Peter Miller writes in WUWT Tips and Notes:
There has been a major fire tonight at Didcot B power station in the UK – this plant provides around 3% of the country’s electricity.
In addition, an abnormal amount of the UK’s nuclear power stations are currently down for maintenance or repair.
A cold winter will bring widespread black outs in the UK and with it the long overdue realisation by the lumpen proletariat that an energy policy reliant on intermittent, unreliable, expensive wind power is totally insane.
Bishop Hill notes:
News is breaking of a major fire at the Didcot B gas fired power station in Oxfordshire. From the photos, this a big one which will put it offline for a long time. The station’s cacacity is 1300MW or thereabouts, so it represents a pretty serious erosion of the UK’s already paper-thin safety margin. Time to start praying for a mild winter.
Meanwhile:
Winter 2014 set to be ‘coldest for century’ Britain faces ARCTIC FREEZE in just weeks
WINTER 2014 is on track to be the coldest for more than a CENTURY with Britain just weeks away from a crippling ARCTIC FREEZE.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/520672/Winter-weather-2014-UK-forecast-cold-snow-November
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Do not listen to anything the express or mail publish about weather. They are not interested in accuracy. …only sensationalism!
In fact, it looks like the UK is expected to have a warmer than average winter:
http://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/seasonal-climate-forecasts/
Lately, the UK always seems to be forecast to have a warmer than average winter. The reality is often very different.
I wouldn’t consider Columbia University to be the bastion of objective reporting on anything to do with weather or climate. Isn’t GISS a joint NASA/Columbia project?
You mean like it’s been accurately predicted over the last couple of years?
Up here in Yorkshire, all the signs point to it being a very cold winter.
Quite true. In fact, as soon as I saw the headline I thought “Express”. And so it was. They run this every year.
How do you know, you must be an avid reader. LOL
The greens will be the death of us all. There is no reasoning with these people.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they started the fire.
actually the greens hope it will be the death of you and I – they wish to be the remaining comfortable elite ready to enjoy an uncrowded international park
The more I learn, the more I see the Exact same thing. I suspect a lot of them do not realize they will be among those culled.
John Brignell has been predicting this outcome since at least 2009:
http://numberwatch.co.uk/2009%20September.htm
BBC link http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-29684205
First of all don’t panic….
Energy Secretary Ed Davey said:
“I’ve been reassured by National Grid that there is no risk to electricity supplies. I will be keeping in touch with the relevant authorities throughout.”
We could always burn Ed Davey, of course. Then there’s Jeremy Hunt, Vince Cable, Nick Clegg, George Galloway, Vivienne Westwood, Emma Thompson. We could import Americans like Sean Penn. There’s a huge resource!
Keith, a quote from ‘Yes Minister” “Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.”.
What Ed Davey said is the standard masterpiece of misstatement by a civil servant. There is no risk ‘at the moment’ is what that statement says, it is not saying “no risk to future electricity supplies”. The sentence is also incomplete – throughout…. what? The fire? The night? The coming winter?
Only the fat ones would give you an energy surplus; and you would have to dry them first I think.
Nice. I watch “Yes, Minister” regularly to keep my cynicism of political speak sharp 🙂
Come on now, the Express gave up with journalism long ago. Now they just print the weather forecast on the front page and sensationalise it as much as they can. Doesn’t make it any more accurate being a headline.
You got there first.
The Express predicts an extreme season every three months.
It’s cheaper than doing journalism.
Did The Express predict it?
Here is the Met Office UK covering all bases and NOT making any forecast. 😉
Jimbo:
So from that forecast the met office has obviously hired Al Sleet as their forecaster.
(Al Sleet, aka The Hippy Dippy Weatherman – George Carlin)
M Courtney
October 20, 2014 at 1:11 am
“The Express predicts an extreme season every three months.
It’s cheaper than doing journalism.”
Nothing is cheaper than “doing journalism”. Judging from what I read in the media.
