After the Reset

WORK IN PROGRESS

Freed up by the removal of the pressures of responding to local commitments (usually self-imposed), in this post I aim to pick up on some of the issues that exposure to the GNRSBP project, my involvement in the North Muskham Neighbourhood Plan exercise so far, and inevitably how our new UK government's influence bears on all of them.

Starting today, 4th August 2025, it might take some time.

This post is mainly being written as personal reflection, and probably just as well that I see that a good enough reason for writing it since I'll be surprised if anyone reads it. Even the content of the pages on the Beyond 60 web pages (which were certainly locally relevant) was rarely accessed - just like the pages on that site, I will use links to the posts on this blog to send to 3rd parties that I want to inform/influence in some way, leveraging them wherever the content is appropriate.

GNRSP Local Mini-Survey

Thanks to the 98 who’ve responded to the GNRSP mini-survey as of this morning. Starting on the analysis today, so if you haven’t already done so please click on the link and add your view, thank you.

 

There is an interesting example of a hydro scheme on the Thames at Reading Hydro – the scheme’s two turbines have a combined maximum power of 46kW (0.000046 GW, GNRSP max. 1GW - 21,739 times bigger than Reading Hydro, and still only 2.2% of the 45GW mentioned below. Riverbank water power got our economy started in the 18^th Century but today it’s, for the most part, a curiosity.

 

I read this morning that:-

 

“The electricity grid needs to be able produce around 45GW peak demand, and to supply all the population night and day, winter and summer. In our interconnected and sophisticated modern world power cuts are disastrous. To prevent power cuts, energy must be always available, and the only way to have that is to have it ready, stored, and able to be converted into electricity immediately (and I mean within seconds, not minutes). Battery technology is nothing like developed enough to store grid-scale electricity, and even if it were, it would be fantastically expensive to install. The largest battery in the world at the moment is in California, and it could power the UK grid in normal use for about 3 minutes. That battery cost about $1.5bn!”

 

The only watery renewable that could bring reliability to a renewables future is the Severn Barrage – generating up to 15GW (a third of UK 45GW base load) which, because it’s tidal, is totally predictable, years ahead! Brilliant, but it won’t happen, ecopolitics, Anglo-Welsh politics etc. It’s the kind of project only dictators could push through – second thoughts, I’ll drop Starmer/Miliband a line. 

Nuclear Futures

POST Created 26th February 2024

REASON prompted by SolarComment member Brenda pointing me to Department for Energy Security & Net Zero. (2023). Towards Fusion Energy 2023.

WORK IN PROGRESS

AI Summary:

• Fusion is the process that occurs at the center of stars, generating light and heat.

• UK government investing in Fusion Futures Programme, cutting-edge research, and facilities.

• MAST-U facility explores fusion power production at reduced scale and cost.

• H3AT center focuses on tritium research crucial for commercial fusion energy.

• UK aims to invest in building a fuel cycle testing facility.

• Fusion Skills Council estimates need for 3000-7000 more workers in the fusion sector.

• Agile Nations network discussing regulatory framework for fusion energy facilities.

• UK leading in providing technical information for safety codes and standards for fusion energy.

• UK government plans to introduce a National Policy Statement for Fusion Energy.

• UK strategy aims to lead in fusion energy development, expand collaborations, and achieve commercialization.

Recent :

• In 2021, JET set new records for power generation, producing 59 MJ of energy over 5 seconds.

• In 2022, the highest plasma 'triple product' of any private fusion company was achieved, a key measure of plasma temperature, density, and confinement time.

• The USA, Germany, and Japan announced their intentions and priorities for fusion.

• Over $6 billion has been invested globally in the private fusion industry.

• The H3AT center was opened at Culham to research tritium processing.

• World record results were achieved from JET (Joint European Torus).

• Demonstration of ignition was achieved from the US National Ignition Facility.

• A site has been selected for STEP in West Burton, Nottinghamshire, for constructing fusion energy facilities.

Sea Level, Surge or Subside

 

A true story: in early summer 1975 I was a teacher of A-level Geology in Manchester and had just got a new job, in Blackpool, to teach Geology and establish new courses in Environmental Science.

We had to find a new house and, never one to move house if I didn’t have to, I assumed we’d be in it a long time. Born in Fleetwood, well aware of its low-lying geography and its risk of storm flooding and geologically clued in to the part played by isostatic readjustment in sea level changes, I pored over my textbooks and found a map very much like the one shown here, after wondering how many years it would be till the sea flooded into our front room 😊.

I needn’t have worried, we were OK. Blackpool, in the green area covering Scotland and North Western England, had been underneath the thickest ice during the Ice Age and has been rising back up ever since. Despite the worldwide rise in sea level overall, in these areas local sea level was actually falling, and it still is. You’d expect a geologist to know this of course, but it’s rarely mentioned in media commentary.

