Slashdot Mirror
Renewables Are Now Scotland's Biggest Energy Source
AmiMoJo writes Government figures revealed that Scotland is now generating more power from "clean" technologies than nuclear, coal and gas. The combination of wind, solar and hydroelectric, along with less-publicized sources such as landfill gas and biomass, produced 10.3TWh in the first half of 2014. Over the same period, Scotland generated 7.8TWh from nuclear, 5.6TWh from coal and 1.4TWh from gas, according to figures supplied by National Grid. Renewable sources tend to fluctuate throughout the year, especially in Scotland where the weather is notoriously volatile, but in six-month chunks the country has consistently increased its renewable output.
It will never work. Just give up.
Oh wait, it's starting to work.
It's still tortured reasoning; they're comparing all renewable sources combined to non-renewables individually. You might just as well say "Russian autos outselling Toyota Corolla, Honda Accord, Ford Fiesta".
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The biggest hand waving always comes with decommissioning
Okay, I'll wave my hands about and gobble about 'decommissioning'.
People tend to increase over time. Energy use increases over time. Globally we are not even close to providing the whole world with a grid coverage and capacity that provides the comfortable existence we ourselves would not tolerate losing. Every renewable dream has us whizzing around in electric vehicles. But this could come true only if the future is nuclear. The renewable numbers just don't work out, even when you imagine a magical solution to the storage problem, and especially when you include ground transportation.
So where did this 'decommissioning fable' come from? When was it decided --- and by whom --- that ~60 or so years hence there must be a desolate public park at every site chosen for a gigawatt nuclear plant, today?
Suggest to anyone that a water or sewage treatment plant cannot cost what it costs, it must also gather funds to fund its own destruction and demise and people will shake their heads. But this is crazy! The sewage will always flow downhill to here. We're not going to move a water plant, tear the pipes out of the ground and route them somewhere else. Oh, it's soo much different.
But is it really? Who is telling us we will be using less energy in the future? Should we listen to them?
Decommissioning funds gathered for nuclear plants may seem like a great idea, but it has also become an awful idea. It does not make nuclear energy any safer. It has promoted technological sloth, dissuaded investors from supporting (and injecting R&D to improve) the only clean base load energy source on the table. It has handicapped nuclear from being THE cheapest source of energy. It has enabled the most short-sighted and fuck-stupid forms of corporate vandalism. This is because when anyone owns or acquires an aging nuclear plant, they are faced with a choice --- whether to re-invest and re-structure to replace aging components, as they would for any other source, or trigger its destruction and unlock the magic chest of decommission funding. Getting a little kick to the balance sheet by rendering a productive energy source into a blight on the landscape, something intentionally broken that cannot be fixed.
Such as the Kewaunee Power Station which went offline in 2013 despite that it is in good condition, has maintained a healthy balance sheet, perfect safety record, operating license extended to 2033 and had six months' fuel left in the reactor. All because Dominion is riding the natural gas 'glut' at this brief moment in time. When the glut peaks out Dominion will invest in some other, dirtier short-term solution.
We should be upgrading these plants and taking them to the next level as we do with every other utility. Given the gigawatt-year track record they have demonstrated It is ludicrous to assume that any nuclear plant operating today deserves to be destroyed rather than upgraded. There are too few of them and they are too precious.
Do not feed the vultures.
___
Please see Thorium Remix and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
Also of interest, Faulkner [2005]: Electric Pipelines for North American Power Grid Efficiency Security
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>