Why not? You've got abundant wind and solar. Once installed, even if for some reason you can't get new turbines or panels, you'll still have a decent amount of capacity.
Solar is hit & miss. The only capacity we really have is wind and those are only efficient to those near the sea or in the highlands. England, Scotland, Wales are governed by rain 80% of the year and with the sun we get, household solar rarely breaks even.
Just because we've got, if the government isn't supporting it's pretty much wasted. The renewable farms we do have are mostly funded by private investments firms. Scotland and Wales wants more renewable but the UK government says no.
mate, I dunno what your smoking, but it deffo does. I'm about 50% "paid off" and I had an expensive setup. Installed now the equivalent costs about 50% of what it did.
> Scotland and Wales wants more renewable but the UK government says no.
National grid say "holy shit I need to build more cables" then local people say "ewwww pylons" and shit gets more expensive. There is a bottleneck between england and scotland, which is partially being solved by https://www.nationalgrid.com/the-great-grid-upgrade
The whole boo england, poor scotland/wales thing gets tired super quick. its being solved, is it being solved fast enough? no, but thats because we have a raised a shit generation of empty politicians from across UK and NI. (and the co-dependent pundit class)
> The renewable farms we do have are mostly funded by private investments firms.
Mostly pension funds. but yes, private. However given the high turnover of (useless) polticians, and a civil service that has had all is expertise hollowed out and replaced by consultancy firms, I don't think public funding, without structural reform is a good idea (look at railways for example)
A quick search says the UK produced 18,314 GWh of solar last year. And this was mostly funded by private investment? It seems like for some infrastructure investment, the government is getting long-term renewable power. If the solar isn't making money, why is it growing 30% annually?
What is stupid about nuclear? It's a huge amount of clean, secure energy.
Would your preference be dependence on Russian/US oil natural gas? Would you feel the same if Russia invaded Finland/Baltics and US took over Greenland?
> What is stupid about nuclear? It's a huge amount of clean, secure energy.
It's not the stupidly of the reactor producing. I don't agree with it personally, but hey whatever, it's a thing. The stupidly of it is that we are small island.
Claim what you wish about how safe they are but like anything: errors and malfunctions. Cyber sabotage and all that.
If an reactor were to implode we're eff'd. We don't have landmass to facilitate the output waste in the UK and the waste we do currently produce has to be shipped elsewhere; sold for dark money.
> Would your preference be dependence on Russian/US oil natural gas? Would you feel the same if Russia invaded Finland/Baltics and US took over Greenland?
My preference would be my hand with a gun pointed at my temple and myself pulling the trigger. To dark?
Forgive me, but I don't think you're looking at UK energy policy with a pragmatic and realistic lens. The UK could always make a reactor safer and more secure. If you're dependent on gas, Russia or the US could just shut off the tap.
even accounting for fukushima/chernoble nuclear is between solar and wind in terms of human deaths. And new units are safer than both. EPR went 'just add one more thing' to be more expensive, AP1000 went passive safety way but westinghose imploded and they needed to ask Korea for help
An accident spreading hazardous substances over a large geographical area that are difficult to contain (or waste of this type) is unique to nuclear power; no renewable energy source poses such a threat.
Another problem is the urgency (due to the impacts) combined with the difficulty of modifying power plants as required by "lessons learned," in other words, bug fixes. Modifying or repairing solar panels or wind turbines is easier than working on a reactor and results in a smaller reduction in the plant's output. The effects of this are significant.
The number of victims (and more generally, the health impacts) of nuclear power depends on the method of analysis, which is controversial. This is true for Chernobyl and Fukushima, where the evacuation triggered by the nuclear accident officially caused 2,202 deaths (2019 count), and 2,313 according to the International Nuclear Association.
Even the maximum potential impact of an accident is debated.
The full impact of nuclear power will at best only be known after all dismantling is complete and the last cold waste is disposed of (before this deadline any mishap or stray waste can be costly), in a few thousand years.
renewables are still made from different substances, one of which is copper. One byproduct of copper is extremely toxic- arsenic, and it's spills are not that different in terms of dangers. That's the point. For nuclear at least, over time decay happens, esp for most dangerous isotopes, but for chemical waste - it's forever.
Nuclear still has higher capacity factor than any VRE.
Evacuation numbers for Fukushima are accounted in the stat. But it's also worth mentioning Japanese govt acknowledged most of the deaths are caused by extreme evacuation measures that werent needed, but govt ignored the data it had to enforce them. The panic against nuclear caused them, not radiation.
Arsenic: this only plays during mining (recycling is OK), and efficient measures are already in place (where and when was it a problem, and at which extent?)
> capacity factor
So what? Capacity factor (or another similar quantity such as physical efficiency, operating life, etc.) is a salient criterion in the case of equipment consuming materials or fuel without recycling them, or producing waste in quantity or in the long term that is dangerous... therefore does not concern nuclear power but hardly concerns renewables.
A low yield makes deployment more expensive but, considered alone, is not prohibitive: a mix of renewables producing adequately (quantity, permanence, impacts, total cost including recycling, etc.) is a good solution whatever its yield.
> most of the deaths are caused by extreme evacuation measures that werent needed
This is disputed and the real amplitude of the threat was not known during the nuclear accident. The tiny evacuation ordered was minimally cautious as experts predicted, during the accident, that the worst cast would imply evacuating up to 50 millions persons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoto_Kan#In_media
There are some very recent arsenic spills events in copper mines...
Nuclear fuel can be recycled, just like renewables. It's mostly not done because it's cheaper not to, just like in renewables
The danger was known based on multiple data points. Japanese govt ignored them. And they acknowledged evacuation was not necessary in the way it was implemented
Capacity factor is important to understand how much firming you need
Indeed, but nothing comparable to the spills at Chernobyl or Fukushima.
> Nuclear fuel can be recycled
Only once, and France, an industrial leader in this area, only manages to recycle 10% of its reactor fuel this way.
> It's mostly not done because it's cheaper not to, just like in renewables
No, that's completely false. Closing the fuel cycle was considered the Holy Grail as early as the 1950s, because everyone knew that uranium deposits would greatly limit the expansion of nuclear power. The industrialization of reactors of the most promising architecture (fast neutron-breeders, sodium-cooled) as well as others, attempted at great length and expense in many countries, failed everywhere ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Notable_reacto... ), there is no ready-to-deploy model of such reactor, and this approach has been virtually abandoned, replaced by the pursuit of fusion.
> The danger was known based on multiple data points
Before the major nuclear accident at Fukushima, the formulas for calculating seismic risk (the tsunami was triggered by an earthquake) were incorrect because they neglected very old earthquakes. The cause was an inability to properly assess the risk. This inability was not universal, as some (for example, Y. Hirai in the case of the Onagawa nuclear power plant, which was closer to the earthquake's epicenter and withstood the earthquake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#20...) did take the necessary precautions.
> They acknowledged evacuation was not necessary in the way it was implemented.
Arms-chair tacticians are verbose after the fact, but nowhere to be found when the problem was an ongoing challenge and experts described the worst-case scenario. The testimony of the prime minister at the time, referenced above, is perfectly clear.
> Capacity factor is important to understand how much firming you need.
No value is prohibitive, as there are many other pertinent parameters.
