Nuclear Power in the UK

[Alex]

 

....I've been expecting that.

 

Chernobyl was caused by the Russian's experimenting.

 

They pushed the reactors to overload on purpose and then screwed it all up, yes it was a disaster...but do you not think that they've learnt from it? In what 40years?

 

FFS comparing a brand new state of the art Nuclear PS with chernobyl is just not at all fair or balanced.

[Kip]

Alex thats not very polite is it.

How to win friends and influence people eh!!

Yes, I do have differing views and all I was trying to do is bring it to other peoples attention gracefully.

May I suggest a diplomacy pill old chap...

[Alex]

Alex thats not very polite is it.

How to win friends and influence people eh!!

Yes, I do have differing views and all I was trying to do is bring it to other peoples attention gracefully.

May I suggest a diplomacy pill old chap...

 

You were the one calling anyone who'd consider Nuclear Power thick and uneducated....was there any need for that? Hmm???

 

I don't appreciate it one bit and will not stand by and let it continue.

[Marco]

And it's still melting Marco!!

And it's still the cause of massive amounts of contamination and disease in Europe.

But, hey, it's safe and clean....

 

Exactly! Nuclear powerplants can't be 100% garanteed safe. If a windmill stops working it stops, but if a powerplant stops working... you better run!

[Ark]

How about plugging everyone in, Matrix style, while they sleep? 8 hours of 'free' power from each person every day. With a global power network you'd get a constant rolling daily power cycle.

 

No?

 

OK I go with nuclear for now then, until someone can come up with something better.

[Alex]

Exactly! Nuclear powerplants can't be 100% garanteed safe. If a windmill stops working it stops, but if a powerplant stops working... you better run!

 

 

You mean if an act of god happens and all the shut down and back up systems which are all independent fail at the same time, then what?

 

It's called a 4m think concrete structure...

 

Side issue, but a plane has 11 seperate computer systems all able to fly the plane in case of a problem with an/all other 10....and after that they can revert to manual control...redundancy is something that can be built into these things....after all would you work at a place that could become ground zero cause someone spilt their coffee???

[Kip]

Alex, no worries m8.

Thank you for retracting part of your opening statement.

Please accept my apologies if I offended - it wasn't meant to.

Just trying to provoke a reaction, which it obviously did.

At least you thought, and are, probably, thinking about the bigger issue now.

The governments reaction to this - I believe - is to think nuclear because its the cheapest and easiest short term fix, but in my view its a disaster waiting to happen - in the long term....

[Gaz Walker]

I don't appreciate it one bit and will not stand by and let it continue.

 

You did just call the guy a tw*t Alex, I don't think he appreciates it either... :thumbdown

 

Gaz.

[Ian C]

I think Alex is more volatile than any modern nuclear plant But Kip, your initial diatribe was a bit of a left-winger eco-friendly emotion-over-rationality shouty shouty attention whore speech, bypassing any facts in order to get attention er I mean prove your point (Or is that Greenpeace?)*

 

Anyway, yeah, the government do seem to be ones for short term bugger-the-consequences fixes, don't they? We should fire politicians into the sun instead But I'm all for safe nuclear power as long as it's offshored to India

 

-Ian

 

*er, the real one. Not Simon. Who is of course real as well. You know what I mean.

[SkyJawa]

Chernobyl, how old was that technology? Plus the reactor would never have been built if it was the US as the building/reactor didn't meet their safety standards, and then the Soviets pushed it further! Clever!

 

As for Fusion - we already can control that, just not for long enough to use it for electricity production. When we can it won't just fuel power stations, it will be utilised on a new era of space flight that will see us able to reach other planets in our solar system far faster

[Kip]

Ok, I know when I'm beaten - nuclear power plants it is then.

I do have two last questions though:

1. what about the waste?

2. where do we put it?

[Alex]

Ok, I know when I'm beaten - nuclear power plants it is then.

I do have two last questions though:

1. what about the waste?

2. where do we put it?

 

Both good questions and I personally don't know the answers though I can come up with ideas...like putting them in places that's we've extracted oil from. Is that possible? I don't know that's why I wanted this debate.

 

You did just call the guy a tw*t Alex, I don't think he appreciates it either...

Gaz.

 

Hey that's the edited less aggressive version Anyway teacher he called me thick first!

