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If our government want us to rip out our natural gas boilers and replace with newfangled hydrogen boilers, does anybody think that the cost of Methane going up fifteen times in fifteen months will have any bearing?
The feedstock for Hydrogen is Methane.
It is much cheaper to heat water directly with Methane, than either to use Methane to make electricity, then use electricity to heat your radiators or use Methane to produce Hydrogen.
It will be ludicrously expensive to power hydrogen boilers.IAEA to send experts to Japan in December to review plan for release of radioactive Fukushima water into Pacific Ocean
https://www.rt.com/news/534364-fukushima-iaea-water-release/Japan says it’s going to release more than one million tons of contaminated water from the ill-fated Fukushima plant into the sea. According to the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), a one-kilometer-long underwater tunnel will be built to make sure that radioactive materials don’t make it back to the coast. The discharge is expected to begin as early as the spring of 2023.
The contaminated water at Fukushima is treated by a purification system that removes most radionuclides, except tritium, from it.
I just can not imagine any more of these plants should be turned on
Natural Gas for Europe
https://www.rt.com/russia/534438-nord-stream-2-finished/Quote “As the market tightens and the pendulum of market power swings toward suppliers.”
I think there could be something in the view that Russia is reducing flow through Ukraine, in Russia’s views, this would help to beggar Ukraine but when Nord Stream Two comes on flow they can soon turn the taps on, thus proving to Germany/E.U. how useful is Nord Stream and how useful a partner is Russia. Today Russia and Belarus are further engaging in military endeavers and technical assistance and further integrating their economies.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/09/putin-and-lukashenko-discuss-integrating-russia-and-belarusMichael norton, Sept 9, 09:17:
– I feel that with HDVC Interconnectors and a wonderful mix of renewable options, we may not always need base load.
That is one of the various opinions expressed in this interesting video I found yesterday:
Why nuclear power will (and won’t) stop climate change – YouTube, 40 minutes.
Other matters raised: construction of nuclear power stations is too slow these days to get us out of this mess. Solar and wind are particularly suitable in less developed countries that don’t have much distribution infrastructure.
I think nuclear’s place is amid heavy industry, in particular for producing large amounts of heat at high temperature for industrial processes.
China has twenty nuclear reactors under construction, and nearly another eighty planned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#China
But due to their complexity each nuclear plant takes around a decade to construct, which probably helps explain why China’s coal consumption is increasing at present.
There is undue fear of nuclear power. Burning fossil fuels releases radioactivity comparable with the nuclear industry, it just does it more steadily – everything dug up from underground is somewhat radioactive. With millions killed in the last eighteen months and many more deaths still to come, and many times that number suffering long term symptoms, this pandemic should teach us that biological technologies are far, far more dangerous than nuclear power, because biological agents reproduce and spread whereas radioactivity decays and dilutes. Plus anyone can do genetics in their own kitchen; you can mail order the humanised mice that SARS-CoV-2 does so well in (yes, you really can).
Ammonia is a good way of “packaging” hydrogen; similar to methane, but with nitrogen as the central atom instead of the problematic carbon:
Hydrogen energy storage in AMMONIA: Fantastic future or fossil fuel scam? – YouTube, 12 minutes. That whole channel, “Just Have a Think”, is highly informative.
Maybe the government should hold up a bit on hydrogen deployment because ammonia looks more practical.
“I just can not imagine any more of these plants should be turned on”
So, after the deep water horizon incident did you advocate for the cessation of all oil exploration and closure of all oil rigs and wells?
The nuclear industry is not alone in having disasters and indeed, so far, they pale in comparison to those that have occurred within the oil, coal, natural gas and even biomass energy production industries.
The Fukushima incident need not have happened if the cooling infrastructure design had been more considered (as it was for similar plants located 11 miles away). Radioactive waste and the potential for disaster is, I agree, a huge downside to nuclear power.
Assuming the climate change science is correct we are headed for global disaster if we don’t reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions in very short order. Approx 11% of the worlds total energy demand comes from renewables (which includes biomass with which there are significant reservations). The rest comes from fossil fuels. If you exclude biomass produced energy in the UK renewables account for just over 3% of total energy used.
Methane is a much more potent GHG than CO2 and its use has its own problems as highlighted in previous posts. So, if we are going to reduce GHG emissions what are the levers we can pull? Reduce the energy we use and reduce the GHG emissions caused by energy production.
What are we going to replace fossil fuel energy production with given, we need to do it rapidly or we will be soon faced with global disaster? Although I’d rather it wasn’t the case it seems to me that nuclear is the only realistic choice. The alternative is to make no choice at all.
Michael, I sense that you value British innovation.
