Saturday 24 July 2021

All the things we cannot do without


Murr  has just put me in mind of the shocking waste of a natural resource which is the Severn Estuary, a few miles away from our compact but adorable city apartment.

The Severn Estuary has the second highest tide in the world - the mean average is over 20 feet and it can rise even higher than that.

The idea is simple. You create a series of tidal lagoon generators on both sides of the estuary. As the tide rises, the huge tonnage of water rotates the turbines of the generator. As it falls, it rotates the turbines again. The above diagram is the type being proposed for Swansea in Wales, but there are different designs, some of which store the high tide in a reservoir so it can be released back into the ocean by choice.

The generators cost a small fraction of the amount it takes to build a nuclear power station and have the added advantage of not producing toxic waste which takes thousands of years to degrade, and they don't keep you awake at night worrying about the prospect of a disaster such as happened in Japan and Russia a while ago. No need to cancel that Butlins holiday at Minehead, for instance.

Now we have left the EU there should be no excuse for not taking advantage of the fact that we really are an island - surrounded water on all sides - is there? 

Most of the electricity generation for Great Britain is provided by the French company, EDF - with money from both British and Chinese government investment. Our electricity here in Bath is provided by a Malaysian company. Hard to believe, but true. Successive governments have not wanted to upset them by denying them the opportunity to make money from British householders and businesses, especially now that we are desperate for foreign investment, having turned ourselves into an ideological island as well as a physical one.

And B.J. says that British lorry drivers should drive British lorries. 

Anyway, I have bored even myself with this post so I think I'll write another one.

33 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. I just popped over to your blog, Derek, to remind myself why I gave up following you, only to find that you have only put up about three posts since I dropped you. I read the last one (May) and realised that it wasn't your posts which made me give up on you (I actually like wildlife posts) it was the comments you leave on other peoples'.

      What a shame that you do not seem to be able to interact with people in the same positive way that you interact with animals on your windswept and isolated fen.

      Delete
    2. "I have bored even myself with this post" was your closing statement, I simply agreed that it was - it was a positive response, hard to accept, well tough. By the way, it's a marsh, not a fen.

      Delete
    3. If I have hurt your feelings then I am sorry. I am fed up with hurting people. I would rather just get on with everyone if I can. Please accept my apologies and let us try to get on in the future.

      Delete
  2. Glad you introduced everyone to Murr, her lovely lopsided view to everything is wonderful. Whereas everything owned by Chinese and Malaysian companies in this country can surely be taken back from them? And no the blog wasn't boring, are there any environmental hazards though?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Murr is great. I think you introduced me to her. I think that many contracts and agreements have been signed which extend further than any 5 year government term. Also, we owe them big time. The only environmental hazards that I can envisage at the moment would be the chopping-up of some fish through the turbines, in the same way that wind farms are said to chop up birds. Compared to industrial fishing and the wholesale slaughter of migrating birds in Malta, I think the tidal lagoon impact may be compared to B.J.'s attitude to the sharp rise in deaths during his dithering over rules and regulations - acceptable.

      Delete
  3. For years the lagoons were pushed back as others supported a complete barrage like the one that has affected Cardiff Bay...
    A technology that has been used in various forms for at least a thousand years or more, and one that shouldn't affect the ecology of the Severn overly

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is my attitude. There will always be a cost of some sort, but it has to be pragmatically compared to other technology - and the general attitude to those in power who pay lip-service to global warming whilst continuing to provide lucrative contracts to foreign investors in truly damaging energy technology.

      Delete
    2. Afflicted Cardiff Bay - and the remedial work to provide alternative sites for feeding and breeding sea birds of course never materialised.

      Delete
    3. Not forgetting the loss of the Red House pub...used to be one of the two best jazz pubs in Cardiff...and the other, local haunt of Victor Parker et al in the 70s has also gone

      Delete
  4. It seems a no-brainer. There might be problems with silt but surely that could be dealt with even it meant constant dredging. And how many other suitable tidal rivers are there?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The designs I have seen do not seem to be overly affected by silt build-up, and maintenance is said to be minimal. If the lower end of the 'tunnel' which houses the turbines is at the level of low tide, I cannot see how the silt would be any more of a problem than it is already, but I will do the research and see what the people who know more than I do about it have to say.

      Delete
  5. The silt problem would reduce it to a marsh within 10 years.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The banks of the Severn Estuary stand no chance of being turned into marshes as far as I understand, but I will look into it as I said to Tasker I would. The designs I have seen show collection tunnels which run beyond the banks of the artificial lagoon, but what do I know? Not much yet, but there has to be a solution to any problem which might exist.

