Iran are toast

[woody1]

Just quoting US Secretary of ̶D̶e̶f̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ War.

https://www.aol.com/articles/pete-he...131400014.html

Don't know about that but price of heating oil is certainly getting toasty. 60p/L last week; 80p on Tuesday; £1 yesterday. BoilerJuice isn't even giving a price this morning. Placed an order a couple of weeks ago, due next week, feck knows how much that will cost.

[Protagoras]

So glad I installed a wood burner last year and have enough wood for a couple of winters.

I hate to think what the utility bills will be like. If only we'd kept all these coal-fired power stations and the mines open ...

[sadkingbilly]

INKSPE.
AYSYCOTBAC?

[Protagoras]

NIWAOTM

[woody1]

So glad I installed a wood burner last year and have enough wood for a couple of winters.

We only use our wood burner when the electricity's down or the boiler's on the blink. CBA with it the rest of the time.

Might fall back on it now though, and cancel that oil order. At the rate it's going up, it's going to cost a grand more than usual to fill up, and I'd rather spend that on something else.

[Protagoras]

I suppose the good thing about oil is that at least you can store it for an extended period so that it could be bought when, or if, the price is a bit lower.

But it's hard to see that happening while market economics dominate policies. Government could, of course, have planned to extract and process North Sea oil / gas, provide it to uk business and consumers on a cost-plus basis and then sell the surplus at international market rates, but that would never satisfy governments big business backers. Hey, we could even have had an energy policy.

It's ancient history, but Japan - a long time importer of energy - developed a national energy strategy after the '73 oil price shock. That's how they ended up with lots of Nuclear power stations. Even at the time they were built, it was recognised that Japan was in a subduction zone.

The wood burner is a bit of a faff. It's not as onable and offable as the gas boiler.

[WTFH]

If only we'd kept all these coal-fired power stations and the mines open ...

Nuclear, solar & wind, and a bit more accountability from the owners. (Ofgem are a joke)

[NotAllThere]

My gas supplier agrees the price a year in advance. I've time to save up for the increases.

What do we want?
More nukes.
When do we want them?
About 30 years ago...

[Protagoras]

I might have mentioned before that CEGB was planning around six new nuclear power stations at the time of privatisation. That of course was shelved. What was really awful was the loss of nuclear engineering experience and the associated manufacturing so that when UK wanted to build new nuclear power stations, overseas suppliers and skills are required.

Of course no one has solved the nuclear waste problem, so it just keeps piling up in Cumbria.

At the time of privatisation of utilities it was very popular; almost everyone made money on the shares and few foresaw that the lack of effective regulation and inadequate 'market' design would so badly impact consumers in the long run.

I've tried to reduce my demand as much as possible by dry lining exterior walls, including insulation, re-insulating the roof and replacing windows. It was disruptive and expensive but I reckon that reducing demand is the best way to avoid costs; the alternative is emigration, but where to go that might have us?

[NotAllThere]

Of course no one has solved the nuclear waste problem, so it just keeps piling up in Cumbria.

Finland will shortly be starting its long term solution with a deep geological repository.

There's about 500,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste. If all the world’s spent fuel were stacked together, it would fit on a single football field to a depth of around 4 metres. Compare with hazardous chemical waste, like phosphorous waste - 100s of millions of tonnes annually - which has similar disposal problems. But for some reason people get less worked up about.