Not the nuclear thing again...

[graham]

This makes interesting reading.

 

[whitelackington]

We should not allow ourselves in the U.K. to be persuaded there is
no alternative to more plants by the nuclear lobby
nor should we be complacent with out present nuclear facilities,
there have been three Storegga Events over the last 40,000 years
leading to Tsunamis on our East coast.
The last one 7,000 years ago.
There was also a Tsunami in the Severn Estuary in the early seventeeth century.
Hinckley Point is situated in Somerset at sea level, yet "they" are going to build more nuclear power plants there.
Is it worth the risk.

 

[AndyF]

AndyF

Did you seen the pictures of burning oil refineries? They didn't survive too well either.

Rhys

I did, but they don't have a 30km evacuation zone around them.

There is a reason for that.

 

[droid]

there is likely to be no further desire for a renewed nuclear building programme in the U.K.

That's an irrelevent comment.
The UK isn't next to a subduction zone.

 

[whitelackington]

The government have to weigh it all up, one of the factors will be public opposition.
Today  more than fifty thousand Germans are marching to tell their government
that they do not want nuclear power stations in Germany.
This march was planned before the recent catastrophic nuclear power station failures in Japan.
The Japanese are currently pumping sea water into three nuclear reactors,
all will be a right off.
The last time I checked the U.K. was still a democracy,
so our government have to listen to their voters,
most of whom do not want nuclear.

 

[bubba]

The last time I checked the U.K. was still a democracy,
so our government have to listen to their voters,

Sure. Just like they listened to the million people who marched against the invasion of Iraq.

 

[droid]

Some people will not want nuclear power under any circumstances.
Just as some people won't want tidal barrages or bloody great wind powered generators 200 metres from their house.
More people have died getting coal than have died through nuclear power
We're not in a seismically active area.

Hey, it's good
hitting the enter
button at random tines isn't
it

 

[whitelackington]

It would seem there may be some coincidences with the U.S.A. Three Mile Island Event
Sticking valves, lack of coolant.
So you do not necessarily need an earthquake or Tsunami
to make things go seriously adrift.

 

[droid]

No.
Poor mainainance schedules leading to faulty
monitoring of pressure relief valves is all you need.

So what are we discussing? The safety record of the Nuclear industry, or the wisdom of siting nuclear reactors in a seismologically active area?

 

[paul]

So what are we discussing? The safety record of the Nuclear industry, or the wisdom of siting nuclear reactors in a seismologically active area?

Or what realistic alternatives are there for dependable and reliably constant supplies of electricty to meet our insatiable and ever-increasing demands?

 

[AndyF]

So what are we discussing? The safety record of the Nuclear industry, or the wisdom of siting nuclear reactors in a seismologically active area?

Or what realistic alternatives are there for dependable and reliably constant supplies of electricty to meet our insatiable and ever-increasing demands?

Its that premise that is fundamentally at fault. The assumption and accpetance that increaing demand is inevitable and that it must be met.

This is wrong .

The "realistic alternative" is to focus efforts on limiting and in turn reducing net demand. This takes big thinking and major policies that out governments of any flavour are incapable of.

 

[paul]

So what are we discussing? The safety record of the Nuclear industry, or the wisdom of siting nuclear reactors in a seismologically active area?

Or what realistic alternatives are there for dependable and reliably constant supplies of electricity to meet our insatiable and ever-increasing demands?

Its that premise that is fundamentally at fault. The assumption and accpetance that increaing demand is inevitable and that it must be met.

This is wrong .

The "realistic alternative" is to focus efforts on limiting and in turn reducing net demand. This takes big thinking and major policies that out governments of any flavour are incapable of.

If we assume that governments are not going to reduce net demand, which as you say, is not going to happen, then what options should be pursued? It's all very well condemning the nuclear option, but to succeed in persuading others that nuclear is not the way to go, then you must provide an alternative.

 

[ChrisB]

Its that premise that is fundamentally at fault. The assumption and accpetance that increaing demand is inevitable and that it must be met. This is wrong .

Now that, I agree with. Whether you mean electricity demand or economic demand in general, growth should not be a necessity, and the economic model that most of the world uses is unsustainable.

But not this:

A grade 4 incident hasn't happened because of the earthquake or the tsunami. Its happened because of a decision to place reactors IN an earthquake zone despite the blindingly obvious high risks.

or this:

There are plenty of advanced nations with no local fossil fuel that do not have nuclear stations eg Singapore, Denmark, Greece, Austria etc..

The earthquake and tsunami are now though to have killed over 10,000 people - on your logic, that's their fault for living in an earthquake zone. The risks from nuclear reactors can only be "blindingly obvious" if you discount the enormous effort that is put into designing and building earthquake resistant nuclear stations; none of which fell down or suffered significant direct damage - they were shut down as a precaution - ironically, they might have been safer left running. It's very unfortunate that something has gone wrong with the backup cooling, and that may or may not be a consequence of the earthquake, but so far the defence in depth provided by the containment has resulted in relatively minor consequences, even given the biggest earthquake for 1000 years.

Given the history of nuclear fission in Japan, I'm sure they would not have decided to adopt nuclear power if they had any reasonable alternative. Austria gets over 50% of it's electricity from hydro; dams are somewhat harder to make earthquake resistant than nuclear stations and have vast potential for disaster. Greece is hardly an example of a successful economy.

