Re: OT: 'Shambolic' Sellafield in crisis again after damning safety report - Independent on Sunday

On 6 Feb, 12:36, Hans-Joachim Zierke <Usenetspam...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Roland Perry schrieb:

But getting back to the original point, if 25% is the point
at which wind power becomes difficult to install and manage due to
changes in wind profile, what else can plug the 75% gap? Clean coal (or
are you one of those who says there's no such thing?)

The best combination is "enough hydro". You overdesign the hydro plants
towards far more generating capacity than water/year, and run the combo
with preference for wind. If possible, redesign hydro plants for pumped
storage as well.

There are two problems with that, in the UK/Scotland. First of all, we
have used just about all the major hydro capacity in Scotland. Lots of
room for smaller or microhydro schemes, but, being small, they don't
come to much in total. The second problem is that pumped storage has
traditionally been used to fill the fairly short gaps while other
stuff (mainly coal fired) is brought up from spinning reserve (a few
minutes) or warm reserve (an hour or so). It would take absolutely
collossal schemes to meet national loads for longer. Not that it
couldn't be done, but it would require some very expensive reworking
of existing schemes.

As I recall, current sensible estimates (ie not FoE ones) are that /
if/ we exploited all feasible renewable resources - wind, hydro, wave,
tidal stream, tidal - in and around the UK, we would just about be
able to meet current electricity demands. Which is nice, but leaves
none over for current non-electricity fossil fuel power. So nothing to
spare to recharge electric cars, or electrify the rest of the rail
system, or heat factories, or ...

Nuclear. It's got to be nuclear. We need /lots/ more nuclear. Another
fifty reactors would be a good start. Big ones.
Ian
.

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