Add to this the idiocy of having converted one of Britain’s largest power stations to burning wood.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290444/Madness-How-pay-billions-electricity-bills-Britains-biggest-power-station-switch-coal-wood-chips–wont-help-planet-jot.html
Stupid is as stupid does, and I have no sympathy for these idiots freezing in the dark.
Do you have any sympathy for poor pensioners who will literally be freezing and dying in the dark?
It won’t be the likes of, say, Zac (estimated net worth £300m) Goldsmith who will be doing the freezing.
Conflating Zac Goldsmith with poor pensioners is a mite disingenuous since he isn’t a pensioner. (As you rightly point out, of course, he isn’t poor either!)
You are, of course, completely correct that he won’t be freezing and certainly not in the dark. As an “honourable member” of the House of Commons, he will be totally protected by power cuts etc. since Parliament will be the last place in the country to be cut off. These parasites will do anything to protect themselves whilst at the same time letting the rest of us go hang. So, as well as working in a well lit and well heated building (and with the many subsided bars to sustain them in their hours of need), they will naturally claim all sorts of expenses to keep themselves comfortable at home too. That gravy train must keep going.
I believe the “idiots” referred to are those who voted in Cameron and the other CAGW religionists who brought about the current crisis. It likely includes many of the “poor pensioners”.
Further to William’s comment:
There are real and unfortunate consequences to spending billions and billions on green scams that do not work to significantly reduce CO2 emissions or to provide electricity, that do not work for engineering and economic reasons. See Germany where consumers are now paying three times more for electricity than the US average. Germany is now desperately constructing coal fired power plants to avoid brownouts. Green policies that are madness will led to economic collapse and country wide brown-outs if they are not stopped.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290444/Madness-How-pay-billions-electricity-bills-Britains-biggest-power-station-switch-coal-wood-chips–wont-help-planet-jot.html
P.S. The AGW problem has no basis in science and is not support by observations. Roughly 90% of the warming in the last 70 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes. The solar magnetic cycle is now declining faster than at an time in the last 1000 years. I am truly curious how the AGW climategate scientists will try to explain unequivocal global cooling.
William Astley
October 20, 2014 at 1:45 am
William, these plants are not being closed due to AGW. They are being closed as a result of the “Large Combustion Plant Directive” – which is intended to prevent acid rain – the previous falsified claim from the Greens that was supposed to be killing forests and fresh water fish.
See http://www.defra.gov.uk/industrial-emissions/eu-international/lcpd/
Despite the claims of acid rain being disproved the EU Bureaucracy continues to enforce regulations to prevent it, even if that means old people die of cold in energy poverty. The same blind application of regulations will happen even if AGW is comprehensively falsified and the world cools, the EU (and EPA) bureaucrats will continue to enforce carbon dioxide emissions limits. Rules and regulations are needed for the continued employment of bureaucrats after all.
There are a lot of us in the UK who disagree with changign to biomass and all that other sustainable renewable idiotic stuff. But we don’t get the choice. All the major parties, except UKIP, are signed up to this green nonsense.
You just pointed out the choice…UKIP.
Is it true that huge piles of wood pellets are liable to spontaneously ignite?
Is it true that stored pellets can release volatile organic compounds?
Let’s hope they are doing all they can to avoid a wood chip fire in the Drax power station.
“Is it true that huge piles of wood pellets are liable to spontaneously ignite?”
yes, and so are piles of coal; managing “bunkerage” is a key process at any solid-fuelled power station
Thanks for the info. In the meantime…….
My 75 year old mother is sick and living alone in the UK, I am in Australia and can do nothing to help, your comments are insensitive to say the least.
Didcot B has 2 modules each generating 680 MW. Only one module has affected and shut down, so only half power capacity has been lost.
That’s OK then, no problems, Just lost the equivalent of the London Array Wind farm nothing to worry about.
Drax may not be in as dire a situation as first seems. The elevators built to feed in wood chips are dual purpose as they can also feed in coal. But then again would that be allowed?
