Are you for or against nuclear power or somewhere in between?
The government gave the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power stations on Thursday.
Nuclear operators say they could have new plants running in Britain by 2017, which would help the government meet its 2020 goals for cutting carbon emissions to fight climate change.
Opponents say thousands of years of toxic waste make nuclear power not worth the risk.
Polls say the public is divided on the issue, with 44 percent saying companies should have the option of investing in new nuclear power and 37 percent disagreeing.
What do you think? Send us your comments.
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65 comments so far
I am FOR nuclear power, simply because I do not want to live in a house without electricity. I need electricity for heavens sake!
Where are these NO people coming from? Are they barking or what? What will they be using - candle power? Will they generate enough burnable methan from their own excrement?
Not all of us can live like that - nor do we have room for an eco-friendly horse and trap to saunter around town on.
I know that we are gradually returning to the past and its methods, in some ways, but that is inevitable: just that we don’t need to install old-time kitchen ranges, just yet.
However, I want to see ALL new homes fitted with the latest solar and wind power technology, subsidised by government grants.
- Posted by Keith M WarwickIt is basic common sense to have a balanced energy policy. Part of that needs to be nuclear to avoid an over reliance on fossils. Renewables cannot fill the gap alone. 99% of the population would vote for nuclear if their lights went out, however by then it is too late because of the lead time to get the new stations up and running so we need goverment decisions now (todays decision is rather late but better late than never. A plus is the CO2 reduction.
- Posted by D E HaslettForgive me for being under the impression that the governmets are in power to do the will of the people and not to dictate to society. The majority of people do not wish to have nuclear power plants near their dwellings or within a thousand miles of them, just as they do not wish tohave mobile phone masts near them. I should have a vote as to whether or not I wish to risk my life and that of my children and the planet with nuclear energy plants. The electricity may end up being cheaper for those who produce it but the public still get conned into paying over the ends in rip off Britain. The cost of building these plants is astronomical and dismantling them at the end of their working life doesn’t bear thinking about. Still why worry as money is no object when they can rip us all off and spend our money as they see fit. Sure we need to ensure an electricity supply but not at the risk of destroying the planet through nuclear contamination, no matter how small a risk they claim it is to us all. This planet does not belong to the labour party or any other politician. It belongs to everyone, yet only a few tell us what we can or cannot do on it. If you are happy to live next to a nuclear power plant go and do so but dont ask me to do the same.
- Posted by A. ReidIf we find it necessary to build nuclear power plants to sustain our life styles, should we really question and block other countries from bulding them (esp. N. Korea and Iran), especially as that may be the only way they can get ahead?
- Posted by Crabby AppleThe nuclear power resurrection policy is the FINAL NAIL in the Labour Government’s coffin! How can Labour claim to be pro-environment and that nuclear power is ’safe’ when there is STILL no way of disposing of nuclear waste safely? Let’s just let people thousands of years down the line deal with our toxic rubbish instead shall we? This short-sighted, selfish thinking is utter madness!
Surely this planet has enough natural energy potential in the form of wind, wave and solar power to supply every single person (or machine) with an unlimited energy resource?! Why can’t the potential £billions of investment in building nuclear power stations be spent instead on building wind, wave and solar farms?
- Posted by Steve NethercottWe desperately need nuclear power. It supplies 20% of current power generation, but as we move toward electric powered cars and other non-polluting powered systems electricity consumption will increase. Conservation and improved efficiency will only slightly counter this. With rising fossil fuel prices caused by increasing demand from other countries and a plateau in oil production, the uncertainty of supply from politically volatile countries, the danger of global warming caused by burning fossil fuels and the inability of wind and water power to meet demand, we need nuclear power.
We need energy. Our whole civilisation depends on energy. I hope nuclear fission will be a stop gap until nuclear fusion eventually provides abundant, affordable, pollution free energy.
- Posted by Paul Hobbsi do not think nuclear power is safe enough to be used as a source off energy. it only takes one accident to contaminate a vast area off Britain and other. Country’s that surround us.rember Chernobyl. and that’s just one power stn. You cannot see radiation and the cancer it brings but it is still here in the u/k but it is quickly forgotton.What happened to wave power solar power and not to mention wind power.
- Posted by k edghillBefore any educated opinion can be made, one needs to know what design will be used in these new reactors? Check out the link below. Nuclear power has come a long way since most of the current reactors were built.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fa st_Reactor
- Posted by BigSteve703About time too.
In response to A. Reid. Surely, government should have the right to take action on matters which the public does not fully comprehend i.e. nuclear power. In fact the public at large has wildly hysterical and ill-informed views about the risks of nuclear power. These are perpetuated by the first use of nuclear energy (the atomic bomb) and hippy groups such as Greenpeace who have little or no knowledge of advancements in the fields of technology. Incidentally these groups rarely do anything to help society despite their large amount of press cover.
- Posted by puppetworxAs for the government stealing our money - yes they do. However I’d rather they spent it on cheap and safe nuclear power then on renewables. Renewables being expensive and inviable for much more then 10% of total national grid power production. Nuclear power is by far the cheapest form of energy supply. Whatever the number of stations they decide to open it won’t be enough.
Steve Nethercott you will note provides a perfect illustration of technological ignorance in his above post.
- Posted by puppetworxIt all just goes to show how much governments rely on people forgetting, or at least on a new generation not aware of the past. Would such a decision have been possible in the immediate years after Chernobyl? Of course not, but nowadays we no longer see pictures of the children who suffered, and are still suffering, from that disaster (which, according to nuclear scientists at the time, “could never happen”)…
- Posted by myersWhy not instead invest those billions of pounds in alternative energy - the energy of the future and create tens as many new jobs and technologies in the process? Labour, not for the first time, is again about to betray the interests of the ordinary (not rich) people of this country who elected them!
