[Closed] Hinkley - non merci

Not that it makes a difference anyway, decommissioning IS costed.

Costed where? For the new ones, in the strike price? It wasn't for existing, and I bet if it is included in the new one strike price it's a massive underestimate. There was a great page on the NDA gov website about the estimated decom costs in billions for each UK reactor, sadly they've taken it down now. A friend who works in decommissioning nuclear sites says no one knows the true cost of decom until it's done, which is a job for life itself.

The number of deaths and illnesses due to accidents and the effects of permitted leakage and use of radioactive materials in conventional weapons etc. is high and probably impossible to accurately count, and this is without there having been any serious (in relative terms)incidents.

Source please. Also, nobody is talking about weapons, there's another thread for that.

Another not talked about issue is how vulnerable reactors,processing plants,mines, material in transportation and waste storage facilities are to deliberate attack, physical or cyber, also they are preferred targets in times of conflict.

Not particularly. At least not in my experience. Also, I assume you are talking about nuclear conflict since any idiot knows blowing up a reactor isn't good for anyone. Therefore, moot point.

As far as I know (IANANE), there is really no way to remove the material effectively from the enviroment or food chain.

Not like the fairy dust and unicorn tears emitted from mining waste eh?

Not sure how this can be mitigated, technology is unlikely to improve this.

Relay?

To ask about UK specific is somewhat shortsighted as when radioactive material gets out into the enviroment it travels and the damage it does is irreversable and can last for many generations.

A nuclear incident anywhere is relevant .

Actually no, in this context it's not. We're talking about the UK nuclear industry.

http://euanmearns.com/a-trip-round-swansea-bay/

you do know this guy is a total nimby quack weirdo don't you? I wouldn't take anything on that site as remotely factual.

Costed where?

Sorry, off night shift. Not costed but funded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Liabilities_Fund

It was established when the AGR's were privatised, it's now up to the owners to add to the fund. The remaining sites were all publically owned.

A friend who works in decommissioning nuclear sites says no one knows the true cost of decom until it's done, which is a job for life itself.

Sadly all part and parcel of legacy crap.

Source please. Also, nobody is talking about weapons, there's another thread for that.

what you don't know everything/have google?

Not particularly. At least not in my experience. Also, I assume you are talking about nuclear conflict since any idiot knows blowing up a reactor isn't good for anyone. Therefore, moot point.

no I am not, and it is a real possibility. how is that moot?

Not like the fairy dust and unicorn tears emitted from mining waste eh?

yes burning fossil fuel is not good. how does this change anything?

Relay?

yes.

Actually no, in this context it's not. We're talking about the UK nuclear industry.

OK. but I said a nuclear incident, this is not border restricted.

Anyway I could be wrong but pretty sure the "nuclear industry" is not so localised and has a lot to do with large companies and investors than any UK goverments or other related organisations.

does this proposed one have something to do with China?

Tidal lagoons where for long periods of the day generation is zero as the lagoon refills.

Tidal Lagoons? Where the cost of electricity is far higher than Hinkley Point Nuclear and four times higher than gas generated electricity.

I'm not sure comparing strike rates from Hinkley against other forms of more expensive generation has much meaning, it makes for exciting headlines etc, but in terms of representing overall cost to the consumer it doesn't take account of the overall quantity of energy the consumer has to pay for overall, just the cost of each unit.

If you consider each mwh as one unit, the consumer is going to pay for a massively higher number of units from Hinkley than say an offshore wind farm, or a tidal lagoon, as it is going to produce such a large amount of energy compared to the wind farm or lagoon. Strike rates for things like offshore wind will come down with time too, even that quack link says the lagoon prices will come down. With Hinkley you are paying a high strike rate for a comparitively massive quantity of units for a long time.

An index of the rate against how much energy the development will produce would provide a better indication of relative expense perhaps?

wait till every other car in the street is a subsidised electric car too......

[quote=mikewsmith ]Windscale was an experimental reactior built in the 50s copied from the yanks to produce plutonium for a bomb not power.

It was a deliberate trick question - I don't think Windscale has the slightest relevance to any current power station. I note that there isn't a single major accident at a UK power station on the wiki list linked to above, and it is reasonable to confine discussion to the UK, as we're discussing power generation in the UK, not anywhere else - an incident in a different country with different safety standards isn't terribly relevant when considering the risks of building a power station here.

[quote=DrJ ]I think the point with nuclear safety is the potential that if something goes wrong it goes really, really wrong.

