[Closed] Hinkley C - do you have a view?

Lets go for it. Dungeness is near me and a bit miffed that they are not proceeding there with the next wave. We need energy, from multiple sources - and not just imported gas. Time for us all to grow up and stop being nimbyish about it, and concentrate on making it as safe as possible.

Against. No solution to waste storage, fuel is finite supply, horrendously expensive, not carbon neutral.

Totally agree, get 'em built & give us 10 or 20 years of breathing space to develop other forms of generation & not have us reliant on some other country for an essential utility.

Stoatsbrother, I worked on 'A' site for a couple of years. Best job I ever had, wish I was back there. Lots of weird Welsh people though. 🙂

A friend who worked for English Nature and whose area included the site said no-one would be allowed to build another reactor there, too many SSSI's within the boundary and it is the breeding site for a rare moth (only rare in uk, widespread just across the channel!

Against. No solution to waste storage, fuel is finite supply, horrendously expensive, not carbon neutral.

As discussed at length nearly a year ago now TJ, have you come up with a suitable real-world answer instead?

Running out of gas, coal dirty, realistic levels of renewables unlikely to fill the gap, increased need for electricity as petrol becomes more expensive and electric cars take off, political suicide to make mandatory limits on energy usage....

Makes me laugh - I was talking to a local. They had a huge campaign to stop the projected wind farm down there. Which succeeded.

Then they announced the alternative, the new nuclear plant. 😀
heh, atomic is the new green.

Against. We still haven't worked out how to deal with the waste. It's very expensive. A wonderful present to terrorists (of which we are constantly reminded).

We live on a wet, windy island, surrounded by waves. Surely we can produce more power from renewables?

I think in addition to the grid, we should all have local, possibly low tech, generation schemes, the kind of which would depend on where you live and the resources to hand.

We need to use less power. Oh! I said it!

+1 for nuclear

why destroy our coast line with acres more wind wave crap? Most waste is reprocessed. Most waste comes from other sources such as hospitals etc. Cant see that waste diminishing any time soon.

Nuclear takes up little space, more bang for your buck. Agree we need to use less but looking at the trend in 4x4's and consumer electronics and white goods I vote for more power.

Somerset native and against. But with no kids & a pretty fatalistic attitude, I accept that I'm just a curious onlooker...

Mind you, I'll say one thing for the atomic age - it gave us some [i]superb[/i] fiction. 😀

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Does Somerset need all that extra generating capacity? Why not build it in London Docklands instead and save all that transmission loss?

As a hippy environmentalist type I have no concerns against nuclear power. I'm sure its safe enough, and if it does go wrong we probably wont know about it and we'll probably all be killed by nuclear weapons anyway (ever the optimist!)

just one quick question, after all these years of research and development, why is the answer for waste still "bury it in the ground and pretend its not there"?

Find and answer to the waste problem and its a goer, fail to do this and we might as well carry on using coal, at least future generations will be obese and have copd rather than tentacles and lasers for eyes.

My friend in Glastonbury has a fantastic view looking west, for miles and miles of the Somerset levels. And out on the coast, you can see the boxes of the Hinkley power station.

The sad reality is, if you filled that entire view with hundreds of wind turbines you would not generate as much leccy as one extra box.

It's Bristol that needs the leccy - Britain's 10 largest city by population.

Zokes - yes - as We have discussed ad nauseum. Energy efficinecy, renewables, CHP etc etc. I am quite prepared to accept more coal to be burnt in the interim until the fruits of these things come thru.

Have you an answer to the waste yet?

Druidh has a very good point - build these nukes in teh places that need the energy.

Those in the know...

I understand that fast-breeder reactors effectively get many times the leccy per amount of uranium than the kind normally built. That uses a fraction of the precious resource, and makes a fraction of the waste product.

Why not do that then? Is it the intermediate Plutonium product that upsets people?

+1
To add we don't have a long tern solution to global warming and rising tides.
We haven't managed to sort a big enough battery to make wind power useful all of the time
The merits of dry dark storage for spent fuel are worth considering, it stands more chance than some other ideas for Carbon Capture.
Reprocessing will become less favoured as a solution with higher burn fuels.
Even if we can reduce our consumption population growth will leave us needing more energy.
A stable base load source of power will provide the basis for making the most of the renewables we have available (see above point) Nuclear provides a method of having more wind/tide/solar etc in the mix

China has just recently overtaken the US of A as the world's largest energy consumer. Their oil companies are rushing around the world buying up anything and everything that might supply oil. We're about to find out if all that scare mongering about "peak oil" is for real or not.