I think that there is a lot of hysteria about these issues. The green supporters want us to reduce our carbon dependence but then say they don’t want us to go nuclear. Renewable/reuseable isn’t a viable otion for many. If you live in a town or city, there isn’t enough consistant wind power, neighbours don’t want the noise, dc generators require significant plant to then store and create ac power. This makes wind generation a non-starter for domestic customers; twitchers are worried about bird deaths, country folk don’t like the visual impact (neither do visitors to beauty spots) making commercial wind generation unpopular. Solar is a relatively poor option unless you have the ideal orientation of your house and live in a high sunshine part of the uk - then it’s only good for part of the year. Uranium is pretty nasty stuff at the best of times, so what is the problem with using it and storing the by-product securely? We need electricity full-stop, therefore we have to produce it by one means or another. Let’s keep the financial issues separate from the environmental and accept that if we don’t do something NOW, in fifteen years time all the lights will start to go out. If there is a real, alternative out there - I haven’t heard of it - but I have no intention of going back to the dark ages and living in a cave.
- Posted by Keith DawsonThis is yes another example of the Government’s arrogance, short-termism and selling out to industry. Yet again they have ignored the full impacts of investing in nuclear - at huge long-term economic, social and environmental costs. They have ignored the time it will take to install new infrastructure and the vast decommissioning costs. I sincerely hope that Greenpeace takes the initiative yet again and puts a stop to this madness. A mixed renewable energy must portfolio must be taken seriously.
Check out Greenpeace’s video ‘the convenient solution’ for further info on renewables: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climat e/the-convenient-solution-20070718
- Posted by angryNuclear Power Generation is one of the Great Myths of the 20th and 21st Centuries. The stark reality is that Nuclear Powers’ primary value to those that posses it is soley in having the ability to utterly destroy an given ‘enemy’.
Hiroshima was a demonstration of that power, as was Nagasaki.
The Government of Gordon Brown has decreed a committment to War by comitting to Trident and to Nuclear Powered Electricity Generation (a cover for production of weapons grade materials such as Depleted Uranium and Explosive Grade Uranium).
Gordon Brown has a possibly 40 odd years in which to come to terms with this latest decision - his children, grand children and great grand children, and many generations beyond will have to live with the results.
I pray we see no ‘accidents’ or worse!
- Posted by conor cruise o'brienI am in favour of nuclear but to hear all these people shouting doom and gloom about possible nuclear disaster with a plant as if it is inevitable.
Any facility has the potential to cause harm, look at all the chemical plants but people seem to ignore the potential of leaks from these, what about oil rigs, they could explode, we shouldnt build them I guess aswell because they might go bang but we need the oil - We also need energy
Yes a nuclear plant has the potential to be a national or global problem if a problem was to occur but the amount of safety and backups that now are included in them makes it very unlikely that a castrophic failure would occur.
France have been using nuclear for decades and have had no serious problems and as the technology becomes more mature and understood the design of more modern reactors is likely to be even better and safer.
- Posted by ZachI firmly believe that Nuclear has a place in our future electricity generation mix. Modern Nuclear Reactors are built with decommissioning in mind and generate a mere fraction of the waste produced by most of the reactors currently operating in this country.
- Posted by D HensonNuclear is dirty, and unsafe. It will be a burden on future generations and terrorist targets. I understand we need to be free from dependance on foreign energy sources, but surely there must be another way? In the last 50 years has nobody come up with a new idea other than Dirty nuclear power?
- Posted by DavidWhat’s the bet that the UK’s contracts for the building of these new & expensive reactors goes to a US company…. another example of the UK paying off it’s WWII debt…. a bit like the UK signing up for more nuclear missiles (US built of course)
- Posted by Sonny HooperSure, we need a solution to our future power needs, renewable supplies & cutting the power we use by strong rule (not market lead incentives) are better answers than selling our souls to the radioactive devil..
We urgently need a solution to be able to produce much more electricity that does not produce so much CO2 it destroys the world.
Currently I believe we use about the same amount of energy from gas as we are producing through electric. Whilst burning gas creates less pollution than coal our gas is rapidly running out so we only have a few years more before we will need to import ALL our gas. Apart from where will we get the money to pay for it; I don’t have any confidence that we will be able to reliably obtain this. So we need to be able to replace the “gas energy” with electric i.e. double our electricity generation.
Oh yes, oil is in a similar position except that it is the fossil fuel that is running out the fastest. Thus PDQ we will need to get to electric or hydrogen (that needs electric to make it) to fuel our transport. We use about 80 million tonnes of oil a year or about the same energy equivalent as gas and electricity. So maybe we need three times as much electricity???
The age of cheap energy is over.
So I would go for a huge program to build three or four times the requirement from wind both offshore and onshore (cheaper) but at the coast where the wind is more reliable and faster. Wind is proven technology. The wind still blows at night so when demand is less can be used for transport to charge batteries or create hydrogen.
I don’t know how much we can get from waves but think this is still fairly experimental and the largest is a fraction of one small power plant. Encourage micro hydro generators e.g. at locks. A barrage is probably on and there has been one running in France for many years but I bet there will be an issue with fish, birds or ….
Solar PV cells today just don’t produce much energy in the UK being northerly and cloudy but a couple of companies claim to be able to soon produce them at a tenth of current costs which will be interesting if they can produce them in volume.
We will probably still need some backup for the rare occasions without enough wind so is it to be coal or nuclear?
Here’s my ten point plan devised in the last ten minutes:-) to reduce the energy we use and create more:
Ban incandescent lights with a three month period.
Apply a tax on carrier bags with immediate effect, say 20p. Ireland has this and China has just banned them this week.
Ban sales of new cars over 400 carbons with a three month period with a long term stated plan to reduce this further each year. Say 350 by the following year, then 300 the next and so on. This could be combined with an auction for “right to buy” permits for the next level of car down similar to Singapore.
Stop expansion of airports and roads with immediate effect.
Electrify all railways – do not order new diesel engines.
Simplify planning permission for renewable generators and encourage renewable generators with some sort of tax & benefit that will encourage existing generators to “go green” much more rapidly.
