Saving the Planet … or is it ?

It's actually in the interests of private companies to have a catastrophic energy strategy

Chaos is far far more profitable

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As stated earlier, Tony …

There’s a surprisingly succinct review of advantages/disadvantages here: **LINK**

https://www.araner.com/blog/combined-cycle-gas-turbines

MichaelG.

I bought some heavy duty bags from Lidl about 7 or 8 years ago. Still using the same ones now. They might just turn out to be bags for (my) life.

I will 'bet my shirt' the government will now allow major 'fracking' to go ahead on 'land' sites, with the excuse , there is 'no alternative'.

Just treasure the last few years of extracting potable water from our aquifers.

Is this really true, would the yanks drink contaminated water??

Tony

Texas alone is five times the size of England.

Plenty of reports from other regions expelling 'gas' from their water taps..

In the UK it is too late for nuclear , so fracking is their only way out.

The Government understandably withdrew support for fracking in 2019.

**LINK**

On the other hand.

**LINK**

What we need next is storage. Just a random link on the topic.

**LINK**

Anyone who manages to ignite gas coming from a water tap has connected the water to the gas. Don't believe everything you see on youtube

Hi, I remember Methane being pumped from fractured shale strata down coal mines more than 50 years ago,the strata fractured as the face moved forward . Holes were bored into the strata above the face ,pipes inserted and gas collected and pumped to the surface. This was at a depth of 2500 feet.

I can’t remember it ever affecting drinking water

Maurice

The best thing for the planet will be to get rid of the humans, in the big picture they have not been around very long and probably won’t be around much longer. Nature fights back with a vengeance given a chance. I feel sure man will destroy himself before he destroys the planet,

Mike

Agreed, it couldn't happen to ' us' with a separate public water supply.

But , IF the aquifer that public water supply is being drawn from is 'contaminated' then , no potable water for anyone in that area.

Want to risk it ?

The way to save burning so much methane, reduce landfill and help feed the hungry is Soylent Green.

But large areas of the country don't get their water from aquifers, so why can't we get shale gas from there? We will need to burn gas for a long time yet even if the plan is to phase it out eventually, so we might as well use our own rather than import it. All depends on the pay back period for drilling the hole, but I bet that isn't all that many years. We could start by allowing people to fit energy efficient windows and insulation in listed buildings etc, which is banned at present according to the press

Just think about it.....

weve been buying oil from the tent dwellers for to long....

Now overpriced gas from the lovers of Communism......

even importing wood chips from over the Atlantic....

best dig a whole and get away from them asap.....

I just hope the US becomes self sufficient in oil/gas then the tent swellers can drink the stuff/oil.....

The 'tent dwellers' as you call them have been busy buying the world with money we gave them.

Tony

I don’t think you need to worry about fracking or tent dwellers. Us Kilt wearers are just opening Cambodian field and we still have plenty oil and gas in the existing fields for a good few decades yet.

there are other options including underground gasification of the vast remaining deep coal reserves under the UK. Nuclear in its present form is not a good idea as evidenced by Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukishima.

one point that is being roundly ignored is the inefficiency of power transmission. Between 40% and 60% power is lost between power generation and socket outlet. Big scale generation is not as efficient as it might seem. When the power source energy is”free” such as wind, tide or solar maybe not such an issue but “expensive” energy in either monetary or environmental terms are best used local to the demand.

I really have my doubts that the projected power generation and existing distribution network are capable of the massive load increase required from the change over to electric vehicles and replacing gas central heating with electric heating and heat pumps. But we are all fitting “smart” meters. They can have two way conversations with your supplier. I expect that we will get used to “load shedding” when our domestic supplies get “throttled “ much like our internet does when we get a bit greedy with our data use!

We are already in the throes of a power crisis right now. Not a shortage but a market failure brought about through governmental mis management, compounded by a panicky population scared by the press into filling their vehicle tanks faster than a depleted tanker fleet can refill petrol stations!

If we do increase demand for electricity beyond available resources how will we all react!

Can they switch Drax back to coal or is it stuck burning wood? I hear that Chris Huhne, liberal energy loon in the Cameron Clegg partnership, has made a fortune converting American forest into wood pellets.

Underground gasification produces just as much if not more CO2 than digging up the coal and burning it in a power station.

Burning coal kills a lot more people than nuclear per MWhr, mainly widely spread out due to pollution, and of course nuclear has a much lower CO2 emission. Very few people died as a direct result of Three Mile Island and Fukushima

according to Wikepedia

Although overall losses in the national grid are low, there are significant further losses in onward electricity distribution to the consumer, causing a total distribution loss of about 7.7%.^[29] However losses differ significantly for customers connected at different voltages; connected at high voltage the total losses are about 2.6%, at medium voltage 6.4% and at low voltage 12.2%

I do wish people would check their facts.

The Vajont dam disaster in Italy killed at least 1,910 people, so even hydro power isn't completely safe. This is well worth a read deaths per TWhr, shows nuclear is actually relatively safe

Good to see small modular reactors are being moved up the priority list. The idea of installing them on decommissioned coal fired power plant sites with their existing infrastructure seems like a sensible idea to me. I accept that the turbines and generators will need to be replaced but the transmission lines are already in place.

Peter

The UK used to lead the world in developing practical nuclear-power generation, principally at UKAE Winfrith, in Dorset. However its main project was jointly with the French, who pulled out at some stage and for reasons I have never established, our government thought it impractial or uneconomic to continue alone.

So like so many other things developed in Britain, our governments of both parties threw it all away. Winfrith is now a trading-estate with the remaining two, big, experimental reactors in their own secure enclave, still being dismantled.

'

As for Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island...

The opponents of nuclear power like to parrot those names to support their case, but that is rather like using the Tay Bridge disaster to ban major viaducts. Whilst the genuine problems of dealing with nuclear waste are undeniable and costly, I would not expect us to use those disasters in the "green" way in a forum dedicated to engineering.

The reasons for all those four failures are all known; hence teaching us what to avoid in future.

I don't personally know what happened at Chernobyl; but a major factor at Three-Mile Island was found to be adjacent control-panels mirror-imaged for aesthetics, disastrously confusing the operators suddenly working under considerable stress when something failed.

At Fukushima, the reactors were unharmed by the tsunami and would have been closed down to a safe state had the site's designers done something very simple: place the necessary emergency-generators well above possible tsunami and storm-surge reach. The wave swamped the low-lying emergency plant, stopping the reactor circulating-pumps and control systems after their normal mains supplies had been cut by the inundation. After all, as the very word tsunami shows, Japan is hardly a stranger to earthquakes and tsunamis.

What baffles me also is why Germany so feared the same type of disaster on the seismically-calm Baltic shores, that she used it to justify ending her own nuclear-power programme.

Tay Bridge? Design flaws, poor oversight of the design and building, and appalling workmanship in both parts-manufacture and erection, including not always meeting the designed specifications.

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All engineering problems, needing engineers to solve... but sadly too often hampered by politicians, money-traders and others who barely know stress from strain. If that.