On Sep 18, 10:43 pm, Tony Polson  wrote:
> Stimpy  wrote:
> >On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:18:59 퍝, Roland Perry wrote
>
> >>>> Remembering also that in the medium term centralised generating capacity
> >>>> will be the scare resource, not coal.
>
> >>> Alledgedly.
>
> >> What are you expecting to take up the slack, when all the nuclear plants
> >> become life-expired?
>
> >Prof. Ian Fells was making exactly this point on R4 yesterday morning. He
> >suggested that we need to start building more generating capacity *now* to
> >replace the plants becoming life-expired in the next 5 years
>
> The situation is now desperate.  The Engineering Institutions have
> been giving strong warnings to the Government about this for at least
> the last four years.  New Labour has decided to do absolutely nothing,
> a position not helped by their abolition of the Department of Trade
> and Industry which was also responsible for energy.  
>
> The DTI's toothless successor has only a watching brief, if that, and
> the Government no longer has a credible energy policy.   Of course the
> method of privatisation is also to blame; the industry was split into
> three, with generation, the national grid and local distribution and
> billing all done by a plethora of private firms with no overall
> co-ordination or control.  Most important of all, none of these
> organisations has been given the most important responsibility the
> CEGB had, which was to ensure security of supply.
>
> The problem is so acute that the only option left is to build more
> gas-fired stations.  Mr Putin would just love that; we are already
> very heavily dependent on Russian gas and building more gas-fired
> stations would make us even more subservient to the Kremlin.  It will
> soon get to the point where the UK has no leverage over Russia, and
> all the power (literally) will be in Putin's hands.
>
> In comparison, our sources of oil are safe and secure.
>
> Even building new coal fired stations would be too slow to fill the
> soon-to-be yawning gap.  Roughly speaking, promoting, building and
> commissioning a gas fired station takes about three to four years, a
> coal fired station about six to eight, and a nuclear station probably
> about ten to twelve.  These figures are very rough approximations but
> I give them to illustrate the relative speed at which new stations can
> be brought on stream.
>
> The point at which rolling power cuts become probable is about 2014,
> due to closures of the oldest nuclear stations and the rapidly
> diminishing reliability of those still operating.  In order to avoid
> those, we will probably need to build as many gas fired stations as we
> can get away with, while also building a couple of coal fired stations
> - naturally these will be built without carbon capture and storage
> because the technology is many years away from full scale
> implementation.
>
> Even if we start building nuclear stations tomorrow, the first ones
> will only come on stream in 2018-2020, which is far too late to help
> bridge the "generation gap".  So rolling power cuts are what we can
> expect.
>
> Needless to say, any initiative that increases our dependence on this
> inadequate system - such as widespread rail electrification - would be
> complete and utter madness at this time.

Oh here we go again...

Rich