For all new building ensure they are fully self sufficient for heating, i.e. insulated to German “PassivHaus” standards and use solar water heating plus the capability to include PV to grid.
Apply a tax on electrical devices over their working life that covers the cost of offsetting the CO2 down to the level of “A+” or “A” performing devices. This will encourage people to buy “A” class devices since now people often tend to just look at the initial price and others who have no interest in the running costs just the up-front costs e.g. landlords, builders.
Prevent people mortgaging their property to take out capital to spend on more useless “stuff”.
Make all consumer goods have a 20 year life span and built to be repaired not thrown away.
- Posted by TonyWLet us welcome the Government’s belated decision. Electricity generation accounts for about a third of the UK’s total CO2 production, and it is a no-brainer that nuclear power, the renewables AND energy efficiency improvements will have to play a part in reducing this. However it is not surprising that as many as 37% of people are against nuclear power (44% are for it). Understanding what nuclear power is and what its risks are is not something people can readily gain, and there is an industry of those committed to opposing nuclear who use every opportunity to assert that it’s both dangerous, expensive and unnecessary. The media give greater prominence to their views than they warrant.
Some facts:
1. Nuclear power has been safely generating electricity in the UK for 50 years.
2. Just as aeroplanes have become safer over the years, so the next nuclear stations to be built will be intrinsically more safe (ie use better technology and be of better designs) than those built in the early years.
3. No station will be built or allowed to operate in the UK unless it can satisfy the extremely exacting requirements of the independent nuclear inspectorate.
4. Chernobyl is irrelevant to the debate. It was of an inherently unsafe design (that could not have been licensed in the West), operated irresponsibly, and in the absence of any overseeing regulator or even management system.
5. Future stations are unlikely to be of the sort that requires fuel to be reprocessed. Reprocessing (at Sellafield and Dounreay) has in the past given rise to nuclear industry’s greatest environmental concerns.
6. Waste disposal is held up as an intractable problem. Finding a disposal site for those wastes that cannot currently be disp[osed of is primarily a socio-political issue, not a technical one. It will have to be solved eventually to deal with the wastes that already exist, and once solved for these dealing with the much smaller volumes to arise from any new build will be a modest increment. Until a disposal route is available there is no problem in storing the wastes in purpose designed facilities that ensure their absolute safety and isolation from the environment.
7. End of life costs can be accurately estimated from reactors that have already been dismantled.
These costs are relatively modest in relation to the value of lifetime electricity generated. The c.£70 billion currently estimated by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority for cleaning up the existing nuclear facilities is largely associated with decommissioning the fuel reprocessing plants and other facilities at Sellafield and Dounreay (not relevant to the decommissioning of power stations), and with the dismantling of the older (magnox) power stations which are much more expensive to take apart than today’s designs.
8.Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are distinct issues. Having nuclear power does not commit one to having weapons, and does not lead to proliferation. The issue with Iran and North Korea is not with their having nuclear power stations but of wanting to build up the technology from which they could make a bomb.
9. Nuclear power stations cost more to build than gas, coal or oil ones, but their fuel costs are very much less. They are not moreover affected by the current increase in the world prices for these fuels. However, because of the big up-front investments the operators have to make in building nuclear stations, they need some assurance that Government will not change the rules that will allow them to make their expected return over their lifetimes. With fossil fuels likely to continue increasing in price, and a value put on all non-carbon energy sources, it is difficult to accept the argument of those who dismiss nuclear as too expensive.
- Posted by Ian CollsThe will of the people is to have power in their homes, to run their cars and keep their life styles. The people who seem to have the biggest voices are always the ANTI brigade. Most of my contacts are for a sensible mix of generation of electricity including Nuclear, wind, wave, gas, COAL, and Hydro. This leads me to believe that most people either are for nuclear or do not care. The anti lobby do take into account the large apathetic majority of people which is why it is left to the politicians to make these decisions and they take a very measured view (usually) even if it is unpopular with a few people. Nuclear has its problems but so does everything else which is why we need the mix.
- Posted by PGFThis is a massive dissapointment for the renewables sector which, with the right investment, is on the verge of a boom comparable to the north sea oil rush.
Since the start of the 1970s, the government has invested 83 billion pounds on nuclear research and development (13 billion) and nuclear waste management (70 billion). Renewables on the other hand have in the same time have had a comparatively measly 1 billion.*
The basic point here is that it is easier, safer, greener and in the long run cheaper to extract energy from moving water (tidal/hydro/wave), the wind, the sun and the other renewable options than it is to split atoms!!!
What we need is immediate massive investment in renewables, not to go on producing nuclear waste which remains dangerous to humans for tens of thousands of years. Tens of thousands of years - what kind of legacy is that for us to leave future generations to deal with?
D E Haslett - A balanced portfolio of all the renewable sources (wind, wave, solar, tidal, geothermal, sustainable biomass) combined with energy efficiency and wide scale use of new technologies such as CHP plants could supply all of the world’s energy needs many time over.
* Greenpeace figures, watch the video at http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climat e/the-convenient-solution-20070718
- Posted by Tom WHow many more times are the big multinational companies going to steal the democratic rights of the people?
- Posted by Kevin ColemanIt is outrageous that once again greed and a quick fix takes precedence over common sense solutions that are readily achievable with little risk to the environment or the people. The simple reason is because they are not profitable and they do not promote the biggest conspiracy of all….economic growth!
How much further down the slippery slope to our own demise are we going to be pushed by the corporate masters greed?
I for one will be putting my full efforts behind stopping this atrocity from ever becoming a reality.
I am an engineer on the fringes of Nuclear Power. Nuclear power is the only way to go if we don’t want the lights in our power hungry society to go out. Is it safe ? yes !! I and all the people who work with and have families near to a reactor must think so or we wouldn’t be there. To all the tree huggers and greenpeace get off your high horses and come into the real world.
