OT: Underground utilities

What would Reform's expertise bring to the mix? SMRs already have regulatory approval.

Or do you mean nuclear beyond the 25% planned - even up to 100% demand?

Take your pick. Although to match Isambard would be a bit if a stretch.

Step 3 is still ongoing for RR; Holtec and GE Hitachi are further back

I’m a bit of a heretic when it comes to Brunel and his Hero status. Yes he did some wonderful feats of engineering but he also made some mistakes usually at great cost causing the misery of being a bankrupt in the 19th century for many who backed him and lost their money he had spent profusely. EG his Great Eastern Ship, choosing the broad gauge for the GWR costing it thousands as it had to convert later . The Steam Locos he specified for the GWR were awful failures and soon replaced by Stephenson based designs. The Atmospheric Railway wasn’t his invention, he bought it in. and observed an installation in Dublin before proceeding even though the London and Greenwich install was already showing problems so more money wasted. The Dublin installation actually ran for over 10 years but it was quite short.

GH

I thought RR had approval:

That's another one of the steps/approvals ticked off; still some left. Then there are the site approvals for Wylfa, not expected until 2030.

Thank you. I couldn't be arsed...

Although a patriotic part of me wants it to be RR, really I couldn't give a damn in terms of the grid. It needs nuclear. Any damned nuclear. It all works well enough.

Anyone who had money to invest, and more than a few brain cells, would have known to only put a portion of their capital into such 'cutting edge' ventures. High risk, high reward. The 19th century was chock full of cutting edge ventures.

Betamax vs. VHS. It's easy to see in retrospect which version won out, but (like his broad gauge) the technically superior design lost out.

The Steam Locos he

As you said, he just laid down a broad specification and left others to do the design and build. I agree that the results were not a success.

The Atmospheric Railway wasn’t his invention, he bought it

True.

And therein lies one of the aspects of intertia. Regulatory approval is one thing. And maybe Reform has a way to get through that in a wise way.

The other is that this is untried technology. I'd have thought it has to be up and running for a good few years before anyone's going to invest in it. The government may well underwrite a large part of one, for proof of concept. But the dozens that are needed if/when Reform start to dismantle renewables?

If SMRs work at scale it'll be many years before they become mainstream - 2050 I'd say as a baseload backbone. Longer if there's a bonfire of renewables.

And if SMRs are your horizon and you're certain of the economics, politics, and production, do you really want to use fossil fuels between now and then? Well, good luck with that.

There are already reports coming out by the UK atomic energy regulatory people

Which is what sparked this thread,

It is hardly new technology.

Once one goes in and works the factory wont be able to keep up.

A data centres sized reacor for a couple of bilion?

There isn't anything else we CAN use.

Overhead Kv lines are like testicles. They don't like it hot.

In both cases waving them about in free air helps to keep them cool(er).

Also, underground Kv cables need to be cooled by pumping oil through them with all the attendant risks of leakages.

Underground water pipes are self-cooling, should they actually need it, which they don't.

If some of that was explained in the refusals, it might help. It's not, it's just: "It's more expensive", with no explanation.

"Keep them in the dark and occasionally throw some s*it on them".

I suspect most people would be astonished by the amount of electricity that is lost during transmission (RFI + heat) over the length of the UK.

Compare this with the amount of gas that leaks out over a similar distance. If the rate of gas leakage was on a par with electricity losses it would presumably be a national emergency.

This would be a strong argument for a highly distributed generation capacity, be that SMR's or Gas, and less reliance on long distance power lines.

Exactly. Generation in Scotland for consumption in London is essentially useless

Oh, and undergriund cables do not need water cooling - at least 11kV ones

But the 400Kv ones do ....

"XLPE cable ======== Due to advances in cable technology, XLPE is now being used in preference to the use of fluid filled cable"

In South Devon there is an old Brunel pumping station at Starcross. Inside there was (perhaps still is - I haven't been there for years) a display of exactly how the atmospheric railway worked and what went wrong at the time, and it was possible to have a short ride on a vacuum operated railway on a trolley powered by a domestic cylinder vacuum cleaner.

I visited there once, but I don't remember any rides being offered. It would have been some time in the 90s, probably.

The locomotives designed by Gooch were a success. 5 hours from Exeter to Paddington in the 1840s was a really noteworthy achievement, so much so that it got announced in Parliament. The only trouble was that Gooch designed for the broad gauge, so the useful life of the locomotives never got established.

Again, the broad gauge was better for passenger safety than the standard gauge we ended up with. In all the reports and pictures in the days of the broad gauge, not one of the broad gauge railway disasters ended up with the broad gauge trains other than on its wheels, even if the wheels were nowhere near the rails. Unlike the standard gauge where most of the accidents at that time had the engine (at least) on its side.

Brunel's design for a hospital in the Crimea was also very successful. In fact when the Government wanted to build additional hospitals for the forecast wounded in WW2, it was Brunel's design that was used for the extra UK hospitals.