A Place to Stand: 03/06/2007

A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

Thursday, June 07, 2007

NUCLEAR "WASTE"

The value of the depleted Uranium stored at Sellafield is currently seen to be negligible. There will be some 106,000 tonnes in store by 2020. The only current use is for making armour piercing munitions. This is fertile nuclear material with an energy content of 1,000 MW thermal days/tonne. At a wholesale price of 1.3p/kWh of carbon free electricity, each tonne is worth $156 million so the whole store has an eventual commercial value of £16.5 trillion & could supply all UK needs for 600 years. In units of Billions of Barrels of Oil equivalent, this Uranium has energy content 5 times the oil reserves in Saudi Arabia or 75 times the amount extracted from the North Sea. We are likely to use a trillion pounds worth by the end of this century.

The imminent final sell off of British Nuclear Fuels to 1 of 6 international consortia should not transfer ownership of this to the new contractors. This would be a bargain not seen since the Louisiana Purchase.
From a briefing to SONE by Brendan McNamara. Membership here.

In its enthusiasm to bankrupt our nuclear industry & nationalise the remnants without payment, Labour insisted on giving BNFL's overseas assets away at fire sale prices (because Patricia Hewitt insisted that Bruce Power be sold off within 10 weeks they got £275 million for an asset previously valued at £900 million & Westinghouse, which previously belonged to BNFL was bought by Toshiba & is now a contender to be building Britain's new nuclear stations. Of course this was back when Labour were anti-nuclear - the fact that they are now marginally more sensible than the Tories & infinitely moreso than the LudDems suggests that grossly incompetent though they are the other parties aren't better. Let us hope that they don't give away £16,500 trillion pounds because they haven't noticed it is worth anything.

// posted by neil craig @ 5:51 pm 2 comments

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

JOURNALISTIC DISHONESTY AT THE HERALD - LIES ABOUT RENEWABLES MAINTAINED

I sent this letter to the Herald last Friday in response to a letter from Friends of the Earth assuring us we could keep the lights on with renewables. I have to say that I think it is improper of the Herald to have decided to let FoI's letter which was, as I point out, not only contentious but factualy incorrect, without allowing any response not only from me but, if past experience is any guide, from several other people. It is however an impropriety the Herald have shown before:

There is a considerable amount of sleight of hand in Friends of the Earth's letter today assuring us that we can avoid blackouts without nuclear.

Of course they make no costings of any of their proposals but then it is a given, among renewabilists, that the mere doubling of electricity prices to pay for windmillery, rather than halving if we go nuclear, is a price the 24,000 people who die annually of fuel poverty are happy to pay. The real argument is that whatever we spend on windmills they won't work.

Moderately correctly FoI say that 20% of our power is exported to England & Wales (actually 17% & 1/3rd is to Ireland) but this is purely because we have nuclear power. This is not an argument for letting Hunterston & Torness close.

Their happy scenario is that renewables will be up from the current 13% (10% being hydro) to 45% in time for the closure of Torness. This is a rise of 32% at a time when 50% of Scotland's current capacity will have closed. This will clearly mot avoid blackouts. Going into it in more detail 20% of this proposed capacity is windmills, 6 times present production. Grid experts have publicly warned that wind's inherent instability (wind comes in gusts) would make the grid crash at above 10%. The remaining 15%, while not detailed, must be the long promised wave & tidal which currently provides zero % of our power & has not progressed as far as completing the journey across the drawing board. It is grossly irresponsible to base Scotland's future on such a will o' the wisp.

They also promise that conventional coal production would be transferred to inherently more expensive "clean coal" while admitting that this "urgently needs to be demonstrated commercially.". Indeed. Once again we are being promised pie in the sky

Perhaps most dishonest is the cheerful assurance that "there will be no year in which demand comes even close to exceeding supply". This is also the line in the previous Executive's report Matching Renewable Energy With Demand which again happily assures us that production will "on average" over the year, match demand. What this means in real life is that only 49% of the time, if all the renewabilist's promises work out, will we be suffering blackouts. Presumably almost all wimter nights when there is no wind or when there are gales, while supply will hold up during balmy summer afternoons.

Worse - the writer says that he makes no allowance for energy saving, which is sensible since nobody has yet ever pointed to a power station that was closed because of energy saving, but does not mention that he is making no allowance for a growing economy. If the SNP achieve their promised 3% annual growth by 2023 we will be 60% wealthier (if they achieve 4% as promised if we get the ability to cut corporation tax we will be 90% better off due to compound growth). In fact these are both extremely modest ambitions since world average growth is 5% annually. Since the correlation between economic growth & energy use is as well recognised as anything in economics we will need to increase energy production commensurately.

There is absolutely no reason, apart from politics, why we cannot have unlimited quantities of nuclear power at half the present cost. However because of the irresponsibility of our political we are sleepwalking towards blackouts & a very great increase in hypothermia deaths.
Yours Faithfully

Neil Craig
Reference - the Executive's renewables report - conclusions p77 http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/112589/0027356.pdf

// posted by neil craig @ 4:28 pm 8 comments

Monday, June 04, 2007

MORE COMMENTS

// posted by neil craig @ 4:32 pm 0 comments