UK risks running out of energy generating capacity in winter of 2015-16
66 replies, posted
This is one of the issues with democracy, people that don't even know basic physics get to chose about nuclear power.
Also:
Nuclear reactor is built -> OMG NUCLEAR LIEK ATOM BOMB BAD I PROTEST -> tards protest, politicians stop building more reactors because they'd lose votes -> really old reactors are forced to be kept in service for way too long -> old turd of a reactor that is 3 generations behind has an accident -> OMG NUCLEAR IS BAD OMG -> politicians stop building reactors and the cycle continues.
[editline]7th October 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=farmatyr;37922560]Can't wait for this thing.
[B][URL="http://www.iter.org/mach"]ITER[/URL][/B][/QUOTE]
Going to be a really long wait, sadly.
[editline]7th October 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=Schmaaa;37944266][B]The problem with nuclear plants is the fact that when there are bad accidents, there are REALLY FUCKING BAD ACCIDENTS. With Nuclear energy, there's almost no middle ground between a minor incident and radiation all over the countryside.[/B] Nuclear energy is efficient, cheaper, and reliable, but no matter how advanced the tech is, there's still the possibility of someone fucking up and blowing up the reactor. It's not even a remotely foolproof technology. Not to mention the cost. Everyone is like, "oh all these plants are old and outdated, let's just rip them down and replace them with new ones." That costs a shitload of money just to tear down and decommision the old ones, and then replacing all of that with new technology? That would cost trillions of dollars to do, you can't "just replace all the old ones". ESPECIALLY not in five years. It would take five years just to secure the FUNDING for a plant, let alone enough to power a country.
And before this goes into Fukushima, I am aware the plant was built on a massive fault line. The earthquake wasn't the problem though, the plant was shutting down fine and then a fucking tsunami comes out of nowhere and floods the backup generators. But that doesn't change that if it had been any other kind of power plant, the only major damage would be to the plant and anyone inside, rather than the entire countryside being hit with radiation.[/QUOTE]
Wrong wrong and wrong. There are plenty of accidents at nuclear reactors quite often, you just don't hear about them because they really don't do anything.
A 4th gen reactor has so many security measures you'd have a hard time making it blow even if you knew what you were doing. Unless you employ military grade explosives, you aren't getting through the core's barriers.
Replacing reactors has to be gradual, obviously it's too late to solve the problem in this thread, but you don't need to replace them very often, just don't let them run for 50 years.
Also how many people don't die every single year from a gas pipe blowing up? Or a fire in a petroleum plant?
[QUOTE=markg06;37944254]Nevermind anti-nuclear you'll get these NIMBY morons that'll start crying at everything from a windfarm to some kind of magical generator that works on bad thoughts and provides more energy than cold fusion would.[/QUOTE]
Never heard of NIMBY's, looked them up.
[I]"Long time residents of Pasadena, CA, predominately older white ladies, have been successfully opposing the completion of Interstate 710 for years. After convincing the politicians to pursue an advanced underground tunnel freeway, they proceeded to oppose the very tunnel they were previously arguing for."[/I]
Oh, fuck those morons.
What about all the coal still left in Northern England and Central Scotland? Plus there's this
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flue-gas_desulfurization[/url]
[QUOTE=ben1066;37922346]I don't see the issue, especially with a country such as the UK. People often use Fukishima as an example of why it shouldn't be used however Japan sits on a major fault line, the UK doesn't...[/QUOTE]
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire]Sellafield[/url]
[QUOTE=DrLuckyLuke;37945568][url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire]Sellafield[/url][/QUOTE]
[quote]The Windscale fire of [b]10 October 1957[/b] was the worst nuclear accident in Great Britain's history, ranked in severity at level 5 on the 7-point International Nuclear Event Scale.[1] [b]The two piles had been hurriedly built[/b] as part of the British atomic bomb project.[2] Windscale Pile No. 1 was operational in October 1950 followed by Pile No. 2 in June 1951.[3] The accident occurred when the core of the Unit 1 nuclear reactor at Windscale, Cumberland (now Sellafield, Cumbria) caught fire, releasing substantial amounts of radioactive contamination into the surrounding area. [b]Of particular concern at the time was the radioactive isotope iodine-131, which may lead to cancer of the thyroid, and it has been estimated that the incident caused 240 additional cancer cases.[/b][4] No one was evacuated from the surrounding area, but there was concern that milk might be dangerously contaminated. Milk from about 500 km2 of nearby countryside was diluted and destroyed for about a month. A 2010 study of workers directly involved in the cleanup found no significant long term health effects from their involvement.[/quote]
So basically it's never gonna happen with modern reactors and safety features and the cancers can be easily treated just like what happened with Chernobyl.