In the 1960s and ’70s, the British nuclear industry collaborated with the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory to design a power reactor to burn the UK stockpile of around 100 tonnes of plutonium, which we have no other way of getting rid of. Politics 🙁 – its funding was cut, whereas that of the nuclear subs and missiles was increased. Think where we could have been by now. Way ahead of its time; take a look:
The Weinberg Foundation at archive.org
Clark, I am now going out to dig a pond.
This site seems very clunky, I am on here a lot and I find it difficult, not exactly easy to use, especially notification.
Cumbria
In the time of the Tudors, Graphite was made a strategic resource, probably a first for Britain. The story goes they coated the gun barrels and the canon balls this was to mean that the Royal Navy could knock out the Spanish or French because we had greater range. Probably not fully understanding, they were experimenting with Graphene.
Rosalind Franklin was doing work on the structure of Graphite, when, I think, she moved on to study viruses?
Two chaps, although not born here were given the Nobel prize for developing Graphene.
Almost certainly, soon there will be Graphene windows, so if you can have Elon Musk solar roof tiles and Graphene windows, why not also solar tiled walls.
New houses are to be fitted with connector boxes for battery cars.
You do not need much imagination to understand that houses can be constructed to use very low levels of imported energy. Same with expansive business, like factories producing washing machines.How much longer will base-load be needed?
Graphene has been promising great things for a few years now. Sadly, no one can produce consistently pure graphene crystal structure sheets of any useful size yet except where it’s inordinately expensive at hundreds of thousands of dollars per gram. Silicon had issues that were overcome but graphene is required to be one molecule thick with a consistent crystal structure to do the magic it’s purported to do. We may well get there, there is a lot of investment, but we are not close yet.
Michael, you keep praising solar energy. I keep repeating that it doesn’t work at night and doesn’t work well unless there is good unclouded sunshine. It’s effectively useless in northern Europe for most of the year (when we need and use the most energy) whilst being relatively expensive in terms of actual monetary cost and in terms of manufacturing the panels, disposing of them when they reach end of life and in the rare earth metals used in them as dopants. I’ve also pointed out that currently solar (which includes solar thermal) provides 0.6% of the UK’s total energy requirement. You haven’t addressed any of those points.
Amount of solar energy hitting the Earth is colossal so using it in theory makes more than sense but
in reality things are not that great. I do not understand details about electricity transportation but according to one komentator, having massive solar plant in Sahara and transporting el. to Europe would not be that “easy” because of distance and losses it occurs and other issues. This explanation was in comment section on the youtube video on implication and impact if we covered part of Sahara in solar panels.I belive it is this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ASvupr8Zg&t=599s.
What seemed to me common sense turned out to be not that smart as I thought?, Our eco system is so complex that ordinary people have no idea what is good or counterproductiveMaybe not yet anywhere near cheap or plentiful for graphene solar but almost ready for structural building materials
gram-scale bottom-up
flash graphene synthesis
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1938-0There are all sorts of technologies that look likely to help us next decade, or the decade after that. Nuclear and solar are both in this category; solar because, although it’s getting cheaper, more efficient and multiplying rapidly, as yet it’s expanding from a very small base, and nuclear because the technology was permitted to stagnate, and we seem unable to build installations fast enough these days.
Unfortunately the emergency won’t pause right now just because we’ll have solutions some time soon. The obvious interim measure is to reduce our energy usage until our clean energy technologies catch up. But this requires global cooperation rather than the current fetish for competition and haggling over national quotas. The most developed nations are best placed to do this, and must lead by example.
The British government can start by fulfilling its own building insulation commitments:
https://www.insulatebritain.com/
All the most developed nations could institute job-swap and local resource schemes to minimise commuting and transport. But everywhere we look, government is dysfunctional and beholden to commercial profit motives and vested interests, so it’s going to take people power to change things.
Perpetuus
The U.K. has ordered a security review into the planned China-linked takeover of a Welsh graphene firm.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has told the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate the takeover of Perpetuus by a firm called Taurus International and a Chinese academic.
Mr Kwarteng issued the public intervention notice “on the public interest ground of national security”.
The CMA has until 7 February next year to report on the planned move.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58424348Quote Kwasi Kwarteng “The U.K. is open for business, however foreign investment must not threaten our national security”
Indeed if Graphite was made strategic in Tudor times, surely the development of Graphene techniques, should also be made strategic, if we are to really become Global Britain.
So Michael, you think that graphene could help with the global emissions crisis, but you think the UK government should have a stranglehold over its deployment? You criticise China for its rising emissions, but you think technology that could help should be kept from China? These are my questions about your arguments; please correct me if I’ve gained an erroneous impression.
This isn’t about national security. With a third of the UK’s entire energy supplied through a single North Sea pipeline, the UK has no national security; a single well-placed depth charge could bring the UK to its knees. No, this is about money and trade wars.
