New nuclear power plants in the UK, and the downfall of humanity

[tsb247]

I'm surprised by how much resistance still remains when it comes to the building of nuclear power plants. They are clean, efficient, and the waste the produce can often be reused in modern facilities, and the little that can't is often either stored on sight, or it can be put to use in smaller reactors or used for other useful purposes.

The fact is that we have been working with, improving, and studying nuclear power for ~70 years now (including nuclear research that went into making bombs). It is something that science understands well, and new engineering methods, processes, and construction materials are making it quite safe and reliable.

In my mind, the benefits greatly outweigh the risks, and I find that most of the people that complain about nuclear power don't fully understand it.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Eh. Useful in the short term but nuclear is fucking expensive, needs some pretty hefty subsidies to make it viable economically. Better than having no energy but long term I'd go for a mixture of wind, wave, solar and geothermal as well as nuclear.

 

[tsb247]

All energy production has absolutely horrific downsides.

This seems a little sensational, don't you think?

Our best chance of mitigating them to an acceptably safe, and reliable level is nuclear fusion, which may be an impossibility, but we won't know unless we give it a go and... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nuclear-fusion-project-struggles-to-put-the-pieces-together Oh for Pete's sake!

Nuclear fusion is not an impossible thing. It simply requires more development and research. We are getting ever closer to achieving it. Hell, anyone can build a simple fusion reactor, and it has been done in basements. I look forward to watching that technology develop over the next 20 years or so. I'm willing to bet we'll have it in a decade, two tops.

With the recent breakthrough at CERN (confirmation of the Higgs-Boson), I'm willing to wager that some of the missing pieces to the puzzle will become apparent over time; hopefully a short time.

 

[Petromir]

The problem with Fukushimas wasn't the earthquake, it wasn't the tsunami. The problem with Fukushima was that it uncovered just how amazingly little maintenance had been done on the nuclear power plants country-wide, how safety and upgrade recommendations had been ignored in favour of increased profits, and how generally placing something as sensitive as nuclear power in the hands of a corporation more interested in profits than in people was a very, very bad idea.

Those commenting here are focusing on the dramatic external parts of the Fukushima story, while ignoring that if there hadn't been the earthquake and tsunami then it would have been something else in about another decade as safety standards slipped lower and lower, and maintenance was ignored.

The point that most people are ignoring is that this problem isn't unique to Japan, the same pattern can be seen in many countries. Safety standards are set... and then ignored. The problem with nuclear power is that if something goes wrong it isn't just one building that is affected, it is an entire side of a country.

Frankly, until governments and companies become more responsible I just don't trust them with nuclear power.

The generation of nuclear power stations currently being built have design features that make Fukushima style neglect at lot less serious.

The issue there was that when things broke down the reactors caused issues. Modern reactors are so designed that it takes constant attention to even keep them running, failure of vital parts will cause the reactor to naturally shut off. Poor maintenance at these new reactors will result on a reactor that is off and wont turn on....

 

[Loop Stricken]

I like when people bring up Fukishima because I can counter it by saying that "Shit went down in Fukishima because of the Japanese way of everyone being formal and polite. Nobody was correcting their superiors when they made a mistake (because it could be perceived as rude and informal) which lead to more mistakes which lead to even more mistakes."

That and it was an old reactor that was due to be shut down anyway. I think it held up admirably against unexpectedly-huge natural disasters.

 

[synobal]

As a general rule nuclear power doesn't bother me but corporate owned plants bother me. Corporations have to make money, and when nuclear plants aren't considered infrastructure and given funds to be maintained like infrastructure but instead must rely on corporate masters for upkeep, upkeep that ultimately cuts into their profits then I grow concerned.

That isn't to say I think a government run nuclear plant is free from similar problems I just think a nuclear plant is only as good as the regulations and enforcement of said regulations of it's operations and maintenance. Nuclear power isn't something to cut corners on.

