Bishop Hill Matt Ridley on Huhne
Nov 25, 2010 Energy Matt Ridley has a smashing op-ed in the Times on the coming dash for shale gas, and the delusions of Christopher Huhne (although Matt is far too polite to put it in those terms). It can be seen here.
For a glimpse of a truly scary future dependent on volatile suppliers look no farther than Mr Huhne’s favoured approach, the dash for wind. Every wind turbine has a magnet made of a metal called neodymium. There are 2.5 tonnes of it in each of the behemoths that have just gone up to spoil my view in Northumberland. The mining and refining of neodymium is so dirty (involving repeated boiling in acid, with radioactive thorium as a waste product), that only one country does it: China. This year it flexed its trade muscles and briefly stopped exporting neodymium from its inner Mongolian mines. How’s that for dangerous reliance on a volatile foreign supply?
Reader Comments (35)
Perhaps someone could suggest to Huhne that we start buying the Thorium while it is still a cheap by-product and start using those Thorium reactors. Or is it the wrong type of Thorium?
I've said enough about Huhne and renewables, so I will confine myself to this:
[Can't here it? Never mind, it's only the sound of me chewing my keyboard.]
And good for Ridley once again, who has already done such sterling work debunking the oceans-getting-very-slightly-less-alkaline scare.
Remember, the real enemy is barking mad 'energy policy'.
Fight the (lack of) power!
It is impossible to get through to loony hoony.
For a bit of reality watch this, if you have 20mins to spare. Pertinent to you folk in Scotland who have all that wind and lots of inches of global warming
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid640957304001?bctid=676265059001
And also the rare earths also go into electric cars eg the batteries, not that they are currently green being really coal cars.
@ JohnH
Bit harsh. They are indeed mostly coal-fired, but even so, it seems very unlikely that they're worse net polluters than petrol-fuelled cars.
One less plausible claim I've heard in favour of electric cars is that when we go nuclear, they will instantly be able to take the new fuel, because it's still in the form of power, just differently generated.
The obvious flaw in this assertion seems to be that none of the cars being built today is going to be around by the time any new nuclear plants is built, because cars last 10 years and it takes longer than that for a new nuclear plant to get past the planning stage.
Have I missed anything?
@J4R
CO2 is a pollutant?
So...... Can Huhdini escape? It seems to get worse and worse.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100062801/the-genius-of-fenbeagle/
Philip Bratby
Just watched that video. Thanks.
Looking at the audience reaction during the speech was not very encouraging but the speaker(in my opinion) was excellent. Well worth the 20 mins.
Didn't realise each windmill had 2.5 tonnes of neodymium in them. At $100/kg, more valuable than copper. Let's hope the 'free market' recyclers currently stealing cables and street furniture don't get wind of this.
I suspect that the complete magnets are 2.5t, rather than that being the neodymium content. Doesn't really affect the argument, but I suspect they would be very hard to steal - get them near your van and they'd drag you the rest of the way!
Philip - thanks for posting the link. Soame's speech was actually mainstream news here a few days before the London media cottoned on to it. (BBC Scotland staff nearly all card carrying members of the Labour party, so they take any chance they can to attack the SNP led government, which is strongly pushing the renewables agenda). That said few really understood what Soames was saying, for example I heard Kaye Adams (a BBC Radio Scotland presenter) say that from what she read of the speech, she thought Soames was arguing that as there was going to be a security of supply issue in 10 years time, we needed to build these wind farms more quickly!
