We would love to hear your thoughts about our site and services, please take our survey here.
London South East prides itself on its community spirit, and in order to keep the chat section problem free, we ask all members to follow these simple rules. In these rules, we refer to ourselves as "we", "us", "our". The user of the website is referred to as "you" and "your".
By posting on our share chat boards you are agreeing to the following:
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that we have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or board at any time should we see fit. You agree that we have the right to remove any post without notice. You agree that we have the right to suspend your account without notice.
Please note some users may not behave properly and may post content that is misleading, untrue or offensive.
It is not possible for us to fully monitor all content all of the time but where we have actually received notice of any content that is potentially misleading, untrue, offensive, unlawful, infringes third party rights or is potentially in breach of these terms and conditions, then we will review such content, decide whether to remove it from this website and act accordingly.
Premium Members are members that have a premium subscription with London South East. You can subscribe here.
London South East does not endorse such members, and posts should not be construed as advice and represent the opinions of the authors, not those of London South East Ltd, or its affiliates.
slowroll the current top research establishment in the UK is a testing ground for ITER in france, they know that they have only just got the geometry and the materials correct to make it work, and they can create fusion, but not for long enough. They need to be >10x bigger for it to be viable. So those guys, it's like woodford funding cold fusion, lets put it that way.
Colin, we are getting close to fusion in UK.
https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/
I note the Professor who wrote the original letter to the Telegraph. Are Haydale not part based in Loughborough and are making reinforced hydrogen tanks for the European Space Agency rocket project?
Maybe he is linked to the nuclear facility and see's hydrogen coming up and progressing towards a more commercial impact sooner rather than later.
https://www.tivysideadvertiser.co.uk/news/18158211.cardigan-conduct-feasibility-study-generating-power-river-teifi/
https://www.energylivenews.com/2020/01/08/new-eu-tidal-joint-venture-formed-with-dutch-acquisition/
I think it's more an obsession for boffins at jet culham now... even if it ever works radioactive tritium has to be disposed of.
bb You raise a good point, but I think the base load question is a red herring that crops up a fair bit, started by coal industry I think... "centralised energy” will soon be a thing of the past, storage of renewable energy is fast becoming a solvable problem, energy will come from many sources not only H2 but from ev with bi-directional connection providing power to homes directly, combined with other sources such as wave and tidal twice a day without fail - it's perfectly doable from renewables (nuclear isn't renewable) .
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-three-myths-about-baseload
Faster charging more energy dense silicone batteries.
https://biosolar.com/
https://www.pocket-lint.com/phones/news/150808-graphene-enhanced-batteries-could-be-about-to-finally-hit-the-market
fusion; I'm 60, every year of my adult life I've heard that controlled Fusion will occur next year. I'm not holding my breath, but if I were I'd bet on the Germans.
BTW, two of my tutors at Oxford were on the British project, they reckoned 2050 might see it.
colinh100, as far as I am aware (been following it for a while), no one is close to viable fusion, they can manage a few seconds here and there maybe even 30s but not sustainable, i.e. generating it's own tritium etc.
Interesting fact and reason for it taking so long, helium behaves like tritium but is cheaper and creates much less energy (10x) however you can trial with helium then move to tritium. However following a helium test the machine is safe to work on in days/weeks, following a tritium test it takes months/years for the machine's radiation levels to drop enough to enter the same room as it. So you need to be really really sure that the tritium tests will work, and you need the radiation to make more tritium, it's fairly rare and really expensive, so you need to breed tritium from lithium.
Fusion is at least a decade (probably 2) away from producing meaningful power to the grid, we've got loads or room to play in, and with a large installed base of storage, fewer fusion reactors are needed, which will effect the economics as you'll reuse the design less.
I suspect we have to add 2 variables to our energy mix that you are avoiding
1) Potential improvements in efficiency of usage, eg move to LED lighting, house insulation improvements etc
2) Baseload without nuclear requires some immense energy storage. It is worth trying to do the Maths and you will be shocked at how large an H2 storage facility you would need to cover say the 8-day flat calm period we had over Christmas without a fair chunk of nuclear.
There is a nice PhD paper out by Ms Crozier (I'll let you hunt it down) about cars being used as mobile battery units and you would need to reconsider them as mobile H2 storage to really make this work. So there will be a market for small electrolysers for office blocks etc.
Isn't Nuclear Fusion the "Holy Grail"?
I understand that thre United States is close to producing a viable system
Gl yes v good rns
Hinkley Point C has a locked-in energy price of £92.50 per megawatt-hour
Wind is as low as £40 per megawatt-hour
It makes no sense to build any new nuclear for electricity.
ps: you would have been fine with Tesla for Birkenhead.
super chargers on M56 M52 not far....plenty of ccs chargers around 50Kw ( Model 3 or adapter others) around Birkenhead itself (instavolt) pretty reliable 35p/Kwh.... go for it.. ;-)
Nuclear is expensive and continues to be a risky venture but it isnt going away as a source of power generation. It does look like we wont be seeing any large scale nuclear power being built in the UK for the foreseeable future due to the costs. We are the Saudi Arabia of Offshore wind - we should be putting money into that and some means of storage. "Hydrogen" cough cough. Good RNS today btw.
"A sensible approach would be to have a mix of renewables, hydrogen, and carbon-dioxide-free nuclear power as our green energy future".
Gl... I'm thinking that should read ....A 'Flawed' approach...
When it comes to nuclear how many catastrophes will it take before people (mad proffesors) wake up, the money alone that's thrown at nuclear could have put us leagues ahead with renewables by now.
Nuclear waste is a huge issue and it’s not going away any time soon, in fact, it’s not going away for millions of years. While most types of nuclear waste remain radioactive for mere tens of thousands of years, the half-life of Chlorine-36 is 300,000 years and neptunium-237 boasts a half-life of a whopping 2 million years.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/23/national/tepco-fukushima-decommissioning/#.XimDECPLhdg
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-51211543
Not being funny but it’s about time the Prof and others caught up with the thinking on this board. It’s pretty obvious and been suggested many times down the years. As regards the increase in electricity demand , I would imagine the prospect of 40 million vehicles or so needing to be kept charged up might have be weighed up? We need an over-capacity of renewables alongside H2 storage. Super clean , super easy and ultimately pretty damn cheap when you consider the alternatives.
SIR – Philip Johnston (Comment, January 22) is correct when he says that hydrogen is the solution to carbon-dioxide-free energy.
However, the amount of electricity required to generate the hydrogen is immense: it would add to our electricity demand by 20-30 per cent. This need not be a problem if a little joined-up thinking is employed.
The hydrogen should be used as a reservoir, so that it can be generated by renewables when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. It would then produce electricity through fuel cells when the renewables are not on stream. A sensible approach would be to have a mix of renewables, hydrogen, and carbon-dioxide-free nuclear power as our green energy future.
Professor R?G Faulkner
Loughborough, Leicestershire