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

Were you nearby at the time?

Story I was reading today:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=699890

We're planning on getting solar panels, because fuel costs are rising dramatically at the moment, but the Irish Government will only subsidise them up to about €400.

Is that solar panels to heat water or solar panels to generate electricity Gnomon?
Do you need planning permission to install them in Ireland?

It's solar panels to heat water. I think you would probably need planning permission to put them on the front of your house, but we'll probably get away with putting them on the side, where they won't be visible from the road. The Government are trying to encourage people to use alternative energy as part of the "reduction of CO2" commitment they've made in the Kyoto Agreement.

There are also systems in which the heat-exchanging pipes are woven under your lawn. I doubt they'd need planning permuission.

I understand that Ken Livingstone is trying to promote urban renewables. It makes sense, since they don't need an expensive, inefficient supply infrastructure. 'Dave' Cameron is leading the way with a wind turbine on his roof.

They might not need planning permission but you'd better watch where you stick in the spade when diggig out a pond to help increase chances for the local wildlife

Somethings do need permission, somethings don't. Things change if you live in a conservation area or you're trying to do something to a listed building. I do think that personal supply and micro-gridding should be the way forward along with lots more money for those renewables that aren't wind power.

Someone said recently that the amount of carbon required to build and operate a nuclear power station is almost equivalent to that required to generate the same amount of boper by burning the carbon. (I can't vouch for the accuracy - but it seems plausible).

The current targets for wind/wave generation are a paltry 10% of energy needs. I wonder...if we got serious about renewables, how much effort would it take to convert fully?

boper? That's not even close to POWER!

Again I don't have the quote but I remember listening to a discussion on the radio which suggested that even if we converted every field in Ireland to produce renewable energy crops (ie rape seed, willow, etc), that it would still come far short of our energy needs. I have a suspicion (not validated) that wind energy would not make a significant difference either. I think that's the problem: the renewable alternative on its own won't come close to meeting the demand. The only energy source we know of that does this - outside of oil - involves splitting atoms...

Of course, we waste a hell of a lot of energy, so that's also something we need to tackle.

But if my quote about nuclear is true...

Anyway, James Lovelock says it's too late. The damage is done. We need to worry about how to cope with it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/science/lovelock_climate_20060706.shtml

A traditional national grid can't be operated on wind power alone. You need a source of energy which will increase power production automatically as demand increases. Wind doesn't do this. So you should not generate more than 10% of the total grid power from wind.

So then...the question becomes 'How do we build safe nuclear power plants?', no?

And the answer presumably precludes military and profit-centred involvement which militate (sic!) against openness and safety.

A tricky one!

I would have thought that modern nuclear power plants are very safe, built as they are with multiply redundant safety systems. The bigger issue, of course, is what to do with the waste materials, and where those waste dumps would be located. If there were only a few places to "safely" dump nuclear materials in the world, then the economic and political value of these locations might give rise to the type of power-plays we currently see over oil and gas.

>>I would have thought that modern nuclear power plants are very safe, built as they are with multiply redundant safety systems.

Up to a point, Lord Copper. Yes, *in principle* the technology exists to make them safe. In practice, it requires a suitable, safety-oriented organisation to implement and operate it. This is where the problems creep in.

Take something simple like welding a coolant pipe. This is a known, tried and tested technology. But say you contract the job out to the lowest bidder who is operating on piecework. The contractor has little motivation to do the job properly and every motivation to limit re-work by concealing errors, fiddling inspection reports, etc. Now couple this with a political imperative to conceal any leaks that result from this shoddy work system. And this, basically, is why Bono used to prance around the Irish Sea in an inflatable dinghy.

Believe me...I've worked with people in the nuclear industry. They're a shower of monkeys.

Yes - there is the long term issue as well. It might be alright to talk about safety in the happy-clappy early 21st century, but we haven't a clue what the primary societal values will be when the century closes, and when we will still require the same amount of vigilance around nuclear power stations. Look at the history 20th century for comparison! How many revolutions in outlook did we have over those few years?

Another beef is that they build nuclear power plants very close to seashores, which, somewhat ignores or minimises their understanding of the power of the sea. The UK and Ireland are quite close to unstable drop-offs on the continental shelf that have in the past generated large tsunamis. Personally I wouldn't like to see what a tsunami would do to a nuclear power station. We're talking long timescales here, and humans don't "do" long timescales.

An interesting issue I heard about some years ago was how to communicate with humans of 50,000 years hence that the place they are standing on is a highly toxic plutonium dump? What messaging and signage would you use to give them the hint? Presumably they wouldn't speak English or Chinese or Spanish, and it's likely that a lot of signs and signals used by us today will have a completely different meaning for them.

Yes...but never mind the long-term problems. We still haven't got to grips with the organisational and economic issues of stopping them from going bang in the short term.

Who can we trust to run them safely?

Well, I know Sellafield and its poor track-record always comes up in conversations such as this, but it seems that we rarely hear anything about the other nuclear locations around the UK and France: if there were an accident, and if there were an attempt to cover it up, a radioactive leakage is not an easy thing to conceal. The truth would out, as they say. The assumption therefore must be that most nuclear facilities are run fairly responsibly.

More controversially, there's some evidence coming to light that a nuclear meltdown might not be as bad as previously thought. The environment about Chernobyl does not seem to have suffered any ill effects despite high levels of back-ground radioactivity. It was on Horizon a few weeks ago so it must be true . Interesting nonetheless. An accident in a chemical company or an oil facility might therefore be just as bad, if not worse, on the environment.

Lovelock says the same about Chernobyl. But I'd still not want an energy company - such as Enron - to build one next door. Yet. They need tight control...and that's not how the UK or US governments work at the moment.

Still...these problems are aren't insoluble - merely difficult. My underlying point is that the Human Factors are the tricky ones.

The French had a completely unblemished safety record in their Nuclear Stations for years - it was later found that they are very good at hiding evidence of accidents.