Slashdot Mirror
UK's Coal Plants To Be Phased Out Within 10 Years (bbc.co.uk)
AmiMoJo writes: The UK's remaining coal-fired power stations will be shut by 2025, Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has announced. They will mostly be replaced with gas. Currently, coal provides 28% of the UK's electricity. Japanese/European nuclear plants built in the UK are also expected to contribute. The big question is how to ensure gas plants are built to replace it. Only one large plant is under construction today. Another, which secured a subsidy last year, is struggling to find investors. The government cut renewable energy subsidies earlier this year, which led to questions about the government's commitment to tackle climate change.
Rolling blackouts and constituents lighting up the switchboards with complaints are the only thing that will make them sensible. A shame it needs to get to that point, really.
I also understand that they already have a thriving industry in extracting methane and fertilizer from all the bullshit that comes out of Parliament. They tried hooking up Buckingham Palace but found that the royals don't shit, they just hold it in until they fart a diamond once a year.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It seems to me that they Just Dont Get that we're have hardly any spare capacity and closing another load of stations without any new ones to immediately replace them is only going to make things worse especially if we have another cold winter. FFS , if they can't even formulate and carry out a sensibly policy for building basic infrastructure what fecking chance do we have if there's a real emergency?
Don't worry, they're not really going to turn off the plants by the due date. Some "emergency" will happen between now and then, and they'll be like: "Well, we can't close it down yet, because $EMERGENCY, but come election time everyone please remember that we really wanted to! We're pro-environment, in theory!"
That way they can have their coke and heat it too.
Our government has no clue about energy policy. They are a bunch of utter morons tied to lobbyists' interests. They have already agreed a new nuclear with the Chinese that guarantees a 100% rise in energy costs over current prices and have sold (with the help of the BBC) this to the general public as an energy security initiative. My countrymen are fools and the government is made up very much of their ilk.
Read the bloody article.
The first hint that this isn't purely about "liberal demoncrap" is that it is filed under business, not environment. The second hint is that they're talking about aging plants that won't be shut down if they are upgraded with carbon capture. It is also possible that other upgrades or maintenance is necessary, but unmentioned. In other words, cost is a factor here. The third hint are mentions of economic and political issues, such as energy security.
There are other subtle (as in subtle as being hit by a sledgehammer) issues being mentioned, none of which indicate that environmental considerations are secondary issues.
Coal is worse than gas no matter how you look at it. Mining operations, shipping it around the world, and even with modern plants that have carbon capture it's still just about the most damaging option. And yes, since we have an NHS, they are very expensive.
Note that the Liberals that you hate so much helped get new nuclear plants built in the UK, even if they are designed by a Japanese company, built by the Chinese and owned by the French.
There are lots of reasons to dislike the Lib Dems, but your second paragraph is just right-wing ranting, only fit for the Daily Mail.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yeah, that damn liberal Conservative party. They'll be the ruin of this country, I tell you.
Do your bloody homework!
--JG
Careful. You don't understand the mind of the American bubble person. Disagree with him again, and he'll be calling for attacks on London to win the hearts and minds of the British people.
And completely ignoring the efforts of getting the coal to the generating stations is showing his ignorance. It gets a little harder to extract these days, and it isn't like oil, where you have a hole in the ground. You remove entire mountaintops and dump the fill in the next valley over . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
Dunno how it is in GB with getting to the coal, but when we get to doing that, it doesn't take a "liberal demoncrap" as he quaintly puts it, to understand maybe its time for a switch. Coal is dangerous work, messy, dirty, and poisonous in multiple ways. It makes as much sense to use coal as it does to cut down all the trees in a country to use as fuel.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There's lots of reasons to dislike all of the parties.
Thing is though now that the Tories have shed the lib dems, they are showing their true face and engaging in a massive slash and burn spree. I'd say the lib dems were the most under rated party I've ever seen in power.
To all the defectors who pissed and moaned because the coalition didn't behave like perfect lin dems (no shit, they were the minor party): congratulations, you've now got the government you deserve.
Trouble is of course, the rest of us are also stuck with the government they deserve.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What really upset me was that they formed a government with the Tories in the first place. Ideologically they are far closer to Labour, and could have built a working coalition with them. A minority government was even an option. Instead they enabled the Tories.
Sure, it would have been worse if it was a Tory majority government like it is now, but that was never on the table. They saw an opportunity to get some power and seized it, and got screwed in the process.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Read the bloody article.
The first hint that this isn't purely about "liberal demoncrap" is that it is filed under business, not environment. The second hint is that they're talking about aging plants that won't be shut down if they are upgraded with carbon capture. It is also possible that other upgrades or maintenance is necessary, but unmentioned. In other words, cost is a factor here. The third hint are mentions of economic and political issues, such as energy security.
There are other subtle (as in subtle as being hit by a sledgehammer) issues being mentioned, none of which indicate that environmental considerations are secondary issues.
There are two big problems with your argument-
1. Nobody has demonstrated carbon capture using the full exhaust stream. Typically they extract carbon from only 1 to 10% of the exhaust gasses. The reason is because the amount of carbon is large, and the parasitic losses from even a partial treatment system make the plant uneconomical. These projects are just good enough to attract government subsidies and grants. A full scale system would never be economically viable in most countries.
2. Nobody is going to install such a system on an old coal plant without a fat government subsidy. The economics aren't viable, especially given that the government may change their mind in 5 years.
Killing coal like this is like saying "all girls on the cheerleading team must be slim and petite". It sounds like a great idea until you need to make a pyramid.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Natural gas is a stopgap -- and a highly useful one. I would compare natural gas to a hybrid car, like a Prius. It still burns petroleum fuel, but not as much, and it still pollutes, but not as much, and it can help fill the gap until pure battery electric cars are perfected and take off.