- Posted by JulianWhere are the pro-nuclear people coming from? Do they not realise that storage of nuclear waste will cost taxpayers for THOUSANDS of years! This is the greatest opportunity this country will ever have to invest in our future through renewable energy sources - over thousands of years we will save billions of pounds and probably millions of lives. This is a fantastic opportunity. The government needs to invest in green energy now, not in 2020 when many coastal areas will be submerged and the global impact of our fossil fuel dependence will have reached the point of no return.
- Posted by J LoptsonI’ve grown up with men that worked on nuclear sites in wales. i’ve heard every possible arguement for and agaisnt nuclear power. over all the ’safey problems’ most which are mostly greenpeace propaganda spread through fear and ignorance, don’t outweigh the benifits of nuclear power. I wellcome the governments plans and hope that such ‘Green’ groups don’t chain themselves in the way of progress for too long.
- Posted by Harry Hopkinnsthe old oh we,ll not be around in a hundred years to see the problem caused by the waste side of it as shown up, madness theres no thought gone in to the world that future generations will have to live in and deal with. stick with the coal as a back up which just so happens to be better at producing massive amounts of power from fewer sites than nuclear and back up every green form of power generation possible.
another possible is for say the power from say solar or wind to be stored in massive battery banks with invertors on an industrial scale. we need to think it over and not just go for a quick fix that in the long term as massive long term affects.
- Posted by keithThe New Labour Government has wasted its years while the Electricity Generators have been wasting North Sea Gas in their power stations built on the concept of cheap energy, while allowing British Energy Shareholders investment go down the tubes. Pay-back Time is at Hand !! Of course we need nuclear power stations, we needed them long ago, why do you think France has so many?
- Posted by William FowlerIf the wind industry stopped sucking up all the renewables grants and ROC’s on their unreliable turbines that will never meet the demands of the country, then other forms of renewable power like tidal might get seriously looked at and we would not be discusing new nuclear power. Unfortunatly the greens have been hypmotised by the wind companies and their spinning machines that provide bearly enough power to heat a free range incubator and the goverment see this and are left with the only option, going for nuclear power.
- Posted by TonyNuclear is the way to go. It’s clean, safe, and efficient, unlike any of the alternatives proposed above (incl. coal power, at 38% efficient). The uninformed hysterical mobs baying for “the government’s” head are the ones that voted ‘them’ in - thereby giving consent to ‘them’ to make decisions on the public’s behalf. If you don’t like, get out there and vote ‘them’ out. If you don’t vote, don’t complain! People espousing technical solutions with no technical knowledge should likewise keep their traps shut - you do the madding crowd no favours by tarring them with the brush of ignorance and hysteria. Just stick to hysteria, it has no counterfactual! Massive battery banks, indeed, Keith - any idea how much lead and acid that’s require, and how dangerous that production would be? Think, then type…
Renewables are great too, but exactly none (i.e. zero) of them are implementable today on the scale required, and the same tree-huggers will be out there complaining about bird-strikes and fish-kills and eyesores and Aunty Madge’s stamp collection going mouldy. Because nuclear is being proposed doesn’t mean that research on alternatives will stop - it’s not a binary system! But think about this: would you like for the lights to go out at some point and have renewables still have ten years of research required to make them implementable? Think about it before you shoot your gob off, people.
About safety: how many people use nuclear generated electricity? Let’s say ‘x’. How many of those same people use cars? Let’s say 90%, (doesn’t matter if it’s only 20%). Of those people, how many WILL die from cars, vs those that MAY die from some (very) low-probability nuclear accident? Many more, my friends. Therefore, we should ban all cars, and walk to environmental rallies from now on… Much safer!
And you in the back there - no more farting!
- Posted by Neil MThe only way forward is a mixed economy of fossils, nuclear and renewables. The fossils have got to decrease not only because of global warming but also because they are a finite resource.
- Posted by RobertThe problem seems to be that some part of the Green lobby is against all forms of energy production fossils because of global warming and nuclear and renewables for (different) environmental reasons but they are simply not facing up to realities.
When nuclear power was first developed, we were promised ” electricity too cheap to meter” A promise that was never kept. This decision is an easy way out in the short term but willl leave a huge legacy of cost for the future. A old power station needs care and monitoring for 100 years after it ends it’s 40 year life span.
- Posted by phil stearnWe need to use less and waste less.
Whatever happened to wave power? I’ve never seen a flat calm sea.
About time too! I’m fed up with all the whinging about nuclear power stations - some of the biggest whingers being those that consume the most energy and who are least preapared to compromise upon their lifestyles! We have to be relaistic. Fossil fuels are running out. We all want to live in heated homes, sue computers, drive cars, watch Tv, listen to the radio, use washing machines etc etc etc. Renewable sources of energy are never realistically going to provide the energy that we require, and in the absence of any other solutions nuclear power is the only option. Ok we may get the odd Chernobyl incident -, but that is the price we are going to have to pay if we want to continue to live as we do.
- Posted by NickWe are I presume taking this decision to avoid being dependant on “Foreign” sources of gas, coal, oil etc.
So a strategic decision is taken by both Labour and agreed wholeheartedly by the Conservative party to build what must be the most risky form of power generation known to mankind. This decision will impact on the lives of our children and children’s children for 100s if not 1000s of years. (The half life of the radioactive isotopes involved in these processes can be as long as 4.5 billion years).
Today there are over 800,000 children suffering directly from various cancers as a result of the accident at Chernobyl, and that accident happened over 20 years ago; these children are not yet teenagers.
So to avoid working together with our global partners in what we are told increasingly is a global economy we as a people are prepared to risk the future health and wellbeing of our future geerations.
We truly have the government and opposition we deserve if we let this decision go unchallenged and unrevised.
- Posted by BrianI’m pro nuclear because i’ve worked in the industry for 20 years and I understand it. It is a safe technology when used properly and it is operated in a highly regulated framework in the uk (this is ironically in no small part due to the anti -nulcear movements concerns)
I also understand that the amount of energy avialable from renewables is never going to meet our power hungry lifestyles. Nor should it be assumed that every renewable project will get a green light with no local or environmentalist opposition.
