But you didn't mention fracking in the UK. We're free of any EU restrictions, but how quickly could it be developed for home and export markets, to mitigate some of these crippling energy costs?
And we're just 6 years away from the silver-bullet, low carbom SMR, GE Hitachi's BWRX-300:
And 7 years away from the our own Rolls-Royce SMR Ltd's UK SMR, with it's prospect of a booming manufacturing industry (at 19:50 2 per year and easy to scale to higher levels) and the UK back at the nuclear power top table:
HI Colin, fracking in the UK is an interesting one - for it to work you need three things (1) the right geology, this is probable but not proven I think in the UK, (2) a huge scale service-industry to give the needed economies of scale (maybe less of an issue with gas at E500/MWh) and (3) land-royalty issues (land owners getting royalties tends to help mitigate opposition to operations) Also the UK is rather more densely populated than west Texas. But given the extreme emergency that could happen if cold weather encourages Putin to turn off the taps, then the whole debate could turn. My guess is that given the drivel that is still put out about wind and solar being cheaper, politicians would bend to the green lobbies and do more renewables before imposing fracking.
As for SMRs, I wrote an article for the CGAI last year - just noting that even before the current crisis, the military had identified SMRs as a necessary alternative to long (and exposed) fuel convey lines in modern warfare... so with that kind of backing I can see these coming to market - although am a bit dubious about the time frame. Hope for everyone's sake you are right!
But you didn't mention fracking in the UK. We're free of any EU restrictions, but how quickly could it be developed for home and export markets, to mitigate some of these crippling energy costs?
And we're just 6 years away from the silver-bullet, low carbom SMR, GE Hitachi's BWRX-300:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1032713003519847
And 7 years away from the our own Rolls-Royce SMR Ltd's UK SMR, with it's prospect of a booming manufacturing industry (at 19:50 2 per year and easy to scale to higher levels) and the UK back at the nuclear power top table:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkP3LeKbPJs
HI Colin, fracking in the UK is an interesting one - for it to work you need three things (1) the right geology, this is probable but not proven I think in the UK, (2) a huge scale service-industry to give the needed economies of scale (maybe less of an issue with gas at E500/MWh) and (3) land-royalty issues (land owners getting royalties tends to help mitigate opposition to operations) Also the UK is rather more densely populated than west Texas. But given the extreme emergency that could happen if cold weather encourages Putin to turn off the taps, then the whole debate could turn. My guess is that given the drivel that is still put out about wind and solar being cheaper, politicians would bend to the green lobbies and do more renewables before imposing fracking.
As for SMRs, I wrote an article for the CGAI last year - just noting that even before the current crisis, the military had identified SMRs as a necessary alternative to long (and exposed) fuel convey lines in modern warfare... so with that kind of backing I can see these coming to market - although am a bit dubious about the time frame. Hope for everyone's sake you are right!