Plans to store nuclear waste in Ennerdale.

[knifefan]

It's a sad situation - the fact is, so much of our "Green" energy sources are generally inefficient. Wind power is a prime example, a blight on our landscape and general eyesore built by companies because they get vast amounts of subsidies from our government. If they had to fund them as a business proposition they wouldn't be building half as many. Being in the power industry for some years now it makes me laugh - the total output of all the wind turbines in the UK could be produced by one Gas Turbine!!!!!!!! Yes it's burning a greenhouse gas, but the overall impact is minimal. Nuclear power is one "green" method of producing efficient power in sufficient quantities to make it viable. But the down side is (as per this discussion) is the waste - if we put in the same amount of research funding that wind, wave and solar energies receives then we may find an acceptable means of containment.

 

[Manacles]

It's a sad situation - the fact is, so much of our "Green" energy sources are generally inefficient. Wind power is a prime example, a blight on our landscape and general eyesore built by companies because they get vast amounts of subsidies from our government. If they had to fund them as a business proposition they wouldn't be building half as many. Being in the power industry for some years now it makes me laugh - the total output of all the wind turbines in the UK could be produced by one Gas Turbine!!!!!!!! Yes it's burning a greenhouse gas, but the overall impact is minimal. Nuclear power is one "green" method of producing efficient power in sufficient quantities to make it viable. But the down side is (as per this discussion) is the waste - if we put in the same amount of research funding that wind, wave and solar energies receives then we may find an acceptable means of containment.

I do not disagree with any of what you say on this, and I see nuclear as a good solution, but as you say, only if we can get the waste issue sorted properly. The problem with increased usage of course lies with the consumer. We all seem to have so many more electronics gadgets these days and, of course, there is also irresponsible use, how many people leave all their electrics on standby? I know a lot of people really do not like to see wind generators but I do sometimes wonder how many of the complainants are really power savvy when it comes to playing their part and flicking a swith of off?

 

[knifefan]

We as the consumer have a far bigger part to play, if only we could get the manufacturers to install automatic cut off switches or indeed remove the standby facility on all types of electrical goods. Surely most of use wouldn't miss the couple of seconds it takes to turn the TV on!!! There was a company trying to sell a plug block which you could turn "off" by remote but it didn't seem to do so well If you think about all the devices left on "Stand-by" just in our country especially businesses it's frightening !!! I must admit I do turn off everything I can, so that the only things left on at my house is the fridge freezer and the outside "low energy & sodium" lights.... not just because of the environment, but I'm tight!!!

 

[Andy BB]

Andy are you really going to accuse me of false assumptions when you described people with an interest in the environment as "treehuggers" and then qualify that with implying they are all on the dole? Tut tut

I'm guessing the smilie at the end of my first sentence didn't give you the pointer I intended!

However - now you mention it - anti-nuclear protesters shouldn't be called "people with an interest in the environment" - they should be referred to as people with a political agenda. (after all, my dog has an "interest in the environment" - particularly trees. Not sure I'd take his advice on nuclear energy though...) And just because a group of people call themselves Green doesn't make them genuine environmentalists! After all, haven't the Greens themselves flip-flopped on nuclear power? first of all, its bad - cos it'll apparently go bang like Hiroshima, then its ideal as its CO2-neutral, then its bad again because a tsunami hit Japan, killed 10,000 people, and the nuclear station went down (killing precisely no-one from radiation or nuclear explosion). If anything, they should be protesting against tsunamis, surely?

 

[Eragon21]

The radioactive waste be it intermediate or high level waste etc will have to have a site for its long term storage. There will be full consultation where all the stakeholders will be given all the facts. There will be a chance to oppose as it has been in Cumbria. I am positive that the waste will be stored in perfectly safe manor where it poses no danger to the surrounding environment. I wouldn't have no worries if the site was on my doorstep.

 

[Manacles]

I'm guessing the smilie at the end of my first sentence didn't give you the pointer I intended!

However - now you mention it - anti-nuclear protesters shouldn't be called "people with an interest in the environment" - they should be referred to as people with a political agenda. (after all, my dog has an "interest in the environment" - particularly trees. Not sure I'd take his advice on nuclear energy though...) And just because a group of people call themselves Green doesn't make them genuine environmentalists! After all, haven't the Greens themselves flip-flopped on nuclear power? first of all, its bad - cos it'll apparently go bang like Hiroshima, then its ideal as its CO2-neutral, then its bad again because a tsunami hit Japan, killed 10,000 people, and the nuclear station went down (killing precisely no-one from radiation or nuclear explosion). If anything, they should be protesting against tsunamis, surely?

