Happy Rabbit
05 Jul 2017
Re: Thursday MNKGV,First of all, can I please apologies for my previous post. I was a bit overwrought and used language I don't normally use. Very sorry.I didn't think that two people died, in fact about 50 people died in the immediate incident. The two died in the blast.There have been many incidents in the nuclear industry, but unsurprisingly about 70% of these are in the USA. Remember that Homer Simpson works at a nuclear power station ... says it all really. There are very few (very few, indeed) deaths. Compare with every (and I do mean any) other industry.Nuclear power has an excellent safety record by every standard.My family and friends work in the nuclear power industry and I briefly worked on the nuclear power systems for our nuclear submarines when I was an undergraduate apprentice back in the 60's! They are wonderfully safe!Regarding Hinkley Point, the French and Chinese are paying and the more the cost increases, the more goes in to the UK economy!Regards,HappyAnd, sorry again.
MNKGV
04 Jul 2017
Re: Thursday HR If you believe only 2 people died fighting Chernobyl , that's ok. But, in all the 'nuclear related' serious accidents the experts would have said , " maybe once in a thousand years". Funny how they've all come 'at once' don't you think ? How to explain that ? As for Magnox and AGR, they had/have a 'doomsday button' which would have killed the reactor, never to work again, if worst came worst. Just read, Hinkley costs have increased by £1.6billion already. Just hope it works.
Happy Rabbit
02 Jul 2017
Re: Thursday MNKGV, Gosh, where to start. I know we now live in the post fact era where saying something makes it true, but really?The Windscale accident was in 1957 and was and is the worst nuclear accident in the UK. It caused the deaths (estimated) of 100 people in the UK. This was a graphite pile reactor, built to produce nuclear material to go in the atom bomb. Hardly representative of a modern power station!Fukushima used boiling water reactors, and the incident was caused by an earthquake and tsunami, so is hardly relevant to any new build in the UK. The disaster caused 10's of deaths, and this may rise.Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster the world has seen killed 2 people at the scene and 49 immediately after (including the helicopter crash) A UN study estimates that the number of premature deaths which could be attributable to Chernobyl could be as high as 4000. A very large number, of course, spread over many years.In Great Britain there are about 1700 road deaths a year. A year! But now for the big one. In the UK an estimated 40,000 people die per year as a result of air pollution, of which 23,500 are attributable to NO2 alone. any comparison with any other form of energy production, nuclear is outstandingly the safest. More people die in the hydro electric industry than in nuclear. Compare it with any other industry for that matter!So, "Nuclear....safe....hmmm"? Yes. Absolutely.You also said... "Magnox and AGR were the safest of all the reactor designs but, guess what, everyone went for the cheap and cheerful PWR"This is just not true by any standard. We only have one PWR in this country and it is the best and safest of any reactor built in the UK. We should have built more and decommissioned the dirty Magnox stations (built to support the hydrogen bomb project) years ago.I know that facts and numbers and rational argument are not popular if they get in the way of a good story, but sometimes you have just got to do some research and go with the truth.Regards,
MNKGV
30 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday HR Nuclear....safe...... hmmm, not if you live near Fukishima,Windscale,Pripiat and a few more places.. Magnox and AGR were the safest of all the reactor designs but, guess what, everyone went for the cheap and cheerful PWR . Agreed, nuclear is the way to go but we need to improve the safety record.
Happy Rabbit
30 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday Oops! That is 8x10**7MJ/kg for uranium.
