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In message , Derek Geldard
writes:
[]
And with a little stockpiling able to be self sufficient for a lot
longer than we are with no gas or oil or coal now, and would ever be
with windmills, which require a LOT if imported materials to construct them.


The state that this goverment has got this country into, out of
incompetance and rthe need to placate the lily-livered lefties
because they need their vote, I seriously doubt we could maintain a
country full of windmills because we don't have the capability to make
the replacement parts inside the country if ever the chips were down.

Derek

Can we please leave (party) politics out of this one? I'm certainly no
fan of the current lot (have never voted for them in my life), but as
far as energy policy is concerned, neither of the main parties in this
country have shown much promise where it comes to energy policy, nor
show any sign of doing so (or, whatever has to be done will have to be
done whichever of them is in power). I fear that this is because the
majority of them don't understand the problem, and the few that do are
either cynical because of, or hamstrung by, the political system
(short-termism). [The reds - and to some extent the yellows - _do_ have
ties to the greens, though not as great as is alleged, and the blues
probably favour nuclear more than is wise, but both of these slight
biases won't IMO make much difference.]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)[email protected]+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for ludicrously
outdated thoughts on PCs. **

Hartley's First Law:
You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back,
you've got something.

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In message o.uk, Dave
Liquorice writes:
On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:33:06 +0100, Andy Champ wrote:

Be fair. The delicate bits of windmills are 50ft in the air, safe from
the average chav.

The delicate bit is the hollow steel tube that the turbine sits on.
Give that a hard enough whack and it'll just crumple, as several have
done spontaneously...

Have any recently-built ones done so in Britain? (Genuinely curious: I
just don't know.)

And to damage enough of them to make any difference to our supply
situation would take a _lot_ of effort. There are _thousands_ of them.

Even if you took 'em all out it still wouldn't make much difference.
Might have to ask Drax for another few percent of their capacity.

(-:
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)[email protected]+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for ludicrously
outdated thoughts on PCs. **

Hartley's First Law:
You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back,
you've got something.

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In message
,
jgharston writes:
Andrew Gabriel wrote:
Conversely, if you take a stroll around the electrical isles of Home
Depot (the US equivalent of B&Q), it is like looking back at the wiring
accessories we used to use in the 1930's.

Whenever I see most foreign, and particularly america, plugs it seems
so much that they haven't evolved past the two-nails-bashed-through-a
piece-of-wood stage, whereas the BS1363 was actually /designed/.

--
JGH

I grew up in (then West) Germany, with the Schuko (as we call it here
now) design: I certainly found them at least as good then as the
(then-common) versions of the BS1363, which were then made with a
brittle white substance and unshrouded pins (the basic design of the
German _socket_ made shrouded pins unnecessary). Of course, the BS1363
has improved since then (196x-197x), but then so has the Schuko.

I'm sure they were _all_ designed; I agree I'm not fond of the American
one.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)[email protected]+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for ludicrously
outdated thoughts on PCs. **

Hartley's First Law:
You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back,
you've got something.

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In message , Paul
Martin writes
In article ,
Richard Tobin wrote:
[protons]
AIUI, many physicists believe that they do decay, because they
believe a certain kind of unified theory must be true, and such
a theory would imply it. But that's an intuition about what
must be true, rather than something backed by physical evidence.

They do it when we're not looking.

It's possible that the half life of a proton is in the exayear range or
longer, and that the heat death of the universe would come before any
significant number will decay.

I wonder how many decayed reading this thread ?

--
geoff

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On Sep 28, 5:14*pm, geoff wrote:
In message , Paul
Martin writesIn article ,
* * * Richard Tobin wrote:
[protons]
AIUI, many physicists believe that they do decay, because they
believe a certain kind of unified theory must be true, and such
a theory would imply it. *But that's an intuition about what
must be true, rather than something backed by physical evidence.

They do it when we're not looking.

It's possible that the half life of a proton is in the exayear range or
longer, and that the heat death of the universe would come before any
significant number will decay.

I wonder how many decayed reading this thread ?

--
geoff

Now we know where that little white spot that slowly faded went.

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"js.b1" wrote in message
...
Rest assured, Goldman Sachs (GS) is determined to make sure that
energy of any form is no longer "cheap".

