OT: 1.8GW solar park nears completion

All these problems will vanish when thorium molten salt reactors come online. I don't know what's holding them up. The first LFTR went critical in 1965 and ran for four years.

Companies around the world are working on them, but it appears nothing is happening. Obama and Trump both promised to speed them up. I guess there is a huge investment in boiling water reactors that would disappear when LFTRs come online.

1. The public is afraid of radiation.

1. The greenies don't want more energy, clean or otherwise. They want sacrifice.

Not so much radiation, but meltdowns - Three Mile, Chernobyl, Fukushima. Reactors that lose their cooling water tend to explode.

Molten salt reactors cannot melt down. They are already molten. They cannot explode. There is no water in them.

The greenies have no control over when or where power plants are constructed.

Annoyingly, that's correct :)

My excuse is that I was being nagged to get out the house, and posted too quickly. That isn't a good excuse :(

In the UK the demand over the past 24 hours varied from

23.211GW (1:55am) to 37.106GW (6:40pm), so the minimum was 37.5% down from the maximum.

Source:

Worked in Germany.

Germany has already decided to shut down their coal and nuclear plants and move to renewables.

See:

PREAMBLE

Germany has seven nuclear power reactors in operation and is in the process of phasing out its nuclear power programme. A total of 23 nuclear power reactors are undergoing decommissioning and three nuclear power plants have already been fully dismantled. The remaining seven nuclear power reactors in operation will be permanently shut down in a phased approach by the end of 2022.

This report provides information on the status and development of nuclear power programmes in Germany, including factors related to the effective planning, decision making and implementation of the nuclear power programme that together lead to safe and economical operation of nuclear power plants.

The CNPP summarizes organizational and industrial aspects of nuclear power programmes and provides information about the relevant legislative, regulatory and international framework in Germany.

1. COUNTRY ENERGY OVERVIEW

1.1. ENERGY INFORMATION 1.1.1. Energy policy

Energy policy is, within the Federal Government, the responsibility of the

Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi)). The Federal Ministry for the Environment,

Naturschutz und nukleare Sicherheit (BMU)) is responsible for environmental policy within the Federal Government.

The major aim of the German energy policy is an affordable, secure and environmentally friendly energy supply. This aim shall be reached through the ongoing energy transition, where it is planned to produce energy on a sustainable basis and to maintain one of the most energy efficient and environmentally compatible economies in the world. The energy transition includes the following steps:

The last German nuclear power plant (NPP) will be taken off-grid by the end of 2022.

energy concept, 60% of the energy supply and 80% of electricity should be generated by renewables by 2050.

Germany shall become less dependent on oil and gas imports.

In line with the Paris Agreement, the emissions of greenhouse gases, which are harmful to the environment, shall be reduced by 80% to 95% by

2050.

Energy needs shall be reduced by more economical and efficient use.

The restructuring of the energy supply shall be a driver of innovation for Germany as an industrial base in order to generate growth and create sustainable and secure jobs.

To meet the challenges of the energy transition, the BMWi has launched a Ten Point Energy Agenda (see

transition.html).

1.1.2. Estimated available energy

Germany is one of the largest energy consumers in the world and is currently expanding generation capacities for primary energy from renewable sources as part of the implementation of its energy transition, and to comply with the obligations inherent in the Paris Climate Agreement signed in 2015. However, around 80% of its primary energy consumption still has to be provided by fossil fuels. Germany must import the majority of the energy resources it requires. The most significant source countries for fossil fuel imports to Germany are the Russian Federation, Norway and the Netherlands.

Around 2% of crude oil production and 10% of natural gas production are derived from domestic production. Mining of hard coal was phased out in

2018. Of all the energy resources in Germany, lignite is the only non- renewable energy resource which is available in large, economically

largest producer and consumer of this resource.

The demand for natural uranium is covered almost entirely by imports. Since the closure of the Wismut facility in East Germany in 1990, there has been no mined production of natural uranium in Germany.

An overview of the estimated available energy sources in Germany is given in Table 1. The remaining potential includes reserves (proven volumes of

cannot currently be exploited for technical and/or economic reasons, as well as unproven but geologically possible energy resources which may be exploitable in future).

Seems to me this is similar to when Kennedy said the US would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. They knew it was possible, but didn't know exactly how to do it. They also knew there was considerable risk.

One big advantage of renewables, other countries can't raise prices or cut them off.

--

  Rick C. 

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An issue Germany has faced with Russian gas.

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win

I have a colleague, he went back to work in Germany. I'm not sure but I think when he was working here in the US ~20 years ago he was pro-nuclear. (like ~90% of his physics colleagues) He was back here last year and we were talking, and he was telling me how bad nuclear is, no where to put the waste. (And I'm thinking where does the waste from burning coal go?)

