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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."
Good!
The UK, like many countries, has committed to a substantial drop in CO2 emissions. Nuclear is obviously going to have to be a major component in that.
With the recent shit storm of FUD out there concerning nuclear power, I am shocked that there isn't a more vocal promotion of building/funding/using thorium salt reactors by the "scientific community". Although no technology is 100% safe, this seems to be the best middle ground when it comes to generating energy while not completely ruining the environment.
...that someone's not being completely reactionary about this. Maybe it's Torchwood?
Well, earthquakes and tsunamis are very rare here
A serious understatement. While the UK does have the very occasional tremor, they're so minor that nothing more than a single roof tile has ever moved*. There are no active volcanoes. And hurricanes/tornadoes/etc are extremely rare.
The UK must be one of the best places to build nuclear reactors.
* I'm just assuming this. The point is that they are incredibly minor compared to earthquakes experienced by most other countries.
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...
Gimme safe, gimme cold, gimme reliable fusion power!
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Now they just need to make them Thorium reactors. Safety issues: solved.
What if a Tsunami or an Earthquake hit the UK? What's gonna be your excuse?
We all know that whatever methods being used to generate power there are risks. I would like to see some stats on the number of direct and estimated indirect deaths involved per kwh hour produced for each techs. Along with the number of life serious injuries. eg where the recovery time is greater than a year. Or permanent. After all no matter which tech we use. People will always die from it. eg wind turbines with ice flying off blades and hitting people ....
Fact this everyone is in favour of green energy until a windfarm is proposed on the local beauty spot.
There's too many NIMBYs to make wind farms work. They can't generate all the energy we need.
Nuclear is safer than Coal and Gas when you take into account the number of miners and gas workers who have died in accidents over the years. The number of people who have died as a result of Nuclear is in the 60s. Cars kill thousands a year but I don't see many people talking about eliminating those?
We could have reduced energy usage massively before home computers took off, but we're too reliant on them now to start to talk about cutting back on electricity usage.
Personally i don't want to be forced to live like a caveman just so people can carry on flying around the world on holiday. Nobody seems to be forcing the airlines to do anything about their emissions.
This is the same party that vetoed an £80 million loan to Forgemasters, the Sheffield steel company, that would have allowed them to make pieces for nuclear reactors. The loan was cut as a cost saving measure. I guess that saving will be wiped out when we have to buy from overseas. Good thinking!
The Scottish Government doesn't agree.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2011/05/31082406
Westminster aims to recover the power to build nuclear stations in Scotland with the passing of the Scotland bill/Calman commission. We export electricity to England as it is so perhaps the next generation of nuclear stations will be so safe they can be built in Battersea where it's needed.
We have the same problem in the US, except both of our major parties are unable to deal with the issue for different reasons. No matter who we choose (the two party system is a statistical certainty given our constitution) we will end up with a government that won't solve this problem. It'll keep getting worse for us until something breaks. I hope it's our constitution (certain provisions regarding apportionment and representation) and not our entire economy and way of life.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
It's also worth noting that there was a report published a few months ago showing that wind farms in the UK are only generating about half of the power that the designs said that they were supposed to (around 5% of their peak output). It turns out that the people pushing them were wildly optimistic about their average output.
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Are you sure about this? Canterbury Cathedral was damaged by an earthquake 600-odd years ago. It has never been "demolished" by an earthquake.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
So where can I buy my nuclear powered UK stick?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
IF subsequent governments don't screw it up.
The UK is an island with little in the way of seismic activity or tsunami like events.
The UK already falls short in power generation, requiring imports at peak times through lengthy vulnerable and costly to lay and maintain under sea cables and pipes.
By 2015 it is estimated that the UK will no longer produce sufficient energy for off peak, requiring imports 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
We can ill afford the risks these vulnerabilities pose let alone the 10+ years of money flooding out of our economy for what should be a matter of national security.
Any delays will be costly in so many ways.
