
Dame Sue Ion, former chair of the UK Nuclear Innovation Research Advisory Board
nominative determinism if ever I saw it.
UK business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg has proposed building the UK’s first nuclear fusion power plant in a center of industrial decline. His government has selected the site of West Burton power station in Nottinghamshire to house Britain's first Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) prototype fusion energy plant, to …
Why are you trying to create a distraction from that lying hypocrite's deceitful behaviour?
JRM told us all that UK business/trade would be be better once we'd left the EU. Ripping up its pesky red tape would supposedly bring about an economic boom. But that's not true for his business. Which has been moved to Ireland so it can benefit from being in the single market and do business with the EU/EEA. Because he can't do that from Little England.
@AC
"Why are you trying to create a distraction from that lying hypocrite's deceitful behaviour?"
Your replying to the wrong comment, I didnt make the statement.
"JRM told us all that UK business/trade would be be better once we'd left the EU."
Did he? Individually, in aggregate, immediately?
"But that's not true for his business. Which has been moved to Ireland"
That was the question, did he move the business? My understanding was the business didnt move, only the fund which moved to the market that the fund was in (an EU fund) which by EU law required the fund to be based there? Which would be following the legal requirements as could be applied by other countries?
You're still trying (and failing) to create a distraction from that lying hypocrite JRM's deceitful behaviour.
The earlier comment was in response to your nonsense that JRM's hypocrisy and deceit about his business was nothing more than paperwork trivia. It isn't and wasn't. He would have had no need for an EU presence at all if Brexit was the bowl of cherries he claimed it would be. Which is of course a lie. His own actions prove that.
@AC
"You're still trying (and failing) to create a distraction from that lying hypocrite JRM's deceitful behaviour."
My reply to Charlie Clark was an honest question as there are known lies put out about the exact behaviour I asked about but I wanted to check there wasnt a further revelation. It is strange you would have an issue with that.
"He would have had no need for an EU presence at all if Brexit was the bowl of cherries he claimed it would be."
That is why the question matters. If he moved his business then you might maybe have a point. If it was a fund that was moved then no, he is following the law as is around the world.
@Ken G
"You're making an arbitrary distinction because it's the fund management company, not the funds, which are regulated. To operate an EU fund needs an EU company."
So did the company move? Or was a fund set up in the EU so there is an office opened in the EU for that fund. It is not the company moving. This isnt an arbitrary distinction, its a completely different and entirely apples to oranges comparison.
@AC
"Jacob Ress-Mogg's probity is a curious hill to die on, codejunky..."
It is interesting that trying to get to the facts instead of validating a lie that was perpetuated years ago is considered dying on a hill. Does that mean there is no new information and so the original claim is the lie that was perpetuated? Or are you going to contribute something useful to the conversation?
OK, I'll bite.
Somerset Capital Management LLP did not move. Somerset Capital Group set up a completely new and completely separate company in Dublin and the funds previously administered by Somerset Capital Management were moved to that new company.
I might say I'm moving house but what I really mean is that I'm buying a new house and moving my things to it. Sloppy phrasing.
@Ken G
"Somerset Capital Management LLP did not move. Somerset Capital Group set up a completely new and completely separate company in Dublin and the funds previously administered by Somerset Capital Management were moved to that new company."
The EU funds moved to the EU jurisdiction you mean?
"I might say I'm moving house but what I really mean is that I'm buying a new house and moving my things to it. Sloppy phrasing."
Except this would be more like you are buying your kids a property in a country the kids want to be in. You're not moving.
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@Ian Johnston
"What do you see as the difference between "so that he can continue seamless trading with the EU" and "complying with the regulations for an EU fund"?"
That is not the question. Did he move the company or the fund? The company would be the whole shebang. The fund would be the fund itself which legally must exist in the EU jurisdiction but still part of the company not moved.
Is that what they're calling it now? A cruel euphemism.
"We've designated your town a Centre for Industrial Decline."
"WTF - you've closed all the factories and mines, and made everyone unemployed."
"As I said, we've designated your town a Centre for Industrial Decline."
Its their reward for being 'moderate'. If you're of a certain age you'll remember how the miners were split between the Bolshie crew 'up north' (with a few outliers in Kent) and the nice, moderate, sorts in Notts and Derbyshire. They all ended up out of work, anyway, because for a time it was far cheaper to import strip mined coal from Australia (and Poland, I believe) than employ locals. Coal, of course, fell out of fashion (except in Germany) and so the former coal power station at Drax burns wood pellets which we're assured are renewable (they're imported and some at least come from real trees, not wood byproducts, but we don't want to talk about it).
So the heartland gets a boondoggle / a bit of pork. It probably won't make much of an impact on area employment.
>And when will The Register return to spelling words correctly (i.e. not American)?
We (Americans) own your spell checkers so you get to spell like us. Sorry. You can switch the dictionary to "UK English" but most people don't seem to bother (same with the keyboards). Take consolation from it nowhere near being as bad as the Spaniards have it -- Castilian (Spanish) Spanish is truly a minority language, its known about but not taught in the Americas and its practically unintelligible to many supposedly Spanish speakers.
Their next trick will to be to bollocks up the date formatting so we're left struggling with the US-only backwards date format and struggle to work out whether we are looking at, for example 10th June or 6th November.
Luckily they appear to be mostly sticking to day number and month name, which while not immediately translatable to non-English, or non-American, languages, is quite easily interpretable by them and is quite reasonable given that the articles tend to be in English, except when they are in American of course.
While I love the concept of fusion reactors, the unfortunate reality is that they are not nearly as clean and simple as the sci-fi hype would have people believe. The shielding and other components need to be regularly replaced and the state of this shielding is typically rather dangerous by the time it comes out. These components are not cheap and often not overly safe to dispose of and that's before the fuel is taken into account. Therefore the operation of a nuclear fusion plant will almost certainly have to include very regular periods of down time for maintenance.
The units were internationalized after WWII, which had drawn attention to things like the microscopically different 'inch'.
Then the UK chose to go with the European system rather than the internationalized system they had agreed with the USA -- which was a trade decision, not some kind of fantasy about the 'superiority' of metrification.
As a result of the internationalisation, neither the UK nor the USA use a 'customary' or the 'imperial' system.
Nope. If any company (Tory donor or not) could have built a viable fusion reactor by now, they'd have done it by now. But rather than take the risk of investing their own money, it's more rewarding and far easier for business to get their snouts embedded deep in the trough of taxpayer money earmarked for fusion research.
Within 5 years would be ITER; which is a really big engineering experiment from 35 nations aiming to deliver first plasma in December 2025.
And yes, had we have put £10 billion a year into fusion and fission development instead of subsidies for wind turbines then we might not have energy prices that are 8 times what they were a few years back.
But complaining at the government is pointless; complain at the people who missold wind turbines to the public as a workable solution.
And yes, had we have put £10 billion a year into fusion and fission development instead of subsidies for wind turbines then we might not have energy prices that are 8 times what they were a few years back.
The problem isn't wind turbines, it's the government's asinine decision to create a "market" for energy that ties the cost to the cost of the most expensive producer, so we pay the same for wind power as we do for the most expensive form, which is currently gas, at a large multiple of the price of wind.
@Loyal Commenter
"The problem isn't wind turbines"
Using unreliables made us dependent on gas electricity generation which has shot up in price.
"so we pay the same for wind power as we do for the most expensive form, which is currently gas, at a large multiple of the price of wind."
Which was more expensive before the war?
So tired of seeing your false argument perpetuated. Less windmills = burning more gas = higher prices.
The real failing, if you want to identify it, was the collapse of the CEGB in the late 70's and early 80's at the hands of the Conservatives. Nuclear was readily available then, and could have been done in bulk by a government that actually had an ounce of long term planning or interest in the fate of mere minions.
Sizewell B was meant to be the prototype of half a dozen new stations. We got 1. And then sweet FA for best part of 30 years since then.
We've also burned through the North Sea faster than we would have needed to had we built a metric fuckton of Nukes in the 80's.
