NIMBYs have irrecoverably damaged the reputation of nuclear: there is too much fear and regulation behind the industry.
More so than videos of people lighting their tap water on fire? Are you seriously saying that NIMBYs have been more effective against nuclear than, say, fracking?
The anger over fracking is also misplaced (it can be safe - I'm not a fan because it makes us dependent on cheap natural gas but it seems better than giving OPEC too much control), I'd say they both have their influences but nuclear has been more of a historical movement (CND for example) and despite the safety of nuclear technology improving in each generation they use the same old arguments, it's really getting tiring.
You have not read Greenpeace's manifesto on energy, have you?
In any case, that's not why no-one will build new nuclear. They wont built it because it isn't economically viable. The one new plant we are getting in the UK is insanely expensive. They only agreed to to build it after the government promised to force everyone to pay way over the going rate for it's energy, for the lifetime of the plant, plus the usual massive subsidies on top. Even back in the 1980s when the plants that had been built with government money were sold off to the private sector no-one was interested.
I suppose you will say that the costs are due to regulation... Well, yeah, doing it safely costs money. Considering the hundreds of billions of pounds that Japan is spending to fix its nuclear mess, high safety standards seem like a good idea. Having said that, UK nuclear safety is pretty poor. Open ponds full of high level waste, being carried off by birds, for example.
Nuclear is expensive - I'm not going to deny that. But coal is expensive if you make coal power plants pay for the damage caused to the environment either via carbon tax or other methods. Wind and solar is expensive if you require providers to install storage batteries or molten salt storage systems. Unfortunately, energy is just likely to get more expensive year on year. Just look at how expensive it is in California with all the solar subsidies. I think the era of cheap energy is gone, at least until fusion is no longer a pipe dream.
I do believe that nuclear is over-regulated given the risk is relatively low. In that way it is like a jet airliner. If it goes wrong, generally it is really bad. And what if the unthinkable happens - an airliner plows into a large building (either via terrorist action or not?) You can't really insure against that. We as humans tend to look at low probability high risk failures as being somehow worse than high probability low risk failures - even if the net result is the same - or in the case of coal, much, much worse.
Your 2kW kettle will use more power from the grid, more energy will be put in (statistically speaking) so it will somewhere produce slightly more CO2. OK, I admit it's not going to be measurable below the noise but say a million ecotricity customers switch on their kettles at the same time - you will see a significant change in grid demand which will primarily be reflected in the load on coal and natural gas plants.
Oh, the energy can come from renewables. There might be a wind turbine somewhere that is contributing to the supply, or a solar system.
The problem is, whether or not you have an ecotricity account this makes no difference AT ALL to whether your electricity comes from wind turbines / solar / a greenpeace activists' farts. All ecotricity promise is they will make up your usage X on the whole by the end of the quarter by buying in or selling at least X renewable energy into the grid. That is NOT the same as providing energy when it is needed. They could be selling tons of solar into the grid at the 12pm-3pm period when it is LEAST NEEDED and still meet their obligations. There is NO requirement for them to offset your ACTUAL usage during the peak times of 7am-9am or 5pm-10pm. This is the problem! I don't understand why you can't see this?
They have to provide a proportion of UK load based on the size and composition of their customer base.
[Citation needed]. Nat Grid plc is responsible for demand level management on a day-to-day basis - not Ecotricity. Energy suppliers (I mean ACTUAL suppliers - not resellers) like EDF and Centrica will make the most money selling energy into the grid during periods of high demand. They can operate their plants at the highest efficiency, lowest overhead, and the spot price is highest. This is market competition.
Whereas Ecotricity will sell into the grid as and when energy is available, buying nuclear to cover their obligations as needed. Since renewable energy has very little overhead cost (solar = install it and wait for the bux, wind = occasional maintenance only required) it is most economical for them to sell into the grid as and when it is available.
Here is the problem. If they begin selling tons of solar energy into the grid during the 12pm to 3pm period when most people are at work and energy usage is at a low, this will create an oversupply problem. To compensate, Nat Grid plc will do one of two things; It will either tell the renewable suppliers to "knock it off"* (that's when you see stalled turbines in heavy wind) or it will tell some of the conventional power plants to shut down or run at reduced capacity. If they shut down a plant, then it later has to start up again, and possibly at a lower load. This is less efficient and it increases emissions because the plants are not run at the optimal thermodynamic point. It also increases the cost of providing energy even in a subsidy free environment so prices will naturally rise and the Daily Mail gets its feathers in a right ruffle.
Instead, if renewable energy companies were required to distribute their supply over a larger period - either using storage batteries or other methods - this wouldn't be an issue. It would be easy for conventional power plants to know how supply is going to vary and they could plan their usage to reduce costs and emissions. Remember, they are taxed on emissions and they have fixed overheads that they must pay to operate a plant - staff, equipment, etc. At the same time, it would be one step closer to making renewables more practical. That being said, the amount of storage required really is quite enormous, so I have misgivings about a purely renewable driven grid without at least some base load (preferably nuclear, but if it's not nuclear then closed-cycle natural gas plants.)
(*) In the case of home solar there's bupkis they can do here as solar on rooftops represents a drop in demand rather than increase in supply due to the lack of direct metering.
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