Reply to: Iran are toast

[woody1]

My latest quote for heating oil is already double what I paid in January.

Yes, that's what I'm expecting, at least double. Usually I just get them to fill the tank but last week I reduced the order to the minimum amount - 500L.

I was thinking about cancelling it but who knows how long this will go on.

[xoggoth]

My latest quote for heating oil is already double what I paid in January.

[NotAllThere]

is there room in Swizzy for more nukes?

Of course. We have rivers. On borders.

[sadkingbilly]

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...

is there room in Swizzy for more nukes?

[Dorkeaux]

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.

<snippo>

Indeed on both counts.
Canada used to be a world leader in nuclear technology with the Candu reactor programme.
Like all the other world-beating technological advances to originate in Canada, we managed to neglect and otherwise screw it up.
It's still going, but it is a shadow of what it was in the 60s.

Regarding the waste, the UK does pile it up on site mostly.
Back when breeder reactors were being designed, the idea was that the waste from conventional reactors would be reprocessed as fuel.
But there are almost none of those. More uranium was found, so we dug that up instead,

[woody1]

Property prices have become very high which is another challenge.

Yes, the €275,000 minimum, to gain residency, in the link provided by ladymuck, would barely you get a 1-bed flat, and certainly nothing in or around Valetta.

[Protagoras]

Malta looks quite simple: https://residencies.io/residency/mal...-residency/mt3

I've been to Malta fairly frequently since the mid 90s. The extent of development is astonishing in the Valetta suburban sprawl. Last time I was there I didn't even hire a car, since the congestion was terrible. Property prices have become very high which is another challenge. M'dina is lovely.

[ladymuck]

Malta looks quite simple: https://residencies.io/residency/mal...-residency/mt3

[woody1]

...the alternative is emigration, but where to go that might have us?

That's a good question. Where is easy to move to (get residency) these days? Spain abolished its golden visa last year, and Portugal have shifted theirs away from property to investment. Greece is pretty good - real estate investment over €250,000*. Cyprus - €300,000. Don't know about other countries in Europe.

Our (retired) neighbour is trying to emigrate to New Zealand to be near her daughter and family. It's taking months of jumping through hoops and it's touch and go whether she'll get approval.

* looks like it's been bumped up to €400,000 or €800,000 depending on where the property is

[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.

[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]

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...

[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)

[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.

[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.