Sure, and when you do risk assessment (I'm sure the nuclear industry does a lot of that) you consider magnitude of impact and likelihood of occurrence. The likelihood of occurrence is tiny. Looking at that list again, even the number of deaths caused by Chernobyl is dwarfed by the number of deaths associated with coal power. Let's be realistic about the actual dangers of stuff - a big bang at a nuclear power plant still wouldn't match the health impact of vehicle fumes either.

[quote=bigjim ]I'm not sure comparing strike rates from Hinkley against other forms of more expensive generation has much meaning, it makes for exciting headlines etc, but in terms of representing overall cost to the consumer it doesn't take account of the overall quantity of energy the consumer has to pay for overall, just the cost of each unit.

Well that's just silly. Build enough tidal lagoons to match the total output of Hinkley and how much would the total cost be? Of course the cost per unit is the correct measure.

Well that's just silly. Build enough tidal lagoons to match the total output of Hinkley and how much would the total cost be? Of course the cost per unit is the correct measure.

I think you need to read it again and think about it 😀

Build enough tidal lagoons to match the total output of Hinkley

Well that's just silly.

[quote=bigjim ]

Build enough tidal lagoons to match the total output of Hinkley

Indeed!

what you don't know everything/have google?

The onus is on you to provide the evidence, you said it.

no I am not, and it is a real possibility. how is that moot?

I don't think you're grasping my point. Why would anyone target a nuclear facility when the fallout has the potential to affect their own territory? They wouldn't, the only reason to target one would be in an all out strategic nuclear attack.

yes burning fossil fuel is not good. how does this change anything?

Again, I was talking about mining/industrial waste including that related to renewables. Nuclear isn't that special in this regard (though is probably far better regulated).

Relay?

yes.

No, like actual relays. Thousands of them. I'd like to see an EMP knock out our trip sequencing equipment.

OK. but I said a nuclear incident, this is not border restricted.

Anyway I could be wrong but pretty sure the "nuclear industry" is not so localised and has a lot to do with large companies and investors than any UK goverments or other related organisations.

does this proposed one have something to do with China?

As aracer said we are talking about nuclear safety in relation to a station being built in the UK. Not France, China, North Korea or the moon.

I used to be a fan of nuclear when I was a kid. I grew up very much as one of the Tomorrows World generation and used to go to Sellafield on trips with my Dad and believed all their spiel about how safe and compact the waste was when they turned it into those little glassy blocks.

Then we had Fukushima and now the truth is out about how much of a mess they really are in at Sellafield with all the waste they are trying to deal with amongst failing structures and containment. So now I think we really don't have any right to using nuclear power (or weapons for that matter) and risk the damage that it can cause to the rest of the population of the planet (not just humans).

I think we should make every town/city/district responsible for generating as much of their own power locally. Cover every suitable roof in solar, also windows with transparent solar. Encourage wind turbines, biomass etc. Sort out the disappointment that is wave/tidal power at the moment.

As for storage - phase change thermal, batteries, hydro etc.

If Hinkley does go ahead though we will lose the unsightly power lines we can see from our new house and get some money from the national grid to use in our village for community projects. I' still rather it didn't.

The turbines work in both directions, so generating power as the lagoon fills and empties. The Swansea one is supposed to be able to generate for up to 14 hours a day,

Like I said. Doesn't generate for long periods of the day.

http://euanmearns.com/a-trip-round-swansea-bay/

you do know this guy is a total nimby quack weirdo don't you? I wouldn't take anything on that site as remotely factual.

So which parts of his post are wrong then?

Like I said. Doesn't generate for long periods of the day.

That's why it's all about small and varied generation located preferably close to final use. Also things like CHP and clever use of waste heat.

What happens when there is a problem with your shiny new power station and it goes off line, or floods due a tsunami or gets blown up by an accident or terrorist attach? You lose a huge chunk of your available power.

Umm, the whole point of breeding is to generate and then burn plutonium, you don't actually have to feed it with uranium. For instance the whole selling point of PRISM is to burn those very same stockpiles (or at least render them useless for weaponisation).

Then we had Fukushima and now the truth is out about how much of a mess they really are in at Sellafield with all the waste they are trying to deal with amongst failing structures and containment.

Aye, breeder/burner config, again, just off night shifts so not firing on all channels.

I think we should make every town/city/district responsible for generating as much of their own power locally. Cover every suitable roof in solar, also windows with transparent solar. Encourage wind turbines, biomass etc. Sort out the disappointment that is wave/tidal power at the moment.