So as a nation we either drastically change our habits (and our properties) or we invest in a technology that doesn’t contribute to global warming.
There is a place for renewables but you don’t need to do many sums to figure out how big a windfarm has to be cope with the uk population demands (its a windfarm about the size of france)
My only concern is that protestors will delay the start dates of these reactors and we will all bear the cost (financial and social). What we do need though is a standard design so that there are economies of scale in terms of buyig one kind of fuel , one type of flask ,one type of storage solution - this isn’t something that should be left to the free market to decide - its not a blu ray v.s hd type decision . These reactors will be around at least 30 years and we dont want five differnt types with five lots of design costs, safety assessment costs and five differnt sets of costs for taking them apart again etc. ps. the nuclear know how in the uk is second to none - we should be leading the way in this area and showing the rest of the world how its done (unless of course apple or sony come up with a reactor which is better and smaller! )
- Posted by Mike NukeAT LAST - the wordl is in grave danger from peak oil in decades at most and these tree hugging idiot children are talking of thousand of years in the future - I despair of such human stupidity - they think windmills are the answer - DREAMERS! and dangerous dreamers - we MUST built nuclear plants NOW or your lights go out in 10 years… then we will be forced to eat the tree huggers..
- Posted by ianNuclear power is killing the earth! Why do we need them? We need more solar and wind energy, they should spend the money for these nuclear power plants on eco-friendly forms of electricity. It gives the same amount electricity as nuclear does, with the added bonus of it being safer. And people against nuclear power are not barking mad, they are wise and you people who are for nuclear power are just plain stupid and have no regard for the planet and the next generation of people to come after you.
- Posted by Chloe WilsonThere are many types of reactors available. The UK had some excellent technology. Lets not build more of those boiling kettles, aka PWRs which were originally designed for Submarine Craft use. lets build the type that produce little or no waste, and are not useful for generating weapons. I am usually for multifunction systems, but not one which creates material for nuclear weapons. We should use the ‘renewables’ but the wind doesn’t blow all the time, the waves do wave most of the time. Energy policy is too big and too long term an issue to be in the hands of politicians. The bank of England looks after the money, so Professional Engineers must look after the energy.
- Posted by Ani DeaIt gives me a warm feeling in my heart to see that most of the comments here are rational and sensible. Of the comments against, Chernobyl seems to pop up alot, but not one mention of 3 Mile Island, in which 0 people died. Compare this to the many people killed yearly in coal mines and oil rigs and fighting in wars for oil. Then add in the reduced enviromental impact and I think things are looking up. Perhaps it’s time to start a pro-nuclear rally, so that reason and rationality do not get drowned out by the so called enviromentalists, who seem to be largly fighting western goverments and capitalism.
- Posted by DazLook we all know about chernobyl , but since it’s become safer than before lets face it how many nuclear accidents have there been since that one ?. yes there are dangers and there downright expensive but they produce more power than coal , wind and hydro. I personally dont want to have no power when oil runs out.
what are the cons/pro’s in my oppion
Pro’s
- Clean and Pretty much zero carbon emissions
- Power output is more than other renewables and oil
- Safety rapidly improved since world’s worst nuclear accident meltdown in Chernobyl in 86 and minor meltdown at 3 Mile Island in the 70’s
Cons
- Dangerous / Risk of Meltdown
Most reactors contain Deadly material like
caesium-137, iodine-131, strontium-90 and other radionuclides.
- Expensive
- Requires constant montioring.
- Used Fuel is hard to remove it still contains remaints of the material in the reactor and waste cannot get water in it otherwise it can seep into the ground and spread to water supply’s.
- Alot of the materials need careful cleaning before they can be used.
- Posted by TimFinally, this Government has shown some guts, balls and backbone.
- Posted by klingorThe Stone Age Appreciation Society aka FoE aka the Green Party overlook that(a)the population of the Earth is 6 billion not 6 million and (b)in the developed world, who are the ones capable of building and running safe reactors, oil is far more usefully employed producing plastics rather than energy.
As for Chernobyl, if you use that as a reason why nuclear power should not be used, then by the same process, all train services in Europe should be scrapped because a train crash in India has killed 600 passengers. It completely overlooks differences in regulatory oversight, equipment loading, built-in fault tolerance and the technological superiority of one system versus the other.
As for disposing of nuclear waste from a reactor, just drill a very deep pit shaft and chuck it dowh there. It is only the heavy-metal radionuclides that are really dangerous to life, and that is because of their heavy-metal nature(cf Lead - about as non-radioactive as you can get but still toxic) and not their intrinsic radioactivity. Radiation is all around us, from the soil, the sun and the rock under our feet. A unit of radiation is not intrinsically more dangerous because it was uranium from a reactor which produced it, rather than the decay of a uranium atom in granite.
(to be continued)
If the ammount of money it would take to build these nuclear plants was used to fund a proper subsidy for solar panels(rather than the current farce that is the Low Carbon Building programme) on all residential and commercial buildings then there would be no need for any additional power generation. It won’t ever happen though - too much corporate greed and besides we can’t have everybody being self sufficient now can we!!
- Posted by A CarrI also worked in the industry for many years but left as I realised that the risk assessment carried out for such facilities was very questionable and suspect. The justification for the plants at that time was very closely linked with the generation of nuclear material for the arms industry.
Today the need is diffeent possibly, but the risks are still way outside the vision of all of us; how can we quantify the risk of a serious incident/spillage taking place in 100 or 200 years. Therefore if those risks can not be quantified the risk is too great.
We have to put more resource into quantifying other sources of power and also better utilisation of the power resources we still have and can develop.
I know personally that I would put up with many discomforts rather than have a Nuclear waste tip or power station or reprocessing plant within my locality.
If Nuclear power plants are so safe why not build them next to the new Oplympic facility in london close to where these decisions are taken.
