BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Did anyone see the scare story on BBC 6 O'Clock News tonight.

They had some *+^%$ who was a "power detective" go through someone's house, and point out the error of their ways.

Whilst I agree we should all be doing more to conserve energy, the two things that really stood out as b*ll*cks were
1) the fridge was "only" energy efficiency banding B - it needed to be improved (to A or A+, next bands up - I would have understood if it had be C or D, but B!!!!)
2) the "energy defective" stated that equipment on standby consumed 90% of the electricity that would be used by the equipment if it were still on. What utter garbage! - at the bottom of the link below from Strathclyde University, it states that on average, standby consumes 13% of full power usage, and this is including worst possible case.
http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/W...fo/Standby.htm

I think we need to do more, but scare-mongering and bad reporting is not the way to do it. :mad:

ps My house is double-glazed, with loft and wall insulation, energy saving bulbs, and we switch the TV and PC off at night (but not the HiFi, SetTop Box, or HD recorder - they go to standby, as I don't wish to reset clocks every day).

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

we dont need to do anything . All that needs to happen is build more nucleur power stations and we will be cool :)

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Or, if we live near the stations, "hot" :Yikes:

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yeah but they aint that dangerous are they.If they go bang an area dies in for thousands of years.If we keep burning fossil fuels then eventually the global warming will destroy a good portion of the planet. We can send the waste from these stations into space and let people a few million miles away worry about it ;)

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

This post by Stuart C suggests that the STB may still be using a fair amount of energy in standby. But otherwise, yes. I agree with most of what you say.

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

The Times reported this - ONLY 56 people have so far died directly as a result of the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986, including 9 children with thyroid cancer. In the end, perhaps up to 4,000 people will die from radiation-caused illness.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...768368,00.html

Not good, but not the end of the world scenario that was originally envisioned.

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

I'd rather there wasn't a single nuclear plant on this planet. We need fusion :(

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Agreed - but however, for fusion to occur the atoms must be confined in a magnetic field and raised to temperatures in excess of 100 million Kelvin or more, several times hotter than the centre of the sun.

That's quite hot.

Here's hoping for the JET Tokamak :)

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

According to the spec sheet, a Paasonic plasma TV consumes 0.3w ph.

Frankly, my next door neighbour's drive security / courtesy consumes more power.

Or, in a direct comparison, I'll have one less cup of coffee per month to compensate for leaving it on standby.

There has to be some perpective.

D

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

thats still nucleur

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Hopefully, we'll be able to get more wind farms built that will provide fully sustainable energy. That is, if all the NIMBYs don't prevent them all from being built (and then complain about the increasing number of nuclear power stations :rolleyes: )

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

tidal power should be another option - more difficult, as river estuaries need to allow shipping, also, but where we live it might be possible?

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I like wind farms I think they look cool especially the ones near Kendal. We should have loads of them.

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Not a great idea - you just need one "shuttle" to explode soon after launch to contaminate a large portion of the upper atmosphere...which will then slowly make its way down to earth...

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how about fitting all new house builds with solar panel roofing? If legislation made it mandetory on all new builds, that would be a lot of homes more self sufficient. Ok, so it may cost more in the short term, for the builders, but if it became the norm, people wouldn't even notice a price difference (which at most will be a minimal increase)

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Your bang on there, a lot of houses getting built her enow have the solar panels already included and only costs a fraction of what it takes to build the house.

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By the time the ice caps melt, I'll be plucking Paint It Black on a cloud. And since there's not much chance of my having kids, I've no need to worry about the legacy.

It's an issue but they make it out to more than it is. I've energy saving lightbulbs, so I'm doing my bit, even if it's just because it saves me money :D

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Wind farms and other such types of power do not generate a lot. We need nuclear

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Lets build a dyson sphere!

End of the day, we will need more energy than we are producing right now, and that has to come from somewhere - and sadly reducing our energy waste will avoid the issue for a while, not remove it - and until a 'better' way of getting energy is found, nuclear seems the best option, since renewable sources just don't produce enough for us

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

everyone should read Ringworld

http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/ringworld.html

;)

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they dont work cuz they get dirty and are then useless wanna climb up and clean em all the time?

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

You could build in a sprinkler and motorised rubber scraper. Flick a switch and it cleans itself. Failing that, put gran to some use instead of spending a fortune on home bills - pedal power.

