HexesofVexes

Credit to Putin, it's a good play. The only counter is for Europe to unite against both Russia and the current US government.

Theoretically possible, but unlikely unless the non-EU states also fall in line early.

Currently snowed with marking - hoping the weekend will grace me with some time to tinker and test.

Thanks, I'll try a small exFAT this week and see if that works better!

Early games were designed to delight, slightly more modern games are designed to both delight and advertise.

It's the difference between "I can't beat this boss so I'd better go level up for 20 mins, ooh I unlocked a new spell" and "I can't beat this boss I had better prep for a 10 hour grind, this is so I can find the X to craft the Y so I can begin to make the Z which offers me a 1 in 10 chance to unlock the option to craft a new spell... Or I could just pay $5 to skip that bit by buying the spell..."

DROP TABLE Musk

I think, at this point, we're both stood out on very very long planks. There's more "what if" involved than is healthy.

You've made some good points, I can't comment on trajectory (a lot of that is going to be based on future energy usage patterns which are almost impossible to predict). It may well be that the infrastructure for renewables gets put together faster than I anticipate.

On the other hand, nuclear options might arrive faster than your projected timelines and will play a key role in the journey to 100% renewable. It's tough to say what lessons are being learned and how much of an impact on timeline they'll have.

Either way, thanks for the discussion, it's given me some more thinking points.

Oh but senior management are essential! It's not as if their poor decision making led us to... Oh...

On a more serious note, unions are an educator's best friend.

I thought we were fairly behind the curve on storage (ironically, most is stuck in planning or is over budget, or is delayed).

Also, I never said only nuclear could do it. Simply that it's not the worst option.

As much as I'd like to switch everything to renewable today (if only because my bills would drop), it's just not possible with the infrastructure we have.

I mean, the alternative is you just accept regular grid failures over 1--3 decades while you speedrun towards wind. This sounds great on paper, till you realise UK homes are shifting to electric heating, and those power failures are going to be violent ones doing a lot of damage.

You could mandate lower power use, but that's a recipe for being voted out. Back to fossil fuels you go.

You could tax energy intensive industry, but the UK is trying to revive its manufacturing centers, not kill the survivors off. Likely this will generate enough friction to shift power again.

You're effectively handing the anti-green lobby a golden ticket, which may even mean the issues last more than 3 decades as UK politics flipflops around. In essence, a stopgap is needed due to the sheer state of British energy infrastructure.

Laughs in absolutely decimated university sector

We've known this one for years. How to increase teaching staff workload:

1). Hire 3 people to do 2.8 people's jobs.

2). Make a huge fuss and convince 2 of those people they are doing more than the third.

3). Fire one person, and reduce workload slightly.

4). End up with 2 people doing 2.6 people's jobs.

Repeat as needed to drive your talented teaching staff into the ground.

In terms of nuclear power, lessons need to be learned - the first few plants are going to run over both budget and time because they're not going to take any risks. Better it runs over than it's done shoddily.

Remember, the UK power grid is ancient - it's going to need to be rebuilt from the ground up to integrate renewables (a project more than 20 years in the making). Especially so with such "rapidly" fluctuating power as wind.

Again, it's a stopgap that should be used while actively developing grid changes to better shift the load to wind.

Nuclear isn't the worst option if it pushes us to net 0 fast, especially if investment is made in spent fuel processing facilities (government owned).

It is very much a stopgap, but at this point some kind is likely needed.