We in Highland Perthshire (well mainly the ASWAG pressure group in Strathbran) managed to stop Vattenfall's hideous Logiealmond wind farm, but SSE got approval for the Griffin and Calliachar schemes, after going to public inquiry. (SNH and the RSPB should bury their heads in shame). There's already around 300MW of installed capacity from post-war hydro schemes in Perthshire, so we do more than our share of renewables, but the idiots in Edinburgh insisted we should have these wind farms as well, even though we now have an economy disproportionately based on tourism. The latest outrage is a micro 'run of the river' hydro shceme in the Birks of Aberfeldy, which will take up to 70% of the flow out of the burn, ruining the waterfalls (and main visitor attraction in the town) made famous by Robert Burns. For some reason the government agencies (SEPA and SNH) and Perth and Kinross Council thinks this is a good idea, all for a meagre 1MW installed capacity. But for anyone interested in the madness and monumental folly what is now being planned in the west, have a look at what Scottish Power/Iberdrola have in mind: http://www.no-tiree-array.org.uk - a 500 turbine 1800MW scheme only 3km off the west shore of Tiree (off-shore is supposed to be 35km or more). Truly appalling, in terms of the scale, and environmental and financial cost. The proper first Atlantic storm will likely rip these things from the seabed, I hope so anyway. SSE are planning a smaller but similarly daft scheme just off the Kintyre peninsula, which will ruin Machrihanish (and present a serious problem for shipping).
Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant. But locals (and many retired hydro-electic engineers) are at a loss at the stupidity of the environmental agencies and politicians.
And the RSPB keep putting those cheap metal rings on birds legs and wonder why they never see them again :-)
Crap joke I know, don't work cos they use non mag rings etc, well, what do you expect?
Aussies insufferable about cricket, an army of brass monkeys outside looking for welders, no chance they have all gone off to uni doing media studies and everybody with a Euro holding out a bowl?
Then you are given further conformation that the Huhneatic is to continue to make an unmitigated mess of our energy future and you relax, knowing that there is at least some consistency in life.
I am mystified on why permanent magnets are necessary at all.
No need for rare earths
No Need for gear boxes
No need to synchronise rotors to grid frequency:
Enercon (as used by Ecotricity)
http://www.enercon.de/p/downloads/EN_Eng_TandS_0710.pdf
as stolen by the US
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-09/wind-power-giant-gives-gearless-turbines-boost#comment-42481
Shale gas is very difficult to assess from my POV. We have data from the exploiters indicating it's the best energy supply since light crude to their shareholders - and we have data from locals, living in proximity to fracking operations all over the US, with evidence the ground water aquifer is contaminated with some pretty horrendous pollution.
The UKs aquifers are mainly chalk, cover most of the SW up to the midlands (same as the shale deposits), seems an awful lot of people rely on that water, which can take centuries to move through it. We know fracking contaminates aquifers in the local of the fracking operation (60-100 miles was exampled) logically it seems a hand full of fracking operations contaminating the aquifer could wipe out the UKs water reserve in as little as 2 years. Who knows what will happen in centuries to come as possibly contaminated water makes it's way out of the aquifer?
The debate was politicised before the technology arrived, how on earth are we to sift the wheat from the chaff researching this issue?
Freeze, get poisoned slowly, die of thirst, or leave the problem in the ground for a few hundred years?
I'd rather they didn't bother, but then I don't need it.
James P is right and I misled in my numbers there. According to Tim Worstall, it is one tonne of magnet per megawatt, the magnet being NdFeB. Anybody know the exact ratios of the three?
The important alloy is Nd2Fe14B (where the figures are subscripts.)
Based on atomic masses of:
Nd = 144.24
Fe = 55.85
B = 10.81
I make this about 27% by mass of Nd in the alloy or 2/3 tonne per 2.5 tonne magnet. Or close to 270 kg per megawatt based on the figures in Matt's comment.
This assumes the magnet is only the alloy above. In reality they would have to be coated to prevent corrosion and they might incorporate other materials in the actual fabrication.
In addition, the Nd magnets are available in different grades which appear to be slightly different %ages of Nd.
(I am not an expert on these things but I am a former industrial chemist.)
@ thefordprefect
The only thing missing is a steady, nationwide, unidirectional 15m/second windflow.
Then this otherwise marginal technology might be worth the energy invested in manufacturing and installing it.
Oh, and Enercon turbines consume electricity as well as (occasionally) generating it. They don't need rare earths because they use an electromagnet which can be throttled by varying the current fed into it.
TFP mentions Ecotricity. That will be one of the biggest subsidy-farming enterprises in the UK. The endless stream of hypocritical cant spouted by its founder would make a stone sick.
Alan Bates: Thanks very much, that's helpful. Matt
Alan Bates mentions the issue of coating the neodymium magnet to prevent corrosion.