- Posted by BrianRe: Nuclear Vs. Environmentally-Friendly ‘clean’’ Hydropower - Overlooked totally by Government
The government did not support the Western Water Highway scheme that a £500,000 investment study determined would create 10% of the total primary energy needs for Britain in perpetuity and from environmentally friendly non-polluting clean hydropower at a cost of £9 billion. No nuclear waste problems at all with this scheme and where this waste currently cost the UK taxpayer over £70 billion a year. Indeed added to this, eight new nuclear power stations would only produce 12.5% of our total primary energy requirement according to a recent study and cost anything from £25 billion upwards. The government as always has again got their strategy and figures completely wrong. But the sad point of all this governmental mismanagement is that the total burden of these incompetencies will be borne totally by the people themselves through crippling direct energy bills and government taxation. Therefore the 8 million plus classified ‘poor’ in this country will definitely grow under this present government’s thinking and where the poor will definitely get much poorer by the year. It is therefore time that the government really did think out fully it’s under performing very high cost strategies for the people of Britain, for the future financial burden will be astronomical. Indeed, mark my words when I say that in 10-years time energy will be costing British families and people 500% more at least than it is today. Unbelievable, you will see.
Dr David Hill
- Posted by dr david hillWorld Innovation Foundation
Bern, Switzerland
UK Postal Address: P O Box A60, Huddersfield,
HD1 1XJ, United Kingdom
UK Tel:0044(0)1484 537181
10th January 2008
Claims that nuclear power is a clean energy source are not true. Nuclear power should not be used as an energy source because:
A) nuclear waste remains dangerous for 1000’s of years. Future contamination to the environment possible
B) accidental leaks (e.g. Sellafield etc) contaminate the environment
C) major incidents (e.g. Chernobyl) cause massive contamination, rendering vast areas of land uninhabitable for years
- Posted by MarkI have not taken the time to read all the comments, but I for one do not have a direct problem with nuclear power if the government cant provide adequit proof that the are helping to fund research into better and safer plants, more reliable reactors and a solotion to nuclear waste that wil not be left to our future generations to worry about. Our lives are so busy that none of us has the time to sit back and think ” O, I wonder if this park will still be this green when my grandson is my age” no.. but what about his grandson? do we leave it up to the government to live for the now and just hope that future generations still have some clear air and water. It doesn’t help that the government use the taxes we pay to build bigger airports and more powerfull powerplants to sustain the lifestile we work so hard for if those things mess up the chances for the future to even have a life
- Posted by c heynekeToo little too late….. We should have started buiding new reactors ten years ago and not listened to the green ‘extremists’ who have left our government falling over themselves to be environmentally correct (NOT) and go down the road of expensive windmills (blackout when the wind drops). I work within the nuclear industry and can say without a lie that it is the safeest industry in the UK. The UK should have started a new build ten years ago and i feel that 4 reactors within the next 10 to 15 years is insufficient and we still may find ourselves plunged into darkness, and the first people to complain WILL be the very same people who are today complaining that this new build should not go ahead……………………..
- Posted by andy smithim harry,
im 15, in year 10 and currently studying nuclear energy in phisics.
our teacher was talking about this desision today.
we came up with our thaughts and they are as follows…
we have energy to last up to 2015.. so long as we dont get in a war with the east (which we are already) therefore, there is a year gap in which there will be bad energy. power cuts and so on, i dont like the sound of that.
the ‘world’ is all getting into nuclear energy. great! good and clean. keep pollution levels down.
but what about the pollution it will cause.
the dangerous waste that producing nuclear engery makes takes 1/4 of a million years to become ‘un reactive’ which means stuffing all the reactive waste in the ground for years.. how much ground do we have!
its okay for the older generations, they’ll all be dead before anything bad happens. its probably going to be okay for my generation. but what about the ones that are still to come. could we be creating a mass murder for our childrens childern?
how much does it take for a terrorist to train up to work in a station, take away the elements that stop a nuclear station becoming a bomb and explode the station. again we are just making more ways to muder people.
goverment just want what suits them. everyone knows that… someone went up to them and said ‘nuclear power will make up reach our emmisions targets’ and they all said ‘yeh!, do that.’
WAKE UP, nuclear power is BAD, we’re just too lazy to find nicer ways to go green!
- Posted by harry butcherThe undeniable truth is that this decision is a huge mistake. We are truely underestimating the threat to our planet caused by the wrong decisions that we as a species have made. Luckily we have been given the opportunity, as a rich nation state, to have options on where we should look for our energy. In an age when environmental issues are so pressing we should be setting an example to developing countries but unfortunately I believe that the ‘go ahead’ for nuclear power here is showing the reverse. Surely Britain should be leading the way in the fight to save the planet by looking to renewable energy while we still have the chance, other than goung with the easy option - nuclear power.
- Posted by Samuel MoppettIt seems that humans, by their nature have never learned from their mistakes and I wonder how long it will be until we realise that we are too late?
Just a couple of things :
1: When petrol hits £50 a litre and we cannot cook our food or heat our homes, where will the green party be then or the people who constantly campaign against progress and atually waste money?
2: Nice idea to protest all the time but bottom line is oil is running out and no matter how many movies we watch there is no such thing as free energy so we need an alternative.
3: Nuclear Energy, mmmmm, not my 1st choice but guess what, needs must. Just ask France, one of the bigges Nuclear powers in Europe. Oh you didnt realise this ever preaching country actually uses nuclear power yet preaches such Green ethics!
4: Dont believe what you read or hear in the media and make up your own mind. Maybe then someday the world will make sense again…
- Posted by Steve CrawfordI think this idea is really stupid! I dont want to be living in any area that has nuclear power in it!
- Posted by BecciI think if the government keep treating the country like a carpet to wipe their feet on the planet is going to start retaliating.
Not to mention if an accident happened, these so called radioactive professionals arent miracle workers, say if nuclear energy did break out? The government would leave quicker than we could and we would be here stuck to just die..
things are going to end very horribly if these stupid ideas dont stop now!
