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

Say it again please TJ, damn right.

the fuel for nukes is scarce and in countries that are unstable

That’s why we used to have breeder reactors in the UK, to ensure a supply of fuel. I guess more could be built if the economics were right.

TBH, we need to do all three, invest in nuclear power, cut down usage by travelling less and insulating more, and by investing in solar sources (nanosolar, for example, make printed solar electric films that should provide electrcity as cheap as coal – but we need to start investing in better research now)

Certainly Matt

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

Porterclough – nice arithmetic. I have seen it expressed in a way that shows not such a big advantage – I guess its who is supplying the figures 🙂 – but you are right – I didn’t make my point at all clear. The point was that nukes are not carbon free in any way.

TJ – Local combined heat and power (incinerators) 90 sites for this have been chosen some work on them has begin (am working on one now). Unfortunatley the so called “friends of the earth” are objecting to this project (and most others) on the grounds of emmisions(nearly zero), they stop recycling and they don’t look nice near my big house.
Same sort of issues that face nuclear, coal, wind. Someone from the self appointed environmental industry has got to get there head round the fact that we need electicity and loads of it. My personal view is that we need some of everything that has been discussed above. We should also relax the planning laws so that people can start to generate their own power and encourage more frugal use of electricity (remember SAVE IT from the 70’s). Great debate this and some good stuff on the earlier posts.

but we need to start investing in better research now

Too right – much rather that than spend lots of money on rubbish windmills. The only real way forward with renewables is to find better solutions – I’m sure there are some out there if enough science and engineering skill can be thrown at the issue.

😯

Are we approaching agreement? Is this STW?

Porterclough – nice arithmetic. I have seen it expressed in a way that shows not such a big advantage – I guess its who is supplying the figures – but you are right – I didn’t make my point at all clear. The point was that nukes are not carbon free in any way.

over the lifetime of the station including all carbon dioxide produced they are not much better than a coal station.

You’re right, not at all clear that you simply meant they weren’t carbon neutral, rather than no better than coal. As molgrips kept saying to me on the wind thread, we’re not stupid, of course they’re not carbon neutral (neither are wind turbines), just better than fossil fuel power stations.

Are we approaching agreement?

We agree that we shouldn’t be spending money on rubbish windmills, and that “we need some of everything that has been discussed above” then? 😉

fine by me, we supply alot of equipment for them

it’s the future and they will go ahead from the initial buzz were hearing.

Scotland can quite happily cope with 100% renewables if the will was there. England doesn’t matter, though I do think it’s an absolute disgrace that our gov’t supports nuclear so much. Take into account the cost of commissioning and decommissioning (severeal times the cost of commissioning) the nuclear plants, put that money into micro solar/wind/ground source heat and larger scale wind, wave, tidal, hydro and biofuel generation, and we could actually be a leading light globally.

BUT

We are just the pathetic UK and will continue to be so as long as our leaders continue to be spouted forth with very few brain cells to rub together.

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

I feel sorry for you, living that close to…. Millom. 😆

Once again, my only point being that we need to start making the generating capacity NOW, and if we are going to encourage electric cars we need it YESTERDAY. Useable high-output renewables are currently limited with only wind and hydro-elec capable of large scale production, and they are erratic. It will take a lot more time to develop other types of renewables regardless of how much cash is invested. As a species we have made ourselves a timebomb. Even if, best case scenario, the scientists knock up a working fusion plant tomorrow it’ll be 10+ years before its capable of being reproduced widely. How do we cope when we need power now, more current plants are coming offline etc.

It’s a sticky mess.

I got myself thrown out of a previous Sizewell enquiry, by asking the following:

Given that in Suffolk we already out produce our electricity requirements by some distance, and given that the greatest inefficiency in the grid is transport to point of use by overhead power lines, and also given that all of the power lines from Sizewell head directly to London why is it being built here?

The answer was the lack of an appropriate site; apparently the unused Battersea site wasn’t suitable due to the likelihood of flooding. Yeah right! Which of course doesn’t apply to Sizewell which is on the fastest eroding coastline in Europe, (approximately 1 metre per annum), and as it happens one of the first that will be seriously adversely effected by Global warming ironically enough.

waihiboy – what do you supply the power industry.