Secondary failings are market mechanisms designed to favour large producers over consumers, but that is standard tory ethos and would apply irrespective of the technology being used to generate.
@Binraider
"So tired of seeing your false argument perpetuated. Less windmills = burning more gas = higher prices."
Your argument doesnt follow. Why would less windmills = burning more gas? We rely so much on gas generation because of unreliable power generation. We have and are mothballing power plants that work and replacing them with monuments to a sky god that require the availability of gas generation (run inefficiently!) to provide the power we need.
Less windmills = burning less gas = lower prices. You might not like the argument but its true.
"Nuclear"
Just condensing the whole thing about nuclear here, I too have no issues with nuclear and where we could have had a load of power plants we got greenies protesting it. Labour talked about making some and backed down, Clegg didnt want one built (coalition days) because it would take until 2022 to come online. Etc. Only recently has nukes become more of a possibility as green madness leaves us short of energy production and reality always wins.
Less windmills = burning more gas = higher prices.
Not sure what windmills have got to do with it.
FYI, a "windmill" is a mill powered by wind. A mill is something that mills grain. I am not sure how many of them we have round the UK - possibly dozens. Didn't Jonathan Creek live in one?
We need to give wind turbines the same level of subsidy that we give to oil companies and make subsidies for both contingent on them building more wind turbines!
Y'know, I think you're right. Of course, whoever has been in power since Blair could have changed that...
One of the biggest problems I had with the Blair government was the fact that they stored up a lot of problems for the future (read now) by picking some very neoliberal* market ideas for funding things, such as the PPP funding of hospitals and so on, where a large part of their budget now goes to payments to private finance, whereas it would have been much more cost-effective to borrow and build using the public purse, costing a lot less to the taxpayer in the long run. Blair (and Brown) were far too right-of-centre when it came to some of the economic stuff, and this is one example of that. I think possibly that partly came from a need to please a certain portion of the voting public, in order to get the sensible policies through. To be fair, he made a massive error with the warmongering as well. I never liked him at the time, but in hindsight, every single one we've had since has been progressively worse. And that includes Brown, because he had all the charisma of a block of wood.
It was Thatcher who privatised the energy industry (that was her main way of subsidising the rich, by flogging off the family silver). The idiot Truss and her quasi-chancellor think that will work again now, when we've got nothing left to flog off...
*No that word doesn't mean what you think it does.
I don't think you mean Purchasing Power Parity, I think you mean Private Finance Initiative.
PFI is a great idea if used properly.
If used as intended if shifts risk from the government to the private sector. In exchange, the private sector gets a modest profit.
Everybody wins - government gets their new hospital or whatever on budget without risk over overspend, and the private company that successfully delivered gets to profit.
However Gordon Brown's wheeze was to use PFI as a method to borrow without it showing up on the books because PFI contracts don't count as government debt.
( Your privatisation rant is bollocks by the way ).
No, that would be Thatcher and Major; at the privatisation of the networks in the late 80's and early 90's.
However, pointing fingers doesn't fix things. Pointing fingers at solutions, does.
I don't see the current incumbents giving any solutions apart from borrowing money and devaluing the currency to pay extortionate rates.
@Binraider
"I don't see the current incumbents giving any solutions apart from borrowing money and devaluing the currency to pay extortionate rates."
Truss has just been slammed for proposing changes to known problems through known solutions and has been slammed for it! Agree with her or not she actually proposed to promote growth. A huge break from the orthodoxy that got us here.
No, that would be Thatcher and Major; at the privatisation of the networks in the late 80's and early 90's.
No, they created the "pool" system, which had its own problems, but it was Blair and Brown who changed that to the current "everyone is paid at the rate of the highest bid" scheme to promote the uptake of renewables, apparently without thinking about the future situation when renewables had become cheap and gas expensive.
@Peter2
Why so negative regarding wind power.
Of what these countries produce of electricity right now, this minute that was.
Denmark gets 91%
Sweden 40%
Finland 27%
Norway 21%
All countries export electricity right now but Finland.
https://www.svk.se/en/national-grid/the-control-room/
As fot ITER, yes that is a huge project but I doubt anybody there would like to guarantee that they will deliver first plasma in December 2025.
One can hope though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCpWPJrH7TA
ITER: The $65BN Power Plant of the Future
@Peter2Why so negative regarding wind power.
Because I looked at the actual situation, rather than the PR.
Wind is massively unreliable. The nominally installed 25.5GW worth of capacity has never generated that amount even in a once in a 40 year storm. The maximum possible output in a gale appears to be around half that, and this is highly intermittent. This requires that all of the wind capacity is "backed up" with gas plants to generate the power when the wind isn't blowing.
As a glance at what wind produces over the last year will show quite quickly, this is a long term strategy to be dependant on fossil fuels (ie gas) and relegates wind turbines to a load reduction measure for the gas plants as a PR measure. It's also stupid; we can clearly see that wind turbines cannot supply enough power for our current needs and even tripling this capacity at a really absurd cost would not change this situation significantly.
Our future path to decarbonisation would be to replace all petrol & diesel powered cars with EV's which would at a rough back of the envelope calculation require us to build triple the existing capacity just to meet that demand, plus about that again if you wanted to deploy heat pumps and electric cookers to replace gas central heating and gas cookers.
This is outright impossible with wind turbines. Therefore, either your supporting remaining with fossil fuels forever, or you should be supporting something else.
In terms of this policy; if we say that the cost of building a nuclear power station of the capacity of Hinkley point is going to be £20 billion, then the cost of building ten of these plants (The combined output of which would exceed 100% of our current generating capacity) would be £200 billion and after completion then we'd have completely ended the use of fossil fuels in the UK for power generation.
Because of the current primary strategy of wind turbines, our government has just been forced into spending £100 billion on subsidising gas and electricity prices to avoid an economic collapse just on customers. They are widely expected to do the same for businesses which will cost another £50 billion. In all likelihood we'll have to do the same thing next year, which will have left us having spent £300 billion while leaving the issues unresolved and having made zero progress towards reducing the amount of fossil fuels that we burn.
And that my friend, is why I, and anybody with any critical thinking ability thinks wind turbines are a stupid idea. They are expensive, and as a strategy they are unworkable.
Wind turbines are generally a good supplemental source of power. Combine enough of these, with, for example tidal power and there can be a lot of electricity generation. Not always at helpful times, nor predictable like tidal power.
What the entire grid is really missing is energy storage, where energy produced at unhelpful times is stored to provide energy for later. With this the likes of wind turbines can be very useful as a supplemental source of power generation. The same goes for solar, which tends to produce very little electricity at night, but any excess can feed into energy storage. When energy storage runs low though is when we need on-demand power generation and this is where non-renewables and nuclear can step in.
The Grid is missing energy storage other than the pumped storage. Here's a simple exercise for you, which I invite anybody reading this to give a go at. Calculate what it would cost to store electricity in batteries in a "on the back of an envelope" fashion just to get a ballpark of the costs.
You can do this by taking a UPS or battery system that can supply one kilowatt for one hour, and then multiplying the cost by a thousand to get to a megawatt hour. You then need to multiply this answer by a thousand to get to a gigawatt hour.
You then have storage for 1 gigawatt, for one hour, excluding costs of land, building a structure something to put them in, connection to the grid, ongoing maintenance required and staff etc etc etc.
Multiply that answer by 24 to store one gigawatt hour for one day. How much does it cost?
Now bear in mind that we often have no wind generation for one or two weeks (look up the history chart on gridwatch), so you'd need to multiply that by 7 to supply 1 gigawatt for one week on batteries. Then multiply that number by the number of gigawatts that you think need to be supplied.
Challenge: show your working. (ie, the UPS unit used as a base, the cost of the UPS and the cost going through) and see if it changes your support for battery storage.
That exercise will demonstrate to anybody with any reasoning ability that storage is an utterly unviable option compared to the cost of primary generation.
While you have a valid point, it is lost in a strawman type argument. Small scale UPS type batteries are not scalable is the answer out of it. However, a distributed scheme where every property has a battery or similar has some benefits, not least should rolling blackouts happen in this country again. Just better hope they don't get caught in a fire or are damaged...
