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January Newsletter No. 124 |
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Written by SONE
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Thursday, 01 January 2009 |
The unheeded lessons of winter, anti-cyclones and Mr Putin
If the UK were a rational nation, it would now be demanding far greater urgency over the development of nuclear power. Instead, we remain besotted with so called “green” policies that owe everything to mad theorists and fanatical environmentalists and nothing to practical engineers.
Once again Mr Putin, with the ruthlessness he no doubt learned in the KGB, has turned off the gas taps to the Ukraine and much of Western Europe in the middle of a harsh winter. Only now, weeks later, is the supply reportedly trickling back into the West.
The credit crunch, which shows perhaps less sign of abating the more the Government throws our money at our irresponsible bankers, is reportedly killing off proposed investment in UK gas storage that by European standards is minimal.
Three weeks of cold weather, with an anti-cyclone centred over Europe, rendered wind farms as still as the Sphynx. This has blown out of the water the notion that Continental grid connection will secure our power supplies “because the wind always blows somewhere”. The frost has also been accompanied by mists that have added nothing to solar power output.
We would have been very vulnerable but for our declining North Sea gas assets and a deep economic recession that has cut maximum electricity demand. And yet what has happened? Well, to be fair, Ed Miliband, Energy Secretary, commenting on the Russian switch-off, said we needed to diversify out of gas into nuclear as well as renewables and clean fossil fuels. And buried in a new “green” policy from the Conservatives is nuclear power.
But the emphasis is all wrong. Our politicians walk more in fear of “green” fanatics than they do of a populace left with inadequate power supplies. They never think of arguing the case for and extolling the many virtues of nuclear power.
This palsy – and the failure of engineering institutions to bring a national realism to energy supply issues – means that our economy is threatened not just by the excesses of financiers but also by the naivete of politicians who apparently listen exclusively to ignoramuses about what is physically possible in power supply.
As things stand, it is odds on our running out of power just as we are beginning to recover from the current financial mess. When that happens we shall not derive much warmth and comfort from saying ”We told you so”.
Theory versus physics
To examine a little further the distortion of energy policy making, let us turn first to the launch of the Government-backed Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) at Loughborough University. Six companies (instead of the 11 the Government hoped for) have each pledged £50m over 10 years to develop new low-carbon sources of (no doubt subsidised) energy supply. Its first four projects were not very new – three in offshore wind and one in wave or tidal power.
These four projects will attract £60m of funding from the ETI. Contrast that with the problems the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate had in 2007-8 in securing a pay structure to attract more inspectors to licence reactors costing perhaps a mere five per cent of that.
The ETI’s chief executive, David Clarke held out the prospect of a market worth more than £50bn by 2020 by the 4,000 new offshore wind turbines and 2,000 wave or tidal power devices he thinks are needed to meet Government targets. His vision owed absolutely nothing to technical feasibility or cost estimates.
Nor, for that matter, did the £1bn “smart” inter-active electricity grid, backed by feed-in tariffs, at the centre David Cameron’s newly unveiled energy policy. “Smart” are supposed to be able to ell you just what you are paying for and when to use the cheapest power while at the same time allowing you to feed any surplus from your own generating equipment into the grid.
All this sounds wonderful in theory – especially because of the jobs it is claimed these schemes and policies will create while unemployment mounts - but nobody seems to have asked engineers how it would work.
The horse’s mouth
Accordingly, we went to the horse’s mouth – a retired senior engineer with years of grid control behind him. He is the sort of chap who has helped SONE produce its extensive range of briefings – advice which, when we commended it to a newspaper’s environment correspondent, was arrogantly dismissed as: “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?” That perhaps tells you all you need to know about what we are up against.
But we digress. Our engineer was “horrified” with the consequences of the ETI initiative. He said: “The technical implications and cost are not confined to the developer but extend into transmission connection and reinforcement, with supporting conventional generation infrastructure having to operate inefficiently.
“Worse, to ensure system stability, significant interconnection into the Continental grid will be needed, raising strategic issues and political direction. At a period of severe credit restriction suffocating our economy, to encourage such uneconomic and misguided development when the critical need is for replacement generation capacity to restore a balanced generation portfolio is simply economic and technical madness. The essential need is for nuclear investment, not available for at least a decade, but, much more pressing, new coal capacity in this insecure world.” He said that public education away from green hysteria into strategic realities is needed – “a political matter for the Opposition whose track record in this area is abysmal”. He argued that “the turnaround of the public perception of nuclear should provide encouragement for Opposition based on realities and conviction rather than addressing a perceived public mood for political advantage”.
