So we're going to invest £700 million in nuclear power, how many such plants could we have built with the £37 Billion we gave Dido Harding?
We could have planned 53, but permissions, inquiries, protests, appeals, rising costs and programme delays as well as getting the French to let us have their plant design would have reduced this to one plant delivered in 2035…Sizewell D
Aye. I'm no fan of nuclear power anyway but imagine how many North Sea wind farms and power storage facilities could have been bought with £37 Billion?
We need to start generating our own energy by whatever means which may sadly have to include nuclear.
Insulation programmes, possible loans for solar power, with batteries to people taking them up and more onshore & offshore wind, but we need to invest in storage and some of that is R&D. The sun doesn't shine every day, but when it doesn't the wind is usually blowing a gale. Nuclear will take years & years to get results & will be far more costly. It really is a no brainer. (The Tories turned down the new nuclear plant in Angelsey years ago). Then we have no one with the country's interest at heart running for leader. Basically the country has been run into the ground. We have had no long term planning for us being energy dependant since we shut the pits & started importing coal from Poland. I'd like to thank Thatcher for that personally, if I could dig her up.
We have had this discussion in the 80s,90s and 00s. The consensus and agreement of the public and politicians was that it was a bad idea. Why? Because of Nuclear waste,where will it be stored? It takes a 1000years before it becomes safer. It is being sold as environmentally friendly and carbon neutral by Johnson. How much is Johnson being paid by these people. The next Prime minister should get rid of these ridiculous targets, electric cars which are unenvironmental.
Quite right John. On the subject of power storage, my eldest son did his Chemistry PhD at Lancaster researching flow cells. They have been used for decades at power stations as a buffer to even out demand, they are the size of a house and work by pumping a mixture of chemicals through a cell with a voltage applied. The result is a different mixture of chemicals which can be stored until power is needed. At that point the cell works in reverse, converting the mixture back to the original and producing electrical energy. These things operate using water based mixtures similar to battery acid. My son was working on using organic chemicals in desktop sized cells to do the same job more efficiently.
As I posted earlier, I'm no fan of nuclear (for the reasons you state) and would prefer to spend the £37 Billion on renewables and insulation. If only we could get it back....
A lot of good comments here. We have to also consider that our network isnt capable of simply adding more and more supply. As stated we have not invested enough and now its time to play catch up we might be too late. the introduction of say Solar and Wind to supply side and EV etc to demand side means there are many things needed to stabilise and manage harmonics and make our grid ready.
I talk a lot of crap at times, but I've said for years we have not tried to keep sustainable energy / water / steel & it is only now that the sell offs by the Tories are showing we have nothing. What the **** does Brexit mean if we are in hock to Russia & Saudi? What it means is that is what they wanted. Can we tar & feather Farage now?
As someone who works for EDF and has worked a sizewell B and every other nuclear site throughout the UK keep em coming!! We need to produce more of our own power we have lost 2 nukes in the last 5 years both dungeness and hunterston have gone, heysham 1 is constantly being extended and heysham 2 we need more nukes building.
As someone who worked in the nuclear industry, we allowed our undoubted expertise in the nuclear industry to wither away after Sizewell B. This has left us at the mercy of the French and the Chinese to provide the latest technology. So far we have the following accidents after 70 years of nuclear generation: Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fujiyama and the current issue with a Nuclear Power Station in the middle of a war zone giving uncle Vlad another bargaining chip. I am not sure that Nuclear is the answer. It cannot help us in our current energy crisis. At best Sizewell C is not going to be commissioned for at least 15 years.
In regards to insulation, I understand that many old houses have major thermal energy retention issues…. …but on the flip side, I’m lucky enough to have a modern house with a good energy efficiency rating and the problem in all seriousness is that’s it’s too hot. Now I know that I won’t warrant nor require any sympathy on this, but I genuinely spend a lot of my summer thinking about installing permanent air con’ to replace the 20 year old mobile unit we regularly use…. the honest point being, that too much insulation will also create huge energy usage too in the future…. all in all, a very fine line, as anyone who has spent a long period of summer time in an office with air con and a colleague mix of both genders will readily testify to….
If it's hot outside and you have a very well insulated home, all you need to do is keep your doors and windows shut and draw the curtains where the sun shines in. They've been doing it for centuries in Spain....
