HPC

[Moxi]

Hi Mart,

I'm a bit removed from the front line these days but yes those figures seem to resonate with my personal understanding, I did a fag paper exercise a while back to see how the power produced by a 1st generation nuclear station stacked up against its original costs, operation and decommissioning costs - it got a bit vague at the point where you had to account for costs for fuel reprocessing etc and I had to abandon any reasonable accuracy when I tried to account for spent fuel and waste storage costs - needless to say the cost of the electrical power produced was sufficiently high as to make the case for having any nuclear power generation a strategic government level decision which in the case of the 1st gen plants was not wholly down to civil power production demands.

As I have said before it would be good to see how a large hydro, tidal or pumped system capex costs stacked up against the cost of Hinckley C to see if we are missing an option in our low carbon power production program ?

Keeping it with Wales for the moment (because I know the area) but can you imagine the benefits of reopening one or two of the old slate quarries, mining rock that is then used to form an offshore barrage and then flooding up the worked quarries afterwards to form pumped hydro units ? I would think the employment benefits alone up here would be enough to get general local approval, add in the power generation and durability factors and re-use of brown field industrial sites and it starts to look very interesting as a concept. but maybe this is getting to be a digression from the subject?

Moxi

[Mart]

Many thanks Moxi. I think the figures for the Swansea tidal lagoon were similar to HPC, but Cardiff may be half the cost (per MWh) as it's 10x the size, but only about 5x the barrage wall. [Double the circumference of a circle and you quadruple the volume.]

Slight aside, but as a young child I remember we visited a slate quarry musuem while on holiday with friends from London. The route up was so steep, that the clutch on the Vauxhall Cavalier burnt out.

Single(ish) track road, so quite an issue. But friends used their early big box Volvo to push us all the way up, utilising the great big bumpers they had.

Funny the stuff you remember, and I was totally taken by the giant German Shepherd that was in the recovery truck that had to come up and get us. Must have been pre 1980.

Long way up that mountain!

[Moxi]

Hi Mart,

So generally comparable and actually has the potential to be cheaper as you get a tidal barrage and pumped hydro for a little more investment?

Its about time our Senedd got their heads in gear and offered the UK government an outline design plan for something like this to attract UK power investment.

I wonder if you are thinking of Nant Gwrtheyrn ? Its a very steep switchback single track road with passing places down to the museum and venue.



Moxi

[Mart]

Wow that road looks fun. I don't know where we were for the musuem/quarry, though we were holidaying in Betws-y-Coed. It was a mountain road that spiralled up to the top where the 'working' museum was. I recall looking down at the huge volume of spoil down the side. Funny how the memory works, I can now recall I spotted ~£50 in a bundle dropped by the side of the mine carts we got a trip in. Was a fortune to a small child back then. I handed it in, then shortly after realised I'd lost my holiday savings, probably about £1 in coin in a little bag. Clearly, I'm still bitter and twisted.

I'm still really hopeful that teh Swansea tidal lagoon will get built. I appreciate it may not be very economical, ude to its small size, but should prove (or disprove) the idea, and allow for Cardiff (and many other) much bigger schemes to be developed.

I think I recall a CfD estimate of ~£95/MWh, so similar to HPC's £92.50 (£89.50 if SZC is built). But the scheme was confusing, possibly with a much longer subsidy period, 50yrs+, v's 35 for HPC and 15 for wind and PV. Then got even more complicated by it only being index-linked for the first Xyrs of the scheme (can't remember all details).

But again, if Swansea is comparable to HPC (in subsidy), but smaller and cheaper to build, it seems like a good investment to test the idea. And now there are hopes, as Swansea is trying to price in sales of new water front properties, floating PV etc etc, as ways to spread costs.

