Peter Miller writes in WUWT Tips and Notes:
There has been a major fire tonight at Didcot B power station in the UK – this plant provides around 3% of the country’s electricity.
In addition, an abnormal amount of the UK’s nuclear power stations are currently down for maintenance or repair.
A cold winter will bring widespread black outs in the UK and with it the long overdue realisation by the lumpen proletariat that an energy policy reliant on intermittent, unreliable, expensive wind power is totally insane.
Bishop Hill notes:
News is breaking of a major fire at the Didcot B gas fired power station in Oxfordshire. From the photos, this a big one which will put it offline for a long time. The station’s cacacity is 1300MW or thereabouts, so it represents a pretty serious erosion of the UK’s already paper-thin safety margin. Time to start praying for a mild winter.
Meanwhile:
Winter 2014 set to be ‘coldest for century’ Britain faces ARCTIC FREEZE in just weeks
WINTER 2014 is on track to be the coldest for more than a CENTURY with Britain just weeks away from a crippling ARCTIC FREEZE.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/520672/Winter-weather-2014-UK-forecast-cold-snow-November
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Erm! maybe we can call this the Watts effect!! Wind energy record power generation achieved yesterday 6.37GW
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29715796
but in all seriousness, the UK’s grid has needed an overhaul for years, yet always seems to be overlooked by the incumbent government. The old nuclear plants are well past their use by dates, so they are now shifting the safety limits to keep them in action. Wind energy is pretty suitable for our location and environment, but ugly and expensive to maintain i’d say we are approaching saturation there. A decision is desperately needed to decide the direction of the UK’s future generation and as the old sites like didcott reach end of life we can expect more incidents like this in the coming years, lets just hope its not nuclear.
There is no such thing as a “..use by date.”