Some stats from tomorrows chip paper:
Nuc users France 78% to Holland 3.5%.
15 EU countries have em and they supply 34% of eu electricity.
Friends of the earth statement “breathing new life into the failed nuclear experiment”. Then brings on all the usual reasons (some good) but adds the trendy scare words of the moment “terrorist threat”. Perhaps France should retrying the experiment for us, oh of course EDF they will be as we got sold off all our experts (westinghouse Thanks Gordon).
If I was the goverment I’d be more worried about what my mother in law (and those like her) would do if the power went of while coronation st was on the telly.
Still think we need a spectrum of solutions.

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

I live just a few miles from Hyde Park. I would much rather any power station be built as far away as possible. 😉

Nobody wants them, but considering our electricity consumption, we all need them. And if they are to be built, then better that they are built in places with relatively small populations, just in case of any disasters. I know they spoil the local environment and that, but that’s too bad. The vast majority of people live in cities, and most will never go to the countryside areas near nuclear power stations anyway, so for the vast majority of people, it’s all right for them to be built in remote areas.

It’s naive and selfish to want to keep the countryside as a lovely, unspoiled area that the few can enjoy by themselves. Remote areas offer locations and resources that go to feed our society’s insatiable desire for energy; you want your computers, your wash-machines, your DVD players, your 85-inch plasma screen TVs, your mobile ‘phone chargers? Where you think energy comes from? A little well in a village in Cumbria, with infinite supplies?

All those moaning against the building of any new power stations; switch your computers off now, and have your leccy disconnected. And maybe use yer own poo to grow stuff…

Don’t feed the troll?

Don’t feed the troll?

I did briefly consider the idea, but it’s poor stuff even for Rudeboy.

RudeBoy – Member

It’s naive and selfish to want to keep the countryside as a lovely, unspoiled area that the few can enjoy by themselves. remote areas offer locations and resources that go to feed our societies insatiable desire for energy; you want your computers, your wash-machines, your DVD players, your 85-inch plasma screen TVs, your mobile ‘phone chargers? Where you think energy comes from? A little well in a village in Cumbria, with infinite supplies?

Nice – and I happen to agree with much of it. While it’s lovely to look at photos of, say, Sutherland, I’d much prefer there to be some meaningful employment and re-population. That could be achieved by moving people to where the power is generated, not the other way around.

You know I’m right, though. That’s the thing. You just don’t want to admit it.

Rudeboy – but you get huge losses in the transmission lkines plus the cost of building them. Far better to have the power generated near where it is used. If you do so then you can also use the heat generated which at the moment is wasted to heat homes. Local combined heat and power. Used in other parts of the world.

So – nuke london

Wunundred!

[edit]

Bugger! Bloody TJ beat me to it! 👿

Rudeboy’s in room 101 😆

Teej; I’d be ok with smaller power stations being near London, but where you gonna put them? Or near any major city, for that matter?

See, everyone appreciates the need for them, but no-one wants them in their back yard. You build a power station, speshly a nuclear one; watch people move out. So you’d just end up with an area deserted by it’s population.

They’ve got to be in remote areas. So stop moaning about it.

And Teej; what if I responded with ‘nuke Edinburgh’?

Be childish, woon’t it?

RudeBoy, you say “The vast majority of people live in cities, and most will never go to the countryside areas near nuclear power stations anyway, so for the vast majority of people, it’s all right for them to be built in remote areas.”

Kirksanton is on the edge of The Lake District National Park, tourism is very important to this area, we have lots of visitors from cities all year long, we don’t need a nuclear power sation sited here when there is a perfectly adequate site at an already spoiled Sellafield.

Surely, the siting of a nuclear power station at Kirksanton would kill completely the tourist industry in this beautiful corner of Cumbria.

But you can’t nuke edinburgh – its a world heritage site and a nuke free city 🙂

Seriously – local power and heat is all about small stations – any brownfield development site will do. For example the Olymip site would be perfect. Infrastructure is being built anyway so there is the chance to get the steam pipes put it. Imagine all those housing units needing no heating system as the heat is piped in from the nearby power station. Its one of the best solutions. You gain efficiency (although you lose some by small size) by reducing power transmission losses and by using the waste heat to heat homes.