And meanwhile, you won't find any politicians anywhere who will advocate reducing our energy demands.

So we either build nuclear and create a problem for our great-great-grandchildren, or have blackouts and a failing economy sometime in the next decade.

we don't need nuclear, we need a grown up attitude to energy waste. why do we leave shop and office lights on at night? do we need a bigger tv? more gadgets? do we need to live in a way that means we have to drive to work? etc etc.

We don't have a solution to the waste, we don't have a large supply of nuclear fuel, we can't make nuclear at a price that the market will bare. (So it will have to be rigged) what nuclear fuel that is there will be under ever increasing demand, ie it will get alot more expensive.

Batteries, where are the rare metals coming from in the volumes we need to get the prices down to affordable?

Then we can look at food or biofuels, remember one or the other.

The solution is use less not generate more.

The sooner Hinkley C is up and running, the sooner I can retire from Hinkley B 😉
I'm not looking forward to commuting when the new site is under construction though.

luked2 - Member
So we either build nuclear and create a problem for our great-great-grandchildren, or have blackouts and a failing economy sometime in the next decade.

You forget the third option. Energy conservation and accept a bit more coal will be burnt while renewables come on line. Renewables can provide baseload. Tidal. its alkways moving somewhere around are coasts

I am old enough to remember the power cuts in the 70's. When you loose all your power, heating etc I can assure you you will think differently. All your food goes off in freezer, no washing machine, no hot water, no TV only candles. It was pretty pants time.

So hence my vote for proven technologies. The save batteries cut down on waste etc etc is of course a good idea but will not in all reality prove effective enough to meet demand.

You forget the third option. Energy conservation and accept a bit more coal will be burnt while renewables come on line. Renewables can provide baseload. Tidal. its alkways moving somewhere around are coasts

Sadly I didn't forget the third option. Good luck finding any politicians who will be interested in that one. Unless you think you can persuade Rupert Murdoch otherwise.

We've just had the Severn estuary cancelled as being even more absurdly expensive than Nuclear; again, good luck finding politicians interested in that one.

TBH, we worry about nuclear waste, but we're all quite happy to dump stuff equally toxic in the third world.

[url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/gallery/2008/may/06/computer.waste ]
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TJ

I believe nuclear power stations still have to be built near decent reliable water supplies - hence on the coast and near a few very large rivers (the Loire in France). So much as I would like to put one in Kensington and another in the Bullring...

Re batteries and rare-earth metals needed for many "clean" technologies - we are now very very dependent on China for these and they can turn the tap off at anytime.

Stoatsbrother - so Bristol, London - they can both have them

No new nukes in Scotland. 🙂 No need for them

TJ I believe there are tow answers to your question. THe first and obvious is risk. If you have a choice of two locations you might want to consider the least risk. It would be lower risk in Hinckley than in London. What I'm not sure about is whate the absolute risk is. With modern reactors I'd say it's extremely low. The other thing to think about with risk is not the actual risk but the perceived risk. If you were to put the reactor in London then I think you'd get a couple of complaints. Less so in more remote areas where the benefit to the local community in terms of economy is greater than their perceived risk.

The other option is jobs. The government is fond of putting things in places where jobs will be created as it is a vote winner. Reason why large numbers of civil service departments are located in poor areas with high unemployment.

My personal feeling is that they should look to nuclear. The image and understanding that most people have is based on very old technology. New breeder reactors are much more efficient producing less waste.

No nukes in Scotland?

So no nuclear submarine bases up there then? 😆

If the Scots had the power to get rid of them they would do. There will be no new nuclear power stations and the ones we have will be shut down.

Personally, I'm all in favour, but I do work in the nuclear industry so I'm biased.

Nailing my nerd flag firmly to the mast, I'll recommend the latest issue of "Physics World" magazine (the magazine of the UK Institute of Physics) which has an excellent series of articles regarding current and likely future reactor designs. The options for Thorium reactors look interesting (lots more of it than Uranium, more difficult to make nasty bombs out of the end product).

The bottom line is that oil is going to become scarce and expensive, and most of the people who have it aren't terribly friendly. Plus both oil and coal release too much CO2 into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change. We need a mixture of energy supplies for diversity, and we need to reduce our energy usage - start by making sure your loft is well insulated!

TandemJeremy - Member
If the Scots had the power to get rid of them they would do. There will be no new nuclear power stations and the ones we have will be shut down.

