Tidal power has been largely forgotten.
Too true. There has been a prototype tidal turbine sitting by the sea in Pembroke Dock for the past few months, it was supposed to have been deployed in the sea further round the Pembrokeshire coast, but it is rumored one of the cables has a kink in it which has prevented them deploying the device, and the company is broke. Terribly sad.
Fracking has a bad name, almost certainly unwarranted
We should be moving away from burning fossil fuels, fracking deserves its bad name for that reason. However, I get the feeling that isn't the bad name you are referring to.
One last option that has been overlooked is the use of Thorium, rather than Uranium, as a nuclear fuel. This can't go critical, can't produce plutonium for bombs, and may even let us burn some of our waste. Read
this for information. A reactor is already running in Norway, and India is on the way to building its first.
As with tidal power, it is somewhat disapointing that different models of nuclear power appear to be ignored. I've no idea what the pros and cons of the different concepts are, nor do I understand the differences between them, but as well as your suggestion of Thorium I've heard of things called 'Breeder Reactors' and 'Integral Fast Reactors'.
The Sabatier reaction is a well known and proven method to generate methane from Carbon Dioxide and Water.
Any reaction that goes from CO2+2H2O -> CH4+2O2, and then when methane burns from CH4+2O2->CO2+2H2O has no meaningful greenhouse effect and will act as a chemical battery, using energy to create methane, and releasing energy when methane is burnt. The use of hydrogen will have a similar cost, but storage and use of hydrogen will be more complicated and require significant investment. We already have significant methane storage and gas turbine equipment, so that is probably a good reason to go for it.
That is an interesting suggestion, but I presume there will be losses (ie. when you burn the methane you cannot capture as much energy as you put into make it) You could also do energy storage by building more facilities like Dinorwig, but that would also have losses. Not sure how you choose between such options.
Finally, I am no particular fan of any particular form of power generation, but I do dislike the idea of polluting our world whilst we do it.
Well said.
The elephant in the room is that onshore wind power is very popular amongst city dwellers, electricity generators, landowners, and Green activists, and hugely unpopular in the rural communities who have the monstrosities dumped on them. I speak with experience.
I live in a rural area and there are 4 or 5 wind turbines in the surrounding area, I don't really mind them at all. Most of them are small ones though, it isn't one of these massive wind farms which bring with them horrid national grid pylons (whatever form of generation we use, I'll always object to those).
Offshore wind is unpopular with the fishermen (we still have some) who lose their fishing grounds. Hinkley C is not raising the same hackles amongst the locals, who see work and prosperity, and who have lived next to two reactors for many years without incident.
I assume the fishermen lose their fishing grounds because their equipment is such that they might damage the undersea power cables, not because the turbines scare/kill the fish? Thus, could they still fish with rod and line? As for Hinkley C, it is not without opposition. I quote an extract from
this (lengthy) corrospondance between two enviromentalists, one who was in favour of Hinkley C and one opposed to it.
I would like to thank you for the reason, consideration and decency with which you responded to my initial email. This subject raises intense emotions, and I^ve found that all too often they cloud what should be a rational discussion. All of us in the environment movement have the same overarching goals ^ to protect both the biosphere and the future of humanity ^ and we should be able to discuss them without tearing each other^s eyes out. I just wish that everyone could approach this disagreement in the spirit with which you have handled it.
Your letter provides the most persuasive case against both the Hinkley plant and nuclear power in general that I have ever read. It has persuaded me that the way in which the new power station is being shoved through the planning system is undemocratic, coercive and morally wrong. I now see that ^ on planning grounds ^ your protests are both worthwhile and necessary.
So I would like to retract my flat statement that campaigning against Hinkley C is the wrong thing to do. I would like to replace it with a more nuanced one. On planning grounds it was and is the right thing to do. But where climate change is concerned, the consequences of success would be, to put it mildly, unfortunate.
In fact, since then, George has further shifted his opinion and
is now also opposed:
Yes, we are pro-nuclear, but the proposed Hinkley C plant should be scrapped.
One final extract:The harsh reality is that less nuclear means more gas and coal. Coal burning produces, among other toxic emissions, heavy metals, acid sulphates and particulates, which cause a wide range of heart and lung diseases. Even before you take the impacts of climate change into account, coal is likely to kill more people every week than the Chernobyl disaster has killed since 1986(9). It astonishes me to see people fretting about continuing leaks at Fukushima, which present a tiny health risk even to the Japanese(10), while ignoring the carcinogenic pollutants being sprayed across our own country.
But none of this means that we should accept nuclear power at any cost. And at Hinkley Point the cost is too high.
Nils Pratley warned in the Guardian last week that ^if Hinkley Point^s entire output is tied to the rate of inflation for 40 years, we could be staring at a truly astronomical cost by the end of the contract.^(11) The City analyst he consulted reassured him that ^the government surely can^t be that dumb^. Oh yes? Payment to the operators, the government now tells us, will be ^fully indexed to the Consumer Price Index.^(12) Guaranteed income for corporations, risk assumed by the taxpayer: this deal looks as bad as any private finance initiative contract(13).
That^s not the only respect in which the price is too high. A fundamental principle of all development is that we should know how the story ends. In this case no one has the faintest idea. Cumbria ^ the only local authority which seemed prepared to accept a dump for the nuclear waste from past and future schemes ^ rejected the proposal in January(14). No one should commission a mess without a plan for clearing it up.
But this above all is a wasted opportunity. By the time a European pressurised reactor at Hinkley Point is halfway through its operating life, it will look about as hip as a traction engine.
I understand that, with a project this big and timeframes this long, the government needs to pick a technology, but you would expect it to try to pick a winner. The clunky third-generation power station chosen for Hinkley C already looks outdated, beside the promise of integral fast reactors and liquid fluoride thorium reactors. While other power stations are consuming nuclear waste, Hinkley will be producing it.
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