Interesting gamble the government is taking here. Unusually the environmentalists are right to be cautious, SMRs have been designed since the 90s and not a one of them has ever come to anything.
Also not completely sure why we’d need it. By the governments own plans we can expect our wind power to jump from 10gw to 50gw by 2035, which would mean being 100% renewable powered for months at a time.
Which will make it very very expensive, the research I’ve seen recently says nations that manage that transition can expect electric price falls of a quarter to a half, and that Hinckley plant is already going to be selling at over twice the unit price of any other source. I would expect SMR plans to collapse for that reason by itself.
The rest of the world are about to go all in on geothermal and we’re just about to start going in on the stop-gap solution. I wish Starmer had more imagination, we could be world leaders in geothermal and that would generate revenue for decades.
If we are talking mononuclear renewables, I understand that the UK is in an enviable position regarding wind, being one of, if not, the windiest nations in Europe. If I haven’t misremembered maybe we should prioritise wind generation. Leave geothermal to places like Iceland, or maybe the nations around the Pacific Rim.
So on both points:
Recent studies have shown that the intermitency of wind and solar means countries with a high reliance on it are especially prone to gas price shocks, that issue dissapears if the country has a good amount of nuclear or hydroelectric in the mix.Regarding geothermal the UK, particularly parts of Scotland, are actually rather suited to more modern types of geothermal with a lot of hot dense rock at depths we previously couldn’t drill too but are now much more able to.
that issue dissapears if the country has a good amount of nuclear or hydroelectric in the mix.
It also disappears if we have copious energy storage.
Yes but one of those exists and the other is still a work in progress. May as well use what’s good rather than sitting around waiting for what’s perfect, we can always switch to perfect when it arrives.
