I like #fission #boiler #steam #power but if you start putting blocks of #solar panels down and connecting them to substations you can do it in many places and in sequence, and each 1000 kW you do is another 300 kWh per day. Add a #battery here and there, and you spread that through the whole day.
Fission takes a #decade, or perhaps 5 years (or 30) before a turbine spins a generator, and yes, all day and a GW but power next #winter is highly valuable.
And #wind, onshore...
@Photo55 Actual build is about 5 years. Permitting for a nuke is about another five years if past performance gives us any clues.
And then, of course, you and your kids and your kids' kids out to the 1000th cursed generation gets to try to avoid being sickened and killed by the waste.
_And_ any money spent on that can't be spent on solar, wind, batteries which are, as you point out, useful right now.
@quixote yes. The French made a major effort in the 1950s and built "50 in a decade" which does point out that you can do the stages in sequence, an idea behind the small modular reactor _stories_.
The one in Somerset, on a site already used for two, has had about a 25 year run up, but now has tops on both boilers, and another couple or 5 years should see it generating.
I think we probably need a reactor or several in 20 years, so we had best build them, but meanwhile a MWp/week will help.
@quixote Now building walls for lagoons or a single dam and locks across the Severn estuary would produce a metric shitload of power, but be a very big project very expensive and take a long time.
But it might plug in to the connection at Hinckley Point about when the nearly built fission boiler has run its life ;)
Same argument there - build a lagoon and you get some power,. Build another and double it, carry on and after 50 years you've had a lot of energy out of it.
@Photo55 You seem to be leaving environmental destruction out of your scenarios.
Nukes: basically eternal lethal pollution. Lagoons and dams: localized destruction, but it's still destruction.
And -- main point -- none of it is necessary.
We can get more than enough energy with solar, wind, batteries, some tidal power.
And we can get it cheaper and faster.
Nuclear is just a distraction. Its main financial backing at this point comes from fossil fuel companies who know it takes so long before you get anything from it, it guarantees a few extra years for oil.
@quixote I've stood on the Rance Estuary barrage and been very impressed. It looks improved to me, by the tidal power system.
But there are few suitable sites in the world.
The Korean one uses a natural lagoon.
The Severn Estuary has a large tidal range, but damming the whole thing seems excessive, so make circular dams (also allows alternating for continuous extraction)
The Pentland Firth I've crossed, and there's a lot of ocean current energy there, more useful than tide.
MidgePhoto
quixote