The important point is that energy storage is required, and other technologies are available to store energy, not batteries and not purely electric although the never-ending future promise of super-capacitors are a potential. These are probably on the same timescale as commercial nuclear fusion though.
One practical and already existing example of energy storage in operation is pumped storage hydro electric schemes. For example, Dinorwig Power Station in Wales. Look it up, it's one hell of an impressive system, is much more efficient than you'd probably initially predict and can spin up to generate electricity very rapidly. There are various other options for energy storage, but the key thing is that no one system is perfect nor applicable in every location and every scenario.
Re storage: I was hearing an interesting podcast about new research into enhanced geothermal. Geothermal had always been considered baseload, but apparently you can engineer the right conditions to be able to pump water down the entry pipe while throttling the exit pipe. The exit can then be ramped up pretty quickly (30% capacity per minute)
This effectively turns the geo reservoir into an energy store, and turns a steady-state baseload power station (competing with nuclear or coal) into a fully dispatchable one (that could replace gas)
You're being utterly disingenuous blaming wind for our continual use of Gas and other dead dinosaur products. They've barely been around in volume for enough time to start disrupting the Market.
If renewables weren't now in the mix we'd be burning even more gas and the bailout would need to be even higher.
I also have no problem with Wind and Solar being pegged to Gas - provided those extra profits are ploughed back into more renewable generation.
I also see nothing wrong with the massive over provisioning of renewable power - its now so cheap that most of the supply side issues are amenable a brute forcing solution via volume. Those that aren't require medium sized investments in interconnectors and some more R&D into Storage.
It's a damn sight less polluting that fossils or NuCLEAR. Even the not so nice environmental outputs from Solar fabs are a damn sight safer than fossil and nuclear by-products.
You're being utterly disingenuous blaming wind for our continual use of Gas and other dead dinosaur products. They've barely been around in volume for enough time to start disrupting the Market.If renewables weren't now in the mix we'd be burning even more gas and the bailout would need to be even higher.
The Central Electricity Generating Board plan (when that existed) was summarily to build up nuclear to cover most of the base load generation, and then use gas to cover spikes.
This plan was abandoned in favour of the current green plan of building wind turbines to replace coal and the nuclear capacity reaching end of life after ~50 years, with wind "backed up" by gas. As wind is unreliable, we mostly burn gas as primary generation, and as the rhetoric is that we aren't using as much of it as we actually are we then decommissioned our own gas production and bought increasing amounts from abroad hence the current gas prices.
I think you'll find that your either being utterly misinformed, or utterly disingenuous. We'd have been burning much, much less with ye olde CEGB plan; we've been burning steadily more as nuclear capacity has been replaced with gas and this is factually unarguable.
It's the other way round - when the cost is likely to balloon to multiple times the original blind guess estimate, it's a millstone to hang round the neck of the next government. Either they continue funding it, or they cut the losses, along with the headlines about wasted money and job losses that that will generate. Meanwhile the Rees-Moggs of the world will be off sunning themselves with all the proceeds they have squirrelled away in tax havens, occasionally popping up to badmouth the current government in order to get a speaking gig or to promote their new book which will probably be a thinly reworded load of Ayn Rand's absolute nonsense.
Dame Sue Ion, former chair of the UK Nuclear Innovation Research Advisory Board
"I think there's a difference between confidence that it will work and confidence that it will work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and satisfy an economic environment in which it's got to live. And my answer to that is, I honestly don't know,"
.. She does know, the answer to 24/7 running with any decent level of uptime is zero.
Likelihood of 7 minutes continual NET positive energy generation (never mind 7 days) is very low... I will be massively optimistic and not say zero
Plenty of teams have managed a few seconds of fusion, the difficulty is sustaining long enough bursts to create more power than the (large amount) that was used starting it in the first place, and then the lesser amounts to maintain it
By all means do some research, research is (nearly) always a good thing, but don't pretend you will end up with a viable power plant at the end of it.. but being honest & upfront is not the way of the haunted pencil.
What a pathetic thought process. Why shouldn't the aim of that research to be a model for a viable plant? What would the point be of setting the already proven point that it is possible to generate power from fusion?
"In 1961, President John F. Kennedy began a dramatic expansion of the U.S. space program and committed the nation to the ambitious goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade." - nothing wishy washy with that goal. What would the outcome have been if the goal had just been a more realistic effort to just match the Soviets....
Like me, I suspect you have no real idea if it requires funding levels of $250bn or not.
The one thing I do know is that setting the funding at $250bn would mean that is the minimum that will be spent, regardless of the outcome. As it is, $250m as first stage funding between now and 2024 is more than enough to show intent.
The basic point remains - if you don't set ambitious targets, you don't make the dramatic gains needed.
Why not spend that money on the existing ITER project instead? You also get the pooled expertise from international collaboration, and the economy of scale of having multiple contributors.
It's almost as if that sort of model of international cooperation is anathema to Rees-Mogg and his friends in Tufton Street.
While I wholeheartedly agree that would should collaborate internationally, that can also be seen as putting all your eggs in a single basket.
250M is not a lot to say, what about this way.
I admit, I've not looked into ITER fully but surely looking at multiple ways of doing things is better that trying one and potentially failing.
Fusion isn't the brand new unexplored area a lot of people seem to think it is. There's been a lot of study in the area and using modelling we can be pretty sure we know what will work and want won't. What we're not sure about are those intermediate cases but they would make poor power reactors anyway.
When the design for ITER was drawn up every design they could think of was looked at and the best was chosen. I don't know if the exact geometry of STEP was looked at but I'd put money on them looking at something very similar. The ITER design was selected because it was about the only one that stood a reasonable chance of being net positive in power and was also buildable. The big problem when they were designing ITER was predicting the power of the magnets they would commission. They had to guess because the world had never built magnets that large and powerful before. One of the key goals of the project was to set up a global supply chain for this type of magnet and in this respect it's been wildly successful.
In hindsight we can see they underestimated how powerful magnets would get. If they were designing ITER now they would spec much more powerful magnets and it would definitely be able to achieve a net gain in power output. The increase in magnet strength is why we are seeing an explosion in other reactor designs. Suddenly designs that didn't work or were marginal fall into the category of buildable. The basic rules of plasma physics haven't changed though so the design of ITER is still sound.
Another key issue with fusion power is where we'll get the tritium from for DT fusion. Current it almost all comes from Canadian CANDU reactors but they won't be around forever and they don't produce anywhere near enough to run a commercial fusion reactor. ITER is the only project, AKAIK, that has plans to investigate breeding tritium. There are other possible fusion reactions but none are anywhere near as advanced and all have issues that make them less appealing.
It's not that we shouldn't try other things it's that (many of) the other things look more like a high tech way to move large quantities of money into peoples bank accounts than genuine fusion research.
@Furious Reg reader John
Maybe you did not interpret my comment how they were intended.
I said research is (nearly always) a good think.
But was sceptical the stated outcome would be achieved.
Maybe* its my scientific training but I dislike the way it is is being pimped as we will have a viable fusion power station prototype..I prefer honesty, describe it as what it is - a research project, say that the ideal outcome would be a working 24/7 net positive energy generation prototype .. but emphasise that that outcome is highly unlikely i.e. Don't raise false hopes.
*.. also might be because I'm old enough to have seen what a struggle it has been to reach the few brief minutes of sustained fusion that is currently possible - the upscaling to 24/7 net positive energy output is going to be phenomenally difficult even though fusion research is now doing a lot better than it was decades ago.
Oh dear. Conservative Party Vapourware on Steroids. Is there an annual conference taking place? Are popular polls showing them trailing spectacularly?
Is Jacob fond of an occasional hit to help him feel superhumanly and pull rabbits out of top hats?
As a well known local toff politician, what do you think the chances are of him being able to deliver anything of what he says? Both history and recent form of most all outspoken politicians exercising themselves in the genre are certainly not kind to them and would have more than just a few asking if, before he rendered those few lines, had he partaken of a few, so vast and expensive and experimental is the aspiration.
