Getting to net zero by 2030 is cloud cuckoo land. Building lots more wind turbines and solar farms will not help. If the wind is not blowing or the sun shining, you do not get any power, no matter how many turbines we have.
We have always been looking to fusion as the answer to our prayers, but while tiny steps towards it are being taken, for the last 70 years it has always been 20 years away, and still remains so.
The only alternatie is to build more nuclear power stations, not the huge behemoths of yesterday, but small package units like those supplied www.rolls-royce.com/investors/capital-markets-day/small-modular-reactors.aspx
I am well aware of all the concerns about nuclear power, but when you look at the damage clinate chanage is causing to the world. The wild fires in California with 12,000 houses destroyed, the floods in Europe and all over the world. The devastating effects of hurricaanes and sea height rises on small island nations. The world's average temperature has already risen by over 1.5 degrees, considered breaking point. The downsides of nuclear power pale into insignificance.
Fusion will come, and solve most of the world's energy problems, but our current refusal to install nuclear fission power station seems to me to be the equivalent to someone bleeding to death refusing a blood donation because there is a 1% chance the blood might be contaminated,
One of my nephews has a ground source heat pump with underfloor heating and it works well - but it’s a brand new highly insulated house with plenty of space. Running cost aren’t especially cheap, it’s a spacious 4 bed detached, if it was an older house it would cost a lot more.
M0nica
Barleyfields
Once the room is up to temperature it switches off, so the floor isn’t permanently warm. I have lived with it for about 12 years now throughout the whole house and have never found the floor uncomfortably warm.
The floor was never uncomfortably warm. Everyone else with us was quite happy with it, and I did not find the temperature uncomfortable, but, while I do not like cold feet, I do not like my feet to be too warm and I kept wanting a nice cold tile (the floors were tiled) for the pleasure of the coolness on my warm feet.
The fact that everyone else was happy with it means it was just you! I am always perfectly comfortable with our underfloor heating. The house is not very old, very well insulated and we have an air source heat pump.
Barleyfields
I couldn’t agree more, but try telling Milliband that.
What do you think of Trump leaving the Paris Agreement and vowing to drill dozens of new oil sites Monica.. truly he is only thinking of America
Barleyfield I always made it quite clear that I was talking about my response to underfloor heating and whyI would not want it in any house I lived in. I ponted out that other people with me were happy with the system.
We do not all have to be the same, and on this subject my views are diffeent to others and I am quite comfortable with that.
That is why we need nuclear power. Unfortunately our Tory and Labour government failed to build nuclear stations for years, probably because CND and Greeneace gzve nuclear a bad name and because there are few scientists in senior political roles. We do of course buy nuclear generated eectricity from France which did not hesitate to build several nuclear stations.
Grantanow
That is why we need nuclear power. Unfortunately our Tory and Labour government failed to build nuclear stations for years, probably because CND and Greeneace gzve nuclear a bad name and because there are few scientists in senior political roles. We do of course buy nuclear generated eectricity from France which did not hesitate to build several nuclear stations.
Couldn't agree more. i was on the Local Liaison Committee of a local power station for nearly 20 years, so I have been monitoring the day to day variation of the sources of our power and it has been only too clear from the start of wind/solar power could never be relied on to provide what is known as base power.
Weather systems seem to always engulf all the British Isles, if the wind isn't blowing in Scotland, it is generally not blowing anywhere else so production drops drastically. That classic winter weather, clear skies, bright sunlight and freezing cold temperatures is accomanied by no wind.
As for battery storage, well we have seen how small high storage batteries can explode. it started with some telephone batteries, but we hear of exploding batteries in bikes and cars and when batteries do explode the ensuing fire is very difficult to extinguish. Imagine a huge power storage battery holding 500MW of power exploding or catching fire!
More needs to be done to develop water power, there were plans for a necklace of lagoons down the South Wales coast, starting with the Severn barrage, all fell victim to government expenditure cuts. The money spent on HS2, Osborne and cameron's vanity project, would have easily funded this work - and it would have provided 20% of our power. That and nuclear. As James Loverock pointed out, nuclear power is the safest form of generation when you look at the deathrate per power source.
There isn’t an energy source without a downside, nuclear has been neglected for far too long, alongside Solar and Wind we could get close to all green energy and meet our targets but decisions have to be made now.
Laughs in Quebec winter...
Try a -35 C plus a wind chill factor of -10 while our hydro is supplying 90% of our electricity and wind power is 4% of the rest .
There are ways to maximise green power if the will is there.
Oh and Quebec isn't the leader in Canadian green power.
Ilovecheese
We need to find better ways of storing energy.
If we want nuclear power we should put our money where our mouth is and build them ourselves, not pay for a foreign company to build them, who will then rip us off for generations to come.
Yes, that would be ideal. However, back in the 90s, when the then government decided the UKAEA was no longer needed the highly skilled scientists, technical staff and design engineers lost their jobs. Nuclear engineering courses were no longer in demand and as a result we no longer have the skills and experience in this country. Hence we have had to look abroad.
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