[stevie_b]

On the whole, I agree with Alex. Nuclear power isn't a 100% perfect solution. However, a 100% perfect solution doesn't exist, and never will. Wind/solar/wave would probably be best, but wouldn't currently be able to supply all our energy needs.

 

I do get exasperated by people who complain about the blight on the landscape of wind farms. Again, they're not ideal, but they're probably better than the alternatives: you can either

1) keep using fossil fuels until the greenhouse effect REALLY takes hold or until the exponential rise in its price as supplies run out puts it beyond everyone's reach; or

2) enjoy the effects of gamma radiation near whichever sites are chosen to inter nuclear waste, be this remote parts of the land, the sea, etc; or

3) get a view of a bloody great windmill outside your house.

 

I know which I'd choose.

 

Disposing of the waste is the trickiest thing about nuclear, but as Alex said, it could be used as an interim measure. As long as we don't generate shed-loads of it, I reckon it could be interred relatively safely. Modern nuclear power stations with inhibitor material suspended above the reactor are pretty safe. If anything goes wrong, including all the power to the building itself is cut, then the inhibitor falls into the reactor, which has the same effect as smothering a fire with a very large fire blanket. Older reactors had the inhibitor below the reactor chamber: great, as long as you've still got the electrical power to push the inhibitor up into the chamber!

 

Some really good ideas here. I do like the one about subsidies for homes having solar panels installed. Not popular with the energy companies, but they can take a flying f**k: there's more important issues here.

 

I've got a few pie-in-the-sky ideas about electricity generation. However, watch this space in a few years' time about wave power. I've got a friend who's working on some VERY clever technology.

[Kip]

If we put it in the places we have extracted oil and gases from, do we run the risk of the cylinders degrading, earthquakes, lava flowing in to the voids, I don't know either, what I do know is that nuclear waste is nasty stuff and we still don't know how to dispose of it safely. - So why would we want to create more?

Are we be causing contamination for future generations to deal with in the hopes that by then there will be a solution.

That's why I suggested thinking long term....

[Pete]

I wouldn't worry too much. A giant meteor is going to come along and whack the planet and everything on it into oblivian anyway.

[Kip]

Giant meteor is going to wipe us out.

Ah well, we're all ok then - no need to worry after all.

Thanks for that reassurance Pete.

[JonW]

Interesting that people driving 3ltr fuel guzzling cars are so concerned about the carbon in the atmosphere!!!

 

What will power our Supras when the Oil runs out!!! How much plutonium will I need??

 

How much difference would be made to Carbon based fuel consumption if all cars with engines bigger than say 1ltr were banned??

 

Just seems a little hypocritical of us all to moan about fossil fuel running out when we are all using more than the average person!!!

[Pete]

Giant meteor is going to wipe us out.

Ah well, we're all ok then - no need to worry after all.

Thanks for that reassurance Pete.

[Alex]

Interesting that people driving 3ltr fuel guzzling cars are so concerned about the carbon in the atmosphere!!!

 

What will power our Supras when the Oil runs out!!! How much plutonium will I need??

 

How much difference would be made to Carbon based fuel consumption if all cars with engines bigger than say 1ltr were banned??

 

Just seems a little hypocritical of us all to moan about fossil fuel running out when we are all using more than the average person!!!

 

I don't know....I use my car at the weekend only...my missues uses her 1.4 Fiesta all week....so are we really that different.

 

And yes it's something we should all be concerned about as the longer the oil lasts the longer we can drive Supra's!!!

[chilli]

Arguments against it in a newspaper all related to Plutonium being used in bombs...well if it's in the power stations there'll be less for the terrorists lol

 

lol no that's back to front isn't it, nuclear power stations can be used to produce quantities of U235 as required in a nuclear bomb, from more regular uranium fuel (which is mostly U238) IIRC - So Nuclear power stations can be seen as nuclear bomb fuel production units (indeed in the early days during WW2 that's really what they were for no doubt!).

 

As for firing it into space, not a safe option since an explosion in the atmosphear would spread the fuel over the planet

 

More research into Nuclear Fusion is the way forward Fission is dirty and there will always be mistakes - imagine one in the UK or in France where they have loads (lots along the coast near us doh!)...

[Gazboy]

Interesting that people driving 3ltr fuel guzzling cars are so concerned about the carbon in the atmosphere!!!