Why are so many comments ad hominem?
There does seem to be progress in nuclear fusion, as Nature reported only in February this year, JET at Oxford (that will be Joint European BTW) seems to have made some significant achievements.
Would we rather that nothing was done?
That it is a 17 year project is surely to be commended. No one is going to win or lose an election based on their position regarding nuclear fusion. Energy security is a long term problem.
If it creates some jobs in an area with industrial decline that seems OK too. No-one is going to win a seat in Cornwall because some jobs were created in the old industrial heartlands.
Do any of the disparagers have any better ideas?
Always reminds me about the joke to the effect that all the people that should be running the country are too busy cutting hair or driving taxis. (I'm sure that list is extensible)
Regarding your downvote (one at the moment) I wonder if it was because they disagree with your description of the tories or because you were not singing from the hymn sheet of acceptable opinion
Because they are not serious, frequently corrupt people making ridiculous promises that very recent experience tells us they will not even start let along actually complete simply to get column inches in the few newspapers that still happily parrot their lies to their gullible readers.
Well, quite. A large part of the reason for the lack of progress with fusion is that the funding started to badly dry up as early as the mid '60s; I've mentioned before that my father-in-law worked on JET (I still have piles of his design documents for stuff like "ion thrustors" lying around and don't understand any of it) but it was with a decreasingly generous budget and most of his colleagues consequently departed for jobs with better prospects. Not even in the same field, I think a lot of them left nuclear physics to work in the burgeoning computer sector. I think his greatest regret was not doing the same. And the lack of funding was thanks to JRM's chums, in common with the trifling amount he thinks will get things moving again.
gerryg: "Why are so many comments ad hominem?"
Unfortunately Mr Rees-Mogg is rather unpopular, often due to his public pronouncements, and his attitude towards people who disagree with him. His reclining in the House of Commons when 'Leader of the House', for example was seen by many as treating the House with disrespect (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCNwXHaTDik). His boasting that although the father of 6 children he had never changed a nappy (and recently complained that the British worker lacks 'graft') suggests a disrespectful attitude towards less well-off people than himself.
He was also, again as Leader of the House, partly responsible for the unlawful proroguing of parliament by Boris Johnson in an attempt to prevent the debating of anything in the run up to the UK leaving the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_British_prorogation_controversy).
A recent (4th October 2022) article on the front page of the FT was headlined "No10 quashes Rees-Mogg's 'half-baked' work reforms'. It seems that he wanted to remove employment protection from people paid over GBP50,000 a year and various other things bound to alienate the workforce and union members.
@gerryg you make some good points and i am fully in favour of spending money on ambitious projects.
My issue is this being sold as a a answer to energy dependence and a done thing. It is not. No one has any idea whether this will work, whether it is the correct approach and if it does, it will still only be a prototype and a long way from a working production power source.
Yes, lets spend the money, but lets not ride the Mogg hype train (Steam powered of course) and call it what it is. A fusion power plant research project
I read an article in one of the early computer mags (in the 80s, so on paper!) where they were satirically bemoaning (a precursor to El Reg perhaps?) how the software specs will always be in the most inconvenient units possible and casually threw out the example of acceleration in furlongs per square fortnight ...
(approximately 0.137 nm/s^2 in case you wondered)
JRM said the benefits of Brexit would not be seen for 50 years, so 17 years to see a working fusion reactor means that fusion will be achieved well before any Brexit benefits.
https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a22513246/jacob-rees-mogg-claims-we-might-not-see-benefits-of-brexit-for-50-years/
@trevorde
"JRM said the benefits of Brexit would not be seen for 50 years, so 17 years to see a working fusion reactor means that fusion will be achieved well before any Brexit benefits."
It was amazing to see how wrong he was. I doubt he could have foreseen the instant benefits.
@Loyal Commenter
"I suspect your up-votes there are from people who assumed you were being ironic."
You hope. I do want to let you know I am appreciating your other comments on this topic making great arguments for smaller government-
https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/10/05/reesmogg_proposes_site_for_prototype/#c_4542978
https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/10/05/reesmogg_proposes_site_for_prototype/#c_4542971
You may read it that way, but then again, you seem to be wilfully conflating that argument with one for not wasting money. I'm not against spending money on nuclear fusion, I am against wasting it on vanity projects.
Anyway, back to your original comment. Please list those immediate benefits.
I know I've asked you this before, and you've failed to do so every time, but hope does spring eternal.
For reference, opinion pieces from right-wing think-tanks, the opinions of Patrick Minford vs those of every sane economist on the planet, and the blogs of UKIP members don't count as factual evidence.
@Loyal Commenter
"You may read it that way, but then again, you seem to be wilfully conflating that argument with one for not wasting money."
Yup thats the way I read it. A good argument for smaller government so they are not wasting money. In your comments you complain about them putting future governments on the hook for spending-
https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/10/05/reesmogg_proposes_site_for_prototype/#c_4542978
And you complain about them funnelling money to the unproven technology- https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/10/05/reesmogg_proposes_site_for_prototype/#c_4542971
"I'm not against spending money on nuclear fusion, I am against wasting it on vanity projects."
So your assuming this is a vanity project instead of spending money on nuclear fusion, although this is spending money on nuclear fusion but you class it as a vanity project?? How do you tell the difference?
"Anyway, back to your original comment. Please list those immediate benefits.
I know I've asked you this before, and you've failed to do so every time, but hope does spring eternal."
It seems the last time we discussed this was February so maybe thats why your recollection is 'off'.
>The easiest immediate benefit was Covid vaccinations. Unless you believe the UK is somehow better run than every member government and the EU government itself then the speedy vaccination is an immediate win.
>Also we are not paying for the EU covid fund.
>We were much quicker to support Ukraine and are not tainted by EU infighting which is making up for the taint of being in the EU when it caused problems in Ukraine.
How do you tell the difference?
How do you tell the difference between facts and bullshit? I think you may have hit the nail on the head there. It seems that many people can, and some can't. Others may be taken in by it, but come to their senses after a while.
I think the key is probably in spotting the warning signs. Something coming from the mouth of Jacob Rees-Mogg is certainly one of those as far as I am concerned. I'd like to be proven wrong on this occasion, because practical cost-effective nuclear fusion would be a boon for the whole human race, but I'm deeply cynical about this one, sorry. Not just because who is saying it, although that does play a big part of it in this instance, but because of the long and torturous history of nuclear fusion research in general. I can almost guarantee that I know more about the subject than a man who doesn't even have a computer on his work desk, and whose job appears to revolve around leaving sarcastic post-it notes on people's desks. Unlike JRM, I have two degrees in the physical sciences, and have been following the progress of fusion research over the last thirty or so years.
@Loyal Commenter
"Something coming from the mouth of Jacob Rees-Mogg is certainly one of those as far as I am concerned."
So has this come from the mouth of some other figurehead it would have seemed better to you? Still throwing money at the same problem with the same millstone around the next government (as you aptly put it)? Which one would you trust to say it? From any party?
So you didn't read the following sentence that started with the words "not just" which explicitly says the opposite of the words you just tried to put in my mouth?
I've noticed that this is a tendency with your comments; deliberately arguing against what you would have liked me to have said, rather than what I actually write. It belies a deceitful nature, and an inability to honestly answer a question. I'd ask whether you've considered a job in politics, but I fear that you may already have, and that's part of the problem.
@Loyal Commenter
"So you didn't read the following sentence that started with the words "not just" which explicitly says the opposite of the words you just tried to put in my mouth?"
Sorry if I misunderstood your comment when you said-
"Something coming from the mouth of Jacob Rees-Mogg is certainly one of those as far as I am concerned"
"Not just because who is saying it, although that does play a big part of it in this instance"
So while you said not just I also quoted the rest of that line from your own mouth (fingers). Which is why I asked- "So has this come from the mouth of some other figurehead it would have seemed better to you?". Since according to you who says it makes a big part of it (in this instance).
"I've noticed that this is a tendency with your comments; deliberately arguing against what you would have liked me to have said, rather than what I actually write."
