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24 comments on Of pipelines and the future
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24 comments on Of pipelines and the future
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We are now in the reverse position from WW2: then we were an oil exporter whereas Germany and Japan were oil dependent. We (the US) appeared to be horrendous creatures to those regimes, blocking their access to resources needed by their industrial empires.
This time, our gov't in a bumpy collaboration with the EU and Japan has tried consolidate its hold on the ME and Afghanistan thru military means, simple aggression to put it bluntly. Russia has a lot of gas and oil (declining, yes), and wants to protect and exploit that advantage. The US and EU, ever since the fall of the SU, have been trying to weaken that advantage thru fomenting "revolutions" in the former Soviet states and satellites, not just leaving them neutral, but recruiting them into NATO, putting military bases there, and so on. Now, for the first time, Russia did not passively accept a provocation, but responded. Shock, shock,shock.
I'm no fan of Russia. But I'm even less a fan of the hypocrisy that prevails in the West where we see only one side. The "fingers around the neck" metaphor needs to be looked at from both ends.
What we ought be doing, rather than ramping up for Armageddon, is re-directing the funds now used for military adventures and bailing out the billionaires to rebuilding our society so that it can function on a radically reduced oil energy budget, i.e. build up small dense towns close to agriculture and small industry, and all the other obvious and natural steps.
Won't happen, of course, until we're more than halfway to hell. But without a vision, we'll make it all the way.
I'd like to concur in the thought that Russia has some justifiable concern about its position, and is likely to behave hostilely when threatened, even if we in the west think the threat is quite unreal. We after all know that we are good guys, one and all. But the Russians have historically been concerned about their access to ocean ports. This goes back to Czarist times and is not something that can be ignored. With each Cheneyist move on our side, they wonder what they could to counter a real escalation somewhere on their border. And what a real enemy, which Cheney surely is, could do to counter whatever they think they might do. It is chess master thinking. It does no good to say that we mean them no harm, if our actions continually move toward a situation in which doing them harm could less costly to us. This is not to say that we should simply let them do what they want, but we do need to work harder at diplomacy.
I belive that the G7 is acting out of desperation.
Japan has no energy resources.
Europe has depleted it's uranium and coal and north sea oil and gas is running out fast.
In the US net energy from coal peaked some time ago. Oil imports are very high. The Naturalgas cliff will soon arrive in north America. A north American natural gas shortage will end cannadian tarsands oil production.
Plus most of the exports that the west are depending on will not be forth coming.
Europe has not depleted all its coal, it has just chosen not to use it (whether on price or other concerns).
I'm not a fan of nuclear power but uranium comes from Canada, Australia, the United States. For a price, which is small compared to building the nuke in the first place, I can't see Europe not getting all the uranium they want.
The UK has enough nuclear waste if processed to run a number of reactors for 60 years.
Just a detail, but the 'waste' referred to is actually depleted uranium left over from the enrichment of natural uranium as fuel for the current generation of (thermal) nuclear reactors. Tens of thousands of tonnes sit in storage in rural Cheshire with no obvious place to go at the moment. A fast reactor, such as used to operate at Dounreay in the north of Scotland, can convert the depeleted uranium to plutonium which can be used to generate electricity (I know - I worked there).
For political and low oil and natural uranium price reasons, the project was cancelled in 1988 and the fast reactor shut down in 1994 as the Tory government of the day nailed its colours to the deregulated natural gas mast in respect of electricity generation. The result now is that about 35% of the UK's electricity is generated from natural gas, supplies from the North Sea are dwindling and it's getting less and less clear where long term stable supplies of any sort of energy are gong to come from in the future (but then we all know this anyway).
Sterling is doing an analysis of the potential of nuclear power to meet future world power needs - he has put the first part up here but was looking for collaborators.
You contribution could be very valuable, so if you feel that you would be prepared to help, please e-mail me and I will pass it on.
brittanicone2007 at yahoo dot co dot uk
There is also a webs site that some of us in the UK who are concerned about power shortages have set up:
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/energysecurityuk/
Again, e-mail me if you would like to be a member.
Regards,
Do you work in the nuclear industry or own a company with interest in a nuke revival?
Nope. I am just interested in trying to stay warm in the winter, and am persuaded that for the UK at least there is no other practicable way.
We are probably going to get very cold and and thrown out ot work anyway, since the plan, insofar as there is one, is based on importing LNG.
Around 30GW of coal and nuclear out of a total of 75GW is coming off line in the next few years.
The planned increase in world LNG production has been scaled back in a number of countries, and now looks likely to be 100 million tons short by 2013, around the same as Japan and Korea use together.
Here is an analysis of the physical limitations of producing power with renewables in a crowded northern country:
http://www.withouthotair.com/
Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air (withouthotair.com)
This leaves out cost considerations. Solar PV in the UK produces only a tiny amount of power in the winter when it is most needed.