Maybe mostly about getting along with your local crowd, if everyone in Deutschland is anti nuc, it's hard to be pro.

George H.

There have never been issues with Russian gas. Never ever. Not even during the cold war. The Russians keep their contracts. That's more than one can say about the US.

Well, the Ukrainians help themselves at the pipeline, now and then. Then they wonder why the second pipeline is under the sea now.

Gerhard

rs

if

line.

Not an irrational anxiety.

There may be greenies who are that silly. I don't seem to come across any o f their propaganda, but John Larkin gets his information on the subject fro m denialist propaganda websites designed to appeal to the gullible, and the y presumably feel free to invent any kind of greeny they feel might be usef ul.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

I seem to recall the issue with gas from the other side of the fallen iron curtain is the *threat* of being cut off.

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  Rick C. 

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That cannot be right apart from in the most extreme situation of a Wimbledon final or a cup final involving England kettle rush load in the middle of the coldest weather the country has ever seen and held on a weekday evening at 8pm (which is about when peak winter load occurs).

Normal diurnal load variation in the UK for most of the year is about

30% of peak load rising to 50% in a really cold winter. Base load also rises in winter because of economy 7 off-peak use tariffs.

Base load is typically 20GW continuously irrespective of season (but will get higher in very cold weather). Absolute peak generating capacity with everything going at full tilt is something like 80GW but it is very very unusual for actual consumption to go above 60GW). Last winter was so mild that it didn't get much above 40GW for any length of time.

In spring 2018 they were having to pay some industrial users to not use electricity because their available capacity was so limited.

We very nearly ran out of mains gas when "the beast from the East" hit and that was with a peak demand that was under 50GW for a few days. Broken gas pipelines being offline didn't help:

Odd that they should make such a crass mistake on the first line. You can check the annual peak figures for last year on gridwatch.

Or here for previous more representative cold winter years:

See for example:

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

This talks about what energy storage would have to cost to be cheap enough to allow solar to supply all the power being used. It's not there yet.

But it doesn't take much in the way of backup sources to let you get away with more expensive storage, and we may be there already.

Economy of scale has pushed the price of solar cells down a long way.

Grid storage modules aren't really being mass-produced yet, so they may come down quite a bit too when they get more popular.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

It was my cockup, not the BBC's.

The heading, which I missed and therefore didn't quote, refers to /household/ electricity use, not total electricity use. Mea culpa.

However, yesterday's diurnal variation (according to gridwatch) was around 37.5%, and yesterday was scarcely a cold winter day :)

I don't follow. Their description of the electricity usage seems spot on i n describing the curve your reference provides. Are you saying people wake up in the morning and *don't* take showers???

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  Rick C. 

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te:

h to allow solar to supply all the power being used. It's not there yet.

with more expensive storage, and we may be there already.

ome down quite a bit too when they get more popular.

Contrary to what some people would argue, companies working li-ion batterie s for grid storage are designing different chemistries for this market from the currently larger market for EVs. I found a reference for this and pos ted in another discussion recently.

It only makes sense. Design goals are different for cars and grid storage. So the batteries will be optimized differently. In cars weight vs. capac ity is vital, for grid storage not important so much, size vs. capacity is a factor, but not a critical one. Cost per kWh is important for both, but likely near the top of the list for grid storage while others are more impo rtant for cars. Grid storage can use space to provide isolation to minimiz e the spread of damage if a cell catches fire, a VERY important issue when you are storing MWh of energy. In cars they use active cooling and pray si nce there is no room for spacing cells apart.

Yep, there will be a whole industry for grid storage which will have limite d overlap with EV and cell phone batteries.

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  Rick C. 

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Hot water (and space heating) in the UK is typically provided by the gas/oil central heating or a gas flash boiler so it makes no difference to *electricity* usage. A few people have electric showers but not many.

And to your other point not everybody in the UK showers every morning.

My point was that the 4:1 ratio claimed in the first paragraph was well wide of the mark. The entire grid nearly collapsed in March last year because although the installed generation capacity is ~80GW you can in very cold weather only reliably generate about 60GW of electricity without bringing down the network that supplies mains gas to consumers. The dash to gas for electricity has some unwelcome side effects.

They had to pay heavy industry to drop off just to keep the lights on.

An even weirder paradox is because the distribution network and the generators are separate privatised businesses and France uses a lot more electric heating the Beast from the East event in March 2018 saw UK generators selling their electricity into France where it got premium prices! (up to the full capacity of the cross channel interlinks)

Electricity de Francaise owns quite a lot of UK generating capacity (as did Enron until it went bust). There is a derelict supergrid line not far from me for connecting in a power station they never actually built.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown