On Sat, 8 Jul 2006 10:02:51 +0100, David Hansen wrote
(in article ):

On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 20:37:18 +0100 someone who may be Andy Hall
wrote this:-

A very 1970s claim, one that was made by the nuclear "industry" when
the Mad Woman of Finchley when she asked them to look at Salter's
Duck. Mildly amusing, but no more.

If there were real commercial viability to these solutions significant
private investment would have been made and there would be significant
capacity.

You appear to misunderstand the effect that government has on
private investment. If government is encouraging something then the
private sector will not invest in something that competes.
Government can get money more cheaply and has more resources.

Something which is highly undesirable.

However, the private sector will invest if the government creates favourable
investment conditions.


A good example is the wind turbine industry. The first ones were
erected in Scotland and there was a good chance of a useful export
business growing. However, government killed it off by promoting
nuclear electricity.


Looks like they got at least one thing right. When one sees the acres of
wind turbines across the flatter parts of Denmark, thank goodness it has not
become widespread here - it's a total eyesore.



Now we buy the knowledge from Denmark, although
we have some spanner plants.

That's not a very wise purchase. There are some very strange ideas around
energy production in Denmark. At one stage they were burning fish oil as
part of the fuel source for electricity production.






It looks like Mr Liar is just as incompetent as his predecessors in
this respect.

He's incompetent in every respect apart from the one the makes sure that
blame always falls elsewhere.


The wave and sea current industry looks set to go the
same way.

Thank goodness. Hopefully that will make investment and other resources
available for sensible and scalable means of generating energy.



Note that the UK got very little exports out of nuclear. There was
hardly an export success to justify the policy.

I don't think that that particularly matters.



If one looks at the issue on a UK or European wide basis, the equations
change considerably.

The proportions of generation change, but not the basic facts. For
example, Germany does not have as good wind resources as the UK, on
the other hand it has rather more land on which to grow energy
crops.



The proportions make a huge difference to energy policy economics.