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

We have window cleaners - i see a new opportunity there for panel cleaners! Even more jobs for the market! Everyone's a winner!

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Yeah but they can't nick windows. Liable to pay them to clean the panel and find they've taken it.

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

good luck if it's bolted / rivetted to the roofing, or indeed, if it is incorporated as part of the roofing. It could be mounted behind a perspex panelling I suppose.

Don't forget, if you look at it from a communist point of view, if everyone has it, there is no point taking it for gain. Who are you going to give / sell it to?... works for me!

Tell me, are you just playing Devils advocate here, or are you ACTUALLY this difficult and pessamistic?

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Thieving chav types took my answer machine - ripped out the wiring first. Also took the NTL cable modem. They just think "nice" and take it. Years of inbreeding for you.


Probably about 40/60 :)

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

vandals will brick it lol I know nuclear waste is hard to contain but its by far and away the most effective (notice I didn't dare say efficient lol) way of producing large amounts of electricity.And it doesnt involve using vast quantities oh fossil fuels being burnt

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Perhaps they thought it held all the answers? :shrug:

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Could maybe build them near council housing estates :scratch: Maybe get the Russians in to manage them - they are the experts. Provide employment for the area.

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

I live on a council estate and tbh I wouldnt be to bothered if they built one here :)

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Let me guess... It might cheer the place up a bit? :erm: :jk: :angel:

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

nah its a happy estate i live here you see ;)

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Good on ya :) :tu:

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Need? Debatable.

If we could be sure that the design was safe, if we could be sure regular maintenance was carried out by independent authorities and if we could trust the government not to cut staff and maintenance to minimum levels, then it might be more feasible. However, correct me if I'm wrong, but those are bloody big 'if's!

Actually...does anyone here know why a lot of people who object to nuclear power do so? The reason I'm against it is not because of nuclear waste, or leakage. There is a far more serious objection, namely the actual design of the proposed reactors. For anyone not interested in physics, now's the time to switch threads... :)

Leaving aside the 'breeder' reactors (these can, in theory, reprocess 'spent' nuclear fuel and transmute it into different isotopes, i.e. new fuel, but in practice they aren't very efficient), there are, for practical purposes, two types of reactor: Advanced Gas-cooled and Pressurised Water Reactors. What happens inside a nuclear reactor core is this: in the fuel (uranium, thorium or plutonium), nuclei are continually, spontaneously undergoing nuclear fission, i.e. disintegrating into two more or less equal parts. This is because the laws of physics are such that certain ratios of protons to neutrons in a nucleus create instability; the nucleus has too much energy and must shed it somehow. Various particles are given off in the process, and that reduces the energy because the particles are ejected at high velocities, i.e. they have a lot of kinetic energy. But the most important particles in this context are neutrons emitted when uranium nuclei decay - because those neutrons can cause other nuclei to decay. These in turn emit more neutrons, which cause more nuclei to decay, and so on.

If you ensure that neutrons can't escape from the mass, by encasing it in a beryllium reflector, the result is a chain reaction - in other words, you've made and detonated an atomic bomb. It's not as simple as that, of course; you have to provide shaped charges to create implosion, to force two halves of the critical mass together in exactly the right way - this was, for a while, the major stumbling block for the Manhattan Project. But that's it in principle. Left to itself, uranium doesn't spontaneously explode, because the vast majority of the neutrons escape from the mass before they can cause any more nuclei to disintegrate. This is why a nuclear reactor can't - it literally cannot - become an atom bomb - even though the total mass of nuclear fuel is more than enough, there is no beryllium reflector in a nuclear core. The reaction still occurs, obviously, but at a steady pace instead of, as in an A-bomb, in microseconds or less, because enough neutrons escape from the mass to prevent a sustainable chain reaction.

On the other hand, you don't want too many neutrons to escape, else the reaction will proceed at too slow a pace to generate useful heat. So you introduce a moderator, a substance which absorbs some neutrons, but not too many. Depending on the design, either you raise or lower fuel rods into the moderator (depending on whether you want the reaction rate to decrease or increase), or you lower/raise control rods into the core to reduce or increase the rate of nuclear fission. If the rate increases, so does the heat generated.

(I'm coming to the point, honest!)

The coolant circulating around and through the core is of course heated by it; the hot coolant is drawn off to a heat-exchanger; cold coolant is pumped back in, and so on. The heat energy thus obtained is used to create high-pressure steam; this in turn drives a turbine, which produces electricity. All well and good so far. The kicker comes when you consider the major difference between the AGR and the PWR...