Interesting that Dungeness did not make the cut. That is one of four sites that Greenpeace studied and found problems. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/nuclear/british-energy-reckons-nuclear-power-stations-are-safe-from-flooding-20071128 The UK does expect to have to use setbacks and dikes elsewhere.
If there is a time to use it, this is it.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Nuclear power is unavoidable if we want to free ourselves from the oil&gas economy (because it makes us dependent on the Arabs, Iran, and Russia, and that is not a good thing). The windmills and solar panels are not an option. The controlled nuclear synthesis is far far away in time. For the near and not so near future, the nuclear fission is the way.
Link please.
Probably should just have mod you a troll.
A quarter of mill does not hide this kind of information, the fact that you received a donation from nuclear companies might be better. Not that its anything more than coincidence, how does undetected radiation cause deaths within 10 weeks in the US. Maybe if in the next few years we get a 35 percent rise in thyroid cancer this would be remotely plausible.
Found the link:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html
It might be right about the extent but causing deaths in the US is bullshit.
There's too many NIMBYs to make wind farms work. They can't generate all the energy we need.
Simple solution: Ban NIMBYs! Or, cut off the electricity supply of all NIMBYs and inform them that they will now have to generate their own electricity. All that hot air and outrage has to be good for something afterall (generating energy?). :-p
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." -- Leonardo Da Vinci
Personally i don't want to be forced to live like a caveman just so people can carry on flying around the world on holiday. Nobody seems to be forcing the airlines to do anything about their emissions.
Damn straight they're not, and now that we have a pro-business tory government it's unlikely that we'll get any action on that in the near future. Also, I remember reading a while back that shipping is a major contributor of CO2 emissions (and I mean major), that one seems to have slipped through the cracks though (no sod ever complains about shipping as a source of pollution).
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." -- Leonardo Da Vinci
Accelerated Thorium reactors look like they could run on SOME high grade waste such as spent fuel rods from other plants and expired weapon materials - but there hasn't been one designed or built anywhere yet. Nothing else comes close to your dream.
No such thing unless you redefine "little" to mean whatever you want it to be.
That sort of very active material is very bad news and the real reason why the fast breeder Superphoenix was so difficult to run. Rapid decay means very intense radiation which means everything has to be done remotely without any of the sort of electronics we take for granted - it's hard to do stuff by robot when the robot gets fried. It's also stupidly counterproductive if you are suggesting it to reduce waste and shows a severe lack of understanding - more radioactive material is generated because intense neutron sources make the surrounding material radioactive. All that French reprocessing equipment is now also radioactive waste and people need to keep away from it.
There are ways to deal with waste. Pretending some magic fairy will make all disadvantages vanish is not one of them.
Japan and The Netherlands also stick to building new reactors. They at least learned the right lesson, we need to build reactors that are more inherently safe. Only Germany doesn't stay the course. That is primarily the result of cultural fights in the eighties in Germany that defined some generations. When Three Miles Island went down, there was no significant release of radiation, but the public reaction was based on it's fears, rather than on the reports. That is a natural thing happening in other areas as well. When Chernobyl happened, that was much worse than a reactor melt down, the reactor was designed as an enormous dirty bomb. Fukushima is the first real nuclear full scale disaster. And look, hardly any casualties, just an enormous financial burden. Even if a Fukushima incident happens every year it would be roughly on par with coal burning power plants running steady.
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.
--
make install -not war
Sorry, but the cargo cult only gets you so far before real physics comes in and burns your foot. There is, very obviously, such a thing as nuclear waste and if you had spent your time learning about nuclear power instead of swallowing the crap from clueless PR fools you would know that your suggestion only covers a fraction of the waste.
It's this counterproductive and idiotic bullshit that resulted in research on how to deal with nuclear waste getting held up for nearly forty years. Look up synrock and what it's designed to deal with - that should give you an idea of what nuclear waste actually is.
In particular, we need the thorium reactors similar to what Ft. St. Vrain had.