 

[Tombfyre]

The gormless masses don't understand Nuclear power. Hell, they barely understand any form of power generation. So, I'm not overly surprised that another nuclear power project is getting negative feedback. Perhaps more education would help calm enough folks down to get badly needed power projects off the ground. There are definitely more than a few good reactor designs out there. The work being done with Thorium power generation is impressive to say the least.

If fusion power gets off the ground as fast as it seems it might, perhaps we won't even have to worry about fission plants for all that long. And in the meantime, having more wind, more solar, and things of that nature couldn't hurt. There's no one perfect solution to any problem. Many different good solutions however could lead in the right direction, however.

 

[MiskWisk]

When I saw the title I immediately thought, "Oh please don't let this be more wind turbine propaganda."
Thank you for not doing that, I got enough of that in my bloody General Studies exam.

OT: I was really impressed with the Japanese but not so much with the reaction to Fukushima. Bearing in mind the fact that the earthquake was unusually powerful even for Japan, the reactor remained in a fairly okay state all things considered; but nope, ignore the tsunami deaths and let's jump on the radiation band wagon. I saw a hilarious article pointing out the Italians at the time left Japan despite the fact that radiation levels in Japan were lower than in Italy. They left low radiation to go to higher radiation.

 

[Rush Syks]

I'm kind of surprised how many people are pro nuclear here. I mean I see it's temptations and was close to accepting it, but after Fukushima I realized one thing: The technology may be flawless (which it isn't), but the people aren't and never will be and therefore a catastrophy can and will inevitably happen.

And Transmutation to reduce the waste's half-life is far from beeing economical as well. You might argue we should put effort into researching this, but then we might as well look into alternatives which don't have the rather terrifying side effects.

 

[indelibleStain]

Nuclear fission is a great stop gap between coal/oil and nuclear fusion. The EU - via their many scientific exploits - plan to have a testing bed nuclear fission power station up and running by 2018-2020, with a commercially viable solution in place by 2025-2030. In short, it's not going to be too long until we can start addressing potential energy problems in a constructive and safe fashion.

Then there's the overpopulation issue to tackle. That's going to be a tough'en ;(

 

[Loop Stricken]

Both of you: READ. [http://www.gregpalast.com/fukushima-they-knew-2/#more-7924]

So what you're saying is, this shoddily-built and woefully-unsafe nuclear reactor, when hit with an earthquake and a tsunami, and ended up causing zero deaths and releasing a negligible amount of radiation... sorry, what was your point again?
This seems like a brilliant endorsement.

 

[UrinalDook]

TL;DR
Nuclear power still scares the crap out of stupid people​

Your ignorance is breathtaking. You should educate yourself on the real reasons the Fukishima plant want haywire. And then you should be very, very afraid of nuclear power.

I like when people bring up Fukishima because I can counter it by saying that "Shit went down in Fukishima because of the Japanese way of everyone being formal and polite. Nobody was correcting their superiors when they made a mistake (because it could be perceived as rude and informal) which lead to more mistakes which lead to even more mistakes."

Yet more ignorance.

Both of you: READ. [http://www.gregpalast.com/fukushima-they-knew-2/#more-7924]

Wow! What a fantastically reputable source!

And I love how relevant it is to the nuclear industry in the UK. I mean, these companies, they're all the same, right?

 

[rob_simple]

I know I have a link relating to this somewhere....ah, there we go. (Bottom of the list)

I think the majority of fears surrounding nuclear power began with Chernobyl, despite the fact it's been made clear a hundred times over that it was the many, many fuck-ups that caused the disaster, not the radiation; any dangerous material is dangerous if it's not properly handled. That's why we call it god damn dangerous.

It's like saying we should all stop driving cars because if you hit someone with one you'll probably kill them.

 

[repeating integers]

Hmm. Yes, I think I see the problem here. You're reading the comments on a BBC news article! Seriously, I'm convinced the place is a breeding ground for idiots. The vast majority of people that post there are exceptionally bitter individuals who despise change yet hate inaction. The absolute last straw for me was the appalling cascade of offensive posts after the BBC's entertainment section posted it's list of musicians to watch in 2013.

