Paul Weaver said:

Do you want to pay twice the price for your electricity (and
increase in prices for every industry that relys on electricity)
to prevent a 40 minute blackout to a small area of the country
every 15 years?

Depends where it is. In Cumbria we're used to power cuts of up to a
day, and we are prepared. If the trains stop it's no big deal here.
If you're deep underground in a hot sweaty tube train and you are
less than perfectly fit/healthy it could be serious. But these
individual problems can be designed out - we could run the tube
trains on fuel cells or whatever. Hospitals have their generators.
Stranded passengers could be put up in shelters/halls, or back at the
office. Businesses could move out of central London. These things can
be planned; it's not rocket science.

And I don't think 'layers of redundancy' is an appropriate model.
Load sharing might be.

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Chris Game chrisgame@!yahoo!dotcodotuk
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