We got addicted to crack (oil, coal) and keep looking for ‘clean’ techno substitutes (wind, solar)…only everyone gets upset because they can’t provide us with the same ‘hit’.

Maybe we just shouldn’t have got addicted in the first place.

Surely, the siting of a nuclear power station at Kirksanton would kill completely the tourist industry in this beautiful corner of Cumbria.

Well perhaps, but it will also be a fraction of the size of sellafield. The Kirksanton / Braystones bid by RWE is also an entirely seperate process to the proposed NDA land being sold off at selafield, so in theory we could get anywhere between 0 and all 4.

I agree with everyone else it makes no practical sense to put the power stations so far away from the consumers, the losses in the transport are huge and we could more than likely hit our reduced carbon targets just by moving the production to the consumer.

However no Govt. would ever get any votes if they did the sensible thing.

Also its not as if they can make London any more ugly is it, a power station might actually improve things.

nb: just to add I am not a Hypocrite, oldbury is just outside Bristol and the replacement one makes a lot of sense to be there, as it can supply Bristol & Cardiff as its close to both

IMO:

The solutions to “The Energy Question” that’s been looming for the last 30 years, is too technical for politicians to understand and communicate.

I suppose I’m technically anti-nuclear, as a long-term solution, but right now renewables still aren’t a mature product, so nuclear makes an effective delaying tactic, and give us time to actually develop alternatives that work instead of trying to rush to market with, well, crap. Most renewables right now aren’t worth the effort, but we’re learning.

It’s naive and selfish to want to keep the countryside as a lovely, unspoiled area that the few can enjoy by themselves.

I’m not so utilitarian. Ideas of “Rural England” and “Wild Scotland” are as important as the reality.

Problem is with any attempt at any type of alternate power generation the Luddites come out of the woodwork, I use that term as they quite successfully protest against the plan, but then don’t offer any viable alternative, so all that happens is nothing at all apart from a huge waste of funds on paperwork and lawyers. Plus a ticking timebomb for the future when existing nuclear and non-nuclear power stations are decommissioned and we end up with brown-outs as new capacity has not been brought online in time, whatever that capacity may be.

In any modern society there will always be a need for Nuclear Reactors, if only for the by-products, now most people will quite rightly say for bomb production. However they can also produce radioisotopes for medical imaging and radiotherapy.

For example the Olymip site would be perfect

Get fecked. Stick one on Arthur’s Seat. Perfect.

Or just get loads of giant hamster wheels, and get all the fayt lazy northerners on ’em, generate some leccy. Result= slimmer, healthier northerners, loads of leccy, and a smaller NHS burden from lard and deep-fried Mars Bar induced illnesses.

Nuclear PS in London; don’t be so **** stupid. You’re worried about tourism in Cumbria? Have you any idea how many billions of pounds the London Tourism industry is worth? Probbly more than half the rest of Britain put together!

**** it. Stick ’em up North. I don’t visit there anyway, so it don’t bother me. And ‘cos I’m from London, my opinion is more important than anyone else’s. 😉

RB are you an MP? 😉

I should be.

‘And next, we have the Right ‘Orrible Mr. RudeBoy, MP for Hackney Bastard…’

‘Mr. Speaker; may I say, that I think you are a right wally, and that I don’t like your face? And that I am going to duff you in, after school?’

I’d have an outstanding and overwhelming majority.

‘Vote Rude, or I’ll kick yer teeth in’.

Democracy? My Arse…

It seems this troll is capable of surviving on the measliest of morsels. Perhaps we should try reprocessing him at Sellafield and see what comes out?

how many billions of pounds the London Tourism industry is worth

It seems that the police don’t value it much….

Good Lord. Can you imagine?

MechaRudeZilla!

I have skipped quite a few posts but the “carbon question” is moot. Even if we managed to become carbon neutral if such a thing exists someone else (china, india etc) will happily burn the remaining coal/oil/gas.

There are simply too many comfy people living cushy lifestyles and the rest of the world quite rightly wants to join in. We should be pushing contraception instead of toyota f’ing priuses and other such ridiculous energy “saving” devices.
With my limited knowledge James Lovelock seems to be the only person speaking any kind of non political b**locks at the moment.

Spot on, Northwind.