In an AGR, the moderator is usually bricks of graphite, and the coolant is generally sodium vapour or carbon dioxide. But in a PWR, the coolant - pressurised water - is also used as the moderator. Still doesn't sound like a problem, does it? And in fact a PWR is a lot simpler in design and cheaper to build.

But what happens if the coolant system breaks down?

With an AGR, the moderator is still in place - you can't lose that. So if the coolant system breaks down - despite multiple safety backups - it'll take the core about 16 hours to heat up to the point where there's serious danger, so that gives you plenty of time to find and correct the problem or, at worst, shut down the reactor by simply dropping the fuel rods all the way into the moderator; that halts the reaction, since virtually all the emitted neutrons are absorbed by the graphite.

But with a PWR, you lose both coolant and moderator. The result is that a) the reaction can proceed as fast as you like because there's no moderator to stop it doing so, and b) the core starts heating up very fast. In short, you have, not 16 hours, but more like 2 minutes, to do something. After that, the core will become so hot it will simply start melting down through the Earth, and nothing known to our science can stop it - doubtless many of you have now recognised this as the China Syndrome scenario. It hasn't happened...yet.

Sizewell A is a PWR. The proposed Sizewell B, if it's ever built, will be. Three Mile Island was a PWR - and compared to what could have happened, they were lucky. As for Chernobyl, which in fact was not a PWR, that was not a meltdown but a burn-down, i.e. the graphite core actually caught fire - and graphite burns at a very high temperature. I can't remember exactly why it happened, but I seem to recall reading they were trying some experimental - and not officially approved - procedure. We all know what happened then.

Nuclear power should be a viable alternative to fossil fuels. Despite the risks, it should be relatively safe. But it isn't. Just because PWRs are cheap does not mean they should be built - at the very least, they should have a separate moderator in the core to eliminate the risk of meltdown. I don't even want to think of what it would mean to the UK to have one happen here, on this relatively small island. And the scenario laid out in The China Syndrome - namely the power station's owners cutting corners by only doing weld tests every few years instead of every 6 months as they should have been doing - is all too horribly plausible...especially given our government's track record re skimping on safety procedures.

Sorry for the long and possibly boring post, but it used to be a pet subject of mine - a long time ago I had an ambition to be a nuclear physicist, and so I learned as much about nuclear fission as I could...and then I read about Kerr-McGee and Karen Silkwood.

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

I don't know how accurate it is, but I bought a power consumption meter from Maplin and did some tests.. My TV (Sony Wega 28 inch) consumed 118-130 watts while on, and between 0 and 2 watts in standby.

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Just wanted to thank you for such an informative post.

I for one feel much better informed.

My opinion is that all current means of getting power cause damage - even solar and wind. If nothing else, the resources used making the things, the chemicals involved etc.

Perhaps the least damaging are the geothermal means - heat from a few feet in the earth harnessed fairly easily.

Otherwise, I'm with the other people who think we need to include nuclear.

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

For those of us who have no idea what the "China Syndrome" is - perhaps you could explain why this is bad, won't it just vanish into the depths of the earth, never to be seen again ?

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

you could just watch the film ;) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078966/

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Or look in Wiki ;)

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lol :)

---------- Post added at 11:54 ---------- Previous post was at 11:53 ----------

lol to that one too!!!

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Big companies need to be forced to cut their energy consumption. The lunatic company I work for has a policy of leaving all dektops (2000+) on all the time.

As the IT department script upgrades etc for next reboot anyway, it's completely pointless.

So we have many kilowatts of PCs doing nothing, plus the air con fighting against the heat. Plus piles of other equipment in addition to the PCs.

I've made suggestions to the management, who did precisely nothing. Obviously the cost of electricity isn't enough incentive for them to do anything about it.

Against this kind of waste, installing energy efficient bulbs is almost pointless.

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

or Orbitsville by Bob Shaw
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0...lance&n=266239

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Their is a logic there I admire Zingle.

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Until the "people" a long way away turn up seriously ****ed off. I say send Zingle to negotiate :p:

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

He would just upgrade their computer system and they would go home happy playing Quake 5,000,001

Re: BBC News - Standby power scare story
 

Liable to upgrade him - Cyberzingle :D