The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[Evanivitch]

Gary C said:

Seem to want an argument ?

Better question would be, how much do we stock.

Anyway, I'm not allowed to say

Edited by Gary C on Saturday 3rd March 14:06

It's not an argument, it's a question I couldn't find an answer to and you seemed to be within the industry. Disappointing you can't share but I can respect that.

[Gary C]

Evanivitch said:

Gary C said:

Seem to want an argument ?

Better question would be, how much do we stock.

Anyway, I'm not allowed to say

Edited by Gary C on Saturday 3rd March 14:06

It's not an argument, it's a question I couldn't find an answer to and you seemed to be within the industry. Disappointing you can't share but I can respect that.

Sorry, was tongue in cheek

I'm not allowed to say when fuel is being moved and from where to where but I can't say how much the uk has cause I don't know. We don't have large stocks on site.

But strategic stocks would be easier to build and store than much else but still from foreign countries.

I can't see why uk deep coal couldn't be restarted. I know old mines collapse (my dad was a coal miner) but a lot of deep seams must be viable, just cost limited (environment and money) but really, it, tidal and wind/solar are the only uk source of energy available in large amounts ?

[anonymous-user]

I have a question about nuclear

How much energy is left in a spent fuel rod?

Given it has to be kept under water for about the age of a crow, is there no way of capturing that energy more usefully?

[Gary C]

JPJPJP said:

I have a question about nuclear

How much energy is left in a spent fuel rod?

Given it has to be kept under water for about the age of a crow, is there no way of capturing that energy more usefully?

A stringer usually produces about 7MW of power down to about 2 at discharge, after about 2 months it's doing less than 6kw

But that's the decay heat. Used fuel still has a fair amount of fissile uranium and even has built up some fissile plutonium but because of the design of a commercial reactor other elements produced poison the fuel until the reactor would shut itself down.

You can reprocess the fuel and make new fuel called mox which removes some of the poisons and allows you to burn some of the remaining fuel.

Problem is, new fuel is fairly safe (very low levels of Iactivity) you can hold it. Mox fuel is radioactive so becomes difficult and expensive to handle so we don't use it (despite having spent billions in the 80's on the thermal oxide reprocessing plant (thorp) in Cumbria.

Also, you can use depleted uranium (minus most of its fissile isotope) in a fast breeder reactor, where it surrounds the active core, adsorbs neutrons changing some uranium into fissile plutonium. This then has to be processed so you end up with similar problems to mox, I every expensive.

[s2art]

JPJPJP said:

I have a question about nuclear

How much energy is left in a spent fuel rod?

Given it has to be kept under water for about the age of a crow, is there no way of capturing that energy more usefully?

Q1 Most, only a few percent is 'burned'
Q2 The most promising technology is the Thorium molten salt reactor as it can burn up almost all the Uranium/Plutonium. Could be a few years away yet though.

[Ali G]

Thorium...

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/c...

[WatchfulEye]

JPJPJP said:

I have a question about nuclear

How much energy is left in a spent fuel rod?

Given it has to be kept under water for about the age of a crow, is there no way of capturing that energy more usefully?

Garry C has said it best.
The spent fuel is discharged once it no longer has sufficient reactivity to continue being used. Presumably, this is much easier to manage in an AGR plant which can be refuelled online, compared to a PWR like Sizewell B or Hinkley C which is batch refuelled typically every 18 months. There may be a small reserve of reactivity in the fuel to cover some eventualities, 1-2 weeks would not be uncommon for PWR fuel in the US.

You can reprocess the fuel to recover the unused uranium and plutonium generated during use, but this is very difficult, hazardous and expensive. The French experience is that if you run 7 reactors on uranium, you can reprocess the spent fuel and recover enough plutonium to run an 8th reactor on MOX fuel. The UK spent a ton of money reprocessing plutonium, but because of difficulties with handling MOX fuel, none was ever made for use in the UK and the plutonium is just sitting in a storage vault. Some MOX fuel was made for export to Japan, but this didn't last long - a batch of fuel was sent out with forged QA certificates and this was noticed by the customer.

The Canadians tried to market their reactor technology to the UK as a method of getting energy from spent fuel; the Canadian design uses heavy water, and this allows the reactor to extract more reactivity from the fuel. The idea was that instead of a full chemical reprocessing with nasty stuff like concentrated nitric acid and nasty solvents like TBP, you could simply mechanically process the fuel (chopping, grinding, sintering and re-canning) and get another 10-15% more energy. The idea never really got very far before being abandoned.

The heat from spent fuel is not really enough to be useful, but is still enough to be a nuisance. A PWR fuel assembly (e.g. as might be used at Hinkley C) produces about 18 MW of heat during its operating life of about 4.5 years; 4 days after shutdown this is down to about 60 kW. 1 year after shutdown, this is down to about 6 kW, and after 10 years about 1 kW. Given the level of hazard of the material, that just isn't enough for long enough to be worth capturing, especially when keeping the rods at a safe storage temperature.

[PRTVR]

Well coal has come off maximum output for the first time in 6 days, down from 10/11 gw to 8,
This was when wind was providing a decent output, what else in the short term can do as the same job and be available to fill in for intermittency with renewables ?

[V8 Fettler]

Evanivitch said:

V8 Fettler said:

How is the data within the Selby DC report inaccurate? You posted a link to a page on the IET website which relies on an "estimate" with no meaningful data, I posted a link to the Selby DC report which contains data and facts.

