CND - Nuclear Power

[zero000]

Having wandered around the greenfields quite a lot at Glastonbury and had a look at the CND tents quite a lot it has really got me thinking about what they stand for an the implications of that. I do agree with the main principle of disarmament that CND is formed around, trident is a colossal waste of money and in an ideal world we'd scrap it completely, not to mention the obvious horrific impact of nuclear weapons.

The bit I have a problem with is the complete opposition to nuclear energy. They cite Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, all equally scary and horrifying incidents, but they are old reactors not built to modern standards. Also it seems to run absolutely counter to the green argument to oppose it, it's a much cleaner energy resource than coal or oil and quite frankly the energy we get from solar and wind power just isn't going to cut it, in an ever increasing population. Nuclear power might well be the answer.

Sorry for the long rambling gambit! I'd be interested to here everyone's thoughts on it all

[Spindles]

I also believe that nuclear is a clean, safe and necessary power source for at least the next century.

I am a great believer in wave, wind and solar, but as pointed out these are not methods which can create the energy we need in a cost effective manner. With regards to storage of energy, pump water into towers with the energy created, drive turbines from the gravity release, this is how it is done elsewhere in the world.

[eFestivals]

I also believe that nuclear is a clean, safe and necessary power source for at least the next century.

necessary, yup. The military/industrial complex demands it.

Clean? Not until someone knows what to do with the waste. There's waste still un-disposed of in this country after 60 years!!!!

Safe? Only time will tell. Is it worth the risk?

Meanwhile, if wind/wave/solar got just 10% of the handouts that nuclear has had over the decades then we'd be self-sufficient in natural power within 10 years.

[kaosmark2]

The problem with the 3 sustainable ones is that the cell technology isnt quite there yet meaning we can produce energy but at peak times we would suffer outages. I have no doubt nuclear technology causes cancer and the half life on it is incredibly worrying, but until we can sort the tech for sustainable methods its the only realistic option in the interim.

Once the technology is thereid imagine a serious effort will be made to start to migrate energy supplies.

[eFestivals]

Is there any evidence for this ?

do you have any evidence to dispute it with?

Two can play your silly games.

[eFestivals]

Nuclear got a LOT of handouts in the 90s

lol ... nukes were getting over £5M a day in the early eighties, and had been govt supported since the very start, are still govt supported today at a far higher rate ... and have you seen what EDF are wanting in guarantees from the govt to go ahead with the new Hinkley point?

Nuke power would never ever have existed without these subsidies. The govt managed to get the taxpayer to go along with them via a promise of almost-free electricity for all in the future, because nuke power would be so cheap (one of the biggest porkies ever told).

Meanwhile, during those eighties when nukes were getting over £5M of subsidy each and every day at the lowest amount, the govt very kindly gave a grant - just one grant - of just £250,000 to fund a five year research project into tidal generation. That was the govt's total investment in natural power during the 80s.

They didn't even follow thru on that. After just one year the grant was revoked ... on the suggestion of the Atomic Energy Authority.

You couldn't make it up!

If natural powers had had just a tenth of the investment in nuke power over all those decades, we'd be self sufficient in genuinely nearly-free energy today.

, in fact energy specialists working in the nuclear industry got commissioned to do a report into which source of energy would be best, and they said the government should give handouts to nuclear

I wonder why they did that?

Edited July 5, 2013 by eFestivals

[Kowalski]

The bit I have a problem with is the complete opposition to nuclear energy. They cite Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, all equally scary and horrifying incidents, but they are old reactors not built to modern standards.

[TheGayTent]

Wlyfa will be the same

[eFestivals]

Just as an aside, Fukushima was caused by the owners of the plant ignoring recommendations to build sea defences.

You might choose to think about the coastal positioning of all our nukes, and the rising seas.

If nukes are so safe, someone might like to tell me why it is that nearly every nuke powerstation in the world is built on the borders of the country that owns it.

[windy_miller]

do you have any evidence to dispute it with?

Two can play your silly games.

[windy_miller]

Anyway, what I originally cam on here to post was this. I heard Owen Jones speaking on the Pyramid Stage after Jake Bugg at Galsto, and I thought he made a very convincing argument. I had not heard of the man before this, so I only have that one speech to judge him on.