Give the public something for once… argghhhhh the government get right on my nerves… they disgust me.
How do we know that if the energy runs out faster than the government anticipated that the government wont screw us over further and cut off our energy supplies leaving energy for them to use. I can actually see that happening.. i hate the government…literally…i just dont know why the public follow government rules.. its the public thats really in control .. without the public the government wont mean a thing..thats all im saying..
- Posted by BecciHave read all the comments. Seems to me that change to a low fossil energy econmony is inevitable. If peak oil is right which I think one has, for risk analysis, to assume how much time do we really have? Some say we are already over the peak. So we need to conserve oil now for use as a chemical, not energy, resource.
Agro-chemicals are basic to our ability to support the population explosion that has occurred due to the last couple of centuries cheap fossil energy, without them starvation will occur in UK. Pre fossil fuel economy the population was a fraction of the near 60 million we now have.
All current available technologies are not as economic as fossil fuel so we had better all get used to the idea of a more restricted life style and if we get it wrong then be prepared for civil unrest poverty and starvation on a major scale.
- Posted by pete youngwe need a reliable energy source, so if you do not like nuclear power find a clean viable alternative that nobody will moan about!We can have them but no to Iran or North Korea ? oh dear we are so arrogant in the western world are we not? If there are so many anti nuclear people in our so called democratic society stand up and fight,if you are the majority you will be heard but I get the feeling the when i come in on a cold winters day in 2015-20 I will be warming my tootsies on an electric fire powered by a nuclear power station
- Posted by Andy routThis is one of those topics that is bound to polarise views. I’ve read a lot of comments about peoples ‘needs’ - the fact is you don’t ‘need’ electricity to survive, not unless you’re on a life support machine of some description. You ‘want’ it, in the same selfish way that this generation in particular seems to demand what it wants, when it wants it and damn the consequences.
There are some other rather amusing comments regarding the governments right to act on issues we as the public ‘don’t understand’ - how many members of the cabinet have qualifications or experience directly regarding safe nuclear energy exactly? All governments are innevitably bureaucratic machines that get things wrong, it’s one thing for an envelope with some disks in it to go missing, it’s quite another to ok a nuclear power station with a faulty design where contractors have looked to save some money. Look at the disaster that winscale so very nearly was!
All of these decisions are based on very short term and selfish views. Our descendants are going to look back on this time in disgust, and are going to be left with the legacy of trying to put right our mistakes.
I’m all for nuclear energy if it’s balanced by renewable resources (which can and do work by the way, they just haven’t been given the budget that even existing nuclear power has), and when a genuine intelligent plan for the disposal of the waste is put together, and furthermore as long as they are all based in London. Why is it that, if they are as safe as we are led to believe, they are still being built well away from major conurbations? Let’s see one in the heart of every city and then see how many supporters there are still for it.
It’s time we collectively started looking forward and thinking through where we’re going as a nation, and frankly as a race. We need to stop making knee jerk reactions to crisis which have plainly been on the cards for decades (1970s fuel shortages in the states, 1990s war in Iraq all for securing oil), grow up and take responisiblity for our individual and collective actions.
I am not a green ‘extremist’ (there really are some dreadful examples of stereotypes being dragged in here by some people), I’m merely someone encouraging ‘thought’. All you have to do is take a deep breath, look at all the facts and then draw your conclusion.
- Posted by JimlaadMany of the replies above show a real fear of nuclear power, and some people seem to believe it is a threat to the planet.
The concerns relate to the long-lived nature of its wastes, to the risk of radioactive leaks, and to the riks of catastrophic accidents a la Chernobyl.
Nuclear power produces wastes which are dangerous if the radioactivity gets into the environment and is taken up by our bodies. By volume most wastes are of low radioactivity and this will decay to nothing within a hundred or so years. Some, small amounts will remain hazardous for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. (Note, though, that some conventional industrial wastes such as arsenic remain hazardous FOR EVER.) For the immediate future these wastes can easily be kept in a form, and in secure facilities, so as to guarantee that there will be no risk of the radioactivity leaking into the environment and causing harm or risk to people or wildlife. For the long term they need to be put into a place where they can be left without any human management. This is likely to be in deep geological formations. To be sure that they will then not be a risk to future generations we must be confident that they will not be accidentally encountered (eg by future mining or drilling operations)or geological changes, and that the radioactivity will not be brought to the surface through water leaching it out over the next 100,000 years or so. Geologists and other scientists are increasingly confident that suitable sites can be found where all this can be assured.
Leakages of radioactivity from nuclear plants are reported from time to time. Often these leakages are because of failings in old plant built 40-50 years ago when standards were different. Safety standards today are such that new plant is very much less likely to experience such failings. Moreover, even though such incidents are serious (they should not happen), any potential health hazard that results, either to the workforce or the general population is likely to be small in comparison with those from the toxic and other polluting emissions from all our other industrial activities. We should remember that we live in a (naturally) radioactive world - the ground is slightly radioactive, so is our food and so are our bodies. We happily expose ourselves to much greater radiation when we have our dental or hospital x-rays. The significance of leaks from the nuclear industry should be seen in this context.
Big nuclear accidents create fear. But the fact is that we have learnt so much that the likelihood of such an accident is now infinitessimally small. Regulation requires that no reactor can be built or allowed to operate unless it satisfies the most stringent safety requirements. These involve the following:
- that as far as possible the laws of physics ensure that whatever happens the reactor can be brought back to a safe state;
- Posted by Ian Colls- that the reactor is engineered so that in the event of a fault it can be brought to a safe state without human intervention (the accident at Three Mile Island would not have developed had the operators done nothing!! Their attempts to correct a minor fault made matters infinetly worse);
- that in the event of these engineered systems failing, there are other systems that will achieve the same result;
- that if all fails, the reactor is so contained to limit the likelihood of any release of radioactivity to the environment;
- that operators are well trained, have the instrumentation to know what is happening in the reactor before any fault situation starts to develop, and have the management control to prevent the sort of irresponsible actions that led to Chernobyl (where safety systems had been deliberately switched off).