DRAX reportedly used to stockpile over one million tonnes (2009), is there data available for overall historical particulate emission from DRAX?

http://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/print/...

Alarmingly, biomass appears to increase particulate emissions. http://energyandcarbon.com/will-biomass-follow-die...

I didn't say the data was inaccurate, it's irrelevant.

It's like comparing traffic emissions on a quiet country lane to the middle of London. You're recording different data and unless you understand the scalability then you can't compare 2 different scenarios.

In the absence of readily available data for historical particle emissions from DRAX (when perhaps as much as 2.5 million tonnes of coal were stockpiled), we could use a Greenpeace method for identifying the presence of adverse levels of PM2.5 http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/campaigns/air-p...

Greenpeace said:

PM2.5 vs. Visibility

5-10km: No special protection required.
3-5km: Reduce outdoor activities.
2-3km: Reduce outdoor activities, especially for respiratory patients; wear a mask outdoors; stop outdoor physical exercise.
Less than 2km: Avoid all outdoor activities, especially for respiratory patients; however if outside wear a mask.

If PM2.5 emissions from coal stockpiled at DRAX created historical or current visibility issues then we can be certain that Greenpeace and others would be complaining vociferously in the media.

[V8 Fettler]

PRTVR said:

Well coal has come off maximum output for the first time in 6 days, down from 10/11 gw to 8,
This was when wind was providing a decent output, what else in the short term can do as the same job and be available to fill in for intermittency with renewables ?

According to Greenpeace, the remaining gas at Rough couldn't be distributed because of the cold weather.

https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/03/02/nation...

Also other issues with gas. Is there anyone competent involved with the strategic planning of UK energy supplies?

[rolando]

More depressing reading:
Capacity Market Still Fails To Trigger New CCGT
There's no doubt that someone will be along in a moment to tell us that there's no problem because the answer to the unreliables' intermittency question is just around the corner — powered by unicorn droppings.

[dxg]

This is quite interesting:

In short, 65% capacity factor since October for the offshore wind farm in the North Sea. Shame the Norwegians own it!

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/201...

^ I never knew about suction cup foundations before: they're really clever!

[StanleyT]

Gary C said:

You can reprocess the fuel and make new fuel called mox

Ha-ha-ha...........

I think most MOX plants have more "intermicency" in their production than even the poorest performing windmill.

I had a friend whom was a manager at Thorp during the "Sellafield MOX Scandal" - apparently the data falsification undertaken by the empolyees was more effort than actually doing the job properly, until they stopped faking the data with science behind it and then just "copied and faked" MS Excel sheets, the systematic pattern in the results being teh eventual downfal of five to ten employess and a £1 billion manufacturing plant.

For some strange reasons coutries still making bombs and building up their stockpiles seem to get their MOX plants working fine though.......(World Nuclear News is a good source).

[LongQ]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Will be interesting to see if they can convince the market on the punt.

And, presumably, the extra blade wear potential.

However if you see the size as pushing the boundaries of what the investors may consider does that mean the the industry is at or very near the the limits of what increased size and capacity can achieve? If so what effect does that have on the rate of decline of costs (as a proxy for CfD bid flexibility)?

[Ali G]

It's not really possible to discuss the future without also discussing the past.

Particularly the experimental fast breeder reactor built at Dounreay and the subsequent decommissioning challenges.

https://dounreay.com/2009/11/fast-breeder-was-brit...

There is no such thing as a free lunch..

[Kccv23highliftcam]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

In other news,

GE drops a gauntlet and tries to get a march on the big two offshore:

Worlds largest turbine Officially declared as 12MW :

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/ge-haliade-x-wind-tu...




Will be interesting to see if they can convince the market on the punt.

Is it direct drive??

[Gary C]

StanleyT said:

Gary C said:

You can reprocess the fuel and make new fuel called mox

Ha-ha-ha...........

I think most MOX plants have more "intermicency" in their production than even the poorest performing windmill.

I had a friend whom was a manager at Thorp during the "Sellafield MOX Scandal" - apparently the data falsification undertaken by the empolyees was more effort than actually doing the job properly, until they stopped faking the data with science behind it and then just "copied and faked" MS Excel sheets, the systematic pattern in the results being teh eventual downfal of five to ten employess and a £1 billion manufacturing plant.

For some strange reasons coutries still making bombs and building up their stockpiles seem to get their MOX plants working fine though.......(World Nuclear News is a good source).

The falsification was a farce. The measurements were not necessary anyway, but we didn't really want the fuel as new fuel was cleaner and cheaper.

As I remember the Pacific teal was actually at sea when the scandal broke and gave the Japanese a reason to withdraw.

[Ali G]

67GWh - capacity factor being weather dependent.

Let's scale that down to a capacity factor close to 30% on an annual basis - so 20 GWh average with a significant amount of 0 GWh - when a high pressure weather system occurs.

[StanleyT]

Were we going to use MOX in the UK?

My brief time on fuel plant was at the Preston plant. Probably touched a few of the graphite sleeves that made it to Heysham!!!!! Then again, probably not as everything I touched seemed to go wrong.........still does, hence doing something much less dangerous these days.

[V8 Fettler]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

In other news,

GE drops a gauntlet and tries to get a march on the big two offshore:

Worlds largest turbine Officially declared as 12MW :

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/ge-haliade-x-wind-tu...




Will be interesting to see if they can convince the market on the punt.

Not quite the world's largest electrical turbine, that record is currently held by Olkiluoto 3 (Finnish nuclear) at 2000MW