Nuclear power's a good thing. It will only make your bills go up a little bit. ?

volver I was thinking of how much concern is shown about potential danger of different fuels and how they focus on one fuel and completely ignore the most dangerous and pervasive of fuels that maims and kills those who mine it and those who live anywhere where it is burnt. It is still mined and burnt everyday and still makes millions ill from coping with the pollution it causes, but no one even mentions it other than in passing.

I don't think that is what we're talking about though M0nica. Most people agree that we need to stop using coal and other fossil fuels. The question is, what do we replace them with?

If we choose nuclear fission, then we are choosing something that will only cause issues for future generations. We know that is the case, and we don't have to choose it because there are alternatives. Excellent alternatives that are already up and running.

I do feel that we would be taking the easy way out if we just go with fission, because we are storing up problems for the people who come down the line in years to come.

Coal has killed and destroyed the lives of millions of people of people over the years. ans still every years kills. Even today many 100s of thousands more who work down mines and in cities polluted by the fumes from coal- fired power stations continue to suffer.

How does that compare with fatalities and people being poisoned and choked every day with those killed or affected by nuclear power production?

I think the answer has to be to invest in wider scale insulation and research into energy savings/efficiency , we are never , as a globe, going to be able to produce enough energy to satisfy the growing demands so it would be most sensible to reduce the need.

BeEmerald

I agree with volver on all points she’s made.
And I remember Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. All horror stories.

??

OK then, the fusion in Scotland thing...

Fusion hasn't been proved to be effective at producing power yet. There are a total of five UK sites on the shortlist for the development which will not start producing before 2040 at the earliest. Prof Diver in the article, who is heading up the Scottish bid, is making the point that it could be at risk because its got the word "nuclear" in it and the Scottish Government don't like nuclear fission. But this is something else entirely, with no nasty by-products.

So the article is about how we shouldn't miss out on this simply because of politics. And I agree with him. Already the local council have gone all NIMBY by saying its a waste of money and "nobody wants to live next to a nuclear plant" . CND are throwing a hissy fit.

The point is, people aren't really up on energy sources and jump to conclusions. Here endeth the lesson.

I agree with volver on all points she’s made.
And I remember Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. All horror stories.

I can't see any LOGIC In most of what Scottish separatists say. Your blind faith is touching though.

Oh ye of little faith ....Scotland is already a frontrunner in renewable energy we may have "failed to meet the target" as the headline on the BBC says BUT we did provide 97% of our own power last year + a fair amount of Englands and Wales .Like Monica I keep an eye on Grid watch and the day bfore yesterday we were sending between 30 and 50% of the power required by several English regions /
Our biggest problem was Westminster who pulled the plug on funding ....and no power isn;t a devolved issue so we cant .
FULLY fund it ourselves
Now of course there are multiple Tory ministers laying claim to it ;"A new source of power for England because Scotland has too much to use itself" one eegit was heard saying in Inverness .Aberdeen runs busses on Hydrogen power ,water has long been a relaibe source of electricity so either Westminster fronts up with the cash to expand OR they let us and our own finances deal with it by Independence .
Boris was very happy to take the credit at COP26!

I still find it hard to see a SCOT constantly run down their country ...of course you may well believe we are better off paying £465 Million to connect to the grid while English suppliers get PAID £30million for doing the same .
Beats me though..I cant see any logic in that at all!!

I am

Its being so cheerful that keeps me going...

Hmmm. Talk's cheap in Scotland. Not optimistic.

Aveline ??

www.scotsman.com/news/politics/expert-urges-scottish-government-to-back-bid-for-worlds-first-fusion-power-plant-3693701

Fusion in Scotland, fingers crossed. ??

I noticed!

Aveline the politicians are all saying that about the windfall tax but they can't make any private company invest in anything. It's a smokescreen that keeps the private oil and gas firms happy while the government make the public think they support renewables properly.

I have a bee in my bonnet about this! ?

Am I imagining it or did I hear some politician (Boris? Rishi?) say that they're swerving a windfall tax of oil industry firms as they want them to use profits to reinvest into alternative forms of energy? Will that happen? What forms if energy might they invest in?
Ukraine and it's aggressor have certainly concentrated thinking on the need for local energy generation. It's very sad that the various international networks are so damaged politically by Russia's action. We were all getting on so well together before Putin too. More grown up than him I guess. Sorry. Mind wandering and wondering.

Thank you for posting all that information M0nica, it was very interesting.

However, the Rolls Royce system is not the answer to the problem. However cleverly they are made, they still rely on nuclear fission. And right now, and for the foreseeable future, nuclear fission produces by-products that we cannot deal with effectively, that will cause our descendants problems for decades, centuries to come.

