Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Mistakes never happen, do they? Future dictators, and current ones, are always predictable and mentally balanced. So are religious extremists.
The case against nuclear power - does it stack up?
- Thread starter platinumsage
- Start date
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
Discarding nuclear energy on that basis is just daft, just like it would be daft to abandon the use of fire because of arsonists. Look at the deaths per terawatt-hour. Nuclear fission energy is comparable to renewables in that respect. We can't decide policy based on theatrics, otherwise aircraft would be banned because thousands of people died on 9/11.
Interview in the Guardian at the weekend.
Energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins: ‘It’s the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest way to address the crisis’
Sat 26 Mar 2022
Energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins: ‘It’s the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest way to address the crisis’
Sat 26 Mar 2022
The whole article is worth a read.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Can’t say I’m convinced on this alone that nuclear won’t be a valuable part of the mix, but a guy who grows tropical fruits in his house without heating when the temperatures outside are sub-zero is definitely worth listening to when it comes to energy efficiency.
elbows
Well-Known Member
it will likely end up an important part of the mix in a whole bunch of countries for exactly the reasons mentioned in the article - there are a bunch of powerful interests that want it to be part of the mix, and combining that with not wholeheartedly doing all the things he goes on about on the demand and efficiency side of things, we end up needing something else to ensure sufficient supply to meet that demand for periods when, for example, the wind isnt blowing strongly.
I cannot make an exact prediction about what proportion of the mix it will end up making. Because it isnt clear exactly how far our renewable ambitions will stretch, or our power storage ambitions, or our efficiency and reduced demand ambitions. Although we can be reasonable sure that in a country like the UK we dont want to do the efficiency and demand reduction stuff properly. We'e squandered a lot of opportunities this century so far to actually sort our housing stock out properly, and I expect that will bite us in the arse big time at some point. And also I struggle with exact predictions because there are a bunch of setbacks that nuclear will likely face, but its not so easy to know exactly how bad they will be. We can expect timescales to be unreliable, and for costs to spiral especially given the general inflationary picture. We cannot predict whether there will be any further nuclear accidents at a delicate moment which give the nuclear industry a massive kick in the balls and really upset plans. And we cannot predict whether public support will diminish dramatically for any other possible reasons.
Anyway I see the much-delayed UK energy strategy stuff emerged in the news today. But it was the typical stuff we probably already expected, and seemed lacking in detail as usual:
Energy strategy: UK plans eight new nuclear reactors to boost production
The government wants to boost UK energy production and independence as household bills soar.
www.bbc.co.uk
All I really learnt is that they really love the 'Great British' branding they are attaching to new entities these days. Great British Nuclear, joining Great British Railways and maybe some others I'm not aware of.
elbows
Well-Known Member
And I suspect the detail is lacking is because I believe reports suggested the plan was previously delayed because the treasurey were quibbling about funding. So all these plans still leave me feeling like we are still stuck within the holding pattern of 'the UK has nuclear ambitions but doesnt want to fund them properly'. A story that feels like its been dragging on this whole century so far.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I expect it has already been posted to the thread but Rolls Royce wants to produce a number of small modular nuclear power stations to be positioned around the country. The argument is that they made small reactors for nuclear subs and slightly larger units could power parts of the country.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yeah, although thats part of the future vision that people are most likely to take the piss out of. I dont much like the idea myself, but I have an open mind about whether it will actually be viable and done at some point.
Having said that, even that side of things features talk of other countries in the UK document about the energy strategy:
They bring up the queen in that document too:
British energy security strategy
Funnily enough they dont mention that the power station she opened there was dual purpose and was mostly used to produce plutonium for bombs in its early years, or the 1957 fire and radioactive release from the original two plutonium-producing military reactors at the same site.
