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@Mr Bigstuff wrote:
All the scares happened in the UK Tommy. As for a disaster at a conventional power station, the consequences wouldn’t be as severe as with a nuclear power station. The funny thing is that if we had a Chernobyl style disaster in the UK, there’d be a whole bunch of British people seeking asylum in another country. Of course they’d all go to the nearest country (France) where they’d all be welcomed with open arms.
Apart from that, there’s the whole issue of transporting radioactive material by rail. In this country we have problems keeping trains on the tracks when there are people in them let alone hazardous and radioactive material. They’d also be an easy target for terrorists.
Well I have conducted a Google search on nuclear disasters in the UK and strangely I cannot find even one. Surely something must be wrong with Google. It can’t find any reference to trains filled with nuclear waste being derailed and poisoning the countryside. Also, and again oddly, there are no reported incidents of terrorists attacking nuclear power stations.
Maybe I am missing something somewhere. Can you advise???
Well there was Windscale many years ago. 11 of the 57 scares were classed as serious and all 57 incidents were important enough that they had to be reported to government ministers. As for a terrorist attack, one of the masterminds of the WTC attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, originally planned to target a nuclear power plant in the USA on Sept. 11 (as well as other targets). Apparently he was overruled. Even so, it wouldn’t exactly be difficult to deliberately derail a train if you were a terrorist. You also have to remember that as the number of nuclear power stations grows then the chance of something going wrong will increase too.
If there were to be a major disaster at a nuclear power plant the consequences could be catastrophic. The surrounding area would be uninhabitable, plant-life, livestock and water supplies would be contaminated, there would be a substantial increase in birth defects, cancer, leukaemia and other symptoms related to radiation poisoning. These problems would spread beyond the immediate area of the disaster. You might say that there are numerous safety measures to prevent things going wrong but there were also numerous safety measures at that oil depot that went up in flames recently.
Even if you disregard the risk of something going wrong, what do you do with all the waste?
I guess my problem is that whenever people base their opposition to something (whatever it may be) on a whole list of things that MIGHT happen if; or that COULD go wrong perhaps; or on scenarios which IF they occur WOULD mean….. etc; then I simply turn off and cease to be persuaded.
I am equally unimpressed with a listing of things that have happened in other countries (Chernobl, Ukraine; Five Mile Island, USA; Goiânia, Brazil; etc etc). Most of these things happened 20-30 years ago. Windscale was in 1977. I think that we have moved on a long way since then.
I remember the prophets of doom bleating on and on in the press when Nuclear power stations were first built in this country. If only a fraction of the terrible predicted disasters took place we would all be glowing in the dark by now and every child born in the UK and Northern Europe would be grossly deformed through exposure to radiation etc etc ad nauseam.
Of course none of these things actually happened, and Nuclear power continues to successfully provide electricity to the nation, as it has done for decades.
The current (and future) safety systems and procedures in Nuclear power stations are now so advanced as to make them one of the safest places to be in and work in.
Did you know that you actually receive a higher dose of radiation from the luminous dial on a bedside alarm clock or wrist watch than you would get inside a Nuclear power plant standing right next to the reactor?
Well if they’re so safe then why were there 57 scares in the past decade? I just think it’s common sense to evaluate the risks involved before embarking on projects. It’s a fact of life that things will sometimes go wrong no matter how advanced the technology and no matter how many safety measures are in place. If you increase the number of plants then the chances of something going wrong will increase too. So you have to weigh up the energy benefits with the potentially catastrophic consequences if something does go wrong and also the problem of waste disposal.
Personally, I think it’s too big a gamble. Chernobyl may have happened 20 years ago but the area around the site is still heavily contaminated and people are still suffering from the after effects including a new generation of children.
Well I’ve been searching for ANY details of these 57 events and I can’t find a reference to them other than as an answer to a Parliamentary committee enquiry on Nuclear power in Scotland.
Opposers claim 57 ‘events’ but I suspect that these are really really minor ones. Remember that absolutely EVERYTHING has to be reported and analysed in the nuclear industry no matter how minor.
This is interesting (from the UKAEA site):
“The average (radiation) dose received by employees was 0.10mSv, equivalent to 3.8% of the average background radioactive dose received by all members of the public.”
You can read the article about the 57 incidents here:
It only mentions a couple of incidents but it says that the list of incidents was obtained by a Liberal Democrat MP from the Energy Minister Malcolm Wickes.
