Nuclear is a great idea.

However to keep transmission costs down, they should be sited in the centres of electrical consumption. That is in the centres of cities, and the used fuel should be stored there too.

That way we may have some chance of proper safety measures not getting the NHS cost cutting measures in years to come.

With regards to the radioactive waste why not stick it in a big rocket and fire it at the sun? That should do it 😉

At the end of the day I believe this is effectively a faith based debate. I have no faith in nukes – “electricity to cheap to meter” – remember that?

To me they are unreliable, expensive, there is no way of disposing of the waste which is very dangerous, they are not carbon neutral, etc etc.

No one actually knows – its down to faith

No one actually knows – its down to faith

You are quite right, and I have more faith in a new nuclear generation that our ability to either:

a) Generate equivalent amounts of reliable (yes, nukes are usually reliable) baseload electricity

b) reduce the need so much that we don’t need to replace existing stations

It’s either nukes or coal, really – there’s your choice.

And before yet more rhetoric gets spouted about energy saving – just how necessary is it for any of us to be wasting electricity browsing this site, or for the site to exist and use energy at all? Apply that to all your small vices, and it would be a very different world….

Zokes – the history of nukes shows massive unreliability

It’s the way forward. Make almost everything electric, lots of Nuclear power which is essentially incredibly green when compared with the alternatives, send the waste up into space.

‘Green’ alternatives are propaganda. The embodied energy and environmental costs will never add up.

Everything should be Nuclear and everything should be electric.

Oh, and stop putting solar/PV panel’s on your roof, paint it white instead.

Zokes – the history of nukes shows massive unreliability

Less reliable than the wind blowing not too slow, not too fast? Less reliable than it being sunny? Less reliable than the problems caused by tidal barrages only supplying those huge chunks of electricity half the time when we don’t need it?

Without nukes we either burn more coal, or use less electricity. As already stated (and the government’s ‘commitment’ that 40% of cars will be electric by 2020) we’re going to need more, not less electricity. Where will it come from?

MTT – Member

Oh, and stop putting solar/PV panel’s on your roof, paint it white instead.

Oh – tell me more….

I would but someone’s just stolen my mouse and that makes things more difficult. I shall retrieve another.

Zokes – thats not my point. A mix of alternatives can easily give both base load and peak load. Its almost always windy somewhere – hydrogen generation can take up slack, waves are fairly reliable, pump storage acts as a reservoir, hydro can be used on demand, tidal – two barrages on different costs run at different times – barrages can give fairly constant load as well.

Energy efficiency can give great savings – local combined heat and power for esample.

It all comes down to fdaith. I simply do not believe that nukes are the answer and given the history of nukes I have good reason to be sceptical.

MTT – Member

I would but someone’s just stolen my mouse and that makes things more difficult. I shall retrieve another.

Thus proving that rodent-driven generators are unsuitable as a long-term, reliable power source.

TJ,

Not that I’ve done this for a while now, but I did a big project looking at this back in 2004 for my BSc. Short of a LARGE reduction in use, or quite literally covering the inshore waters with barrages and turbines, the UK cannot be supply itself with ‘renewable’ energy. You are correct that it’s ‘usually’ windy somewhere. But is it always windy enough to generate the 40 or so GW of electricity we currently use – let alone increases as people move to hydrogen-powered cars etc? It simply cannot be done. I have no great love for nuclear fission, but until someone either bans electricity or invents fusion on a scale that is useful (and even that’s not totally renewable by a long shot), then it’s either more nukes, more power, or lights off. Any other belief is blind faith….

It has been estimated that a Pentland Firth Tidal scheme could generate up to 10 GW.

French have 59 reactors providing 63,000Mw, and nearly 80% of their electricity.

project – Member

Strangely non in london town, or Hull, or even cornwall, all places with high unemployment either soon or now, all with rivers or water for cooling, and plenty of disposable members of society if something goes wrong , just give them a mop or a shovel, and send them in.

Would you mind defining exactly which members of society are ‘disposable’?

Darkies? Jews? The Disabled?

Or simply people you think you are ‘better’ than?

Mouse and computer reunited;

druidh – http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18825273.000

Have a look around on Google, combined with UHE there may be something in it. Regarding solar panels, PV, ground source heat etc… the costs in terms of embodied energy, installation and maintenance mean it’s simply uneconomic. Good design can provide many better passive alternatives.

Regarding solar panels, PV, ground source heat etc… the costs in terms of embodied energy, installation and maintenance mean it’s simply uneconomic. Good design can provide many better passive alternatives.

I second that! Our nice new ‘Environment Building’ at my university reckons on a 65-year payback for the PV cells on its roof. I doubt they’ll last that long, and in any case, had they not stuck them over the skylight in the atrium, we wouldn’t have to have the lights on as often. All this in a BREAM building….

Would you mind defining exactly which members of society are ‘disposable’?

people who spend all their lives on the net?