Elpenor
Dancing as fast as I can
Not the Japanese though as the Wylfa project on Anglesey was shut down from 2018-9; a huge amount of money spent on a new concept that hadn’t ever been proven.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
If nuclear energy was being pushed by a powerful lobby, then it would have displaced fossil fuels as a source of baseload power, starting in the 1970s. Instead what happened is that the true power, AKA the fossil fuels industry, strangled baseload nuclear energy in the crib when it could have done the greatest amount of good. We should still build them, by the way. We're not starving and nuclear fuel isn't anything like caviar, which is pricey and and can't be reprocessed into more caviar.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Its still a powerful lobby, just nowhere near as powerful as the traditional fossil fuel ones. And in terms of the timescale you indicated, the UK had North Sea oil and gas fields to exploit, and would have been eyeing when production would reach its maximum from those sources.
Also a chunk of the power of the nuclear lobby relates to nuclear submarines and weapons, including the historical overlap and the way that the nuclear powers of this world resulting strategic interest calculations include want to have a broader nuclear industry and technical technical expertise in place to support the military side of things.
Factors that have made this an uneven competition between these lobbies include nuclear projects having a history of ending up a pain in the arse for governments, because of technical and timescale setback risks and problems making the costings look politically attractive, and the risk of unwanted public opposition. Repeatedly kicking long term waste storage considerations off into the distance hasnt helped. Fossil fuel stuff had less technical risk, and very large amounts of quick money sloshing around. Only now that our own fossil resource exploitation is well past its peak, combined with other sustainability issues including possible global production ceilings and climate change issues, and geopolitical considerations given who the major producers are, is there more room again for alternatives to get a look in. And a couple of renewable technologies were able to exploit these changes more effectively than nuclear could. The UK approach to nuclear stuff is still half-hearted in terms of the appetite to invest in it to the required extent to meet energy security goals. The prize of energy security is undervalued despite the rhetoric, with other sorts of risk and rapid reward calculations still tending to win out so far.
If all this stuff happened on a level playing field with no lobbying and non-energy (eg military) considerations included, then nuclear is still not a genuinely attractive option, and renewables will easily win a lot of such battles. Its only when energy security in terms of baseload, periods of a lack of wind etc are considered that justifications for nuclear can be constructed which allow it to remain on the table as a serious option in the UK. Plus the occasional local employment political considerations.I suppose it will also benefit if the floor for what we expect to pay for energy from other sources remains elevated for a prolonged period, but then again periods of inflation are not exactly going to help with spiralling construction cost fears.
All things considered I still tend to believe that the most realistic prediction is that nuclear will be kept around but the timescales will often slip, and pro-nuclear optimists are never going to see anything remotely close to the percentage share of energy generation they think nuclear can and should offer. Not with fission anyway, not in this era. And personally I'd like to see nuclear power get absolutely trounced to ever increasing and obvious extents by renewables and storage in future, forms of generation that can exceed expectations in terms of their growth, rather than always failing to live up to claims like nuclear has.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
Plus a narrative that involves the genuine possibilities in the 1970s should really include the wider story about the state of British industry at the time. It wasnt just lobbying by the energy alternatives or a lack of political will that doomed nuclear things to fall short of ambitions back then. A lot of the problems were the same ones affecting other industries at the time, too big a gap between ambitions, funding and capabilities when it came to home grown stuff. Industrial decline that we'd tried to be in denial about throughout the post-war period for as long as possible. And we know how that story went in many other industries in the end - retreat and disinterest rather than a project to save that stuff on a massive scale. No appetite to find a way to invest and renew, rather conceding that we couldnt compete and shouldnt bother trying. In a situation where we gave up on stuff like our own design of high speed rail, we were going to give up on UK reactor designs eventually too, no appetite to deal with the scale of setbacks that come with that territory. In the case of nuclear pwoer, it was probably just as well, the priorities in this country and corner-cutting are a poor fit for nuclear safety requirements (eg see the fact that 'Cockrofts folly' was given such a condescending name until it saved our bacon).
