GASMON wrote:Out of interest I never thought I would see this day
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39675418
Britain went a full day without using coal to generate electricity for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, the National Grid says.
The energy provider said Friday's lack of coal usage was a "watershed" moment.
Britain's longest continuous energy period without coal until now was 19 hours - first achieved last May, and again on Thursday.
The government plans to phase out Britain's last plants by 2025 in order to cut carbon emissions.
Friday is thought to be the first time the nation has not used coal to generate electricity since the world's first centralised public coal-fired generator opened in 1882, at Holborn Viaduct in London.
Gas
dissident wrote:Ontario Hydro's debt was downloaded on the consumers of the province via an additional fee on their bills. Half of this 30 billion Canadian dollar debt was due to one nuclear power plant, Darlington. Nuclear plant construction is clearly a racket since the costs are beyond any sane level and clearly in the corruption category. Supposedly the calandria developed cracks after it was built, so it had to be replaced. Somehow a hunk of metal doubled the cost to 14 billion dollars. BTW, the wikipedia page does not even mention to calandria so it is not to be trusted, I clearly recall the excuses given during the 1980s.
Now they want to sink 13 billion dollars into refurbishment. This amount of money should buy them a whole new plant with four reactors.
Zarquon wrote:According to what I've read about EDF (the French nuke company, basically state-owned), the reason why they can sell electricity for 14 cents is that EDF sucked up huge losses for decades. Today they don't even have enough money to dismantle the aging reactors which will have to go offline in the next decade, let alone build replacements. EDF is a financial black hole. So, if I understand it correctly, cutting down nuclear power in France is not so much a courageous policy decision as simply acknowledging the facts.
yellowcanoe wrote:dissident wrote:Ontario Hydro's debt was downloaded on the consumers of the province via an additional fee on their bills. Half of this 30 billion Canadian dollar debt was due to one nuclear power plant, Darlington. Nuclear plant construction is clearly a racket since the costs are beyond any sane level and clearly in the corruption category. Supposedly the calandria developed cracks after it was built, so it had to be replaced. Somehow a hunk of metal doubled the cost to 14 billion dollars. BTW, the wikipedia page does not even mention to calandria so it is not to be trusted, I clearly recall the excuses given during the 1980s.
Now they want to sink 13 billion dollars into refurbishment. This amount of money should buy them a whole new plant with four reactors.
The cost over run in building the four reactor Darlington facility was largely due to the refusal of Ontario Hydro to pay any of the construction costs up front. The entire construction cost over the long period of construction was financed entirely with borrowed money at a time when interest rates were in the double digits. Thus a good portion of the final bill was interest costs, not construction costs.
I've never heard about a cracked calandria in one of the Darlington reactors. My impression is that the Darlington reactors have performed flawlessly since they were brought into service. Earlier CANDU reactors experienced premature cracking in the pressure tubes, something that had not been seen in the smaller development reactors. CANDU reactors require a refurbishment after 30 years and the Darlington reactors are approaching that point. $13 billion to refurbish Darlington is cheaper than building four new reactors. The project to refurbish Darlington was started several years ago. OPG constructed a full size replica of one of the reactors so all steps in the process could be tested before work is done on any of the real reactors. All existing reactor components have been studied to determine if they can be used "as is" for another 30 years, can be refurbished or require complete replacement. The level of planning and preparation that has been put into the refurbishment project greatly increases the chances that it will be completed on time and on budget.
My understanding is that OPG and Bruce Nuclear are receiving 6.5 cents per Kwh. That's a lot less than the regulated price for power and less than half what wind power producers receive. 60% of Ontario's electricity comes from our nuclear plants.
dissident wrote:Thanks for the information about the absurd financing model. But I am quite sure about the calandria cracking excuses since I personally heard them. The financing model was never used as an excuse. But I doubt it accounts for all the costs since the refurbishment is being tagged initially as 14 billion dollars. This means the final bill will be much higher and even accounting for inflation vs. 1980 this figure is insane.
If the workers were making $100,000 per year then you would need 14,000 of them working for 10 years to cost this much. There will not be even 1,000 of them and they will not work for 10 years. They must be using platinum and palladium by the ton.
Tanada wrote:dissident wrote:Thanks for the information about the absurd financing model. But I am quite sure about the calandria cracking excuses since I personally heard them. The financing model was never used as an excuse. But I doubt it accounts for all the costs since the refurbishment is being tagged initially as 14 billion dollars. This means the final bill will be much higher and even accounting for inflation vs. 1980 this figure is insane.
If the workers were making $100,000 per year then you would need 14,000 of them working for 10 years to cost this much. There will not be even 1,000 of them and they will not work for 10 years. They must be using platinum and palladium by the ton.
What an odd way of looking at things, as if all the money will be spent on labor and none on the specialized highly tested and certified materials used in the refurbishing.
onlooker wrote:Can I ask the nuclear advocates here, does the time and resources still exist for a wide scale transition to Nuclear especially the Fast breeder reactors? I ask because I have reluctantly concluded that nuclear seems now a necessary avenue to pursue to both power civilization and be more climate friendly in the process
onlooker wrote:Can I ask the nuclear advocates here, does the time and resources still exist for a wide scale transition to Nuclear especially the Fast breeder reactors? I ask because I have reluctantly concluded that nuclear seems now a necessary avenue to pursue to both power civilization and be more climate friendly in the process
dissident wrote:Tanada wrote:dissident wrote:Thanks for the information about the absurd financing model. But I am quite sure about the calandria cracking excuses since I personally heard them. The financing model was never used as an excuse. But I doubt it accounts for all the costs since the refurbishment is being tagged initially as 14 billion dollars. This means the final bill will be much higher and even accounting for inflation vs. 1980 this figure is insane.
If the workers were making $100,000 per year then you would need 14,000 of them working for 10 years to cost this much. There will not be even 1,000 of them and they will not work for 10 years. They must be using platinum and palladium by the ton.
What an odd way of looking at things, as if all the money will be spent on labor and none on the specialized highly tested and certified materials used in the refurbishing.
Labour costs are always invoked as the main portion of the expense. So it is your way of looking at it that is odd. How can labour costs be less than 1/14th of the total expense? Certified materials like gold and plantinum? Enriched uranium does not cost that much. The refurbishment would consist of fuel assembly replacement and control systems upgrades. Unless they want to replace the freaking calandria again. Neither the control systems nor the fuel assemblies could possibly cost almost $14 billion without any labour costs.
pstarr wrote:Sub and diss, we may have our disagreements elsewhere but here I appreciated your facts and opinions. Are there still valid anti-nuke folks around this forum anymore? Or are they all knee-jerks?
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