There are limited sites for wind on land, and off-shore wind costs around £3 million MW installed, not including connection, back-up and maintenance.
Allowing for intermittency you come out to around £9millionor so a MW - most of the poor, or indeed most people, could in no way afford that if it represented any substantial proportion of power, and would simply have to do without.
I should emphasise that the very first thing we should be doing is to insulate our houses properly, and to conserve wherever possible.
We need all sources of power which can be produced with anything like reasonable cost as soon as possible, but here the potential of renewables is nothing like as good as, say, in the Great plains of America with its huge on-shore resources.
It is going to take some time for a nuclear build to get going, and in the meantime we are going to get very cold in spite of conservation.
I do not appreciate the delay.
Ok, interesting.
Your offshore wind figures sound awfully expensive though. Are you sure they are correct? 9 billion pounds per GW? Isnt nuke about 1 billion dollars per GW? What would be the cost per kwh of offshore wind compared to nuke?
Darned if I can find the detailed break-down now, as I looked at the issue some time ago and a lot of my sources are now off line.
The problem is that you are shooting at a moving target, and unfortunately most of the costs are rapidly rising - this applies to nuclear as well as wind, although the inputs are rather different, as wind uses a lot more basic resources like steel but obviously not such sophisticated engineering, although the nacelle does involve precision engineering, and the equipment to install off-shore wind is certainly technologically advanced.
Here is the basic UK government report , but it is from 2006:
http://www.renewables-advisory-board.org.uk/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=13
Offshore Wind Cost Study (ODE Ltd) - RAB Forum
Here are some calculations I did at the time, and came out to a figure of around £45bn for 33GW nominal, which would come out to around £4bn for an actual MW
However, this was certainly, or at least is now, an under-estimate, and at one time a figure of £66bn was about, although that apparently did not include much of the needed connections, with some of the estimates to include connection being around £3bn/MW installed.
Since the Government report, Sterling has sunk by around 12% against many currencies for a start, and most of the costs are either in dollars or Euros.
I won't bother giving my links for the £99bn figure,a s most of them seem to be old now, and you have encouraged me to find a later figure:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n25141277
This comes out to £80bn, so using the Government's 30% utilisation figure from the report I quoted that is £8 million MW actual average output - this is April though, and Sterling is lower now.
I think I would be happier to use this figure, so apologies if I overstated the case - I really am happy for offshore wind to be built, it is only the cost that puts me off, so I don't have an axe ot grind.
It should also be noted that wind has an excellent load-following characteristic for the UK, being around 2.5 times stronger in mid-winter when it is most needed, as opposed to mid-summer when it is not.
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden05-dtiwindreport.pdf
sinden05-dtiwindreport.pdf
Nuclear costs are also a it as long as a piece of string, as if you take the costs the Chines have been building Westinghouse reactors for then you come out with a very low figure, whereas the new Areva reactor in Finland was the first of a kind, and they had to train the Finnish workforce and so may be high compared to series production.
However, I will use the highest estimate I can find - please note that it explicitly stated in the wind estimate that this was a conservative figure, so I am giving wind every chance to compete:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilitie...
So you have £4.8bn for a 1.6GW plant, at a 90% capacity factor that is around £3.3 bn GW
Connection costs are far lower for nuclear, as they are mostly going to be built on existing sites, and anyway are not in the very remote locations of wind power.
Fuel costs are minor. Decomissioning is not included, or waste disposal, but OTOH my figures do not include maintenance in the case of off-shore wind, and that is going to be expensive.
The projected life-span of nuclear plants is at least 60 years, albeit with substantial refurbishment, whereas the wind build is going for 20years, although it should be noted that some of the foundations may be OK to put another rig atop.
It is easy to trip over decimal points, and go for a false precision, but from the figures we have come out at, £3.3million MW of average production for nuclear, and £8 million MW for off-shore wind, if we think in terms of at least double the cost for off-shore wind to nuclear we may be in the right ball-park.
Hope this helps - it was a good opportunity to update my figures.
BTW, you will see all sorts of costs per kwh quoted, high and low for both sources, and they are based on levelised costs.
Unfortunately, these figures are dependent on the assumptions fed into them, with interest rates being one critical factor, so unless you have full details of the assumptions and breakdown they are useless, and can be adjusted to taste by the people who compile them.
For renewables typically the quoted levelised cost will not include government subsidies.
Some of the figures for nuclear also may not include all the costs - I don't know I don't use levelised costs as they are too dodgy.
Another thing to watch out for is most of the quoted figures per MW in the press and from advocates for renewables do not allow for intermittency - rework my figures allowing 100% utilisation for wind and it is a bargain! :-)
EDIT: I just looked back at your comment - the figure of $1million per MW for nuclear is way too low- they might be able to get somewhere near that in China, in a few years with series production, but no-one can do anything like that now.