OT - Airbus A380 flyby over Bristol

I think Swampy was a protester by trade? We'd describe your 'sort' as a "tree hugger" :-))

Seen them on the server, I'll pick the email up in a mo, just updating the website.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

On Sat, 20 May 2006 12:53:37 +0100, Peter A Forbes finished tucking into their plate of fish, chips and mushy peas. Wiping their mouths, they swiggged the last of their cup of tea, paid the bill and wrote::

In another context entirely, we have to deal with the Wildlife Lobby who are at present against us restoring the Cromford Canal. Won't listen to reasoned arguments, won't help by providing advice when it would clearly be in their interest to do so: the restoration will go past some of their nature reserves but they refused to provide input to the environmental study we've funded.

To top it all, we organised a Sponsored Walk on public footpaths and they moaned they hadn't been consulted!

Brian L Dominic

Web Sites: Canals:

of the Cromford Canal: (Waterways World Site of the Month, November 2005)

Newsgroup readers should note that the reply-to address is NOT read: To email me, please send to brian(dot)dominic(at)tiscali(dot)co(dot)uk

Hmmmmmmm...this thread is starting to sound rather American....."Environment...who needs it...I LIKE my big car and don't care about anyone else"

You must be reading different posts to the rest of us! :-))

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

Apologies accepted with some relief. I've still got the scars from starting the Cox engine in my plastic control line Hurricane - my sole foray into aeromodelling, aquired at a suspiciously low price from a school mate with bandaged fingers!

Peace returns :-)

My apologies, I have indeed crossed over two threads here, I'm also into model aircraft and another thread got into us ruining the environment by wasting fuel when in fact we were using methanol decades before it was recognised as a future environmentally friendly fuel. Greg

I agree totally, they potentially have a lot of power to improve things and I would gladly back them if they got their act together as I suspect many would, their present approach does little more than serve the interests of the oil companies, hence me getting rather annoyed about them at times 8-).

There's a really daft side to the wind farm debate that seems to have been missed, most of the _successfull_ objections to them are not from locals or greens but from the RAF, not as you might think because they might fly into them while practising low flying but because the rotating blades are apparently very good at jamming their tactical radar!, one has to wonder what use a tactical radar is if it can be overcome by any enemy that can build windmills around their country 8-).

It's worse than that, the reason the government is cold on the idea of building more nuclear plants is not as they will claim the objections or the risks, it's because there isn't enough high grade uranium ore in the world to fuel them for the life of the plants if many countries go that way!. There is of course a lot of uranium around but they have always omitted the fact that most of it is in forms that require more energy to extract than is produced by burning the resulting fuel.

With commercial fusion reactors still many decades away we are up the proverbial without a paddle unless we get renewables on line in significant volume.

Anyway, off my soap box, this is an engine group after all, my Lister generator is still waiting for me to get my garage sorted out so I have room to work on restoring it.

Greg

When I got back into model flying a few years ago, having given it up when I "grew up", the first time I visited my local club an experience flyer tried to adjust the needle valve of a rather large engine from the wrong side of the prop and they had to rush him to hospital with gruesome injuries to his hand, it served as a very good warning of the dangers of complacensy.

Greg

Maybe, but I don't think so. Just seems to me that this thread advocates protection from responsibilty...a top up of "antigreen"

Doesn't really matter though..with 20 years of emmissions still to get up there even if they all stop now it's probably too late, so as the bible says....eat,drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

All I'm advocating is a bit of balance. The comments I've read so far seem somewhat extremist and generalized. Please try to seperate green issues from green politics.

(snip)

NH> my sole foray into aeromodelling,

I forgot the ultra basic Jetex powered device which sliced a wing off on a neighbors tv aerial and then proceeded to melt a hole in the garage roof!

Night night.

nickh=== Posted with Qusnetsoft NewsReader 2.2.0.8

that's not actually true, the potential supply of ore is finite, but there is enough for fifty to a hundred years, and of course if you build a fast breeder reactor the fuel reserve is exponentially longer.

