The government fired the starting gun today for the rebirth of Britain’s nuclear power industry, announcing the names of eleven sites earmarked for construction of new reactors.
Each of the new stations will cost £4.5 billion to build and will be powerful enough to supply as many as 2 million homes with electricity for up to 60 years.
Energy experts warned that the first one would not be ready before 2017 at the earliest — too late to avoid a yawning gap opening up in Britain’s energy supplies with a string of ageing coal and nuclear stations set to close over the next few years.
Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said that the list of new sites — all of which are located at or close to existing nuclear stations and which span the country from West Cumbria to Kent and Somerset — represented “another important step towards a new generation of nuclear power stations”.
“Nuclear power is part of the low-carbon future for Britain. It also has the potential to offer thousands of jobs to the UK and multimillion-pound opportunities to British businesses.”
The public now has one month to respond to the list of sites, including Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk, considered the frontrunners for the first two stations to be built by the French power giant EDF.
Other sites thought to be among the first wave of new reactors include Wylfa in Anglesey; Oldbury in Gloucestershire; and Bradwell in Essex.
The list also includes Dungeness in Kent; Hartlepool in Cleveland; Heysham in Lancashire; and three separate sites in West Cumbria at Sellafield, Braystones and Kirksanton.
Craig Lowrey, head of energy markets at EIC, an independent consultancy, pointed out that the new plants would arrive too late to help Britain avoid a dangerous slide towards an unhealthy dependency on electricity produced from gas-fired power stations.
This was an unwelcome development because of the carbon emissions associated with burning gas and because the UK was running short of its own supplies in the North Sea,forcing it to import more and more of the fuel from countries such as Russia, Algeria and Qatar, Dr Lowrey said.
Britain’s current fleet of power stations — including coal, gas, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and biomass stations — have a generating capacity of about 83.5 gigawatts. Roughly a quarter of that (22-23 gigawatts) is set to close in the next few years as ageing nuclear plants are retired from service, while a big chunk of coal-fired generation is set to close by 2015 to meet tough new European rules on the use of coal and oil-fired power stations.
The announcement of the nuclear sites also triggered a wave of protest from environmental groups, which argue that the high costs involved and the waste produced by nuclear stations do not justify the contribution they will make in cutting UK carbon emissions.
“We urgently need to end our addiction to fossil fuels, but breathing new life into the failed nuclear experiment is not the answer,” said Robin Webster, energy campaigner for Friends of the Earth. “Nuclear power leaves a deadly legacy of radioactive waste that remains highly dangerous for tens of thousands of years and costs tens of billions of pounds to manage.
Source - The Times
Showing posts with label Algeria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Algeria. Show all posts
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Solar panels in the Sahara could power the whole of Europe
All of Europe's energy needs could be supplied by building an array of solar panels in the Sahara desert, a climate change conference has been told.
Technological advances combined with falling costs have made it realistic to consider North Africa as Europe's main source of imported energy.
By harnessing the power of the sun, possibly in tandem with wind farms along the North African coastline, Europe could easily meet its 2020 target of getting at least 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources.
"It could supply Europe all the energy it needs," Dr Anthony Patt, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, in Austria, told scientists at a climate change conference in Copenhagen. "The sun is very strong there and it's very reliable."
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"There is starting to be a growing number of cost estimates of both wind and concentrated solar power for North Africa....that start to compare favourably with alternative technologies. The cost of moving [electricity] long distances has really come down."
He said only a fraction of the Sahara, probably the size of a small country, needed to be covered to extract enough energy to supply the whole of Europe.
Dr Patt told the conference that calculations show a £50 billion investment by governments over the next ten years would be enough to make Saharan solar power an attractive and viable prospect for private investors.
Over the last decade technological advances, especially the development of high voltage direct current cables, has brought down the cost of transmitting electricity by three-quarters.
The sun in the Sahara is twice as strong as it is in Spain and is a constant resource, rarely being blocked by clouds even in the winter.
