Does anyone agree with Tony Blair on Nulcear power?

[rosycheek]

I'm finding it very hard to understand why anyone would want to build more nuclear power stations. They may reduce CO2 but then you are left with radioactive waste!!

We live on an island FFS. We are surrounded by all this natural energy. Is it just people's NIMBY 'ism that it stopping us from harnessing it? What it so wrong with wind farms ...at least you can remove them with out leaving future generations with the problem of radioactive waste.

Am I in the minority with this, or do people think nuclear is the way to go?

BTW, I love the environment topic, feel much better now for my rant!

China doesn't lack english speakers or capitalists

Actually there is a profound shortage of English speakers in China, the pay of these people is growing ahead of the average.
But that is nothing like the shortage of "capitalists". Such is the lack of supply that pay for people who have the remotest idea what they're doing is rocketing, and in many cases greater than they might earn in a civilised country.

In any case you don't need capitalism to form a civilised nation, at least in theory. Never seen it done, but it could happen. You can't do it without democracy, property rights, or law. A couple of countries have managed it with only a small % of English speakers, but it was invariably rather bloody, and in a time when English was not the dominant language. Hard to see it happening now.

Oil has peaked! I feel it in my bones I tell yer!

not gonna read it all but have worked in oil, gas and nuclear industries.
there's plenty more oil and gas - the prob is a lot of it is in deep water and so is very expensive to get out - and we already pay way more than its worth.
nuclear probs are obvious - the waste - as well as many leaks that are unpublicised. masses of low level waste is buried local to power stations with no more than clay to cover it - leaks into water table as at Seascale. high level waste is lethal for 10,000 years plus - cant even imagine the probs that'll cause.
renewables are excellent but very small. all underused, miss out badly on hydro as much rain/flood water is found quickest way into sea - along with it's energy.
the original question? blair is talking out of his arse, is all about a quick fix and earning revenue - no long term vision by any party - too expensive?

That reminds that back when people still committed socialism they came up with a marvelous idea for storing nuclear waste.
We need a gas & water tight store that will last for tens of thousands, and possibly millions of years.

We have plenty of those, they're called oil wells.
They are known to be sealed, since they liquids and gases are volatile and would have evaporated long ago if they weren't.
Gas sources are the best since anything that can keep methane from leaking is not going to leak any time soon.
This is of course from the people who brought you Chernobyl. They actually started doing this, but of course under "fraternal socialism" this meant that the Russians stored it in East European oil wells, not their own...

I've never managed to work out what the defect in the idea is, just seems a bit too easy.

will give it a bit of thought. one thing when drilling is that once initial pressure is released from the oil/gas bed is that it has to be pumped with another liquid in order to force out oil/gas. not sure of legislation but sea water is obviously used offshore. have seen tests in desert oil/gas fields where CO2 is used. this acts as a carbon sink as well as a propellant to force out oil.
would expect using nuclear waste to be hazardous in the extreme, but low level in a liquid form is a possibility. is gonna cost tho.

What particular extra sources of danger do you see from the nuclear waste when liquified and put down wells ?

But, what if someone goes back to pump more oil/gas out of that well at a later date (when technologies have become possibly and/or financially viable)? Do you want to pum nuclear waste up with the product. And, what if your nuclear waste in say block 23 seeps out into block 28? Whose going to be responsible for that?

And what about natural disasters (i.e. earthquakes)

Singledad, mind if I ask what you do?

Whose? Get it right, Uwila! Who's Perdon my ignorance

GRRRR pardon.

Good point about re-opening, big warning signs ?

My guess is that gas wells will be the best since they are the best sealed and are much less likely to have anything left worth sucking out.

Don't think earthquakes are an issue for a very long time in oil wells. Certainly tens of thousands, quite possibly millions of years.
Anything less than a very high degree of stability would mean that the gas and oil leaked out.

Are you saying that there are no reserves near faultlines? How do you know?

If there were a fault line then the gas would have leaked out.
Natural gas is mostly methane, a lightweight, small molecule, (lighter than air). Even relatively low permeabilty from rocks will let it leak out if you give it the tens of millions of years most of it has been there.
Oil is less volatile, but of course we are dealing with very long periods and again most cracks would have let it leak out.
Fault lines are bloody great cracks, so we know that nothing much has happened there for a long time. Most earthquakes are associated with vulcanism or plate movement both of which involve serious heat either from friction of maga movements. Oil doesn't take well to that at all, and would boil off.
There are bits of the crust which are being subducted under other bits. Fortunately this is not exactly a subtle process, so is easily avoided.
If one is duly paranoid, then the Iranian wells aren't brilliant because of the ongoing issues from when India hit Asia, but Saudi or Polish wells seem pretty stable.
Wells near or in the sea may not be optimal either , but ther are loads of them on land.

Oil wells are of course highly studied, so we know a lot about their geology.

Texas might be a good place...

I fear though that the kleptocrats in the EU might follw the socialist logic that started me on this idea. Britain has lots of oil wells beginning to run dry. They've tried for a common eneergy policy on the lines of the common agrigcultural policy for some time.

With all due respect DC, you are talking out your arse. For example:

"If there were a fault line then the gas would have leaked out."

If the two plates are pressed together very tightly (which they are or there wouldn't be so much friction, and hence heat generation) they may provide an aqequate seal to keep the oil/gas in. But, if they move (and they do) then that seal might be broken and up seeps the oil/gas. So if you have nuclear waste in there, it's going to seep up to, right?

