Scientists interrogate Lovelock 06 July 06

Seems the scientists said his catastrophic scenario is within the upper range predicted by science, and that it’s okay to talk about those upper range possibilities, even if they are less than 5%, even 1%, likely, esp since this is such a dangerous problem.

Just what I’ve been saying….

Following on from tonight’s BBC ‘Horizon’ programme, perhaps the risks from a limited renewal of nuclear capacity may be worth support in the present context.

Why? two reasons: firstly, the effects of AGW are manifesting themselves far faster than was thought even 18 months ago: ergo we have far less time to make deep reductions in GHG emissions. Secondly, as presented in the Horizon programme, the effects of low-level radiation may be less harmful than previously thought, except for certain ‘at risk ’ groups.

The overview is here : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5173310.stm

Despite the deaths of 47 emergency workers at the Chernobyl power plant and 9 deaths amongst children from Thyroid cancer since, there have been reportedly no other radiation-related deaths in the area. However, over 4000 children in the contamintion zone have Thyroid cancer, many of which may not prove fatal.

The programme also reported that at doses below 100 millisieverts, the human body has some kind of genetic ‘immune response’ which actually prevents cell and dna damage from radiation. So low level radiation, just like low-level pathogen exposure, may increase human resilience initially, rather than lower it.

This may mean that our fears of cancer and death from small increases in radiation exposure may not be well founded (although the longer term effects; 25 yrs and greater, on other cancer types will only show up from this point forward). It would support the report of the Sustainable Development Commission on UK Nuclear development that a limited programme of reactor replacements would be justified.

However, it doesn’t address the issues of CO2 emissions from mining, refinement and transport of Nuclear fuel, especialy after the claimed present 30 years supply of high-grade Uranium ores are exhausted. It also doesn’t address the difficulties of long-term storage and disposal of spent fuels, although low-grade waste may now be seen as much less of a risk.

Neither does it alleviate the issues of nuclear proliferation and terrorism threat but, in the context of an accellerating threat from AGW and the delay in making a change to a far less energy-intensive economy, it may well be that this change in the scientific risk analysis may justify a limited Nuclear replacement programme.

The Horizon programme mentioned the 200,000 forced abortions in the Chernobyl area instituted by the Russian Authorities as a preventitive measure. This would agree with my experience a year later, of local health professionals in Kiev reportedly being told to record any deaths that might be radiation-releated but not obviously so, as ‘natural causes’ (see previous post). But it seems it may have been the conviction of the Soviet state that they were about to face an epidemic of radiation related mutations and deaths that caused them to react by forcibly suppressing the recording of what actually was happening to avoid bad international publicity.

So on this issue I now feel that those like Almuth, Dan, Mark and even Norb have had a valid point all along. It is the case that the ‘lesser evil’ may be sufficiently less compared to the more urgent threat form AGW that it should be tried in a limited way.

But only after energy efficiency, renewables, distributed CHP and microgeneration have been able to reduce the demand on centralised power plants much lower than it is at present.

Colin

Hi Colin,

There seems to be a lot of uncertainty over Chernobyl. The picture you paint seems quite rosy compared to this report in the Guardian in April 2006 – see below.

I’d really like to know:

- how bad was Chernobyl? (i.e. how many people did it really affect / kill?) - how bad could it have been? - what really are the risks of future nuclear disasters?

My feeling is that the stories that people tell are heavily influenced by agendas!

http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1760930,00.html

“in the past few weeks four major scientific reports have challenged the World Health Organisation (WHO), which believes that only 50 people have died and 9,000 may over the coming years. The reports widely accuse WHO of ignoring the evidence and dismissing illnesses that many doctors in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus say are worsening, especially in children of liquidators. The charge is led by the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, which last week declared that 212,000 people have now died as a direct consequence of Chernobyl. Meanwhile, a major report commissioned by Greenpeace considers the evidence of 52 scientists and estimates the deaths and illnesses to be 93,000 terminal cancers already and perhaps 100,000 deaths in time. A further report for European parliamentarians suggested 60,000 deaths. In truth no one knows.”