So, there you have it. They are all up with the fairies while we, the people, are at risk.
Sone’s opportunity
Ed Miliband declined to honour the promise made by the immediately outgoing Energy Secretary, John Hutton, to address SONE’s AGM last October. He remains too busy to meet us following the letter we wrote calling for more urgency behind nuclear after the AGM.
Let us leave aside what this says about a lack of political enthusiasm for nuclear, given that SONE has spent 10 years trying to keep the nuclear flame alive. Mr Miliband has asked his officials in the Office for Nuclear Development to meet us “in the first instance”.
We now have an opportunity to penetrate at least an outer circle of the Government’s energy policymaking and to press upon it our serious concerns about energy policy. It will not be enough for us to be told all is in hand when it manifestly isn’t.
It may well be that preparation for nuclear’s development is proceeding at its familiarly sedate pace. But what we need to puncture is the complacency and not least the hopelessly rosy views about wind, waves, tides, solar and other renewables, power station carbon capture and energy conservation. They will not close the looming energy gap. Nor will nuclear if international demand exceeds supply for nuclear components.
We are heading for an even more wrecked economy than the bankers and regulators have produced if somebody somewhere does not get serious about our power supplies PDQ. Why, they are even dithering about approving a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, Kent, when it is as plain as Christ’s statue towering over Rio that we shall need coal as well as nuclear.
Cut the scepticism
Before we try to sort anybody else out, we ought to get our own ducks in a row. Not for the first time, this Newsletter has been attacked by members for its scepticism about man-made global warming.
In a letter to the chairman, Patrick McCarron, of Bath, after reading the December issue, asks for the “wayward, self-centred author” to be instructed that “we are an organisation that supports nuclear energy and not an organisation that opposes the prevailing view on the causes of climate change and that he had better confine his copy to the former or follow his peer, President George Bush, into retirement.” His argument is that members pay their subscriptions solely to promote nuclear power and not for the editor to proclaim his “idiosyncrasy”.
We have three comments:
- We have always made it clear that we are not competent to judge whether man is responsible for global warming, if it still exists after the evidence of the last 10 years. In these circumstances, a certain scepticism seems to be in order, especially in view of the sustained doom-mongering of the true believers and their espousal of manifestly useless remedies regardless of cost. It is one thing to cry doom; it is entirely another matter in doing so to ensure we are doomed.
- We cannot wisely ignore the substantial body of opinion dismissing global warming whether as a fact or caused by man, especially when the proposed remedies for warming won’t work and are pre-empting scarce capital for nuclear. It would be as remiss of us not to promote insurance action (with nuclear) against the possibility that the global warmers are right as it would be to base the case for nuclear on global warming when it might be proved not to exist. The real case for nuclear is security of supply at competitive cost with next to no carbon emissions a real bonus. Too many people are carried away by environmentalism.
- We profoundly object to any attempt to suppress free speech. If members don’t like our scepticism, they can put it down to our cantankerous nature. One thing is for sure, they cannot doubt we are in favour of nuclear power. Indeed, we have also been criticised by SONE members for our over-enthusiastic advocacy.
It’s all happening
Our progress towards a new nuclear age may be, as we say, sedate, but there has been a lot happening in the first weeks of 2009. We are not referring to the Sun’s imaginative suggestion that a Lincolnshire wind farm was hit by a flying saucer. It would be nice to think that the little green men can recognise a scam when they see one.
Instead, EdF’s purchase of British Energy has been completed. The German companies E.ON and RWE have entered into a 50-50 joint venture to build at least 6,000MW of nuclear capacity in the UK. They jointly own three reactors in Germany and have stakes in 20 across the world.
RWE has also obtained grid connections for 3,600MW and bought land for up to three new nuclear power stations at Wylfa on Anglesey where two Magnox reactors are due for closure next year. This was warmly welcomed on Anglesey where the aluminium smelter is under threat.