I tend to stomp on your comments using your own comments. Sorry if you dont like it but you wrote it. Or do you disown what you write once you submit it? What does that say about your nature and suitability for politics?
If you copy and paste every other sentence from a paragraph, you can radiacally change the meaning conveyed. Whodathunkit?
To sum up what I was actually saying; I don't trust a thing that comes out of JRM's mouth, but even if you put to one side the person who is saying it, what is being said is still deeply suspicious.
Is that succinct enough for you?
For starters, the amount of money being spent, whilst a large number, is orders of magnitude smaller than that being spent on the ITER plant at Cadarache. Admittedly, that is a research plant, but pretending that the research has been done already won't make this thing cheaper, especially when it is based on a different type of reactor to ITER (a spherical tokamak, rather than toroidal, which is not something with the long research track record of toroids).
As I said, I'd like to be proven wrong, but going from the history of both fusion power research and large government development projects, this is almost 100% guaranteed to be a money sink with no result at the end. At least not a working nuclear fusion power plant, demonstrator or otherwise.
@Loyal Commenter
"If you copy and paste every other sentence from a paragraph, you can radiacally change the meaning conveyed. Whodathunkit?"
Exactly which is why when you selectively posted "not just" I posted your entire sentence- "Not just because who is saying it, although that does play a big part of it in this instance". Because your attempt to again change the meaning of your posts can be resolved by quoting your actual post. Whodathunkit?
"To sum up what I was actually saying; I don't trust a thing that comes out of JRM's mouth, but even if you put to one side the person who is saying it, what is being said is still deeply suspicious.
Is that succinct enough for you?"
Sure. I dont care if what you wrote was hyperbole or a dislike of the man/party. I was genuinely asking if there was a single politician of any party you would feel better coming out with this stuff. Somehow this ended up down the rabbit hole of you denying you wrote what was in your comment and complaining I selectively quoted your comment by you selectively quoting your own comment.
> False. Any EU country could have done the same. You're claiming that a member of a cricket club can only buy beer at the club bar.
> Assuming you mean the Covid recovery funding, it's money the UK could have actually received if it had still been an EU member. Though as it's impossible to know whether the UK would have been a net recipient, I'll give you a "possibly" on this one.
> Mostly False. The EU arguments have been about applying sanctions on gas and oil, not the material support of military hardware being provided by the UK, USA and several EU member states. The UK would have been able to provide far more help if still a member of the EU, due to the gas terminal infrastructure and could have been very helpful in the argument. But it's not in that room so can't help Ukraine in that way.
@Richard 12
"> False. Any EU country could have done the same. You're claiming that a member of a cricket club can only buy beer at the club bar."
Actually I did not say anything remotely close to that. Go back and read.
"> Assuming you mean the Covid recovery funding, it's money the UK could have actually received if it had still been an EU member. Though as it's impossible to know whether the UK would have been a net recipient, I'll give you a "possibly" on this one."
Really? You dont know if a net contributor would be one that is a net contributor?
"> Mostly False. The EU arguments have been about applying sanctions on gas and oil, not the material support of military hardware being provided by the UK, USA and several EU member states. The UK would have been able to provide far more help if still a member of the EU, due to the gas terminal infrastructure and could have been very helpful in the argument. But it's not in that room so can't help Ukraine in that way."
Eh? You mention EU member states which of course provide as much or as little assistance as they choose (Germany taking some criticism for backing down on offering tanks and such) but the EU, that is the EU itself was imposing partial bans on Russian oil and gas. I think they finally toughened it eventually. A bit of financial support but the UK response has been firm and reliable.
"I doubt he could have foreseen the instant benefits."
What instant Brexit benefits? {Blue passports don't count - especially when you're in the queues for EU border contriol.} You've still not been able to identify one of these supposed benefits, instant or not. And you always run away in a smokescreen of bullshit and whataboutery whenever you're challenged about this..
Brexit benefits my arse.
FWIW, that one wasn't me posting anonymously (I do so sometimes, but only when I'm posting something that might reveal too much about my identity, or about my personal life).
He did hit the nail on the head though. You might think the evasiveness and argument-switching is clever, but there are plenty of people reading the comments on this forum who are far cleverer than you, and who can see through it like it's not even there.
@Loyal Commenter
"FWIW, that one wasn't me posting anonymously (I do so sometimes, but only when I'm posting something that might reveal too much about my identity, or about my personal life)."
And I appreciate it.
"He did hit the nail on the head though"
By saying bollox. Nothing. A total lie with no ability to support itself. I can see why you two agree.
"You might think the evasiveness and argument-switching is clever, but there are plenty of people reading the comments on this forum who are far cleverer than you, and who can see through it like it's not even there."
I assume you think you are one of the clever ones? I have just had to reply to you pointing out things in your own comment you dont think you said while accusing me of saying things you didnt say. Get yourself straight first then come back.
I'm clever enough to know that there are plenty of people smarter than me here. I'm also clever enough to not pretend or claim to be cleverer than others, as that's just crass, and you do run the risk of falling foul of the Dunning-Kruger effect if you do that.
I'm also more than clever enough to spot bullshit.
But this isn't about me, the original AC's comment was about how your posts lack factual substance, and attempting to switch the argument is exactly an example of that.
@Loyal Commenter
"But this isn't about me, the original AC's comment was about how your posts lack factual substance"
Except the original comment didnt point to any example of a lack of factual substance. So far you havnt either. So apart from agreeing with an unfounded lie from a coward you have done nothing but claim to be smart enough to spot bullshit (seeing the oxymoron?), that your clever enough not to fall foul of the Dunning-Kruger effect (read our conversations please) and have so far on this reply thread said nothing of substance. But it isnt about you!!!
Glad you made that clear
@AC
"Some of us use our actual names in our handles"
Not necessarily smart in the first place. I would recommend a new account with a new handle so your able to hold a thread with someone instead of being a coward.
"Are you looking to dox? Post your actual name up yourself."
Thats a dumb comment. Wanting to be able to associate the comments with the correct user is somehow a problem? Proved by-
"- Another Anon"
Are you? Look like a coward to me, which just so happens to be what I was responding to.
@AC
"Use of real names harks back to friendlier times on here. Perhaps posts such as yours are the reason so many now post FullAnon? Abuse, vitriol and exhibiting stalker/doxxer behavior."
Which anon are you? First, second, third? Ah sod it you cant understand the basics of a conversation (you know you are conversing with the same name) anyone can post as you and even claim to be you. Feel free to remain as coward but as my original response states clearly-
"Stick your username to your posts and we can talk. No fun showing you how wrong you are when you will repeat your garbage under anonymity."
That being to a coward who lied and tried to insult me in their first post. Was that you? Dont cry if I wont hold a conversation with 'the coward', stick a name, any name, I dont care as long as it ensures we can hold an actual conversation.
@Richard 12
"For example, Rees-Mogg's own businesses. The ones that weren't already in tax havens, of course."
See my conversation with Charlie Clark. Is this true or the lie that was propagated at the time?
https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/10/05/reesmogg_proposes_site_for_prototype/#c_4542913
From booming exporter, to Brexit poster company, to failed business looking for a buying. In under a year:
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent-business/county-news/brewery-says-its-business-as-usual-ahead-of-potential-sal-274634/
As with many, many SMEs in the food & drink business.
Even Tim Wetherspoon (sic) is bitching about Brexit consequences and selling off pubs to cover incurred loses.
Sovereignty.
If only there were good reasons why nobody else is building a prototype demonstration plant on unproven, as-yet undeveloped technology, eh?
It's almost as if everyone else is sitting on their money and waiting for some schmuck to pour what will probably end up as hundreds of billions of pounds down the drain making all the mistakes, and ironing them out, before building their own functioning plants.
Whilst it may help solve some of the many known problems with practical fusion power, and may even help uncover and solve some of the as-yet unknown ones, I think I'd put more faith in the international project at Cadarache, which is based on steady research and development of existing proven technology, above pumping money into a rival project and building it from scratch, in what must be one of the most egregious examples of nationalistic hubris that the current lot of shysters in government have come up with to date.
