Unthreaded
Tomo
Yes LFTR seems the best option to me. I am at a loss to know why it is not being developed with more urgency. I think small scale nuclear has potential.
Ross Lea
SandyS@7:36 AM
good riposte!
I'd add that EM perhaps could improve himself a bit by reading Gulliver's Travels (again?).
It is a continuing source of exasperation to me personally that higher efficiency in the use of fossil fuels (say CHP) and thermal solar (Ground Source Heat) and far better buildings get trivial play while windmills and photovoltaics litter the landscape, damage existing infrastructure and suck subsidy for little real benefit beyond their status as totemic follies - talk about "virtue signalling"!
Some variety of nuclear is the sensible way ahead - presently LFTR looks like an option that only really requires engineering rather than the "research" we see going on in fusion. I'd like to think Lockheed Skunkworks might crack fusion - but that's been too quiet for too long.... .
tomo
Well worth a read. Why Europe is to blame for the UK's acute energy policy failures.
Phillip Bratby
Alan Kendall. You seem to be a pessimist who doesn't believe in human ingenuity to obtain fossil fuels at affordable costs in the future.
The insurmountable problems with renewables (excepting hydro) are energy density and reliability. Nothing can be done about the former and it also impacts on getting round the latter by means of energy storage.
Phillip Bratby
"Load factor calculated by Re-newable Energy UK"
I rest my case.
Roger Tolson
Entropic Man
Unlike most people alive today I grew up without ANY mains services including electricity, water, sewage, gas public transport and refuse collection. The only concession to modern living was from about 1962 a party telephone line. This was the situation at home for my mother until the very late 1990s when she moved to sheltered accommodation after an aggravated burglary , although by that time refuse was collected and the phone was no longer a party line. I do not regard my lifestyle as anything but an improvement.
You should try living without living without all the modern convenience that you have for a few years before preaching to anyone else
As it happens I think that until somebody comes up with a better method of storing several weeks worth of energy than damning every valley in Scotland , Wales and the Lake District then renewables are a blind alley.
Thank You.
SandyS
Phillip Bratby. Where is your evidence that we have fossil fuel resources, which can be converted to reserves, that will last for "hundreds of years"? Resources yes, but not at affordable costs or with appropriate energy gain can they become reserves. Once costs rise above a certain point, renewables are more viable.
I believe current fusion systems require lithium of which resources and reserves are limited.
Alan kendall
EM Writes "Sometime you or your descendants will have to learn to live with renewables". Where is the evidence for that? There are enough fossil fuels to last hundreds of years and enough nuclear fuels to last thousands of years. They will provide reliable energy. Who knows what technologies will be available in a hundred years? Hopefully our descendants will be using fusion technology and renewables will be something to be laughed at in the museums.
Phillip Bratby
Idau, thank you! Will the US Navy use it for bigger ships?
golf charlie
@Ross Lea
LFTR not being developed?
That has to do with the present fission business model - which to use an example most people are familiar with - it's the ink jet printer cartridge of scam of heavy engineering (fuel reprocessing) .... banks have a bit to do with it too - just look at the utter bilge being spewed about green energy by the banks....