The Spanish company, Iberdrola, and Scottish and Southern Energy have announced a joint venture to join the UK nuclear renaissance and Oldbury, the oldest nuclear power station in Britain due to close at the end of last year, has been given a limited extension of life of about two years.
Westinghouse, which the UK Government sold to the Japanese and is one of the two current contenders to build power stations in Britain, continues to snap up orders across the world.
Gas cut boosts nuclear
If you want to know what happens when people feel cold because energy supplies have been interrupted, examine events in Europe this month. People demand the re-opening of nuclear power stations. Mid-month Slovakia was preparing Bohunice for recommissioning less than two weeks after it was closed if Russia did not resume gas supplies..
An Italian Minister said the “ shortsightedness of the past” had put Italy at risk after a utility president had declared “The only long run solution to energy imports for Italy is nuclear energy”. Poland wants two nuclear plants and a share of one in Lithuania to increase its energy security.
In Germany where, as in Sweden, they are supposed to be phasing out nuclear but probably never will, gross electricity output from its 17 nuclear reactors rose 6 per cent in 2008. South Korea aims to have half its electricity generated by nuclear reactors. And Japan continues to develop its nuclear industry and is beefing up its nuclear budget for research into the fast breeder reactor.
Last year across the world three old reactors closed. No new ones were opened but 10 were under construction and the number planned grows.
Royal rumble
The coarser public prints [are there any other sort? Ed.] have been trying to stir up trouble within the monarchy because Prince Andrew, who is the UK’s special representative for international trade and investment, is to hold what is curiously described as a “Royal Rumble” for the nuclear industry at Buckingham Palace on February 5. More prosaically, it is a “gala lunch” for representatives of the British nuclear industry.
This would be entirely unremarkable, though welcome, were it not for the fact that his “big brother”, as Prince Charles is described, has acquired a former Greenpeace policy adviser as his deputy private sector. We see this as confirmation that the Palace is a broad church.
Irish wind statistics
In this haven of democracy where the Government urges MPs to suppress details of their expenses claimed from the taxpayer, the day to day performance of wind “farms” is classed as commercially confidential. In Ireland it’s on the internet.
Friends in Dublin have sent us details of the readings for every 15 minutes over Christmas from midnight December 20 to midnight December 27. They are expressed as a percentage of demand over the quarter hour concerned. The average over the eight days ranged from 24 per cent of demand on December 20 to one per cent on December 23. After December 20, the highest amount generated never averaged more than 12 per cent of demand (on Boxing Day).
The figures for the week are: December 20 – 24 per cent; 21 – 8; 22 – 5; 23 – 1; 24 3; 25 – 5; 26 – 12; 27 – 10.
It would have been a cold Christmas in Ireland if it had to rely on wind. No wonder its politicians are being pressed to end the statutory ban on nuclear power.
Google where art thou?
We shall take the opposition to airport expansion in the UK more seriously when “Greens” stop flying all over the world to global warming conferences. The next jamboree is in Copenhagen at the end of the year to develop a new (failed) Kyoto. We presume it will have on its agenda the new international pastime called Googling.
A US physicist reckons that every second we stay on the internet we produce 0.02 grammes of carbon. Since world wide there are 200m internet searches a day, that works out at a lot of carbon. A typical Google search produces about 7g – about half that produced by boiling an electric kettle for a cup of tea.
Why have we not heard Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth calling for a ban on importunate use of computers?
Gone with the wind
In a letter to the Sunday Times, Paul Spare, a member of SONE’s committee, wrote: “December 2008 has produced the most unequivocal evidence that constructing wind turbines is a totally futile gesture. At the same time, a typical freezing anti-cyclone has been static over the UK and most of Europe for two weeks so the output from tens of thousands of turbines is only a few per cent of their nominal output at a time when electricity demand is close to maximum.
“One must conclude”, he adds, “that the Government has no comprehension of scientific reasoning if it continues to support these white elephant schemes in the face of such substantial evidence of their inadequacy”.
It’s not just the Government – it’s our entire political class. Which is where we came in.
Obituary
We very much regret to record the deaths of two SONE stalwarts – Dr Peter Hodgson, an Oxford academic who was a fund of technical advice, and J L Raikes, of Bournemouth, who fought a bonny campaign promoting nuclear power with local politicians.
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