Japan restarts nuclear reactor at Sendai.

[Suff]

OK try this one.

Instead of drilling holes in the ground in parallel, forcing a sudden burst of steam energy down the input pipe to create a fracture chamber, pumping in millions of gallons of water and doing a "steam dance" on the knees, whilst praying for more than 50% of that water to come back as steam energy, instead of either causing a seismology event (earthquake) or just locally cooling the hot rocks.....

How about we try this one.

We drill holes to the hot rocks. We fill the holes with a lined conductor. Bottom km is all conductor, remaining length is insulation with a conducting core. We attach the conducting "rods" to a themal slab and on top of the thermal slab we have a 200m colum of water. In that water we have a funnel ending in a shaft and in the shaft is a turbine.

It can be applied to shallow HDR geothermal. Deep HDR geothermal with some difficulty. Or, the piece de la resistance, we can push the rods into the side of a dormant but 300c volcano. Because we're only using conduction of heat in a closed system, there is no chance of a steam based explosion cracking the chamber open.

Now that sounds like 24x7 power to me.

Then lets add

water turbines
tidal flow
tidal rise fall

and, if we must, a few offshore wind farms.

Oh and we can keep the Nuc's too. We need the sterilisation capability and the weapons grade fuel for our nuclear arsenal. Oh and it's good for tritium which also has to be recycled in the weapons and lb for lb is about the most expensive stuff on the planet.

Getting close?

[Workingman]

In theory, yes, absolutely, for the future, as is fusion.

But for now we need off-the-shelf nuclear to plug the gap. What generation method is used is neither here nor there, we need electrical power NOW!

We can already reuse nuclear waste to feed new reactors. We have tried and tested reactors capable of being built in no more than a few years. OK, they might not be the most efficient, but they safely work. The problems they cause are being solved.

We have to work with what is needed in the here and now..... a lack or electrical power, and also look to methods to meet future needs. Research funds are urgently needed.

If this winter is bad the UK could well see power outages because we do not have the generation capacity to meet demands. We only have ~2% spare capacity. A couple of nuclear plants would solve that. No amount of intermittent wind or solar comes close.

[Suff]

What we need most of all is a balanced approach with a driving goal to remove fossil fuels from the majority of our power and transport consumption.

Nothing in the political or business framework of the UK makes me believe we are even 10% of the way there...