The possibilities for the UK’s net-zero drive are tantalising

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The larger issue is that cobalt-59 has to be converted in an industrial reactor by bombarding it with neutrons. There are 85 such reactors in Europe, some already producing isotopes for X-rays, scanners, smoke detectors, measuring devices, and so on. Others are scattered all over the world. They are crying out for business, especially in ex-Soviet states such as Armenia and Kazakhstan.

Mr McLeod said the isotope can be recycled again and again by putting it back in a reactor every ten years. By then the isotopes have partly decayed into nickel. There are almost no operating costs once the system is up and running.

Dr Tinsley said it was unclear whether there is a big enough global supply of cobalt-60 to produce power at commercial scale. Infinite Power says the market is deeper than it looks. “We can easily build a one gigawatt plant within current supply,” said McLeod.

Once the technology takes off, demand creates its own supply. It becomes commercially worthwhile to build small industrial reactors just to make the cobalt-60 round-the-clock. That at least is the idea.

Mr McLeod said the radioisotope technology has lain dormant because the world was not ready. He compared it to gasoline in the late 19th Century before the combustion engine. It was deemed useless by early oil drillers and tipped into rivers in Pennsylvania. A single twist in technology turned waste into liquid gold.

What is clear is that there are countless technologies emerging across the world that are changing the calculus on CO2 abatement faster than governments, economists, and commentators can keep up.

Britain is the crucible where so many breakthroughs are happening, perhaps because the country never succumbed to the technology luddism of the precautionary principle, and perhaps because the grip of vested interests is relatively weak (the same thing).

The UK may achieve net-zero much sooner than widely-supposed, and at a nice profit.

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