kravietz 🦇<p><span class="h-card"><a class="u-url mention" href="https://mastodon.social/@etchedpixels" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>etchedpixels</span></a></span> <span class="h-card"><a class="u-url mention" href="https://zirk.us/@ChrisMayLA6" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>ChrisMayLA6</span></a></span> </p><p>It’s quite interesting that nobody in this threads seems to realise - or maybe simply are in denial - that <a class="hashtag" href="https://agora.echelon.pl/tag/china" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#China</a> has also built over 10 GW in <a class="hashtag" href="https://agora.echelon.pl/tag/nuclear" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#nuclear</a> power over the last decade, also at 1/10 cost of whatever is done in the UK. The same also applies to renewable (wind and solar) projects between China and UK. Yet nobody seems to be reflecting on these simple factors that are directly impacting the price of construction in both countries:</p><ul><li>public funding (China) versus private funding (UK), which doesn’t only apply to nuclear but also water utilities or telecommunications, with consequences known to everyone living in the UK</li><li>widespread use of forced labour (China) versus labour protection laws and trade unions (UK)</li><li>extraction of own mined resources with little regard to environment or local population (China) versus fanatical mass-scale protests against any new mining initiatives (UK)</li><li>cheap, largely coal-based electricity with little or no carbon taxes facilitating local industrial manufacturing (China) versus high carbon and pollution taxation, and high energy prices (UK, EU)</li></ul><p>You can’t have a cake and eat a cake. You need to decide whether you want UK to return to the times when it was a truly global mining and industrial power, that is in 19-20th century, <strong>with all the consequences such as police dispersing mining unions or environmental protests</strong>, or you want UK to be a pink unicorn that only has nice green hills and clean air while all the dirty processing is cheaply done by prisoners in China. You can’t have both.</p>