h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

IMHO, nuclear fission power isn't so bad. One of the things people don't appreciate is that any given coal burning power station will release far more radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere than a nuclear fission power station. There is enough U-235 on earth to supply all our energy needs for the next 10 billion years, so we get rid of the problems with burning fossil fuels.

Although management of the by-products of nuclear fission power is not being handled well by the British, many people confuse problems with waste management with problems with nuclear fission power itself. Also, the problems with the handling of nuclear fission waste are sometimes exaggerated. I agree that Sellafield has problems, and no-one really wants the facility where it is - but it has to be somewhere. If only the stupid British government would stop being so bureaucratic and would actually implement of the thousands of different schemes drawn up since the 1960s for safely and effectively disposing of the waste!

Part of the problem, of course, is lobby groups. No matter what scheme is chosen, overnight a thousand-strong lobby group will materialise claiming that it's unsafe and shouldn't be allowed to happen, presenting some sort of scientific evidence. Lobby groups and demonstrators actually increase the bureaucracy level - the more lobby groups and protestors, the longer it takes to get anything done about the problem.

NEVER CONFUSE FISSION WITH FUSION. Nuclear fusion energy sources (as in the sun) are just as good as fission ones, but with the added benefit of there being more fuel available, and the fact that there is NO harmful waste. The scientists at JET (just down the road from me) have been working on it for the last couple of decades. Rumours are that they've recently made a significant breakthrough...

Just my £0.02 worth.

I'm presuming by dint of your ministerial title that this is either sarcasm or should be ignored as something your ministry has control of?

No. I'm being entirely serious in my RL capacity as a scientist. It's not a frivolous subject - I appreciate how seriously it needs to be taken - and I wouldn't treat as such. Neh?

Three words;
Chernobyl
Harrisburg
Sellafield

'Radioactivity
Discovered by Madame Curie
It's in the air for you and me.'

Kraftwerk, Radioactivity

Let me see... I can add to the list.
Three Mile Island, anyone?

But I still feel that nuclear power is a better alternative to schemes such as the Three Gorges Dam project.

(Bearing in mind that damming projects are releasing more CO2 into that atmosphere per year than the whole of Europe's fossil fuel consumption).

Harrisburg was the town affected by 3 Mile Island.
I have a friend, a former resident of the Ukraine, whose life was directly affected Chernobyl. Nothing will ever convince me that Nuclear Power is an acceptable risk.

Nuclear power? Once again, you're using ambiguous terminology... I can appreciate that there are big problems with nuclear fission power that you are perhaps correct to criticise, but by making the blanket statement that "nuclear power is bad" you're excluding fusion power sources that:

- have an unlimited supply of fuel
- are less unsightly than wind turbines
- are less environmentally unfriendly than dams (and take up less space)
- make no unpleasantly unstable by-products that need to be disposed of.

I imagine that you don't object to fusion power (please excuse me if you do)... but if you don't, make it CLEAR that it is nuclear fission you're opposing.

(BTW... one of my little missions is to get people not to lobby for the liquidation of all nuclear power plants/waste processing facilities but instead to lobby for governments to invest in fusion research)

Fusion's a lovely dream but at this time impractical, unlike alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and tidal power.
Shut down all the fission reactors. as a matter of interestI live a small distance from the magnox b reactor at Bradwell, which has spent more of it's operating time off line than on, due to safety concerns. The magnox B plants are all now operating well beyond their anticipated life time. they are unsafe as a result.
Of course, maybe you should be persuading the big oil companies like Exxon, who spent NO MONEY at all last year in investigating alternative stargeties to the use of fossil fuels...

Magnox B reactors should have been phased out a while ago...

... but fortunately all the British nuclear reactors were overengineered (as all nuclear facilities should be). They're still /safe/, but they should be replaced. They're not safe /enough/. The latest nuclear reactors in the UK (I forget which they are) are very efficient, and unbelievably safe...

Hang on... solar power isn't impractical?

Solar power is practical as *part* of the solution.
It's time people woke up to two facts
1) No one strategy is going to solve all the problems
2) It's going to cost money
But as the alternative is Steve Bell's two-headed sheep all over Eastern Europe, I think it's a price worth paying.

I guess we'd better just agree to disagree, neh?

>>Fusion's a lovely dream but at this time impractical, unlike alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and tidal power.

Sending men to the moon and bringing them back would be nothing but a lovely dream with current technology.

>>Shut down all the fission reactors.

Couldn't agree with you more.

>>Of course, maybe you should be persuading the big oil companies like Exxon, who spent NO MONEY at all last year in investigating alternative stargeties to the use of fossil fuels...

A few years ago the JET project announced it had measured the worlds first power-producing controlled fusion reaction - i.e. they got more energy out than put in.

Then everything went quiet. If you try and look it up on the web, it looks like funding just ceased.

Just ask yourself in whose interest it is that a cheap, virtually infinite, clean source of electricity that could eventually also produce portable power for transport is developed further? Some of the worlds biggest, most powerful companies? Who rely on dirty energy for their profits?

Conspiracy theory? Undoubtedly.

But I think the only thing stopping a move to cleaner power is motivation and vested interests. Vested interests of those who have fission-related training, employment and investment. And vested interests of fossil-fuel dirty energy producers.

Do you remember the story of Salter's ducks? A design for wave power generation in the 1970s. Civil servants looked at it and worked out the capital costs were such that the end-user price would be ten times that of nuclear. In the 1990's it was realised that this was not true. The mistake? A civil servant had "accidentally" put the decimal point one place further to the right.

If the oil, coal and gas ran out tomorrow, how fast do you think fusion would be turned into a practical power production system?