“The elevators built to feed in wood chips are dual purpose as they can also feed in coal”
Drax, like all other large scale coal plants actually burned powdered coal. You can’t simply dump solid coal in.
The question is in what state are the ball-mills and blowers that provide the capacity to get the coal to the burners?
Pretty good. Drax only cioncerted because the government promised lots of subsidies if they did.
Of course they were lied to.
They can’t run the hours for coal as I understand it, or they get fined. Maybe. I havent studied exactly where they sit on the coal scheme of things legally.
All that windpower should solve the problem.
Conspiracy theory time, someone is sabotaging the UK power grid.
Either that or they’ve suddenly become terrible at maintenance for some reason.
2 nuclear reactors down, and now this.
This is ridiculous.
Just underinvestment.
Run advanced engineering on a shoestring and keep trying to extend the life of plant – and breakdowns will occur.
Even the coalition Government admit that electricity generation has been underinvested in. But they blame the last administration, of course
And they think windpower and £16billion of cables to link it up (page 85 of Delivering UK Energy Investment) will be enough.
With good luck for the weather they might be right.
Possible design. Liking nuclear or coal power is electoral suicide unless a few days of rolling blackouts were stopped by very quickly bringing the plants back on line.
Kinda hard to argue against the power source that brought the lights and heat back on. 😉
a tip for anyone in the uk running a diesel car. at the first sign of cold weather get at least one 5 gallon container of fuel set aside at home. any shortfall in power supply will be made up by diesel fueled generators as the current government are too stupid to realise the cunning plan to stave of public unrest caused by regular power outages until after the next election is likely to see the same unrest when diesel supplies for their cars run out. the law of unintended consequences.
Rough ride. Headline.
Taking the Express weather headline – they said the same last year – something about months of snow and ice and were completely wrong. This is the last place I expected to see alarmist writing on any subject.
1 gallon = 4.54609 litres. Assuming your diesel car is reasonably fuel efficient, you do 4.54609 litres to 100 km. So 5 gallons will take you 500 km. Assume you travel 25 km per day on average, this gives you fuel for 20 days. Suggest for a bad winter you need at least 5 times that, just over 3 months of fuel restrictions.
But, ISTR, last time there were fuel shortages and restrictions, there were heavy penalties on ‘fuel hoarding’.
You just can’t win!
sorry for the interruption – ex-pat here. there were “penalties on ‘fuel hoarding’ “? Did I miss that? I thought rationing went bye bye after WWII?
Yes, who can forget the guy who filled up a leaky 107 litre wheelie bin with petrol and whose neighbours had to be evacuated.
“Quit hoarding!” said the Grasshopper to the Ant, “Or I’ll fine you!”
So the Ant, who had gathered openly so the Grasshopper might learn, instead gathered in secret so the Grasshopper wouldn’t know better, and wouldn’t come begging and stealing during Winter.
The official information is that the fire will not affect electricity supplies in the UK as other stations will cover any shortfall. Your headline, as well as being misspelt, is unnecessarily pessimistic
Maybe, Ian. But the point is that with our capacity here in Britain, and with a few stations off-line at the moment, it wouldn’t take much for us to be tipped into power cuts – it really wouldn’t. A few stations knocked out by a small terrorist campaign would bring Britain to its knees. We have power that we can bring in from France, but it isn’t much. We’re walking a knife edge at the moment. I don’t know if you live here, but a couple of years back we learned that we were whisker close to power cuts – revealed months later.
It is not just the UK at risk , we also supply some of Ireland’s needs (North and South) via interconnectors from Scotland and Wales. At present , with autumn winds, metered wind power is supplying more than 4GW , but this is close to its limit and we are importing 1/2 of the 2GW available from France.
The latter, with 50GW available from nuclear and hydro ,is sitting pretty and exporting to all adjacent countries. If Hollande’s plans to close all nuclear power stations and convert to wind ever happen then Western Europe will be in deep trouble.
when was the last successful terrorist attack on a power station in the UK?
Greg Kirkby
October 20, 2014 at 2:22 am
You must be an accountant 🙂
“What are all those fire extinguishers doing here? When was the last time this office had a fire?”
