ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Nuclear power

Well that certainly doesn't sound like the lax standards assumed by protesters, does it? (Maybe they actually believe every plant really does have a Homer Simpson in charge of safety. )

We also have plenty of protesters against the wind farms which have appeared in recent years. There's one a few miles down the coast from here.

They can't produce the old radiation stories, of course, so they have to fall back on "environmental and visual impact."

Our energy consumption is increasing at a rapid rate. They object to wind farms and they don't want nuclear power. Solar is being developed here, but let's face facts: In this country it's not going to supply more than a very small percentage of demand. We have hydro-electric schemes in Scotland and Wales, but most of England is too flat.

Back to burning up precious reserves of fossil fuels, I suppose. Even if we had the ability to construct a Dyson sphere right now, I'm sure there'd be protests about that!

I live in Detroit near fermi 2 which almost melts down yearly.no need for a flash light here.

I LOVE NUCLEAR POWER
We've had San Onofre (SONGS) operating out here since '68. Unit1 (450MW) produced 53.35 billion kwh during its lifetime ('til '92). Units 2 and 3 are still going at 1100MW each. The only environmental impact has been a warming of the sea water near the outlet pipes offshore (which I've used to my advantage while fishing).
The power has been used to print the "No Nukes" bumper stickers, and power many cappucino and latte machines, but the envirofreaks just don't get it.

Yep, I kinda like the irony of machines printing the "no nukes" stickers being powered by nuclear-generated electricity.

I've seen some of the old promo films and newsreel footage from when our Calder Hall station opened (1956 I think). The tone of the reports is so wonderfully optimistic. Heaps of energy, cleanly generated, and forecasts that by the 1990s most of our power would be nuclear (or atomic as they usually called it then) and so cheap it wouldn't be worth metering it!


Oh dear -- What went wrong?




[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 12-15-2001).]

I rather enjoy the irony of this pro-nuclear discussion taking place in a medium that is powered in part by the rapidly growing percentage of power that comes from renewable energy sources, espescially wind.

"No Nukes" Al

I think that the "power too cheap to meter" line came out of the whole "nukes for peace" campaign of the 1950s, to get the American public to associate nukes with prosperity and the "American dream", rather than Hiroshima, fallout, and armageddon.

Other proposals from that era were civilian uses of nuclear explosives (for mining, excavation, and heavy construction), and General Electric's proposal for nuclear powered airplanes! This idea was shelved when engineers figured out that the requisite lead shielding around the reactor (mounted in the tail to get it as far as possible from the passengers) would make the thing too heavy to fly! Good thing that idea never panned out, or the events of 9/11 could have been MUCH worse with the remains of 2 reactors mixed into the mess at ground zero.

Could you imagine several reactors in a holding pattern over LAX? No thanks...

The "nuke planes" type of thinking still is around! How about cars powered by fuel cells? Drunken drivers piloting mini hydrogen bombs!
A great memory of mine is standing on the beach summer '74. I watched the helicopter take off from San Clemente with the newly resigned Nixon, turned around and looked at the nuke generator, and thought "Aint America great!"

I'm looking forward to when we're all finally off the grid with our own washing machine sized reactors in our basements.

No more storm or car accidents knocking my power out, no meter guy trampling my flowers.

Just clean, quiet nuclear. Outta run about three lifetimes on just a dash of uranium too.

NJ,

Yes, the consequences are too horrible to think about, but I guess that back then we (both U.S. & U.K.) also had the optimistic outlook that the world would become a better place and that events such as happened on 9/11 could never occur.

It's like the other old reports here about how crime levels would drop in the future and Britain would become a better place to live. Well, some material things have improved, but our rate of violent crme is now 20 times what it was in 1960 and folks in some areas are scared to go out alone in daylight, nevermind after dark. It makes it that much harder to seem optimistic about the future, doesn't it? But I digress - Sorry!
*

Al,

Point taken. I think it would be wonderful if we could get all our energy requirements from renewable sources such as wind and solar, but I think the time that we will achieve that is still a long way off. Until that day, I just think that nuclear power is a better alternative to building more "conventional" coal/oil/gas stations which will burn up our dwindling fossil fuel supplies at an even more rapid rate.

Ultimately, I think we will need to address the question of how to stop the rapid annual increase in power consumption, right down to the small items, e.g. Does my local supermarket really need 4kW of lighting in a 20 ft. square lobby which is completely glass on two sides? And when the govt. spends millions on a "Save Energy" campaign, why do their tax offices need to be heated to about 78 degrees?

One area the U.K. in particular should address is the woefully inadequate heat insulation of our houses. A recent study showed that the winter heating bill
in an average British home is greater than that for a similar sized home in the middle of Sweden.

I don't think we'll ever have residential nuclear reactors, but I think fuel cells are a real possibility.

More people have been killed mining coal than by nuclear reactors. I don't have a thing against nukes except for the waste disposal problem. If the NIMBY syndrome regarding waste can be cured, then nukes might make a comeback here.

Tom