors.
Re:Nuclear is Clean (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately no, they did the opposite of the safe thing and extended the life of old reactors and increased the output.
But just because they're being all twisted and stupid about it doesn't mean they have their head up their ass. They clearly see the benefit in investing in nuclear infrastructure. They have eight new reactors being built that are set to be completed all within the next two years. Probably plans for more on the way. It's a very aggressive strategy, and I'd imagine after the new ones are online the old ones are going to be decommissioned.
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They have eight new reactors being built that are set to be completed all within the next two years. Probably plans for more on the way. It's a very aggressive strategy, and I'd imagine after the new ones are online the old ones are going to be decommissioned.
Maybe, maybe not. The problem with nuclear reactors is they're like eating at a fancy restaurant. Lots of merriness until you decide the meal's over. Then the bill comes. Not shutting down the old reactors means not having to deal with the humungous costs to decommissioning them, dismantling the plant, paying for long-term storage of some highly radioactive parts that are no longer generating revenue, etc.
There's a reason you keep reading about the NRC granting license extensions to 50+ year old reactors in
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The corporate heads of those power companies all want to cruise into retirement without having to deal with the clean-up cost fallout.
I know you're making that out like it's a bad thing, but I actually think it's a good strategy to hold out as long as you can, because the more time passes, the more likely technology will catch up and make clean up slightly less difficult. It sounds like a cop out, but technology and time can solve almost any problem.
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It's not too hard.
It's the long-lived toxic nucleotides that are the real problem. Keeping something safe for 50 years isn't too hard (particularly if everything is vitrified and kept as small pellets so you can use passive cooling) but keeping it safe for 5000 years is a massive headache. So how should we deal with them? Bombard with more neutrons. Like that, they transmute into something hotter which will decay away much more rapidly.
Vitrification is so 1970s (Score:2)
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I know you're making that out like it's a bad thing, but I actually think it's a good strategy to hold out as long as you can, because the more time passes, the more likely technology will catch up and make clean up slightly less difficult.
If we leave the mess lying around for a long time where it can be distributed into the atmosphere like at Fukushima if something goes wrong, you mean. What a great idea! Let's create lots of those messes and see if any of them blow up! Whoops, in fact, something like half our messes are exactly like that. Same reactor design, usually sited someplace ignorant where it will flood, with a bunch of spent fuel sitting around on top of it... sometimes more than they had at Fukushima Daiichi.
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I know you're making that out like it's a bad thing, but I actually think it's a good strategy to hold out as long as you can, because the more time passes, the more likely technology will catch up and make clean up slightly less difficult.
That is a huge ass assumption.
You realize thinking like this is exactly why we have the environmental issues we do today? No one wanting to make the tough choices (back when the problems were first discovered), let's keep going as we are and in the future I'm sure we'll come up with a solution. ("of course, if we haven't I'll be pushing up daisies anyway," they were thinking back then).
Back in the '60s folks through by the turn of the millennium we'd all be driving flying cars and living on other planets. T
Re:Paid for by the English (Score:5, Insightful)
None, Scotland gets 8% of the revenue for the UK, has 10% of the population, and pays 12% of the taxes. Scotland in fact (slightly) subsidises England.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought Scotland had a lot of peat production since like time immemorial.
Re: (Score:3)