Torness to stay open until 2030

[biffer]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35583740

thoughts? I'm against building new nuclear stations in Scotland as I don't believe we need them, however I'm entirely comfortable with extending the lifetimes of what we have so long as it is safe. It helps to extend the time to develop safe storage tech for renewables.

 

[Alan]

Nuclear power is zero carbon and guaranteed. Saving our energy needs as renewables are not delivering as promised. The vast majority of French energy is powered by nuclear. It gets a bad rap. Should be part our energy plans.

[Alan]

Plus fracking is now being looked at by SNP Government which is good news. Diversification and some job creation.

[biffer]

1 hour ago, Alan said:

Nuclear power is zero carbon and guaranteed. Saving our energy needs as renewables are not delivering as promised. The vast majority of French energy is powered by nuclear. It gets a bad rap. Should be part our energy plans.

Decommissioning and waste are massive issues however. We have no long term plan for what to do with waste and we don't have a plan for what to do with decommissioned reactors as is demonstrated by the 12 nuclear submarines tied up at Rosyth which are no longer in service and waiting for a plan. Renewables are delivering what was promised (50% of Scotland's electricity use by 2015) and though there are plenty of challenges still to be overcome, they're not as intractable as those presented by nuclear.

As I said, I don't see a reason for Scotland to have nuclear power, but I don't preclude other countries using it if they must. As with the future of energy in any country however, sticking all of your future on one type of production is moronic in the extreme. One of my main worries about nuclear power is security of supply for fuel. Resources are not that abundant and two thirds of them are either in Russia or sub saharan africa. So making yourself dependent on these areas for fuel supplies would, in the long term, replicate the global situation around oil supply. And that worked out well. 

Edited February 16, 2016 by biffer

[Alan]

Didn't say depend on it but think it should be part of the broad plan to hedge our supply.

[College_Boy]

For a country with so much rainfall our use of hydroelectric is shockingly poor. Only 12% of our electricity generation is hydro. Once built your fuel supply is 'free' and almost guaranteed.

Cruachan is sat idle most of the time as its only used as an emergency supply - how daft is that!

 

[teecee-]

1 hour ago, Alan said:

Nuclear power is zero carbon and guaranteed. Saving our energy needs as renewables are not delivering as promised. The vast majority of French energy is powered by nuclear. It gets a bad rap. Should be part our energy plans.

Agreed- I would build more.

[Orraloon]

2 hours ago, Alan said:

Nuclear power is zero carbon and guaranteed. Saving our energy needs as renewables are not delivering as promised. The vast majority of French energy is powered by nuclear. It gets a bad rap. Should be part our energy plans.

It isn't zero risk though.

[Orraloon]

A lot of folk don't realise that electricity is only a fraction of our energy use. 

I'm not really bothered too much about where my electricity comes from but I would prefer it if there wasn't a nuclear reactor within 3000 miles of my house. Accidents can and do happen. We have a giant nuclear reactor  about 93 million miles away, which is close enough for my liking. We just need to learn how to use it better.

If we had invested as much time and money into fusion as we have done with fission we might have a viable reactor by now but of course the concentration on fission was more about bombs than energy.

[Topcat]

the trouble with electricity generation is essentially we're either burning crap (gas/coal) or splitting a manky atom to release some energy to heat water / produce steam / turn a turbine which spins some magnets or bits of wire in the generator - not very high tech at all really

however it's the crap we burn/split that gives us a stable base load and without nuclear we'd be in a bit of a stooshie - all other forms of renewables are too wishy washy and locally expensive to produce so have to be heavily subsidised per kWh

fusion is still a concept and perhaps when ITER (fusion) in France gets switched on we'll be a bit closer to that but at 14 billion euros & rising for an experimental reactor it's a bit pricey already - and by no means clean either as the fusion process also leaves behind some radioactive by-products which require containment

someone also mentioned cruachan up at loch awe - it's purpose it to respond to peaks in daily demand on the UK grid alongside ffestiniog & dinorwig in wales - without them attached to the grid and ready to pull the plug at a moments notice our grid would have regular outages.

[Toepoke]

3 hours ago, Alan said:

Nuclear power is zero carbon

Not according to some...

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2736691/false_solution_nuclear_power_is_not_low_carbon.html

[kumnio]

5 hours ago, Alan said:

Nuclear power is zero carbon and guaranteed. Saving our energy needs as renewables are not delivering as promised. The vast majority of French energy is powered by nuclear. It gets a bad rap. Should be part our energy plans.

Completely agree, I don't get the whole anti nuclear stance.

4 hours ago, Alan said:

Plus fracking is now being looked at by SNP Government which is good news. Diversification and some job creation.

Completely disagree, it's a disaster waiting to happen. 

[hunchy]

For to long folk have listened to the scaremongers who use Chernobyl, 3 mile island etc as an excuse as to why nuclear is bad. They have now added Fukushima to that list. The trouble is firstly these were old designs which are nothing like the new reactor designs. All the above were made so you had to work to keep the reaction under control where as the new designs are built so you have to work to keep the reaction going. I would have no problem building new reactors here as long as they are modern designs and not old designs.

As to the waste it gets transported to sellafield where it is stored. Don't know why the sub's haven't had there reactors pulled maybe cost or we don't have the facilities here but apart from that I don't know

[deecie]

Less of this alternative shite.

 

Use Brent Crude.

[Orraloon]

18 minutes ago, hunchy said:

For to long folk have listened to the scaremongers who use Chernobyl, 3 mile island etc as an excuse as to why nuclear is bad. They have now added Fukushima to that list. The trouble is firstly these were old designs which are nothing like the new reactor designs. All the above were made so you had to work to keep the reaction under control where as the new designs are built so you have to work to keep the reaction going. I would have no problem building new reactors here as long as they are modern designs and not old designs.