The global uranium reserves with mining costs up to US $ 80 per kilogram amount to about 2 million tonnes. If mining costs of up to 130 $/kg are taken into consideration the global uranium reserves are increased by further 3 million tonnes. The uranium resources are estimated to be 15 to 20 million tonnes.

A million tons of uranium reserves correspond to an energy equivalent of 14 billion tonnes hard coal when used in light water reactors.

Fast breeders will better that by a factor of 60, so a million tons of uranium reserves correspond to an energy equivalent of 840 billion tonnes hard coal when used in fast breeder reactors

Current proven global hard coal reserves are 478,771 million tons, stretch the definition of coal all the way to vase lignite and global reserves stand at 909,064 million tons.

So...

Coal (ALL forms) 939,061,000,000 tons Uranium equivalent coal tonnage 840,000,000,000 tons

Since burning coal released considerably MORE radioactive material into the atmosphere than nuke plants, the "Green" aspect of burning that coal would be a double whammy to the enviornment.

the reality is that there is no nuke vs renewables etc options open to the UK, we have a very simple and stark option, do you want light and heat, yes or no, if the answer is yes then nuke is the only way it can be done.

you can dislike this choice as much as you please, it doesn't alter the facts one iota.

we either have a nuclear future, or we have a post apocalyptic future with a national sustainable population of maybe ten million if we are lucky, and the "economy" as we know it today will have vanished never to return.

Barring accidents, all of you posting here who are not already drawing a state pension will live to see which way things go.

that should have said

One million tons

global unarnium equivalent coal tonnage 16,800,000,000,000,000,000 tons

Lots of stuff taken word for word from the web site of The European Nuclear Society:

of course there's no reason to beleive their 'facts' to be at all distorted

8-)

However, you do very carefully cut out one paragraph that doesn't suit your arguments: "These ten countries possess about 96% of the global uranium reserves. With their 2 million tonnes, all 439 world-wide operated nuclear power plants can be supplied for several decades."

So actually those several decades of life is if, and only if, the existing number of power stations is maintained. But of course we only get about 16% of the world's energy needs from nuclear at the moment so would have to increase the number by over 6 times so even with the low grade ore that several decades becomes sevaral years. Considering that it takes over a decade just to build a nuclear station and their life would be several decades there is no rational reason to build them.

Of course then you bring the fast breeder into the argument, well all I can say is that if you think a reactor cooled by liquid sodium or lithium is a good idea then you're in a small minority!, so far only experimental prototypes exist and no one considers them economic to build.

Greg

Couple of *green* points.

I understand that Lake Nasser (aside from changing the climate in the Nile valley & wrecking the monuments with salt creep) is now pretty well silted up & the huge turbines that provide much of Egypt's electricity are working well below capacity. I'm on third hand info here & write for clarification, you understand.

The carbon debt raised in constructing a wind turbine of any size (the advantages are incremental and increase with size) is usually very negative. They are mostly sited far away from civilization & require concrete roads for access.

Finally, in my Other Hobby we are all tree huggers. An oak that is too big in the trunk to allow your fingers to touch will provide main house timbers for Saxon buildings!

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

it was the first link to come up, there were many more, all saying tha same thing.

that's the thing about independently verifiable facts, they withstand scrutiny

quite right, no REASON at all

no, you ascribe motives that do not exist

oh yes, and you carefully cut paragraphs of mine that don't suit your arguments, like that 2 million tons is at 80 bucks a kilo.....

and represents about a tenth of world resources

which will go sixty times further if used in fast breeders.....

so, a six hundred fold increase.

which annuls your "argument" that there ain't enough.

see above, several, say 7, years from 2 millon tons

that makes 70 years with global stocks, taking us to, 2100 or so with build time

that makes 420 years with fast breeder, taking us to 2500 or so...

