10 myths about nuclear power

Fusion may be a long term solution but for the next few hundred years fission is perfectly capable of serving our needs.

As I see it the biggest barrier is the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For countries with a nuclear weapons capability already the only reason for not investing in fission is our own stupidity, it really is quite sad :(
 
I'm all for nuclear, always have been but we should also be looking at renewable energies particularly off shore tidal power. There have been proven studies that there are various areas in Scotland that could provide huge power for the country. By doing so, this will bring a lot of investment into many poor areas, provide much needed jobs and ensure that we aren't so resilient on one form of power production which would be disastrous.
 
steve45 said:
but what does this have to do with us reinvestiing in nuclear tech.
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Well really we need to lead by example, it's a bit hypocritical to deny other countries the opportunity to develop nuclear power if we're building tens of new power plants.

vonhelmet said:
FYI - I assume you mean "inextricably" rather than "inexplicably".
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:o ahhh indeed!

I'm totally on the fence when it comes to Nuclear, on the plus side it's a clean way to guarantee base load energy, something that renewable sources can't do (discounting geothermal because we don't have enough). Nevertheless something that I can't quite put my finger on disturbs me, maybe it's the Chernobyl incident?!
 
Nuclear is the way forward.

At this current moment in time there is not another power source that can provide what nuclear can.
 
I am just waiting for a nuclear assisted wind farm :p

It is quite scary how many people I have talked to about nuclear power who are so against it but with no/very little understanding of why they are so against it (other than 'it is bad for the environment').
 
Why don't we go a bit crazy and use the hippies who oppose it (and harriet killallman and Tony Blair and his troupe, mixed in with Cameron) and use them for slave labour to make the plants that much quicker?

Then if we want to do the world a favour we'll then use said people as fuel for a while.


Too grim?
Oh well.
 
kwerk said:
Don't see any mention on that list of what happens to the waste fuel after it's been used up.
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Best thing you can do is process it and keep reusing the good stuff. That way you end up with some waste that is very radioactive, but obviously dies off quickly (100 years ish), and some that is very slowly radioactive, so slow that it barely registers above background.

The problem the US has is they don't reprocess their used fuel, so they have a whole lot of middling waste, stuff that's hot for a few thousand years and puts out enough radioactivity to cause problems.
 
kwerk said:
Don't see any mention on that list of what happens to the waste fuel after it's been used up.
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All fuels have waste products. This waste product to be buried. The other major waste product from our fuels of choice floats around in the atmosphere. At least we can keep this one in a barrel, out of harm's way.
 
Col_M said:
Does anyone know what reactors we'd use in the new stations? PWR like the rest of the newer power stations?
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They will be PWR's. Nobody is as crazy enough to build gas cooled reactors like we did any more! Saying that, some AGR's could be up to 45% efficient due to their high operating temperatures (and use of stainless steel instead of magnox to clad the fuel).

The French/German design by Areva which is the EPR (1600MWe) and the Westinhouse Advanced Passive 1000 (1000MWe).

The EPR is essentially the latest incarnation of the French PWRs except with a bigger core and the AP1000 is an evolution of the American PWR's (similar to Sizewell B) with much less cable, pipes, mechanical parts, etc, all this enabled by the clever thinking of "Advanced Passive" safety mechanisms, i.e. those that require no operator intervention, or rely on mavity operated systems instead of a motor etc. Clever designs.
 
steve45 said:
I think the main problem with nuclear power is just general ignorance of the majority of the public, for the past 60 odd years they have been told anything nuclear = dangerous, not helped by the chernobyl incident or other such disasters, so obviously whenever the subject of nuclear power is brought up everyone is a bit wary of it and the greens and other such completely ignorant people play on this.
yes it can be dangerous, but if done correctly is completely safe and relatively so mch cleaner.

the way i see it, nuclear power is the only reasonable solution until a more practical cleaner source of power is found.
the british population needs to get over its phobia of nuclear.

and before anyone starts with the whole nimby stuff, i wouldnt give 2 hoots if i lived next to a powerplant.
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Thats an INCREDIBLY naive view, if done correctly, its safe, thats rubbish.

Sorry but mistakes and accidents happen, thats life, this is proven, and the biggest problem with that is you CAN NOT PLAN for every eventuality, no matter how thorough you think it is there is ALWAYS something that can go wrong.

