Renewable Gas versus Nuclear Renaissance
ByProfessor David J. C. MacKay, newly Chief Scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), whom many of you know has written a splendid book called “Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air”, is slightly infamous for his optimistic stance on the potential of new Nuclear Power.
When dipping into the details of his publication this “holiday” week, I realised that the much-hyped “renaissance” of Fission generation is perhaps more apparition than fact, and that this ectoplasmic future painted for us depends on the promotional skill of large mining and project construction companies more than the potential for actual delivery.
I did a crude, back of the Christmas card calculation and concluded that BioMethane offers a similar ballpark of Energy provision to the new “fleet” of Nuclear reactors planned in the United Kingdom, and without all the delay and risk of project failure and spiralling costs.
I welcome your comments, and your Water Closet humour as you see fit :-
http://www.joabbess.com/2009/12/28/toilet-power-trumps-nuclear/
Of interest I see Ecotricity are to be the first UK supplier to start offerring a biogas tarrif in the new year:
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/about/our-green-gas
WE have long promoted the use of BioMethane be it for transport fuel rather then generation of electric power. There are many ways to provide clean electric power but very few for essential transport.
Fission generation can never be sustainable the cost in obtaining the raw martial, processing, transport, construction and clean up means it is anything but clean or sustainable.
Also why should we in the developed countries be using a resource fro developing countries. If it made any sense then its use at site of extraction would possible make it short term way to bring such developing countries the power they require.
. Things will look even better when Ceres and CFCL are delivering fuel cells to end users. See their press releases. That will nearly halve their fuel requirement.
. According to K-H Tetzlaff (see papers I’ve put on-line) the cost of distributing gas is less than 10% that of distributing electrcity.
. Gas is a fuel. You can store it. You can use it when you want!
. According to K-H T you can turn any chemically organic material into syngas in a ‘gassifier’ and thence into hydrogen (or methane or mix the two together).
. He now proposes a modification to capture carbon as ‘terra preta’ to return it to the land.
. K-H T is a retired chemical engineer from Hoescht.