New Nuke power stations for the UK

Apparently Tony B-liar (did I misspell that?) and his [strike]cronies[/strike] 'Government' are discussing the building of new nuke plants (NNP) to provide more power whilst reducing the UK's CO2 emissions (a commitment he seems to be backing out of anyway).

Now being the former scientist that I am I'm willing to listen to the arguments on both sides and some of the arguments in favour of NNP are quite compelling. But I can't help thing that this is not going to be any sort of long term solution. The lifetime of any NNP is going to be in decades whilst the waste products still have well known issues that could last millennia.

Plus building these NNPs is in no way going to be cheap. The power produced by them will also not be cheap as it will almost certainly have be built and run in partnership with private enterprise (and how successful has PPP been really?) which means they will be expected to turn a profit and recoup building and running costs.

Now the billions that would have to be put into these projects, what kind of power could be produced by putting that investment into sustainable power generation. i.e. wind and wave in the UK (solar not really being an option here). We have a lot of offshore platforms coming to the end of their usefull lives that could be utilised as bases for wind turbines. We have already had semi-successful projects using wave and tidle power but these have fallen by the wayside through lack of funding.

The uk has a probelm here in that no-one really likes the idea of NNP, similarly everytime a new wind farm is proposed 3 people living within 10 miles of it shout NIMBY and everything stops. I can understand if the masts are noisy but not on asthetic grounds, I quite like the look of wind turbines.

So what are we to do?

I'm starting to think that NNP is a mistake in the mid term, I think in the short term we're going to have problems but that we should be investing in more sustainable power souces. If we build NNP (which could take 10-15 years anyway and last for 70 maybe) halfway through their lives we could we see better cleaner power becoming more feasable i.e. Fusion, satellite power plants, better green power sources. Meanwhile we're left with yet more radioactive leftovers to deal with. I sound like a greenie but I'm not really.

Actually I just read a good point, green power is ok for constant demand but no use for when power surges (first thing in the morning when all the kettles go on).
Also what about power conservation. What about the government reducing VAT(sales tax) on simple things like energy saving light bulbs, efficent appliances etc. Discounting home insulation?

Solar and Wind should be explored to the fullest and utilised, as it is cheap (wind is free, so is the sun), also it would wean us off of fossil fuels, not so much in the auto industry, but the big plants that burn coal and oil (bunker).
Let's face it the sun is actually getting stronger as we continually erode the ozone layer(actually more radiation from the sun is getting through) so lots of days for solar energy.

With China on the verge of passing the US in consumption of oils, we had better come up with alternatives in a hurry.......so if building Nuke plants is the way to go, and they are able to find a way to dispose of the waste,(drop it off on the moon they won't mind) then this will have to be the future for now.

As for people who don't like the look of Wind turbines, tough....if you aren't willing to make a change so that future generations (my grandkids) have a safe enviroment to live in, then move.

The whole coast of Nova Scotia could be dotted with Wind Turbines and if it meant that the local coal/natural gas power station becomes obsolete then yeah!!!! I kinda like the look of them as well.
The West Coast BC produces a lot of windbags, the East Coast (Maritimes) produce a lot of windbags as well, but the majority of wind produced in this Country comes from Upper and lower Canada (Ontario/Quebec) lots of windbags there, not sure if the Prairies have windbags, oh yes they have Klein.
just my 0.01 CDN :p :D

Aspman,
The only thing I have to say about another nuclear plant in England is Sellafield. It has turned the irish sea into one of the most radioactive bodys of water in the world.
British Nuclear Waste in the Irish Sea

If it wasn't for the oil companys blocking research on renewable energy sources all throught the 60's and 70's we would be much better off now. I too like the look of wind turbines. As said a good idea is to place them on platforms out to sea.

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This may be true but the storage and reprocessing of nuclear waste is also big business, and "more than 1500 hundred jobs were created on the site during the peak of construction.

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This will always be the sticking point for anyone to recommend alternatives, where do you get the jobs, or how do you replace the jobs.It's a viscious circle, and until the mind set of a majority are changed to embrace "Green Methods" this will take a long time.

Then again you have ol georgie boy (Bush) taking a dim view of the Kyoto process, some people may not agree with the concept of this plan, but at least it is a start, and if Alaska, didn't look so enticing to Bush and his Oil tycoon cronies, the US may have signed on to this and with their backing it would have sold all over the globe.

Moral of this story: Greed.

I cannot believe that with the technological leaps and bounds over the last 30 yrs (you think we would have learned from the last time OPEC had us by the B*lls in the 70's)OPEC

surely by now their must be alternative methods, geesus we walked on the moon in 69 for chris't sakes, by now we should be having holidays on Jupiter. :p

The problem was that for most of the last 30 - 40 years any one who even mention green energy was classed as a wacko. Green energy was the domain of the hippys. Most of that attitude was thanks to the global oil companies and that fact that as long as there was billions to be made on oil it wasn't politically correct to mention that there might be other options than oil or nuclear. Of course there are alternative methods just the energy companys and the politicians don't want to publices them till they can take the credit and the profits.