Crikey Andy, now we are agreeing, this really has to stop lol. Seriously though you are right about nuclear activists quite often having political agenda, and I know quite a few "Greens" who are amongst the most voracious consumers and wasters I have ever met.

For the record, I was quite wary of nuclear until university when I had to research different power generation methods in some depth (there's a cure for insomnia I can tell you). In a nutshell, if we can get over the waste issues then nuclear does have real potential. There, however are a couple of quite serious drawbacks to it. The first is that the amount of usable nuclear material is limited and more and more is being mined, hence as with all the earth's resources it is finite, and secondly the waste problem. The half-lifes of core material are such that we do not have the technology to provide a longterm solution. So, for now, it is a reasonable interim solution. For me it is all about regulating our own consumption of power. As the global population continues to grow, so will demand for power stretching an already precarious system even further. Knifefan sums it up very nicely in his post below, and in his comments re being tight, because that is why I turn the lights off when I'm not using them . On a slighlty different slant I am one of the (apparent minority) that likes to see wind turbines, I like the engineering and their visibility in the landscape, that's not a popular view though, and I don't live next door to one either.

I favour microgeneration as an ultimate source of (relatively low) power, in no small part because it gives a degree of self reliance that is wholly absent when drawing power from the grid. Again not without its flaws by any means though.

 

[Lurch]

Seriously though you are right about nuclear activists quite often having political agenda, and I know quite a few "Greens" who are amongst the most voracious consumers and wasters I have ever met.

Watermelons.

Power requirements are going up, the idea that we will reduce our demand for power is fantasy.
It's a good thing that we don't waste power but if we think by doing so we are 'making a difference' a quick glance at China and India should swiftly disabuse us of that notion.

 

[Andy BB]

Watermelons.

Power requirements are going up, the idea that we will reduce our demand for power is fantasy.
It's a good thing that we don't waste power but if we think by doing so we are 'making a difference' a quick glance at China and India should swiftly disabuse us of that notion.

Yup. The additional coal-powered stations China are bringing on-line annually exceeds the TOTAL UK CO2 generation. Turn your TV off instead of leaving it on standby by all means - good safety practice as well - but don't kid yourself it'll save the planet....................

Re Manacles - true, uranium is a finite resource, although modern stations and fast breeders make the best use of the raw material. But it is nothing like as scarce as is made out by the nay-sayers. It is widely available - even in sea-water! - just not economically viable to extract at current prices. (in the same way that deep mining for coal became attractive once the surface scrapings were used up, or deep-sea drilling for oil is now common-place). Once the price rises, however, economics kicks in to make alternate extraction processes viable. There are literally thousands of years of uranium available - even with much higher usage than at present - if the price is right!

 

[Andy BB]

To support the above, lots of info on the web about uranium. A typical article:

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The world had enough uranium reserves to sustain its nuclear fuel requirements for the foreseeable future, nuclear engineer and independent consultant Andrew Kenny asserted on Thursday.
He noted that the world was currently consuming about 70 000 t/y of uranium and that global consumption would increase to about 412 000 t/y if the world relied entirely on nuclear energy for its electricity generation purposes.
Kenny stated that uranium could be found in abundance in the earth's crust, as well as in the sea.
The underground resource at a depth of up to one kilometre equated to about 680-billion tons, which could provide the world with nuclear fuel for up to 1,6-million years.
Even if electricity demand increased tenfold, there would be enough uranium to provide nuclear fuel for another 160 000 years.
This, Kenny noted, was in contrast with oil and gas reserves, which would probably be depleted in another 100 years and coal reserves, which would become depleted in about 500 years.
"Nuclear, at present, is the best long-term prospect in terms of energy sources," stated Kenny.
Nuclear fuel reserves could further be improved by extracting uranium from the sea, by using thorium as a fuel source, by using fast-breeder reactors or by using a mixed-oxide fuel consisting of plutonium and uranium.
However, he noted these options would most likely not be economically and commercially viable for the majority of countries, including South Africa.
Kenny said that while the technology existed to implement these options, it was unnecessary for most countries to implement this, as they had a big enough resource of conventional uranium at a reasonable cost.

