10 myths about nuclear power

For me the main problem of nuclear power is the waste.

I was listening to radio 4 the other day and they were talking about it on there and still their best solution is to seal it, shove it in the ground and forget about it. From what I remember them saying though, they can't even seal it properly yet until it decays some more...it's a massive problem.

I heard quite some time ago that it was considered that radioactive waste could be successfully broken down and made harmless quickly using a type of laser...I can't remember what it was exactly but I haven't heard anything about it since.

Rather than looking at fusion, wouldn't this be a shorter term goal?
 
vonhelmet said:
Is another one that THE SHEEP WILL HAVE THREE HEADS!
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I saw a two headed sheep last time I was in Wales.....

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RE Thorium:

Brussels turned to its technical experts, who happened to be French because the French dominate the EU’s nuclear industry. "They didn’t want competition because they had made a huge investment in the old technology," he said.

Another decade was lost. It was a sad triumph of vested interests over scientific progress. "We have very little time to waste because the world is running out of fossil fuels. Renewables can’t replace them. Nuclear fusion is not going work for a century, if ever," he said.
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THAT is the problem with humanity...sheer greed.

we cannot use x fuel, despite it being much better than our old fuel....because we have invested in this due to being short sighted. therefore we will forgoe the benefits of thorium.
 
I'm a big fan of nuclear power. :)

Shame a lot of countries don't support it, and certainly the yanks won't ask the French for help - which is a shame as i think if the US and the UK came on board with Nuclear the demand for oil whilst still high, will become less of a necessity which in turn will drop the prices down. So it's win win really!
 
Good article and agree with you FF, it would be good if both us and the US pushed it more.
 
I had to do a similar project at uni too, we had to pretend as a class that we were a government board researching the options, costs and impact of every power source. Nuclear came out as the best source for us with more votes than all the others put together.

It just makes sense as the most economical source.

Also stability of fuel supply is very good too, compared to gas from Russia, nuclear fuel comes mainly from Australia and Canada, strong friends of the UK with stable governments.
 
Freefaller said:
I'm a big fan of nuclear power. :)

Shame a lot of countries don't support it, and certainly the yanks won't ask the French for help - which is a shame as i think if the US and the UK came on board with Nuclear the demand for oil whilst still high, will become less of a necessity which in turn will drop the prices down. So it's win win really!
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The UK has been preparing for an influx of French designed Nuclear Plants for a number of years now, the major factor, in my experience, has been public preception of them (chernobyl) which has stopped the goverment from giving the go ahead.

I've worked with a number of companies who have been involved in the initial design of such plants/location and it's all very hush hush and phone calls asking about their "engineering background" in such fields.

Hopefully it will get the green light soon tho :).

KaHn
 
I just think it’s hilarious that the likes of the greens can think we can get reliable energy supplies from wind and sea.

I took a 370 miles drive a couple of weeks back, no wind the whole trip, i must have passed 50 wind turbines in various locations and not a single one was spinning.

Nuclear is the way forward, it always has been, I’m a huge fan and it’s a big part of the company i work in.
 
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I'm averse to new nuclear stations being built in Scotland. Up here we have a staggering untapped potential for renewable energy.

Renewable energy in Scotland - Wikipedia

Scotland has an estimated potential of 36.5 GW of wind and 7.5 GW of tidal power, 25% of the estimated total capacity for the European Union and up to 14 GW of wave power potential, 10% of EU capacity. The renewable electricity generating capacity may be 60 GW or more, considerably greater than the existing capacity from all Scottish fuel sources of 10.3 GW.
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It would be folly to ignore the employment and wider economic benefits that the renewable industry could bring.
 
KaHn said:
The UK has been preparing for an influx of French designed Nuclear Plants for a number of years now, the major factor, in my experience, has been public preception of them (chernobyl) which has stopped the goverment from giving the go ahead.

I've worked with a number of companies who have been involved in the initial design of such plants/location and it's all very hush hush and phone calls asking about their "engineering background" in such fields.

Hopefully it will get the green light soon tho :).

KaHn
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It would be good.

However with Chernobyl was made even more tragic owing to the fact the bloody Ruskies were too secretive to allow western help. Furthermore, there was quite a lot of pressure from the French government specialists, asking/telling them to allow them to come in and help but owing to the time in the century it occured and the weak ties the west had with Russia then, they refused any help owing to fears of espionage. Lessons learnt I guess.

Nuclear power is contreversial, but as the technology, and expertise gets better, it's becoming an increasingly clean and safe technology - use something devastating to make something crucial, I think it's beautiful!
 
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