I disagree with your evaluation of nuclear based on old tech but totally agree with this point. We should be aiming to be as sustainable and diverse as possible.

The legacy waste at Sellafield is in containments that were also built to 1960s designs (or older); they are not 'failing', they just don't meet modern standards.

Are you sure about that? I think you will find that the containment solutions put in place decades ago are starting to fall apart so now they are having to try and re-home the waste into even more expensive containment.

Building a nuclear power station is pretty much a case of getting yourself a blank cheque from the country to cash in when the time comes to decommission it in future.

How many billions have we spent on building nuclear plants and how many times this will we have spent in decommissioning them? Unless we can honesty, 100%, say that you can build, operate, decommission and dispose of the waste without ANY incident or pollution/upprocessable waste at the end of it then we have no right to use it as far as I am concerned.

little bit more than not meeting modern standards:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530053-800-shocking-state-of-worlds-riskiest-nuclear-waste-site/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/29/sellafield-nuclear-radioactive-risk-storage-ponds-fears

Their own reports are scary enough as they are very much learning/fumbling as they go: http://www.sellafieldsites.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Technology-Development-and-Delivery-Summary-Review-2010_2011.pdf

We will NEVER know everything there is to know about nuclear, nor will we ever be able to deal with it properly. All we do is encase the waste for another generation, then re-encase it and so forth. That is not a solution, it is an expensive, risky and environmentally damaging process.

This pretty much sums up the nuclear industry to me:

[img] [/img]

Building a nuclear power station is pretty much a case of getting yourself a blank cheque from the country to cash in when the time comes to decommission it in future.

Given Hinkley C is the first private nuclear venture in this country I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.

Their own reports are scary enough as they are very much learning/fumbling as they go

Again, legacy issues. B30 has the 70's miners strike to thank for that (as a causal factor).

As for waste, the higher the tech the lower the waste, breeders have waste with a life of hundreds of years rather than thousands which makes it significantly more manageable.

Given Hinkley C is the first private nuclear venture in this country I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.

because it's us that ends up paying for it in the end when the company gets in trouble in X years time when trying to decommission it. It's not a hard concept to grasp really is it?

I don't get why you keep saying it's just legacy issues. Odds are history will just repeat itself.

Look as asbestos. Years ago it was a wonder material and used everywhere they could. Then they realised it was dangerous and we are left with a long deadly legacy that will be impossible to ever completely clean up.

Then CNTs were invented and people started using them everywhere despite not knowing all the risks...humans never learn, never know all the answers and are not infallible so why should we be trusted with nuclear energy? For me it's a risk too far.

Thalidomide, MRSA, oil spills etc etc problems caused by humans doing something wrong and it will continue and fall on the generations after us to try and deal with it.

Given Hinkley C is the first [b]private[/b] nuclear venture

The "P" word has worked well for rail, the Royal Mail, banks etc to far hasn't it?

[quote=andyl ]Thalidomide, MRSA, oil spills etc etc problems caused by humans doing something wrong and it will continue and fall on the generations after us to try and deal with it.

Coal, internal combustion engines...

All things considered we have a fairly good idea what we're doing with nuclear now - there are plenty of other more dangerous things we do which people don't get so excited about (the use of some of which can be reduced by building nuclear power stations).

Coal, internal combustion engines...

Indeed.

All things considered we have a fairly good idea what we're doing with nuclear now -

I can't share your confidence in this. Plus you say "fairly" which is not good enough to me. Would you get on a plane if the airline was "fairly confident the wings would stay on", or they were "fairly sure the pilot was competent to fly" it or they were "fairly sure they had put enough fuel in for the flight"? The very fact we have to get a french company with money borrowed from China suggests to me that as well as being unable to financially afford it we can't afford to clean up any mess should it go wrong. do you think it will also come in on budget and on time?

Up until Fukishima I was a fan but now I just can't accept it is a viable route. Say what you want that that was an isolated case and to an old reactor and a freak event...it happened.

Don't pick on my words, I'm English - yes I might suggest the pilot of a plane has a fairly good idea what he's doing and that I'm fairly confident the wings will stay on. I'm similarly confident about nuclear power.

It's been done by other, but Fukushima keeps coming up - remind me how many people were killed by the nuclear incident and how many by other causes? ISTM there are other things than having a nuclear power station there which cost rather more lives.

I don't get why you keep saying it's just legacy issues. Odds are history will just repeat itself.