And Chernobyl could have been much worse. What would have happened if all the reactors had caught fire? What would have happened if there had been a complete melt-down of the Chernobyl reactors? How would that have affected Ukraine – or indeed Europe, Russia and other former-USSR countries? One of the features of the radioactive fall-out is how far some of the radioactive hotspots travel away from the source. We can all be affected by these incidents!

The Greenpeace link is here: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/chernobyl-deaths-180406

This looks interesting ..

http://www.euradcom.org/publications/chernobyleflyer.pdf

Best wishes,

Peter

I think people have to take the reins now & do whatever they can to reduce their GHGs at home, at work, at church, & at other places. The gov can help by offering incentives & info, and disincentives to emit GHGs (tax them to smitherines).

But people are lazy, so….maybe if it’s put this way: “A nuclear power plant is being proposed for your back yard,...unless, of course, you & neighbors show real progress in greatly reducing your GHGs.” Maybe that would light a fire under people to finally do something.

Hi Peter,

I trust all your numbers are correct and your post is very important to promote caution. Still, disasters do force major improvements. The dangers from new facilities are much less than old facilities and we simply can do a much better job of containment.

I am more worried about past facilities such as a nuclear bomb plant which created vast stores of nuclear liquid wastes in the state of Washington. A very costly cleanup is slowly underway to turn the liquid waste into a solid glass. For me, I wonder why this was not done at the beginning. Solids simply cannot leak and sit where they are and this reduces the threat tremendously to the point of eliminating it. The solid waste can radiate till it dies. This is what I call doing it right!

We had a disaster called Three Mile Island. It was bad but not a Chernobyl. Why? The engineers designed a containment building that would withstand any meltdown and quite frankly, it worked. As bad as it was, it did not go the direction Chernobyl did even when coolant was cut off to the reactor. The improvements made to prevent human error through better instrumentation and fail-safe controls followed from that.

New designs such as Pebble Bed make a melt down impossible even from lack of coolant by basically not concentrating the nuclear material but placing small quantities inside tennis ball shaped spheres which cannot melt down even when isolated with no heat transfer. I think little solid spheres are very hard to breach even if bombed as many may scatter about instead of exposing their contents. Still, I am concerned about fire and I wonder if this has been worked out properly based on what I read on the material properties of these spheres. I do think a containment building is warranted to prevent fire mostly from a terrorist attack and not a meltdown necessarily although this may still be a good idea.

It is a matter of the risk/cost assessment. How many layers of containment are necessary to reduce the risk to acceptable levels. How much will it cost and is it worth it if other options are available.

The bottom line is climate change still is by far a much higher risk than managing and controlling nuclear energy which seems easier than protecting the climate from a technical level. In that light, Colin’s case is still valid but your numbers and caution are warranted as we have to insure new plants have a magnitude less in risk than older plants. Nuclear, if made safe, does not cause harm. Coal plants, by contrast, will kill billions by destroying the climate let alone the emissions of mercury, sulfur, etc.

Colin’s case is not so much an endorsement of nuclear but an endorsement of priorities. I would not favor even shutting old nuclear plants down if this prevented coal plants.

On the side of the numbers, climate change just took a new dimension my friend (or an old one for that matter). I have learned something very profound from a very good book which I recommend to everyone on this blog. It is called “Weather Makers” by Australian Tim Flannery (The Aussies have it bad right now with lack of water so they are really feeling the effects of climate change).

What Tom said about Africa shocked me to the core. In 2003, it was determined in Boulder, CO that their prolonged drought which has caused so much suffering and millions of death can now be blamed on CO2. After running computer simulations, the extra CO2 from humans induced a climate change in that region from altering the sea surface temperatures of the Indian Ocean to be much higher. The droughts Africa has been having started back in 1960 and for 4 decades, an annual monsoon which was quite normal before stopped appearing and has never come back since. This was initially blamed on how Africans overgrazed and collected firewood exposing the dark soil to absorbing more heat, etc. Tim Flannery even said that the Darfur conflict was more a conflict of herders taking their camels and goats to eat vegetables grown on farmers’ land which did not set well with the farmers. So despite the political reasons (in our news), the Darfur region is apparently more about 2 starving cultures fighting over available food.

