British Pride

I've just been reading about the Severn Barrage, the proposal that's been knocking around for nearly over a century to build a barrage across the severn, and utilising the tide (the highest in the world!) to generate electricity.

It seems to me like a project we should all get behind; since concorde I can't think of a single engineering project of that scale which makes you feel proud to be British A project of this scale would held detract the nation from the glum moods we're all in, and prove that the UK isn't on it's knees quite yet.

It would create tens of thousands of jobs for at least a decade, open up Bristol-Cardiff transport further, provide 5% of the UKs electricty, be as green as you like and be infinitely more reliable than wind power.

The cost you ask? A mere £12billion. Whilst that may seem like a mad cost it's spread over a decade, is an alternative to spending that money on buying foreign power, and will go back in the hands of the tens of thousands of skileld employees needed for construction

South Wales has a huge unemployment problem, only second to the North East of England and this would bring so much to this area of the UK by creating a skilled workforce. It's a no brainer as far as I'm concerned. I bet we've wasted more than that this year alone.

Have a look anyway, it's an interesting read: (especially that the Nazis had drawn up plans to build a barrage upon their "conquest" of the UK!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Barrage

The thing that puzzles me is how it costs £9million to conduct a viability survey

Originally Posted by gettin2dizzy

The thing that puzzles me is how it costs ?9million to conduct a viability survey

?8.75 Million for MP's so they can give it the green light and 0.25million for a team to actually do the study.

that cost can be covered in the 1.2Bn they take of us in fuel tax a year!!

[timwilky]

The company I work for, was involved in studies in the 80s. We also looked at a barrage across Morcambe Bay. Whilst these sort of projects cause lots of environmental protest. How the hell are we supposed to provide electricity from "Renewables" without some environmental impact.


NIMBYs the lot of them. The Morecambe Bay barrage would also cut about 70 miles from the journey to Barrow etc as it could incorporate a road scheme etc.


BTW. Most of the engineering work (Turbines/ Generators etc.) could no longer be executed in the UK. We shut down our capacity and let the French/Swiss do it

Exactly

I'd LOVE to see a project like this take off!

Get a decent Engineer to design the bugger too. Get Norman Foster to do the honours (MR MIllau Bridge) The guy who did this

Originally Posted by timwilky

BTW. Most of the engineering work (Turbines/ Generators etc.) could no longer be executed in the UK. We shut down our capacity and let the French/Swiss do it

I suppose it's a matter of investment. It would take so long to plan I'd imagine the training could be done prior to construction, it would need to be seen as a capability investment by the government too. I'd be happy for the government to spend money on getting people in to work rather than just handing it to them!

Or even this:

It would have been the longest suspension bridge in the world by far: a single, 21 mile span linking Britain to mainland Europe over the grey waters of the Channel.
Five years before work began on the Channel tunnel, engineers submitted detailed plans to Margaret Thatcher's government for a motorway bridge between England and France.
Motorists would have paid £5.60 and lorry drivers £8 to drive across the bridge, suspended 67m (220ft) above the Channel, according to files released today by the National Archives.
Dismissing the option of tunnelling under the water as "impractical", the engineering group LinktoEurope said the bridge could be completed for about £3bn. The consortium said it had raised backing from private financiers - attracted, no doubt, by the forecast that toll charges would bring in up to £220m a year.
Similar in design to the Severn Bridge, the Channel span would have been reached from near Dover or Folkestone.

Originally Posted by gettin2dizzy

infinitely more reliable than wind power.

Not sure 'reliable' is the best word there...maybe 'consistant' would be better?

We ought to be using wind energy to pump water up a hill, then use the stored energy to generate on demand for peak-lopping.

Are any of these projects truely green? If you look at the amount of resources required to build them...

[G]

Its sustainable development, initial use of large amount of resources to build something that is sustainable is miles better than using large amount of resource to build something that then relies on unsustainable resources like coal to run there after.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by gettin2dizzy

a single, 21 mile span

How the feck would they have got that to work is that not just a pipe dream?
Are there materials on the planet strong enough to support that bridge & all it's traffic?
£5.60 sounds good though