Nuclear power stations.

We need power and until they come up with something better I can't see what else we can do. Green power is all very well but I'm not sure we can produce all we need that way (although I may be wrong).

Nuclear power is green insofar as it is 'carbon' free. Quite prominent environmentalists support it for that reason.

According to James Lovelock of the Gaia theory, the most (humanly) destructive method of power generation is hydro power. Collapsing dams have killed far more people than nuclear power generation.

oh, and building them - see Hoover dam and *** the American civil engineering firm that built it and threaten tosue you if you dare to mention them in relation to it.

But what will we do with the nuclear waste? would you want it buried near you

And what about terrorist attacks?

And the tiniest amount of plutonium could make a lethal dirty bomb.

Cheer us up, why don't you

We have had nuclear power stations for rather a long time in this country without any problems. They will build new ones near old ones. They are I think the least bad option. Otherwise it is a case of burning oil/gas/coal all of which we will have to import. Cos we have pretty much used up all our own.
It doesn't matter what companies build them really does it.

I fear we have put up with a couple more nuclear power stations to tide us over until something better comes along.

Sellafield has had problems jess.

I guess you are right NfkDumpling. As I said on the wind turbines thread, I wish they could speed up nuclear fusion.

I know Sellafield isn't a power station. But they deal with the waste there.

last winter I went to a very interesting talk by an environmental scientist who said there was reasonable confidence in scientific circles that nuclear fusion would be a viable alternative by 2040. Just as the present wind farms are winding down.

Apparently there is another source of nuclear energy - thorium, which is more plentiful than uranium and safer to utilise. Can't pretend to understand all the science but here's some info

Impressive! Fingers crossed for thorium.

nfk, "wind farms winding down" – like the poeticism

Windscale fire 1957 jess?

.... and they renamed it Sellafield so that we would forget!!!

The long term effects of the Windscale fire were not dire, not even statistically significant, according to this article in New Scientist in 1981

And safety standards have improved a tad in the last 50 years.

Tell that to the estimated 33 people who died prematurely bags and the methods used to put it out were a gamble that luckily paid off or it could have been much worse.

www.lakestay.co.uk/1957.htm

jess ??? you're joking of course?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents

People are always dying prematurely. Dangerous thing, this living lark. It's silly to think we can eradicate all risks. We can do our best to reduce risk which, on the whole, I think we do, gradually, but there will always be risks while ever there is life. Risks from nuclear accidents are not high in real terms, not like road accidents and heart attacks.

BTW, jodi, happy to tell those people if you give me a means of communication

Just going to a public Hallowe'en party can kill you prematurely

No i was not joking. A lot of lessons have been learned about design and operation of all kinds of things in the last 50 years! In the 1950s when the first plants were built it was still experimental technology.
I don't welcome the idea of more NPSts but - do I want us to be totally dependent on russian gas? No. Do I think we should be burning the more polluting coal or oil (also imported) ? No. Do I think we could ever rely completely on renewables? no.
Do I think we will cut our energy requirements voluntarily - or do we think that energy use will carry on going up and up. Yes.
Successive governments have been completely wimpy about mandating energy efficiency improvements and at the same time they have tried to keep energy costs low (not full VAT for example).
Which leaves me with the lesser of the evils - nuclear.