Interesting Links for 01-08-2023

[andrewducker]

1. The BBC is now on Mastodon (a bit)

(tags:bbc socialnetworking )

2. Good design remembers what it means to be human

(tags:design )

3. Air force had early warning of pulsars

(tags:space history viaPatrickHadfield )

4. What's going on with the Room-Temperature Superconductor news?

(tags:superconductors physics )

5. Sizewell C nuclear power plant: MPs question if it will offer value for money

(tags:nuclearpower money uk )

6. 495 Uxbridge voters tip the whole UK climate policy into madness

(tags:uk environment globalwarming doom politics )

7. When the Yogurt Took Over: A Short Story

(tags:food ai scifi short_story )

Comments

[cellio]

I might never look at my granola & yogurt the same way again. :-)

[hairyears]

The short answer is that Sizewell C's contracts are very, very murky indeed...

But not as murky as te shenanigans with Hinckley Point.

The charitable guess is thay ministers were desperate to get a power station built at any cost.

However, the Cameron cabinet's action in cancelling the NEI contracts when they had actually started forging the reactor casings only makes sense as a deliberate attempt to kill off the UK's remaining capacity to do the heavy Engineering for power stations.

We do actually need these power stations - we are still facing serious shortfalls in generating capacity - but every single decision in the process, since 2010, has seemed like a deliberate attempt make them even more costly.

[andrewducker]

If we took the same amount of cash and invested it in more wind, solar, hydro, and transmission, how much less effective would that be?

[hairyears]

I don't have hard numbers for Sizewell, but the contracted and committed prices in the Hinckley Point project now exceed the projected prices for the Severn Barrage.

The definite answer would be to cost-up the European hydro storage projects *and the transmission work* plus an equeal investment in offshore wind, for a capacity equal to Sizewell C.

Also... Not hiding the costs of ongoing coastline stabilisation work for the Sizewell site.