But wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to have a distributed network of small schemes in areas where there's a good hydro-electric resouce ? Lots of streams with good water power in Wales , Scotland and N England. But then we end up with lots of wind resource and then we remember what country this is.
So we're back to nuclear power and the weakness the govt won't admit : It shouldn't be trusted with a lead battery, let alone a nuclear power station.
Rinse and repeat keep to the Fen Causeway
That £73bn is wasted cash. It will not make the UK more sustainable, more fuel efficient, more secure, or nicer to look at when it's raining.
So I think the point is more about starting to apply pressure to the points of weakness - the links between the people who authorise this spending, and the people who benefit from it.
Perhaps a side order of shrieky tabloid ranting wouldn't hurt either, in the right places.
Hardly anyone seems to have noticed the irony of news like this coming out the day after the fuel protests, and Gordo's 'give me more oil or I'll cry' stern exchange of raised eyebrows with the oil boards.
http://www.marineturbines.com/ Facts, selfish little bastards. They don't even care about your feelings.
you are the media you consume.
maintenance under water is a bitch.
As is off-shore oil platform maintenance. Companies supplying divers for the oil industry could supply divers for these facilities. Hopefully, the East River Project will provide information on that issue. It may prove possible to remove-repair-reinstall. For some aspects tidal estuaries seem worst case, but at least, in this case, they are close to shore. If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.
Wind, both onshore and offshore, works, has a understandable price structure (with a cap on said price, increasingly a luxury these days) and no physical limitation. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The latest proposed version seems to be a 8.6 GW plant, which is supposed to meet 5% of the UK's needs (that would be roughly 20 TWh/year, or a capacity factor of around 25%). A single giant project, 1500 times bigger than the largest wind turbine; but it is not much overall - and not much even with all the other potential estuaries barraged.
The same amount of electricity would be produced by off-shore wind farms with a combined capacity of 5.7 GW, assuming a capacity factor of 40%. The cost to build that with all strings attached, even at today's increased prices is presently around £17 billion I believe (but Jérôme correct me). *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
