That nuclear power is carbon free and miss understood

[Greatwhiteworld]

Nuclear power is very efficient, very safe and carbon free. Accidents like Chernobyl won't happen again as that type of reactor isn't widely used

New reactors are being built that use radioactive waste from older reactors, or use nuclear weapons as fuel.

The UK should be building more as part of moving away from fossil fuel.

Nuclear might have made sense a decade or three ago. I believe that using today's technology the best option is to put a few hundred square miles of solar panels in the Sahara desert, with the electricity piped to Europe.

I believe solar is now potentially cheaper than oil which is cheaper than nuclear. Maybe not quite yet, everywhere, but I've heard that in places completely unsubsidised solar plants are being built because they can are cost-effective compared to burning fossil fuels.

My facts may be wrong now, but if they are, they are only premature by fewer years than it would take to build more nuclear.

Solar and onshore wind are the cheapest sources of new build in the U.K. Today. Unfortunately neither of them has financial support under this government so no one can build any new sources.
Whilst solar in the Sahara would obviously be ideal the transmission losses would be horrendous so at the moment I don't think it's a goer

Chernobyl was a catastrophic catalogue of human error it wasn't just some freak accident.

I don't have a problem with nuclear energy. I do think every new build should have Solar panels though.

Here in Switzerland we're all well equipped I case something happens to a nuclear plant. All communities must have nuclear bunkers, many houses have them in their cellars, and the government regularly distributes iodine tablets.

From a wikipedia article on solar power in India (which seems to have more of it than any other country.)

According to a Bloomberg report in December 2016, the cost of solar power in India, China, Brazil and 55 other emerging market economies dropped to about one third of its price in 2010, making solar the cheapest form of renewable energy and also cheaper than power generated from fossil fuels such as coal and gas. The report also cited a $64 per megawatt-hour solar power contract signed in India in early 2016, as proof of "remarkable falls in the price of electricity from solar sources".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_India

Nuclear is a horrible way to generate power sellafield is an accident waiting to happen.
They are just collecting nuclear waste with no real plan of what to do with it other than some vague notion of eventually hiding storing it under some mountains.

Chernobyl happened because the engineers were operating the reactor with some of the safety interlocks defeated (I believe for test purposes) it's perfectly possible for someone to recreate a similar situation, difficult as there are several layers of protection but possible.

On the positive side decommissioning will keep many an engineer employed when the UKs manufacturing sector has gone to shit post Brexit

You see to me that suggests that it's got too many externalities. And look how fucked Chernobyl still is, how long are you planning to stay in your cellar

Sorry that was in response to the Switzerland post. And firesuit I reckon we could get solar here under $64 if government allowed it a route to market (large scale not rooftop)

Nuclear power has the potential to be an awful accident.

Climate change is going to be a massive worldwide impact on so many things with massive global implications.

We can't ignore climate change. We need to reduce carbon emissions. The risks of nuclear power need to be balanced against the benefits. It's just one possible solution.

Whilst solar in the Sahara would obviously be ideal the transmission losses would be horrendous so at the moment I don't think it's a goer

According to a random article I've just googled, the losses on a high-voltage DC line are 3.5% per 1000 kilometres. The Sahara desert is about 4000km from London. That doesn't sound insurmountable to me? (Speaking as someone who knows nothing he hasn't learnt in 30 seconds of googling.)

(Google seems to have taken somewhere in Egypt as the location of the Sahara. I think there are hot bits of North Africa a lot closer than that. But I'm not convinced it would be an engineering problem to get it from Egypt. I suppose anywhere in North Africa might have a bit of political risk though.)

That's pretty high though, a best case scenario of 14% - although obviously the load factor would be considerably better than it is here. You'd need a lot of substations which people get twitchy about.

Off the top of my head...

Pros:
Lower carbon emissions
Reliable

Cons:
Fucking expensive price per kWh
Horrendous nuclear waste
When it goes wrong, it really really goes wrong.

It has it's uses f'sure, but nuclear is no magic bullet to the carbon issues we face. Fusion might be, but its been 20 years away for the past 50 years and i still don't think anyone has made fusion put out more energy than it takes to maintain the reaction.

Personally, I'd like to see more wind and those tidal lagoons. I think every new build house should come with a solar panel or wind turbine.

Here's a film about the biggest issue with nuclear. It's a total mind melt film. I thought it's maybe overegging the custard and scaremongering so I checked with DH. DH says it's correct and he's a very pro nuclear nuclear scientist. Countries with nuclear are all looking to or are already building their own 'Onkalos'.

ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUQ-Mhb4OVo

Chernobyl and Fukushima were both massive fuck ups by the operators.

I support nuclear. Think Australia - where I am - would be the perfect place to have it. We're the world's biggest uranium exporter, have vast expanses of uninhabited land for plants and storage, and don't have the fault lines or natural disasters that other countries (like Japan) have. Ideal.

Piping in energy from the Sahara, fucking heard it all now, lol. Idiocy.

Also love it when Cherynobly and Fukushima are trotted out to try shut down a discussion, we're neither a 1980's Eastern Bloc Soviet nation, nor do we live on a part of the planet where a Tsunami is likely to wipe out emergency generators used to power the cooling pumps on a nuclear reactor.

What do you think of the possibility of deliberate sabotage @biker47?
www.google.co.uk/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/01/airports-nuclear-power-stations-terror-alert-government-officials/amp/
@c3pu sadly micro wind isn't great - If you've got enough land and the right weather conditions small wind can be good but the roof mounted ones aren't much use at all

Either we produce more energy, use different energy sources, store energy or use energy more efficiently.

America is a massive consumer of energy. It's a good thing we have a US President who is willing to take the lead on this as he believes in climate change........

Yeah right.

And let's not forget the small matter of the left over radio active waste

The new generation generate a tiny amount of waste compared to the legacy we already have, so in that respect new nuclear isn't such a big problem.

There are, of course, risks and benefits. I think I reluctantly support this generation until our storage technology improves enough to store renewable energy over the winter. We rely on nuclear quite heavily for our base load and instant surge capacity as far as I understand.

Renewables are wonderful and I agree the subsidies should come back, but they're not up to our demands yet.

I think the problem is new nuclear takes so long to build - I think hinkley currently expected 2025? I just think In that period we could be doing more clever stuff

By the way in the most I'm massively enjoying this thread, there seems to be a lot of intelligent discussion and little name calling

Until we have developed the technology that allows us to generate and store large amounts of renewables, we are stuck with either coal/gas or nuclear.

With the exception of the high MW/H prices, I have absolutely no issue with Hinckley at all. It seems the current most obvious solution.

The OP appears to be sleeping off their hangover, but I am generally in agreement with their incoherently expressed view that nuclear power may be a useful part of Operation Keeping The Lights On Without Drowning Bangladesh.

The real problem is that the lead times for construction are so high that research and developments in other fields may have made them obsolete by the time they come online, leaving us with a massive PFI bill. However if I were Bangladeshi or Somali I think I'd count that a risk worth taking.

More people have died building wind generators than in all nuclear power accidents put together.

I know which I'd ban.

It's ironic really, nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity by far, yet due to the catastrophic nature of its (very few) failures it is pretty universally feared. Until we wean ourselves off our power hungry lifestyles we need a way to generate electricity round the clock which until we sort out mass storage issues renewables can't deliver. Fossil fuels, aside from being bad for climate change are dreadful for air pollution too and lead to many many actual deaths from asthma that for some unfathomable reason people prefer to live with than a remote risk of death from radiation leaks. Storage of spent fuel is an issue, but not insurmountable. We need to continue with nuclear for another generation at least imo.