Do we need nuclear or Brian Wilson? Nope!

Bob Lamont and Mills James on yesterday’s Sizewell C announcement

millsjames1949

With estimates of (up to ) £40 billion as the ( building ) cost of this one Nuclear Station ( with several Small Nuclear stations to follow ) plus the higher cost of electricity to the consumers to access this power …imagine using this money for :

a) proper insulation of existing housing stock to reduce energy consumption

b) installing solar panels in existing housing stock to offset energy use from the Grid

c) installing heat pumps in existing housing stock to reduce energy consumption ….

I know , I know , the Nuclear Lobby hasn’t been supporting Labour for them to go and do something more sensible and cost effective which would severely damage Nuclear profits !

Over to you , Brian Wilson !

Bob – You’re on the right track…

a) The last national campaign over energy conservation was in the 1950s/60s, when nuclear was being touted as so cheap to produce ‘it wasn’t worth billing for’, and government guidance on a nuclear blast was to whitewash the windows and duck the family behind a handy unscrewed door…. For the cost of Hinkley C they could insulate every home in the country and shave >70% off their bills.

b) There are multiple ways to skin the solar/battery cat, look to Oz for lessons on how to do it right, community/substation batteries…. You may also find this podcast interesting https://youtu.be/dOoRRMblD, not something likely to trumpeted by politicians with shares…

c) It doesn’t reduce your energy consumption by itself, it relies on a) to make it possible, but even those on storage heaters would only benefit after tearing the place up to fit hydronics.

The ‘energy market’ and HMG are the problem – SE England have been skirting on rolling blackouts for decades, only saved by all those interconnects feeding southern England from the continent – Their problem now is the ‘exporters’ are throttling transfer to protect their own transition – Hence HMG’s sudden interest in clearing bottlenecks in the grid and HVDC cables and transfer stations being built like crazy.

Scotland could stand alone quite comfortably with some judicious insulation and draughtproofing measures, but energy is ‘reserved’ to the SE England script writers…

Do we need nuclear or Brian Wilson ? Nope.

7 thoughts on “Do we need nuclear or Brian Wilson? Nope!”

  1. The UK government needs plutonium for its nuclear bombs so it needs nuclear plants capable of supplying plutonium. That’s the simplest reason for funding the nuclear industry.

    Don’t forget Salter’s Duck, or the Edinburgh Duck (because the research was carried out at Edinburgh University).

    in 1982 the Wave Energy programme was shut down, ending the hope of Salter’s duck becoming a mainstay in the alternative energy campaign. 

    After later investigation, it was discovered that the Energy Technology Support Unit’s cost determinations had mis-estimated the cost of building Salter’s duck by more than double the actual cost. The Energy Technology Support Unit was set up in 1974 as an agency on behalf of the Department of Energy; though its function was to manage research programmes on renewable energy and energy conservation, it was operated by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.

    Cost considerations based on the findings were among the main factors in the ducks not being put into widespread production under the Wave Energy programme in the late 1970s.

    The other major factor was that a consulting firm tasked with distributing government grants passed over the 9.5 million pounds that had been allocated to Salter’s research and the improvement of Salter’s duck, so the funds were never actually granted to Salter and his group. From this revelation and with the increase in research into alternative energy in the 2000s, Salter’s duck has begun to be used as a part of wave energy research in the United Kingdom

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salter%27s_duck

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      1. Not able to like your comment because WordPress keeps logging me out. But I agree. I once met a student working on his research and it was sabotaged IMO in favour of the nuclear industry. A great loss to us in Scotland in so many ways.

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          1. No I haven’t because I don’t use my mobile for reading blogs. The screen is a bit small. But I will have a look and see if I can use that.

            I read Wee Ginger Dug on WordPress and there I am permanently logged in so can comment without having to log in again. But on WGD I don’t have a “like” button and can’t see how to get one though other people are able to like my comments.

            Here on TuS I have to log in every time even though I tick the box which says to log me in permanently. I do have a “like” button on TuS but it only works on the main article and not on comments.

            Someday when I have several hours to spare I will go through WordPress support and see if I can resolve these anomalies!

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            1. There is a version of “Jetpack for WordPress” which works on the iPad, maybe there’s a Windows version but I haven’t checked

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  2. As adjunct to this nonsense campaign by the State of a Secretary for Greggs and HMS James Cook over SMRs – Look at the projected power output figures if one is ever actually built and works, where the ‘energy security’ fuel is coming from the ultra stable Russia – IIRC 6 wind turbines match the power output of a single SMR – That’s why China is whacking wind turbines and solar arrays week by week and have already overtaken Scotland’s entire (UKok) green power capacity…

    As Ian Murray spits out flakes from his latest Greggs steak bake calling it policy, trying to convince Scots, Irish, Welsh and frankly most of England that everyone else is responsible for the south of England’s energy dilemma (made in Westminster), perhaps a crocodile tear might be shed, or a Razzie presented.

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