Wind Turbine Factories ... or Late & Expensive Nuclear?

The nuclear reactor under construction in Finland is the 'EPR' design that the French power company EDF wants to build in the UK, and the one that the pro-nuclear UK government used as the basis of figures in its nuclear power consultation document. According to an article in Professional Engineering (October 2008) completion is now delayed by 3 years until 2012. When will governments learn that the world's 450 odd nuclear plants built over several decades are all one-off prototypes that can never be mass produced for a reliable and falling cost.

This brings us nicely to wind turbines which can and are mass produced in tens of thousands with falling costs .... but not in the UK. The UK cannot meet its targets for wind energy in part because of a world shortage of turbines (“UK wind farm plans on brink of failure” Observer, Sunday October 19 2008). Wartime Britain created industries and as recently as the 1970's the government's National Enterprise Board founded a successful semiconductor company (Inmos). Isn't it time therefore to establish a turbine manufacturer in the UK. If necessary it could be done via an agreement to licence an existing design or finance the creation of a UK subsidiary. I can already hear the howls of protest that governments shouldn't intervene in commerce ... oddly though, it seems to be perfectly acceptable for state owned EDF to buy UK power generators. And if the UK has to start from scratch, can it really be true that its engineers can build aircraft carriers, missiles and tanks for their government but are stumped by windmills?