ITER is being built in France:
https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines
"In southern France, 35 nations* are collaborating to build the world's largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars."
I might go and visit: https://www.iter.org/visiting/howto
Precisely. Given how far into development that project already is, and how mind-bendingly expensive it is, it is entirely hubristic to suppose that a single nation, that is already struggling under policies supported by the same individual is going to be able to achieve the same ends, from scratch, in a shorter timescale, and with far less money, all whilst drawing talent from a much smaller pool of people, many of whom will already be considering leaving the country for another where scientists aren't used as a political football.
In short, in this, as with pretty much everything that comes out of his mouth, Rees-Mogg is demonstrating exactly how clueless and how much of a charlatan he is. The only real expertise he has is in disaster economics and knowing how to make lots of money by screwing other people over.
it is entirely hubristic to suppose that a single nation...is going to be able to achieve the same ends, from scratch, in a shorter timescale, and with far less mone
And yet private companies are doing it, and doing it in the UK, see https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/02/the-promise-of-fusion/
"Oil and gas firms are joining private investors, and the likes of Google, Jeff Bezos and PayPal founder Peter Thiel are backing the sector.
Now the UK is feted as the most fusion-industry-friendly country in the world, with the prospect of supply chain and regulation certainty on the horizon, as well as playing host to future experimental pilot plants. Companies have been founded around the world, from India to China to Australia, as well as North America and Europe.
“In one fell swoop, the investment in private fusion companies has doubled – it’s really exciting,” says plasma physicist Dr Melanie Windridge, founder of Fusion Energy Insights. She compiled a survey of 30 private fusion firms worldwide, published in November by the Fusion Industry Association (FIA), which revealed 18 firms had attracted $1.8bn (£1.3bn) of investment, rising shortly afterwards to $2.4bn (£1.8bn). This was trumped by the announcement that US-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems – a spinout from MIT – had raised a further $1.8bn to build and operate a pilot plant, with construction under way in Massachusetts and predicted to run by the end of 2025."
You don't have to "do it" completely, but discover and patent enough of the essential IP, I think that's where it's at.
Then everyone has to license from you.
P.S. Son-of-Adam 40 has just started an M.Sc. in plasma physics specialising in fusion tech. So we will already have a genius working on it in 10 months time!
Britain became great as it lead the world in creating and using technology and power.
Britain started the First Industrial Revolution : Mechanisation & Steam engines
Britain was a leader in the Second Industrial Revolution : Steel, chemical synthesis, television, telephone, telegraph & Internal combustion engines
Britain was a leader in the Third Industrial Revolution : Electronics, computers, Internet & Nuclear power
Britain could be a leader in the Fourth Industrial Revolution : Automation, virtualisation & Fusion power
In each one see that the last item was an advancement in energy production. There are brilliant minds in GB despite the brain-drain abroad, they just need the right focus and more importantly funding. But, given the vast costs of advances these days, they should be ready to commercialise, but not stop their collaboration with the existing projects.
Britain, in most of those examples, was not the Britain of today, but referred to an empire spanning two thirds of the globe, and, with the possible exception of those developments in the early eighteenth century, all of those have been international efforts, not the kind of parochial project JRM is touting.
I don't disagree with the sentiment that we should commercialise, but planning a commercial plant when the research and development has not yet been done is putting the cart before the horse. It's also worth noting hat the R&D required for this is in spherical tokamaks, which is not where the current research that ITER does is focused, so it is likely that a large number of the challenges that they are aiming to solve will not be applicable. We will end up spending all the money on R&D, which may indeed prove to be useful in the long run, but is vanishingly unlikely to lead to a demonstration plant at anything like the costs or timescales posited.
All Rees-Mogg is doing is committing us to pay for the research that we should be doing internationally, and sharing the costs for internationally.
It is worth noting, as well, that the reason that the UK has, until Brexit, been considered a good international destination for science, is that British science has always been international, and has attracted the best from around the world. Brexit parochialism is the antithesis of this.
Brexit parochialism
Yet another commenter who still (wilfully?) doesn't understand Brexit.
Brexit is the very opposite of parochialism. It gets us out of the parochial, over-regulated, walled garden of the EU, and into the wider world of the 100+ countries that are not in the EU. Many of them have companies that are setting up in Britain, with British expertise, to do fusion research and prototyping.
"The rest of the world is holding us back" is the rhetoric of the likes of Putin and Kim.
If what you said were even half-way true, our economy would be overtaking that of the EU nations, rather than lagging behind. In reality, we have a brain-drain, and many research establishments are in dire financial straits directly because of brexit.
"The rest of the world is holding us back" is the rhetoric of the likes of Putin and Kim.
Really? I can't imagine either of them admitting anyone holds them back. It's not what I said, anyway.
If what you said were even half-way true, our economy would be overtaking that of the EU nations, rather than lagging behind. In reality, we have a brain-drain, and many research establishments are in dire financial straits directly because of brexit.
In reality it's only 18 months since Brexit, far too soon to see the actual effects of such a huge change. During that we've had a pandemic, an energy crisis due to Putin, and yet all the doomsday predictions haven't come true. Financial staff are actually moving to the UK, nuclear fusion companies are setting up here (staying on track for the article), etc.
I've never seen any country leave a major political grouping and be instantly successful, it usually takes 10-20 years to even catch up, so no surprises there. If you think leavers excepted anything else it just reinforces that fact that you don't really understand Brexit.
"In reality it's only 18 months since Brexit, far too soon to see the actual effects of such a huge change. ... and yet all the doomsday predictions haven't come true."
We are seeing the difficulties of conflicting requirements of the Northern Ireland Protocol, The Good Friday Agreement and the Ulster Unionists concerning the customs barriers between the EU and the UK. We have seen problems importing from the EU into Great Britain and exporting to the EU, people now need visas to travel to and work in the EU.
Anyone who comes up with an 'acceptable to all* sides' resolution to the Northern Ireland issues will deserve a Nobel prize, It's a four way issue with multiple levels of overlapping agreement/disagreement/points of principle between the various groups.
* N-I, Ireland, UK & the EU.
Clearly 'acceptable to all sides' would do, but is impossible as Sinn Fein want a united Ireland ruled from Dublin, and the Ulster Unionists will only accept Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK.
(As everything in my post is factually correct, I can only assume that my stalkers have arrived 'mob handed' as it were, to downvote without providing any explanation. Oh well, maybe they'll eventually have the courage to explain their downvotes one day, even as Anonymous Cowards it would be nice to actually hear their views explained. Still, time for lunch.)
@Eclectic Man
"my stalkers have arrived 'mob handed' as it were, to downvote without providing any explanation"
I havnt voted any of your posts either way for at least 4 months (just a quick look) but some people can only think as far as an XFactor vote, not a reason. Rarely has much to do with the correctness of your comment.
"Clearly 'acceptable to all sides' would do, but is impossible as Sinn Fein want a united Ireland ruled from Dublin, and the Ulster Unionists will only accept Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK."
As far as I see it the solution is fairly simple. The border exists already and thats where it should be (between the EU and UK). The UK and ROI have an agreement which requires both sides to maintain, and none of it dictates membership to the EU. If NI dont agree with that they can try to legally vote their situation as UK or ROI.
The issue about the border becomes a self solving one as the UK has made clear we dont want to make a hard border, NI nor ROI seem to want one but the EU does. So its not the UK's problem and if one is implemented its not the UK's problem.
The only time this becomes impossible is if we try to dictate the actions of the EU and Ireland (NI and ROI) instead of just sticking to what actions we do control which is the UK.
Dear Codejunky,
You always seem to provide ample explanation of your views, my remark re 'stalkers' was not directed at you. In another thread someone posted that they sometimes downvote posts purely due to who posted, not the actual posting, and as good as admitted that I have been the recipient on more than one occasion. I take it as a lesson not to take myself or downvotes too seriously. But it would be nice if they could explain things in a post, otherwise one concludes that they cannot form a coherent argument, even to themselves.