Happy Rabbit
30 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday MNKGV,A third the energy density? Coal is an average 30MJ/kg and wood about 18MJ/kg or about 60% of coal.Now if it's energy density you want, Uranium is about 8x10**7J/kg. Nuclear really does make sense. Safe, reliable and dependable.Regards,
Happy Rabbit
30 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday LK,"It is no more "climate-friendly" to transport that increased yield from Louisiana to Yorkshire and burn it there than it is for Drax to increase that yield ... and then burn coal."It is never climate friendly to burn coal. Not only do you need to capture and lock away "for ever" all of the CO2 it would release, but also the sulphur and nitrate/nitrite/nitrile products and all of the particulates it emits. It isn't possible to do this at the moment or probably ever.It makes both environmental and economic sense to transport the wood pellets from Louisiana by sea and rail to Drax.Wood, properly sourced and transported is a very clean and renewable fuel and is neither wind or sun dependent. It is the ideal fuel for large amounts of low carbon, renewable energy. A half converted Drax on its own produces about 5% of the countries energy needs, day and night, summer and winter, wind or calm, and unlike solar and wind, has a very small physical footprint.There is more, much, much more to say, but I'll save it for another day.Regards,
LK Hyman
30 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday Happy," Increasing plantation yields with fertiliser or better management also yields climate-friendly biomass"It is no more "climate-friendly" to transport that increased yield from Louisiana to Yorkshire and burn it there than it is for Drax to increase that yield ... and then burn coal.What matters is that Drax (and anyone else claiming to be green) offsets whatever CO2 it emits, however it emits it, by growing the relevant amount of CO2 absorbing greenery ... or by pumping its CO2 deep underground in Yorkshire, thereby capturing the carbon emitted.LKH on the flybridge it stands to reaso
MNKGV
30 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday How anyone can believe it is anything but a completely insane idea to hump wood pelletswith a third of the thermal energy density of coal , with multiple land/sea/land transfers before being burned in a power station sitting on top of a coal -field, three thousand + miles away, , is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps the same people who dreamed up the Northern Ireland scheme of paying for using more energy than you need ? But, as a Drax shareholder , I love to see those cooling towers wreathed in water vapour. As long as the carbon credit scam is in existence Drax is secure.
Happy Rabbit
28 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday Games, This issue was raised in a Daily Mail article some years ago as a scare story. I'm not sure where you got the quote from, but if is from where I think, then the article says ...“When trees grow they absorb carbon dioxide and lock it away in wood. If you chop down a tree and burn it, you can’t possibly emit more than was absorbed in the first place, so the whole thing is effectively carbon neutral, or zero kilograms per megawatt hour.”And this ..."If Drax is burning wood residues like twigs, small branches or sawdust that would otherwise have been burnt as waste, then the emissions will be below 100 kilograms per megawatt hour, or at least ten times lower than burning coal." ... and of course it is.And this ..."Burning wood residues instead of leaving them in the forest to rot is also generally low carbon. Increasing plantation yields with fertiliser or better management also yields climate-friendly biomass, as long as the rate of harvest does not increase.If Drax burns wood from plantations that would otherwise have reverted to natural forest, or from regrowth forest converted to plantations then the carbon benefits are also significant, and emissions will come in at under 100 kg/MWh."So it is possible to do it right, and Drax are doing it right.Regards,
gamesinvestor
28 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday ""Facts don't care if you believe them or not. They are still facts. ""No they don't I suppose!"""Reducing the rotation rate of trees to boost forest output is also generally a bad idea for the climate and can lead to the production of biomass that’s higher carbon than coal. Several other DECC scenarios also show that burning wood in UK power plants can be worse than coal. This includes harvesting wood from naturally regenerating forest, with emissions of up to 5,174 kilograms per megawatt hour – a staggering five times that of coal."""Games - but still governments and the EU will find new ways to justify such lunacy.
MNKGV
19 Jun 2017
Air-con First bit of decent weather and the air-con systems are making the Grid 'grunt' a bit. Never mind, coal comes to the rescue, again.
Happy Rabbit
16 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday LK, you're wrong, and somewhere deep down I'm sure you know you are.I'm not going to give you yet another physics lecture about global warming and the difference between biomass and fossilised carbon but I will if you like!Facts don't care if you believe them or not. They are still facts. Best regards, as ever,
LK Hyman
16 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday Happy,"we will need more low carbon generation to meet the required CO2 emission target"If you think that wood pellets involve low carbon generation try sticking your head just behind Dorothy's exhaust pipe and let me know how you get on, m8!Biomass is only viewed as low carbon because of the damnfool way that the world categorises different electricity fuel sources. One can't blame Dorothy for taking advantage of that, but still ....Sometimes I despair ... and now is one of them times.LKH on the flybridge tracking steadily north, Bressay lighthouse off the port be
axel27
15 Jun 2017
Re: Thursday Thanks Happy,Doh. Got me mental division wrong way up! 400m shares =1/8th £, so 12p it is.Teach me to have a coffee before sums.A