Other countries such as France may be relying on it, but that doesn't mean it is acceptable. Some posters have said that the situation in Ukraine has made them think that maybe nuclear is the way. Do you remember early in the war when Russia were close to Chernobyl? Remember too Zaporizhzhia. Russia, or any other aggressor, will use nuclear power plants as weapons if they want to. Nuclear power is not the answer to our future power needs.

The answer is actually as simple as saying that we should use renewables. It is the world's only viable option. The problems we have found have to be solved. But problems with recycling used solar panels for instance, or fixing the human issues associated with mining, are as nothing compared with the issues we face if we make nuclear fission the energy source of the future.

Just because we don't have enough renewable installations today, that doesn't means we can't have enough efficient ones tomorrow. That will take investment. However we are investing billion upon billion on opening new oil and gas fields, and supporting companies to develop fission installations. Vested interest are getting the money, as usual.

And the new nuclear installations in the UK won't come online for at least eight years and in the interim our bills will go up to pay for them. None of that strategy is even vaguely sensible.

Renewables are not without their problems. Solar panels, car batteries, wind turbines all have to be manufactured and then disposed of when they reach the end of their life. At the moment most end up in land fill which creates many problems. Likewise the resources to make/build these such as lead, copper, cobalt and zinc are potentially hazardous not to mention the conditions many people work in to mine these resources. Some of these people in the Democratic Republic of Congo work for 30p per hour.

It is not as simple as saying we must use renewables.

There are, of course, regular maintenance problems with the older plants and Macron has announced huge investment in new ones. I am by no means saying it is a perfect system, but got to be better than reliance on fossil fuels.

About 70% of electricity in France is nuclear; hydroelectric and renewables provide more and less than 10% is from fossil fuels. About 17% of the waste is recycled to make more electricity and the rest is stored under very strict protocols.
Electricity is much cheaper than the UK and controlled by France. Also a big export market.
I would have been twitchy about it before we lived here, but it does seem to be well managed.

volver Rolls Royce are developing nuclear power plants based on the nuclear sytems used in submarines. These would be smaller and identical and could be manufactured in a factory and installed on site in a far shprter time than the huge behemoths we build now. They can also be used to produce hydrogen and power desalination plants.

Here are the two RR sites that explain what these new modular units are and how they work www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#section-why-rolls-royce-smr www.rolls-royce-smr.com/ Heres a non-RR site www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/rolls-royce-small-modular-reactors-approval-accelerated-with-aim-of-powering-up-by-2029-21-04-2022/

RR expect to get approval for the first one in 2024 and have it operational by 2029.

The biggest factor for our need for nuclear power, is that to run the grid efficiently and assure constant supply ^the UK will need 30-40 GW of new “firm” low-carbon baseload generation by 2050 to meet the net-zero emissions target and however hopeful people are, I just do not think we can do that without a significant nuclear contribution.

I did see a papr showing how we could do it based on international networks where we bought power in from countries as far away as Morocco, but I think the Ukraine war has shown the problems that can arise, if you are too dependent on foreign energy sources.

Hydrogen is an alternative to natural gas, I believe Aveline Very promising. But the problem so far is producing it at scale and amending the systems we currently have to run on hydrogen instead of gas. Hydrogen can also be used to power cars but I don't actually know much about that.

Fusion is a form of nuclear energy that is ideal for what we want - no dangerous by-products. But nobody can get it to be stable for any more that a few seconds at a time.

We need to have alternatives to fossil fuels and to phase them out as quickly as we can - and certainly not be finding new sources. All the alternatives will need investment but the investment seems to be going the way of big business with links to the government - hence the nuclear power stations which are just the worst idea I can think of.

This is an area I really know nothing about but I have some questions. I hear people going on about 'fusion' and also about hydrogen. Are there practical implications from either or both of these? Genuine question as I know volver really knows her stuff in this field.

It has a place in the consideration of which energy to use, why and how will it affect global weather.

As I have found, things arnt as clear as they seem in this area.
Plenty of reputable info to ponder on, if one is clear headed about it.

Fracking generates more fossil fuels. How is that remotely useful?

Thorium, new generation nuclear, some renewables (its debatable which are actually useful when the environmental costs and actual results are taken into account).

Believe it or not fracking could be useful.

Look closely at the USA to see which energy production is financially and environmentally successful.

It's not as obvious as it seems.

There is a lot of up to date info out there, if our bias or prejudice doesnt influence our thoughts on the subject.