The Anonymous Widower

The Severn Barrage

It is being reported that the government is abandoning the building of the electricity-generating barrage of the River Severn between Cardiff and Weston-super-Mare.

Years ago, I did a job for Frederick Snow and Partners and at the time, they were proposing a bold barrage of the river to generate up to 10% if the UK’s energy needs. When the barrage was being discussed a couple of years ago, I had a letter published in The Times about the scheme.

Sir, The proposal shown in your paper today is timid. We have an energy crisis, an energy storage crisis, a landfill crisis and an airport crisis in this country and I believe that if we use the resource of the River Severn properly, we can help to solve all of them. A proper solution would also mitigate the problems of flooding in the Severn Valley.

I have knowledge of the proposals put forward by Frederick Snow in the 1960s. He felt that a central spine with a high and a low lake would be the best solution. Turbines would run between the lakes and could provide power when required, but they would also be capable of pumping water back to store energy. In these days of wind turbines relying on winds that don’t always blow, this would be a sensible way of storing the energy from wind power and releasing it as required.

Snow proposed putting energy-based industries such as chlorine and hydrogen production on the spine — but his major proposal was to site a very large airport on it. Could it with proper engineering be built on landfill? After all, it does face in the direction of the prevailing winds and it would be several kilometres from any centre of population, so noise pollution would be reduced to a minimum. As Brunel designed the Great Western to be virtually straight for high-speed running, trains à la TGV could do the journey to London in well under an hour. We either dither or we formulate a bold vision of which Brunel would have been proud.

I suspect that by cancelling we may only be delaying a scheme that will eventually go ahead.  As time passes Snow’s scheme for a central spine and airport will become more not less economical.

1. The need to store energy from wind turbines and nuclear power stations will become more important.
2. The high-speed railway to Bristol and Wales will have been electrified.  Also, a properly designed barrage will give another rail route to Wales from London.
3. A higher percentage of the flights out of the UK, will go to the west. as those to the east will be more likely to be replaced by trains through the Channel Tunnel.  This will mean that an airport in the Bristol Channel will cut carbon emissions by a few percent, due to the shorter journey to the American continent.

October 17, 2010 Posted by AnonW | News, World | Energy, Global Warming/Zero-Carbon, Severn Barrage | 10 Comments