UK Sticks With Nuclear Power

Coisiche writes "Despite recent events in Japan and the certain public outcry that it will generate, the UK government proposes to build new nuclear power stations. Well, earthquakes and tsunamis are very rare here."

Comments

But what about the waste?

[cormandy]

What is the UK planning to do about nuclear waste? It cannot be kept in cooling ponds forever. I just watched the intriguing documentary Into Eternity the other day (99p rental on iTunes) about Onkalo, the massive network of tunnels the Finnish are digging in solid bedrock in which will become a giant subterranean depository for the country's nuclear waste. The documentary reminds us that nuclear waste remains harmful for something like 100,000 years, and shockingly they reveal that although Onkalo will be used only for Finnish nuclear waste, the country will need to dig many more Onkalos to handle all of it! What hope is there for countries that are not on a shield of bedrock? Why isn't Canada doing something similar? (Think Canadian Shield.) I recall the US was going to proceed with Yucca Mountain, but Obama slashed the budget that would have funded the work...

No uranium

[mdsolar]

The UK has no uranium mining or reserves and thus is completely dependent on imports for its nuclear energy. Though less is known about thorium, it is not listed as having any reserves here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium Particularly given the many many unaddressed problems with making a liquid salt reactor work (the last one never really did) and the huge clean up cost for using that kind of fuel, there does not seem to be any advantage for the UK to adopt thorium.

Re:No uranium

[Anonymous Coward]

Thorium is sub-critical unless you use a particle accelerator (expensive) or uranium to kick it off.
The other main complicating factor with Thorium, is lack of experience - the Oakridge Reactor did run fine for 4 years, but that was back in the 60's.

WTB: process engineers who are also nuclear physicists ......

The chemicals are cheap though, thorium isn't currently useful for much else and its as common as lead.
Also unlike uranium it requires only purification not enrichment, so the price should get down to well under (as in and order of magnitude or two) current fuels.

Scaling up from the small reasearch reactors to productions ones should be easier more than half a century later, and inherently a lot cheaper and safer than a highly pressurised vessel filled with radioactive water, just waiting to explode.

Now if we can just explain to people there is no such thing as clean coal, I'm hoping sanity will eventually prevail ......

Re:Not a problem

[isorox]

It should also be noted that the IRA struck mainly British armed forces and police officers, even though they had quite a few civilian losses as collateral damage.

Which police were the IRA targeting when they planted a bomb outside McDonalds in Warrington on mothers day?
Which armed forces were they targeting when they blew up Manchester a few years later?

Tim Parry, aged 12 and Johnathan Ball, a 3 year old toddler, were killed in the American-funded murder in Warrington in 1993.

4 years later Tim Parry's parents shared a platform and shook hands with Gerry Adams.

After a terrible terrorist attack, three people do three things.

Person A: Invades one country, then another, looking for the ring leader. Fails to find him, spends trillions on it.
Person B: Sends troops into an ally's country, performs an extra-judicial killing, and buries the body at sea.
Person C: Forms a Foundation for Peace, shares a platform and shakes hands with the ring leader.

Who gets the Nobel Peace prize?

Same Old Same Old

[Doc Ruby]

We don't have as many earthquakes or tsunamis here as they have in Japan. But we do have exactly the same industry that's immune to public reaction or the liabilities of risk. The US reaction to Fukushima is to make laws to cap nuke plants liability in the event of catastrophe. Which means yet again the power corps (monopolies and cartels) have capitalism for profits, but socialism for losses. This is already true, because nuke plants are uninsurable in the market so the public covers their insurance. But now it's even more starkly true. And what's even more starkly true is that the US nuke government/industry complex is interested in only that "innovation", not in any other changes even when events confront us with the actual risks and damages from these expensive, hazardous boondoggles our Cold War legacy has forced on us.

The technical problems can be patched. The business problems, especially the corruption of a government captured by the industry it regulates, show no sign of any of hope for patch. And that means not even the necessary technical solutions will be applied, when they cost a little profit.