In the past, it has been impossible to get official reactions.
But now we have one, from the most reliable of sources - the weather men.
The Met Office officially acknowledge that rising sea-levels, increased wave height and increased storm surge height must all be considered in the planning of the UK's future nuclear stations.
Their report was commissioned by the debt-ridden nuclear power company British Energy. It concludes future power plants will need to be further inland and may need added protection.
The government is likely to release its criteria for possible sites in March.
Flood risk
At Sizewell in Suffolk, for example, site of Britain's most modern reactor, the prediction is for the most severe storm surges to be 1.7 metres higher in 2080 than at present. But that's only if the Greenland ice sheet doesn't melt. If it does, much of it will be underwater.
At Dungeness in Kent, the storm surge increase could be up to 0.9 metres. Already this plant, which is sited on land only two metres above sea-level, is protected by a massive wall of shingle which needs constant maintenance in the winter. Waves erode so much of it that it needs to be topped up constantly with 600 tons of shingle every day.
Met Office researcher Rob Harrison told the BBC, "very large potential changes are in prospect; what we're trying to do is avoid a catastrophic effect.
The rise in storm surge heights will be most extreme along the coast of south-east England.
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You have a good point. Solar Paces website is another god resource on this topic. I have in the past suggested that if we wanted to call Iran's bluff on it's "We only want nuclear power for the elctricity" line, it would be cheaper to giveIran a CSV plant than attempt a hostile action.
ReplyDeleteOver here we call them solar thermal power plants, utilising parabolic mirrors which track the sun. They are a relatively old technology but also relatively untested.
The first European solar thermal power plant is to be built in Spain, and will also test the new high temperature thermal storage system (molten salt) which you mention, to extend the daily electricity generation to over 12 hours in winter and up to 20 hours in summer.
It will have a net capacity of 50 MWe and be located 60 km from Granada in southern Spain.
The project supports Spain’s policy to develop 200 MWe of solar thermal generation capacity, an objective likely soon to be significantly increased. Among the solar thermal facilities already operating there is an 11-megawatt "power tower" in Seville. Unlike the parabolic trough system, power towers stand in the middle of an array of mirrors to receive all the reflected sunlight at once.
I think it unlikely that this technology alone will power the whole of Europe however. Marine current technology, marine turbines, offshore windfarms, and solar PV are all going tobcome equally important.