John Williamson wrote:
harry wrote:
On Mar 12, 2:56 pm, Andy Dingley wrote:
On Mar 12, 8:40 am, harry wrote:

The age of gas is finished.
I have some sympathy with this view, but are you going to nip into
your Tardis and go back to tell Thatcher not to build our energy
generating capacity on gas too? If you follow the web links that TNP
has been posting lately, it's amazing just how much of total grid
output has been coming from gas of late.

If the gas is finished, or if Putin turns the tap off again, not only
will the heating go off, but the lights will too.

Nuclear is the only way unfortunately. Just hope that fusion can be
made to work.

Haven't they been saying "Give us twenty years and we'll have fusion
working" since the 60s?

Although someone did publish an account recently of a fusion reactor
that broke even on energy production for a few seconds.

Oh yes, they got that far. But containment is the practical problem that
is really hard to fix.

It may be possible one say with fast action computing controlling a
magnetic bottle, or perhaps we will find an impulse type reactor where
we just need to contain it for a few ms at a time, and run the thing in
pulses...or maybe something no one has thought of will completely change
everything.

But these are all maybes.

The practical reality is probably boring old PWR now, thorium and pebble
bed, and/or breeder or other tuned up fission in the next 30 years, and
after that maybe fusion or even more advanced fission reactors.

There are many areas that need exploring, once the granting agencies
love affair with 'renewables' finally turns to divorce..