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Is Britain Secretly Funding Its Nuclear Submarine Program? (nytimes.com)
Why is the U.K. funding a risky $22 billion joint project with China to produce electricity at twice the cost? mdsolar quotes a nuclear specialist from the University of Oxford:
...it only makes sense if one considers its connection to Britain's military projects -- especially Trident, a roving fleet of armed nuclear submarines, which is outdated and needs upgrading. Hawks and conservatives, in particular, see the Trident program as vital to preserving Britain's international clout...the government and some of its partners in the defense industry, like Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, think a robust civilian nuclear industry is essential to revamping Britain's nuclear submarine program...
Merging programs like research and development or skills training across civilian and military sectors helps cut back on military spending. It also helps maintain the talent pool for nuclear specialists. And given the long lead times and life spans of most nuclear projects, connections between civilian and military programs give companies more incentives to make the major investments required. One might say that with the Hinkley Point project, the British government is using billions of Chinese money to build stealth submarines designed to deter China.
The Op-Ed -- published in The New York Times -- calls for more openness about military spending, arguing "If Britain's energy policy were solely about energy, rather than also about defense, the nuclear sector would be forced to stand on its own two feet."
Merging programs like research and development or skills training across civilian and military sectors helps cut back on military spending. It also helps maintain the talent pool for nuclear specialists. And given the long lead times and life spans of most nuclear projects, connections between civilian and military programs give companies more incentives to make the major investments required. One might say that with the Hinkley Point project, the British government is using billions of Chinese money to build stealth submarines designed to deter China.
The Op-Ed -- published in The New York Times -- calls for more openness about military spending, arguing "If Britain's energy policy were solely about energy, rather than also about defense, the nuclear sector would be forced to stand on its own two feet."
One has to balance the practicalities between effectiveness and usefulness.
I imagine lead would do a much better job at blocking alien mind-reading technology than tin; however, tinfoil would be lighter and easier to wear. If the leadfoil is too heavy to wear when walking the dog, who really is going to use it?
Tin foil might only block out some alien technologies and leadfoil blocks them, but let's face it; no-one is going to wear the leadfoil in public unless they're crazy, So it's tinfoil for me all the way. Might not work as well, but at least it is wearable.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Britain is an island mon, like Hawaii or Jamica. We got the blue skies every day. Never rains, just a tropical paradise. Britain's sheep grow spandex instead of wool.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Nuclear waste is only a problem because we make it one by refusing to reprocess spent fuel and have some mind numbingly strict storage requirements that really don't make all that much sense.
If we could re-process the spent fuel, two things would happen. 1st the physical amount of high level waste would go DOWN because we would be taking the inert and low level stuff out of the fuel assemblies. Much of the really nasty stuff would decay more quickly on it's own and could be separated out into a much lower volume. Some of this high level stuff could be "burned off" faster by putting it to high levels of neutron flux, making the problem even smaller. 2nd, we'd have a lot of very useful fissionable material that we could then use to generate power with a lot fewer high level waste products.
So, nuclear power is indeed a long term environmental issue, but the technology to deal with this issue is well known and understood. Which leaves the "problems" really limited to cleaning up the "accidents" at these plants, which here to fore has been relatively easy with two notable exceptions. Chernobyl, which was just plain stupidity in both operations and risky design, and The plants in Japan which suffered though TWO natural disasters, both of which were well beyond designed limits and where 2 decades older than the state of the art today.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I started to read through the NYTimes article, and about half-way through realized that it's an opinion piece. I had to check the summary just to make sure I didn't get baited.
I looked up the author, Peter Wynn Kirby.
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff...
"Peter Wynn Kirby is an environmental specialist, ethnographer, and Research Fellow in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford"
So you'd think this guy would have a PhD in geology, chemistry, or one of the other physical sciences. Nope, his PhD is in Social Anthropology from Cambridge. I'm sure he's a smart guy, but that's hardly what I'd call a "nuclear specialist from the University of Oxford" as the summary states.
Not to mention that this falls under Betteridge's Law....
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Call back when we have viable fusion power.
Fusion produces high levels of neutron flux, creating radioactive isotopes in the reactor structure. It is somewhat cleaner than fission, but the waste problem doesn't just magically go away.
I think most of us have suspected for some time that mdsolar is a shill for the nuclear industry, paid to make supporters of renewable energy look ridiculous, but this latest screed is just too over the top and risks exposing his true agenda.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
There's about 0 overlap between civilian nuclear reactors and submarine powerplants. The UK might as well hide the SSBN budget inside the NHS.
The cost for a new nuclear submarine powerplant has been openly discussed already, making it unlikely they'd try to hide that cost now.
Then again, it's an mdsolar submission, so par for the course.