All the best,
E.M.
Financial staff are actually moving to the UK,... .... Phil O’Sophical
Oh? WTF for whenever UK leadership operations are so clearly bereft and bankrupt of vital novel proprietary intellectual property to make great use of both domestic and foreign angel investments and non-ponzi unicorn promotions? There’s nothing but mounting debt and expanding deficit and crippling interest agreements and obligations to server and try to offload onto hapless ignorant suckers/the electorate and wilful arrogant enablers/Bank of England type markets.
So allowing global immigration instead of restricting it due to the high volumes of EU immigration is parochial?
The UK choosing whether to spend its money instead of funding EU developments in other EU countries isn't being parochial, it's being sensible. Supporting nuclear fusion research that will benefit the whole world sounds like a rather better use of our money than handing it to EU mandarins.
Quote
"So allowing global immigration instead of restricting it due to the high volumes of EU immigration is parochial?"
Well thats bollocks* for a start.
Immigration from the EU ran at about 100 000 people per year prior to exit
Immigration from outside the EU (which the EU had no power over) ran at about 200 000 per year.
What screwed us on immigration is labour thinking 100K EU citizens would arrive in the first 10 years after the east europe members joined, and then 1.5 million arrived. followed by a tory government that completely failed to expand services to cope with 300 000 more people arriving every year. (hint thats a city the size of southampton EVERY year) making it easy for the anti-migration people to feed on people's resentment.
*bollocks is my current favourite swear word
4.9 million EU citizens received a 'right to remain' in the UK. That's rather more than 100k/year, especially when you factor in the ones that chose not to remain.
None of which explains how allowing EU citizens the same rights to migrate to the UK that non-EU citizens have is parochial?
Indeed, UK net migration remains in the hundreds of thousands. Given, as you say, we don't have the services, the homes or the space to put them all, allowing their continued migration really doesn't feel parochial at all.
Allowing for inflation, £220m is around the figure that was quoted for Boris' HMY Boaty McBoatface.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/01/uk_new_flagship/
Is that still due to be delivered or even required, now that Boris is no longer PM to take it on junkets to the Caribbean, nor HM Queen Elizabeth to whom it would have been available for occasional use is no longer with us?
Apparently the very same JRM is against it, but the idea was raised at the Tory Conference by Telegraph journos who are pushing it.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/oct/03/truss-expected-to-abandon-plan-to-abolish-45-top-rate-of-income-tax-live?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with%3Ablock-633b132d8f0883d28b5872ee
We now have working (or nearly working) fusion reactors! Oh my, how jolly. Did JRM just watch Back to the Future for the first time and tried to invest in Mr Fusion, then found out it didn't exist and saw an opportunity? I'm also presuming someone pointed out to to him that there is a difference between fusion and fission. Bloke's a twat.
1.) Fast Neutron Breeders, which can burn U238, Thorium and Plutonium. The Russians have it operational in Beloyarsk.
2.) Maybe the SMR reactors, which can be mass produced and shipped by heavy road vehicles.
3.) Simply more large pressurized water reactors. They have a very good safety record in terms of People_Killed/TWh. That includes the 1000 or so people killed in Tshernobyl, Windscale and Fukushima. All other energy sources kill more people per unit of energy generated.
4.) U238 we have sufficient in storage and U235 can even be mined in many places in Europe, providing great jobs for European families. All controlled by competent and honest medical professionals.
Fusion is a nice concept, but still very much research and no commercial development. The fission reactors we know can provide reliable energy production at reasonable cost (unlike wind+solar) and they can provide tens of thousands of well paid jobs for educated people. As opposed to make-work programs in "renewable" and pipe dreams.
What we need is Industrial Policy as opposed to MaoistGreenScare and FreeMarketByTyrantCarboSource. Energy is a strategic matter like building tanks and fighter jets; it must be secured by government policy and long term finance. Just like the reactor building programs of the past.
Totally agree there, especially with point (1), I think thorium bed reactors are probably the way forward, and the only reason that the research required to make them a reality hasn't been done is because they can't be used to make bombs. I've certainly seen no technical reasons they can't be made to work.
I'm not sure I'd agree with (3) though, because "people killed per TWh" isn't exactly a comforting statistic to use for determining utility. When those deaths do occur, there are other considerations besides fatalities, as well. For instance, reputational damage, costs from cleaning contaminated land, evacuating towns, and so on. There's also the tricky problem of waste, not just the high-level spent fuel, which is a relatively small volume on the grand scale of things, and could be disposed of in a thorium bed reactor, but all the medium and low level waste - metals, concrete, rubber gloves, all the stuff that wears out and has to be replaced in a reactor because it's being constantly smashed to bits by neutron flux.
Just think hard. Do you think solar cells come free of environmental damage ? Certainly not. Installers fall from the roof then and now. Windmills are full of hazardous materials, which are currently impossible to recycle, at least economically. After 20 years, they must be demolished for safety reasons.
Same argument can be made about any source of energy. Think of the people killed in Wars For Oil.
Think of the political damage of Lack Of Methane. People killed from methane explosions.
People getting cancer from coal exhaust, much of which is radioactive(was naturally buried, is now airborne).
I don't disagree with you. What I do disagree with is the metric you are using. It might be right, it might be, logically, the best metric to use, but it's not the one that captures people's hearts and minds. You can either try to do something about that, and fight an uphill struggle trying to fight all the interests that hate nuclear for various reasons, or you can do something else more cost effective.
Why should we cater for people who are unwilling to think rigorously ?
The nations of Europe are great because we are sometimes able to overcome superstition. In the last few decades we have receded into feel good irrationality; if we want to survive it is time to use our intelligence.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Sky TV news had an energy crisis special this morning with financial and energy expert pundits. If it's repeated it is worth watching.
One guy said he asked Truss about a story that the UK is considering buying hundreds of billions of pounds of Norwegian gas. This would provide stability and security despite the record high price, and despite the money being borrowed at high rates. She didn't deny it. He speculated what the markets would make of that record expenditure, and pointed out the UK is the only European nation not asking industry to lower energy usage.
If that pans out then there'll be no money for anything else, nothing carbon free.
JRM said he'd be happy to have fracking in his back garden, so presumably we can use his back garden to store nuclear waste.
We also have to drastically reduce methane consumption, because 40% came from Russia. In practice this means that some industries will have to shut down or maybe die completely.
In addition, we might experience a shortage for private methane consumption.
All of which can be handled, if you know more options than handing out money. Engineers can find solutions, lawyers(chancellor) and children's tale authors(economy minister) can only scare the people.
What we will do is to put a small oil-powered stove in methane-heated households. Ersatz Chimney through the wall, using a bit of sheet metal piping. That will create a bit of fumes, but I am sure nobody will want to trade that for ice in the living room.
https://www.hornbach.de/shop/Oelofen-Haas-Sohn-Elba-II-406-55-Braun-Beige/5795556/artikel.html
And that is just Engineering Measure Nr 1. Many more to follow, if needed.
A few quotes from an article in today's FT (Thursday 6th October 2022):
"Truss obstinacy spells trouble for energy too"*
"Ofgem acknowledged this week what the industry already believed: there is a "significant risk" of gas shortages this winter and a chance that Britain enters a "gas supply emergency" ."
"Truss's resistance to an extension to the windfall tax is understandable even when it would help solve her government's public finances problem. The Conservatives' silence until now on energy conservation is not. "
You know, I reckon some people at the FT are not exactly fans of the new PM.
*By Cat Rutter Pooley, page 12.
@fg_swe
Yes but some countries use gas for cooking too and to produce a makeshift chimney in an apartment house is not a good idea.
I used to have one of those oil burning things in my summer cottage but switch to electricity many many years ago.
These days I am thinking of one of those "air pumps" as the summers are getting too hot at times.
Welcome to war. You can thank Mrs NULAND "Fuck the EU" and the WEF Young Leader trash fior it.
PUTIN, BAERBOCK, MERKEL, MACRON, TRUDEAU - WEF young leaders.
