Clean Energy - Renewable vs Nuclear....

[Enrique]

The UK is currently considering Nuclear power as our long term solution to generating 'clean' energy.
Should more of a focus be put on renewables?
Or is there no quick alternative to Nuclear?

[Annpan]

Scotland isn't thinking about it

Every nuclear power station is an accident waiting to happen. The average life span is about 25 years and they take a hundred years to decommission...(I admit my figures may be slightly out, but that is the gist)

We need to stop using as much electricity. (and here I am mostly talking about industry and retail, not households)

What we do use should come from re-newables, and I also believe micro-generation is the future.

[ina]

We need to stop using as much electricity. (and here I am mostly talking about industry and retail, not households)

What we do use should come from re-newables, and I also believe micro-generation is the future.

My thinking exactly.

[hamster]

Sorry, can't choose. I think we should be investing in renewables, but none of them individually has the capability of matching our current fossil fuel use (nor does nuclear, actually) and a lot of renewable methods are limited in other ways - e.g. it's not windy all the time, so if we just had wind there would be times when there was no power. In my opinion, we need to use all different sorts of renewable power, wind, solar, hydro AND tidal (and any more I've forgotten), make it appropriate for different areas (e.g. homes in rural areas could use more wood for heating rather than oil), use more local power generation and have a huge drive for efficiency and demand reduction.

*dreams on*

Nuclear isn't a solution, at best it's a stop-gap. Sadly, it probably would keep things ticking over until the current crop of politicians finish their terms in office and aren't accountable any more, so they'll probably push for that rather than the trickier, long-term, but ultimately the only possible, solution.

[jim]

Nuclear shouldn't even be considered as an option. The decomissioning, the extreme half life of the pollution caused by all levels of waste products, the terrorist target it offers, and the fact that they are energy sinks - that is more energy goes into them than we can hope to get out - should make it obvious we need a mix of other technologies.

I'm old enough to remember Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the fire at Windscale. They're not accidents waiting to happen, they already have! (Am I cynical or are politicians only interested in nuclear because it produces such large amounts of weapons grade plutonium?)

Further information can be found in the excellent "Nuclear Britain" by Peter Bunyard, New English Library, 1981. (There are probably more up to date critiques available as well.)

Love and Peace
Jim

[contadino]

There is absolutely nothing 'clean' about nuclear. If it was clean, it wouldn't incur an annual 'clean up' cost of £80bn.

The top 4 options are the only clean, cost effective options for the UK at the moment.

[Clara]

Moreover, nuclear isn't even green! Studies that promote its use as a carbon neutral (or low carbon) alternative always fail to take into account the energy required to mine transport and dispose of the relevant materials. And what about energy security? If you're looking to ensure energy supplies for the future, you have to create energy on your own territory, not ship in the raw materials from other countries.

I'm with Ann Pan....reduce and micro-generate.

[Odsox]

Radio active material is totally banned in Ireland except for very small amounts for hospital use.
Even planes carrying nuclear warheads in Ireland's airspace are banned, as are nuclear powered submarines in Irish waters.
So I guess nuclear power is not an option here

[The Riff-Raff Element]

There has to be a portfolio approach. Certainly for us rural residents diffuse and micro generation schemes make a great deal of sense, as does, for example, wood burning for home heating.

And where there is scope for large-scale renewable energy development this is clearly a desirable addition. We will shortly (in partnership with two neighbouring communes) be hosting 23 wind turbines with a combined design capacity of 17MW. I have yet to meet anyone locally who thinks these are a bad thing, though it should be admitted that the development is being very carefully sited to avoid nuisance.

Economy of consumption has to be part of the package and it has to be said that legislating to force reductions in use is probably the only way this is going to be achieved as in the move to forbid the sale of most kinds of conventional light bulbs. More could be done in terms of building regulations, design requirements for motor vehicles and provision of public transport too, though it is likely that some of these things would be seen as politically “courageous:” i.e., likely to lose the next election.

But urban sprawl and heavy industry are not going to disappear overnight, and it is the provision of power to these that is going to be the issue over the next few decades.

Again, renewable energy should play a role here: I have seen reports prepared within the energy industry (I helped write a couple of them) that suggested that up to 40% of Europe’s electricity consumption (2002 levels, it should be said) could be provided by renewable technologies provided that the political will were there and that the various grids could be properly integrated. Consumption has gone up since then but technology has improved too, so I reckon that figure should still be fair.

As for the other 60%; I’m probably in the minority in favouring nuclear. It is worth noting that in terms of putting radio nuclides into the wider environment, the contribution of the nuclear power industry pales into insignificance alongside the amounts pumped out by burning coal and heavy oils for power generation and in the extraction of oil & gas.

Clearly there are safety concerns concerning the operation of nuclear facilities and of waste disposal, but these are manageable particularly in light of advancing technology and engineering. For example, the transmutation of high level radioactive waste in specially designed reactors is being actively developed.

