Well, the point is that we aren't going to be making up the difference with nuclear, so using that to imply that it's impossible to build new generation capacity to replace fossil fuel is misleading. There will be some, if not lots, of new nuclear generation, but renewables are starting to fly, and it is here, rather than with nuclear, that much of the additional capacity will come from. China, USA, and much of Europe are putting in enormous amounts of wind generation. We lead the world in off-shore wind power, and have a huge programme of additional generation coming along in the next few years. Economies of scale have driven the cost down enormously, and huge advances in the engineering has seen the end of gearboxes, the major cause of expense, failure and maintenance issues of the previous generations of turbines. I predict that we will see a series of major tidal engineering projects approved in the next decade, and again, the technology there has changed beyond recognition.....but most of the new schemes are going to be relatively small scale, and involve not much more than sitting a turbine on the sea bed in a suitable location.