At least that stuff isnt a factor now, we are long past the point of relying on our own designs. Maybe if the modular nuclear stuff gets anywhere in future there will be a chance to see how we do in this way in a modern context, but even there it seems likely that we'll rely on international cooperation rather than hopelessly banking on being able to punch above our weight.
At least that stuff isnt a factor now, we are long past the point of relying on our own designs. Maybe if the modular nuclear stuff gets anywhere in future there will be a chance to see how we do in this way in a modern context, but even there it seems likely that we'll rely on international cooperation rather than hopelessly banking on being able to punch above our weight.
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even the Mistress of the Handbag Maggie only got one through in 12 years. What's happening or not with thorium based reactors? Are they still in the experimental stage?
Where's good to read up on them? I only vaguely have some notion that if they work at scale, it's a system that's safer / cheaper than other types of contemporary fission reactors.
Where's good to read up on them? I only vaguely have some notion that if they work at scale, it's a system that's safer / cheaper than other types of contemporary fission reactors.
Aladdin
Well-Known Member
I often think that Ireland could run itself on one big nuclear power station.
It could be build deep under a mountain...which would address any explosive problems.
Nuclear Waste is of course the big problem. Where to put that and how to ensure its never going to reach a water table or come in contact with any life form.
Quite frankly the only way to completely eradicate the risks from nuclear waste would be to deposit them off the planet somewhere.
It could be build deep under a mountain...which would address any explosive problems.
Nuclear Waste is of course the big problem. Where to put that and how to ensure its never going to reach a water table or come in contact with any life form.
Quite frankly the only way to completely eradicate the risks from nuclear waste would be to deposit them off the planet somewhere.
Ah e2a. Not cheaper but other advantages. still technically difficult, commercial scale reactors some way off.
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
It’s pretty shit when the Daily Mail is calling out the sort of scaremongering that you might find in the Guardian, and not the other way around:
www.dailymail.co.uk
DOMINIC LAWSON: Greens' hatred of nuclear played into Putin's hands
DOMINIC LAWSON: Prepare for nuclear Armageddon. That is, if you believe what the likes of Greenpeace are saying about the fighting around Ukraine's nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
When I hear the words Dominic Lawson I reach for my sick bucket. For once i actually bothered to read the article (I don't normally with the Daily Mail). What. A. Load. Of. Crap.It’s pretty shit when the Daily Mail is calling out the sort of scaremongering that you might find in the Guardian, and not the other way around:
DOMINIC LAWSON: Greens' hatred of nuclear played into Putin's hands
DOMINIC LAWSON: Prepare for nuclear Armageddon. That is, if you believe what the likes of Greenpeace are saying about the fighting around Ukraine's nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia.
He praises Daddy, Nigel Lawson, for approving a nuclear power plant in the UK when he was a minister, but strangely fails to mention that Daddy is a climate change denier.
He says how well built the nuclear power plants are in ex-Russian states and how they will withstand attack, with no comment on how these same plants may have been modified by the occupiers, how the usual maintenance will have been disrupted, how all the backup installations will be vulnerable in different ways. No. Nothing to see here. Nuclear power plants are totally safe during modern warfare.
Because of Daddy.
Oh yes, and Greenpeace are the unwitting stooges of evil genius Vladimir Putin.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Not the most accurate precis of an article that I've ever read.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
It was almost word for word.
elbows
Well-Known Member
It’s pretty shit when the Daily Mail is calling out the sort of scaremongering that you might find in the Guardian, and not the other way around:
DOMINIC LAWSON: Greens' hatred of nuclear played into Putin's hands
DOMINIC LAWSON: Prepare for nuclear Armageddon. That is, if you believe what the likes of Greenpeace are saying about the fighting around Ukraine's nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia.
