Yes folks, its cheaper to heat with electricity!

Since when has te Severn Estuary been on the East cost, or in Holland?

Only marginally, and every little doesn't help, when the titanic is sinking and all you have us teaspoons to bail it with.

No you could not.

Do the sums.

I am not sure that given the size of it, that would represent a much greater saving in costs.

Would still probably have to be a fat DC cable.

Its a good idea though.

No, there isn;t. Ther are upwards of 150 nuclear plants operating around eeh world today, and ther is no other Severn Barrage, nor indeed IIRC anything remotely like it, which will be a complete one-off.

If some unforeseen factor doesn't limit it..like weed encrustation, algae infestation, fatigue cracks in the turbines, etc etc etc.

Fuel costs are so small for a nuclear plant that even a 100 fold increase would barely make a difference.

I doubt it.

They would run the reactors to teh end of their service life.

whereas windmills, being unprofitable from the word go, would be left to rot as monuments to man's folly.

Not at all. I see it as risky cost benefit wiose, and a solution that barely nmtees a couple of percent of te problem, and is applicable in only a few places n our ciosatline.

Why BOTHER doing special projects at uncertain costs when standard solutions at totally predictable costs already exists? which can be sited where the power is needed?

Unless projected costs come out at less than 300 quid a kilowatt, its sunk anyway. No sane financier is going to invest in unproven, untried and totally new technology against vociferous opposition, with less than a 3:1 upside potential.

Google-fu gives us: "For a tidal power plant to produce electricity effectively (about 85% efficiency), it requires a basin or a gulf that has a mean tidal amplitude (the differences between spring and neap tide) of 7 meters or above." Roger Henri Charlier, Tidal Energy (Toronto: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1982) p. 191

That seems in line with modern hydro which is in the 80-90% range.

The message from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

snip

Since when has the location of an extreme tidal event disqualified it as a classic example of an extreme tidal event?

False analogy.

There are an awful lot of tidal inlets round the cost. Costwise it might not be economic to dam them all for tidal power but if push came to shove there probably is enough. However barrages are not the only way to skin this particular cat. Someone is bound to come up with a viable solution soon that uses floating power stations which rely on their rise and fall in the tide to generate their power.

The message from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

Take off your blinkers. The barrage is a low tech project on a par with quays and breakwaters the world over and nothing like as complex as something like the Three Gorges dam. Likewise hydro-electric projects are run of the mill and extremely low tech compared with a nuclear reactor. The French have been running a barrage scheme successfully for decades. The only thing that sets the Severn Barrage apart from other works is the projected size of the barrage. The individual generators (214 40 MW sets) are comparatively tiny.

Now why would that be? It is all proven technology.

You got any figures for proven reserves of uranium? If there is not enough to go round no price may be high enough to get adequate supplies.

Limited life and no new commissions. Other methods may have a longer working life and could still attract further commissions. No one but no one will order a fission powered generator set once fusion power is available.

On what grounds do you deduce that installed wind turbines would fall out of use immediately or even not continue to be ordered for remote locations? The marginal cost of continuing to use installed wind capacity is low.

Lb to a pinch of salt the Severn Barrage would come in closer to budget than any nuclear power plant.

Nothing "untried and totally new technology" about tidal power.

Actually, the largest contribution to the load rise is sewage pumping stations, due to the amount of toilet flushing.

The largest load spike we've ever had was at the end of the coverage of Diana's funeral. After a number of hours with no commercial breaks, pretty much the whole country went and had a crap at the same moment, and put the kettle on... A lot of advanced planning went in to handling that load spike.

I think our gas turbines are a little more efficient than that, but they were all dirt cheap low-efficiency ones, because gas was dirt cheap at the time.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Plowman (News)" saying something like:

I don't give a s*it.

How does it differ from the Rance tidal power scheme?

In article , Doctor Drivel scribeth thus

And Shrewsbury being some 100 miles or thereabouts away from the Severn estuary etc...

In message , Doctor Drivel writes

over some 100 miles through mature riverbed through established waterways ?

You really don't have a clue, do you ?

Well if you can supply 19kg plutonium and 5kg c4 I can diy a hydrogen bomb. ;-)

A nation vomits...?

I was sleeping off a hangover that day, so missed it all :-)

Stop the flow at one end and it restricts flow at the other, no matter how far back. What Maxie is saying is that far too much water was entering Shrewsbury - when too little was actually leaving.

Maxie, I have great clue and I believe them. Not my view as I am just the messenger.

Maxie, how is the Paddy band going? Diddly-dee, diddly-dee....

I went to a no wedding pub and it was packed with proper people. Fabulous time.

THey won't be significantly better than that for a basic gas turbine. With the waste exhaust heat utilised for boiling water to help drive steam turbines may up it a just a little.

In message , Doctor Drivel writes

You simply just don't understand the local geography

Between Shrewsbury and Ironbridge for example, there's a huge flood plain which ... floods

What happens 100 miles downstream is irrelevant