| Comment | Firstly, there's no shortage of ex-nuclear sites for new build nuclear - that's really not the constraint and due to transmission costs it's very unlikely any new nuclear would be built in Scotland preferentially to e.g. Wylfa or Heysham if the moratorium was abandoned
Secondly, it's unlikely the sites at Hunterston (and later Torness) will be abandoned outright - in fact I think it's likely we'll see them occupied by other forms of baseload such BECCS or hydrogen/CCS CCGT, both probably commissioned and up and running years before a nuclear reactor would be able to get going (which takes at least a decade assuming you can persuade anyone to finance it)
Germany is a different case to the UK because they have zero indigenous gas resources of their own (hence the Nordstream kerfuffle). While gas prices are a disaster right now, that is also ignoring that we've had it pretty fucking great for going on 30 years due to gas prices being low (this is partially why it hurts so much - gas has been so cheap for so long we got used to energy overall being unrealistically cheap). |
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