      Delete
  6. Dear Tom. You have not bored me but you left me standing at the first fence. These days I sometimes have difficulty remembering what day of the week it is - surely you are not expecting me to understand about such things as tidal lagoons.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't worry Weave. As others suggest, I am not even one step ahead of you.

      Delete
  7. There are so many ways to generate power. I live smack in the middle of oil country and those who make a living in this industry will fight tooth and nail any attempt to replace it with 'green' technology.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can imagine it is hard to go against the Ewing family.

      Delete
    2. or my husband's. I wonder if the whale oil people blew such fits when kerosene became a thing?

      Delete
  8. Like Weave, I have little to add. The argument above, though, does remind me of the days when I was important. There was an engineering problem that engineering was not resolving. One night I had an idea that I thought might. I took a piece of scrap paper, outlined it to my boss, who was the president, and left it in his box next day. Toward afternoon the chief engineer dropped by my office and threw my note to the president on my desk, told me to mind my own business and left. I unfolded the paper. The president had written on it, to the engineer: "If the controller is concerned enough with this problem to think up solutions, why aren't you?"
    Your discussion makes me wonder why we ever had nuclear.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is precisely the problem in the way our government are dealing with Covid 19. They take inferior advice from people who are paid handsomely or who have a vested interest in supplying equipment or protecting their own positions or careers, and ignore common sense because they have thrown so much money at systems which do not function properly and they do not want to back down. As always, everyone else will get blamed for their mistakes.

      Delete
  9. The Merrimack River and Boyden turbines rated at 35 to 650 horsepower, helped drive the historic Lowell, Massachusetts mills in 1858. I agree with you, water power should be pursued.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When the lights do go out, then they might begin to think about it.

      Delete
  10. Chinese people everywhere (mind: I do love their ancient culture but here I see different people) - and they influence on a high level, even in aesthetics: the design of cars; the KaDeWe in Berlin (and the Alsterhaus in Hamburg) have rebuilt their temples of consume: entry now for the hurried traveler: Prada, Dior, Chanel and Gucci - lots of high-priced leather-bags etc. They run through, buy, buy also big suitcases and pans - and hurry to the little shop where they get the sales tax back.
    As to earning good energy: interesting.
    And now I'm going to take the (unknown) link to Murr.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Have you heard of Bicester Village? It is a designer clothing direct outlet near Oxford. Many wealthy nations go there, but I have heard that the Chinese have their own dedicated flights. Dubiously wealthy Russians have bought up a lot of the most expensive property in London. You cannot blame the retailers and estate agents for wanting to make as much money as possible, but the money is not always clean. Britain is in a difficult political situation now. We are borrowing heavily from nations like China, and it will be the ordinary tax-payer who pays them back. Interest rates are set to rise once the lending slows down.

      Delete
  11. Well I have looked into the technology and, of course, it is all much more complicated than I originally thought when they first denied a tidal lagoon to be built in the area about 10 years ago.

    The biggest potential impact seems to be on life below the water - the small things which the things above it feed on. They need more time to assess this impact about 8 years of data gathering, apparently. The Severn Estuary is also a huge migratory motorway for creatures like eels and salmon etc. Silt does not seem to be an issue.

    It is such a new technology which has only just been considered that getting the investment is also proving difficult. The big energy companies do not want to lose billions on an experiment, and you can understand why. There are quite a few pros and cons comparisons, and here is one:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-37863807

    ReplyDelete
  12. Where I live in Pembrokeshire there is one of the strongest and most reliable tidal races in the world - in Ramsey Sound. It even has a narrowing and overfall of sorts which creates a rapid known as the bitches. They have looked carefully at a tidal barrage, but there are issues with wildlife as well as the extremes of building it - but intuitively it seems such a no brainer. The latent energy potential must be colossal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There has to be a way of exploiting this huge power source without the negative effects of fossil fuel burning or nuclear. There has to be. But - in the end - it all comes down to the confidence of investors who are naturally reluctant to risk money in untested schemes. Electric cars are now universally accepted as the future by all the manufacturers, not least because of the staggeringly quick acceleration they have. You could keep the internal combustion engine and use hydrogen, but I understand it would probably be more akin to diesel/electric in practice. Water as an exhaust sounds quite appealing to me. Solar power is very attractive too. That vast ball out there wasting energy which could be used to fry your sausages is even more unlimited than the water. Oh dear, I don't know. I don't know much.

      Delete
  13. Down here in NZ most of our power is generated by river dams or wind. I don't think river dams are all that clean, they hugely disrupt river systems for a start. But they were built before anyone cared about such things, and nature has adapted around them. Our power is very expensive - our 70sqm apartment power bill is between $140-$220(halve for pounds). Such is life.

    ReplyDelete