What that article fails to state explicitly is that the nuclear concerns in Ukraine have been a shameless part of the war propaganda there right since the start. And that it is the Ukrainian government and nuclear agency that shout loudest about this stuff, using it as part of their attempts to get the world and their allies to take the war seriously and back Ukraine in a strong and ongoing way.
The article also features the standard attempts to diminish the mental scars of Chernobyl, by going on about the containment around reactors that Chernobyl lacked. But of course when the article then seeks to make use of Fukushima to tell a positive story, it fails to mention that Fukushima also demonstrated a limitation of such containment, being that if a loss of coolant or other issue causes fuel to melt, pressure rises in the reactor vessel and within the containment layer, and a deliberate or uncontrolled release of pressure from containment will follow, enabling radioactive material to enter the wider environment. But when it comes to containment this article features a different magnitude of misleading statement - the claim that "these colossal casings prevented any breach during the full-scale attack, involving shelling, by Russian troops when they seized the plant in March". This is bollocks since the 'full scale attack' did not involve any direct hits on the reactor buildings that would have tested the strength of the containment walls there.
The rest of the article makes standard use of the very messy and contentious picture when it comes to human health impacts of Chernobyl and Fukushima. Its not very easy to get a true view of such things, and both sides of the debate are prone to rushing to the extremes when it comes to that stuff. Even if we attempt to peer beyond the extremes, by looking at illnesses rather than deaths, a clear picture will not emerge. For example attempts to study incidence rates of childhood thyroid cancer in the Fukushima region still end up featuring the usual split of opinion, with claims of an obvious increase vs claims that the screening programme led to over diagnosis.
We are never going to escape the fact that all things nuclear are mired in propaganda, and that people in general will be more attuned to the potential threat than they often are with other forms of pollution. Nor can we escape the fact that the pro nuclear side have long been setup to fight loudly on this propaganda front. And that this stuff has had an impact on the extent to which particular governments pressed on with ambitious nuclear energy plans over various decades. However all of this mess is still only one aspect of that picture, there are other reasons why the enthusiasm for and timescales of our own governments nuclear energy programme has fluctuated in our lifetime. Easy, profitable exploitation of fossil fuels made it relatively easy for them to turn to other options instead, and only now that that traditional fossil fuel story is threatened from multiple directions do we find that the nuclear power equation is belatedly shifting again here. Although still dependant on quite how long the Ukraine-related threats to gas security and energy prices persist, the economic case for nuclear will be altered by recent global events, although it still has to be noted that inflation also has an impact on nuclear construction costs.
As for the Guardian, I would hardly describe them as being an anti-nuclear publication. They will run stories about peoples concerns and the various issues with nuclear, but they are also the paper of Monbiot who was quite prepared to be very pro-nuclear even in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima, even when making such a case required him to write articles that utterly failed to acknowledge the impact on humans of evacuations and exclusion zones.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
The latest nuclear stuff from Ukraine, just to illustrate one of my points in previous post. What Zelensky says here is consistent with their previous rhetoric:
From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/wor...fb62174929d817e9777600&pinned_post_type=share
From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/wor...fb62174929d817e9777600&pinned_post_type=share
weltweit
Well-Known Member
The main case against nuclear fission is that we don't have a solution for the waste nuclear fuel rods which are produced by the process. At the moment they are being held above ground at Sellafield (Windscale) and they have a massive half life. There was discussion on the possibility of reusing the fuel, I don't know how feasible that is.
So, the holy grail is nuclear fusion, which hasn't been achieved in a demo reactor anywhere yet. The theory is that for an input of energy of X, there will be an output of energy of X+Y and I think no waste fuel. At the moment there is more investment than ever before being put into fusion research. However that money is dwarfed by the amount being donated in weapons to Ukraine for example.
So, the holy grail is nuclear fusion, which hasn't been achieved in a demo reactor anywhere yet. The theory is that for an input of energy of X, there will be an output of energy of X+Y and I think no waste fuel. At the moment there is more investment than ever before being put into fusion research. However that money is dwarfed by the amount being donated in weapons to Ukraine for example.