I don't think your plan is very well thought out. Needs to be researched. My first thought is that it is too simplistic for it not to have been thought of before. Not sure fossil fuels are an ideal environment in which to store nuclear waste.

Firstly if you would care to look at my posts on this topic, you'd see that I though it was a bad idea myself. So it's not my plan, I don't just use "socialist" as a term of abuse, it was thought up by them, so I knew it was flawed.

So your comment about my arse talking applies rather more to you than me doesn't it. When I'm wrong feel free to correct me, for it isn't that rare, but at least have the integrity to read my stuff first.

I'm not a geologist, but the point about fault lines is that although they can produce very tight seals, they are by their nature usually dynamic. A static fault is either no problem because it doesn't leak, or dyanamic which means it's most likely leaked already.

I suppose a fault my become dynamic, but if you read my post (feel free to ask for help with the long words), you will see that I wasn't asserting all wells are good, and that one could relatively easily check for faults.

Doesn't mean there isn't a hole in the argument, but that that you're not smart enough to help me find it.

will endeavour to be more objective, and give an opinion in the hopes of settling things as the expressed views re oil wells and geology are quite academic in relation to nuclear waste.

low/intermediate level waste is produced en masse and is therefore disposed of local to its production site. near surface disposal sites are now better planned and managed and so the risk to humans/enviroment is acceptably low. this is basically a landfill with no intention for future retrieval. so long as the waste remains unbreached, there is no risk of a leak. the need for low cost disposal within the UK is paramount. to process low/intermediate level waste and then transport it offshore to be pumped to the seabed and into an underground reservoir is economically unviable. regardless of geological stability, the cost, compared to local landfill, would be staggering.
the main problem to be faced is that of high level long lived waste. this can be spent fuel, contaminated equipment after decommissioning and spent sources. all of these need to be kept behind suitable shielding during storage. this removes any possibility of disposal in a reservoir type enclosure. current practice is to keep such waste in depositories rather than being disposed of. these can be above or below surface altho much research is being done to encourage the use of deep shafts and boreholes. the geology can be proven allowing suitable sites to be chosen. the waste is then securely stored within its own shielding and can, if necessary, be retreived at a later date for relocation or reprocessing. one main argument against deep shafts is public opinion. deep shafts, aka mine shafts, are often close to/below areas of population. there are existing shafts that have been earmarked for use, but have had permission denied due to adverse public opinion. boreholes can be sited away from population centres and also offer a high level of protection for the waste as well as from it.

2:26am? Where are you singledadofthree? Are you an engineer?

Hope you don't mind me being nosey.

uwila - i'm in the uk but often work late and can be easily distracted by mn :)
have engineering background altho being sp has altered things a bit. main experience is oil/gas/chemical but also ambled into nuclear a while back. was reminded after first posting about Official Secrets Act, hence slight change in stance . worked in Enviromental Monitoring (health physics) rather than power generation.

dominiconnor - was late to realise you were just posing question of alternative disposal based on practices elsewhere. virtually all nuclear countries are currently working together trying to solve the probs caused by past policies of waste disposal. deep shafts/boreholes are becoming more attractive as high level waste is vulnerable from external interference. reprocessing/waste disposal is a real problem especially after the failure of THORP which was supposed to solve the probs for many countries, not just us. is a problem that is costing more than the power generation is worth (IMO), altho few people are aware of the size and locations of depositories. the fact is we are stuck with the stuff and so the sooner it's underground the better.

Ah, nice to "meet" you singledad. I work in the oil industry also (for one of the major E&Cs). Perhaps we can have some intelligent chats about other things... oh I don't know say Russian/Caspian pipelines. Lots of fun politics there.

Anyway, I won't hijack the nuclear thread any further.

I don't agree with the new nuclear build. It's simply not necessary for the simple reason that it's too expensive. Never mind the waste problems etc. Uranium is a finite resource too and there will be wars over that in the future. Imagine if you put all the billions into developing a sustainable, renewable energy system instead of into Nuclear. We need a decentralised energy system that can cater for smaller scale local powerplants such as biomass and anaerobic digestion. We need to invest in CHP, microhydro, microCHP, solar water heating, microwind, ground source heat pumps, wave and tidal power etc. The technology is already here. It just requires the political will to do it. You can of course take small steps yourself. Like the old saying: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

There are no easy options though and there isn't time for sustainable projects to get off the ground. especially as business won't invest in them. This is going to start hurting within the next 50 years.

thought this might pop up again as nuclear is back on the agenda.
you are right too about the lack of interest from big business. as much as they like to be seen as supporting eco stuff they know that such types of power gen cannot sustain the business community. it takes many wind turbines/tidal gens etc just to power a small residential area. and its fairly low voltage gen so will not travel far.

we all know our industry is in serious decline and so in order to try and slow the decline we need massive amounts of power. if business was to improve - which is unlikely as China/India grow rapidly - we would need more power still. is becoming obvious gas cannot be relied on and so sadly nuclear is seen as the only solution. and i am personally against it as i've worked in it and know the science well enough - and know the extent of the current waste problem.

the bottom line seen by the gov is that the country's economy cannot afford green energy - and the personal stuff we do to save on waste doesnt make much difference. we are a very small country that is being left behind in many ways.

Did anyone see Horizon last night. Very surprising. I don't suffer from 'radiophobia' as as I was brought up (almost literally) in the shadow of nuclear power - my dad was a nuclear engineer - but even so I was genuinely shocked at the result of the Chernobyl human health surveys and the wildlife surveys. Very strange and most unexpected.