UK Gov to invest in SMR's

[Joeboy]

Forget to say 320,000 = 876 units per 24 hr period (not to be sniffed at)

Gus, if there were Archimedes screw hydro project to invest in I'd be in there. Such a low tech, low maintenance non impacting way to do business.

[AE-NMidlands]

This would have been a good one: Teddington Weir. Should have been being built now.
http://www.hamhydro.org/
Unfortunately the NIMBYs in the (ex BP?) Country club adjacent got it squashed by going to Judicial Review to get the planning permission overturned.
Big weir = lots of noise anyway. Shipping channel and lock = semi-industrial setting. I can't believe it didn't get through.
A

[Joeboy]

This would have been a good one: Teddington Weir. Should have been being built now.
http://www.hamhydro.org/
Unfortunately the NIMBYs in the (ex BP?) Country club adjacent got it squashed by going to Judicial Review to get the planning permission overturned.
Big weir = lots of noise anyway. Shipping channel and lock = semi-industrial setting. I can't believe it didn't get through.
A

That is very sad. I hope we can eventually have an Archimedes screw club here too. Why not eh? Just gotta find the project to invest in. I think it's this year that Kinlochbervie start paying a return on the Hydroturbine. I tried to get an update on build progress but heard nothing back....

[AE-NMidlands]

That is very sad. I hope we can eventually have an Archimedes screw club here too. Why not eh? Just gotta find the project to invest in. I think it's this year that Kinlochbervie start paying a return on the Hydroturbine. I tried to get an update on build progress but heard nothing back....

I occasionally look at this page https://www.triodoscrowdfunding.co.uk/investments but the energy offers are usually fully subscribed before I see them! I think lots of people now recognise that they are pretty reliable. They have even arranged funding for a hydro less than 5 miles from where I live... How come I never knew about that? (Perhaps it was kept low-key to avoid alerting the NIMBYs!)
A

[Mart]

Mart,
there's no shortage of money should the GOVT really commit to combatting the climate emergency, and your argument works well enough only assuming we can build enough RE plant without the NIMBIES holding it up for years. I think the GOVT assume (probably correctly) that building far fewer big plants is easier than many thousands scattered about the country.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... key-report

TBH it's moot in any case, I've been having these discussions for 40 years now, 1981 I joined friends of the Earth, back then it was inconceivable that we would be in this state ever. COP26 looks like it will be a cop out so nukes, turnips, hydro is all just irrelevant noise

Desp

If there really is no shortage of money, as you suggest, then I refer you back to my post and suggest that additional money is spent on RE and storage instead of additional nuclear, and you will get more generation, sooner, and thus displacing FF emissions long before the 'new' nuclear does, or doesn't arrive.

If more money then becomes available, rinse and repeat. In fact, probably worth looking at the learning curve/Wright's Law for RE and storage, as costs continue to fall as deployments rise, so more deployments lead to cheaper deployments, leading to more deployments and so on. Nuclear is quite an interesting subject when it comes to learning curves, as its costs have risen as we've become aware of the complexity of preventing mistakes and having to spend more in order to reduce the complexity of decommissioning. The UK's NDA (Nuclear Decommissioning Authority) has a budget of ~£3bn pa, most of which is for decommissioning and will run for ~120yrs. And we still don't know what to do with the waste. All of these factors have pushed up the cost of nuclear, whilst the argument for new nuclear is always that it will be much cheaper.

I don't accept the NIMBY argument, RE is far more popular and acceptable than nuclear, and can be deployed in a fraction of the time. Approx 35% of UK leccy has been displaced now by new RE in the last ~10yrs, whilst the ~7% from HPC is still a long way away. Had the CfD contract gone to RE instead of HPC in 2015, then we'd already have that generation displacing FF emissions today. Personally I couldn't disagree more with the assumption that building a small number of large nuclear plants is easier than many thousands of RE plants scattered about the country (and sea), and reality appears to disagree strongly too.

Effectively, investing monies in nuclear now, will do harm, v's putting that money into RE and storage.

The problem is too big, and too serious to make it worse by wasting time and money on inferior options.

[Joeboy]

That is very sad. I hope we can eventually have an Archimedes screw club here too. Why not eh? Just gotta find the project to invest in. I think it's this year that Kinlochbervie start paying a return on the Hydroturbine. I tried to get an update on build progress but heard nothing back....

I occasionally look at this page https://www.triodoscrowdfunding.co.uk/investments but the energy offers are usually fully subscribed before I see them! I think lots of people now recognise that they are pretty reliable. They have even arranged funding for a hydro less than 5 miles from where I live... How come I never knew about that? (Perhaps it was kept low-key to avoid alerting the NIMBYs!)
A

Nice one, thank you AE. Much appreciated. I've signed up.