For me, this is quite profound and suggests that climate change from our use of fossil fuels has already killed millions of Africans and this started back in 1960 when the science was at a premature state as compared to today. This is mind boggling to me as our CO2 levels along with world population levels are much higher. So, I do hear your concerns about nuclear and think we should avoid it when we can but the climate problem is overwhelming the more we learn about it.

Whatever works is what we have to do. It does not matter so much if it is renewable, nuclear, space reflectors, reflective pavement, planting trees or all the above. Africa’s plight can happen elsewhere. Our own western forests are burning up at the moment from climate change. The fires are everywhere. They are attributed to the snow melt happening sooner leaving a very long dry season.

Peter, we are really all on the same page here. I think we are simply up against finding an easy path through this maze. For me, I know it has to do with the total accounting and the numbers have to add up and they do not. The financial aspects are important numbers and investments at changing infrastructure can be substantial. We may have financial limits as well and this may be the best case for or against nuclear when comparing all other available options.

All the very best,

Dan

I watched the Horizon programme on Chernobyl and radiation. It got my BS detector twitching like mad. I felt it was completely one sided and must have been put together by someone with an “agenda”.

A quick Google of Dr Mike Repacholi, a key contributor, indicates he is a very controversial character. The results are here http://aolsearch.aol.co.uk/web?query=Dr+Mike+Repacholi&isinit=true&restrict=wholeweb&x=33&y=11 Have a look and see what you think.

I’ve got a horrible feeling that AGW/CC and related issues are now so well established that certain journalists have moved on to the next stage and are digging around for some ill founded controversy to get viewing figures up and advance their careers. I hope I’m wrong.

And it’s worth checking the Guardian’s coverage of the massive lobbying effort behind the new nukes venture. Here http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1817546,00.html

We are in the process of being well stitched up and Bliar is thoroughly complicit in this.

Douglas Coker

Peter, the links are very useful and the information disturbing. In the light of this, it seems that the editing of the Horizon programme has been more than a bit partisan.

I’ve been trying to take a break from the Big energy/ geo-political conspiracy theories lately and concentrating on trying to get some resources into two recycling contracts and a sustainable land management project. But, the timing of the Horizon programme , just after the publication of the UK energy review….... Nah! I thought, this is Britain, we don’t do propaganda and media manipulation…...and got a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I notice that this blog is watched by some Beeb producers, so perhaps the Horizon editorial team might like to comment? If the programme is as selective as Douglas’s references infer, then it is cynical misinformation worthy of the tobacco industry.

Perhaps it might be worth a comment direct to Auntie.

The programme did admit, that at 20 years on, some of the types of cancers that may well be provoked by cell damage have yet to emerge in an ageing population, but this is again out-of sync with the figures stated in the Guradian article, and doesn’t square with my own experiences of meeting very sick kids from that area.

If we are forced to accept a limited Nuclear revival then it will carry a heavy cost in terms of waste disposal and decommissioning. But since when did lumbering the UK taxpayer with a millstone for the forseable future stop government policy? Nuclear meets PFI: oh God!

In the time it would take to build a new plant, we could get every household in the UK fitted with micro wind turbines, solar panels, low energy applainces and better insulation. We could also get community-scale biomass CHP, wind turbine clusters and small hydro developments on-line.

Who will want Nuclear energy, if we can reduce domestic demand by 60% and generate most of the rest locally?

best wishes to all

Colin

I think all of us are mostly on the same page.

I dislike centralized power plants of any type if they can be avoided through increased efficiency and micro power concepts as articulated by Colin. The only case for nuclear, for me, would be an area needing more energy than can be delivered through renewable energy and efficiency increases.

