For me, PM Teresa May made her first prime ministerial good move yesterday. She put the decision of Hinkley C on hold, for the time being. And for my money, she can let it stay there. Or cancel it. Way before it became operational it would be almost as obsolete as the coal-fired power stations it would be built to replace. And it would be producing the costliest per unit electricity of any station in history. Already, alternative means of electricity generation are cheaper or going that way. One or two of the existing ones are set to jump in efficiency within the next few years. Solar cells are presently at best around 36%. There has been word escaping that 96% efficiency is being achieved under a new process. That would basically cure the energy production problem on its own. Batteries, on the other hand, are still lagging behind, but they have improved dramatically in recent years too. But there are plenty of other methods of producing clean electricity, as well as technology which actually extracts 99.99% of the chemicals and dirt out of the air produced by fossil fuel burning power stations, if only they allow the 1% trade off the technology requires to work. You've not heard of it.? IIRC it was invented and developed in *****lia [but maybe Afghanistan] and has been around for about 10-15 years. The USA, Germany, France invested in it. Typically, the UK haven't. Then we have the E-Cat QuarkX, the domestic electricity generator which should blow the whole thing asunder when it finally gets going, with electricity production at a couple of pence per unit. Last year the UK officially became aware of the E-Cat and similar methods, though they keep it quiet. Clean, low cost energy is on the horizon. Unlike Hot Nuclear Fusion it isn't 50 years away still [that's always 50 years away], but within 3-10. And also unlike HNF all of the alternative methods have each produced more electricity for the tiniest fraction of investment money that HNF still receives. Hinkley C won't be needed.