In addition, we really should be working towards SMALL-MEDIUM MANUFACTURED reactors ideally, doing IFR. With that approach, we can burn up what we have, rather than pay the high costs of storage.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Several of my friends in the Pacific Northwest USA operate (privately!) scientific instruments to detect radiation levels. They were all watching radiation levels carefully after Fukishima. None of them detected statistically significant changes in background radiation levels at their Oregon or Washington sites. While their instrumentation is not super-sensitive, they detected little or no change.
I am not a doctor, but I know a bit about the effects of radiation. Most of the harmful effects of low level radiation come in the form of increased rate of mutation of offsprings and increased cancer rate. Small increases in background radiation don't kill anyone outright, they increase the probability of early death and mutant/dead offspring. It seems implausible that a small increase (note that none was detected!) in background radiation would directly increase infant mortality in the short term: radiation effects on animals don't work like that. Instead, one would expect slightly increased background radiation to slightly increase infant mortality over a period of decades, starting 3-6 months after the increase.
Science has clearly demonstrated that radiation is harmful to health. No question about it. However, when it comes to pegging specific deaths to specific radiation releases ... well, that's much harder. After the US Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (where most of the medical studies of high radiation exposure comes form) there was a dramatic increase in mutation, cancer, and infant mortality. In fact, most of the death caused by the atomic bombs actually occurred long after the actual bomb mess was cleaned up. Small increases (barely detectable or not detectable with decent instrumentation) in background radiation are much harder to evaluate. The data is noisy (as this data must be noisy), and it is hard to draw accurate conclusions.
There's no need for them to be common. One is enough.
That is rather disingenuous, and I think you know it.
'Tornadoes', here in the US, are graded on a 5 level scale, from EF0 through EF5.
An EF-0 tornado has winds between 65-85mph(105-135km/h). The strongest tornado to hit the UK in the past 200 years was the equivalent to an EF-2(93 and 130mph). A basic, run of the mill winter storm, has stronger gusts in the UK on a yearly basis. Here in the US, there are residential stick houses that could functionally survive the worst tornado the UK has seen in modern times.
To not design a nuclear reactor to even minimally survive winds that houses in the US could survive, is not a realistic problem. It would never happen. I would go so far as to say it is almost impossible, unless you plan to build your reactors out of 1x2 stick wood-frame buildings. A metal shed with aluminum supports would be enough in 99% of the cases. Moving to concrete, even non-reenforced, would bring that to 100%. To avoid any possible problems, add in some re-bar, and I would feel perfectly safe living right next door to a nuclear plant that would take a direct hit, when it comes to the strength of the tornadoes in the UK.
Being afraid of the word 'tornado' makes no more sense than being afraid of the word 'nuclear'. It arouses fear in people who do not understand it, but the mechanics and consequences can be easily comprehended and dealt with by those who do.
*I've been directly under an EF-5 tornado in my past, that obliterated everything above ground level, as well as watching a EF-0 roll right through my front yard from my living room window. It would be foolish to fear them both in the same way, just as it is foolish to fear anything with the word nuclear in it.
None of you is getting the idea that the problem is that "none can predict where or when the next tsunami/earthquake will hit any area"
That's all I have to say and that's what I'm trying to tell you, ladies and gentlemen. You may have the controlling capabilities over your nuclear reactors, but you can't deal with their powerful effects of the natural disasters. The greatest example of all is that Japan has a lot of advanced technologies but they got hit unexpectedly.
and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster
This is true
Joseph Mangano
OHHHH... this guy eh? Let me go look closer at his data then...
Well look at that, he decided to cherry pick his data to only a few weeks before the incident to use as his 'comparison'. Going back further, even only as far back as he then goes forwards, shows no such spike at all, and it becomes clear that the normal fluctuation of the rate of infant mortality falls within the bands being described. Suddenly, the weeks afterwards just seem to be regular background noise of the data. But, only going back a few weeks before, and cutting off the results immediately prior to that where the data doesn't fit the angle you are trying to sell, (usually called cherry-picking the data) suddenly shows this 'drastic' 35% increase.
