Great British Nuclear - UK's Push To Include Nuclear Energy

Rroff said:
Telling thing for me is we don't make radical changes mandatory with new build houses in respect to both climate change and energy. So much could be done there.
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indeed.... i think as part of planning permission every single new build should have to have a survey done (independently) and if solar is suitable every new build has to have solar. If solar isnt suitable then should probably have a home battery installed instead to charge offpeak.

on top of that, whilst ground source heat pumps may not make sense for individual houses..... surely they would work as shared heating systems for multiple houses or flats (flats its even easier as the cost to maintain would be part of the maintenance charges on the flats).

a lot of this costs money and may need to be propped up by government.... but long term it would pay for itself (home buyers could have a choice to either buy outright or to pay for that part over time as part of the energy bills) and besides, how much money is being peed up the wall with projects like HS2? and on point..... whilst i am not against nuclear, something has gone badly wrong with hinkley point C imo.... (13 billion projected cost is currently at £30 billion last time i looked and even after all that its not even british companies who will be making any profit iirc (France and China)
 
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radderfire said:
Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima ... the list goes on.
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You can’t count Chernobyl in the list of nuclear accidents as it was caused by deliberately operating a reactor in an unsafe condition whilst being ignorant of a critical design flaw because it was a State Secret.

Negligent, not accidental.
 
Terminal_Boy said:
You can’t count Chernobyl in the list of nuclear accidents as it was caused by deliberately operating a reactor in an unsafe condition whilst being ignorant of a critical design flaw because it was a State Secret.

Negligent, not accidental.
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perhaps.... and Fukushima was built on a fault line which one would think was entirely avoidable.... but that is the thing... people ARE negligent. you will never fully get rid of corruption / negligence / incompetence / insanity / warmongering fools and just plain bad luck.
 
Fukushima nuclear plant survived an earth quake with 3 times the energy of it's original design and shutdown safely. The failure was one of imagination that any tsunami would be 2 twice the size of the wall they built to defend against one. The reactor didn't lose control the decay heat caused a meltdown because the diesel generators for the cooling pumps were washed away.

A molten salt reactor for instance could have an entirely passive design to manage decay heat. I think the Westinghouse AP1000 may have a passive design to manage decay heat. But in general I don't like PWR's to much energy density.
 
PlacidCasual said:
Fukushima nuclear plant survived an earth quake with 3 times the energy of it's original design and shutdown safely. The failure was one of imagination that any tsunami would be 2 twice the size of the wall they built to defend against one. The reactor didn't lose control the decay heat caused a meltdown because the diesel generators for the cooling pumps were washed away.

A molten salt reactor for instance could have an entirely passive design to manage decay heat. I think the Westinghouse AP1000 may have a passive design to manage decay heat. But in general I don't like PWR's to much energy density.
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I can't find it quickly but there is closer up footage somewhere of the tsunami coming in over the defences at the power station - the event is exceptional. While it wouldn't have helped if the event had happened sooner those power stations were supposed to have been replaced before it happened with newer designs less exposed to an event like that, there are also a bunch of other complex factors involved in the failure.
 
If you take climate control into consideration, there really isn't an alternative (that I'm aware of).

We need scalable solutions to support a growing (hopefully) economy, which renewable energy is unable to provide right now. There are multiple concepts in the works to store energy in a cost effective manner, but nothing is concrete - there could be a breakthrough tomorrow, there could only be one in 20 years.

The alternative is to keep burning dirty fuel and rely on other countries for said fuel. You'd think with over half the country wanting, based on an uneducated opinion, Brexit, people would be in favour of being more self-sufficient in terms of power generation.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't still be building more renewable capture, but we need long-term solutions.
 
One More Solo said:
Blaming “the Greens” is pathetic when we consistently elect centre right governments and actual green voices in parliament have been negligible. The biggest barriers to improving our energy security have been short term governing and NIMBYism. This move has been in the government’s gift for a long time.
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I will absolutely blame the Greens for making stupid and unelectable idealist policies that ensures they never get power. And their blanket anti-nuclear stance, even to fusion.
 
D.P. said:
Indeed. You also just have to look at france to see how unreliable Nuclear is, when half the capacity was offline for much of the last year
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That is such a bad faith take, especially coming from you.
 
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Chris Wilson said:
A major disaster with ongoing consequences decades later, nonetheless.
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This is one of the issues with nuclear it is high stakes, but it doesn't have to be high stakes - it is the human element which makes it so not the other aspects as some try to make out.
 
The only shame is that we used to be a world leader and thanks to the green protestors and dim-witted governments, we have now lost all the technology to build our own reactors.
 
SpellowHouse said:
The only shame is that we used to be a world leader and thanks to the green protestors and dim-witted governments, we have now lost all the technology to build our own reactors.
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(not sure if i agree or disagree with you..... do you mean green people protesting against big oil or people protesting against green tech? )

either way it is a shame how we have seemingly willfully and negligently shot ourselves in the foot.

however imo embracing green technology is one of the ways to get us back on the front foot imo - and i do begrudgingly include nuclear as part of a green future at least for the next half century..... we are really fortunate in that we have so much potential for safe renewable energy (wind/solar/tidal/geothermal) , we should be world leading (we actually still are WRT offshore wind...... but its all foreign investment because for what ever reason we chose not to invest properly in it ourselves)

its a damn shame. christ we cant seem to even build a damn battery factory for a technology which is beginning to explode (in a good way).....
 
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bigmike20vt said:
(not sure if i agree or disagree with you..... do you mean green people protesting against big oil or people protesting against green tech? )

either way it is a shame how we have seemingly willfully and negligently shot ourselves in the foot.

however imo embracing green technology is one of the ways to get us back on the front foot imo - and i do begrudgingly include nuclear as part of a green future at least for the next half century..... we are really fortunate in that we have so much potential for safe renewable energy (wind/solar/tidal/geothermal) , we should be world leading (we actually still are WRT offshore wind...... but its all foreign investment because for what ever reason we chose not to invest properly in it ourselves)

its a damn shame. christ we cant seem to even build a damn battery factory for a technology which is beginning to explode (in a good way).....
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What is your take on Fusion?
 
Tephnos said:
What is your take on Fusion?
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its the dream **** but it has been 40 years away for as long as i can remember.

we simply cant wait any longer and hope it arrives to solve all our problems. what if it never works (i mean it works technically but its not much of a solution if you have to put more energy in that you get out of it)

**** note i am not qualified to have an actual qualified opinion, this is just my thoughts.
 
robgmun said:
^ trying to think what four letter word fits into those stars but can't figure it out
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lol it wasnt.... it was an asterix to highlight my closing point at the bottom that i am not qualified to make a "proper" opinion. (I have listened to i think it was Helen Czerski talk about it however and she is qualified)
 
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Here's a TED Talk from almost 10 years ago from a 19 year old Taylor Wilson, the kid who build a nuclear reactor in his parents garage at 14.


You've probably heard it before, his idea is to bury self-contained small modular reactors way down in the ground away from your local terrorist group. Sealed systems that last for around 30 years producing over 50MW, enough for over 20,000 homes while being inherently safe from attack or natural disasters.

You'd have thought we'd be a bit further on in 10 years but alas, nope.
 
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