I’ll have the mop, you can have the shovel… 🙂

This is a theory that’s coming out of the bottom of a wine bottle, so don’t flame too much, but…

…doesn’t virtually every use of energy produce heat? Be it using a lightbulb (energy efficient or otherwise), charging a battery, producing nuclear power, burning fossil fuels, driving a car, even riding a bike or whatever… They all convert some sort of potential/kinetic/chemical/atomic energy into heat, (and light, motion, website pron. etc). Newton’s law (can’t remember which one) states that energy can’t be created or destroyed.

Seems to me like we should just be making an effort to use less lecky, rather that arguing about how to generate more of the stuff. I geuss that you could argue about the whole greenhouse effect, (I have no opinion one way or another on that whole minefield), and how we need to reduce our carbon emmissions etc, but surely the one thing we can be sure we need to do is reduce our energy consumption, and therefore heat production!

Passive technology and the Solar House concepts do work well, though it aint the answer to everything. I am a firm believer that building design is a pile of cock in the UK though (actually… the Western World). We should be able to build structures that need little or no heating or cooling systems just through construction methods and design. One day I shall build something that both looks nice and works (cos ecohippies building Earthships are so missing the point).

Nuke – not good… at all… so very not carbon neutral, and also with the benefit of what is technically known as shitloads of CFCs released in the processing of ore. Magnificent.

Clean coal would be a better stop gap technology IMO. Solar has a lot of potential (perhaps not so much in solar electric in the UK, but some parts of the globe are ideal for this)

Off shore wind, tidal, wave, small hydro… there are loads of ways to get the electric. We also need to be conserving electricity massivly – we (in the developed world) should be cutting our usage massivly and allowing those in the developing world should be allowed more.

Oh aye – and I live in that marveolous nuclear sandwich location that is South Cumbria – with Sellafield to the North (and another further up than that proposed), one over outside Millom to the West and Hysham just to the south. I entirely agree – if you are going to build em, stick em near where the power demand is. Also – best place in the UK to burry waste is the most stable geological region surely. So under London then 😉

Someone in my year did a project on CO2 capture and then passing this through an algae solution, which then photo-synthesises the CO2. You then dry this algae and use it as combustible biomass, which can then be re-used in the original power generation process. Apparently MIT have it running at a decent capture efficiency on one of their buildings, can’t find any info on it just now though.

It’s effectively solar power I suppose, I don’t know precisely how it pans out against the likes of PV and solar steam generation in terms of capital/precious resources for unit/unit area per kW generated.

It would give more bang for your buck in terms of energy from fossil fuels though, eg use coal/oil/gas to generate power then make biomass for transport uses. I think electric cars will struggle due to the inhibitive costs of batteries and the scarcity of lithium, it’s fairly finite too so that fact that this process gives biomass is quite appealing.

I agree that we should look at the more easily achievable targets, heating/cooling uses a lot more energy than electricity. Improving the efficiency of these aspects would go a long way, more stringent building regs for housing would be a good step.

Problem is that coal fired power stations can also release radioactive particles into the surrounding atmosphere and if filtration captures it instead, what is the fly ash used for…

Problem is that coal fired power stations can also release radioactive particles into the surrounding atmosphere and if filtration captures it instead, what is the fly ash used for…

Indeed. Wave a GM tube near Drax and you’ll get far more clicks than near Sizewell

TandemJeremy – Member
Zokes – the history of nukes shows massive unreliability

The history of computers shows 640k should be enough for everybody. The history of medicine shows us that there’s no cure for TB.

I thought we’d done this one before? “On 27 May 2008, the Sizewell B plant had its first unplanned shutdown for over three years, cutting off its supply to the National Grid.[10] A British Energy spokesman said that the fault involved conventional equipment at the plant rather than any part of the nuclear reactor.”

As most will have gathered, like coffeeking I have a rational dislike of onshore windfarms, but irrationally think they are beautiful pieces of engineering.

Chrism – I think so. and round and round goes the merrygoround 🙂

This is why I say a lot of this debate is about faith. I don’t have the faith that you have in nukes. The historical record is poor. dirty, expensive and unreliable. You believe the future of them is better. I don’t. Neither of us can see into the future.

I make no comment on expense or disposal of spent fuel, don’t know enough to comment. Regarding being dirty on a day to day basis, as others have pointed out, you get more radiation from a coal burning power station (ISTR there are various reasons why one would be shut down instantly if it was a nuclear plant).

However my main point is about reliability – here you’re talking about several generations old technology (believe it or not, they didn’t know that much when Calder Hall was built 56 years ago, and have learnt a lot since). Meanwhile I’m basing my comments on almost the latest technology (any new plants will be a generation beyond SB), which have shown they are far, far more reliable than any other form of power station, not just at SB, but all over the world. Whilst your comments are akin to saying that all Fords are black, my argument is no more based on faith than my expectation that the electrons will wing there way from here to the STW servers and onwards to Glasgow – I can’t see into the future and be sure you will read this message either on the basis of your argument.

Chrism – I totally understand your point. I just don’t have the faith or belief you have. Old tech power stations were unreliable – next generation are unproven as non have been built yet. Current ones are still early in their life so we don’t know how reliable they will be over their life. given the history of broken promises I remain sceptical about reliablity.

Its not just the disposal of waste that is dirty – its also in the building of them

Of course your argument is based on faith – you believe as yet unbuilt things will be reliable.

