Perhaps, when we next hear a protagonist for more nuke power dissing wind power for its intermittancy, we should recall this. "Almost half Britain's nuclear power stations are currently shut down for repairs or maintenance, the Nuclear Industry Association said today. "
And then there is the difficulty of actually making sure they're safe when there is a pay squeeze on inspectors, leading to a shortage. "The government is so short of nuclear inspectors that the programme of new reactors being planned may have to be put on hold" (full article here)
Half of nuclear power stations closed for repairs | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:
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If you actually read the articles, you will see that most of the units are down for normal scheduled maintenance. All power generating units, no matter what the energy source, typically shut down for a period in the spring or fall (when electricity demand is lowest) for maintenance. Only two units actually have a need for unscheduled work. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
Thanks Ken, actually I did notice about scheduled maintainance. But the point is that there needs to be such which introduces a degree of [admittedly planned] intermittancy to nuclear power, and then there is the issue of quite a lot of unscheduled outages for a variety of reasons. Hardly a good argument against wind intermittancy when the remedy in this case applies to wind generation; ie having enough capacity distributed over a wide-enough area.
And of course the difficulty of recruiting inspectors etc will continue in an industry which can't actually turn a profit under normal market conditions. Basically it's asking us the taxpayer to subsidise it.
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