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

Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good!

Re:Good!

[somersault]

Sure we invest in wind farms and tidal generators. I work for a company that has designed and is building a tidal turbine, and I've heard talk about wind energy projects. I still think it's important to continue with nuclear as well. I'm glad that our government doesn't seem as dumb and panicky as certain others.

Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Obvious

[jcr]

Had a look at a topographical map of Norway lately? Now, compare it to one of the UK.

Hydro power doesn't work everywhere in the world.

-jcr

Re:Obvious

[geckipede]

Norway has less than a tenth the population of the UK, approximately similar land area, and a far more significant snowmelt contribution to their precipitation. Hydro works for them in a way that it wouldn't for us.

The UK is committing to heavy use of renewable power in the form of wind turbines, but we are a small island with a huge power demand, we need to follow every avenue that we reasonably can do in power generation.

Re:Obvious

[rainmouse]

Had a look at a topographical map of Norway lately? Now, compare it to one of the UK.
Hydro power doesn't work everywhere in the world.

-jcr

Not to mention the fact that the UK has 15.25 times the population of Norway.

Re:Obvious

[somersault]

Pah, like he said, you lack imagination! If we build giant funnels over the beaches, we can catch all the rain and use it for hydro power generation!

Re:Obvious

[jeppen]

Space isn't the problem. Intermittency is. The world could aim for 80% wind power if wind towers produced baseload power, or 100% if it were dispatchable. However, wind is very intermittent, and thus cannot be integrated above approximately 20%. You could try to extend this by smart grids, more wide-spread grids, demand-side-management and so on, but you won't get very far.

Re:Obvious

[RsG]

The world could aim for 80% wind power if wind towers produced baseload power

Are you sure about that?

According to this (scroll down to the list of power sources), building wind turbines in all the locations where they generate sufficient power would produce a grand total of 2.1 terawatts, globally. Which is a lot of power - don't get me wrong, it's totally worth building them to get that energy. But it's nowhere near the 13.5 terawatts needed circa 2002 (the article cites a 2006 paper), or the projected 28-35 terawatts needed by the midcentury (all figures from the same article, feel free to provide counter citations if my source is incorrect or biased).

I don't think we can aim for 80% wind power even if we had the ability to combat intermittency.

Thorium anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not a problem

[calzakk]

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.

Re:Not a problem

[TheRaven64]

The UK's terrorism problem dropped significantly after September, 2001. Apparently something happened in the USA around then that stopped it being fashionable for people in New York to send money to fund terrorism. With their main supply of funding cut off, there was a much bigger incentive for them to reach a negotiated settlement.

Re:Not a problem

[Computershack]

This is an organization that build napalm-like incendiary bombs and set them off in hotels, restaurants and pubs where civilians gathered in large numbers. I don't see why you think they would hesitate to attack a nuclear power station or other such facility.

I served in the British Army. When we started using warfare tactics such as full sized all out ambushes rather than just patrolling and playing at being targets, all of a sudden this supposed Irish army who had declared war against the UK decided that this wasn't fair when we went to war footing in some areas instead of policing and complained to the European Courts that we were being too heavy handed!! Err, who was it who said they were an army at war with the UK? The IRA attacked soft targets. Nuclear powerstations along with gas storage facilities are well guarded by armed guards.

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?

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...

Re:But what about the waste?

[MrHanky]

You mean you drop it into the ocean.

Re:But what about the waste?

[Arlet]

Nice, you got modded insightful for saying plant food is harmful

And rightly so. The fact that something has useful properties doesn't mean it isn't harmful in other places. Plants also need water, and we still consider floods to be harmful.

The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

Re:Death per kwh?

[TheRaven64]

Why don't you ask your favourite search engine? This was the top hit for me. The important data (deaths per TWh):

• Coal – world average: 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
• Coal – China: 278
• Coal – USA: 15
• Oil: 36 (36% of world energy)
• Natural Gas: 4 (21% of world energy)
• Biofuel/Biomass: 12
• Peat: 12
• Solar (rooftop): 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
• Wind: 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
• Hydro: 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
• Hydro - world including Banqiao): 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
• Nuclear: 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)

So, Nuclear power is 3-4 times safer than wind, and twice as safe as hydro-electric.

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 ......

Congratulations, UK!

[Maimun]

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.

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.