Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

According to wikipedia, Colorado is 104,000 square miles. England is 50,000 square miles, so roughly half the size of Colorado which makes the size of the contaminated area ermm, the size of England...

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Wasn't is somthing to do with a steam valve that failed?

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

They were buggering about with the reactor.

The water pumps on that type of reactor had backup diesel generators, but they took 40 seconds to get up to speed, so that would be 40 seconds of no water pumping around a nuclear reactor.
So they were testing to see if the momentum in the reactor's turbine was enough to cover the power shortfall.
They'd performed the same operation on another reactor without anything going wrong because they'd left the safety systems active that time. It hadn't worked though, there wasn't enough power produced.
With reactor 4 they'd made improvements to the power so were trying again.
The experiment was delayed until the night shift because a normal power station had gone offline and they needed the power for the grid.
The night shift were inexperienced, most drafted from coal power stations, and not suited to run the experiment.
They didn't even realise the reactor shutdown had been postponed so continued following the original plan, causing the shutdown to be too rapid.
To compensate they withdrew most of the control rods.
Even though only a third of the power required for the experiment was being produced, they continued on.
They increased water flow, which required removing the remaining control rods, as water and the gas produced by the rapid shutdown were absorbing neutrons like the rods should do.
When they turned off the steam to the turbine to let it's momentum power the pumps, the water flow dropped, the neutron absorbsion dropped.
The reaction increased.
Pockets of steam were produced in the cooling lines, increasing the reaction.
The neutron absorbing gas that had been produced was burnt off, increasing the reaction.
They tried to shut the reactor down by re-inserting the rods, but that took up to 20 seconds, and by design flaw reduces the coolant, actually increased the reaction.
The boron rods melted, the steam exploded, and radioactive waste was spread across the continent.

So what caused it?
Untrained staff pulling the control rods out of a badly designed nuclear reactor while trying to see if the turbine spinning could power the coolant pumps.

It wasn't a case of happy running reactor one minute, big explosion the next, the staff caused the explosion.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Makes me glad my home is heated by logs and coal. A Bin bag of logs lasts 4 days for £2.15 plus we use a little kindling and a bit of coal. We also get bags of wood off my folks and are going to start to get driftwood when its light evenings again (or when we make it out at the weekend).

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Never let the facts get in the way of a good excuse :LOL:

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

well i wont bother worrying then :)

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

mine to -my cast iron stove isn't likely to wipe out the uk if it overheats, i dont think there is such a thing as a safe reactor[yet] so i say wind power for me please at least i know my grand children wont be born with 2 heads and 3 eyes;)

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Well, wood power is pretty CO2 friendly, as it's recycling the CO2 that was absorbed not so long ago, and actually not releasing as much CO2 as was absorbed in a lot of cases.
This is why there's a lot of investment in some countries with steam locomotives running on wood chips, and powerstations too.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

that maybe so but i was wondering if wood burning or any sort of solid fuel could be carcogenic, (heard somthin before about this)?? found this, dont know if its true? hope it isnt.

http://burningissues.org/car-www/index.html

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

I am very puzzled. I am with npower, v4 online, the cheapest possible (for my postcode and consumption) . Npower will not increase my price.
Who are the unlucky souls that will be clobbered with +17%? How can they screw some of their customers and not all?

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

London, midlands and east midlands are going up the most apparently

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Glad I jumped ship to Southern Electric on their Price Fix 2008 plan just last month from Npower then.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

this may interest some people.

I initiated a move to edf from atlantic start of dec, had a gas balance as was on payment plan and for this reason atlantic blocked the move (for the electric as well).

When I paid anything owed so was 0 balance the very next day they sent out new bills meaning I still owed them money.

The day after I paid a guy turned up to read my meter presumably they about to send another bill, funny I am getting so much attention now edf are trying to initiate the move.

Incidently edf will work about 30% cheaper for me. I am in the east midlands and I have compared to other regions and found this region is already priced higher so I may be asking my mp why this region is targeted more for higher prices.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

talking of edf...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7189593.stm

im waiting a month or 2 to see where all this goes then moving (again)

Does using gas for heating make financial sense?
 

The gas increases always seem to be high and if you work out the cost of installing, running and maintaining a gas boiler fired central heating system, surely we'd all be better of using lots of electric fires to heat our homes.