Commodity prices always come down in the end; except when I really want the price of steel to stay at 2007 levels because it harms the economics of wind power. Further, supply of manufactured goods always responds to price signals except when I have a bizarre ideological opposition to some particular technology. And nuclear power is magically proof against the price of materials, the cost of labour, the rate of interest, and the planning process.
Tim - nuclear power stations are made from reinforced concrete. What is reinforced concrete reinforced WITH? Perhaps this is why he doesn't go on about his metals trading business so much these days.
Actually, the article he's drivelling about is fairly sensible and much more optimistic than either Timmeh's deranged take on it or the Obscurer's headline; it is here. Basically, the worldwide boom in wind power is putting the industry under capacity constraints; like, say, the semiconductor industry in the PC boom. They can sell'em for almost any price as fast as they come off the line, and they've built up a huge order book. Of course, what will eventually happen is that the wind turbine makers will expand and probably eventually end up flooding the market in a few years' time. This will, however, definitively not happen with nuclear, because a nuclear power station is essentially a working definition of one-off job production; it's a hell of a lot easier to make something cheap when you're making thousands of it on a production line.
Further problems mostly centre on the planning process; both for turbines and for grid interconnection.
Of course, in Timmehworld this shouldn't be happening, because wind power is a bizarre plot organised by British socialists, which no-one else in the world would possibly use. But Tim lives in Portugal, one of the world's biggest and fastest wind developers; and as far as I know, the hens haven't stopped laying, the skies have not darkened, and the rain has not become chubby there. This doesn't change the essential issue, though; his problem is that it's gay electricity.
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Hey, you never mentioned that his source for this was Professor Ian Fells! If I had a load of free time, I'd do a long post on Fells - him and his nuclear cheerleading have literally been with me as long as I can remember. He's the "Emeritus Professor of Alternative Energy, Its Prevention And Cure" now, isn't he?
That Ian Fells?
I must say I like the idea of viewing energy policy as a manly dick-swinging contest. Anyone for a bit of Austrian neo-Nazi style repressed projection?
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