it takes SEVERAL years to build a coal fired power station, and their service life is about the same as a nuke plant

there goes another pillar of your argument

yes, "efficiency", maybe you've heard about it, it's all the rage, especially with enviornmentalists

of course it would appear that you are arguing that the nuclear lobby must run inefficient processes, merely so you can improve your anti nuke arguments.

so now you spout "pop science" while ignoring the real science, again because it is the only way you can mount an effective argument

more crap

ALL, without exception, ALL reactors "Breed", fast breeders just do it at a higher ratio, and they have not been "prototypes" since about

1950, and lots of people, including india are currently building them

I also not you snip the bit about a choice between lights on or lights off, if you want lights on then nuke is the only option.

Why should I repeat everything you said?, others can read the thread for themselves can't they?, it's only common courtesy to keep the reply short and to the point. In my experience it's only trolls who come up with that old chestnut because they love to see their words repeated again and again...

So even according to your own figures we would only get 70 years of power from a nuclear powered economy without going to fast breeders, so my children will see us run out of energy instead of me seeing it, WOW that's a really great improvement isn't it!, so much better than developing renewables that, erm, never run out...

Yes isn't science a wonderful tool for pursuading us that something is safe against all common sense, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the people living in the shadow of Chernobyl were told that it was safe because of all the science, or nearer to home maybe the Buncefield residents were told the same tale. I'm an engineer by trade and no one on this earth will ever convince me that a reactor cooled by liquid sodium at 500 degrees is a good idea!.

Well argue with yourself My Fawkes, 'cos I'm not falling for it.

Greg

clarification,

Yes I understand that's true, projects can go wrong, but what we have to do is learn how to make them work better next time.

Yes that's a fact that is often forgotten, you have to look at the whole life cycle of a renewable project to see if it's beneficial or simply moves the problem elsewhere. Of course with careful consideration the result can easily be positive, in your example a long road serving a single turbine is very different from one serving a field of them because you don't need the main road to be any bigger for 100 than for 1. Such economies of scale also apply to the links to the national grid and the size of individual turbines.

The fact remains that this island of ours has all the renewable energy we could ever want, tidal, wave, wind and even solar, all we have to do is collect it economically and as you say that needs economy of scale so isn't really viable for individuals do, though we can contribute. What's needed is a concerted drive by government to develop these large schemes and that's what the greens should be arguing for, not against.

Greg

oh yes, talking of old chestnuts

"he doesn't agree with me, ergo I shall brand him a troll".

yeah, gives us 70 years MINIMUM to perfect commercial fusion.

and it's not just energy they will run out of, it is everything, including food.

you DO know how much energy it takes to produce food in a modern economy don't you?

clue, we now require 2000 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food energy.

35 years ago it was parity

50 years before that it was 2000 to 1 in the other direction.

this is why eco idiots are all idiots.

ALL the renewal power on the entire planet today, which is ALL solar, globally, ALL wind, globally, and ALL wave power, globally, and ALL geothermal power, globally, won't run one full size aluminium smelting plant.

you must be a crap engineer (hint, I'm an engineer) if you can't run the numbers.

nuclear has killed and injured less people than coal, by a vast margin.

you whine like some ninny about nuclear being dangerous, then get in a car, and more people die on the roads than almost anything else, but that's different innit....

nuke accidents are high profile, like aeroplane crashes, but that still doesn't alter the odds or the statistics, nuke are like air travel, far far far safer than any of the alternatives we are using today.

yeah, "he doesn't agree with me, and he has answers to every specious claim I make, so I'm not going to talk to him any more"

well done.

this is not fact, it is the purest fantasy.

I can quote national grid power consumption figures, you cannot, for if you could the mind would boggle at the risible idea that a wind farm in a hurricane could even dent it

come on, back up your claimed "facts" with hard numbers.

Start with uk annual MWh consumption.