LATEST MOAN FROM YOU AND ME - 2022

I abandoned Christmas a couple of decades ago and glad that I don't have to suffer the advertising on tv. It's bad enough seeing it all in shops.

I wonder how many homes will abandon outside decorations this year, with the price of leccy on the up?

 

I dont think they will, lots claim to be hard up but actually they arn't.

 

A local G/C not far from me always goes big for Xmas. According to FB, they already have Xmas trees etc etc for sale and have shown a video with their Northern Lights theme display. So many people are already giving positive feedback on how amazing it looks, sad.

 

Yes, as well as the Christmas decorations there was an isle full of skeletons and ghoolies and spiders.

 

West Burton A power station, coal powered, was due to be decommissioned this year, September I think. It was announced in June that the plant will continue to burn coal now until March 2023. I also believe that 2 of Drax decommissioned coal plants are to be fired back up.

I have been in numerous council meetings regarding the Moorside new nuclear reactors that were supposed to have been built with Toshiba playing a big part in the build. With spiralling costs and Toshiba's account scandal this project fell through, I was not surprised by the outcome following the abandonment of 2 unfinished nuclear plants in Carolina, which Toshiba were also involved in, no plan B C D

South Carolina Wasted $9 Billion on a Failed Nuclear Project. So Why Can’t We Find Money for a Green New Deal? (theintercept.com)

 

Hickley B in Somerset was switch off the other week, the owner said they could still run it saftey for other year but Gov say no

 

It was due to be decommissioned next year anyways, it was brought forward due to cracks in the structural blocks.

Hitachi were going to build two new nuclear reactors, one was going to be in Anglesey, I am not sure where the other was due to be built at. But due to the lack of third party financial support, they pulled out.

Even the French have had major issues with delays and costs with their new generation reactors. A new reactor was due to open in Normandy in 2020, it has yet to be fired up and is reportable to be 3 times over the original budget. Makes you wonder, why are we actually being charged more for our leccy, recouping the spiralling costs?

 

They almost seem to redesign the whole thing every time they build a new nuclear reactor.
You would have thought by now they would have come up with something that works and can just go out and build the thing.
Leave the research and development to just a few experimental reactors.

 

Fast forward to countries where data base companies and bitcoin mining have set up and the demand for electricity has soared.

A Norwegian bitcoin miner is moving its operations from the south to the north due to the huge discrepancy in price. With Norway's main source of energy coming from hydropower then you have a problem when reservoirs levels are at historical low levels, the demand from other sources of energy increase.
To think that the south of Norway are importing their electric supply from Sweden, which they imported from the North of Norway just goes to show, money talks.

Who would of thought that countries like Iceland and now Norway would experience energy crisis, when they pride themselves for being rich in renewables. Tech and Data companies set up their operations in these countries, not because the energy is green, it's cheaper.

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

 

Data companies use a lot of power, but not as much as people think, and the tech industry is constantly striving to lower the power requirements. The CPU in the average smart phone is a good example. For the computing power it has, a few years ago you'd have found it inside a high end PC with a huge heatsink on top and a fan on top of that, and the whole thing would be powered by a 600 watt PSU. The software industry is also striving to drive down power requirements. It's just standard now for low priority background tasks to be limited to just a few threads and run with CPU throttling to keep the energy requirements down.

Bitcoin is a different story and doesn't belong in the same category as data companies. Bitcoin is an environmental travesty. Bitcoin 'miners' get rewarded for being the first to complete some intensive mathematical computations. It's quite advanced stuff with complex Cryptography, so to be the first to crack it and get the reward, you need really high end processing. And it's not a one time race. Every time a new block goes on the block chain, there's more maths to solve, and more rewards to be had. The consequence of this is a huge operation happening in the shadows. There are people that actually steal electricity, physically connecting to the supply illegally before the meter, to power entire farms of super beefy purpose built computers. There are other cryptocurrencies that work different, with much lower power demand but bitcoin is the biggest name in the crypto world. If it's any consolation, banks and governments hate it and will use any legal means to kill it off. People have had their bank accounts suddenly closed just for buying bitcoin. I reckon it will be around for a while, but the whole crypto currency industry has took a massive hit lately, losing about 70% of its value in a matter of days and not really recovering in months, so that might put people off it.