And nuclear energy is not "clean". No-one has figured out what to do with the waste yet.

[eFestivals]

Neil, you have made some stupid comments on before, but this one is quite possibly the most ridiculous.

Asking for evidence is not a "silly game", it a questioning of something being paraded as truth. Evidence is what the scientific method is based on. Evidence is what separates someone from being innocent or guilty. Lack of evidence means nothing.

It was deliberately ridiculous, back at someone who has a moronic 'let's hassle Neil' head on today.

He's no less able to search and find evidence to dispute what anyone says than I am to search something down to back up what I say.

Given that he's spent most of the day trying to argue that Churchill gloried in war and didn't want peace while providing not a jot of evidence for his own claim, I merely took an easy cop-out.

But also, given that he doesn't have the first idea of just how many hundreds of billions the nuke power industry has been gifted in the last 60-ish years either, then he's got no basis for any dispute on my words.

[eFestivals]

Asked you on two topics to back up what you have said and on two topics you have failed to do that. That isn't hassling, that is just pointing out someone talking bollocks.

I don't have time to give you a history of the world, so that you don't have to query so many everyday facts constantly.

This is a thread about nukes. Some of us take the time to know something about the discussions we get involved in, but if there's no discussion to be had because people have to prove every word they utter and spend all their time getting references.

If you wish to be informed, inform yourself. In the days of google, it really isn't very hard.

[eFestivals]

At which point did I deny that ?

My shock was your claim that we could become 100% reliant on renewable energy when the vast vast majority of the scientific community believe it to be 15% at best.

That's based on where we are and the fact we're going nowhere fast. Because nukes are still being financially supported at a massively higher cost than anything natural power sources gets.

Throw a few hundred billion at research of natural power sources and things would quickly get to a different place.

[zero000]

Just as an aside, Fukushima was caused by the owners of the plant ignoring recommendations to build sea defences.

[RobertProsineckisLighter]

The problem is we don't really have any good alternatives. Fusion is perpetually "50 years away"

[eFestivals]

I have googled and like I said the majority opinion is renewables won't ever meet demand...

I've no idea how it might stand on a world scale, but for the UK it's easily possible with the desire to do it.

We have the sea around us. There's more than ample there to be tapped, even with today's not very good wave generation technologies.

[eFestivals]

Is it though?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/jul/02/hs2-fusion-power

the problem with fusion is a massive political one. The UK will never back it, because it screwed itself over by demanding it had the JET research project which means it won't get the productive fusion plants.

[zero000]

Is it though?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/jul/02/hs2-fusion-power

[eFestivals]

Scientists disagree with you.

then they can't do the most simple of maths. It's not a hard calculation.

Or perhaps they're working from the current political reality, of the fact that nimbys would never let it happen. eg: google the 50-ish year (non)history of the Severn Barrage.

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[lost]

unless things have changed recently you need an always on "base current" which currently is either fossil fuels or nuclear for times when the sun/tide is out or the wind isn't blowing. This I believe is why certain environmentalists like monbiot have started to support nuclear.

[zero000]

This documentary on nuclear looks interesting, has anyone seen it?

[eFestivals]

unless things have changed recently you need an always on "base current" which currently is either fossil fuels or nuclear for times when the sun/tide is out or the wind isn't blowing. This I believe is why certain environmentalists like monbiot have started to support nuclear.

In the real world as things stand there's little alternative.

What you've missed from your thinking tho is wave power, that's where the big future's at - for the UK, at least.

But there's also so many wasted opportunities. For example, our rivers are barely used (and re-used, and re-used, almost ad-infinitum) at all. There's too much focus on large-scale when a lot of small scale can be as effective.

[lost]

In the real world as things stand there's little alternative.

What you've missed from your thinking tho is wave power, that's where the big future's at - for the UK, at least.

But there's also so many wasted opportunities. For example, our rivers are barely used (and re-used, and re-used, almost ad-infinitum) at all. There's too much focus on large-scale when a lot of small scale can be as effective.

[TheGayTent]

personally I think the government will scale back its nuclear plans, in fact I think some of the projects have been abandoned as RWE and Eon have pulled out based on their massive losses in Germany after Merkel switched a number of plants off early after fukushima. If I was a betting man (which I am) I think they will turn to shale gas when they get the nod from the fracking companies that its viable.