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The energy debate - Nuclear vs renewable


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An interesting post from this website. They are obviously pro-nuclear but bring up some interesting points.

 

The UK government is expected to announce tomorrow that it will give the green light to the building of new nuclear power stations in the UK - the first since the Sizewell ‘B’ station was completed in 1995. These are urgently needed to make up the shortfall in power supply as older nuclear stations are closed over the next few years.

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Yet the decision is bound to be controversial - not helped by widespread misinformation about nuclear power. Greens opposing nuclear power muddle every issue from terrorism to uranium supplies, in order to besmirch the only proven safe and cost-effective way to generate large amounts of electricity that won’t produce large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. One would think that greens don’t want a world with abundant energy and a stable climate!

 

These are some of the myths we are likely to hear from greens debating nuclear power over the next few weeks:

 

1) Uranium is running out

 

According to Greenpeace, uranium reserves are ‘relatively limited’ (1) and last week the Nuclear Consultation Working Group claimed that a significant increase in nuclear generating capacity would reduce reliable supplies from 50 to 12 years (2).

 

In fact, there is 600 times more uranium in the ground than gold and there is as much uranium as tin. There has been no major new uranium exploration for 20 years, but at current consumption levels, known uranium reserves are predicted to last for 85 years. Geological estimates from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that at least six times more uranium is extractable – enough for 500 years’ supply at current demand (3). Modern reactors can use thorium as a fuel and convert it into uranium – and there is three times more thorium in the ground than uranium (4).

 

Uranium is the only fuel which, when burnt, generates more fuel. Not only existing nuclear warheads, but also the uranium and plutonium in radioactive waste can be reprocessed into new fuel, which former UK chief scientist Sir David King estimates could supply 60 per cent of Britain’s electricity to 2060 (5).

 

In short, there is more than enough uranium, thorium and plutonium to supply the entire world’s electricity for several hundred years.

 

2) Nuclear is not a low-carbon option

 

Anti-nuclear campaigners claim that nuclear power contains ‘hidden emissions’ of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from uranium mining and reactor construction. But so do wind turbines, built from huge amounts of concrete, steel and plastic.

 

The OECD analysed the total lifetime releases of GHG from energy technologies and concluded that, taking into account mining of building materials, construction and energy production, nuclear is still a ‘lower carbon’ option than wind, solar or hydroelectric generation. For example, during its whole life cycle, nuclear power releases three to six grams of carbon per kiloWatthour (GC kWh) of electricity produced, compared with three to 10 GC/kWh for wind turbines, 105 GC/kWh for natural gas and 228 GC/kWh for lignite (‘dirty’ coal) (6).

 

Greens, exemplified by the Sustainable Development Commission, place their trust in ‘carbon capture and storage’ (CCS) to reduce the GHG emissions from coal and gas plants (7). But carbon capture is, at present, a myth. There is no functioning power station with CCS in the world – not even a demonstration plant – and if it did work, it would still greatly reduce the energy efficiency of any power station where it is installed.

 

3) Nuclear power is expensive

 

With all power generation technology, the cost of electricity depends upon the investment in construction (including interest on capital loans), fuel, management and operation. Like wind, solar and hydroelectric dams, the principal costs of nuclear lie in construction. Acquisition of uranium accounts for only about 10 per cent of the price of total costs, so nuclear power is not as vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of fuel as gas and oil generation.

 

Unlike the UK’s existing stations, any new designs will be pre-approved for operational safety, modular to lower construction costs, produce 90 per cent less volume of waste and incorporate decommissioning and waste management costs.

 

A worst-case analysis conducted for the UK Department of Trade and Industry (now the Department of Business and Enterprise), which was accepted by Greenpeace, shows nuclear-generated electricity to be only marginally more expensive than gas (before the late-2007 hike in gas prices), and 10 to 20 times cheaper than onshore and offshore wind. With expected carbon-pricing penalties for gas and coal, nuclear power will be considerably cheaper than all the alternatives (8).

 

4) Reactors produce too much waste

 

Contrary to environmentalists’ claims, Britain is not overwhelmed with radioactive waste and has no radioactive waste ‘problem’.