Some of the arguments In favour of this are quite interesting - that existing nuclear power stations are essentially completely bespoke because of the infrequency of construction and their scale which means they cost a lot.
In theory the small rolls Royce ones - which they’ve made quite a few of for nuclear subs, can be made at scale and just installed on site.
Also see nuclear power stations on boats, make them at a “nuclear power station boat” factory and then take them where you need them.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Until not that long ago Sellafield was part of the oldschool ways of reprocessing some types of UK fuel, with a contract for Japan to take quite a bit of it, but the changed nuclear industry in Japan in the wake of Fukushima, and some scandals with falsified documents, brought that particular operation to an end. It tends to be a messy business that generated different sorts of nuclear waste problems during the processing. France probably does quite a lot of this stuff to so maybe do a search for their reprocessing industry to learn more. The sort of reactors in use makes a difference to the technicalities of this too, and so the picture will also have changed over time as our original generation of power stations reached their end (eg bye bye Magnox reactors).
Getting the whole 'where are we going to store the used fuel in the longterm?' question off the mainstream news/political hot potato radar has been one of the more obvious changes to the nuclear picture in this country in my lifetime. I could call it one of the more obvious victories for nuclear industry PR, but there are probably also other reasons why it isnt in the news like it was in the 1980s. It probably featured in the news plenty back then because there were big decisions to be made about potential sites, and big questions as to the extent to which this country was going to commit to the next generation of new nuclear power stations. But in the end they backed off most of the difficult questions in those regards and just kept kicking things into the long grass instead, till the issue eventually lost most of its public attention. Plus back then the general theme of nuclear also had a lot of attention because of Chernobyl, cold war nuclear weapons stuff, the politics of coal and miners when it came to the broader uk electricity generation story and future. And I suppose the 'environmental concerns' movement was still in a somewhat nascent state back then, climate change, plastics etc hadnt risen to the top of the totem of such concerns, and nuclear power issues were able to occupy a larger chunk of awareness and activism on that front.
elbows
Well-Known Member
The signs are they will want to dabble with this stuff, not least because there will be questions about how well it actually works out in practice until its actually attempted.
Some of the potential benefits but also the questions about how well it will turn out in practice remind me of a different, non-nuclear story thats all about the building and construction industry. At various times over the decades there has been much hope and hype in regards the idea of modular buildings, where precision work is done in the factory rather than on-site. It hasnt lived up to expectations on any of those occasions, but the failures are probably not purely technical stories, they also involve the politics of labour, variation in skills and on-site quality control, and the status quo and lobbying/political fear. The modular nuclear builds will probably stumble into some of these areas, and the delicate nature of some of these themes may lead to obfuscation of what the real issues and potential advantages really are, and the risk that political will to press on will evaporate in the face of any resistance and technical setbacks.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Ah I see the issue of long term waste storage popped back onto the BBCs radar:
The piece starts off in a simplistic fashion but ends in a different way:
UK looks to Sweden for a solution to nuclear waste
After decades of experimentation Sweden is ahead of the UK when dealing with nuclear waste.
www.bbc.co.uk
The piece starts off in a simplistic fashion but ends in a different way:
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
The Nuclear Consulting Group is a rent-a-quote fake-neutral anti-nuclear campaign group, I suppose it's no surprise that the BBC went to them for a quote to "balance" the article.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I only have to spend a minute looking at articles they write or contribute to to see that they are not pretending to be neutral, they dont think there is a case for nuclear power in our future and they are keen to make the case against it. I only disregard a small percentage of what they draw attention to, eg some occasional opportunistic fear-based stuff such as that related to the nuclear propaganda coming out of the Ukraine war. A lot of what they say is very sensible analysis that cannot be dismissed via cheap smears. I'll be using them as a source more often from now on, since they notice things such as all the woes France is having with its nuclear power stations at the moment.
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