 

What will power our Supras when the Oil runs out!!! How much plutonium will I need??

 

How much difference would be made to Carbon based fuel consumption if all cars with engines bigger than say 1ltr were banned??

 

Just seems a little hypocritical of us all to moan about fossil fuel running out when we are all using more than the average person!!!

 

I think you'll find a lot of us have second cars, the Supras are toys.

 

My part:

 

I drive a 1.3 Hyundai Getz every day, I think it's fab. Strangley it has worse mpg than the Supra when both are cruising at 100mph, but at 60mph, it returns 50mpg. My wife cycles.

 

In any case, it's great that the tree hugging lentil slurping sandle wearing left handed trombone playing lesbians are banging on about cars and their contribution to pollution, but wait- HANG ON I CAN'T HEAR MYSELF SPEAK OVER THE NOISE OF THAT GODDAM PLANE THAT JUST TOOK OFF PUMPING 200 TIMES MORE SHIT, UNTREATED INTO THE UPPER ATMOSPHERE....

 

The Independent have started whinging about the envioronment, how we should buy localy and have cars taxed at £1000 per annum.

 

The thing is, to run the independent, takes 100,000kg of paper, every night. 75% of which is recycled, granted, that still leaves you 25,000kg of paper to make, from quite a few tons of trees. Then they have to ship this 100 tons of paper from Russia to our ports. What was that about buying localy? never mind the fact that the ship just burnt 4000kg of carbon into the air.

 

I wont go into the fact that the 3 presses that produce it need 11,000 volts each to run, and they run for 6 hours every night, or the 1000's of plates made. Ink, from oil, trucks that use lots of fuel to ferry the products around, planes for the foreighn sales...

 

Persoanly, I'd stick wind-farms on central reservations of motorways, and solar panels on every house, to help out.

[Soop Dogg]

....I've been expecting that.

 

Chernobyl was caused by the Russian's experimenting.

 

They pushed the reactors to overload on purpose and then screwed it all up, yes it was a disaster...but do you not think that they've learnt from it? In what 40years?

 

FFS comparing a brand new state of the art Nuclear PS with chernobyl is just not at all fair or balanced.

 

 

You don't mean 40 years since Chernobyl happened do you?

 

It was 1986.

 

Anyway, I don't think we can compare old nuclear power plants with what can be built now. Interestingly enough I was listening to a discussion on this very subject last week on radio 4. Johnny Ball was on there giving some interesting facts.

 

New nuclear plants produce less than 10% of what we have had in the UK up until now.

 

Denmark tried the 100% reliance on wind power idea in experiments in some areas and it won't work. It is just not realistic to depend on wind for a steady power supply. In Denmark, theyre lights kept flickering! A PC would run well in those circumstances, don't you think? So what would happen to business users who rely on a good supply?

 

We all know The best way of producing energy is by generating enough heat to boil water into steam and use that to power turbines. When water boils, it almost instantaneously expands to 600 times its' original volume. To get this amount of energy from any other type of turbine would take hundreds of the damn things. In the UK we would need a few hundred thousand of them.(can't remember the exact figure but it was in this region)

 

Wind will only ever account for about 30% of our power. That might even be a little optimistic!

 

We are due to decommission old reactor sites. These can be used for the new ones.

 

I reckon that at the moment we don't really have a huge choice but to accept nuclear power like the rest of Europe.

[chilli]

Chernobyl was caused by the Russian's experimenting.

 

They pushed the reactors to overload on purpose and then screwed it all up, yes it was a disaster...but do you not think that they've learnt from it? In what 40years?

 

From what I understand, that is not exactly what happened. They got the reactor into an unstable state during routine tests and then tried to switch it back online too quickly (due to pressure to be back online again) by removing too many rods - in the unstable state it quickly came back up, melting the core before they could get the rods back in, and the distorted core stopped the rods from going in at all! Thus leading to a meltdown - doh!

[Pete]

In Denmark, theyre lights kept flickering! A PC would run well in those circumstances, don't you think? So what would happen to business users who rely on a good supply?

That's what phat UPSs are for.

[Pete]

The Independent have started whinging about the envioronment, how we should buy localy and have cars taxed at £1000 per annum.

That's fine if you live in a city. Public transport here is non existant and would take me 2 hours and a walk to get to work. A journey that takes 15mins by car.