As Tonto once said - "less of the 'we' white-man"

Well I think there is a plan for a new power station right near Bristol, next to the existing one at Oldbury that will stop production in 2012.
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Probably ought to put one on the Thames tho. Canvey Island?

haakon_haakonsson

Wher do we get our supplies of Uranium from

[uranium}is going to become scarce and expensive, and most of the people who have it aren't terribly friendly.

Druidh - be careful. When I rule that sort of remark will be considered sedition

Uranium is one of Australia myriad exports so that isn't really an issue, there just isn't much of it at a high enough purity level, and that is an issue.

TJ, there's no shortage of Uranium - seawater is full of it. It's just that extraction is a bit costly at the moment. When (if) it becomes difficult/costly to get by other means, then seawater extraction will become more cost-effective.

Against here, opinion based solely on two factors.

Plans are/were to burrow miles under the fields towards and potentially under the Quantocks and as a dumping store.

The extra power produced will be distributed above ground, so lots of gopping pylons from Hinckley to wherever..

This may or may no longer be factual, but when i left the area back in early April, these were the details i had heard.

My dad can see it across the water from his bed, very good view indeed.

jonb

So its OK to muck up rural areas with nuclear power stations but not good enough for urban areas?

Taht does not bear scrutiny. If its not safe enough to put int eh middle of cities its not safe enough to put anywere in teh UK

[i]Energy conservation and accept a bit more coal will be burnt while renewables come on line.[/i]

Co2 emission are the single biggest threat to human life on this planet now. Nuclear can make a vast difference in reducing those emissions. The waste issue is nothing in comparison to the damage just a 2deg rise in temperature will do if we carry on burning coal in the hope that renewable by itself will solve our energy issues.

Hi TJ

As per mrmo, Australia and Canada are our two main sources of Uranium. Russia has quite a lot too (although I'd put them in the "potentially unfriendly" category).

Thorium reactors are at the prototype stage (with some technical challenges to overcome), not something that's completely ready yet.

Unfortunately, it's really a case of choosing the least bad option:
Oil - becoming scarce, bad for global climate change
Coal - bad for global climate change
Gas - will become more scarce, bad for global climate change
Uranium fission reactors - not terribly popular, long term waste issues, high capital cost
Fusion reactors - still a long way off being usable
Onshore wind - not terribly popular, only 25-40% typical availability, need to have backup generation of some kind for when the wind isn't blowing
Offshore wind - hard work (ie expensive) to install, same availability / backup issues as onshore wind
Hydroelectric - actually quite a good option, but relatively limited further opportunities in the UK as far as I understand it
Tidal - again, a good option for diversity, but my personal view is that the Severn Barrage is not desirable as the lagoon created would silt up something chronic, and it would take absolutely shedloads of concrete to make it (concrete is pretty bad for climate change, as making cement liberates lots of CO2)

At the risk of seeming even more of a nerd, I found the recent book "Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air" by David MacKay extremely well written, it covers most of these issues in depth.

haakon_haakonsson - you left out wave and tidal

I am quite prepared to accept more coal to be burnt in the interim until the fruits of these things come thru.

So we shift the issue of the waste (CO2 and climate change in coal's case) to Bangladesh and other low-lying poor countries - how very noble.

Did you know there's a damned sight more radioactivity released from a coal fired plant to the atmosphere than from a nuclear plant? Just food for thought - if we're worrying about radiation that [i]may[/i] leak into the environment, why not worry about the radiation that [i]does[/i]?

zokes - Member

Did you know there's a damned sight more radioactivity released from a coal fired plant to the atmosphere than from a nuclear plant? Just food for thought - if we're worrying about radiation that may leak into the environment, why not worry about the radiation that does?

Because that which does is miniscule compared to the amount which we subsequently have to store and which could leak/ be mis-appropriated.

As a generic question to the pro-nuclear lobby - are you all happy to have nuclear reactors installed throughout the world, in every country?

If real significant steps are taken in energy conservation consumption could be reduced dramatically. This will make up much of the shortfall. If a bit more coal has to get burnt then so be it - this is far less dangerous than the waste from nukes - remembering that they are not carbon neutral by any means. Lots of co2 produced by the construction ogf the stations, the mining of the fuel and the decommissioning of the sites

druidh - yes I did miss them off. I realised and edited my post to include tidal, apologies for my lapse in concentration (watching the last episode of Downton Abbey, v gripping)

Wave power - need a lot of it to make a significant difference, not many mechanisms like being pounded in seawater