Similar things were said in the USA before the Oklahoma bombing and again before 9/11.
There was already considerable concern about terrorist attacks on the national grid in UK, but now the previous and current government policies have made continuity of supplies extremely fragile.
Last successful (green) terrorist attacks on a UK power station, 2007,2012 there have others since.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/greenpeace-shuts-down-coal-fired-power-station-20071008
http://blueandgreentomorrow.com/2012/10/29/campaigners-occupy-power-station-in-dash-for-gas-protest/
Greg, are you serious? Ian W deals with your post correctly. Attempts have been made to keep the location of the National Grid co-ordination centre a secret – because of terrorism. Only thing is, the BBC recently had a TV programme that showed the inside of the centre, and pasted up on the screen where it is, geographically, for a second or two! During a BBC programme that featured it just six months prior, the presenter said she couldn’t say where it is. Good ol’ BBC! I know exactly where it is down to the exact building – as one of my customers works there.
Thanks Sandy. Greg has a kitchen cupboard full of snake oil, if anyone wants any.
@ur momisugly SandyInLimousin, I note that Greenpeace are still taking the easy route in their protests. They stop coal fueled power stations, but they don’t picket actual coal mines to stop the coal coming out. I wonder why? Could it be that coal miners might actually stop their protest? 🙂
“Attempts have been made to keep the location of the National Grid co-ordination centre a secret – because of terrorism”
That’s complete nonsense – the locations are in the public domain.
The primary Electricity grid control location is just outside Wokingham; the equivalent for the national gas “spine ” (i.e. the high pressure network) is in Hinkley, Leicestershire. You can find either via Google Maps
That’s not to say you’d find it easy to gat anywhere close to the control rooms themselves -you wouldn’t. Or that there aren’t failover facilities elsewhere.
Who needs terrorists when you have govt and voters who have been already radicalised by AGW?
SadButMadLad
No deep coal mines left in the UK, a bit of open cast but that upsets the Ecoloons. Despite having several centuries of coal reserves the UK is a net importer.
One can always rely on official responses. They make good burnable material.
Misspelt? Where?
I think he means ‘rider’ should be ‘ride’.
“rider” should be “ride”
Oh, that’s all right then. As long as it’s ‘official information’ we’re bound to be safe. After all, would they lie to us??? [WMD anyone?]
Ah, you noticed that the NY Times admitted that George was right about WMDs?
Otter – nope. I’m from England the NYT isn’t widely distributed here. Anyway, I read enough crap in British newspapers; why would I want to read more from a foreign organ. What I do know is that our former Prime Minister, Tony BLiar, lied through his teeth over the issue.
Agree on taking the Expresses reports with a pinch of salt – they tend to exaggerate…. As to power going down. Don’t worry – see Booker’s article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/10220083/We-could-soon-be-paying-billions-for-this-wind-back-up.html
It will be a sad loss to many glider pilots who use the power station as a reliable source of thermals.
The turning-point photo you could hardly miss. I remember it well.
R
My first thought was “Was this fire started deliberately or was it a genuine accident?”. Here is Aus, Tasmania has had it’s first bush fire, and it was started deliberately. I can see a re-run of power blackouts in the UK similar to those of the 1970’s, the Govn’t has already hinted this would be the case.
Slightly worried that to meet our UK long term emission targets we must be weaned from heating our homes with gas. The remnants of that Bermudan hurricane will arrive in Scotland tonight and set all the wind turbines spinning. Please send more remnants, I think we are going to need them.
Enough of using other peoples remnants, we are British, we want our own independent wind, untouched & unsullied by foreigners, DickEd Davey will see us though, hes promised “the lights wont go out” so we’re bound to be OK.
Must go; Nurse says it’s time for my pills & a lie down.
I think Bermuda still thinks of itself as British so these remnants could still be classed as, “untainted”.
I was slightly amazed at how quickly the hurricane leftovers got here, I had been told that the ocean winds arriving in Ireland were remarkably clean and fresh after their long crossing. Now patently nonsense.
