To Nuclear or not to Nuclear

[Mike]

No I didn't I will try and find the article here and see if there is any more information.

[Mike]

I saw yesterday that the cost for a 500 million year clean up of nuclear fuel is going to be only ?70.1 billion. Since this is the same metro that reported carrots helped pilots in WW2 see better I am a bit dubious but I was surprised by the minute figure.

I can see a time in the far future when we this 'civilisation' collapses when an innocent group of evolving creatures will come into contact with these lovely glowing rocks. After the discovery of these highly sought after rocks a mysterious desease wipes the tribe off the map. . . .

[johnriley1uk]

We'd better keep our heads down and carry on quietly evolving. I'm planning to evolve into a Super Being as soon as I can.

[Fez]

did anyone else see a programme on channel four last week called 'what makes us human'? apparently the latest stage of human evolution is a new mental response that is allowing us to develop better to deal with living in the massive concentrations of populations found in modern cities, as in the past the brain has only been able to cope effectively with the smaller group gatherings of people before mass transit became possible. scientists are not sure how effective it will be and most people still carry the old code in their physci, but it is hoped the brain will be able to better cope with stress in future generations. and that is a 'fact'.

[mr_e]

I never trust facts enclosed by apostrophes myself. Instead of merely coping with cities, which are inherently unsustainable (every city-based civilisation has collapsed), why don't we just disperse ourselves more? I suppose a city is just an extreme reflection of our social instincts. I'm waiting for the study into why humans are alledgedly intelligent but make some of the most appalling short-sighted and stupidly self-destructive decisions collectively.

[TAOWBST]

I never trust facts enclosed by apostrophes myself. Instead of merely coping with cities, which are inherently unsustainable (every city-based civilisation has collapsed), why don't we just disperse ourselves more? I suppose a city is just an extreme reflection of our social instincts. I'm waiting for the study into why humans are alledgedly intelligent but make some of the most appalling short-sighted and stupidly self-destructive decisions collectively.

The individual is perfectly rational but the masses lose this sense of rationality and so makes such decisions.

[Mike]

Despite the best efforts of the forum users our beloved government has decided to go nuclear after all. Sod the huge environmental impact of the stations it will just have to be paid by our children's, children's, children's, children's, x a hell of a lot, children. . . . stupid his Majesty G Brown.

[mr_e]

Apparently uranium comes from stable countries, so it's a better bet than oil. French firm EDF have announced plans to build four nuclear plants as soon as possible, legislation permitting. Interestingly, the government have said there will be no subsidies for any nuclear power plants. Bizarrely, it was reported they may also consider help to firms "hit by decommissioning costs". Which the poor firms would never expect with nuclear reactors, of course. And it remains to be seen whether or not they count huge tax breaks as subsidies...

How were those plans for that huge barrage on the Severn going that could generate about 4% of the countries power needs? Or did I totally mis-read something?

[johnriley1uk]

To be honest I slightly disagree with the feelings expressed against nuclear power.

If properly managed nuclear power stations can be safe and efficient and have relatively little environmental impact. The newer designs will auto-shut down if they are not constantly monitored, so no explosions when society crumbles....

The downside is the waste, which is very hazardous but in relatively small amounts. It will decay eventually, so deep sites in stable areas and lots of small storage will minimise the risk. It probably has less effect on us than the masses of pollutants that other processes leave behind, Carbon Dioxide being only one of them.

Our civilisation needs power to function, so we must move away from reliance on fossil fuels that originate in areas of political unrest. I think this is more of an imperative than global warming, which as far as the UK goes is beyond our control entirely. However much we reduce our emmissions it will have virtually no effect on the planet as a whole. But our dependence on other, unstable nations is a serious potential threat.

[Mike]

The downside is the waste, which is very hazardous but in relatively small amounts. It will decay eventually, so deep sites in stable areas and lots of small storage will minimise the risk.

Well there are a couple of things about this. The waste is very hazardous for hundreds of thousand of years. How are we going to find somewhere stable enough for that sort of timescale. Over hundreds of thousands of years the sea bed becomes mountains and mountains become plains. . . .

[johnriley1uk]

The downside is the waste, which is very hazardous but in relatively small amounts. It will decay eventually, so deep sites in stable areas and lots of small storage will minimise the risk.

Well there are a couple of things about this. The waste is very hazardous for hundreds of thousand of years. How are we going to find somewhere stable enough for that sort of timescale. Over hundreds of thousands of years the sea bed becomes mountains and mountains become plains. . . .

It's undeniably a fair point. The implication is that we need containers that will withstand potentially catastrophic forces, if that's possible, or that the sites will need continued management of some sort. Could we claim that if sea beds had become mountains and mountains become plains that it's academic anyway, because humans will be long gone? Who knows...

We have to decide. Nature's way is that if we are rampant predators and we ravage the planet and then move onwards and outwards to other worlds we may survive as a species. If we stay at home recycling cardboard and looking after multi-coloured bins of rubbish then we won't survive, because ultimately someone will come along and push us out. I wonder if we are reaching the point where we are turning soft - the end of the line? We could conquer the Universe (although I might wonder why...) but we won't if we stop to do a Risk Assessment first.

[Mike]

It would be unfortunate if humans were gone and the sites could not be managed and future animals would get ill without knowing why!

[mr_e]

I've heavily edited this, because it was coming across as a bit too rant-like (it's late, can't sleep), so here goes:

Overall, once cost of extraction and building of the plants is taken into account, nuclear plants cause more CO2 emissions than, say, wind power. Don't kid yourselves that they're somehow CO2 free just because they don't emit it in operation (saying nothing about those other by-products).

Uranium reserves will still run out eventually, so we're just delaying the inevitable decisions that need to be made. We can write that in a little love-letter to our great-grandchildren: we had a great time, sorry about the mess!

[johnriley1uk]

Funnily enough I couldn't sleep either, so I nearly found your post straight away, but in the end didn't get to the PC after all.

Good points indeed. When we look at this from a "green" perspective then renerwables must be the way to go in many ways, although even then it's not always so clear cut. Wind turbines, for example, also cost Carbon to manufacture and it takes a very long time indeed to get into a positive situation with them.

As far as the UK goes, as far as I can see whatever we do is academic in that we do only contribute about 2% of the world's greenhouse gases, so we could cripple ourselves and make no difference. It's a gesture of course and an example, but will China, America and India be impressed or just laugh all the way to oblivion?

I do have concerns about stability and security of energy supply and would prefer the UK to be self-sufficient in this respect. That means some fossil fuels from our own fields, renewables and it seems probably Nuclear as well. Nuclear is dangerous in many ways, fairly clean in others, a disaster if it goes wrong. But being held to ransom by Russia or some other source of energy could be a real possibilty and it would happen at the worst time for us we can be sure.

So what's the alternative? Civilisation needs energy, society would fall apart without it and a lot of people live in these islands that need it. What could we really do that would be meaningful whilst maintaining our power supplies?

As a first suggestion I would go for wind turbines in every garden or on every property, feeding any excess back into the National Grid. That would be a lot of turbines and perhaps the money earmarked for some nuclear plants could be diverted to pay for them.

Any other ideas?

[Mike]

but will China

Why do you think that China has such emissions? It is because all our manufacturing has been exported to that country, I would bet that a significant portion of the electrical appliances in our houses are manufacturered in China. I wonder what our emission rate would be if you applied this formula:

UK Emissions + (China Emissions x export factor) = Total UK Emissions
Therefore

587,261 + (5,012,377 x (£4.7bn total exports / total exports) = tbc

Will come back later when I find out what the total exports are in £!

References Imports value
Total exports in $