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How many people are for or against the UK building some modern nuclear power stations?
Do you want to keep the lights on and your fridge to work. Do you want to cut down greenhouse gas emissions? You can run your car on electricity (we have to not be reliant on oil). We have not had a criticality accident in he UK (that I know of).
Nuclear energy production can be very safe and very clean and efficient. You can more or less just turn it up and down as required. I don't favour reprocessing irradiated fuel if we can help it. I would rather store it dry in special stores, at least untill it has decayed sufficiently to allow safer processing, but only if necessary.
If you don't want nuclear energy production do you have a logical reason for not wanting it, or is it just that it is 'icky' nuclear stuff?
No best answer has yet been selected by alphamale. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.It is safe, and it produces much more realistic levels than most renewable sources.
While wind and solar power are nice for the environment, the actual amount of power they produce is nothing compared to a nuclear or fossil fuel facility. The only renewable sources with any real output behind them are wave and hydroelectric power, but both of these have serious environmental effects.
I think we HAVE had a criticality incident in the UK. Namely the windscale fire http://www.lakestay.co.uk/1957.htm
However we are fast running out of options especially when we consider greenhouse emissions.
Renewable sources are great but won't run all our needs they are probably going to be most important in minimising the number of reactors we will need.
One of the major waste problems is medium level waste which unlike low level waste is quite radioactive and unlike High level waste there's a lot of it. Some of the materials tecnology developed around fusion projects such as JET and ITER revolve about the intelligent choice of materials used in reactors so that waste has a short half life. Some of this technology should be transferable to fission reactors.
There is however much more than a technical aspect to this decision. It is political (who's going to get it built next to them?) and economic. Nuclear reactors are just not cost effective when the decommissioning costs are considerred. The last generation were built with the Government agreeing to pick up the tab for this. No commercial organisation will build more if they will have to pay for this.
BTW the answers in this thread have been quite amazingly positive to the nuclear option - I'll bet you'd get a different response in "body and soul"
No, no, no.
Still measuring radioactive pollution from Chernobyl in Welsh sheep to this day.
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/s/137/137740_new_cancer_fears_over_chernobyl.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1071289.stm
Maybe if CANDU is redesigned or we follow the Chinese example and go for the pebble bed reactor invented by Farrington Daniels.
No, no, no. Give me tidal power.
Hello Golden boy,
Geothermal for the home is quite an outlay to start with, about 16 - 20 �k. Then the only cost is to run the 0.25 hp motor to circulate the heat from deep down to your heat exchanger. I have considered this as my house is on rock. I don't know if a really really big big geothermal station would work as well in the UK as it does in Iceland.
I am thinking about having a domestic wind turbine put up. Not sure of the costs, just starting to look into it.
I have trained and worked in the nuclear industry, it's my job, it's how I make my living, so from a personal point of view ofcourse I want nuclear power to continue in the UK.
Where I live there is almost no other industry, you either work at taking the old power station apart, the declining fishing industry or for the tourist industry. Man cannot live by fish and tourist alone!
We need more nuclear power stations in the UK for all the good reasons pointed out. North Scotland is a great area for a new nuclear power station - the people are used to it, we have all the expertise, land and an acceptance of the nuclear industry.
I want to go into my old age knowing that the lights will still be on when I want them.
Uranium is now getting expensive - everybody wants it. It's about $30 per pound (I won't bother with the conversion) whereas just a few years ago it was $10 and plentifull.
I've probably said this before, coal and oil fired power stations probably lay more radionuclides on our environment than your local friendly nuclear power station. They put out poloniums, radons (and all the subsequent daughters), lead-210 and mercury.
Even the oil industry relies upon us 'Atomics' as we used to be called. The nuclear industry has to help clean the inside of oil pipelines as the natural radioactivity laid down on the inner surfaces is really quite frightening.
Hello folks,
Looks like I was wrong - the UK did have a criticality accident in the 1970's.
http://www.csirc.net/docs/reports/la-13638.pdf
alphamale