Look as asbestos. Years ago it was a wonder material and used everywhere they could. Then they realised it was dangerous and we are left with a long deadly legacy that will be impossible to ever completely clean up.

And then what? We learned from our mistakes and managed asbestos. As for clean up, just remember it came from somewhere and could just as easily be put back where it was found.

Anyway, in the cases of both nuclear and asbestos the harsh, shitty lessons of their infancies have been learned and they are both mature enough to be managed (or avoided) where applicable. Gone are the days where scientists would piss about with barely sub-critical plutonium spheres with scant regard for their own lives let alone anyone elses. In fact I bet more people have died or been injured on nuclear related construction sites than in nuclear related incidents, hence why the H&S executive was created to manage and legislate againt bad practices (of which the ONR is now a branch).

The "P" word has worked well for rail, the Royal Mail, banks etc to far hasn't it?

You miss my point, up until now the public purse has picked up decommissioning as all the assets were publically owned either by the UKAEA, BNFL or NDA. Private decommissioning hasn't yet taken place so it's completely disingenious to say anything about it.

It should also be noted that one AGR has already beeen decommissioned (the Sellafield prototype) so the principle is already better understood than that of the Magnox reactors which were constantly evolving through their construction period and as such all had to be approched differently. AGR's are all the same within the core and there are actually only two (or three*) distinct designs of pressure vessel.

*blame Dungeness, I'm allowing for it being different though I don't believe there is much seperating the APC reactor from the TNPG/NNC** types in principle.

**
APC - Atomic Power Construction - DNB
TNPG - The Nuclear Power Group - HNB & HPB
BNDC - British Nuclear Design & Construction - HAR & HYA
NNC - National Nuclear Corporation - HYB & TOR

Sorry but Fukushima is relevant, since its an example of engineers & accountants not designing out risk.

They knew there was a damn good chance of an Tatsumi yet choose not to fully protect the reactors with a full height sea wall.

How many similar risks have UK reactors chosen to ignore to save a few bob.

Chaos will find a way people ... Did no-one see Jurassic park

[quote=samunkim ]Sorry but Fukushima is relevant, since its an example of engineers & accountants not designing out risk.

Sure - and how many people did that actually kill? I'm just wondering whether not protecting the reactors was actually the worst thing that went wrong in that area if they knew there was a chance of a tsunami (did they? it seems odd that so many people died in that case).

[quote=samunkim ]How many similar risks have UK reactors chosen to ignore to save a few bob.

[s]Probably [/s] I'm fairly confident it's none.

Chaos will find a way people ... Did no-one see Jurassic park

Talking about Fukushima as an event that has passed is misleading.

It is still happening and it appears that nobody knows how to deal with it and it will continue 'happening' for many years.

nobody can really say what the effect of it will be in the long term.

nobody can even get close enough for long enough to have a good look at it nevermind 'put it back where it was found'.

The 'controlled release' of contaminated water into the enviroment is just another way of saying dump it in the Pacific.

This seems to be the best solution that current engineering can supply.
it is not even a solution, just a way of stopping the situation getting even worse.

this is the thing that makes nuclear powered electic stations so dangerous, and the more of it there is operating the more frequently accidents will happen.

at least they use public transport to move the waste around 😯

Remind me again how many people have been killed by it?

Are you really not aware of the fact that radiation does not kill people instantly but destroys your body slowly?

but in answer to how many (affected), all of us sooner or later.

Of course - the only people to die within the first 2 weeks at Chernobyl died in a helicopter crash...

Let's try this another way then - how many extra deaths are expected due to exposure to radiation?

you reckon people in the UK will die because of it? 😯

squirrelking - Member

Anyway, in the cases of both nuclear and asbestos the harsh, shitty lessons of their infancies have been learned and they are both mature enough to be managed (or avoided) where applicable

Uh, yeah. Flamanville 3- the same design of reactor as Hinckley C, also built by EDF- has already had problems with the secondary containment vessel's concrete cracking and steelwork not being made to spec, the coolant safety valves had enough faults to create a meltdown risk (an issue found by external regulators, never found or at least never reported by Areva), and afaik they've still not finished the investigation into the faulty steel of the reactor vessel.

Now that last one's of particular interest, because there's a strong suggestion that they've known that steel was faulty for almost the entire build, and yet didn't report it til last year. So you have all the usual suspects here- design issues, construction issues, a failure to detect critical systems failures by the builders, and [i]possibly[/i] willingness to conceal those they do find from regulators.