The guy is a shill, and if you would have done the ACTUAL FUCKING MATH yourself, you would know that. Instead, you just looked around until you found someone that did the right cherry-picking of data to fit your already pre-conceived notions of what you think should be happening.
Math is hard, posting links is easy. Going forward, it will be best for you to assume that if you aren't going to do the math yourself and understand any possible flaws in the means taken to gather those numbers, it is very likely you will be lied to without knowing it.
The devil is in the detail.
What constitutes as contributing to the statistics?
Deleted
I am pleased to hear that our government has got something right.
Sadly, this is probably more because of big companies lobbying for contracts than looking after my future power needs.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
We all know there are no black swans in Britain.
just change the name and the problem will be solved. Windscale became Sellafield and eveyone was happy. Right?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I can assure you, we are quite capable of having nuclear disasters without the aid of natural disasters. In 1957 we had a major fire at Windscale which melted the nuclear fuel and released iodine 131 through the cooling chimneys. In 2005, over 80,000 litres of radioactive waste leaked inside the Thorp reprocessing plant. Sellafield limited were fined £500,000 for breaching health and safety rules.
Also, on the international level, neither Chernobyl or 3 Mile Island were due to natural disasters, so lets not get into the mindset that tsunamis or earthquakes are required. Nuclear disasters are usually down to bad reactor design (i.e. everyone agrees the design was bad once the accident has happened, and then go on to insist that the newest reactors really are safe, honestly) and human error.
Those things were not the answer and are really military solutions that the military doesn't need any more and probably never did. These days we have so much plutonium stockpiled that those two fast breeders you describe are really ways to effectively make nuclear waste because we just cannot use all the plutonium they produce. The debacle of superpheonix showed that it doesn't scale up and is not suitable for electricity production.
They don't do what you pretend they do anyway and you can't just feed any high grade waste into them. I suggest you spend a few minutes learning about how they work before dragging up the 1970s propaganda again - the world moved on from Plutonium fast breeders decades ago. They were built on the idea that Uranium was going to be difficult to obtain and that a rapidly expanding nuclear weapons program would need a lot of plutonium more quickly than could be supplied otherwise - both ideas were shown to be wrong in the early 1980s.
I suggest you actually read about plutonium fast breeders, it's interesting stuff but a pointless dead end. Pebble bed and accelerated thorium show a lot more potential, and the latter comes close to doing what you appear to think plutonium fast breeders can do.
That reactor never worked well. Many components were seriously damaged after only a short run. And the clean up was hugely expensive. That one is a dead end.
Once again your ignorance is flapping around for all too see. I am embarrassed for you.
http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/MSadventure.pdf
"Thorium is not any "safer" than Uranium. I have to say that proliferation risk is not a risk anymore - it's a political word. Any nation that can build a nuclear weapon can do so anyway via thorium. It is not that much more difficult to build a Pu-239 bomb than to build a U-233 bomb (from thorium). Also, a thorium reactor needs U-235 to prime it, so that point about proliferation is moot."
This is flat out wrong. The only nation ever to try to make a U233 bomb core was the US and it was a fizzle. It was a hugely expensive effort to refine that amount of U233 and with the inevitable U232 contamination issue, no nation ever would use a Th232-U233 cycle to make a bomb core. Look up that Thallium-208 gamma ray, it's nasty and messes with bomb core electronics. Plus it's shines like a movie premier beacon to anyone with detectors looking for fission weapons.
The U238-Pu239 path is known to work, the U235 enrichment path is very simple and known to work, and both paths have known science behind the data for their bomb core designs. None of which is true about the Th232-U233 path. It is much much more difficult to try and use a Th232-U233 path. So difficult that no nation has ever succeeded. Not saying it cannot be done, it's just that it's not worth the effort when two relatively mature paths to a bomb core are available and KNOWN to work.
LFTR = LIQUID Flouride Thorium Reactor
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/25/244122/three-mile-island-accident-nuclear-power/