[QUOTE=kebab52;37945562]What about all the coal still left in Northern England and Central Scotland? Plus there's this
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flue-gas_desulfurization[/url][/QUOTE]
Have fun reopening mines that Thatcher shut down, or how about the mine near me that might be about to be mothballed or shut down completely due to safety concerns and all the shit that's pulled out with it.
y dont they mak mor energis????
Well this is worrying. They need nuclear reactors.
[QUOTE=kebab52;37945562]What about all the coal still left in Northern England and Central Scotland? Plus there's this
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flue-gas_desulfurization[/url][/QUOTE]
Coal is still an ecological disaster, even after all of the advancements we've made in cleaning coal power plants, it's only really clean relative to just burning coal.
[QUOTE=carcarcargo;37922385]No, we must build more solar power thingies! They'll be good in the winter, right?[/QUOTE]
what
why would they not work during the winter
Yeah, fair enough. If we're ever REALLY struggling though it's something to think about.
All the coal around where I live was really pure stuff, low sulphur and burned quite clean apparently.
[QUOTE=kebab52;37945668]Yeah, fair enough. If we're ever REALLY struggling though it's something to think about.
All the coal around where I live was really pure stuff, low sulphur and burned quite clean apparently.[/QUOTE]
The difference between standard coal and "clean burning" coal is the difference between setting yourself on fire using petrol or setting yourself on fire with napalm.
[QUOTE=Pierrewithahat;37945682]The difference between standard coal and "clean burning" coal is the difference between setting yourself on fire using petrol or setting yourself on fire with napalm.[/QUOTE]
Not really though. If there's a lower number of pollutants already present in the coal such as sulphur and you can make it undergo combustion in an atmosphere with a high concentration of Oxygen, you will achieve a much cleaner burn.
[QUOTE=kebab52;37945715]Not really though. If there's a lower number of pollutants already present in the coal such as sulphur and you can make it undergo combustion in an atmosphere with a high concentration of Oxygen, you will achieve a much cleaner burn.[/QUOTE]
Burning coal is a terrible idea unless you somehow achieve flawless, 100% perfect combustion cause if you don't then you're pumping a massive amount of carbon into the atmosphere. The sulphur and shit is bad but it's a far cry from the biggest issue with coal and that problem is the fact that it pumps an insane amount of CO2, CO and carbon into the atmosphere.
[QUOTE=Cuel;37945661]what
why would they not work during the winter[/QUOTE]
They would still work in the winter, it's just that they wouldn't work as well as they could in summer.
I would wager that more people die of cancer they got from burning coal than would die of nuclear related cancer from accidents, even if they were commonplace (they aren't).
[QUOTE=King Tiger;37946185]I would wager that more people die of cancer they got from burning coal than would die of nuclear related cancer from accidents, even if they were commonplace (they aren't).[/QUOTE]
And that's the interesting thing. If we look at the history of nuclear power generation, it has been directly responsible for less than 6,000 deaths in the last 60 years, including the cancer cases from Chernobyl. Coal, on the other hand, is responsible for ~10,000 deaths[B] per year.[/B]
[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;37946456]And that's the interesting thing. If we look at the history of nuclear power generation, it has been directly responsible for less than 6,000 deaths in the last 60 years, including the cancer cases from Chernobyl. Coal, on the other hand, is responsible for ~10,000 deaths[B] per year.[/B][/QUOTE]
The best part is, nuclear power has only got safer and safer as time goes on and reactor designs and methods of power generation improve. Meanwhile coal continues to slowly choke us all to death.