The same goes for food (agriculture) as they, plus carbon, are the new
super-commodity markets with super-distortions. Enron showed just how
much money could be extracted.

It will be a case of energy prices rise to negate technological
improvements, since energy will be a prime source of taxation in the
anglo-america and much of the world. All disguised as "green" of
course, a repeat of the UFO groups.


You don't have to be Milton Friedman to realise just how much oil prices
have been speculated and manipulated, especially in the last couple of years

Free market, what free market?

Steve Terry

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"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.co.uk...
On Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:24:14 +0000 (UTC), J G Miller wrote:

We have hydro plants on streams that can generate a couple
kilowatts

Sounds like Scottish Power generate more than a *couple of kilowatts* to
me from hydro electric schemes --

Lanark Hydro Electric Scheme 17 MW
Galloway Hydro Electric Scheme 106.5 MW

Sloy 152MW
Foyers 300MW
Cheers
Dave.


Proposed Bristol channel tidal barrier 7GW

Steve Terry

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In message , J G Miller
writes
On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:22:51 +0100, Bof wrote:

seems like 'some' is currently around 170 MK products

Why are none of them available for home delivery?

Could it be that they are the remnants of the stock line still available
at some stores which have not yet sold out of the item, and thus are
no longer available from the central distribution depot (from where
home delivery items would be dispatched)?

Or is that a bogus explanation?

No idea, is it /the/ explanation?

--
bof at bof dot me dot uk

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Java Jive wrote:
On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:01:41 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
- world uranium output is what it is because no more is currently
needed. There is plenty more there.The use of CURRENT production to
imply a limit on FUTURE production is basically worthy only of a
green****er or politician.

But you are talking about buying the uranium up front, which implies
it must be found now or in the near future, so current production
figures or nearly so would apply. See the calculation below.

-300GW is a figure obtained by taking the governments figures for total
energy consumption, and multiplying it by appropriate efficiency figures
to map it into putative electrical generation figures.

I know, but I and everyone else are talking about electricity
production alone, so you're just muddying the waters.

Thereby making us strategically independent of oil and gas producing
countries.

We are already, or near as dammit.

Bwahahahaha!
Keep up at the back! we have never been able to meet our oil demands,
and we are now a net importer of gas, too.

Or windmills that are very vulnerable to terrorists, vandals, or
probably even someone with a stanley knife.

A terrorist would have to knock out a hell of a lot of windmills
scattered over the country to make a difference. It would be a lot
easier to fly some planes into some nuclear power stations.


Wouldn't get very far.

And with a little stockpiling able to be self sufficient for a lot
longer than we are with no gas or oil or coal now, and would ever be
with windmills, which require a LOT if imported materials to construct them.

But we don't have any radio-active fuel, so the only way we could
guarantee strategic security of supply is to stockpile the WHOLE
envisaged future demand in advance while we are actually building the
power stations. Let's do the maths for that ...


Do it, Its a lot easier than stockpiling all the coal for a year so you
can take on the miners.

If 100 nuclear power stations were ordered today, and completed 10 a
year from 10 years hence, it would take 20 years to complete the job.
If each was expected to last 40 years, the estimated lifetime of
Sizewell B, that would mean a total fuel demand of 40 * 100 * 7360t =
29,440,000t, or 1,472,000t/yr, or 34 times the current world uranium
production. This means that total current world uranium production
would have to grow at about 29% compound every single year over the 20
years of construction to meet both our and the current level of world
demands.


You conveniently forget reprocessing and fast breeding. And your figures
for uranium are way off beam. It only takes about 200tons a year of
enriched uranium to run a 1GW power station so for 300GW its about
600,000 tons a year.

By contrast we currently import 50 million tons of coal each year.


You should look at the rate of rise of production in uranium in the 50's..

That's a hell of a growth rate.

Now look at the figures for windmills.

And gasp. Oh I forgot, you dont do maths except when it fits your scenario.


You're not employed by or have shares
in Rio Tinto are/do you?

Wish I was..

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Andy Champ wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Or windmills that are very vulnerable to terrorists, vandals, or
probably even someone with a stanley knife.


Be fair. The delicate bits of windmills are 50ft in the air, safe from
the average chav. And to damage enough of them to make any difference
to our supply situation would take a _lot_ of effort. There are
_thousands_ of them.

Andy
They said that about public telephone boxes too.