The WEF Trash also wants to inject an experimental gene therapy into the entire population, so that one of their chief oligarchs makes a "killing" 100 billion dollar business.
We need a Nuremberg 2.0 trial.
@Danny 2
I think it's this Norwegian gas project you are referring to.
But that pipe line from Norway is already in operation since 2007.
Could there be one more under construction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langeled_pipeline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEFMgap6Ptg&t=21s
Constructing Mammoth Underwater Gas Pipeline
A) Quick Fix Electricity: Lease Planes, remove engines. From the engine, remove the fan. Connect engine to generator. Add electronic control unit to synchronize with net and control power. Cost will be in the order of 40cen/kWh operational and 1Dollar/W Capital Cost. Still cheaper than blackouts, production stops and stopped trains. Can be done in the dozens of GW scale in a matter of weeks.
B) Lignite Coal Briquettes: Can be ramped up in a matter of weeks. Unbeatable national sovereignty.
C) Underground Coal Gasification: under the North Sea, there are vast coal reserves, that can be turned into hot CO and then on the surface to CO2, generating huge amounts of heat (100GW easily). The heat can be used for electricity or heating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBpj42CF2yI
D) Coal2Methane, Coal2Diesel, Coal2Petrol. Been there done that, worked nicely until those bombers destroyed it. Can be done again !
All of this can and will be done, if the situation worsens and some foreign tyrants think they can stick it to us.
Like A, just replace the oil with Carbon Monoxide from C or from incomplete Lignite burn. Then costs will come down to 10 cent/kWh or even less. Let DGA, FGAN, QINETIQ work on this problem. They will be 10x faster than RR, MTU and SNECMA by themselves. Of course, pull out all the paper shifting BS ("V Modell", "Genehmigungsverfahren", "Consultation" etc etc).
Option A)
Jet engines on airliners are optimized for thrust, not rotational energy.
Whilst there have nominally been the same engines providing motive power for aircraft and for, say marine applications (RR Olympus springs to mind, but there have been static versions of Avon and Spey engines as well), it's not as simple as attaching a generator to the turbine shaft. You would never be able to spin it up without some form of gearbox and clutch as well.
But why do even that? I've been told on these forums here that you can use atomized jet fuel, or even in some cases similarly treated diesel in the current generation of CCGT generators. It may increase maintenance requirements, but the installations already exist, all that needs to happen is to make some alterations to the fuel treatment and injection methods. If we don't have gas, use another fuel.
But that does not answer the two issues, that of emissions, and that of fuel availability. Oil (and by refining, j-fuel and diesel) comes from similar sources to gas, and although it is easier to transport oil from far fields, it's still subject to the same demand conflicts and constraints as natural gas.
As to your liquefication of coal and gasification of coal and oil, that makes no sense at all. Germany only did it in WWII because they could not get oil, but had plenty of coal available. It was not economically or environmentally efficient, but what did those matter in a war of survival, especially when your leader was unhinged? We used to create Town gas, but it was dirty and since we stopped using it, towns and cities have become much more pleasant to live in.
If you go down the coal route again, just use powdered coal directly in the power station burners, and treat the emissions, rather than go through a wasteful process of conversion. Re-convert Drax to coal.
But it would probably take decades to re-create the UK coal industry.
@Peter Gathercole
There was a passenger ship named Finnjet that was propelled by a jet engine and very fast. It run between Finland and Germany mostly.
I happened to know one engineer involved with it and he told me how the engine was so "small" but the gearbox huge for getting the high revs down to drive the propeller.
"Jet engines on airliners are optimized for thrust, not rotational energy."
Modern turbofans have a bypass ratio of 1:10 or even more. That (approx) means 90% of thrust comes from the fan. Most of the engine power is the torque and revolutions of the fan axle. As I wrote, remove the fan. Then add a gearbox to adapt to the speed of the generator. The hot exhaust from the turbine can then be used for hot water heating. ZF or the A400M folks can provide the gearbox.
Afaik, this approach is used in many warships, as yourself point out :-)
Kerosene is much easier to trade, transport and store as compared to LNG.
"liquefication of coal and gasification of coal and oil, that makes no sense"
With all due respect, you seem to be slow and not recognize there is a war ongoing.
"Town gas, but it was dirty"
What do you prefer - ice in the living room or a bit of fumes in the air. Again, this is a wartime measure.
"Germany only did it in WWII because they could not get oil"
We need a strategic insurance against energy blackmail. The two types of oil tyrants have teamed up, recently.
"But it would probably take decades to re-create the UK coal industry."
Drilling holes and doing UCG can be done quickly and with moderate manpower. Yes, Carbon Monoxide is not the nicest fuel, but much better than having nothing, freezing and closing factories forever.
I think you'll find that a high bypass turbofan, although it may be a 10:1 or more bypass ratio, that this does not mean that 90% of the thrust comes from the fan. It just means that nine times more air bypasses the compressor, but it will do so at a lower speed, and thus less thrust.
In the Wikipedia entry for bypass ratio, even higher thrust turboprop engines only develop 90% of the thrust from the propeller, but I acknowledge that I was not thinking about that type of jet engine.
Marine gas turbine engines are generally adoptions of turbojet engines, and have very different compression ratios to their flying counterparts.
I think that you over-estimate the current situation in Ukraine. The UK is not actually territorially threatened, and if the conflict in Ukraine escalates, it's probably going to jump over the Europe-wide confrontation, and on to something much more serious. That means that we will not be in the same, bottled in situation that Germany found itself in.
I'm not familiar with the underground generation of carbon monoxide to be used as a fuel, but it must involve partial oxidation of the carbon underground (in a process that probably involves burning it underground with too little oxygen for full oxidation), which means that the process will dump energy into the levels where the coal is found. I can't imagine that any sane person would consider this as being sensible, as it will waste energy, still generate carbon dioxide, and may well also leak carbon monoxide into the atmosphere, something far worse than CO2.
This would not be a price worth paying, when there are other ways of generating energy with less impact on the environment.
What came out of this great idea ?
Mr Rees-Mogg should by now developing a plan how to build 3 of these reactors per month, securing the expedited design validation and financing.
He once wanted to be the CEO of English General Electric. I guess he is now just one of these helpless RedShield Bankers like Mr Macron.
According to RR it will take about 10 years before they can deliver.
"In November 2021, the UK government provided funding of £210 million to further develop the design, partly matched by £195 million of investment by Rolls Royce Group, BNF Resources UK Limited and Exelon Generation Limited.[9][10] At that point they expected the first unit would be completed in the early 2030s.".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_SMR
It's not the only company trying to make it work, however.
The "aspiring CEO of English Electric" would ask RR to simply "bring the proven submarine nuclear engine to land" and begin trials by 1st of December 2022.
But alas, there is no English Electric anymore.
In France, the grandson of de Gaulle is an advocate, the president an equally useless Rothschild banker.
Germany, infested by Maoists who preach windmills with fervor.
In Russia, they have an SMR operational on a barge. Thank god their inefficiency and corruption is legendary.
https://uk.yahoo.com/finance/news/daily-blackouts-uk-winter-warns-national-grid-135844320.html
"Millions of homes and businesses in the UK face planned power cuts this winter in the “extreme” case of gas shortages and reduced electricity imports from the rest of Europe, the National Grid has warned.
Households could experience a series of three-hour power cuts under this worst case scenario.
If this emergency plan is set into motion, consumers in different parts of the country would be notified a day in advance of three-hour blocks of time during which their power would be cut off, in an effort to reduce total consumption by 5%.
To avoid this, households are being encouraged to help avoid blackouts, “save money and back Britain” by using more energy during off-peak times."*
Eeek! I must nip down to the shops and buy non-scented candles, a 'big slipper' and hot water bottles before they run out.
*I think they mean people are being encouraged to change their energy use to non-peak times, rather than to actually use more energy.
That's what you get when beancounters and social scientists are running government.
Engineers would rig jet engines to generators. See other post.
Other engineers would create a cloud based Electricity Rationing APP.
Still a few weeks until peek demand, so we can do both.