That is so funny…
Thanks for the laugh.
Most of us take a warning about “COLDEST” and “FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY” with the same Dead Sea sized grain of salt that we take “WARMEST” and “IN THE HISTORY OF THE PLANET”.
Still, it’s far more likely that this will be another in a string of brutal winters in the NH than a mild one. With power demand already approaching capacity the potential for visible trouble is increased.
It is always worth checking sources. In this case the story comes from the Express, a notoriously inexact peddler of sensational stories. Moreover, if you look at their source, they are quoting an outfit called Exacta Weather. These are the people who said that last winter in the UK would be very cold with major snow falls. It was actually mild but very wet.
Jimmi_the_dalek;
I have followed Exacta weather for three years and he made these predictions in May this year. Yes he fully accepts that the winter of 13/14 he and other forcasters got completely wrong, due to not taking into account the CME that happened. The majority of his long term forcasts over the years have been 75% accurate. please check out his website.
Anthony this is the first time posting although a silient folower fro more than two years. Love WUWT.
I see via some reports – the BBC has 25 fire engines, DT, Express -12 engines, others 20 (incl BBC) attending.
Obviously fluid numbers as more appliances called in.
Did the BBC get there twenty minutes before it caught fire?
When I saw that the fire was in a cooling tower I was puzzled because the huge concrete convection cooling towers don’t contain much at all that is combustable and being inside is like being in a continual downpour. However looking at the photo’s they look like fan forced towers which contain a fair amount of stuff that will burn even when it’s wet. I last worked on cooling towers in the late 70’s and they were the old fashioned Venturi types. I suppose they changed to the new fan driven units because they are cheaper to build and the operating costs are a function of power output. They have done the same with big transformers too but when the fans go down they lose the whole thing. Penny wise, pound foolish I guess.
They say that at the moment the station can supply enough power with the one tower down thanks to the mild weather. A spokesman said it could be a different story at tea time on a cold February evening.
Thanks for this. If you discover more details, please share.
According to the BBC website these cooling towers are partly of timber construction. Greener than conventional concrete, I guess, but don’t those babies burn!
I seem to remeber they contain wooden racks over which the water cascades. If that tower was unused, and the racks were dry, they would burn furiously in their own convection.
OT, I guess) In the 1970s I was in a group checking out bicycle routes that had to be relocated due to coal mining activity in western Pennsylvania. We came across a minehead coal plant, one of a group of four scattered around that part of the state. There was always one plant shutdown, and the one we were at was the one shutdown. We asked a security person if we could ride around inside the fenced area, but he said no, there were too many dangers to be aware of.
Then he told us about the hyperboloid cooling tower (those are big suckers, by the way!) at one of the other plants. They had a redwood lattice inside to splash the falling water around to encourage more evaporation. During maintenance, a welder working inside the tower accidentally set fire to the now dry wood. Given the aerodynamic design, the wood burned really quickly, apparently it was quite a sight. IIRC, the welder did not get out and burned to death.
The cooling tower fire you mentioned are typical of those I was talking about below …. Thank you: Didn’t expect a confirmation that clear.
Using redwood makes sense. Its resistance to decay makes it desirable for many applications. Water on wood is very attractive to several species of fungus.
Seems I had read once the bearings on submarine propeller gear boxes were made of wood. Quiet and durable.
Meanwhile, the BBC breakfast TV reports that despite the incident, the supply of power has not been interrupted.
My friends; it is the honest truth that modern man needs cheap and reliable energy to meet the needs of our 7 Billion people. Modern industrial society is a great boon to humanity and darn few want to return to a hunter-gather existence.
Someday some political party will wake up and promise the people cheap and reliable energy and they will win in a landslide. Odd that no one has yet gone that route.
Anthony watch out for this James Maddon character in the Express article about Arctic Freezes – he’s a snake oil salesman, I three years of “predicting” winters for the Express he has got it spectacularly wrong on all three occasions!