As far as offshore wind is concerned, after extreme wind and wave energy pulses from bad weather, the endless gnawing of seawater at every component has to be the central maintenance issue over time.
Anyone hear with rig/maritime experience will know the absolute truth of this.
The implications for ongoing maintenance costs are frightening. As I understand it, the only way to service the larger offshore turbines is to land engineers on top by helicopter.
This can only be accomplished during clear, calm conditions with a good forecast.
Alarm bells, anyone?
Fun to see the Texan (complete with hat) on the news last night explaining that his wind farms were a purely commercial enterprise and nothing to do with saving the planet.
There certainly seemed to be plenty of wind, unlike here, where we have the regular combination of high pressure, freezing temperatures and completely still air!
BBD - I wouldn't want to fly a helicopter anywhere near those things!
BTW I posted a link to Soames' speech on an earlier thread, but if you would rather read than watch, the full transcript is here:
http://www.aggreko.com/media-centre/press-releases/speech-to-scottish-parliament.aspx
James P - I missed that. I presume you are talking about dear old T. Boone (rich) Pickens?
And no, I wouldn't fancy flying a helicopter down into an offshore array either.
There used to be lots of very, very good pilots around in the 80s when North Sea oil was a big deal. Mostly retired or moved on now.
BBD - T. Boone Pickens did feature, and he didn't come across as any shade of green!
I share your respect of the N.Sea pilots. I only flew offshore once, to the West Sole platform, in a howling gale. Whatever they were paid, it wasn't enough.
Re BBD
I found a diagram for the base construction after mentions of foundation problems for the Vattenfall windfarm here
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/wind_farm_foundations#incoming-122951
which shows a boat landing and internal access inside the columns at the end of the PDF. Which would still be rather hazardous to transfer in heavy weather. Not sure what internal or external hoists are fitted and presumably replacing anything large or heavy like blades, gearboxes, generator components etc would need a crane barge or skycrane and good weather.
There was also the environmental problems you mentioned for both onshore and offshore, partly addressed by fitting aircon inside the nacelles, reducing efficiency and draining power when the wind isn't blowing.
Don't get carried away with the Nd argument. Before high BH product permanent magnets you had powered rotor magnets from slip rings. Two US companies are producing high temperature superconducting oxide magnetic rotor systems cooled by liquid hydrogen.
It's not the deal breaker. That is the dependence on natural gas for the standby plant. 50% of that chemical energy will be lost in the steam condensers of the CCGT systems.
Far better to have that same gas used for CHP either microturbine or domestic fuel cells. You can add wind and PV to such systems but the key is constant output from the fuel cell.
"...with radioactive thorium as a waste product..."
Why is thorium the waste product, not the neodynium? Thorium is far more useful in supplying energy.
The reason I suspect is the decades-old lies of the KGB-funded pressure groups, spreading anti-nuclear panic to aid the USSR. Nuclear energy has such bad press, so unfairly, that it is impossible to even mention it without certain people panicking and condemning the very suggestion. The watermelons of the environmental movement place more emphasis on socialist lies than environmental reality.
@ Atomic Hairdryer
Thanks for the link and the info. As you say, it doesn't really do much to inspire confidence in a quick fix maintenance program...
@ Alexander
I have ranted elsewhere at length about the backup problem. Thanks for bringing it in here and with such sharp attention to specifics. I'm a quiet believer in CHP as having a bigger role than Big Wind in real climate/energy policy solutions down the line.
But we shall see. First the windies are going to have to fail, spectacularly, and cost us all many, many billions in the process.
Re the maintenance, Denmark has found it needs to replace windies at about 14 years on average. Costly on land; how tricky offshore?
Mike A
Oh, nothing a few billion won't fix...
"high temperature superconducting oxide magnetic rotor systems cooled by liquid hydrogen"
And how much energy does that require? For the record, 'high temperature' in that context means 'not quite as close to absolute zero as used to be the case', i.e. above 30K, so still quite tricky to maintain.
The real problem with Nd in the long term is not security of supply. You can get it from monazite which has widespread occurrence and contains a lot of it in e.g. beach sands. Price and availability is another issue. China controls the market. The price has tripled in the past year and there have been threats of restrictions on exports.