OT: Solar power - reality check

Perhaps you need to find some better politicians, then as those of all colours have been avoiding nuclear power for many years. Wonder why that would be?

And just how quickly do you think nuclear power stations could be built?

The approval/planning/build period is so long, they're unlikely to still be around to claim the credit?

The answer is simple. far more money to be made far faster by massively subsidised 'renewables' that take a decade to show people they wont actually work... and you score greenie points for it too.

Why buck the trend? people have been blasted with propaganda that renewables are the coming thing, so why not make a fortune out of giving them to them?

The vast majority of Blair's Britain not only can't do sums even with their right brains engaged and certainly can't count beyond ten without taking their socks off. Only when they can't afford to pay the electricity bills do they start to change their voting habits.

Blair told them they were f****ng wonderful and could all go to Uni and be brilliant, and they liked it so much they have believed what leftycunt politicians have been telling them ever since.

It will not end well.

It's free energy, not reliable energy, which is why you're getting it for $0.03.

As long as you have sufficient redundancy in the supply basket, you can accept a small percentage of it.

Even nukes need redundancy and more units than needed. We always seem to have a couple offline being rebuilt/refurbed.

You would think the hydro generating facilities would be ultimately reliable. But in the last few months, an American generating facility went offline because there wasn't enough water to run it. It is possible to lose those.

Paul

Rocketing prices might just concentrate the mind, as it did in France in

It is all about will, really. We built Calder Hall in the early 50's in just over three years. While the basic physics was reasonably well established from the American water-cooled and UK air-cooled Pu breeding piles, there was a *lot* of novel engineering in building plant to run in carbon dioxide at 10 bar and 350 deg C, and generating steam to run turbo-alternators. And we built eight of them quickly.

The other thing that comes out of SMRs is a decent amount of high tech jobs in all branches of engineering, including control / instrumentation / IT. Maybe the red wall would vote for it.

I also suspect that the Chinese might get their Hualong 1 into a reasonably "rapid rollout" form but I guess they won't be coming here for a while.

Americans have two or three small reactors - Natrium and Nuscale spring to mind - on the drawing board.

Canada has something as well.

No need for China...

I'm just saying, in the long term I could see China being a major provider to a lot of developing countries. And doing what Japan did to the western-dominated motor trade.

Quite. And to think we once were once world leaders in nuclear power. Now we can't even build windmills.

The somerset levels were awash at one point. Seems the wave came in at place called Hinkley. Oops.

We can't build our own nuclear power stations because your mate Gord flogged Westinghouse and all its IP to Toshiba, who then went bust.