captain kirk

I agree that it is too late to sit around debating over what to do now the house is on fire around us. Certainly no point in arguing over whether its actually on fire or it's just a trick of the light. We know it is and we know fossil fuels are doing the damage and you're right AT and co that is enough information about the situation to drag in anything that might help put it out right now. So I will get over myself and accept that the nuclear option could be the way to bring an end to fossil fuel dependence. It's not clean and it's not cheap but as the primary objective is to get ourselves off fossil fuels it makes sense in theory. But scientists say we have to have made drastic reductions in carbon emissions by 2015 and gov's own targets are 26% reduction by 2020 but new-build reactors not due to come on stream before 2020 so how will they help now? Not as a stop gap. We need something else but all the money and kudos will go into nuclear. Finland seems to be having trouble with its EPR, now late and over budget and technological problems occurring. What evidence do we have in reality that the nuclear industry is getting its act together on issues of technological improvements, efficiency and transparency? And there is still the waste issue. Geological depository? Where? How much? Who pays? Communities are supposed to step up and offer their own back yards as possible sites for waste burial in exchange for swimming pools and cake but only two have so far and one of them is Cumbria. Might as well. It's already the site of the "most hazardous industrial building in Europe" according to sellafield's own deputy manager. So we overlook all that and the quoted £73 bn needed to clear it up because that was last time and it will be different this time. But what factual evidence is there for that claim? Plutonium- that ugly story. Even a fast breeder reactor produces plutonium. Do we let some countries have a nuclear programme while others are prohibited? Who decides? It's worked so well so far. Welcome to the club North Korea. I get it. I am not some rampant old green wanting to relive my glory days round the campfires of Greenham Common. A new shiny improved nuclear industry might come up with the goods, sometime in the next few decades and all the massive problems that go with it might still be worth curbing fossil fuels. But its not the dead cert that people would like it to be. No more than renewables are. Zero Carbon Britain report maintains that just that- zero carbon emissions- is possible with renewables and sustainable living, excluding nuclear, within 20 years. But is the gov likely to plough millions into that? Certainly not when it has the apparently legitimate option of nuclear to play around with and giant players like E.ON are moving seamlessly from filthy coal power stations to wobbly nuclear. I laugh heartily at the idea that environmental protesters ever had any influence over the fortunes of the nuclear industry. But a point is being missed in all the ridicule. There are many people around today in the "environmental", call it what you want, movement who believe that global inequality lies at the root of this crisis and until we confront that there is little hope of making the right decisions.

Yes I can see that my statement about maintaining a blinkered anti-nuclear stance was misleading. Just for the record I was anti-nuclear power and weapons in the seventies, (late-I'm not that old) the eighties, the nineties, the 2000 and naughties and quite possibly the tenties as well. My point is not so much about the argument against nuclear itself, although obviously I could bleat on about that until the three-eyed cows come home if that was required, but about the necessity of questioning all so-called 'facts' that come our way, particularly from major energy providers like E.ON and BP etc and governmental bodies that are powerless against them. (Or wikipedia) It's about power and wealth and getting it all sewn up quick before the renewables can get a foot hold. The split in environmentalists over nuclear is very interesting. Rather than revealing that people were wrong to discredit it decades ago, it shows their genuine alarm in the face of climate change. As years go by and the government happily misses carbon emission targets by miles the sweat is running and environmentalists are reduced to saying ok then nuclear- it's the "lesser evil". Anything rather than nothing. I understand this entirely and have had moments of despair when I almost agreed. But it is not the right way to go. It won't fix it, not even temporarily, it will just hand over more power to the wrong people, the ones who've got us into this state in the first place. The change needed is much deeper.This cannot be fixed with nuclear selotape.We have to change our entire way of doing things. That's all.

I agree with you Malachy that it's a good idea to keep looking at nuclear power and try to sift the facts out from the hysteria and the hype on both sides. I am so convinced of the reality of climate change and the devastating effects that it will have on humanity in the near future that there is no way I would maintain a blinkered anti-nuclear position just because I did in the seventies. How silly would that be. I would willingly look at anything that might offer some sort of solution. Concerning Chernobyl, I wish from the bottom of my heart that there had only been fifty deaths as a result of that explosion. I don't know where to begin on that one. Horrific increase in thyroid cancer in children in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, and beyond. 40% increase in solid cancer incidence in Belarus now that twenty years plus has passed, set to increase. And so on. IAEA/WHO predict 4000 deaths as a result; TORCH predict 30,000 to 60,000. Take your pick. I suppose it depends whether you just look at Chernobyl as a single event and decide only to measure the blast of external radiation that the immediate population was exposed to, as the International Commission on Radiological Protection prefers to do, or whether you examine the evidence of internal radiation received by the populations of a far wider, international, area ingested in food and water and milk etc that will continue for thousands of years. Research into prolonged exposure to low level radiation is revealing that it has far more profound effects on cell mutation and reduced immunity than previously thought. It is causing multiple changes in human DNA that are passed on to future generations, weakening resistance to disease. This is happening before our eyes if we chose to look, in the hospitals of Iraq where incidence of childhood cancers and babies born with severe birth defects is increasing exponentially, due to radioactive contamination caused by depleted uranium in allied forces' weapons. Statistics can be exaggerated. They can also be underestimated, discounted, and indeed hidden from the public if political need dictates. We have to keep on questioning what we are told. I read Revenge of Gaia a few years ago and it certainly made me re-examine my views about environmentalism and nuclear power. I really wanted to agree with him but in the end there were too many contradictions. I have always found Lovelock's writing style to be persuasive to the point of manipulative. He's a clever man but we do not have to believe everything he says. I have not read Vanishing Face yet.

Thanks Carlos. Very interesting. Thought they had abandoned thorium in the seventies. Interesting that India is going ahead with it.

Where's the evidence that modern nuclear power stations produce relatively little waste? France? Finland? I hear the new EPR is coming along splendidly. Ha ha. It's illogical to assume that "radical greens" are trying to get some sort of political mileage out of occupying an entrenched anti-nuclear position, come what may. What would be the point of that? There's plenty of evidence that the nuclear industry is still floundering around in its own filth and producing nothing that comes even close to the magic solution to the energy crisis that it keeps promising. Worse still- nuclear regeneration is diverting obscene millions away from renewables. However it will guarantee a constant supply of depleted uranium which has come in so handy in Iraq and Afghanistan etc etc. And in the next war, wherever that may be. E.ON and co want to make money. That's all. They're not interested in the future of humankind.

I agree with AT's assessment of what should be done almost entirely. Carbon neutral homes, absolutely. Scrap the third runway, ban open cast mining, build wind farms, couldn't agree more, yes even on Shetland. But back to nuclear power? Can't get my head around that one. Haven't we got enough to do clearing up after the last time we went down that road? Cost of clean-up £72bn, according to Nuclear Decommissioning Authority figures and £21 bn for building a waste dump. And that's skirting around the generally accepted truth that we do not know what to do with radioactive waste. All the "solutions" are just ways of buying time in the vain hope that our descendents will think of something to do with it in the future. Perhaps the proposed incinerator at Dounreay has already been discussed elsewhere- if so- apologies. An incinerator costing £5m to burn away low level waste oils etc would undoubtedly be used to burn waste from everywhere else in UK, maybe beyond, especially if new generation of nuclear reactors goes ahead. Scary scenario. Brushing the waste to one side- nuclear power won't solve anything- even if magically in tandem with renewables. Too long to build, too expensive and 10 new reactors would only reduce carbon emissions by 4% after 2025 (government figures) So why go back to nuclear? Don't get that one. Not too sure about biochar either.