In a recent DM exchange with a respected member of our SolarComment group, having lazily described myself without explanation as a ‘climate change sceptic’, I needed to clarify – not least because I believe scepticism is essential to decision making, including being for/against GNRSP. I explained (please note the distinction I make between ‘climate change’ and ‘Climate Change’) …

… “‘sceptic’ doesn’t mean ‘denier’ – for me as a geologist ‘climate change’ is a given (a never-ending process), my scepticism is about what I see as an over-simplistic fixation on the fossil fuel elimination response to ‘Climate Change’ (a perceived problem). As it happens, that scepticism puts me right in the middle, sitting on the fence,in respect of this GNRSP project.”

A video titled Geologists See Climate Change Differently helps set the context for my clarification … acknowledging the existence of ‘climate change’, a planet-long process, is simply fundamental to a geologist's point of view. The pretty obvious point (at least to a geologist) that Lindzen makes about sea-level change points to the risk that the general public may swallow the myth that “the burning of fossil fuels” has uniquely caused sea-level rise long-term – it certainly didn’t cause the 125 metre rise in sea level that drowned Doggerland since the last glacial advance, and if you listen  

For a thoughtful justification for being sceptical about ‘Climate Change’ [note the CAPS], I urge you to listen to the whole 5 minutes of Richard Lindzen, noting his cautionary statement that “When you hear a scientist saying the science is settled, you know that person has stepped out of the science”.

YouTube now puts the trigger warning below on every item it perceives as possibly ‘contrarian’ to the Climate Change approved thinking, in this case  a definition that the science it presumes is at the very least incomplete and misleading .... and closer to dogma that has left scientific objectivity behind.

 

Doubts & Dilemmas, Climate & Energy

My first post in this blog said "I'm starting from the position that I believe my 'home' is about to be spoiled, and I don't like it." and that "...we owe it to ourselves and our (grand)children to make sure the [GNRSP] proposals are challenged, and the 'benefits' evaluated in a balanced way." That's not changed.

Can't thinkers also be deniers?

This 'Doubts & Dilemmas' blog entry - certain to be substantially edited and extended over coming weeks - has been prompted by the SolarComment conversation responding to our MP's 20/12/2023 letter (to see the contents of any SolarComment post you need to have signed up, just email jgray.muskham@gmail.com if you want to be added to the mailing list). 

EDIT 29th March, 2024 

The 'doubts and dilemmas' at national and international level have also been surfacing with great rapidity, and revealing unanticipated threats, since I first posted this item in December 2023. Just yesterday, I came across another - hardly discussed until now, events in Africa that have potential knock-on effects for our UK electricity supply.

As I read (and paraphrase) it, the conversation's central message boils down to the belief that "Climate is an [...] existential threat to all of us." and that politicians at all levels should therefore be encouraging us to fully support the UK's sacrificial net-zero policies. There are undoubtedly MILLIONS who completely support those policies, but I can't. My Earth Science background, and 55-year exposure to 'the science' won't let me, nor will my equally long personal experience of Cold War threats and European politics - and that's before I even begin to factor in net zero's economic impact, most felt by people a lot worse off than we are.

For me, it's the loss of secure and resilient energy supply that dominates, not net zero. In 2024 the most immediately obvious threat to energy security could be expressed "Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to all of us, and his willingness to take advantage of our self-inflicted energy supply vulnerability is a serious risk in the near term rather than in 2050". Alarmist? In recent weeks the Royal Navy and allies have become focused on threats to pipelines, and the interconnectors we depend on increasingly are undoubtedly targets for sabotage.

So, at the strategic level of national energy policy, I am (and have been since the 1980s) simultaneously pro-solar, pro-wind and pro-nuclear. At the same time I'm still shocked by the strategic lunacy of unilaterally destroying our coal industry, and the Trent valley generating capacity that it supported.  I am bemused to see our national energy policy dominated by the dunkleflaute-ignoring belief we can ever have a 100% solar/wind energy mix that gives energy security, whilst failing to access our known onshore frackable gas. 

However, at the 'operational' level, I just don't think it makes a great deal of sense to base our support for, or against, local Solar Park plans on our advocacy of net zero or energy security. That decision has already been taken, national policy calls for 70GW of new solar generating capacity and, even though net zero scepticism is growing, the National Infrastructure Planning process is designed to make it happen. The tramlines set down by The Planning Inspectorate (TPI) process which, with the developers' EIA Scoping Report now accepted by the TPI, will limit what counts as 'relevant' to their ultimate assessment of the Elements Green application

My own mantra of  "'Not 100% for, Not 100% against, More 'OK, some of this but in a way that respects our needs'" is just a pragmatic (though conflicted) response to how I see that process shaping up. My focus remains unashamedly on us achieving consensus-led outcomes that optimises community benefits by being very concerned to understand (and game) those aspects of the situation that 'the process' requires that we are consulted on.

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