Clark,
in the land that is now to be known as the United Kingdom, much has been discovered, invented and developed but as we are all aware, much has been filched by the Americans.
We should not let the Chinese Communist Regime steal any more of our developing technologies. I am aware they claim 3,000 patents for Graphene technologies. They will choke the World with their insatiability. Tricky Dicky has a lot to answer for and I do not mean Watergate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon
Desalination, most likely will become very important, Graphene may be one of the answers.
A sprinkle of Graphene in concrete may be able to greatly increase the strength of concrete, thus reducing the volume of concrete needed, thus reducing the amount of CO2 put in our atmosphere.
A sprinkle of Graphene make be able to strengthen steel, offering the chance to use thinner steel, thus reducing the amount of CO2 put in our atmosphere.
A sprinkling of Graphene between sheets of ply, may offer the chance to have thinner ply or less sheets of ply to perform the same job, thus reducing how many trees need to be cut down, thus allowing trees to soak up and temporally store CO2 from out atmosphere.
Super-thin film Graphene will allow electronic components to run using less electricity thus reducing the CO2 into our atmosphere. Lighter vehicles – less fuel needed and so on.No country has any national security in an insecure biosphere.
China has over twenty times the population of the UK, twenty times as many people to do research and innovate. If the UK closes off its technology to China, China is likely to close off its technology to the UK. China will lose a twentieth of what it can do for itself, and the UK will lose twenty times what it can do for itself.
Sounds like a very bad deal to me.
COP26
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-58515311
Armed police will be visible like never before in Scotland when world leaders arrive in Glasgow for COP26 at the end of October.The UN climate change conference is expected to see the biggest ever deployment of arqmed officers in Scotland.
Police Scotland has 500 officers trained to use guns and they will be joined by many others from around the UK. The exact number is not being released but one former chief constable has suggested it could be about 1,000.
A taste of things to come?
Quite frightening.COP26? More like Cops, 10,000.
Yes it does sound quite scary. I’m planning to be there :/
Yippeedo for biofuels
In 2020, Los Alamos National Laboratory reported that it would use corn ethanol to produce domestic fuel for Tomahawk missiles, which also does not require harsh acids to manufacture, compared to petroleum-based JP-10.
At least Raytheon are being climatically responsible?Globally, the US military is the biggest carbon dioxide emitter of any single organisation:
July 23, 2015
Elephant In The Room: The Pentagon’s Massive Carbon Footprint
by Lisa Savage – LinkOf course, most of the US wars and covert operations are for control of hydrocarbon resources – ‘cos you can’t run a military without liquid fuel. It’s Mad Max, but real life.
The reason I looked up Raytheon Tomahawk is massive coverage of the U.K. submarine fleet and bases. The Astute class are having their Tomahawk missiles upgraded to “V” specification. They are still building Astute boats. Faslane is not far from where COP26 will take place.
Last night there was a programme on the T.V. about an Astute boat going into the Atlantic to “mind” an unnamed U.K. ballistic submarine. We were treated to how vital this was for the U.K. I had not known that the Royal Navy SSBNs have to be minded by a nuclear powered Astute, armed to the teeth submarine hunter at all times.
Then there is the programme on Sundays about life on an SSBN.We are probably being buttered up for something?
The cost of Natural Gas has increased by fifteen times in sixteen months as the World Economy recovers from the pandemic.
The United Kingdom imported more than half its gas supply in the first three months of this year, the industry has said. Scottish Green Party co-leader Lorna Slater told BBC Scotland it was time to turn to sustainable energy sources.
Ms. Slater, whose appointment as a junior minister in Nicola Sturgeon’s government was approved in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday, said oil and gas needed to be “phased out”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-58403581Her sentiments were echoed by Friends of the Earth Scotland director Dr Richard Dixon who said: “Burning fossil fuels is the key driver of climate breakdown and every extra barrel of oil and gas produced speeds us closer to greater devastation.
On 29 May 2020 the cost of Natural Gas was 9.63 pence/therm, today it has risen to 165.00 pence/therm, so countries like Germany, must want this stuff desperately?
Michael, can you link the site you are taking your data on gas prices. As far as I can tell, it is the spot price that has risen so high, that is, the price per therm for gas to be immediately delivered (ie. Today, right now). It has been this high before 16 years ago. I want to see an historical chart of price. I think that, say, if you wanted gas delivered in 3 months it’s not that high.
Yes, ET.
BBC webpage – Business, Market Data, Five Year Graph for Natural gas, last item as you roll down
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cxwdwz5d8gxt/natural-gas(UK Natural Gas Futures)
Inflation is rising, apparently some wages are rising. This massive increase in the cost of Natural Gas, will almost certainly open up more fracking in America.
They were really expecting to boost LNG shipping to Europe.
