Time to end of opposition to nuclear power at Sizewell and elsewhere in the UK

I think 50% is a tad unscientific. There is also offshore wind and potentially tide. Energy storage will be resolved to some extent I expect too. Not sure paying overseas companies to build, and then paying overseas companies fixed high prices for energy is a good idea.

There is no solution to energy storage that would power the UK for a couple of weeks, none. The 50% stems from energy density and tidal would have huge implications for birdlife given the impact on tidal marshes. But again I go back to the core point, what have the upper echelons of the organisation got against nuclear?

Seeing as there are no upper echelons of the organisation on here you won't get an answer.

Very true.

I'm all for raising Westminster Palace (and the surrounding estate) and building a nuclear power generation facility on its footprint. It'd provide additional incentive to improve the Thames barrier and thus protect the rest of London.

Look on it as 'brown field site' redevolopment.

I don't think you quite get the RSPB position - they have not said they are against nuclear. In their own words "The RSPB takes no view on the fact that the Sizewell C development is a nuclear power station, but it is against developments which are damaging to nature. We are concerned because this is a major infrastructure project that will sit right on the border of an internationally important nature reserve. We don't believe that the climate crisis should be solved at the expense of the ecological crisis."
Taking a pragmatic view, nuclear probably is part of the solution to our energy needs, but the big builds (like Sizewell) are yesterday's solution to a problem we have today that won't be delivered until tomorrow. We will all need a lot more power in our homes, so generating it in central locations is bonkers - local generation and distribution is a cheaper, far more resilient solution with fewer losses in the grid. That means using the small, factory built reactors that Rolls Royce (and others) have been talking about and demonstrating (they don't need situating near major watercourses or the sea) and a huge increase in renewables and storage (and yes, grid-level storage solutions are also being built around the world demonstrating their capabilities). It's not about covering the landscape with solar panels, simply sticking them on available buildings, over carparks as mentioned earlier and the like will make a huge difference to the amount of fossil fuels required - and is technology that is available today, requires no specialist skills to install and provides power locally. Take the build cost of Sizewell and that would pay for a Solar + battery installation for 1-2 million households (and we'd see some benefits from day 1, unlike Sizewell which will be 15 years or so).
Finally, think of what it will cost each & every one of us financially - the MWh cost of nuclear is triple that of renewables (and the gap is steadily widening) so for a comfortable retirement on a fixed pension, we'd all better hope there are more renewables in the mix to keep our energy bills down!

The 'delivery tomorrow' pov is regularly put forward as an objection, I remember the same things being said 15 years ago, great shame we didn't just go ahead at the time. That said, most of the tech required for renewables to not need fossil fuels doesn't exist and certainly won't exist anytime before a few nuclear stations could be constructed. I'm a big fan of the SMR concept, but again this is not a short term solution and I suspect that people will be reluctant to have them sited close to where they live. On the subject of the grid, all of the old nuclear station sites are already connected to the grid. On the environment point, is it good for ecology to have the country continuing to pump out large volumes of CO2 when the wind doesn't blow or overnight? Lastly on bills, have you seen any evidence that increasing use of renewables is resulting in lower bills? Any system that requires duplication of supply infrastructure seems unlikely to deliver lower bills.

Mike. I take it you don't mind foreign companies building power stations and taking locked in money out of the country for decades once they're up and running?

Agreed re 15 years ago. That was then. Just think what could have been achieved if 15 years ago we stopped installing gas boilers into new builds, started taking onshore wind more seriously and got on with it in all the appropriate places of which there are many, insisted on solar panels on all new builds and on all new and existing appropriate industrial, commercial, academic etc roofs.

Even without all of that, some days there were no fossil fuels burned for energy production in UK.

We need to get on with it.....we have again wasted another year since COP. What has happened with onshore since then? Nothing.

Not sure what you mean. Do you make a point of not buying anything from abroad? Where do we buy wind turbines from? btw Plenty of days where we burnt gas and we always will if we persist with renewables, this is what I don't get why pretend we're going to hit net zero when we all know that we're going to be burning fossil fuels and lots of them for decades to come.