 

By 2040 there will be a total of 2,000 cubic metres of the most radioactive high-level waste (9), which would fit in a 13 x 13 x 13 metre hole – about the size of the foundations for one small wind turbine. Much of this high-level waste is actually a leftover from Britain’s atomic weapons programme. All of the UK’s intermediate and high-level radioactive waste for the past 50 years and the next 30 years would fit in just one Royal Albert Hall, an entertainment venue in London that holds 6,000 people (and which seems, for some reason, to have become the standard unit of measurement in debates about any kind of waste in the UK) (10).

 

The largest volume of waste from the nuclear power programme is low-level waste – concrete from outbuildings, car parks, construction materials, soil from the surroundings and so on. By 2100, there will be 473,000 cubic metres of such waste from decommissioned plants – enough to fill five Albert Halls (11).

 

Production of all the electricity consumed in a four-bedroom house for 70 years leaves about one teacup of high-level waste (12), and new nuclear build will not make any significant contribution to existing radioactive waste levels for 20-40 years.

 

5) Decommissioning is too expensive

 

Existing UK reactors were built with no regard for future demolition. New reactors will be constructed from modular designs with the need for decommissioning built-in. The costs of decommissioning and waste management will be incorporated into the price of electricity to consumers (13).

 

New nuclear plants are expected to have a working life of 40 years so the cost of decommissioning is spread over a longer period. Current government subsidy of decommissioning costs is approximately £1 billion annually (for 20 per cent of Britain’s electrical supply) – half the subsidy to ‘sustainable’ energy (two per cent of Britain’s electrical supply).

 

6) Building reactors takes too long

 

This is perhaps the most ironic of the anti-nuclear arguments, since the legal manoeuvrings of Greenpeace delayed the UK government’s nuclear decision by a year and it is the very opposition of greens that will cause most of the future delays.

 

The best construction schedules are achieved by the Canadian company AECL, which has built six new reactors since 1991; from the pouring of concrete to criticality (when the reactors come on-line), the longest build took six-and-a-half years and the shortest just over four years (14).

 

The UK government expects pre-licensing of standard designs and modular construction to reduce construction times significantly – to about 6 years (15). New nuclear build could certainly start making significant contributions to UK carbon reduction targets by 2020.

 

7) Leukaemia rates are higher near reactors

 

Childhood leukaemia rates are no higher near nuclear power plants than they are near organic farms. ‘Leukaemia clusters’ are geographic areas where the rates of childhood leukaemia appear to be higher than normal, but the definition is controversial because it ignores the fact that leukaemia is actually several very different (and unrelated) diseases with different causes (16).

 

The major increase in UK childhood leukaemia rates occurred before the Second World War. The very small (one per cent) annual increase seen now is probably due to better diagnosis, although it is possible that there is a viral contribution to the disease (17).

 

It is purely by chance that a leukaemia ‘cluster’ will occur near a nuclear installation, a national park or a rollercoaster ride. One such ‘cluster’ occurred in Seascale, the nearest village to the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant, but there are no other examples. Clusters tend to be found in isolated areas where there has been a recent influx of immigration – which hints at a virus.

 

Men who work on nuclear submarines or in nuclear plants are no more likely to father children with leukaemia (or any other disease) than workers in any other industry (18).

 

8) Reactors lead to weapons proliferation

 

More nuclear plants (in Britain and elsewhere) would actually reduce weapons proliferation. Atomic warheads make excellent reactor fuel; decommissioned warheads (containing greatly enriched uranium or plutonium) currently provide about 15 per cent of world nuclear fuel (19). Increased demand for reactor fuel would divert such warheads away from potential terrorists. Nuclear build is closely monitored by the IAEA, which polices anti-proliferation treaties.

 

9) Wind and wave power are more sustainable

 

If, as greens say, new nuclear power cannot come on-line in time to prevent climate change, how much less impact can wind, wave and carbon capture make?

 

Environmentalists claim offshore wind turbines can make a significant contribution to electricity supply. Even if that were true – which it is certainly not (20) – the environmental impact disqualifies wind as ‘sustainable’. The opening up of the North Sea continental shelf to 7,000 wind turbines is, essentially, the building of a huge industrial infrastructure across a vast swathe of ecologically sensitive seabed – as ‘unsustainable’ in its own way as the opening of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration.