And there's the local tourism benefits, after all, Cardiff and Swansea both built barrages in the 90's, purely for aesthetics and local rejuvination. The Cardiff Bay used to be a vast stinking mud hole twice a day, but is now a huge lake, with 1,000's of apartment buildings looking over it. [Back during construction, I organised a site visit for the Environment Division of the Welsh Office, and we got to walk around the pit in which the huge locks were to be built (below sea level, within a coffer dam). Back then I think it was a new world record for a single concrete pour, using liquid nitrogen to chill the water, to prevent the concrete cracking when it heated during curing.]

I think the sum of tidal lagoons, around the UK, was roughly equal to the Severn tidal barrage idea, at about 15% of UK leccy demand. So roughly equal to HPC + SZC.

Clearly I'm in a rambling mood!

[dan_b]

Reading this made me remember where the original climb classifications from the Tour de France come from (and this is a total thread-swerve).

Using a Citroen 2CV, if a climb was achievable in 4th gear - it was a 4th category climb
In 3rd gear, a 3rd cat, 2nd in 2nd, and 1st in 1st.

If the 2CV could not continue up the gradient in 1st - it was "haut categorie" - ie. "Beyond categorisation" as they simply couldn't drive up it in the appointed vehicle!

Many thanks Moxi. I think the figures for the Swansea tidal lagoon were similar to HPC, but Cardiff may be half the cost (per MWh) as it's 10x the size, but only about 5x the barrage wall. [Double the circumference of a circle and you quadruple the volume.]

Slight aside, but as a young child I remember we visited a slate quarry musuem while on holiday with friends from London. The route up was so steep, that the clutch on the Vauxhall Cavalier burnt out.

Single(ish) track road, so quite an issue. But friends used their early big box Volvo to push us all the way up, utilising the great big bumpers they had.

Funny the stuff you remember, and I was totally taken by the giant German Shepherd that was in the recovery truck that had to come up and get us. Must have been pre 1980.

Long way up that mountain!

[Mart]

Dan, that is F'n brilliant. Certainly takes top spot for 'TIL'.

These days they could use a BEV, but confusing results, since all climbs would be both easy, and 1st gear for the car.

[TIL - today I learned, which ironically is something I learnt one day.]

[dan_b]

TIL - another classic of the TLA genre

(TLA - three letter acronym!)

[AE-NMidlands]

TIL - another classic of the TLA genre

(TLA - three letter acronym!)

... except that they are abbreviations! E.g. a Quango is an acronym because you can say/pronounce it...

[Mart]

TIL - another classic of the TLA genre

(TLA - three letter acronym!)

... except that they are abbreviations! E.g. a Quango is an acronym because you can say/pronounce it...

Well, if we are being unecessarily pedantic .....

I thought guango was a semi made up term (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) back when the press and 'a bloke down the pub', where trying to complain about NDPB's and ASPB's (non deparmental public bodies / Assembly sponsored public bodies). But those terms don't sound bad (unlike quango), and most people couldn't even name an NDPB, but they all needed to be banned ...... not understanding the role they do, such as the Environment Agency etc.

NDPB isn't exactly pronounceable.

[AE-NMidlands]

TIL - another classic of the TLA genre

(TLA - three letter acronym!)

... except that they are abbreviations! E.g. a Quango is an acronym because you can say/pronounce it...

Well, if we are being unecessarily pedantic .....

I thought quango was a semi made up term (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) back when the press and 'a bloke down the pub', where trying to complain about NDPB's and ASPB's (non deparmental public bodies / Assembly sponsored public bodies). But those terms don't sound bad (unlike quango), and most people couldn't even name an NDPB, but they all needed to be banned ...... not understanding the role they do, such as the Environment Agency etc.

NDPB isn't exactly pronounceable.

you could say that "unnecessarily pedantic" was a matter of taste anyway! I suspect that if you think a correction is necssary then by definition you are a pedant...
anyway, I found a definition online:

The word acronym typically applies when the resulting thing can be read as a word; for example, radar comes from "radio detection and ranging" and scuba comes from "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus." The word initialism only applies when the resulting thing is read as an abbreviation; for example DIY, which comes from "do it yourself," is pronounced by saying the names of the letters.