On 9 Jul 2006 07:07:14 -0700 someone who may be
wrote this:-

That depends on the uptime of the plants used, and each plant type is
different. Nuclear has the highest uptime of all.

So it has always been claimed by the nuclear lobby. However, reality
was always somewhat different and this is becoming more common
knowledge. For example, "Several British Energy reactors which were
revealed yesterday to be physically deteriorating, are believed to
be close to being uneconomic to run. According to British Energy's
figures, the three oldest, at Hinkley, Hartlepool and Heysham, are
barely operating 50% of the time, partly because they need to be
inspected more frequently."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpo...813468,00.html

Every plant has
downtime so transmission networks are always designed to deal with this
without disruption.

Indeed, that is one of the advantages of an integrated system.

However it is simple statistics that one large centralised plant is
more likely to fail than the equivalent number of small
decentralised plants are likely to all fail at the same time.




--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54