Davkaus Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 7 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: I know its not popular with some on here, but the alternatives include reduced demand. It's not just VT. Western society is collectively burying its heads in the sand thinking we can continue to live the lives of luxury we have over the last half a century or so. Well, we may be able to. Probably won't be very long ones though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted September 7, 2022 VT Supporter Share Posted September 7, 2022 (edited) 10 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: I’m not sure 30 years is a timescale lethal radioactivity works on. Nuclear absolutely is not clean. It’s not clean, it’s not cheap. It’s not safe. It’s also not a short term solution, they are decades in the planning and take a generation to pay for. The actual useful life of a nuclear power station is less than the repayments. We haven’t worked out how to make the existing installations safe and now the idea is to locate one outside every town. It’s insane. We absolutely cannot guarantee safety for all nuclear facilities for the lifespan of the radioactivity. If anyone suggests we can, they just don’t understand what they are guaranteeing. We already have the alternatives. I know its not popular with some on here, but the alternatives include reduced demand. @chrisp65 I don't think you will find anyone on here (well not many) who don't agree 100% that better insulation is a vital thing that needs to happen. Disagreeing with the methods employed by Extinction Rebellion is not the same as disagreeing with their aims. We absolutely need to reduce demand. As stated on the video I posted this morning, the cheapest energy of all is the energy you don't even use. Edited September 7, 2022 by sidcow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 This should've been managed over decades, but the next quarter's profits and tax evasion for the parasite class mattered more. Machetes don't need power to operate btw. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 Just now, sidcow said: @chrisp65 I don't think you will find anyone on here (well not many) who don't agree 100% that better insulation is a vital thing that needs to happen. Disagreeing with the methods employed by Extinction Rebellion is not the same as disagreeing with their aims. We absolutely need to reduce demand. I was trying to broaden it out from a bad day on the M25 two years ago. Reduced demand might also mean not expecting cars to be able to do 140 mph or get to 60mph in 3 seconds. There are better ways of using energy. I’m not a grumpy communist, I know people want personal transport rather than buses. But we shouldn’t be building supercars. We shouldn’t be getting out of the EU because we want bigger louder vacuum cleaners and robot lawnmowers. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVByrne Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 17 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: I’m not sure 30 years is a timescale lethal radioactivity works on. Nuclear absolutely is not clean. It’s not clean, it’s not cheap. It’s not safe. It’s also not a short term solution, they are decades in the planning and take a generation to pay for. The actual useful life of a nuclear power station is less than the repayments. We haven’t worked out how to make the existing installations safe and now the idea is to locate one outside every town. It’s insane. We absolutely cannot guarantee safety for all nuclear facilities for the lifespan of the radioactivity. If anyone suggests we can, they just don’t understand what they are guaranteeing. We already have the alternatives. I know its not popular with some on here, but the alternatives include reduced demand. No offence, but you're giving too much opinion stated as fact here. There is a case for Nuclear power Quote Early environmental movements saw nuclear power as villain number one. Disasters a quarter of a century apart at Chernobyl and Fukushima stoked the fears of successive generations. Many of today’s climate campaigners remain understandably hostile to nuclear. Yet as leaders at COP26 struggle to agree on carbon reductions that will come anywhere near restraining the global temperature rise to 1.5C, it is becoming clear that nuclear generation needs to be part of the panoply of solutions, even if on a transitional basis. The climate case for nuclear power | Financial Times (ft.com) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 Just now, CVByrne said: No offence, but you're giving too much opinion stated as fact here. There is a case for Nuclear power Go on, happy to be corrected… Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVByrne Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 1 minute ago, chrisp65 said: Go on, happy to be corrected… Click link I posted in my previous post and read Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 1 minute ago, CVByrne said: Click link I posted in my previous post and read The one behind a paywall? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted September 7, 2022 Moderator Share Posted September 7, 2022 1 minute ago, CVByrne said: Click link I posted in my previous post and read Become an FT subscriber to read: The climate case for nuclear power Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted September 7, 2022 VT Supporter Share Posted September 7, 2022 (edited) 18 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: I’m not a grumpy communist, What the hell are you doing on Villatalk then???? Edited September 7, 2022 by sidcow 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 1 minute ago, sidcow said: What the hell are you doing on Villatalk then???? I believe my VT pigeonhole is officially ‘sarcastic nationalist’, even though I self identify as enlightened internationalist. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOF Posted September 7, 2022 Moderator Share Posted September 7, 2022 15 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: I believe my VT pigeonhole is officially ‘sarcastic nationalist’ That's your public one. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVByrne Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 30 minutes ago, blandy said: Become an FT subscriber to read: The climate case for nuclear power 34 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: The one behind a paywall? Apologies, they often have a free article where you answer a few survey questions Quote Early environmental movements saw nuclear power as villain number one. Disasters a quarter of a century apart at Chernobyl and Fukushima stoked the fears of successive generations. Many of today’s climate campaigners remain understandably hostile to nuclear. Yet as leaders at COP26 struggle to agree on carbon reductions that will come anywhere near restraining the global temperature rise to 1.5C, it is becoming clear that nuclear generation needs to be part of the panoply of solutions, even if on a transitional basis. Few would question that renewable sources such as wind and solar — which have made huge strides — must be the mainstay of future electricity generation. The drawback remains their intermittent nature, and the lack of large-scale means to store electricity. Storage technologies seem unlikely to provide a big enough solution, fast enough. Nuclear power is the only carbon-free source that can deliver round-the-clock power, on demand, almost anywhere. The world needs not only to replace the fossil fuel sources, moreover, which still generate nearly two-thirds of global power. Electric power must also be dramatically expanded to replace the oil, coal, and gas burnt by vehicles, homes and industry. At the same time many of the nuclear plants that supply 10 per cent of world electricity are getting old. For renewables to take all of the strain would be a daunting challenge. Consider a scenario where sales of internal combustion engine cars end by 2035 and global electricity is decarbonised by 2040. The International Energy Agency suggests the world would need to ramp up building solar and wind plants so that, by 2030, it was adding four times as much capacity annually as in the record-breaking year of 2020. Some sectors, less suited to electrification, will require alternative fuels, such as hydrogen, or sources of heat. Nuclear is potentially good for producing both. The arguments against nuclear are powerful and resonant. It is expensive and complex to build; projects frequently overrun on costs and duration. It produces deadly waste. When things go wrong, the effects can be devastating. The nuclear industry and its proponents are prone to dismiss such concerns too blithely. Climate Capital Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here. Are you curious about the FT’s environmental sustainability commitments? Find out more about our science-based targets here Yet the few tragic accidents were caused by a combination of poor training, design flaws and inadequate understanding of risks. Many scientists and academics agree modern designs, safety features and training are superior. Technology has advanced, too, on waste storage. Finland is setting a welcome benchmark for dealing with high level nuclear waste with the construction of a deep underground site set to become the world’s first repository for spent nuclear fuel. Co-investment by the state or using, say, regulated asset base models can reduce financing costs to the point where nuclear is competitive over its lifespan with other sources. Small modular reactors — being studied by the UK, Estonia, Czech Republic, the Netherlands and others — offer the prospect of being built more cheaply and quickly, but producing copious power. Communities may balk at having such plants in their backyard. But they could potentially be built on sites of existing reactors, or — as the US is examining — retrofitted in formerly coal-fired plants, and use existing transmission infrastructure. Governments, regulators and the industry face an uphill struggle in winning confidence in nuclear. Yet averting climate catastrophe is the defining challenge of this century. All means of achieving it have drawbacks, risks and trade-offs. Nuclear power has, perhaps, more than most. But these are not so great as to bar it from playing a role. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 Amazing how the Tory energy policy and Rupert Murdoch's FT missed the non intermittent tidal. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genie Posted September 7, 2022 Author Share Posted September 7, 2022 Does anyone know how long it typically takes to get energy from a tidal or wind far from a blank sheet of paper? Given the current predicament speed needs to also be a factor alongside cost and environmental impact. We know nuclear is bloody expensive and takes a very long time to put in place. I wondered how if compared to other options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 Thanks @CVByrne but I genuinely don’t think that counters anything I said. I said they are prone to accidents, to paraphrase the article ‘people worry about accidents in the past, but we need more electricity’. That’s not a very robust argument in my opinion. Neither is saying accidents were due to design flaws and a misunderstanding of risk. We won’t know what was a flaw and what was misunderstood until this is revealed by the next incident. They are, in military terms, confident they have now thoroughly planned for the last war. The nice things they promise, cheap little reactors and safe storage… they are studies, and ‘prospectively’ a quick cheap solution. It’s a promise, absolutely not a guarantee. As for the assertion that costs are competitive, that reads like they have left out the hundred years after it stops delivering energy? The cost of Wylfa didn’t stop the day they stopped pumping juice in to the national grid. Wylfa was decommissioned in 2015, but it can’t be demolished until some point in the next century, 80 years from now. How have they costed for demolition in the year 2100? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted September 7, 2022 Moderator Share Posted September 7, 2022 10 minutes ago, Xann said: Amazing how the Tory energy policy and Rupert Murdoch's FT missed the non intermittent tidal. It’s not Murdoch’s. It’s owned by a Japanese co. I think 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted September 7, 2022 VT Supporter Share Posted September 7, 2022 6 minutes ago, Genie said: Does anyone know how long it typically takes to get energy from a tidal or wind far from a blank sheet of paper? Given the current predicament speed needs to also be a factor alongside cost and environmental impact. We know nuclear is bloody expensive and takes a very long time to put in place. I wondered how if compared to other options. Tidal takes ages due to investigation of sites, impact assessments, infrastructure, outright cost and lack of businesses in the field. Wind is easier but has some of the same issues, and offshore is similar in the difficulty getting things off the ground stakes. Plus onshore has lots of nimbyism issues. Nothing is easy in this field. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted September 7, 2022 Moderator Share Posted September 7, 2022 4 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: I genuinely don’t think that counters anything I said. It supports much of what you and others have said Quote The arguments against nuclear are powerful and resonant. It is expensive and complex to build; projects frequently overrun on costs and duration. It produces deadly waste. When things go wrong, the effects can be devastating. The nuclear industry and its proponents are prone to dismiss such concerns too blithely. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVByrne Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 5 minutes ago, blandy said: It’s not Murdoch’s. It’s owned by a Japanese co. I think Yes owned by Nikkei 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts