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All journalists, podcasters, influencers, politicians, PR people, salesmen etc use language, communication, and 'spin' techniques to appeal to and to persuade or influence an audience. Most of what we read has been angled one way or another for an audience, and newspapers typically align left or right and edit and distort their content accordingly. So what are you trying to say exactly ? That I am a child and don't understand this ? That every article in Daily Skeptic is without merit or any underlying truth because they use journalistic techniques to appeal to an audience, whereas your own (unknown and uncited) sources are never subject to the same ? That all that is necessary is to listen to 'officialdom', 'authority', and 'government' departments that always speak absolute truth whatever the consequences and never use such dirty tricks ? The underlying question is always is it true, or is it false ? So I look forward to your takedown of the facts about UK claimed heat deaths raised in that Daily Skeptic article ? Discussing your counter argument might be illuminating.

Some things do not scale well. The lead shielding will be the same thickness, so a (expletive deleted) off big crane will be needed. Why do people think that local generation (at the few MW scale) is better when close to consumption ?

It's usually possible to use pipes in periscope form where the airspace is facing ground.. Takes some thinking through. But it is only the high face and a small length of each side.

Couple of issues, offshore generation in Scotland isn't really that intermittent with a strong enough and almost constant wind - around 96% if the time over a year. Second issue is Scottish wind energy is really an export product, so is equal too the energy England imports from Europe, but had no emissions. But also it's transported via high voltage DC interconnector (or will be) so very little losses occur over long distances. 3rd issue all generation is responsible for the grid network costs not just renewable! Yes they could change the law to make the UK government the only place they can sell too with hedge pricing. Trouble is the oil produced is too good for general stuff like fuel oils, plus nearly all the refineries have gone from the UK, so we would have to export anyway and buy lower quality oils for fuel oils etc. Gas a slightly different story. We could self consume. We or various companies currently store gas (taken from the market when wholesale prices are cheap) in vast onshore cavens, dotted about across the UK, many million of m³ at a time. This is then sold back to the market when prices are high. So we are getting screwed there also.

Is the JACKODUR Atlas Foundation System a similar set up? We haven't used it ourselves but our ICF builder has used it and seemed happy with it.

Since it keeps coming up, and I got no response when I made these points before, I'll briefly repeat them: 1. Renewables aren't cheap. They appear cheap because the generators sell their electricity without having to be accountable for the system costs they incur, which are intermittency and grid capacity. A kWh of electricity from a firm power generator (nuclear, CCGT) which is connected to the grid close to consumers is worth more than a kWh from an intermittent generator in the North Sea off Scotland. 2. The issue of North Sea oil and gas prices peaking with global prices at the whim of geopolitics could be easily solved. The government could issue licences to the oil companies which would work similar to CfDs for renewables, fixed price for a fixed period and conditional on being landed in the UK for UK consumption. It's been done before. That's how it was in the early days of North Sea oil and gas production.

A little story from my past. Back when the war in Iraq started after what seemed like obviously overhyped (putting it politely) weapons of mass destruction evidence I sought out alternative news sources for progress of the war having lost trust in what we were being told by the mainstream media. I came across a blog 'Colonel Cassad' who was supposedly a Russian military analyst of some form. For some time his reports seemed to fairly well match what was reported in the news except that from his reports the losses on our side were much higher than reported. At some point it became obvious that the blog was propaganda rather than truth and that was the end of me reading it. However, I feel grateful I found it when I did as that experience has served me well as inoculation against similar tactics repeated (by both Russians and other motivated players) in other areas. Once you've gone down a rabbit hole and come out the other side it's fairly easy to spot. Which brings me to the Daily Skeptic. Which uses all the same techniques as Colonel Cassad. Take elements of truth, use incomplete quotes to reinforce your angle, mix them in with some motivated reasoning and deliberate bias. Avoid stating counterpoints unless you deliberately want to diminish them (using the same tactics) and focus on areas where there is a willing audience who is ready to take in what you say because it agrees with their priors. It's an incredibly successful tactic that works over and over. Indeed, it's Toby Young's most successful career move (founder of the Daily Skeptic). He earns many times the salary of any climate scientist you ever see quoted in the news.

Which others do you think came close? I'd like to know who I should add to my shopping list. Thanks

Not a realistic option at the moment, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery

I don't doubt that there are grifters on both sides. Do you think all academics and scientists are paragons of virtue. They would never ever think of seeking grant funding from public and privately funded groups dedicated to climate emergency investigations as a nice trendy and extremely well funded source of money ? That when paid say £300k to do a study they would happily report back to their sponsor that there was no hard proof of anthropogenic CO2 driven warming, only correlated data sets that may or may not signify actual causation. They are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. You do know there are immensely wealthy individuals actively funding climate emergency advocacy groups with many £millions. In some cases funding training courses to teach journalists how to write climate propaganda pieces and get them published.

@lizzieuk1 Did you get your Raft installed?

Sounds like a managed close, so hopefully existing customers are safe. A real shame. I do believe they offered the best product in the UK, although a few others were close, and when Olof was in the UK more, they offered a very good Service (can't speak for more recent times).

Oh bollocks. I had my eye on them as the preferred option if I ever find a plot.

You could build in a rigid plastic duct for the heat pump pipes, make sure you get the correct diameter insulation around the pipes so you get the correct size duct. but then what happens when the heat pump installer doesn’t like the location, unless you are getting him involved now to give you the location then just core drill them out, you won’t see the holes as the amount of insulation around the pipes is huge. the only thing you mentioned that it’s worth building in would be the MVHR ducts, pick up the exhaust and fresh ducts and build them in. you will still need to fit a collar or tape them to your vapour control layer as mortar will shrink back and leave a gap.

Subs are hard because they are very very tight on space. AFAIK the sub reactors aren't actually that much bigger than a container. That's why they need to use highly enriched uranium to get them small enough. But they are very much part of the structure of the boat (especially the shielding). On a big container ship you have a lot more space. IIRC the idea is you could design a ship so that the traditional smoke stack area through to the bilge is a fairly open area to allow a big module to be craned in and out. Much bigger than a container and obviously needs to be done at special facilities (but you wouldn't work on nuclear stuff outside a specialist facility anyway) but very doable. Craning in 100-200 tons is very feasible if you plan for it in advance.

I'm shopping round for insulated raft suppliers and had been talking to AFT. I just got this email. I wonder where this leaves any customers who have orders placed with them. Dear Customer / supplier, It is with regret that we at AFT have decided to cease trading with immediate effect. AFT was formed to bring to the UK the considerable benefits of Swedish style insulated raft foundations. To a large extent we achieved this successfully, and for the completed foundation we are confident in saying we achieved a 100% customer satisfaction. Whilst the EcoRaft (and Groundshield) remain in our opinion the very best product for constructing structurally robust and energy efficient foundations, the uptake in the UK has been disappointing. Due to this, and the general economic climate in which we find ourselves, we have decided that we shall no longer trade in the UK and close our books, as it were, with immediate effect. We would like to thank all of our valued customers, particularly those who chose EcoRaft for repeated projects, and those who helped AFT promote EcoRaft to a wider market. We would also like to thank our suppliers and partners for the last 10 years, and wish you every success in the future. Olof Christiansen Managing Director AFT Ltd.

Yeah, the current "small' reactors are bloody huge. But *if* we could get them to container sized then the logistics of removing them to refuel them becomes much much easier. If they were placed where they could easily be craned out rather than having to do major surgery (refueling nuclear subs involved cutting the hull open) then swapping them out would be not much different from unloading a container ship.

I agree - people willing to regurgitate the oil industry line about climate change being a hoax and a communist plot to destroy our economy can have a lucrative career with think tanks, the speaking circuit and providing papers so politicans can cite 'peer reviewed research' , whilst the scientists diligently studying ocean currents, atmospheric temperatures, rainfall patterns, climate models etc live precariously from academic grant to academic grant.

And the high peak prices are something we already deal with - consumers get a fixed price which is above the absolute lowest but also caps the peaks which can get very high.

Yes, that's why the price per Mwh for a plat with 5% or 30% utilisation is higher than one with +90%. But but it's cheaper to run a plant for 4 months at about £150 Mwh than a plant for 11 months at £100Mwh Btw this is exactly what China is doing with coal. There's lots of 'but china are building coal plants!' but little mention that the utilisation of those plants is falling. It's china's energy security backup because they have lots of coal, but the growth in their demand as they electrify is coming from renewables

With a new build it seems a shame to puncture the fabric by drilling holes through walls after the fact. To that end can holes be factored in whilst brickies are building up to plate level?. I am personally thinking things like heat pump connection pipes, MVHR exhaust to outside and external water taps Can these sort of things be pre-planned so that at the very least a tight hole(s) can be made into the inner and outer bricks/blocks at build time Thanks

All done apart from driveway gates, a bit of landscaping and some more solar panels on the ground. Moved in in April, 12 month after breaking ground but only because work pressure forced me to get a project manager in, so less of the self-build sadly.

Really depends on the insulation levels on the ground floor not so much on the upper floor. But generally think I would be doing closer to what @saveasteading did. Then screed and the bond the finished floor to that, no underlay, no floating floor. Then depending on heat losses choose the pipe spacing, but generally on that sort of build up somewhere like 150mm

And what do you think the owners of the plants will do fir the 10 dormant months? Pay to keep them maintained with no income? I wonder what they will charge when they are asked to wake them up for a short time? My concern is with the bonkers pricing system we have, in those periods electricity prices will rocket. Before we get to that point a plan needs to be devised for ownership, maintenance and costing of plant only used for short periods. And the wholesale electricity pricing changed so we are not held hostage to high price supplies to fill the gap.

Ok, sounds slightly different I guess in that your UFH layer presumably was held down by screed, whereas we would screw our overlay boards down. So you have a proper decoupling layer if I've understood rightly. Noted on the install, I think I'd do that myself on that basis.