Because direct sunlight is available almost every day the use of concentrated solar power can be used in the desert.
It operates by using mirrors to focus the sun's rays at a thin pipe containing either water or salt. The rays boil the water or turn the salt molten and the energy is extracted by using the heat to power turbines.
Unlike wind power, which usually has to be used immediately because of the cost of storing the electricity generated, the heated water and salt can be stored for several hours before being used to generate electricity.
Trials of concentrated solar power are being planned for Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Dubai but Libya and Tunisia could also be considered as sources of European electricity.
Getting energy from North Africa would, the conference heard, have the benefit of reducing dependence fossil fuels which drive climate change by emitting carbon dioxide.
Similtaneously, the renewable source of energy would mean that Europe relied less on Russia and the Middle East for fuel.
Attractive as Saharan solar power is, Dr Patt said, there remains the challenge of overcoming the political hurdles posed to the idea, such as the huge opposition put up by residents across Europe of having transmission cables installed near their homes. Piecemeal transmission networks are a further obstacle.
Dr Patt was enthusiastic about the "fantastic wind resource" and the potential of putting wind farms along the North African coast.
Winds created by the sun heating the air are especially strong during the summer when European wind turbines, including those in Britain, are at their least productive.
The conference is being held to collate the latest scientific findings on climate change. Its conclusions will be passed to diplomats and world leaders who in December will arrive in Copenhagen to try to agree an international deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions to reduce global warming.
Source - The times
Technological advances combined with falling costs have made it realistic to consider North Africa as Europe's main source of imported energy.
By harnessing the power of the sun, possibly in tandem with wind farms along the North African coastline, Europe could easily meet its 2020 target of getting at least 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources.
"It could supply Europe all the energy it needs," Dr Anthony Patt, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, in Austria, told scientists at a climate change conference in Copenhagen. "The sun is very strong there and it's very reliable."
Related Links
"There is starting to be a growing number of cost estimates of both wind and concentrated solar power for North Africa....that start to compare favourably with alternative technologies. The cost of moving [electricity] long distances has really come down."
He said only a fraction of the Sahara, probably the size of a small country, needed to be covered to extract enough energy to supply the whole of Europe.
Dr Patt told the conference that calculations show a £50 billion investment by governments over the next ten years would be enough to make Saharan solar power an attractive and viable prospect for private investors.
Over the last decade technological advances, especially the development of high voltage direct current cables, has brought down the cost of transmitting electricity by three-quarters.
The sun in the Sahara is twice as strong as it is in Spain and is a constant resource, rarely being blocked by clouds even in the winter.
Because direct sunlight is available almost every day the use of concentrated solar power can be used in the desert.
It operates by using mirrors to focus the sun's rays at a thin pipe containing either water or salt. The rays boil the water or turn the salt molten and the energy is extracted by using the heat to power turbines.
Unlike wind power, which usually has to be used immediately because of the cost of storing the electricity generated, the heated water and salt can be stored for several hours before being used to generate electricity.
Trials of concentrated solar power are being planned for Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Dubai but Libya and Tunisia could also be considered as sources of European electricity.
Getting energy from North Africa would, the conference heard, have the benefit of reducing dependence fossil fuels which drive climate change by emitting carbon dioxide.
Similtaneously, the renewable source of energy would mean that Europe relied less on Russia and the Middle East for fuel.
Attractive as Saharan solar power is, Dr Patt said, there remains the challenge of overcoming the political hurdles posed to the idea, such as the huge opposition put up by residents across Europe of having transmission cables installed near their homes. Piecemeal transmission networks are a further obstacle.
Dr Patt was enthusiastic about the "fantastic wind resource" and the potential of putting wind farms along the North African coast.
Winds created by the sun heating the air are especially strong during the summer when European wind turbines, including those in Britain, are at their least productive.
The conference is being held to collate the latest scientific findings on climate change. Its conclusions will be passed to diplomats and world leaders who in December will arrive in Copenhagen to try to agree an international deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions to reduce global warming.
Source - The times
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