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Military interests are pushing new nuclear power, and the UK government has finally admitted it
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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UK Politics
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Renewables.
They're cheap, proven, and ready. You can build a lot more renewables in the time it takes to build nuclear, so much that you can build enough of an excess to account for when it's not available (or back it up with BESS, which is massively growing). Furthermore, with nuclear you have no generation until it's finished, with renewables they'll come online gradually over time.
Base load does not need to be supplied by anything in particular. The National Grid's Future Energy Scenarios report determined that the fastest way to net zero is to go hard on renewables. Building nuclear takes limited resources away from building renewables and will only prolong our use of fossil fuels.
There is still room for nuclear, but right now we need to get off fossil fuels asap. We should build a large excess of renewables (backed up with battery storage), then once we're off fossil fuels we can build nuclear to fill out our energy portfolio. By the time nuclear is built, demand will have grown and that excess of renewables probably won't be an excess anymore.
Source: am electrical engineer.