Maybe we should stop building fucking wind turbines and focus on nuclear then, one average size nuclear power station is the same as 2000 wind turbines. Too bad the hippies don't understand nuclear one part and keep trying to stop the construction of Hinkley Point C which would be almost equal to 3000 wind turbines.
Uses a much smaller area, saves money, quicker to build, makes more jobs, less of an eyesore. Fucking hippies stopping the building of nuclear power plants but love to hump all over wind turbines.
[QUOTE=farmatyr;37922560]Can't wait for this thing.
[B][URL="http://www.iter.org/mach"]ITER[/URL][/B][/QUOTE]
Dem reactors
Clearly the only solution is expanding the use of solar/wind power while cutting back on some industries hogging electricity.
[QUOTE=Coffee;37945751]They would still work in the winter, it's just that they wouldn't work as well as they could in summer.[/QUOTE]
i know
[QUOTE=Scrappa;37946623]Maybe we should stop building fucking wind turbines and focus on nuclear then, one average size nuclear power station is the same as 2000 wind turbines. Too bad the hippies don't understand nuclear one part and keep trying to stop the construction of Hinkley Point C which would be almost equal to 3000 wind turbines.
[B]Uses a much smaller area, saves money, quicker to build, makes more jobs, less of an eyesore. Fucking hippies stopping the building of nuclear power plants but love to hump all over wind turbines.[/B][/QUOTE]
[quote=Amory Lovins]
If you ask me, it’d be a little short of disasterous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won’t give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.[/quote]
[quote=Paul Ehrlich]Giving society cheap, abundant energy ... would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun[/quote]
[quote]Let's face it. We don't want safe nuclear power plants. We want NO nuclear power plants.[/quote]
Some quotes from prominent environmentalists on the issue of nuclear power.
Why are environmentalists opposed to cheap and abundant clean energy?
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;37946823]Why are environmentalists opposed to cheap and abundant clean energy?[/QUOTE]
Because what would society do with cheap, abundant energy? Cheap energy means easy growth of industry/society, and growth of either of those usually results in environmental harm.
Just burns grass for energy its infinite.
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;37946806]Some quotes from prominent environmentalists on the issue of nuclear power.[/QUOTE]
Sounds to me like they're being idiots. It's like they WANT our quality of life to stop improving.
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;37946840]Because what would society do with cheap, abundant energy? Cheap energy means easy growth of industry/society, and growth of either of those usually results in environmental harm.[/QUOTE]
We can also use it to help prevent environmental harm.
There's 7 billion people, and solar/wind power will not be adequate to attend to all of those peoples needs.
[QUOTE=ironman17;37944360]Seems like we need a high-yield power source that is perfectly safe when properly controlled.
*buzz* What is atomic power?[/QUOTE]
yes but humans have proven incapable of properly controlling the plants. one small mess up and our entire world is fucked over even more.
[editline]7th October 2012[/editline]
the main problem with nuclear energy, which nobody has yet to mention, is storage. where are you going to store the waste? And how will you warn future generations of the contents of the waste?
[QUOTE=redBadger;37946890]yes but humans have proven incapable of properly controlling the plants. one small mess up and our entire world is fucked over even more.[/QUOTE]
Except no. We've had two major accidents in the history of nuclear power: Chernobyl and Fukishima.
The first was the result of gross negligence and a pathetically outdated reactor design. Modern nuclear reactors effectively can't meltdown, unless you're really trying. The second was the result of the largest earthquake Japan has experienced in recorded history, followed by the largest tsunami in recorded history wiping out the backup generators for the coolant system.
Basically, both were total freak accidents. Coal power kills more people per year than those two accidents combined.
[quote]the main problem with nuclear energy, which nobody has yet to mention, is storage. where are you going to store the waste? And how will you warn future generations of the contents of the waste?[/quote]
If I remember correctly, our current waste storage methods can contain the waste for several centuries before needing to be moved to a new container. And it's not like we're just going to forget what's in them.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;37946880]We can also use it to help prevent environmental harm.
[B]There's 7 billion people, and solar/wind power will not be adequate to attend to all of those peoples needs.[/B][/QUOTE]
Failure to meet the needs of a population often leads to population decline in one shape or another, which is kinda what environmentalists want in the first place. Less people means less resources being consumed, and thus less of a burden on the planet.
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