I think I'd like to see the uk investing in hydrogen generation. If we could get a lead in water cracking tech we could become an exporter of H2. Obviously we need green power to run the cracking plants but H2 is going to be the basis for a lot of power application the in the future.

Get the old rigs, stick solar cells, tidle power modules and wind generators on then and use them to crack water and pipe the products back to Blightly. Ca-ching £££

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I think I'd like to see the uk investing in hydrogen generation. If we could get a lead in water cracking tech we could become an exporter of H2. Obviously we need green power to run the cracking plants but H2 is going to be the basis for a lot of power application the in the future.

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That would be the best possible scenario for replacing fossil fuels, for sure....then I would love to see the OPEC guys when we get to charge them $150.00USD for a barrel of that eh!!

What's an oil rig going for nowadays? must be a Sh*thload of them in the North Sea area, the ones off of our coast are starting to see the end of their days.

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The Brent Spar Oil Rig

In 1995, Shell Oil was granted permission by the British Environment Ministry to dispose of the North Sea oil rig "Brent Spar" in deep water in the North Atlantic Ocean. Greenpeace immediately accused Shell of using the sea as a "dustbin". Greenpeace campaigners maintained that there were hundreds of tonnes of petroleum wastes on board the Brent Spar and that some of these were radioactive. They organized a consumer boycott of Shell and service stations were fire bombed in Germany. The boycott cost the company millions in sales. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl denounced the British government’s decision to allow the dumping. Caught completely off guard, Shell ordered the tug that was already towing the rig to its burial site to turn back. They then announced they had abandoned the plan for deep-sea disposal. This embarrassed British Prime Minister, John Major.

Independent investigation revealed that the rig had been properly cleaned and did not contain the toxic and radioactive waste claimed by Greenpeace. Greenpeace wrote to Shell apologizing for the factual error. But they did not change their position on deep-sea disposal despite the fact that on-land disposal would cause far greater environmental impact.

During all the public outrage directed against Shell for daring to sink a large piece of steel and concrete it was never noted that Greenpeace had purposely sunk its own ship off the coast of New Zealand in 1986. When the French government bombed and sunk the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in 1985, the vessel was permanently disabled. It was later re-floated, patched up, cleaned and towed to a marine park where it was sunk in shallow water as a dive site. Greenpeace said the ship would be an artificial reef and would support increased marine life.

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http://www.greenspirit.com/printable.cfm?msid=29

They are willing to just let them rot on the sea bottom, surely they can be still of some use??To answer my own earlier question on how many in the North Sea, apparently there are 219 of these platforms, they definatley light up the area as well (sailed in the North Sea a few times).

This PDF explains what happened as a result of the Brent Spar incident http://www.parliament.uk/post/pn065.pdf

Has some interesting comments on how the UK views local waters.

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Green energy was the domain of the hippys

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Greenpeace didn't dispel that myth either, every time you turned on the news to see some idiot in a zodiac placing themselves in front of the bow of a vessal, you kinda wondered what bad drugs they were taking. I admired their spirit, but their tactics were a bit questionable.

I have to agree with you on greenpeace. They have done a lot of good stuff but they screw up their image with their ecoranger stunts. They are also as good with misinformation as the Bush goverment when it suites them.

I hate hippies.

There is a lot of FUD from both sides and the thing you rarely hear is that the most environmentally product is the one that is still being used.

By that I mean that once you factor in the energy and pollution generated in building and development new shiny green products aint so green after all.

What would be more green? Me to change my car every other year to the greenest model available or to keep one car for 20 years. The old car is going to be the most green even if it is the dirtiest in operation. That's not to say if something is broken it should be replaced with the best option but the throw away nature of a lot of things undermines a lot of the green credentials of a lot of products. Green is a just another selling point after all.

the best and most environmentally friendly use for these old filthy rigs is to keep using them. I just don't understand why they're not being fitted out for other uses.

Extreme diving hotels, prisons, wind plants, wave plants etc etc. Anything that is ugly and likely to produce a NIMBY answer. And it s sooo much cleaner than scrapping the buggers.

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prisons,

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Now that's something that might interest a lot of people or politicians, row them out, drop them off, give them some fishing line (still have fish in the North Sea?) or nets, a couple of coleman burners, one cell phone (to call home).

Populate the surrounding area with great whites (I think the water is getting more temperate, so they may stay) and that's it. It would solve a couple of things, overcrowding of the current prisons, less overhead (food,utilities,funeral costs etc.) less of a burden to the tax payer, drugs can't get smuggled in by relatives or so called girlfriends, because who is gonna row the boat?? :D

Once a Month let in the Red Cross with the care packages, and condomints/condoments/condoms, what!!!! we would want to keep the prison population down, right :p

Just to stay OT, we could put a big f**cking windmill on the helo platform and some shiny solar panels, that way they can stay nice and snuggly during a North Sea storm, and keep their lights on. :rolleyes:

Big hampster wheels hooked to a genny. Prisoners in wheel + large guard with whip/cattle prod.
= Run you feckers :)

Offenders can pay back in power.