2021-08-20
The GWPF (Global Warming Policy Forum) thinks that it probably does. They believe that the government's prioritising of Wind and Solar renewables (both intermittent and inherently unreliable) over a robust combination of renewables underpinned by reliable thermodynamic power sources such as natural gas and nuclear, will likely cost the UK our geopolitical status, since the affordable and reliable availability of power underpins confidence in our economic and global leadership.
This is a concept that China and India, both intent on building more coal-fired power-stations, fully understand.
I would hesitate to place all our reliable power generation eggs in the nuclear basket however - whilst small modular reactors are fine in principle, Windscale is still home to ponds full of spent nuclear fuel that nobody seems either to know what to do with or to want to talk about, and until that problem is solved I have little confidence in the idea that distributing our nuclear waste output over a large number of small modular reactors is going to change the underlying problem of safe disposal of the waste that will assuredly be produced.
At least we know how to mitigate or remove the CO2 produced by combustion of natural gas - plant growth! There are plenty of deserts around the world that with a bit of imaginative terra-forming might be put to good use, even if we (misguidedly?) accept that more CO2 is bad for the planet.
And whilst deserts are in short supply in the UK, are there not host countries around the world that might welcome our assistance in making some of their hitherto desert land-mass economically productive?