In the case of natural gas power plants. . . For now, they're much better than coal. For the future, solar power and nuclear fusion will eventually kill them off.
What really upset me was that they formed a government with the Tories in the first place. Ideologically they are far closer to Labour, and could have built a working coalition with them. A minority government was even an option. Instead they enabled the Tories.
I don't know how anybody can think this: the maths weren't there. They could form a stable coalition with the Tories, or cobble together a highly fractured coalition with almost everybody that wasn't the Tories, the so-called "rainbow coalition". It would have seemed hugely undemocratic, and allowed a clearly voted-out Prime Minister to stay on. A minority coalition would have lasted 5 minutes - it would have to agree internally and *then* try to find agreements with other parties.
The LibDems are closer to Labour, but they had very little choice. To stay out of coalition would have led to a minority Conservative government that wouldn't have to last long, just long enough for another election when the polls swung slightly their way.
I see much evidence that major governments -- and major environmental groups -- don't really take global warming seriously and don't really want the problem solved. You can judge them by their actions.
If they really took it seriously, the environmental groups would all be backing nuclear power instead of fighting it.
If the US government took global warming seriously, they'd allow new reactor designs instead of forcing companies to go build in China because they have given up on ever getting anything approved in the USA.
If the world took global warming seriously, we'd have massive programs to develop nuclear fusion reactors. It would be like the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Program. I have to grit my teeth when the UN announces ten billion dollars in financial aid to sinking island nations, but nobody can cough up 1/50th of that for a new research reactor.
They had plenty of choices. They could have got a much better deal from the Tories. They could have stuck to their principals and demanded a rainbow coalition of consensus rule. They could have at least demanded a proper electoral reform programme and referendum. No one forced them to do a really bad deal with the devil. They were supposed to be principled, after all.
Note that Brown announced he would step down by September before serious negotiations between Labour and the Lib Dems began, meaning that the issue of having a rejected prime minister would have been moot. Also note that the election is for local MPs, not the PM, so there is no constitutional issue changing leader that way.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You make it sound like Labour was some small minority fringe party. In fact they only got 5% less than the Tories, and 6% more than the Lib Dems. That's how screwed up our system is. A combined Labour/Lib Dem coalition would have taken over 50% of the votes, if not the seats.
I'm not a huge Labour fan either, but they would have been infinitely preferable to the Tories. They may have adopted much of the same ideology, but they aren't nearly as nasty.
The coalition did a terrible job. Labour was hobbled by having to stick the Thatcherite ideas and policies, which the Tories are too. I really doubt that the Tories would have done any better than Labour during the 2000s, especially considering how they did in the early 90s when things got difficult. So Labour did what was necessary with the banks, and then the coalition got in and started hacking away at public services as fast at the Lib Dems would allow. It was irresponsible and ideologically motivated, and unsound economic policy. This is our lost decade thanks to them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
In the case of natural gas power plants. . . For now, they're much better than coal. For the future, solar power and nuclear fusion will eventually kill them off.
If we ever get fusion to work effectively it might end up killing everything off. But in the moderate term, solar isn't going to be the only one. A combination of nuclear fission, solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric is much more viable and solves many of the problems. Fusion is a very long way off and it is likely that we'll stop having susbstantial fossil fuel use well before fusion is a common power source.
Wishful thinking. Natural gas has a couple of big advantages over nuclear (both fusion and fission):
1. They can scale down and provide peaking capacity, quickly brought online when renewable energy is down.
2. It really isn't a bit cleaner than coal, it is a LOT cleaner than coal.
3. People don't turn into full retards when discussing the safety of natural gas.
But, hey, that's just economics.
Cameron is a pig.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The going rate in the UK for unpredictable and variable onshore wind generation, guaranteed by law, is about £95 per MWhr or a little over the asking price for new baseload nuclear. Offshore wind in the UK is guaranteed about £145 per MWhr. The folks planning to build new nuclear plants in the UK simply want price parity with the other non-carbon generators. At least one large offshore wind project was recently cancelled because £145 per MWhr wasn't thought to be enough return for the construction and operating costs and predicted profit over the project's lifespan.
The headline strike price of £92.50 per MWHr for the new nuclear plants is a maximum; it may well be reduced in the future depending on operating costs etc. and the deal runs out in 35 years time. At that point the plants will have been paid for and fresh price negotiations will ensue since those plants will still have an operating life of more than 30 years ahead of them. The initial high strike price is to ensure that if the reactors are built and deliver the non-carbon electricity they are supposed to the reactor builders won't lose out financially in the medium term.
As for taxpayers they are not involved. The funding and construction will be carried out independently of the British government and no tax monies will be used. In return the builders want a price guarantee to build generating capacity which will supply baseload electricity for most of the next hundred years or so.
Our government are imagining it will come from fracking ; they've already passed laws that make it legal to frack under any land (regardless of it's ownership), and use any fracking fluid, and keep it a secret as to what is being used.
Except it isn't. While well managed nuclear at scale with current technology holds a lot of promise it requires a large amount of capital and quite a bit of infrastructure. The will to do that does not currently exist so whether we like it or not we'll have to wait for 1950s style prosperity before it is going to be given serious consideration - as China did recently.
To boil things right down, a windmill or two requires little effort or action on the part of people in politics while nukes would require actual work.
Are you getting the picture now? The question - "where is my network of power stations with GenIV reactors" can be filed with "where is my flying car" for now.
Pretence that it is easy is going to be met with various levels of disbelief by anyone with a clue.