midgemagnet wrote:While I am a great supporter of energy efficiency and localised green energy generation...
Hi Mick,
Look, I know we disagree on this, but I reckon we might agree on many other things besides this, so don't take my comments as a personal vendetta - it's just that you've only posted on this subject lately. Stick around and join in other places, too. We might find common ground.
I have to say I found the Greenpeace video pretty sick, irresponsible - as well as factually innaccurate in its implication. While I think Greenpeace do some good work (particularly on wildlife issues) - they lose credibility with me for scaremongering and misinformation on a broad front of technical/engineering issues.
This is, of course, a problem with all forms of propaganda - 'the truth' is often lost; frighten people enough, and the actual facts hardly matter at all. 'Twas ever thus, and can be seen on all sides. It is my opinion that the government position that says we have to have some means of energy production on this scale or disaster will befall us all, is equally irresponsible, and downright false, too. But if they can scare enough people into thinking this, then I agree, nuclear power is a foregone conclusion.
- It's not "great" but there is no viable alternative for baseload generation.
But that means you're defeated before you start. 'No viable alternative' is simply a political ruse to get people to back one side; it polarises thinking; if you're not for us, you're against us. Further, to talk in terms of viability implies that society, and even life itself, is unviable without consumerist levels of energy production. I'd say that was just one of the great propagandist myths.
- Waste is a problem and a long term solution needs to be sorted out.
Well, yeah; but we've made no progress in this since nuclear waste was first produced. It's a political as well as a practical problem. How about we sort this out (rather than just fudge the issue)
before we embark upon an extended nuclear programme that will take us several generations into the future. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me. But, of course it's quite feasible for every decision-maker alive today to simply brush this issue under the carpet, and let some future generation deal with an impossible situation that we've bequeathed to them.
- It is safe.....the actual risks are very low from operating UK current and future stations (assuming a standard PWR design).
Ah, now; I know you're an H&S man, but I take issue with the way 'risk' and 'hazard' are so casually conflated in this sort of propaganda. They are two different things, but are used as another way to misrepresent the truth to us.
Reducing the risk doesn't reduce the consequences of the event. The risk may indeed be very low (though I don't know how anyone can measure something that apparently can only happen once every hundred thousand years, or whatever - surely that has to be a made-up figure; how can anyone have calculated it? How is that a meaningful figure?), but should the event happen, the effect of widespread nuclear contamination can be
so far reaching that it has to be considered separately, and not as an inconvenient consequence of the 'risk' assessment.
The risk may be small; the hazard is huge. There may be only one chance in a hundred thousand years, but this year may be it. The
risk factor may be a fraction of a percent, but if it happens, the
hazard may still be 100%. Reducing the risk does not make radio isotopes any less toxic. The enormity of the consequenses are being too easily hidden in statistics that won't be of any use at all if it happens.
- Chernobyl was an inherently unstable design with the safety features turned off, being experimented on by people who did not know what they were doing.
- Cheap? Well - expensive to build, not bad to operate for upto 40 years and not so cheap to decommission (though this is getting cheaper due to standardised designs with decommissioning thought out up front)
I tell you what I think - we have to
reduce our energy consumption, which means disconnecting ourselves from the consumerist cycle of consumption-production-growth-consumption. This is a problem, because our entire economy depends upon this little mantra. There will be a lot of grizzling by people, politicians will have impossible decisions to make, and our 'standard of living' will need reining in (but what's the b etting that our 'quality of life' will improve?). At best, this transformation will take a couple of generations.
Y'see, energy efficiency is all very well, but we need energy reduction. Turning off the light when you leave a room is not any sort of answer if you also buy an extra wide screen TV for the kid's bedroom, and buying the latest energy efficient dishwasher is no help to the situation if you've never needed one before. I installed a new kitchen for someone recently, and she was very pleased to tell me how she was helping the environment by installing low voltage lighting under all the wall cabinets; unfortunately I rather spoiled it by pointing out that she had no lights there at all, previously, so her net consumption was going to increase (actually, I don't think she really understood that point, so clever are the consumerist marketing men in pursuading us that by consuming more we will consume less - 'green' is now just another marketing ploy).
It's amazing to compare a modern kitchen with one of even only twenty or thirty years ago; then you would typically have a couple of sockets for appliances - now, a newly installed, consumerist kitchen can have twenty or more (microwave, dishwasher, breadmaker, fridge (big, American style, please), freezer, food processor, coffee maker, radio, kettle, whisk, toaster, washing machine, tin opener, phone charger, cordless handvac., tumble drier...) And count the lightbulbs, too (one in the fridge, one in the microwave, one in the oven, a couple in the extractor hood, several under the wall units, a spot over the sink, plus at least one in the ceiling...).
When I see a powerstation (or a windfarm, come to that), I see a tangible representation of people hooked into the want-want-want philosophy. Somehow, they've come to believe that quality, standards, values, self-worth and happiness are all measured by the number of electrical appliances they have. That can't be good, can it?