I'm not seeing that the human factor's been designed or regulated or managed out. Again, you don't need to be anti-nuclear to think some of this is pretty worrying. Profit and politics and human nature are more dangerous than radiation...

(if you were less cynical than me, you might think that a project that runs massively overbudget and behind schedule should inherently undermine confidence in those in charge of it; ordinarily I'd agree but I think in this case the budget and schedule were probably a carefully designed fantasy in order to get the things built, rather than being acceidentally wrong. Just as they are for Hinckley.)

aracer - Member

Let's try this another way then - how many extra deaths are expected due to exposure to radiation?

Disingenous- a nuclear disaster doesn't just kill by radiation exposure, as you note yourself re Chernobyl. There's been 573 recorded disaster-related deaths relating to Fukushima where the disaster and evacuation directly contributed to aggravating a chronic disease. No reliable accounting of related suicides and mental illness from the upheval. And absolutely no way of knowing the impact that the reactor emergency response and evacuation had on the wider tsunami response. That's human cost only, the economic costs are staggering.

Actual predictions of radiation-related deaths are mostly smaller, ironically.

I tried for a sneaky edit but too late; when people say that nuclear's risks have been learned, fixed and designed out, I always remember Tepco's admission that they had cancelled plans to improve Fukushima's sea defences, because they weren't prepared to publically admit that Fukuskima's sea defences needed to be improved. I trust engineers but these are engineering decisions made by governments, lawyers, accountants and PR men.

If you can't even take the time to find the correct spelling for HINKLEY what are the chances of any of you other claims being correct. 🙄

Sorry but Fukushima is relevant, since its an example of engineers & accountants not designing out risk.

I'll say this very, very clearly.

FUKUSHIMA IS NOT, WAS NOT, AND MOST LIKELY WILL NEVER BE UNDER UK NUCLEAR REGULATORY CONTROL.

You want to know what we did after Fukushima? Build ****ing Thunderbirds, that's what. A few dozen Zetros and Unimog hookloaders and command vehicles, heavy plant equipment, a fleet of Land Rovers and basically enough equipment to make any disaster relief worker, military or civil, piss themselves with joy. On top of that we built a dyke all the way around Dungeness (on the well known North Sea Tsunami belt) and built up flood defences on all the other power stations appropriate to the local environment. As it is we were never lax enough to build anything in such stupid places as TEPCO but we decided to seimically strengthen everything (beyond the already robust improvements already made) anyway. The project managers were given IIRC £200m for the response equipment alone which will in all likelihood never be used in anger (except when it was bailing out Somerset). Here's the full details including plant stress test results:

https://www.edfenergy.com/content/edf-energy-response-fukushima-nuclear-accident

Beancounters eh?

If it's not already apparant I work in the industry, IIRC there are two others on here that I know of.

Dibbs - right spelling, wrong place 😉

Northwind - I need to read up on that, will get back.

Dibbs - Member

If you can't even take the time to find the correct spelling for HINKLEY what are the chances of any of you other claims being correct.

As you didn't take the time to correctly spell "your", I am going to ignore your post.

. Don't pick on my words, I'm English.

Eh? You keep saying you are "fairly sure this" and "fairly sure that" so why shouldn't I pick up on it. Your whole argument is based on "fairly sures". Fairly sure is fine when dealing with some things but I draw a line at nuclear.

I simply do not trust humans with nuclear power any more, not government run and especially not private run and that's before it's foreign companies using foreign money as ultimately the bean counters will be calling the shots.

Are you really short sighted enough to think that the immediate deaths from Fukushima are all that matter? What about the lasting environmental damage and risk to animal life. This is not our planet yet we seem to think it's okay to destroy it just so people can have nice things and electricity to run them.

The wall at Fukushima was too low for the wave. Was this as they thought a wave was not going to be that high (they were " fairly sure it would be fine") or because someone said a bigger wall was too expensive?

Humans will not design the perfect nuclear power station
Humans will not build the perfect nuclear power station
Humans will not accurately predict everything that nature will throw at us during the life of that nuclear power station.

As for putting the waste back where it came from that would be fine but now how much concrete and steel is it encased in?

How much concrete does it take to build the power station?

If nuclear was the perfect solution that in 100 years time people will look back on and say was a wise choice then I would be a fan but I simply do not believe that to be the case. In 100 years people are going to look back on this and curse and how the greed for electricity took us down this road intead of investing in a proper low energy consumption and greener generation society.

aracer - Member

Of course - the only people to die within the first 2 weeks at Chernobyl died in a helicopter crash...