Modern nuclear stations are being built now that have design lifetimes of 60 years, which rather helps in amortising the de-commisioning costs, which in any case are being cut because techniques are being refined.

Certainly we can’t continue burning fossil fuels the way we are. There may be some mileage in carbon capture, but frankly I have my doubts. However is done it will itself consume considerable amounts of energy to effect the capture. This seems somewhat precipitous when one is burning a finite resource.

[Fizzy Izzy]

Nuclear is not only not green and potentially damaging, it is also NOT even a short term solution. The nuclear power stations currently propsed in the UK will takes years and years to be built and to start running.

Reduce and Renewable!

[Rod in Japan]

As for the other 60%; I’m probably in the minority in favouring nuclear. It is worth noting that in terms of putting radio nuclides into the wider environment, the contribution of the nuclear power industry pales into insignificance alongside the amounts pumped out by burning coal and heavy oils for power generation and in the extraction of oil & gas.

Like France, Japan is a heavily nuclear country. There's a nuclear power station closer to us than I would like, on an earthquake zone and in the path of a likely 2.5 m tsunami. I would prefer to take the portfolio approach, but I'd also like to know just how dangerous or not nuclear is. Unfortunately, it's very hard to get a disinterested and unemotional assessment of nuclear power.

[hideo]

I came across this today, which is an interesting, if inflammatory to most of those here, take on energy supplies.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=521

The synopsis is that renewable energy (sun / wind / water / volcanoes) are not viable due to a lack of technology to store and move electricity. He reports an interesting idea regarding converting algae into oil, which I had not heard about.

Just as interestingly is a point about reducing electricity consumption, which I will paraphrase as: we can reduce energy consumption so far, but there is a limit before we reduce our standard of living so much as to be intolerable to everyone.

The thing about the writing, like pretty much all discussion of nuclear / renewable / coal-based energy, is that there are no scientific studies mentioned that back up the opinion. It's one thing to say "it costs more electricity to build a wind turbine that it will produce" or "nuclear stations are unclean," but it there is no research or hard data to back that up then it's just one person's opinion and may or may not be true. I've seen no end of people say that nuclear is obviously unclean, or that modern day plants pose very little threat, but no-one seems to be able to back these statements up. Discussions then turn into arguments with people getting hostile and fanatical. Of course, that would never happen here, we're all so well adjusted :) I was thinking of certain online newspaper discussion boards.

[Clara]

Though I can't find any references in that article either, digging a little further I did find reference to the "facts" that there has been no global warming since 1998 (which is you want that defuted, I happened to be reading an article in todays guardian that explained that myth - a separate incident to do with El Nino that year) and that pre-invasion Iraq was developing WOMD (how many times has that been disproved).....it is some libertarian, climate-change-denier, pro-gun nutter from the states (the only thing I can see going in his favour is that he equates the american evangelical christian right as the moral equivalent of what he terms islamo-fascists). If you want a proper critique of nuclear power, please order yourself a copy of The Ecologist July 2006, which is devoted the subject.

This is a fairly interesting article, stating in terms of renewbility that the current methods of uranium extraction mean that the available uranium would only last 4 years should all the world's energy be generated thus. Again you can criticise the lack of reference, but journalistic articles for public consumption just aren't written that way. Though it is fairly safe to assume that the chap who wrote that as opposed to the article you recommended has a better understanding of journalistic research and evidence critique.
"Peter Bunyard is the science editor of the Ecologist magazine, and a widely published freelance author and environmentalist. He has worked as consultant editor for the United Nations Environment Programme review on Industry and the Environment, and was secretary and editor of the Committee for the Study of Nuclear Economics. "

BTW just because we have to face the fact that reducing our energy consumption might cause us some discomfort, is no kind of logical argument for not doing it. We've created an unsustainable civilisation. Period.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Re. Peter Bunyard.

I would suggest that this is precisely the kind of highly spun article that does sober debate no favours at all.

Take the point that “in terms of renewbility that the current methods of uranium extraction mean that the available uranium would only last 4 years should all the world's energy be generated thus.”

Uranium is more common on Earth than is tin. Thorium (also fissile, though not thus far so used in practice) is more common still. Between them, they are available to us in quantities measured in the tens of billions of tonnes and represent a potential source of global energy supply lasting thousands or years. “Current methods of extraction” are based on economics, not chemistry.

The implication is that further development of nuclear power is pointless because reserves are inadequate to service it, which is incorrect and easily debunked, but in being so makes other arguments less powerful.

Similarly it could be implied quite convincingly and with statistics to back it up that further development of PV cells is pointless because some of the most useful materials for their manufacture are either rare (indium and tellurium – vanishingly rare in the case of tellurium) or wildly toxic (cadmium), but I don’t think any of us here would swallow that too placidly.

[Clara]

I totally accept that PV cells are not the answer....the answer I believe is that at some point we are going to have to do without, there is no other logical conclusion.