This following article says that there have been 22 major accidents at nuclear facilities since Chernobyl, not on the same scale as Chernobyl but still serious incidents:
http://million-against-nuclear.net/background/accidents.htm
The examples mentioned in the article are
1986 Hamm-Uentrop West-Germany
1993 Tomsk Russia
1999 Tokai-mura Japan
2000 Buchanan New York USA
2002 Onagawa Japan
2005 Sellafield UK
2005 Douneray UK
2005 Haddam Connecticut USAA Greenpeace document on nuclear energy (available from their website) also mentions other incidents in France and the USA. It also says that, in the year 2000, government inspectors found a “fundamental failure of safety culture” at the Sellafield nuclear processing plant. In addition, they mention violations of safety and control checks at Sellafield as well as the falsification of quality control checks.
I also came across a report relating to the ability of France’s nuclear reactors to withstand a sept. 11 style attack. Although the 1st published assessment said that a nuclear reactor could withstand impact from a fully-fuelled jumbo jet, a later leaked document said that the assessment was severely flawed. Such as the way in which they used calculations based on a military jet crashing into a reactor and applied them to estimations about a jumbo jet hitting a reactor.
So, I’m far from convinced that nuclear plants are as safe as they are portrayed to be. I’m also unconvinced about the cost-effectiveness and waste disposal methods.
I can’t claim to be any more knowledgeable on the subject of Nuclear power than the next man Mr Bigstuff, but having read through the articles you quote, it seems to me that whilst some of the incidents reported worldwide were clearly serious enough locally to be categorised as ”incidents”, equally some were merely trivial.
A fire in a Nuclear plant sounds on the face of it terrifying with enormous potential for environmental disaster. However, the actual incident was a workman puncturing a can of spray paint which then caught fire and in turn set fire to a bit of plastic sheeting in a basement storeroom. It had to be reported because of the stringency of the controls in these facilities – but in itself it is a very minor industrial accident that could happen in any facility.
As far as I can find out, electricity generated by Nuclear means is apparently cheaper to produce that so-called conventional power stations. Burning millions of gallons of oil or tons of coal etc to generate electricity surely must be more costly and definitely more environmentally unfriendly (due to the emissions etc) than ”clean” Nuclear generation.
I also understand that the technology for storing ”spent” Nuclear fuels is now so advanced that it does not represent a threat in real terms to this country. Indeed we even take in stuff from abroad for re-processing and safe disposal as it appears that we are world leaders in this technology.
So 1007 large wind turbines – realising these are approx 90 metre diameter turbines – thats a hell of a lot of space – where do you suggest putting them ???
8 years on, the question can now be answered. Miles out to sea off the coast of Suffolk. The Greater Gabbard offshore windfarm has a capacity to generate half as much electricity as Sizewell B, on a windy day. 140 wind turbines, 500 megawatts. Add to that the proposed Galloper windfarm next to Greater Gabbard, and the generating capacity will be doubled, more or less equalling Sizewell – again, on a windy day, that is.
There are other major offshore wind schemes too, and while they don’t work at full output all the time, whenever they are generating electricity, that saves gas, since it’s the combined-cycle gas turbine power stations that are easily shut down when not needed.
I haven’t read all.. just skimmed.. and I am not from the UK, just the US, where we share similar problems.. but it seems some things have not been taken into account…
1. The radioactive damage from Nuclear Reactors gone wrong. Am I right in assuming that the UK doesn’t have tornados, hurricanes, or floods? Compare the potential devastation, energy loss and financial losses from downed Wind or Water turbines vs. Nuclear plants, huh?
Fukishima not only killed and made hundreds devastatingly/deadly ill, it also (still) is pumping radioactive waters into the (shared) oceans. The water (upper and lower) currents carry that to other connecting currents around the world. Chernobyl can give us an idea of the kinds of terrible things that happen when an area is bombed with radiation (although one would be bombs and one would be a nuclear disaster, the fallout is really the same).
2. Technology is ever improving. We have hybrid and even hover technology. We have energy star compliance over here in the U.S. There are solar roofs and solar water heaters and all kinds of things that families can use. So, what if those things were encouraged and the turbines (or whatever else) were put in place, while Nuclear was phased out? I have read that other countries are operating fine on alternative energies – but arguably they are much larger..
Shoot.. I thought I had a third.. but I can’t think anymore. I’m sooo tired… just food for thought.
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