I think most centralized power can be avoided in countries like ours and the UK but I fear hundreds of coal plants being built in India or China. I worry about more coal plants being built because of the climatic impact. I do not like coal plants because of the carbon, mercury, sulfates, etc. If we can capture the carbon, I can live with them.

In fact, carbon sequestration technology can help eliminate nuclear plants since this would allow coal plants to compete against nuclear’s smaller carbon footprint.

Maybe the cost of a coal plant, if it included extreme weather and sea level rise, may be greater than the cost of a nuclear plant even when the cost of containment and managing the wastes are included. This is the distinction I make and I agree the total cost/benefit/risk assessment must be thorough and unbiased.

Considering all power plants, be them micro or large-scale, I do want to see all the energy used and the waste heat should always go to something. I can think of many ways to squeeze most of the energy out of our fossil fuels or nuclear.

Ingenuity is everything. Combining ideas can create a better situation. Natural Capitalism promoted concepts which increased the viability of ideas. If there is one unifying aspect in our dialogue, I would say let innovation rule!

In my nuclear post, I promoted using more ingenuity where we could eliminate the possibility of ever having another Chernobyl again and this to me is the main point from the lessons of Chernobyl. I would vehemently oppose anything which resembled a plant design which had the potential of creating another Chernobyl.

On the side of increased efficiency, I hate the idea of any centralized power plant wasting energy. In the USA, the idea of ethanol is being touted and I can see an improvement in efficiency from using power plant waste heat. This improvement would save vast quantities of water which may be lacking with the changing climate in the USA.

Let me articulate:

We are growing in population and need more food, more electric power, and more fuel. Water is limited. Crops require water for both food and fuel. Everyone knows hydro plants need water but so do coal and nuclear plants use water in their cycles to condense water. In fact, over 60 percent of the energy is used to evaporate water. This is substantial enough on water suuply. Ethanol requires a lot of energy to make it which then requires more crops simply to help distill the ethanol (Colin may be reading brewery in this!). Still, this exasperates the climate induced water crises even further. What to do?

By using the waste heat from power plants, we can eliminate their need to evaporate water so we save there. Since we do not need extra crops to distill ethanol, then we save water there increasing yield.

This is the way we need to think. Take a bad idea and make it a good one. Take a good idea and make it great. Build a wave energy platform at the base of an offshore wind farm increasing yield by using 2 renewable sources of energy sharing the same infrastructure. How can the shared costs increase the total value of this combined approach? Would this help renewable energy defeat both coal and nuclear?

May the best ideas always win in the end!

Best wishes to my friends and maybe one day we can all drink a pint of sunshine together!

OK, this is one name of a product from the solar brewery as opposed to moonshine!

And, if we want to take it further, the beer at the CA brewery would be “40 percent sunshine” since 40 percent of the energy used came from solar panels. If we had other names such as 100 percent sunshine, then this would cost more but would help finance more solar panels. 100 percent “sunshine” would come from solar panels only. How about names like: “Low Tide”, “Sun-Spot Shots”, “Solar Breeze”, and “Photon Torpedo”.

Anyhow, these are my contributions to the solar-brewery products.

Colin you mention the time it will take to get new nukes up and running. Of all the arguments against more nuclear I think this tends to be overlooked.

We need a programme of fixes which can be started and/or accelerated immediately. Any new nuclear plant will not be operational for many years. Rushing the process is dangerous.

I think it is instructive to follow the Finland saga. Their new nuclear power station is essentially a loss leader to encourage other prospective purchasers. It is already behind schedule. Terry Macalister is covering the developing story very well in the Guardian.

Nuclear may be a lower CO2 emitter than some other forms of energy but I think we make a serious category error if it is seen as comparable to truly renewable energy sources.

I’d advocate thinking seriously long term, not 50 years ahead, but longer. That gives us a better chance of pursuing solutions which are really sustainable.