 

Wave power is still highly experimental and unproven as a method of generating electricity. Even if we allow the Severn Tidal Bore, the tidal surge that runs up and down the River Severn estuary in south-west England (and a great natural wonder of the world), to be destroyed, the cost overruns and time delays would make any problems of the nuclear industry look cheap by comparison.

 

10) Reactors are a terrorist target

 

Since 11 September 2001, several studies have examined the possibility of attacks by a large aircraft on reactor containment buildings. The US Department of Energy sponsored an independent computer-modelling study of the effects of a fully fuelled Boeing 767-400 hitting the reactor containment vessel. Under none of the possible scenarios was containment breached (21).

 

Only the highly specialised US ‘bunker busting’ ordnance would be capable – after several direct strikes – of penetrating the amount of reinforced concrete that surrounds reactors. And besides, terrorists have already demonstrated that they prefer large, high visibility, soft targets with maximum human casualties (as in the attacks on New York, London, Madrid and Mumbai) rather than well-guarded, isolated, low-population targets.

 

Any new generation of nuclear reactors in the UK will be designed with even greater protection against attack than existing plants, and with ‘passive’ safety measures that work without human intervention or computer control.

 

Rob Johnston is a freelance writer on the environment, health and science.

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Excellent article Pooks. It's nice to hear some common sense about Nuclear Power instead of the hysterical dogmatic ranting we normally get from the likes of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

 

I am a committed believer in global warming (the science is just too strong to be denied) and I try to do my bit to reduce my carbon footprint. However, I like my energy rich lifestyle with my PC, my DVD player and my big TV etc. I don't want to go back to living in a mud hut to save the planet. sausage that!

 

It is technology which has caused the problem and I believe it has to be technology which will get us out. Nuclear power generation is a proven CO2 free technology which could solve global warming within 20 years if we just had the will to apply it. Instead we get the same old outdated garbage spouted by the so-called environmental groups named above.

 

The simple fact is:

 

The consequences of global warming dwarf the minor risks of nuclear power generation. We cannot afford to ignore it!

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I will have a bit more faith in the nuclear industry and the politicians when they convert Battersea powerstation to nuclear or they put a nuc beside any big city, the failure to do so shows that they have no faith in the technology they are trying to convince the rest of us is safe.

Aero generation is a good idea but why not stick to offshore south east England, shallow waters technically and financially feasable, close to the demand so no two hundred mile long power cables, also in an area of sea that has already been scraped clean of marine life. On top of all this no great blot on the landscape as there is sausage all to see there anyway.

AT draining vast areas of peat bog can do nothing but change the local environment so whether you believe the pish spouted by the greens or not you have to admit that it is not a good idea.

What I have noticed in Norway, Denmark, Holland etc is the windfarms are ussually built on hard rocky ground without too much topsoil.

We only have to look to the south end of Shetland to see what happens when you interfere with the natural drainage of the land. All the landslides occured from the south end of Cuningsburgh to the north junction into bigton or in plain language where the new road is. Conveniently blamed on the "global warming bogeyman" but acctually caused by poor planing practices.

Conclusion only a fool or an squeeky clean poop tube would build on land of this type.

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Cutting deep ditches across hillsides of peat is asking for trouble for sure, but I'd point out that none of the south end landslips started anywhere near any roads drainage.

 

Normal road construction avoids peaty ground as much as it can, because it's expensive to build there, which is an issue VE will have to deal with.

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How are they going to get the windmills on top of the hills install an engine and fly them there or build roads for the big trucks needed :roll:

 

Carlos obviously can't remember the water gushing out the cows tunnel above sandwick, the raised road funnelled all the water to one point and boy was it impressive. :twisted:

Of course this is only my opinion :idea:

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I must be missing something here. Surely VE is planning to build the turbines on the tops of the hills, where the peat is thinnest, not in the valleys where it is 10's of metres deep.

 

Not quite as simple as that, the peat has varying depths on the hilltops and in the valleys it is not often, if at all, "tens of metres deep". I recall one section of road building where it was 9 metres deep and there's a place out toward wester skeld where it is exceptionally deep, but as a rule i don't think it's tens of metres.

