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Grant Shapps earmarks £20bn for new fleet of nuclear reactors in UK
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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There's currently no green alternative to baseload power.
Wind is great when it blows, solar is great when it's not night, hydro is great when you need a quick boost to cope with people turning the kettle on at half-time.
Not investing in nuclear faster has arguably been a disaster for the environment. Whilst it has the risks that come with nuclear reactors, it has an extremely low carbon footprint. The amount of CO2 that has been produced due to our reliance on fossil fuels that could have been prevented with nuclear power is absolutely huge.
"Environmentalists" that oppose nuclear power are shooting themselves in the foot.
Would you trust a UK privately-owned firm to run anything nuclear, bearing in mind the failing way that other utilities have been maintained for the last 20+ years.
Power stations under democratic control might be one thing, but allowing systems of privatised control of utilities is only a recipe for disaster, isn’t it? Like giving a lunatic access to your drawer full of knives and askkng him to chop something for dinner.
There are quite a few nuclear power stations operated by private companies without incident around the world already.
I think the bigger concern is construction costs spiralling out of control and landing on the taxpayer.
Storage. It is possible. Cheaper and safer. Safe potential, and chemical energy. It is even more realistic with current and future power grids.
Solar and wind energy never needed terms like nuclear semiotics. Safe technologies don't need those terms.
Storage is a great idea but it's still an establishing technology, the best storage we have so far is pumped storage like at Cruachan dam.
Until storage is established and available to implement we need something to bridge the gap.