Douglas Coker

Horizon neglected to give the full background and credentials of the scientists who were presenting their views in this programme. Dr Repacholi, is or was head of the WHO International Electromagnetic Radiation Project, set up by him to make an independant investigation into the effects of EMF on the brain. He seems to have a reputation in some quarters for having a strong bias in favour of the EMF industry and for working for their interests rather than being independent.

This web page is very interesting indeed on the subject:

http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1599006/

Also see this by Don Maisch:

A pdf paper on “Conflict of Interest and Bias in Health Advisory Committees: a Case Study of the WHO’s EMF Task Group” (Maisch Don. JACNEM Vol.21 No.1 pp 15-17. April 2006).

http://www.emfacts.com/papers/who_conflict.pdf

And see also: http://omega.twoday.net/stories/2178233/

Prof Tony Brooks, also featured in the programme, seems to have more relevant experience in the field – his papers can be found in a Medline search for Brooks AL. On the face of it, he looks more reliable – at least I have not found suggestions otherwise on the internet.

The timing of this programme alone makes me deeply suspicious, never mind the failure to present the other views on low level radiation. I would like to know a lot more about Nick Davidson, too.

I am wondering about a complaint to the Beeb about lack of objectivity and ‘balance’. When GW was being discussed barely a year ago, whenever someone like Mark or George Monbiot was interviewed, the Beeb rushed to field a contrarian in the name of maintaining ‘balance’ in their reporting.

It appears there has been an oversight on the part of the Horizon editorialteam and definite bias has resulted. This should not go unchallenged.

thanks again

Colin

Colin, I think there should be a complaint. I’d volunteer but did not tape the programme and am therefore not well placed to put together a properly considered complaint.

I also had an exchange with one of the BBC Today producers maybe a year ago and since then they do not respond to me. I wonder why – maybe I upset someone!!!

Douglas Coker

Hi Dan, Colin, Douglas & everyone,

At the risk of repeating myself, I have been examining Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” and other speeches and my general thesis is that he doesn’t like to let facts get in the way of a good story! ;-)

I’d be interested if anyone has any comments about this part which particularly refers to Chernobyl. Can anyone find references to 15,000 – 30,000 dead by the New York Times / BBC reported around year 2000? Do you agree with my comments?

Peter

In November 2005, Crichton presented a paper to the Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy, on a paper called “Fear, Complexity, & Environmental Management in the 21st Century” (http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speeches/index.html) .

In order to fit in with his story, he makes a big play about the fact that he had planned to write a book about Chernobyl “since it was the worst man-made disaster that he knew about”. Yet, when he discovered that only 50 people had died at Chernobyl, it led him eventually, to write “State of Fear” instead.

He makes an even bigger play of the fact that the New York Times and the BBC were talking in terms 15,000 to 30,000 dead when the actual number was 56. If 56 people were a foot of space then 56 people would be the space to the fourth row of the auditorium whereas 15,000 people would be three miles away. Therefore it follows, according to Crichton’s line of reasoning, that we live in a state of fear! This is the key message he places in the minds of the audience. Later in Crichton’s paper he discusses that the actual number of delayed deaths from Chernobyl to be less than 4,000.

Yet, I believe that if you examine the evidence, there is little substance to Crichton’s Chernobyl story.

Firstly, he draws a comparison between his reality of “56 deaths” and the reported “15,000 – 30,000 deaths” estimated by the New York Times and the BBC. Whilst, Crichton does not provide a reference to this in his speech, the figure of 56 dead appears to come from the International Atomic Energy Authority’s (IAEA) http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf

which had indicated that 4,000 children would likely die, in time, from thyroid cancer. I can find no references to New York Times/BBC estimates of 15,000 to 30,000 dead immediately following the accident at Chernobyl; and this is not a credible number of people to die immediately following this type of nuclear accident. Radiation does not work like that. To make a fair comparison, Crichton should be comparing his reality of 4,000 delayed dead against the estimates of 15,000 to 30,000 dead he claims are made by the New York Times/BBC.

