Coal fired power stations being used because of electricity shortages

What next? Opening old ‘uneconomic’ pits?

Drove past Nottingham power station yesterday and all four chimneys were sending columns of smoke into the air.

I’ve always wondered where all this extra electricity for cars is coming from.

Having family members with electric cars, the cost of charging it is much cheaper than running a washing machine. It is also much cheaper running costs than petrol or diesel.
Other factors than electric cars are necessitating these start ups.
www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/05/31/days-coal-powered-energy-arent-numbered-seem/

Peasblossom

Drove past Nottingham power station yesterday and all four chimneys were sending columns of smoke into the air.

I’ve always wondered where all this extra electricity for cars is coming from.

Nottingham power station doesn't seem to have four chimneys (or I'm looking at the wrong pictures). It seems to have one chimney and a number of cooling towers. If the 'four chimneys' you refer to are in fact cooling towers then what they are sending into the air is steam, not smoke.

But, of course, there's still that one chimney belching coal smoke..

Oh right. You learn something every day. I’ve driven past them for years and always thought they were four chimneys?

Nope. Looked it up.

Four coal fired boilers that generate steam that drives generators.

So I think it is smoke from those four towers.

Peasblossom

Nope. Looked it up.

Four coal fired boilers that generate steam that drives generators.

So I think it is smoke from those four towers.

From one who worked at Didcot Power Station (now demolished)...
The four boilers will all share the chimney stack - the other towers are cooling towers and that will be steam that you can see.
For four boilers, there would usually be a total of eight cooling towers. Didcot was a bit of an anomaly as it had four boilers and six cooling towers (to reduce the visual impact to the Thames Valley)!!

But this isnt new.
Germany and Japan changed to coal after the Fukushima disaster.
Only to cause around 28,000 deaths from air pollution.
Germany didn't have to change over from its Nuclear energy, but ill informed pressure resulted in this decision.

None of these decisions are easy, but in the end Nuclear built with today's knowledge and tech know how (not Chinese, whose own facilities are failing as we speak, due to poor workmanship).
Along with none fossil fuel energy is the only way.

Another source is a very long way off.

That or do without for part of the day, and I dont see people putting up with that.

I think the angst about using fossil fuel power stations is misplaced. The presence of wind turbines does not mean that we immediately have to switch everything else off, we have to have a plan to get from our current reliance on fossil fuels to as much renewable as possible.

And of course there are other renewables that we rarely talk about - tidal barrages, wave power, ground heat....

I think there is too much reliance on nuclear. However modern the systems are, fission produces nuclear waste that we still don't know how to handle effectively.

It was a great mistake by David Cameron's Government not to go ahead with the tidal power plans in Swansea.

Forget electric cars- horse and cart or even “Shanks’ pony”

I read that it's not actually a shortage of electricity per se as they can use gas powered stations. The problem I read about was entirely economic - to do with the cost of gas at the moment.
Obviously coal is currently cheaper.

Dealing with the waste from Nuclear isnt as tricky as people believe.

Its tricky for the politician's to go ahead and take the responsibility for making the decision, because of all the flack from missguided opposition.

Takes foresight and personal bravery to grasp the nettle.

This physicist thinks its quite tricky.

Obviously, wind mills don't work in a flat calm, but how often is there a flat calm?

Work is being done on using water power from the waves of the sea to create electricity, and a lot of countries are looking into hydrogen as a means of powering public transport.

Obviously research costs money and takes time, but the outlook regarding stopping the use of fossil fuels is relatively good.

That's why nothing is being done.

25Avalon Nuclear power stations are built on the coast because they require very large quantities of cooling water and the warm water returning to its source needs a very large volume of cool water to dissipate the heat so as not to have a disproportionat affect on the local wildlife, especially sea life.

Most power stations need cooling water. The demolished Didcot A station, drew and returned water to the Thames and there were very strict rules governing how much it drew and returned to that river. At times, during dry periods, power production was restricted or even stopped because of restricted water flow in the Thames.

We now have the technology to build modern N.stations to withstand the type of tsunami that occurred in Japan.
We must make our decisions on updated information.

Namsnanny Hinckley Point is Chinese

Krispii

Peasblossom

Nope. Looked it up.

Four coal fired boilers that generate steam that drives generators.

So I think it is smoke from those four towers.

From one who worked at Didcot Power Station (now demolished)...
The four boilers will all share the chimney stack - the other towers are cooling towers and that will be steam that you can see.
For four boilers, there would usually be a total of eight cooling towers. Didcot was a bit of an anomaly as it had four boilers and six cooling towers (to reduce the visual impact to the Thames Valley)!!

Thank you.?

And to think Ivevsoent years and years angering about those big clouds of smoke hovering over some of.my family, when they were only steam all along?

So does the smoke come out of the single tall chimney?

Namsnanny I agree. The only practical solution to meeting the base load for power, plus more, is nuclear power generation.

Currently we are enmeshed in building hugely expensive nuclear power stations with major Chinese investment and technology and we are now too aware of the dangers this poses politically and technologically.

Rolls Royce has been developing new modular nuclear power stations with an output equivalent to a medium sized hydrocarbon fired station. These will do the equivalent of rolling off a factory production line and will be able to be sited on a far wider range of sites and be built more cheaply and faster than the behemoths currently being built. www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/

25Avalon

Namsnanny Hinckley Point is Chinese

Yes your right 25Avalon.
What a debacle!

I have great faith in the ingenuity of our engineers and technologists and I'm sure the new design of nuclear power stations is significantly better than the older designs.

What worries me is the fission products such as caesium-137 and strontium-90 that have a half-life of about 30 years, for which the solution at the moment is to bury it in a hole under the ocean and hope for the best.

As the famous fictional Scotsman said, ye canna change the laws of physics.

I actually cheered to myself when I heard of the Rolls Royce innovation M0nica!!

Smaller, safer, quicker to build.
I actually have faith the future of energy is in safe hands.

It wont be without difficulties, but if the naysayers would only catch up on current innovations things could move forward more quickly.

If you are ahead of the crowd in your knowledge M0nica I for one would be grateful to hear it.