When a coal power station has a problem, gets out of control, burns out of control, the local population won't glow, and have cancers, and have cancer ridden children for the next 100 years.

Nuclear is simply NOT that safe, if a problem occurs with it, the potential for massive massive catastrophic failure that injures/kills many many people is ALWAYS going to be there.

This is where the argument fails, the pro nuclear side trys to put across this 100% safe idea, the public falls for it, one accident happens proving the idea its 100% safe is utterly utterly ridiculous and no one ever trusts the "its safe" PR people ever again.

If they simply sold the idea as, its incredibly safe, will save billions, is sustainable for far longer than coal/oil/any other types of power station and its really the only choice, and come up with ways to minimise the risks they'd get much much better reaction than this truly idiotic idea its completely safe with no risk.

The risk is MASSIVE, half of life is a massive risk, the public need to be sold on the risk vs reward, not sold on the stupid and idiotic idea its completely safe for ever.


The biggest problem really is due to loss of power over length its not hugely economically viable to move everyone off one of the crappy islands around the UK, load it up with nuclear power stations and have it offshore with lower risks if a meltdown occured.

AS for the waste, its not as little a problem as the article makes out, its not the volume its the difficulty.

Its moving it around to be reprocessed, its the expense of creating the containers to stick it in.

Yes it might only create waste the size of a royal albert hall. But that has to be built, underground, in a location that if any leaks did happen, wouldn't seep into ground water, or near any local population, it has to be built to be earthquake proof so the walls hopefully will never crack, to not explode under pressure/heat, to contain the radiation and, etc, etc, etc. Its VERY expensive disposing of the waste property, there is a risk to a truck transporting the waste having an accident, or being a target for attack, of a crash causing a ridiculously dangerous spill etc.

Even then thats not that big an issue, its just not a small issue, in a long list of fairly big problems, amongst the fundamental one that should a nuclear reactor go critical and be a problem, it can effect a simply massive area or problems. Chernobyl caused problems with radioactive rain as far away as Wales.

Also you have the political situation with nuclear power, ok the UK and USA accept it completely, deem it completely safe, etc, etc, we both get 50 power stations each, whoopdedoo.

Now Iran decides, well you have them, so what can you possibly have against us building them. As oil prices continue to rise, Pakistan wants them, Afghanistan wants them, Khazakstan, half of africa.

The political force behind us refusing to help these countries build/learn nuclear power tech is pretty strong when we pretty much refuse to build more stations due to safety issues.

Do we want the ENTIRE GLOBE to end up with nuclear power stations in 20-30 years, of which maybe the UK/USA ones will be of a sufficient safety record, will every one built everywhere else in the world offer the same safety?

Will every worker who helps build the reactors in the UK/USA/Nigeria all of them not make a single mistake, not a single steel girder with a single fault causes a problem eventually?

A coal power station breaks down, it effects almost no one, a nuclear power station going can have worldwide effects, we get loads of our fruit and veg from Africa, what if one year it call becomes irradiated, and for 50 years the place is irridated.


The BIGGEST problem with nuclear power is NOT how safe it would be here, but the long term implications of the "1st world" accepting it as safe and the prefential choice, and the knock on effects of other countries with significantly lower safety standards pushing into the same area's.
 
Scougar said:
Noticed an error in the article (at least I think it's an error). They say uranium is only fuel to produce more fuel when burnt? How so? burn would, get charcoal (if done right)... now technically this is producing more fuel even though the process isn't used for 'fuel', but could quite easily be, after all a Nuclear reaction is just a controlled process.
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Well they shouldn't have used the word "Burn" but even then, it would not produce charcoal, for charcoal you need carbon present, and Uranium, is not carbon.

By producing more fuel, it means that when you use the uranium as fissile material, it breaks down into two other products, one of which is also fissile, so basically, it's like using the fuel to get energy, then the byproduct formed can also undergo Fission and generate more energy that way.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Thats an INCREDIBLY naive view, if done correctly, its safe, thats rubbish.

Sorry but mistakes and accidents happen, thats life, this is proven, and the biggest problem with that is you CAN NOT PLAN for every eventuality, no matter how thorough you think it is there is ALWAYS something that can go wrong.

When a coal power station has a problem, gets out of control, burns out of control, the local population won't glow, and have cancers, and have cancer ridden children for the next 100 years.

