Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Britain is preparing to ditch EU Green Targets, on the grounds they promote useless renewables at the expense of plausible solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as nuclear power.
Britain preparing to scrap EU green energy targets as part of a bonfire of red tape after Brexit
Steven Swinford, deputy political editor 14 APRIL 2017 • 10:00PM
Britain is preparing to scrap EU green energy targets which will add more than £100 to the average energy bill as part of a bonfire of red tape after Brexit.
The UK is currently committed to getting 15 per cent of all energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2020.
Ministers have long been critical of the targets because they exclude nuclear power, carbon capture or gains from energy efficiency.
The UK is currently on course to miss the target and incur millions of pounds in fines from the European Union.
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It comes after civil service documents, photographed on a trade, revealed that Britain plans to scale down its concern over climate change after Brexit.
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The notes say: “Trade and growth are now priorities for all posts — you will all need to prioritise developing capability in this area.
Some economic security-related work like climate change and illegal wildlife trade will be scaled down.”
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As British politicians have realised, nuclear power might currently be more expensive than fossil fuels, but the extra expense is not prohibitive. As France has demonstrated since the 1970s, nuclear power is a viable, dispatchable, emission free replacement for fossil fuels.
Intermittent, unreliable Renewables most definitely are not a viable replacement for fossil fuels.
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It comes after civil service documents, photographed on a trade, revealed that Britain plans to scale down its concern over climate change after Brexit.
…photographed on a train…?
it is the way the UK ministers make major policy announcements (U-turns), they print their confidential documents in large font then hold it in full view of any nearby camera
Correct. The head post contains a “typo” for sure.
The UK Environment Office, MetOffice, immigration from the dark blue countries (see below), BBC, House of Lords and the future King Charles will be sadly missed, but I’ll get over it eventually.
http://www2.scholastic.com/content/images/articles/sn_ts/sn_ts_110311_commonwealth.jpg
Duh.
Too late to strip Baroness Worthington of her roundly undeserved gong, I suppose.
Darling, would you really want to?
http://vps.templar.co.uk/Cartoons%20and%20Politics/worthington.jpg
“Britain is preparing to ditch EU Green Targets, on the grounds they promote useless renewables at the expense of plausible solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as nuclear power.”
And it’s taken how long to work out this no-brainer by the planet’s handsomely recompensed climate scientists and engineering experts?
If we are going to have nuclear though, let it be a safer technology than the PWR/BWR route. Anyone who has studied what happened at Chernobyl and Fukushima will be aware that the dangers of this technology have been played-down, and that both incidents could have actually been a lot worse.
The critical issues with this technology, surprisingly, are not nuclear but chemical. The problem with water as a coolant is that its boiling point is too low for efficient heat engine operation unless it is held under extreme pressure. The other related problem is the use of flammable materials in reactor core construction, notably zirconium alloy in fuel cladding.Whilst these materials are not easy to ignite, once ignited they burn furiously and cannot be extinguished with water.
A safer reactor would use a coolant which remains liquid at low pressures, and would avoid the use of flammable materials in the core. The molten salt reactor is probably the best design to consider, although the British AGR is considerably safer in these respects.
Chernobyl is a completely different technology, and even that one only happened because they turned off most of the safety systems in order to run a test. Regardless, Chernobyl was only as bad as it was because to save money they didn’t build a containment vessel.
The leakages from Fukushima was extremely minimal, the containment vessel did it’s job.
It really is sad how people have to tell lies about other technologies in order to sell their preferred technology.
And even Fukushima wasn’t a new reactor design. We are two generations between that design and it still did a pretty good job of containing the nuclear material. It was human stupidity that it could not contain. The new generation reactors are trying to work out even the human stupidity factor.
That given, newer innovations are always welcome. Now if we could only find materials that hold up to highly corrosive salts and high temperatures for more than a couple of years…
UK PM May calls snap general election over Brexit. Clear example of how EU democracy isn’t working. Well done Cameron for ducking out leaving May, to shaft the will of the people, just like Heath in 1973/74.
Though note the govt has also announced the election won’t delay the latest ‘CFD’ auction for provision of renewables…
More clear cutting of forests (wood pellets) for green greed