There will be lessons to learn from Fukushima Dai-Ichi; nuclear is still a much saver way to generate electricity than coal was; how many people died in the smogs? In the same way that coal improved over time, so has nuclear. Fukushima was built in the 1970's and some of it's emergency cooling will probably have been backfitted - the current designs like AP100 and EPR have much better built in emergency cooling systems.

 

[cap n chris]

To put it into some kind of perspective; a death toll of 10,000 people equates to one hour of births; this is over and beyond the death rate. i.e. a tsunami of this magnitudue only "knocks back" the world population to the level it was at 60 minutes ago.

It's a safe bet that the future of energy production, given such a stark reality, is nuclear all the way. No other method of electricity production can come anywhere near close to coping with the inexorable demand. Oil and gas is dwindling, fast, ... most guestimates reckoning we've got only 12 years to go before the shit and the fan react in a disturbing fashion.

 

[owd git]

Oooooooooh, harsh!
O. G. (a parent. )

 

[whitelackington]

To put it into some kind of perspective; a death toll of 10,000 people equates to one hour of births; this is over and beyond the death rate. i.e. a tsunami of this magnitude only "knocks back" the world population to the level it was at 60 minutes ago.

It's a safe bet that the future of energy production, given such a stark reality, is nuclear all the way. No other method of electricity production can come anywhere near close to coping with the inexorable demand. Oil and gas is dwindling, fast, ... most guestimates reckoning we've got only 12 years to go before the shit and the fan react in a disturbing fashion.

Instead of governments investing for growth,
why not invest in sustainability?
We can not, without ever more catastrophes, continue to have ever more people and consume ever more products, cut every last tree down and drink every last drop of fresh water, we are on the road to madness.

The apologists for the nuclear industry will try and whisper blandishments,
to soothe us with reassurances that this sort of thing could not happen here,
our government will say they are convinced by the arguments of "experts".
Remember how quite recently we were taken to war on a lie
"weapons of mass distruction"
Do not believe their cons.
Serious nuclear power generation incidents have happened in the former Soviet Union,
the U.S.A. and Japan.
We would be brain dead to think an accident could not happen in our country because the nuclear industry said their systems were fool proof.

 

[graham]

... earthquake resistant nuclear stations; none of which fell down or suffered significant direct damage - they were shut down as a precaution - ironically, they might have been safer left running. It's very unfortunate that something has gone wrong with the backup cooling ...

It is far too early to be able to draw all the lessons from this or, indeed, to know what happened in detail, but my understanding is that, in at least one case, the cooling failed because the pumps were flooded by the tsunami. Flooding the reactors with sea water is clearly a last-ditch move at averting disaster as it is clear that this renders the installation wholly unusable in the future. Whatever else may happen these units are write-offs and there is going to be a very difficult (and expensive) job of decontamination and disassembly needed.

And whatever model you choose, you must build the costs of such contingencies into it. These sort of events do happen.

 

[AndyF]

So what are we discussing? The safety record of the Nuclear industry, or the wisdom of siting nuclear reactors in a seismologically active area?

Or what realistic alternatives are there for dependable and reliably constant supplies of electricity to meet our insatiable and ever-increasing demands?

Its that premise that is fundamentally at fault. The assumption and accpetance that increaing demand is inevitable and that it must be met.

This is wrong .

The "realistic alternative" is to focus efforts on limiting and in turn reducing net demand. This takes big thinking and major policies that out governments of any flavour are incapable of.

If we assume that governments are not going to reduce net demand, which as you say, is not going to happen, then what options should be pursued? It's all very well condemning the nuclear option, but to succeed in persuading others that nuclear is not the way to go, then you must provide an alternative.

The market can deal with it....

Throttling supply simply means electricity supply  will go up in price. This means the proportion of peoples income spent on electricity will increase, and living standards will degrade. Fewer foreign holidays, smaller car, cheaper food, less beer. balance will be met.

We are seeing exactly this with petrol at the moment. Prices go up, "demand" is still the same (people would like to drive) but "useage" appears to be falling judging by the roads....

So the alternative is major hydro, renewables, limiting supply...

 

[AndyF]

The earthquake and tsunami are now though to have killed over 10,000 people - on your logic, that's their fault for living in an earthquake zone. The risks from nuclear reactors can only be "blindingly obvious" if you discount the enormous effort that is put into designing and building earthquake resistant nuclear stations; none of which fell down or suffered significant direct damage - they were shut down as a precaution -

My understanding is the cooling systems failed - that IS direct damage in my book!!

ironically, they might have been safer left running. It's very unfortunate

delte "unfortunate", substitute "predicatable"

that something has gone wrong with the backup cooling, and that may or may not be a consequence of the earthquake,

"may or may not be a consequence of the earthquake"

Are you serious?

but so far the defence in depth provided by the containment has resulted in relatively minor consequences, even given the biggest earthquake for 1000 years.

Given the history of nuclear fission in Japan, I'm sure they would not have decided to adopt nuclear power if they had any reasonable alternative. Austria gets over 50% of it's electricity from hydro; dams are somewhat harder to make earthquake resistant than nuclear stations and have vast potential for disaster. Greece is hardly an example of a successful economy.

...and Denamrk?

oh and Japan has LOTS of mountains for hydro...

 

[Jopo]

Found this about energy in Denmark, a major oil and gas exporter.

http://ec.europa.eu/energy/energy_policy/doc/factsheets/mix/mix_dk_en.pdf

Jopo