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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...
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
There are so many assumptions in your question, it is scary. Why assume that a nuclear reactor be damaged by a tsunami or earthquake? What if it were small enough to put on a floating barge? Why not use Thorium?
We as a planet have no real practical alternative to nuclear fission in the short term, while we develop nuclear fusion for the long term. The only alternative is the return to the austerity of the 18th Century. Please can we all just recognise what is staring us in the face; nuclear power is the least worst option for all of humanity.
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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Why don't you ask your favourite search engine? This was the top hit for me. The important data (deaths per TWh):
So, Nuclear power is 3-4 times safer than wind, and twice as safe as hydro-electric.
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Well, you see, there's only one Canterbury Cathedral left. They don't tell you, but there have been ten of them, of which 9 have been demolished by earthquakes. They somehow managed to make everyone believe that those nine cathedrals did never exist. They even managed to erase all traces of those cathedrals, so even archaeologists won't ever find them. This shows you how powerful the nuclear lobby in the UK is. :-)
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.
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.
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
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
On paper: check.
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.
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.