Re: Cloud Mystery

Oh No <NotI@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
Thus spake Oz <Oz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Look, everything nuclear is tainted in the public mind. People who for
decades wore radium-powered phosphorescent watches (read in the dark)
that has a level that is now considered medium level waste are now
paranoid about minuscule amounts. The total waste (including low-level)
is said to be 'enough to fill ten albert halls' as if this is a huge
amount, its tiny.

I accept that, but the installations contain there own built in
obsolescence, eat themselves away and cannot be repaired. It looks to me
expensive even without the waste disposal issue.

The problem is mostly because they are all first generation (we never
built the second). The main problem is hotside CO2 attacking the steel
due to elevated temperatures over extended periods. Once idetified this
was relatively easy to fix the alloy, but a tad late for the stuff
installed. Nobody expected (IIRC) CO2 + XFe -> CO + FeXO followed by
diffusion of the CO into the grain boundaries for some distance,
weakening the alloy.

Not really. A system of eleven lagoons in the Severn estuary would cost
about the same as a barrage

I very much doubt that. A hugely longer perimeter by definition.

and deliver about 80% of the power, but it
would deliver it in a controllable way through most of the day, which is
a lot more useful.

That is certainly true.

Yes, needs doing NOW. That is the government must guarantee an effective
minimum fuel price.

Right.

Not a hope. Who would believe them anyway?

Nor is it clear that tidal lagoons are either expensive or obtrusive.

They want to be big to be cheap (per unit electricity), and to be big
enough to actually significantly reduce our fuel usage. Big means
obtrusive.

I don't really think low islands, a mile or more from shore, and out of
shipping lanes will be that obtrusive.

Hint: Lagoons need a perimeter.
Hint: you can rather easily see across the severn estuary.


The Atkins report made even a fairly small barrage at Swansea look
commercially very attractive, though it was commissioned by the backers
and almost certainly underestimated costs.

A small scheme can be viable commercially even if it has effectively no
effect on the UK energy production. We NEED the latter.

I think the idea was to prove the notion with a smallish scheme first.
The potential for such schemes is large enough to be significant.

And obtrusive, and expensive ...

Wave has promised much and delivered nothing for decades.
I think its probably too dilute a power source and it also suffers from
the anticyclone problem.

It is only recently that a viable machine has actually been built. There
are at least three installations, iirc. Full exploitation would cover
the sea in wave machine right the way out to Rockall. That would deliver
a lot of power.

How many times have I heard that over the decades?

You also omit biofuel. Currently politicians are pushing up food prices
with an unrealistic expectation for the potential of crops, but where is
the development of algal diesel?

Doesn't matter if its algal or whatever. In essence biofuels will always
be a premium product and rape oil is probably the most effective of
these. It will NEVER be a major source of UK energy, its just not able
to deliver the energy volume.

Algal may not be that important in the UK, but it has the potential to
deliver fuel with 1% of the land area of crops, and poor land at that.
Crops simply cannot deliver significant amounts of fuel without
seriously damaging food supplies. Large capital investment required, of
course, and no one willing to make it.

Precisely. Then there is algal blight syndrome.

checks on drug company reports. Unfortunately matmos are either esconced
in ivory towers where maths is no longer being applied, or they work for
banks and oil companies.

The latter probably results in greater social benefit.
Pays everyone's bills, too.

True, I suspect. I don't know how more needs to be done to the computer
programmes. There will be a time when they no longer need to be written.
What will the matmos do then.

Write viruses...

Ooops, already being done ....

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.



.

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