Edinburgh's nuclear power plant, Torness, to stay open until at least 2030.
edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/torness-nucle...
edinburghnews.scotsman.comPosted Feb 16, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC
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edinburghnews.scotsman.comEhh, good. Should keep the power bills lower
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Fun fact: This extension is the equivalent providing power by building over 6,500 wind turbines. For the extra cost not a lot all.
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That number seems to be a bit high. This website estimates 5350 turbines with a nameplate capacity of 600kW each. However, the most powerful modern wind turbines can reach up to 10 MW capacity. In which case we're talking just 320 turbines. (The real scaling of course doesn't quite work like that).
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Indeed, is 600kW averaging over non-windy periods? Although in Scotland I would expect wind turbines to be pretty efficient generally.
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The more limiting factor is usually transporting the power away form the windy place to the place with the lights and kettles.
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Your figures are old because they include Longannet. Now Longannet is closing our two nuclear powerstations will have to do 'more work' to make up for the difference. In fact, my figures are probably a little low and after Longannet closes, Scotland will be at least 50% nuclear if not more.
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s closing our two nuclear powerstations will have to do 'more work'
Torness has a capacity of 1.25 GW. If it were running full time, i.e. 8760 hrs per year, that amounts to an output of 10950 GWh. The calculation is done for an average annual output of 8727 GWh, which is already very close to the theoretical maximum considering that even a nuclear plant doesn't have a 100% duty cycle.
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yeah because torness has been problem free since it opened
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Yey
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So it's going to be closed in about 10 minutes?
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Terrible news as jobs are secured for a further 15 years.
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Huh?
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Better get the tea on quick then, the power might go off later on...
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I was at a Youth IMechE event last week (Institution of Mechanical Engineers) and the MSP for Energy and Tourism was there and basically got brand new asshole torn through by an old nuclear engineer who was there. He was practically sweating it out and couldn't come up with an answer to big parts of the question. Did you know that after Longannet goes out Scotland will not have the capacity to do a standard ramp up from a total electricity outage. With only wind, Scotlands power will have to be switched off for three days to power up the capacitors needed on the grid. SNP have banned new nuclear power stations. If there was single thing I could choose to change about the SNP it would be this issue and this issue only. Overturn the ban on new nuclear energy.
The economics just doesn't work out for new nuclear capacity. Look at Hinkley point C: the government had to guarantee them prices at 3 times the market rate to make that financially viable.
And (despite what we're being promised) the state will also then end up paying for the decommissioning, and then what to do with teh waste....
I was under the impression that waste disposal was part of the price. Also doesn't the government gets a proportion of the profit above a certain level?
Companies come and go, do you still think that they'll be around in 10,000 years?
Profits from what? I've no idea.
That's not accurate. Once longannet closes there is still Peterhead for which I'm not aware of an imminent closure. Only once Peterhead has closed will Scotland be left without any suitable thermal plant. Current National Grid estimates suggest that with no thermal plant in Scotland it would take up to 24 hours to reestablish the Scottish system. Once the HVDC link is active that may also be able to provide the potential to supply sufficient capacity to restore hunterston and I would be surprised if it was by chance that the sites are adjacent.
Post black start the length of time it takes doesn't involve charging anything. It does involve the drawn out process of spinning up and synchronising generators. Capacitors on the network are solely for controlling reactive power and voltage.
Finally and probably most importantly I would take issue with your finger pointing at the SNP. At most they have a very minor impact as energy is a reserved power.
The SNP have stated that they will not grant planning permission for any new nuclear in Scotland. That would pose a problem if any company was even remotely interested in constructing generation in Scotland. All non-renewable transmission connected generators are subject to Transmission Use Of System charges (TUOS) which are determined by the region in which you connect and their proximity to the nations main load centres. The idea being to keep generation close to demand and thus minimise the need for a transmission system. This means that if you build a power station in or near London they will actually subsidise the cost of your generation meanwhile in Northern Scotland the costs are enormous. The net effect of this is that despite recent changes to policy causing a so called 'dash for gas' and Scottish Power having been granted outline planning permission for a new gas plant at the former Cockenzie site they recently shelved the whole thing and sold it for housing in order to invest in their gas plant at Shoreham on the south coast of England.
I cannot comment about the actual intent of the SNP but ultimately they have used the very limited influence they have over energy to create a very favourable system for the only form of generation that it is economic to connect to our transmission infrastructure.
I do agree on the ban no new nuclear power stations being stupid, but new nuclear power stations wouldn't actually help in a Black Start anyway: they take days to safely shut down and turn back on again.
Losing gas and coal plants is what's causing the problem, as they're the important fast-restarting assets that allows you to restore a stable system.
Cruachan Pumped Hydro Station has black start capability.
You going to start the whole country up from one small dam? By the way, if you do the math, a third of Scotland's total surface area would need to be covered in pumped hydro storage to be able to meet demand. Did you know as well wind power produced less than 1 percent of the countries electricity consumption during a cold day in January . It can literally go over 127 percent to 0.17 percent. You hear about the good days for wind but the MSM hides the bad days.
Eh? The 2 pumped hydro sites here cover about 13% of peak Scottish demand.
I'm not ideologically against nuclear power but the costs are staggering.
Back up and balancing power: the UK has around 12GW of sometimes surplus renewable energy that cannot be used because it is available at the wrong time. To store it usefully it needs storage for around 3 months to shift its seasonal availability. That’s about 23TWh of energy storage. Pumped hydro is the only practicable method of bulk storage. If you assume an average vertical rise of say 500m its an easy calculation to get the water volume needed how much water mass can be raised 500m with 23TWh of energy?). Convert that into available valley volumes and you’ll see the vast land areas that would be needed. Even if the landscapes were available, the cost would be absurd.
Yes. That's exactly what it can do.
Grid re-start after a collapse: every UK region must have its own grid black start capability (i.e. restart from zero MW). In Scotland at present, the procedure starts with Cruachan pumped storage scheme, which must ALWAYS have enough water stored up the hill to provide the power to start about 800MW of generation at Longannet. Longannet’s 800MW is then enough to restart all other Scottish generation within 3hrs. Only Longannet remains with the capability to do this quickly. If Longannet is closed in March, Cruachan would have to progressively start lots of small hydro stations in sequence before the two nuclear stations can start. This would take about 3 days. The interconnectors with England might help, but they might have their own grid collapse to deal with.
That's simply not true.
Grid re-start after a collapse: every UK region must have its own grid black start capability (i.e. restart from zero MW). In Scotland at present, the procedure starts with Cruachan pumped storage scheme, which must ALWAYS have enough water stored up the hill to provide the power to start about 800MW of generation at Longannet. Longannet’s 800MW is then enough to restart all other Scottish generation within 3hrs. Only Longannet remains with the capability to do this quickly. If Longannet is closed in March, Cruachan would have to progressively start lots of small hydro stations in sequence before the two nuclear stations can start. This would take about 3 days. The interconnectors with England might help, but they might have their own grid collapse to deal with.