Let's try this another way then - how many extra deaths are expected due to exposure to radiation?

you reckon people in the UK will die because of it?

No doubt we are all aware 73.7% os published statistics are made up on the spot... maybe divide them in half or by 10 and see if they are more acceptable?

http://www.chernobyl-international.com/about-chernobyl/

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of these figures of course but you can probably average them with other official reports and draw the conclusion that many people have been affected across Europe and will continue to be affected for many generations.

a few headlines

MELTDOWN

Only 3% of the reactor’s lethal material was expelled in the initial accident in 1986, leaving 97% within the unstable sarcophagus. It remains a “ticking time bomb”.

70% of the radiation fell onto the population of Belarus, affecting seven million people.

Scientists feared that a further explosion could occur, producing a force of three to five megatons, and exposing the whole of Europe to enormous radioactive contamination.

800,000 men, known as liquidators, risked their lives and exposed themselves to dangerous levels of radiation to contain the situation.

At least 40,000 of these men have died and a further 70,000 are disabled. Twenty percent of these deaths were suicides.

ENVIROMENT

99% of the land of Belarus was contaminated in 1986.

2,000 towns and villages were evacuated, and more than 400,000 people have been relocated from their homes since 1986. Decades later, another 70,000 are still waiting to evacuate.
Some of the contaminants infecting the soil and air, such as plutonium, have a half-life of 24,400 years.

The contamination of the land remains the biggest health threat as caesium 137 finds its way via the food chain into the human body. Professor Yuri Bandashevsky Prof. MD. PhD in Nuclear Medicine Specialist at the Ivankova Hospital in the Ukraine, states that there should be no caesium in the body or should there be no question of temporary or acceptable levels.

“Any dose is an over dose of caesium 137, there should be no question of acceptable levels in the body”, Professor Yuri Bandashevsky.

ECONOMY

The cost of the Chernobyl blast and its consequences is being carried by the survivors and will be handed down to their children for generations.

The Chernobyl disaster costs Belarus 20% of its annual national budget.
It is estimated that the fallout from the disaster will cost Belarus $235 billion.

The first phase in the battle to contain the damage done by the Chernobyl disaster is the construction of a new Chernobyl Sarcophagus. The structure that was built to secure reactor number 4 in the wake of the explosion – the unstable Chernobyl sarcophagus is perilously close to collapse. The new structure being built will secure the reactor for 100 years but the half-life of some of the most dangerous radioactive elements housed within the reactors core have life spans of up to 24,400 years.

Phase two of this plan is to decontaminate the 200 tons of radioactive material still rumbling inside the exploded reactor. The clean-up of the material has yet to begin and could take many years to come. The cost of the new sarcophagus and clean up is €1.5 billion so far.

I will not post video or pictures of living survivors, and those born long after the event are easy to find, I think I would rather die than suffer as these people are.

TL:DR

My opinion is the risk/reward balance here make nuclear energy a bit of a poor choice.

..unless you are into making a quick buck 😉

I'm sorry Andy, please don't take this as a slight on your character but you seem to be woefully ignorant on the subject of risk management. Every single one of those statements could apply to other things you are presumably happy to put faith in every day.

So, all the "anti nuclear" supporters, you'll be fine to be the first on the electricity rationing list when the rolling blackouts and un-expected blackouts (due to a sudden lack of wind or sun) occur in a few years time?

At that point, the few deaths and side effects from the nuclear disasters that occur will be out weighed in their millions by the lack of electricity.

HINT: Walk round you house, pretty much everything you need to survive on a day to day basis is powered by electricty (water, sewage, heating, lighting, refrigeration, cooking etc etc)

[quote=squirrelking ]I'm sorry Andy, please don't take this as a slight on your character but you seem to be woefully ignorant on the subject of risk management. Every single one of those statements could apply to other things you are presumably happy to put faith in every day.

Exactly. Not only did they not build a higher wall at Fukushima, they didn't do anything to prevent the [b]tens of thousands[/b] of deaths caused by the tsunami which were unrelated to Fukushima. Even if we include the deaths NW mentions, it's still only running at 3-4% of the total human cost of the tsunami - ISTM that by focussing on that the point is being missed somewhat.

[quote=andyl ]In 100 years people are going to look back on this and curse and how the greed for electricity took us down this road intead of investing in a proper low energy consumption and greener generation society.

Ah, so we're back to building lots of tidal lagoons to replace the output of a nuclear power station? The real current alternative is to increase our atmospheric CO2 levels - presumably in 100 years they won't curse us for that?