Secondly, Crichton writes as though he has some omnipotent knowledge that the actual number of deaths was less than 4,000. In reality, no-one knows exactly how many people have died or will die from Chernobyl. There are a wide range of estimates of the casualties caused by Chernobyl and Crichton has chosen the lowest from amongst these estimates. And the figure of 4,000 that Crichton chose was, in fact, already no longer valid at the time of Crichton’s speech. In September 2005, the anticipated death toll from Chernobyl according to the IAEA (which led the Chernobyl Forum comprised of a number of UN agencies, including WHO) was revised upwards from 4,000 to 9,000 delayed deaths.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4923220.stm

Yet there are many estimates which put the death toll much higher. According to a Guardian article published in April 2006, to mark the 20 year anniversary:

http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1760930,00.html

“in the past few weeks four major scientific reports have challenged the World Health Organisation (WHO), which believes that only 50 people have died and 9,000 may over the coming years. The reports widely accuse WHO of ignoring the evidence and dismissing illnesses that many doctors in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus say are worsening, especially in children of liquidators. The charge is led by the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, which last week declared that 212,000 people have now died as a direct consequence of Chernobyl. Meanwhile, a major report commissioned by Greenpeace considers the evidence of 52 scientists and estimates the deaths and illnesses to be 93,000 terminal cancers already and perhaps 100,000 deaths in time. A further report for European parliamentarians suggested 60,000 deaths. In truth no one knows.”

Greenpeace link – http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/chernobylforumclosingday

Some believe that IAEA’s/WHO’s/Chernobyl Forum’s relatively low estimate of the number of eventual deaths from Chernobyl to be influenced “for financial, political or legal” reasons.

http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php?userhash=15559253&navID=21&lID=2

And Chernobyl could have been much worse. What would have happened if all the reactors had caught fire? What would have happened if there had been a complete melt-down of the Chernobyl reactors? How would that have affected Ukraine – or indeed Europe, Russia and other former-USSR countries? One of the features of the radioactive fall-out is how far some of the radioactive hotspots are away from the source. We can all be affected by these incidents!

the reasoning against centralised power plants of any type.

What real advantage does micropower actually give us?

All the best Martin

Seems like an important issue to me.

Was surprised not to see a blog section about it.

All the best Martin

I know you work for carbon capture and storage and I support that plus utilizing waste heat as much as possible. I would add processing ethanol fuel as another useful cogen idea since it is an energy intensive fuel crop being touted in the USA.

With regard to micropower, if it helps to create a scenereo for higher efficiency, then it may offset the need for more central plants. That is what I support.

I realize the benefits of thermal efficiency of a large plant but then we have transmission losses. Micropower does not have them.

What matters most is lowering the carbon footprint and using energy wisely. There seems to be an optimum mix and the problem is to define what this is.

Best,

Dan

Just read on ClimateArk about an idea in the UK for carbon rationing: http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=58479

This really sounds like a terrific start. So Lindsey can fly, use her carbon rationing & buy more, if needed.

Charitable do-gooders can withhold their extra carbon, or buy more from the bank & permanently “retire” it.

Later, a carbon “tax” can be added to each product, so that people pay for the GHGs emitted during manufacture & transport of the item. The shop will be using its own carbon ration for energy in running the shop (buying more if need be), and adding “carbon overhead” into the cost of the product.

Methane rationing can be added in, as well.

So we don’t have to calculate our “footprint”—the system will do it for us (to some extent).

We really need this in America. It’s not really “rationing,” since you can buy more when needed. And do-gooders can help jack up the price for that by buying & “retiring” carbon credits.

I actually thought of this idea earlier. Only problem is, nothing will stop the filthy rich—it might become a status thing to brag about how many carbon credits one had to buy…

Too many people seem to believe that centralised power (both kinds) is bad.

This may well be why it is there is so much anti-nuclear power feeling despite it being one of the best options available… their politics are more important to them than the planet.

Perhaps the best way to educate them would be to point out economies of scale they would consider “good” e.g. busses vs private cars; where busses can easily be many times as efficient.

