Gagaryn The only arguments I have ever seen for no power generation mix and that all power should come from nuclear is from you! The idea of baseload generation coming from large power plants is already outdated - future production will be distributed as we are already starting to see - whether that is onsite solar, wind farm or SMR.
Tidal has historically been very expensive but that shouldn’t be a surprise as it it is relatively new and still small scale. But costs are already falling - by over 40% in the last five years and are now comparable with nuclear.
I have never made an argument for no generation mix?
I do however feel that windfarms and solar are not ideal goals to pursue and work out much more expensive than people realise. Much of that cost is hidden and will come over the lifetime of the systems, which are relatively ineffective.
I wouldn’t be opposed to a mix of some Tidal and mainly Nuclear. The problem with Tidal:
- It’s still intermittent
- Varies in it’s capacity daily
- damages the environment
- limited number of suitable and cost effective sites in the UK
- Long build cost
Energy production needs to be very reliable, not intermittent. I also believe we need to stop burning fossil fuels as a world objective, not because of climate change, but because it is literally liquid gold. Hugely wasteful to use it up creating energy, when it is so valuable for other things. Sadly, the world will continue to use oil and gas until there is none left. Nothing on earth can stop this….fortunately the amount of fossil fuels is finite and I firmly believe the world will not end due to climate reasons if we burn it all up….Once it’s gone of course…the world might end for reasons completely unrelated to climate, as countries compete for ever diminishing resources.
Nuclear is expensive in the UK, only because we have not invested national effort into doing it right and keep wanting to pay the French and Chinese to do what we should be doing.!, whilst lining the pockets of other worldwide billion dollar companies (oil, gas, renewable etc.). Meanwhile people wait for fusion thinking we will have it in 20 or so years, another cruel joke, which the scientists perpetrate, because it’s good for business and jobs (their jobs). Progress reports and information from that “industry” are deliberately deceptive.
P.S. The problem with intermittency is we then need power that comes on stream rapidly (fossil fuels). If we have just bypassed a Nuclear power stations steam turbines, then what’s the point. There are reactors proposed by the EU (who want to dictate this), having manoeuvrability, the ability to ramp up and down. This significantly increases their cost, reduces efficiency and is still selling us a crock. I read the scientific papers on these reactors and basically they are only 40% reducible in power until 20 or so % of the fuel is used up, then you have to run them at 100% (Xenon problem again)..
