The Power!

[andrewducker]

Go here and make up your own mind about how you'd like electricity to be generated.  I balanced things nicely and cut back on carbon dioxide, etc to my own satisfaction.  Of course, I also raised prices to £588 a year, over the current £250 a year, but that's eco-friendliness for you.

Comments

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I got out carbon emissions to zero, and it only costs £363 (in total)! Go me :-)

*decays into lighter versions of Rob*

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Is it realistic to get that many reactors online that quickly?

I didn't put additional reactors into the mix because I didn't think it was realistic to get those built by 2010.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

In Europe, in fact specifically France they can get them online in 3-5 years so yeah it's entirely feasible. It's not the case that we will have to replace all our power stations by 2010 anyway...

The fact is that Nuclear is the most cost effective zero[1] carbon emissions option.

There are some issues with nuclear (mainly political, potentially global) but none of them are technical.

I'm going off on a complete tangent here but the greens are really driving me insane in that most of them are opposed to nuclear power completely irrationally, which is ridiculous as its the only realistic chance they have of achieving their primary aim[2].


[1] Excluding obvious stupid attacks like that production of the station uses carbon (which is true of all other options too) or that refining the radioactive fuel does too.
[2] A reduction of greenhouse gases

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Ah, my jaded American experience is that we build every reactor as a one-off, and hand the contracts to Bechtel or Brown and Root (i.e. $$$$). A friend in the business describes American reactors as the world's most complicated plumbing installations.

Does the UK use the Electricity de France model of building reactors off a common template?

Much of the opposition to reactors in the the states (and that crosses party lines) has been caused by a combination of poor management, budget overruns, and people confusing reactors with fission bombs (our government's copped to lying about radiation exposure in the West during the weapons test programs of the 1940s and 50s.)

Unfortunately, the only marketing for use of fission power in the States has been lead by the utilities industry, and they're starting from a deep trust deficit.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I'm not aware of how we build the reactors in the UK - although I think we haven't built any for a long time. The green movement has been very adept at destroying confidence in nuclear power, and spreading BS about how it will take far far too long to build them.

The extent of the green BS is quite large - a recent government report said that nuclear power was not the way to go... well that's what it seemed to say, what it actually said is that a small percentage of nuclear wouldn't solve our problems which is true - for nuclear to be really cost effective you have to really invest in it and go with it for the majority of your power production needs.

[andrewducker]

To be fair - most of the green arguments I hear aren't about the setting up of power plants, but that there is no satisfactory method of disposing of all the radioactive waste.

There _are_ now new methods that may well solve this, but there doesn't seem to be agreement on how to safely store it.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I don't think safe storage is a problem at all. We can store the stuff safely enough. People are upset about the fact that it's going to remain as highly hazardous waste for a very long time. This is true, I don't deny that but I think the amount of waste needs to be kept in perspective.

Nuclear reactors generate incredible small amounts of high level waste compared to say the waste generated by coal. They also make low level waste (clothes / the reactor itself) in larger quantities. Overall though the amount of waste generated is tiny compared to fossil fuels.

Renewables are obviously far better in that they produce no waste (except for any waste involved in their production costs [which are going to be higher than with something like nuclear as the energy production density of renewables is quite poor]). They would be an obviously better choice if they didn't cost so damn much.

[balthial.livejournal.com]

In California you can choose how you want your power, so if you check off the box for Wind you pay a little more, but then California uses more wind power. (on a statewide basis. My power is probably generated by the coal plant up the road, but overall the grid has to use more wind power because that's what I checked off. I think, I don't recall now.)

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

Much lower emissions, and only £313 per household. Yay, insulating roofs!

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

On a more serious note, I hate the term 'nuclear waste'. If it is decaying, and radioactive, it is giving out energy mainly as heat. Heat heats water. Water goes to steam. Steam drives turbines. Oooh, look!

We can get it all to decay into lead or iron with just a little bit of neutron-prodding, and then use the stuff from there....Ahem.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Alchemy is the solution!

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

I played wth that yesterdta and just put in 100% renewables and it only came to £400-and something. Maybe I did it wrong. :-)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... 100% renewables costs £530 atm.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Huh. I don't know what I did yesteday now! Maybe I flooded East Anglia or invented cold fusion or sommat. If only I'd made notes ...

[spaj.livejournal.com]

I got £293
complete walkaway from Carbon fuels (zero emmissions)

12 new nuclear power stations
7000 wind turbines.

didn't even have to persuade people to use less...

Still, we have to buy a lot from China, but it's madness not to exploit the difference in currencies.

Adam