All the comments that weren't simply lambasting the BBC for daring to post an article related to music (again, I stress this was in the entertainment section, way down the page), rather than some invented global tragedy were adamant that modern music is awful, that not a single one of those artists could hope to compare with the music of their generation, and no that's not just because they're old and the music that dominates the charts doesn't have them as an intended audience, thank you very much. Not a single person willing to listen to reason, or allow their opinion to be swayed. It's an awful, awful corner of the internet.

Brit newspaper article comments are enough to convince anyone our nation really is just as cynical as they've been told. Each one has its own unique, intriguing flavour of idiocy, and all of them are cesspits.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Nuclear power isn't the answer.

Its just trading one finite resource (oil/coal) for another (fissile material).

It's reliance on water to cool the plants can be a weak point during heatwaves/droughts, although this issue can be mitigated somewhat.

While it is true in the long run that uranium is a finite resource like oil or coal, I have to disagree with you. Compare the amount of environmental damage, all the wars being fought over, the emissions of, the degree to which oil affects politics worldwide, to the negative effects of nuclear power. We might leave the future generations a shit ton of nuclear waste to deal with, but the rate at which oil and coal degrade the planet at the moment, the future generation might not even have the possibilities to deal with environmental problems in the first place. And nuclear waste is actually stored in contained, protected vaults and most of the radiation decays to a non-lethal level in a few centuries. It's not like we're creating death chambers that last for 10,000 years around the world.

 

[Timmey]

Very good news it you asked me, as long as it's managed and maintained properly then there is little to no risk, the more nuclear power the better.

 

[kickassfrog]

-snippy snip snip-

Do you want us to weigh in, or are you just warning us that we happen to live in a country inhabited by complete fuckwits?

If the second, I already knew, but thanks for the heads up on the new power plants.

If the first, yeah, nuclear power is kind of a ***** when we have to decommission the plant in forty or fifty years time, by which time we may well have figured out a much smarter way of dealing with the waste products.

Wind kinda sucks, power wise. Maybe if they lower the startup costs of the things with R&D it might become more worthwhile, but until then it's not really viable as anything other than a small contributor.

As for the terrorism thing, yeah, flying a plane into a nuclear plant would total the plane without doing a tremendous amount of damage to the plant.

I like when people bring up Fukishima because I can counter it by saying that "Shit went down in Fukishima because of the Japanese way of everyone being formal and polite. Nobody was correcting their superiors when they made a mistake (because it could be perceived as rude and informal) which lead to more mistakes which lead to even more mistakes."

And before Fukushima, Chernobyl went to hell because it was built and operated by Russians. (Just kidding, I'd go into the real reasons, but it's kind of long winded and I'm not entirely certain whether or not it's correct. But I can do the "You shouldn't go to Pripyat, because Chernobyl fall off" joke.)

 

[shintakie10]

Both of you: READ. [http://www.gregpalast.com/fukushima-they-knew-2/#more-7924]

So what you're saying is, this shoddily-built and woefully-unsafe nuclear reactor, when hit with an earthquake and a tsunami, and ended up causing zero deaths and releasing a negligible amount of radiation... sorry, what was your point again?
This seems like a brilliant endorsement.

Yes cos it's fantastically easy to detect the effects of a nuclear power plant radiation leak on surrounding populaces. Nobody actually knows how much radiation was released, and it will take years for the true damage to be detected. All of which is besides the fucking point, a catastrophe occurred because of incompetence, and nothing is happening to prevent future similar occurences.

Thats either an outright lie or you are incredibly misinformed and just regurgitatin incredibly false "facts" that someone else spewed at you.

Im actually disturbed you even bothered to type it out because of how completely wrong it was.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

See, there's this term we use in this country. NIMBYs. It stands for "Not In My Back Yard"s, which I find odd since we Brits don't particularly use the term 'yard'. but I suspect 'Garden' wouldn't be so pithy an acronym, but I digress.

To clarify, NIMBY is a common acronym in a lot of English-speaking countries. Probably American in origin. There is also the related but less-popular acronym BANANA, or "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything".