The clean green energy thread - Lets talk about alternatives to nuclear power and how we can save th

Nuclear power is a safe and reliable source of energy. I was at work today as the news kept coming in about the Japanese situation - the reactor pressure vessels were still manageable. Now that's coming from an ageing design - imagine how safe the newer reactors are.
 
Tefal said:
the electric ones still don't generate more energy than it takes to make them though outside of absolutely optimum conditions.
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As far as I know this just isn't true, unless you can show some figures.

from google i'm getting 1.5-4 years to pay back creation energy cost and life span of 20-30 years, but not what I would call reliable sites.
 
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50 - 250 MW compared to 1200 MW. Cost efficiency only really works out for the very highest power ones. Then increased maintenance costs due to difficult access in the even of a problem. Added to corrosion possibilities I would be less keen on a submersed, unmanned system.
 
I've been involved with the Wavehub project for the last year or so with my employer having been involved since about 2002 (I'm just 'doing' the IT but got to know quite a bit about it)

These things take masses of time and money to even get to a test stage, and even then you've got to find people willing to invest.

Now at the moment a lot of the cash for it has come from my agency through the government, but now we are being closed as part of the gov spending cuts who will fund things like this?

Private sector? Can't see many companies willing to take the risk on something like this when the payback is so far away.
 
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Everyone seems to want Nuclear generation but as is always the case with these type of things - no one wants one built near to their home. Something has to give ;)

There is currently 41GW of signed new renewable electricity generation up to 2020, add this to the 10GW of new Nuclear, 22GW of new non renewable and it’s a good stable mix for the future.
 
i dont oppose nuclear energy, I think its a efficient and safe (when done properly) way to generate power but when you put them on a tsunami prone coastline its asking for something bad to happen. Sure Japan were some what prepared for quakes and tsunamis but nature should never be took for granted, it follows no laws and it cannot always be predicted accurately and with that to consider something as potentially dangerous as nuclear power stations should never have been allowed to be built to begin with
 
I go fishing every other weekend up at torness power station on the scotish border. Its a good spot for sea bass as they are attracted to the warm sea water that the station lets out into the sea. I even eat the fish I catch and I dont have radiation poisoning or cancer. So living near a station isnt dangerous unless an accident/leakage should occur i'd imagine
 
BAppleton said:
I go fishing every other weekend up at torness power station on the scotish border. Its a good spot for sea bass as they are attracted to the warm sea water that the station lets out into the sea. I even eat the fish I catch and I dont have radiation poisoning or cancer. So living near a station isnt dangerous unless an accident/leakage should occur i'd imagine
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The majority of fossil fuel plants give off as much radiation as a nuclear plant ;)
 
It annoys me to see Greenpeace (or whatever anti-nuclear protestor) jump on the bandwagon and claim that nuclear is unsafe due to what is happening in Japan. As said, these are very old reactors (40 years old I hear) and they were hit by a massive earthquake, what do you expect.

Nuclear doesn't have to be unsafe and dangerous. Modern reactor designs and alternatives to uranium (or whatever it is they use now) can produce more energy with less waste and more safely. An example of this is Thorium, which is abundant, clean and safe.

Also, nuclear reactors produce radioactive isotopes which are used in a lot of medical scanners, so without these you won't have any of these in hospitals. See nuclear medicine.
 
SkScotchegg said:
Well I was thinking we should get rid of nuclear power because of the dangers it poses and also fossil fuels because of global warming.

There's no reason why we cant be driving electric cars right now and no reason why we cant have power cuts.

EDIT: Also the power cuts would prob save lives because of lazy people sat in front of the TV when they could be doing something physical like exercising, since they say that the number 1 killer is heart disease due to obesity! All the information on the news saying the western world is turning into nations of fat people.
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Looks like we got a nutter on the board.
 
Nuclear power is certainly the main contender for replacing fossil fuels for large scale electricity generation at present. There are a number of people who have already covered why and I'm so glad to see that. The only unfortunate thing about nuclear power is that we should have been building the reactors 20 years ago. I fear there is simply not enough time to get everything ready for when fossil fuels become too expensive.

Aside from nuclear I would say the only "green" source of energy that's actually viable for long term, large scale electricity generation is tidal power. Wind power is nice and the government give out lots of money to people for doing it but it won't be our saving grace. Not by a long shot. Wave energy seems to be picking up pace but again because of the technical and financial challenges it presents it probably won't be anything but a minor contributor.

Main downside to tidal power is the lack of places to actually implement a scheme though. Bristol channel is ideal, but it can't go ahead because too many people whinge about a bird dieing, when in fact a tidal power project there could be combined with other green efforts to actually improve the eco-system. Of course green peace couldn't possibly believe this because a twig might get broken building the thing in the first place.
 
SkScotchegg said:
Well I was thinking we should get rid of nuclear power because of the dangers it poses and also fossil fuels because of global warming.
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Nuclear isn't particularly dangerous if it's done right. Look at Japan - an unprecedented earthquake, 7 times as powerful as the expected worse case scenario, merely forced old nuclear reactors into shutdown without any damage. A powerful tsunami hit soon afterwards and took out the cooling systems, the backup cooling systems and the second backup cooling systems, but the the third backup cooling systems worked as intended for the intended amount of time, which was enough time to bring in mobile backup cooling systems...which they did, but couldn't get them connected and working. Even then, with two massive disasters and multiple system failures, all stages of containment are secure and the only harm done is a release of radiocative material that might possibly maybe have posed a slight risk to people in the immediate vicinity, perhaps.

Nuclear simply isn't as dangerous as it's often made out to be.

There's no reason why we cant be driving electric cars right now
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There are many reasons why we can't be driving electric cars right now:

i) With current battery technology, it is impossible to make enough batteries to power every car.
ii) Battery manufacturing is quite a dirty business in environmental terms.
iii) There isn't enough electricity being generated to recharge all those cars and there can't be with our current capacity.
iv) Most people cannot afford a halfway decent electric car because of the battery prices (which also make electric cars more expensive to run than petrol or diesel cars).
v) Due to power storage constraints, electric cars simply aren't very good right now.

and no reason why we cant have power cuts.
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This from the person who wants a massive increase to the amount of electricity required, in order to recharge EVs for everyone.

There are reasons why we can't have deliberate power cuts on the scale you suggested:

i) It would make refrigeration useless, which would ruin society nowadays.

ii) It would make this country unattractive to trade with by portraying it as a dying nation sliding down to third world standards. Nobody would want to risk trading with such a desperately poor country except on the worst possible terms for us.

iii) It would make central heating and all cooling unusable during your imposed power cuts (central heating that uses gas as a fuel still uses electricity to control the gas boiler and electricity for pumping). That will kill some people.
 
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