 

However, that is a subject for another thread. How about a nuclear power station in Sullom Voe, perhaps in at Graven, anyone?

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Carlos obviously can't remember the water gushing out the cows tunnel above sandwick, the raised road funnelled all the water to one point and boy was it impressive. :twisted:

Of course this is only my opinion :idea:

 

I'd have said it was the valley and the burn that funneled the water from the hill to that place, where the underpass maybe made things worse immediately downstream.

 

I think that's a different thing from the roads causing the landslides.

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Carlos obviously can't remember the water gushing out the cows tunnel above sandwick, the raised road funnelled all the water to one point and boy was it impressive. :twisted:

Of course this is only my opinion :idea:

 

So should the road have been built below the level of the burn that crosses the road at that point ?

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How about a nuclear power station in Sullom Voe, perhaps in at Graven, anyone?

 

The Royal Navy has a proven reactor design that they use in their nuclear subs. You could put 2 or 3 of those on a barge and moor it at Gremista behind the current station. Then if anything does go wrong, you can just tow it somewhere deep and scuttle it. Problem solved! :wink: :D

 

And ok, I was exaggerating about the depth of the peat (tho' there's a place in Yell between Mid Yell and Gutcher where they couldn't find the bottom so they built the road on sheets of plastic) but the way some people have been going on on this forum you would think the VE proposal involved clear stripping the entire north mainland and burning it. I was just trying to bring things into perspective. :roll: :wink:

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The fact remains that we cannot continue to burn diesel to power Shetland. Without the interconnect, we can't get all our power from wind due to it's intermittent nature, wave and tidal are 10-20 years away from being practical and micro generation is only suitable for a minority of homes mainly in the country, so what's left?

 

Nuclear.

 

We only get the interconnect if we go with the VE windfarm, so it's that or a reactor at Gremista. I don't really have a problem with either tho' I prefer the windfarm as it will go some way to offsetting the loss of earnings from Sullom whereas a reactor would just be big enough to suit our needs.

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How about a nuclear power station in Sullom Voe, perhaps in at Graven, anyone?

 

The Royal Navy has a proven reactor design that they use in their nuclear subs. You could put 2 or 3 of those on a barge and moor it at Gremista behind the current station. Then if anything does go wrong, you can just tow it somewhere deep and scuttle it. Problem solved! :wink: :D

 

 

:idea: Up the Thames :idea:

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The fact remains that we cannot continue to burn diesel to power Shetland.

remember the power station at SVT though too,

 

micro generation is only suitable for a minority of homes mainly in the country, so what's left?
Not true, simple solar and wind solutions to water heating at very least:

http://www.rdenergysolutions.com/images/tech/swift-1.jpg

 

Nuclear.

We only get the interconnect if we go with the VE windfarm,

A northern european interconnector network could tap into either norwegian hydro electric or Icelandic geothermal, also can be justified by the closure of expensive Gremista station, highly subsidised in terms of cost at present and, and further financially propped up locally with smaller scale windfarms

 

so it's that or a reactor at Gremista. I don't really have a problem with either tho
' gremista is fine, but unlikely as a location, just look at the fuss about the incident-less but now "deadly" north-ness fuel depot :wink:
I prefer the windfarm as it will go some way to offsetting the loss of earnings from Sullom
Not necessarily, depends on cost at time of installation and subsequent reliability

 

whereas a reactor would just be big enough to suit our needs.
Not necessarily, it could be pumping enough to power several cities back down a suitable interconnector

 

All hypothetically of course :wink:

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How about a nuclear power station in Sullom Voe, perhaps in at Graven, anyone?

I have met people who have changed their minds very quickly while working in the Nucular Power industry.

I have no argument about the safety of a correctly built, properly funded, well managed and fully (suitably trained)staffed Plant. Hell I'd even willingly live next to it.

But I still remember Chernobyl

(http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html quite a good description and photos of going through the dead zone by a biker)

I have friends who's families are still living (and dying) with the effects and I never want to live with that sort of 'What if?'

Okay burning stuff causes CO2 pollution but global warming versus another Chernobyl I know which I'd prefer. Would you really like Homer Simpson being the one keeping you safe?

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