 

[Corso]

Despite numerous independant scientific & medical studies carried out over the last decade in many countries showing that there are higher incidences of certain types of cancer ( thyroid, leukemia), birth defects & genetic abnormalities in children living within a 5 Km ( some even further) radius of a nuclear plant, a lot of people still seem to want to believe the reassuring info issued to them by the communication experts working for the nuclear industry that it is 'safe'
They will tell you that low doses of radiation that continually escape from the plants & contaminate the air & local water supplies are completely harmless & that the higher cancer rates around the nuclear installations (they can't deny it as it's a fact) are just co-incidental & that there is no way of proving that the reactors are responsible & produce mountains of facts & figures, elaborated by the industries very own assigned experts, to prove it.
Of course we can believe whom we wish, just bear in mind that the basis for any of the nuclear industry's 'studies' is mainly concerned with reducing it's legal liabilities & responsibilities & not the welfare of the population.

That's only a very small part of the picture when it comes to Cancer Etiology. There may well be higher incidencies but these reports only ever look at one factor in isolation and do not consider other economic effects of where such sites exist, socio-economic, genetic and historical context of the population is a very important consideration, so to is the simple point that if you live near a danger area you get yourself checked out more (and therefore get added to the statistic) that is why 'there is no proven link'. BTW health economic studies are not just carried out by the nuclear industry they are carried out by people like me...

and I'm no friend of big buisness

an interesting counter argument is Radiation Hormesis....

 

[Andy BB]

Fact - coaL-fired power stations give off more local radiation than nuclear power stations...............


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

 

[sandbender]

Fact - coaL-fired power stations give off more local radiation than nuclear power stations..........

Presumably that should read...

Fact - coaL-fired power stations give off more local radiation than nuclear power stations (that have not blown up, caught fire or been flooded)..........

 

[Manacles]

Yup. The additional coal-powered stations China are bringing on-line annually exceeds the TOTAL UK CO2 generation. Turn your TV off instead of leaving it on standby by all means - good safety practice as well - but don't kid yourself it'll save the planet....................

Re Manacles - true, uranium is a finite resource, although modern stations and fast breeders make the best use of the raw material. But it is nothing like as scarce as is made out by the nay-sayers. It is widely available - even in sea-water! - just not economically viable to extract at current prices. (in the same way that deep mining for coal became attractive once the surface scrapings were used up, or deep-sea drilling for oil is now common-place). Once the price rises, however, economics kicks in to make alternate extraction processes viable. There are literally thousands of years of uranium available - even with much higher usage than at present - if the price is right!

What you are doing here Andy is confusing economics with energy, and although there is clear link, that is actually only a small part of the picture. The basic formula for energy recovery (eg drilling for oil) is Energy Recovered Offset Against Energy Invested (EROAEI). Basically the way this works on a simple level is that if it takes more tha the potential energy in one barrel of oil to recover (drill/process etc) one barrel of oil it is not power economic to drill (or whatever) for it.

Yes there is Uranium in the sea, but to recover it efficiently for use as power station fuel? Probably not practical. your argument is largely based on the economics of money and that, whilst very articulate, sadly does not stand up to scrutiny where energy is concerned. Using your argument as a basis one can assert that the price of energy will continue to rise indefinitely, which is fine up to the point where it ceases to be affordable for the masses and demand drops off, making it even more costly per megawatt as fewer will be able to pay for it. These are the real "hard" economics of the situation. Look in the news and you will often see UK charities talking about "energy poverty" (classified as those who spend more than 10% of thier net income on domestic power). Energy is not a situation that money alone can fix.

 

[Manacles]

Article on BBC news today:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-21298117

Puts a perspective to our collective arguments

 

[Manacles]

Watermelons.

Power requirements are going up, the idea that we will reduce our demand for power is fantasy.
It's a good thing that we don't waste power but if we think by doing so we are 'making a difference' a quick glance at China and India should swiftly disabuse us of that notion.

It is not fantasy at all Lurch, if power prices continue to rise at the current rates in the UK, it will start to become genuinely unaffordable for some, and that might result in a reduction.

China and India? A meteoric rise followed by a quick fall. China is certainly powered by coal. If the climatologists are right (and scientific concensus appears to to believe they are) they are doing inestimable damage to the air we all breathe through increased CO2. As oil becomes dearer their ability to export cheaply will aslo become damaged and hence their economy will decline.

It all comes back to the finite nature of the earth's resources.