Good to see my faith about the electrons was rewarded.

next generation are unproven as non have been built yet.

They have in other countries.

Electrons? I thought it came thru the subether

Fusion energy still way off?

As long as they remain safe…There was a leak in Avon that ended up on the railroads dripping away from town to town…

Also the WHO signed a pact not to investigate ionisation radiation…

We use old models of 1000 patient years before linking disease and cause…

We need energy but I hope it doesn’t up killing us off.

I live a couple of miles from Sellafield, and even less from the proposed site at Braystones. Obviously the community (and the councils) here are a total pushover when it comes to nuclear new build compared with most other parts of the country, the fact that major infrastructure and power transport upgrades must be built is obviously a secondary consideration.

While i am broardly in favour of new power stations, the land the NDA is selling adjacent the exiting Sellafield site would surely make more sense than developing clear farmland as RWE want to, and, in the case of Braystones, farmland with considerable access issues.

To some extent we will see as there are clear differences in policy between Scotland and England
5 yrs should tell us. By that time the nukes in Scotland should be offline or going off line.

Scotland is of course better placed than England for renewables but watching the way the energyu policies pan out will be interesting to say the least.

For me its Slamonds big test – he has said a lot about renewables but so far not much action and I don’t believe he actually understands the “green” case in any way. But he has talked the talk – lest see if he walks the walk.

If he gets it right in five years Scotland should be well placed to be a world leader in renewables. After all the wind, waves and rainfall are here – just needs to be used. Don’t somehow think that solar will be a big part of it

I live 2 fields away from the proposed site at Kirksanton. I would rather it be built in Hyde Park.

Switch something off NOW!

I read an article (trying to find it) that stated the cost of building and decommissioning the new nuclear stations planned, is equivalent cost to complete super insulation package (walls, roofs, floors, windows and doors) for about 40% of ‘hard to treat’ homes (ie old, solid walled, draughty) buildings.
.
The savings in efficiency would mean that the new nuclear stations were not needed.
.
So, sidestepping any techo arguments, WHY are we building more power stations? I have a magazine article in front of me claiming that only 12% of energy from a lump of coal, barely 17% of energy from a cube of gas and 21% of energy from a nuke station is actually used ‘effectively’ – i.e. the rest is ‘wasted’ through grid losses, inefficiency in production, inefficient products, un-needed use (eg lights left on), or poor thermal insulation of most homes in the UK.
.
Properly efficient buildings (OLD ones, not just new) would sidestep this argument over nukes, would mean all the renewable stuff starts making sense etc etc etc.
.
Efficiency should be king – unfortunately business likes big building projects, not renovating Granny Smiths terrace house; and business likes more, not less, ‘cos its easier to make money selling something rather than charging for less.

To some extent we will see as there are clear differences in policy between Scotland and England
5 yrs should tell us. By that time the nukes in Scotland should be offline or going off line.

Torness is currently due to be decommissioned in 14 years time. It is expected that its operating life will be extended then by refits.

TJ said:

This is why I say a lot of this debate is about faith.

It does seem that way, but it should not be. It should be about numbers.

The numbers say we need nukes.

Porterclough – not from my reading. The numbers for nukes don’t add up. Far too many uncosted assumptions including cost of decommissioning and waste disposal. Add to that the fact that the fuel for nukes is scarce and in countries that are unstable. Economically the case for nukes is nuts. The most expensive electricity generated

From carbon emmisions point of view there are other options. Local combined heat and power and / or as Matt said above – efficiency / insulation measures could reduce our need by at least one power station for the cost of that power station. Tidal barrages have great potential

The only answer is to use less power more efficiently and instead of spending money on nukes spend it on efficiency and alternative sources.

I’m prepared to beleive Scotland could manage on renewables, because the population is so small. But the numbers don’t add up for the UK, never mind Europe as a whole.

Nukes are not carbon neurtal anyway – over the lifetime of the station including all carbon dioxide produced they are not much better than a coal station. All that concrete and so on.

Again, let’s just see by looking at the numbers. Quoting from MacKay’s book:

+++
Mythconceptions

Two widely-cited defects of nuclear power are construction costs, and
waste. Let’s examine some aspects of these issues.

1) “Building a nuclear power station requires huge amounts of con-
crete and steel, materials whose creation involves huge CO2
pollution.”

The steel and concrete in a 1 GW nuclear power station have a carbon
footprint of roughly 300 000 t CO2.

Spreading this “huge” number over a 25-year reactor life we can express
this contribution to the carbon intensity in the standard units (g CO2
per kWh(e)),
carbon intensity
associated with construction = 300× 109 g
106 kW(e) × 220 000 h
= 1.4 g/kWh(e),

which is much smaller than the fossil-fuel benchmark of 400 g CO2/kWh(e).
The IPCC estimates that the total carbon intensity of nuclear power (in-
cluding construction, fuel processing, and decommissioning) is less than
40 g CO2/kWh(e) (Sims et al., 2007).

Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to be pro-nuclear. I’m just
pro-arithmetic.
+++

(http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_169.shtml)