I would just like to agree with a previous person that wrote that we are living in a rip-off Britain. I come from Northern Ireland which is supposed to be part of britain yet when we are over anywhere in the UK we must make sure we have english money yet ours is sterling just the same and we are part of britain.
With education being so dire as this it is hardly surprising that the government want to kill us all. They seem to forget the past with certain issues regarding nuclear power.
Why do these people in power think they have the right. They do not own the country and frankly no matter who is in power they are all the same to some degree or another.
Lets face facts we all need something to continue the power but it has to be something that is almost 100% secure and will not cause any long term damage to peoples health. How will the government cope in years to come when there is a problem with one of the plants and radioactive material leaks out and lots of people are affected. The hospitals at present our overstretched as it is. Get your act together guys.
You went to was in Iraq to get the oil oh sorry thats not your version of events but yet we are still paying over the nose for to heat our homes. You don’t seem to realise that there is many householders out there now me and my partner one of them which simply cannot afford the bills that our coming in each month. Water rates our coming our way soon to but yet the water rates which we our paying at present through our local council rates will not be coming of so we pay twice now.
I think we should all as part of Britian have a say as to what is happening not just the pen pushers. What right have they to deal with peoples lives. Typical of the Governments one night you go to bed next day you wake up and they have decided how your lifes will be in the next 10 years.
Sack them all they are useless so and so’s. Start talking to the public who vote you in after all they are the people who put you there. Start listening to the people put out a public vote in matters like this in the future.
- Posted by Mr D. FrenchThe UK government has, in typical fashion, left the decision on nuclear power to the last possible moment but has finally acknowledged the reality of the matter. We can have some measure of secure energy from nuclear power or we can pay protection money to Russia and have the lights go out periodically during the winter months to keep us aware of who calls the shots. Wind, solar and hydro power can never provide more than a tiny fraction of the reliable energy supply needed by a developed country such as the UK and large scale wave or tidal power projects are decades away. The real shame in yesterday’s decision is that due to the squealing of the “antis” over the past 30 years successive UK governments have throttled what used to be a world leading UK nuclear industry and we now have to rely on foreigners to build the new stations for us.
- Posted by Mike TMost people who work in the nuclear industry or actually live near a nuclear station presently have no reservation about more nuclear station.
The people who work in the industry know the safe guards and the improvements that are in place for modern reactors and the likelyhood of a “chernobyl” type event is very unlikely.
The people who live near by a present reactor know the reality of doing so and are happy. I have personally have lived near a coal fired station and a nuclear plant and I would certainly pick nuclear everytime. They are inherently cleaner as coal stations emit far more toxic gases from there stacks than nuclear station in there day to day running. They are smaller in size generally and have less impact on the near by enviroment so these green peace people like to quote fact and figures supporting their case but it is so biased its untrue.
Like the recent case of a”bribe” for the local people of drigg for excepting the LLW repository. If it was a wind farm or solar plant it would be described as a grant or subsidy by green peace.
The claim the government use spin which they certainly do but certainly not as much as greenpeace do and the enviromentlist.
I saw one comment of almost 800,000 childeren directly affected by Chernobyl which is typical propogando and so far from the truth its not even on this planet
- Posted by ZachThe argument is simple. Nuclear power is good because it is green.
Wrong. The output is green, but the method of extracting uranium in the first place is not.
Besides, the waste produced from the output, cannot be disposed in anything less than thousands of years and is radioactive until then.
How can that possibly be greener?
This is not the way to find solutions to the environmental crises we currently face. In fact, safety & terrorist attacks aside, it is still probably worsening the situation for the environment because of the former reasons mentioned.
- Posted by Karlos the Unhappy JackylI really need to point out some facts which don’t seem to be being discussed at the moment. These new generation Nuclear power stations are different from the ones we currently have. The technology is being developed in South Africa for example to make Pebble Bed Modular Reactors which produce waste which is safe in 100 years, not the tens of thousands currently being touted by Geenpeace. It is also cooled by gas so is not reliant on being situated by the sea or rivers. It is designed to be inherently safe and simply could not go into meltdown as Chernobyl did. There are vast differences between the old style and this new technlogy.
- Posted by J. ReidIts like saying a diesel and a petrol engine are the same. The forward motion of the vehicle is the only similarity, they both work on different principles.
At last.
- Posted by SamThey really need to get cracking as they will not have a skilled workforce to build and maintain these plants. The majority of skilled workers in this field are retired/retiring or changing to other types of work or going/gone to other countries or work like oilrigs due to the constant decommissioning in this country. As Nuclear had no future in this country graduates have not been studying this area anymore.
A good start would be to inform current decommissioning staff they are needed and provide insentives to remain in the field and start training again
More conservation, turn off lights, don’t use disposables, bring your own bags to the store, BUY LOCAL
- Posted by Anon“800,000 children living today directly impacted by Chernobyl 20 years after the incident” is not way off the truth. I know some of them personally as we have them over here in the UK to provide them with a respite from the unhealthy environment they live in. That number actually represents the total for the Ukraine only!! I didn’t want to overstate the case.
Please can some more of you join such organisations and see what risks we truly are taking. Try http://www.chernobyl-children.org.uk .It is something positive we can all do to improve our understanding of this complex problem and at the same time try and improve the lives of those innocent casualties.
Statements about reactors and reprocessing plants and waste dumps being “unlikely to suffer from incidents” in the future are not good enough; you have to be 100% certain and in my experience where there are people and computer systems involved that is just not possible or ever likely.
- Posted by Brian TNuclear power is preferable to darkness and dying from the cold.
Up with nuclear and down with the detractors who seem to think that the 50+ million people in the UK can get by without it.
Energy prices are going sky-high and many households cannot find anough money for their food shopping.
We must act now!
- Posted by Keith M Warwick