World's First Lagoon Power Plants Unveiled In UK

AmiMoJo writes Plans to generate electricity from the world's first series of tidal lagoons have been unveiled in the UK. The six lagoons — four in Wales and one each in Somerset and Cumbria — will capture incoming and outgoing tides behind giant sea walls, and use the weight of the water to power turbines. The series of six lagoons could generate 8% of the UK's electricity for an investment of £12bn. Tidal Lagoon Power wants £168 per MWh hour for electricity in Swansea, reducing to £90-£95 per MWh for power from a second, more efficient lagoon in Cardiff. The £90 figure compares favorably with the £92.50 price for power from the planned Hinkley nuclear station, especially as the lagoon is designed to last 120 years — at a much lower risk than nuclear. Unlike power from the sun and wind, tidal power is predictable. Turbines capture energy from two incoming and two outgoing tides a day, and are expected to be active for an average of 14 hours a day. Friends of the Earth Cymru, said the group is broadly in favor of the Swansea lagoon.

Comments

Re:Armegeddon for indigenous marine life.

[AmiMoJo]

It's the lesser of two evils. Nuclear kills a lot of wildlife, especially in Europe where we have seen some serious dumping of hot water into rivers and lakes during heat waves. They kill a lot of birds too. Coal is obviously pretty bad. Gas is dangerous to extract and kills plenty of birds. Fracking it is even worse.

No system is going to be perfect, but given that we need electricity and every way of generating it has some environmental cost it makes sense to choose one of the least damaging options if possible.