Another example is that of compressed-air cars. These exist, and remarkably it’s cheaper and less CO2-producing to burn coal to power the grid and then compress air to run these cars than it is to run ordinary petrol-driven cars.

One can apply centralisation to centralisation to gain further benefits.
For example, when the French make a series of nuclear power plants following a successful design. This allows similar efficiency benefits to mass production, where many copies of parts can be made, technicians familiar with one are familar with the others and plants can share directly relevant information.

Micro or private power generation has the advantage of independence. It also keeps people more in touch with what’s behind their power
- at the expense of their personal time (sometimes a lot of personal time.)

Cheers,

Derek

Yesterday’s Guardian carried this report “Miliband unveils carbon swipe-card plan” here http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=carbon+rationing. Looks like someone’s been reading How We Can Save The Planet by Mayer Hillman and the work of David Fleming. See Fleming’s Tradable Energy Quotas site for more here http://www.ellerdale3.plus.com/teqs/

What we need now is maximum encouragement and pressure on the government to seriously pursue this. The cynic in me sees it as possibly a mere flash in the pan set to disappear when some lobby or other tells Blair they are not happy with this proposal. Look at the influence the pro-nuclear lobby has had.

On the optimistic side we could be seeing the start of something really substantial in the drive to reduce CO2 emissions and leave this place in some sort of fit state for future generations.

Onwards and upwards. (I hope!)

Douglas Coker

Hi Derek,

You might be interested in this report ..

http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/Micro-generationreport.pdf

The Sustainable Consumption Roundtable discovered in a recent study about the impact of micro-generation technologies that:

“micro-generation provides a tangible hook to engage householders emotionally with the issue of energy use.” “..the impact of micro-generation may reach far beyond a simple analysis of kilowatts produced and carbon emissions averted. A whole host of attitudinal and behavioural shifts do seem to be fostered (though not automatically created) by the presence of on-site micro-generation technology. Some of the sample were only producing very modest levels of energy through their micro-generation technology, yet the behavioural impacts in terms of energy awareness and efficiency were often still considerable. Thus the findings from this research indicate that the qualitative impacts of micro-generation can be substantial, presenting a living, breathing and emotionally engaging face to energy consumption issues. In short, micro-generation can help bring the invisible to life” .

Peter

Dan,

Unfortunately not true.

The majority of transmission and distribution losses are at the distribution end.

i.e. stepping down to various voltage levels local to use.

Relatively little is lost in the high voltage long distance transmission end.

P=I^2.R

The distance may be very long, but the voltage is very high (500 kV for example), so the current low and therefore also the transmission loss.

Microgeneration would expect to deliver to homes on the local distribution network – but if your house has oversupply, it will step up to get out to the local distribution network and step back down to get to someone elses house, with losses.

What is, as you make clear, important is use of the waste heat. This can be done both at the central scale and with microgeneration. But Note: you only have to heat your house in winter!!!! How else can you make use of so much heat.

Essentially, microgeneration is likely to have two forms: combined heat and power from space heaters (i.e the central heating boiler with electricity generation- your house is only likely to be heated in winter!! – Utilities will be averse to this since they generate using gas in winter. Increasing gas use at this peak demand period for micro CHP would raise their fuel cost even though they are comitted to selling electricity at a fixed rate through the year. (Now if homeowners paid for electricity and gas based on the spot prices, and these were displayed prominently in the home….... there may be benefit for everyone)

And local renewables (like solar panels, micro wind, etc.)

It most definately has a place for local renewables, but these are not likely to come near replacing centralised generation

All the best Martin

Extraction and processing of fossil fuels or indeed Uranium ores, including the costs to the ecosystem of disruption during mining and the legacy of pollution. Then there’s the transport of the fuel to the power plant, by sea rail or road or another pipeline. Then there’s the mechanical and thermal losses in the power plant itself. If you have a major industrial heat load that can use part of the waste heat great, but unlike former soviet block countries where I’ve seen acres of greenhouses and apartments surrounding power plants, the UK experience is sea outfalls and evaporative cooling towers. Therefore the percentage of energy lost in cooling is also year-round in major plants. There is a design hurdle to be cleared with community scale CHP i.e. what to do with unwanted heat in the summer, but at least in the winter ( colder, darker, wetter etc.) more power and heat is required. So there is a market for the heat for part of the year at least. I believe a team at Cardiff Uni are looking at waste heat recovery through advanced ceramic thermocouple design.

