Cracks in nuclear plant -seriously worrying

The problem is Caledonian4 is that so many people are saying that renewables are perfect, that the world will be wonderful if we stop using one use plastics and so on and so on.

During the war, there was a great campaign to collect iron to make spitfires, house railings were cut down and people donated all kinds of old iron and felt really good and noble about it.

In fact very little of that iron was ever recycled for the war effort, it was unsuitable in many ways and, anyway, spitfires were made from aluminium not iron. After the war all the scrap merchants were able to sell this iron off for reuse in the construction industry and made a very nice profit from all this freely given iron.

I feel rather the same about much of the froth about renewables and plastics. Rushing around makes people feel good. But how much good it actually does, I am not sure.

Nobody said renewables are perfect, but we have to keep trying as fossil fuels will eventually run out.

Caledonail4
Solar panels are pretty useless unless your property is in a postion to take advantage of sunlight and the outlay is prohibitive unless you generate enough to pay off the original cost...several years.
Electric cars are a no-no. There aren't enough charging points on well used routes and none on country lanes.
The batteries don't hold enough charge for journeys of a decent distance.
Electricity is much more costly than gas and I wouldn't swap my gas hob for an electric one at any price and the most usual way of producing electricity is by burning fossil fuels, so back to square one.
One complete turn of a wind turbine will power an average 3 bedroom house for 1 day.
You'd get more bluster from DT.

Manufacturing an electric car produces as many/much emissionsas driving the average petrol powered car for 100,000 miles.

I am doing more for the environment by continuing to drive my 15 year old Yaris until it drops than scrapping it and buying an elctric car.

Today in the papers it was reported that much of the damaging pollution in towns comes not from the engine emissions but the erosion of all the plastic and other parts of a car - brake pads, tyres and similar and electric cars produce as much of them as petrol or diesel cars. And, of course, much of the electricity they run on is made in gas-fired power stations.

This is why I come across as so sceptical in all these discussions on future energy, the situation is far more complicated than most people realise, especially 16 year old school children.

You make a very good point MOnica. Those of us in country areas have no ready public transport and are facing crippling fuel or parking costs when we visit cities or even towns, something which has become even more necessary with the shutting of banks and the centralisation of health services - certainly in this part of Scotland.

I think the thing to do would be to produce more affordable electric cars and improve public transport and make it easier for us to have solar panels etc before demonising all the old fossil-based stuff.

As they say pumped power has been around for a long time. I think like most people with a good idea, they are overselling it, otherwise why all the cost of offshore wind if on shore pumped storage can carry all the burden and so easily?

What worries me is that I have yet to see any coherent plans about exactly how much more power generation we will need, to make our country hydrocarbon emission free and what form it should take. Currently we are becoming too dependent on renewables whose production rate is out of our control, if the wind isn't blowing, wind turbines cannot not generate electricity, no matter how high demand.. At any time the amount of our power from wind and solar can be as little as 5% of total demand or as much as a third. It jsut depends on the wind.

I would like to see a government plan, or one from a respected think tank showing how demand for power is going to grow, how it can be contained (a countrywide building insulation scheme running like the natural gas conversion scheme of the 1960s-70s for example), where the power will come from and how it can be robust enough to cope with demand 24/7/365.

Electric cars are all the fashion, but a lorry with a battery big enough to travel any distance is going to have no space to carry goods and battery technology is unlikely to solve that problem. There has been a problem with high power lithium phone batteries exploding and catching fire.

The solution to that is possibly the use of liquid hydrogen as a transport fuel, as a by-product of wind turbines producing excess power. But we hear very little about this.

The problem is we keep hearing all these aspirational demands and targets for emission free power production, but no nitty gritty detail to back it up.

Generally, in Scotland, water supply is not as much of a problem as it is down south. Last summer's very dry spell was a blip.

I live near a new hydro scheme and am very impressed by its size (not too big and no villages lost) and the care that is being taken to preserve the environment.

I've been campaigning against nuclear power for 44 years and am sad to say all the reassurances about waste and storage have proved false.

Not too happy about the nuclear subs being in Scotland either, but I accept there is no other suitable port in the UK and I look forward to those negotiations come the revolution , oh, independence, I mean, of course

Pumped storage is the answer to intermittent supplies and peak demands.
www.theengineer.co.uk/pumped-hydro-storage/

paddyann Will you have enough water-power to provide 90% plus of the power you need at night, and possibly during the day during a winter cold snap when the skies are clear and there is little or no wind? These high pressure cold systems are usually Britain wide and can last several weeks.

Electricity demand will probably double in the next few decades, with the introduction of electric cars and all electric home heating and it continues to concern me that there seem to be a lack of clear plans for exactly how renewable power production, which is there when it is there, but not necessarily when you want it, can be harnessed to provide reliable 24/7/365 energy. Even hydro electric schemes are dependent on rainfall levels and water flows.

Being able to produce power enough and more over a year is not the same as having the power readily available when it is needed.

we supplied 117% of all electricity used in the last quarter Monica and have plans to go fully renewable within a couple of decades .I know plans and reality dont always match but the option IS there .Remember renewables is'nt just wind and solar ,our Hydro electric schemes have been working for 50 years and more and there are plans to add to them .Germany is also going fully renewable I believe .

400 cracks apparently but the powers that be have recently announced that up to 700 cracks are permissible.
Funny...that 400 was the limit set by experts but another set of 'experts' say almost double that amount is now ok.
Who decides on which experts are more expert?
Dangerous times.

paddyann, Will that renewable power be available 24/7/365?

its been known here for a year or so.Frightens the bejesus out of me ,with that on one side of me and the Nuclear naval bases on the other .Scotland is or can be self sufficient in renewable power so we should make sure this is decommisioned safely and NOT replaced.

They were found a year or so ago, and the reactor has not been operating to produce electricity since then. 570 small cracks have been found, which is more than the (conservative) safety limit of 340. EDF would like to increase this limit to 700. EDF are planning to ask for a restart, which may or may not be granted. They say that they have caried out surveys and checks.

Mention that if there were an earthquake "In the very worst case the hot graphite core could become exposed to air and ignite leading to radioactive contamination of large areas of central Scotland, including the metropolitan areas of Glasgow and Edinburgh." and so on are in such newspapers as the Sun, the Mirror, and the Express today. They do not appear in any of the more sedate papers.

They take years to decommission petra.

Has anyone read the article on this reactor.
It was shut down a year ago.

Nero and Rome springs to mind.

GrannyGravy yes it is indeed. What have they all been paid for ?
This scramble for leadership is also about money and it's sickening to watch those numbskulls putting themselves forward for debate/leadership.

EllanVannin. It is quite disgraceful that there has been no “governance” as such since the referendum.

I've wondered at times with so much time wasted on this Brexit debacle that it's been a " welcome relief " ( excuse ) to all politicians who've completely side-tracked the REAL concerns that we have in this country, such as the above OP and all the other horrors that are left unchecked.

Not one minister in this last 2 and a bit years has shown any concern for their posts that they were put in charge of.
They're disgusting !