Sure it is - the French have lots of spare capacity - they sell it to other countries (such as the UK).[/quote]
Yes but what if the French have increased demand like us? And are unable to supply us? Energy is supposed to be so important that we do not leave ourselves hostage to another nation, no matter how friendly now. The French will have their own issues as well.

QED. That's exactly why it'd be profitable to have spare capacity - we can sell it until we need it ourselves.

Yes but if you cannot sell that spare capacity then that has an cost in order to build and maintain it.

Sell to who? The French already have a surplus, and everyone else is too far away.

Is there such a thing as "too far away" when we're dealing with cables (IIRC we're connected to the grid in mainland Europe)? Genuine question.

Nuclear is great to fill fluctuations in demand, much more so than fossil fuel power stations. However the 10 year build, 30 year life and 10+ year decommission do have some drawbacks.

At least it's "green".

Green, I don't think so, but it does have a place in the market.

Just imagine where we would be now if the defence budgets for the leading nations over the last 30 years had been spent on power gneration rather than power aquistion?

We'd have lost the Falklands for a start.

I say "green" because of the lack of CO2 emissions.

It's like watching mister Mugabe have an argument with himself on the internet... except his position makes more sense than either of yours.

Any power generation facilities in this country that belong to foreign companies were paid for (as opposed to Zimbabwe where it was all stolen) and properly belong to their current owners. We aren't entitled to steal them back for the sake of petty nationalism and ridiculous xenophobic conspiracy junk.

The foreign owned generators could always sell their plant back to the government. Though how would the government pay for it? It is nothing to do with petty nationalism, I would do the same to UK owned generators. I would make it all state owned or they would haver to comply with strict utility regulations.

I am as green as possible, and do agree that nuclear while not very green is considerably greener than fossil fuels. A high carbon tax for fossil fuels should be matched with an equivalent nuclear levy to cover the costs of decommissioning. That will put the cost of energy from all three sources at the same level. Though with the carbon tax and nuclear levy climbing over time this will make green power generation cost effective.

The regulations aren't necessarily a problem. There has been a queue of people more than willing to build all osrts of power generating facilities for the UK over the last decade. The reason why none of them have done so is down to lack of coherent energy policy in the government. Someone has to take responsibility for how we balance green requiremtns (carbon and radiation) and power needs. Without that policy in place, nobody can justify investing hundreds of millions of pounds (minimum) in new plant and equipment. It doesn't matter who is doing the investing if nobody can do any.

It makes little difference to me whether we are stealing from foreigners or UK nationals. It's still plunder of a kind associated with corrupt countries like Zimbabwe and Russia; not something I much like the sound of.

Yes there has been a complete lack of guidance from the government on carbon taxes etc. They need to set tough carbon limits that will mean Britain will comply with its carbon targets far into the future. Then the government need to set a framework for making the generation of electricity competitive. If they nationalise the industry they will still have to deal with the unions, which was one reason why they were privatised in the first place.