Another aspect of community-scale CHP is fuel diversity, particularly Anaerobic Digestion and Biomass. Both of these sources can reduce extraction and transport impact and can be matched with small-scale heat loads such as a municipal swimming pool or a food processing plant (or brewery!!) .

As to losses through local network trading, you’re missing the other part of the required transformation: distributed buffering. That is appliances and cars ( like BEV’s and plug in hybrids ) that can store excess generated power at local level. I know we don’t have these in production yet, becasue the legislation supporting this kind of development is just on the statute book and, as our friends over on www.evuk.org.uk will tell you, BEV’s and PHEV’s are barely available in the UK because “nobody would buy them”. The UK Treasury will not contemplate the loss of fuel tax more like, so suppresses all aid, support and exposure of anything other than ICE vehicles.

I mean, for God’s sake, it’s not like we have our own car industry any more; just assembly plants for global car makers.

Sorry, I digress…

If one were to design and construct an energy distribution system that placed generation as close to the point of use wherever possibl; that addressed energy storage and efficiency with the same degree of importance that it does in protecting the present generating and fuel production industries, we could have such a system within ten years.

Of course we will be told it can’t be done by those organisations that control the power supply and who can afford to lobby government to keep the investment in R&D, just where it is at the moment.

We have between seven and ten years to get an alternative to fossil fuel-based energy generation into large-scale operation, or we are doomed as a species.

How much more simple does it have to be?

Colin

Agreed.

Soviet style system looks very good. I worked in Poland for a couple of months. Most towns had a CHP plant or two on the town’s boundary. It’s what they call central heating. Gas fired box in the kitchen is alien to most Poles.

We used to have it in Britain too. We called it Battersea Power station! It supplied heat all the way out to Earls Court.

What to do with unwanted heat? – I underatand there is an academic team looking at using large volumes of something (water I think) to store the heat over summer so that it can be used over winter. Think it’s for air conditioning though – but in theory could be applied to CHP. Would be immense storage volume though – at a municipal pool for example one swimming pool for swimming, the other far too hot to swim in to store heat for the main pool over winter…..

Our problem with municipal CHP is NIMBYism!

In terms of your last point, Nuclear’s the only viable non fossil fuel source in the time frame you mention, and then only with significant system storage capacity. Renewables could make 20% – 40% in the UK (at a push, with marine current technology, tidal esturies etc.). But with the first statement….. well, we have a problem. In any case, our coal fleet won’t be phased out that soon

Funnily enough, nuclear’s actually well suited for CHP, given the usually high ratio of heat rejected to heat input.

I wonder if anyone would take too kindly to a municipal reactor though. That one has been considered in Sweden and rejected for that reason.

In any case, we need to concentrate on global solutions, not only to do our bit at home. China builds the equivilent of total UK power generation every year; most of it conventional coal fired, that will be in service for the next 40 years or so. Here is a rather larger problem than our domestic policy.

China has vast reserves of coal. It is totally unrealistic to expect them not to use it.

Any suggestions?

Martin

I did not know that the greatest loss was at the step-down or step-up transformer end. Also, I see your point in the mix of fuel use and prices can offset the benefits of one or the other approach.

On waste heat, I think we can find more ways to use it (if we try).

I know a central plant needs plenty of water for the cooling towers to dissipate the waste heat and over here there is a focus on growing more fuel crops.

With drought and the need for more water for both food and fuel crops, using the waste heat to facilitate fuel crops seems like a good idea.

Ethanol, for example, requires energy for distillation which could be supplied by power plant waste heat. Doing this could eliminate the need for cooling tower water and increase crop yield as well reducing water used for crops