As to the waste it gets transported to sellafield where it is stored. Don't know why the sub's haven't had there reactors pulled maybe cost or we don't have the facilities here but apart from that I don't know

Those old reactors were once new and the state of the art design. We were told they were safe. Just like they are today telling us the new ones are safe. Some folk have longer memories than others.

I don't think just being able to store nuclear waste is a viable long term option.

My main objection though, is that there is just no need for it. The Sun can continue to provide us with enough energy for thousands of generations. We just need to learn how to harness a tiny, tiny fraction of the vast power of the Sun.

 

[Orraloon]

8 minutes ago, deecie said:

Less of this alternative shite.

 

Use Brent Crude.

That's getting expensive again though. Over $30 a barrel. 

[Scunnered]

4 hours ago, Orraloon said:

A lot of folk don't realise that electricity is only a fraction of our energy use. 

I'm not really bothered too much about where my electricity comes from but I would prefer it if there wasn't a nuclear reactor within 3000 miles of my house. Accidents can and do happen. We have a giant nuclear reactor  about 93 million miles away, which is close enough for my liking. We just need to learn how to use it better.

If we had invested as much time and money into fusion as we have done with fission we might have a viable reactor by now but of course the concentration on fission was more about bombs than energy.

sake Orryloon... That was a good post!

[biffer]

40 minutes ago, hunchy said:

For to long folk have listened to the scaremongers who use Chernobyl, 3 mile island etc as an excuse as to why nuclear is bad. They have now added Fukushima to that list. The trouble is firstly these were old designs which are nothing like the new reactor designs. All the above were made so you had to work to keep the reaction under control where as the new designs are built so you have to work to keep the reaction going. I would have no problem building new reactors here as long as they are modern designs and not old designs.

As to the waste it gets transported to sellafield where it is stored. Don't know why the sub's haven't had there reactors pulled maybe cost or we don't have the facilities here but apart from that I don't know

Sticking nuclear waste underground and hoping it doesn't come back to bite us in our lifetimes is sticking our collective heads in the sand though. There's thousands of years of costs of storage to be taken into account. For high level waste, neither the glass or ceramic forms have been shown to contain all the radioactivity; that's one of the reasons the subs haven't been decommissioned - there's a lot of high level waste and the storage isn't up to scratch. 

[hunchy]

2 hours ago, Orraloon said:

Those old reactors were once new and the state of the art design. We were told they were safe. Just like they are today telling us the new ones are safe. Some folk have longer memories than others.

I don't think just being able to store nuclear waste is a viable long term option.

My main objection though, is that there is just no need for it. The Sun can continue to provide us with enough energy for thousands of generations. We just need to learn how to harness a tiny, tiny fraction of the vast power of the Sun.

 

And flying is considered a safe form of transport yet there are hundred if not thousands of deaths each year. At no point did I say they were safe only intimated that the new designs are far far safer.almost nothing is totally safe but folk will willingly twist things for there own agenda

2 hours ago, biffer said:

Sticking nuclear waste underground and hoping it doesn't come back to bite us in our lifetimes is sticking our collective heads in the sand though. There's thousands of years of costs of storage to be taken into account. For high level waste, neither the glass or ceramic forms have been shown to contain all the radioactivity; that's one of the reasons the subs haven't been decommissioned - there's a lot of high level waste and the storage isn't up to scratch. 

It's not exactly just stuck in the ground and forgotten about and every time a viable option does come round the nimby's hear all these scare stories and make sure it doesn't go ahead

[hunchy]

6 hours ago, Orraloon said:

A lot of folk don't realise that electricity is only a fraction of our energy use. 

I'm not really bothered too much about where my electricity comes from but I would prefer it if there wasn't a nuclear reactor within 3000 miles of my house. Accidents can and do happen. We have a giant nuclear reactor  about 93 million miles away, which is close enough for my liking. We just need to learn how to use it better.

If we had invested as much time and money into fusion as we have done with fission we might have a viable reactor by now but of course the concentration on fission was more about bombs than energy.

Kind of agree with you on this in the fact we need to invest more on fusion. But then the  conspiracist in me wonders if it has been cracked already but being hidden by corporate power as it would hit there profits

[Orraloon]

1 hour ago, hunchy said:

And flying is considered a safe form of transport yet there are hundred if not thousands of deaths each year. At no point did I say they were safe only intimated that the new designs are far far safer.almost nothing is totally safe but folk will willingly twist things for there own agenda

It's not exactly just stuck in the ground and forgotten about and every time a viable option does come round the nimby's hear all these scare stories and make sure it doesn't go ahead

Aye, no source of energy is totally safe but if an oil refinery goes ballistic the range of the fallout is relatively limited. If a nuclear reactor goes into meltdown it can have serious repercussions for  a good chunk of the planet.

[thplinth]

fanny baws. I think you need to go re-read the profile pic post. (sigh)

[deecie]

1 hour ago, Orraloon said:

Aye, no source of energy is totally safe but if an oil refinery goes ballistic the range of the fallout is relatively limited. If a nuclear reactor goes into meltdown it can have serious repercussions for  a good chunk of the planet.

Brent Crude is safe.

[Orraloon]

1 hour ago, deecie said:

Brent Crude is safe.

Not if you invested your life savings in it 2 years ago.

[Orraloon]

2 hours ago, thplinth said:

fanny baws. I think you need to go re-read the profile pic post. (sigh)

Where is it?