Nuclear is simply NOT that safe, if a problem occurs with it, the potential for massive massive catastrophic failure that injures/kills many many people is ALWAYS going to be there.

This is where the argument fails, the pro nuclear side trys to put across this 100% safe idea, the public falls for it, one accident happens proving the idea its 100% safe is utterly utterly ridiculous and no one ever trusts the "its safe" PR people ever again.

If they simply sold the idea as, its incredibly safe, will save billions, is sustainable for far longer than coal/oil/any other types of power station and its really the only choice, and come up with ways to minimise the risks they'd get much much better reaction than this truly idiotic idea its completely safe with no risk.

The risk is MASSIVE, half of life is a massive risk, the public need to be sold on the risk vs reward, not sold on the stupid and idiotic idea its completely safe for ever.


The biggest problem really is due to loss of power over length its not hugely economically viable to move everyone off one of the crappy islands around the UK, load it up with nuclear power stations and have it offshore with lower risks if a meltdown occured.

AS for the waste, its not as little a problem as the article makes out, its not the volume its the difficulty.

Its moving it around to be reprocessed, its the expense of creating the containers to stick it in.

Yes it might only create waste the size of a royal albert hall. But that has to be built, underground, in a location that if any leaks did happen, wouldn't seep into ground water, or near any local population, it has to be built to be earthquake proof so the walls hopefully will never crack, to not explode under pressure/heat, to contain the radiation and, etc, etc, etc. Its VERY expensive disposing of the waste property, there is a risk to a truck transporting the waste having an accident, or being a target for attack, of a crash causing a ridiculously dangerous spill etc.

Even then thats not that big an issue, its just not a small issue, in a long list of fairly big problems, amongst the fundamental one that should a nuclear reactor go critical and be a problem, it can effect a simply massive area or problems. Chernobyl caused problems with radioactive rain as far away as Wales.

Also you have the political situation with nuclear power, ok the UK and USA accept it completely, deem it completely safe, etc, etc, we both get 50 power stations each, whoopdedoo.

Now Iran decides, well you have them, so what can you possibly have against us building them. As oil prices continue to rise, Pakistan wants them, Afghanistan wants them, Khazakstan, half of africa.

The political force behind us refusing to help these countries build/learn nuclear power tech is pretty strong when we pretty much refuse to build more stations due to safety issues.

Do we want the ENTIRE GLOBE to end up with nuclear power stations in 20-30 years, of which maybe the UK/USA ones will be of a sufficient safety record, will every one built everywhere else in the world offer the same safety?

Will every worker who helps build the reactors in the UK/USA/Nigeria all of them not make a single mistake, not a single steel girder with a single fault causes a problem eventually?

A coal power station breaks down, it effects almost no one, a nuclear power station going can have worldwide effects, we get loads of our fruit and veg from Africa, what if one year it call becomes irradiated, and for 50 years the place is irridated.


The BIGGEST problem with nuclear power is NOT how safe it would be here, but the long term implications of the "1st world" accepting it as safe and the prefential choice, and the knock on effects of other countries with significantly lower safety standards pushing into the same area's.
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You can plan for most, doing all sorts of process checks like FMEAs etc.. however planes do fall out of the sky still, but it's rare, and as our analysis and processes become more sophistacted and advanced more processes will be secure.

Sure nothing is flawless, as long as humans are around - but most of the risks can be mitigated and prevented.

I think it's pretty ignorant and close minded to close off an idea just because it *might* go wrong. If people hadn't attempted to fly, or go to the moon etc... we wouldn't be where we are now. Nuclear power is really an underutilised source of power, much better than oil and coal, and much more efficient than solar and wind power. The more it's used the safer it'll become, furthermore, you don't need as many nuclear power stations to produce the same output.
 
platinum87 said:
Everything can be worked out using maths, those people dont understand maths..

Pretty simple
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Does that line of thought also include risk? Nuclear power is a risk, albeit calculated and the probability of another Chernobyl is extremely low however you are foolish to believe that nuclear energy is 100% safe and presents ZERO risk.

That said, I'd take my chances with Nuclear until such a time that a safer, better, energy presents itself. The energy clock is ticking and time is most definately running out which if we keep going like we are, war over fossil fuels will be our deciding fate not another Chernobyl.
 
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