Retiring wind farms

I skimmed through your link, FlicketyB, but couldn't find the relevant bit about migrants muddying the logal gene pools.

That seems very unlikely to me, but I'm no scientist and my doubt is no more unreasonable than your linking the use of statins to cancer in your friend.

A tragedy, but it doesn't prove anything. It is not a properly researched scientific report.

A very dear friend died recently of liver cancer. There is a suggestion that the fact that doctors took several years to discover that statins were causing him liver problems possibly could have caused the cancer has made me very wary about taking statins myself. But I accept that my decision is utterly irrational because most scientific studies show that statins are safe for the vast majority of people. Tragedies like both these do not make good science.

Gemma

www.comare.org.uk/documents/COMARE10thReport.pdf

Flick you are joking I trust, or did Nigel Farage come up with that one?

Holly's post shows the reality.

Oh Holly, poor you, are you fully recovered?

We went on a tour of Dungeness in Kent when we lived not all that far away - and look what I found today!

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-dungeness-nuclear-power-station-quietly-taken-offline-for-five-months-over-fears-of-fukushimastyle-flood-disaster-9200494.html

It was fascinating, but the reason we went was because a friend of ours gave us some huge fish, he said they were far bigger than the ones he normally found - and then told us after we had eaten them that he had caught them in the warmer waters near Dungeness! They do have a thrivinge cosystem of weird sealife there, with a display about it.

Our upper hills and some offspring of sheep are still unusable due to the fallout from Chernobyl and lobster, in particular, still show higher than average levels of radiation all emanating from Sellafield. Our Government is now bracing itself for when NI builds the nuclear reactors as it would appear we are likely to get the same problems again.

When you consider that something like dental x rays can put you in danger of thyroid cancer (which is what happened to me), I think people have become a little bit blase about the dangers of nuclear power and raddiation exposure. I think it is one of those cases where technology is ahead of our ability to deal effectively with the negative sides of it.

www.thyroid.org/thyroid-physicians-professionals/thyroid-disease-information/clinical-thyroidology/september-2013-volume-25-issue-9/clin-thyroidol-201325201-202/

I think the cancers at Windscale were found not to have anything to do with the nuclear facility but to do with the introduction of internal migrant workers into an area with a relatively static gene pool. The same pattern of disease has been found in areas with a similar pattern of indigenous and incomer populations in the UK and elsewhere where the reason for the influx did not involve nuclear facilities.

Fossil fuels certainly contributed to my maternal grandmother's death. She was born in the slums of Bermondsey and had asthma from childhood then recurring pneumonia, always worse in winter and during smogs, when her daughters used to ship her out to stay with them, when possible. Every year in London before the smoke abatement acts thousands of deaths were attributed to air pollution. the same probably applies to any conurbation in Britain at the time.

So why miss out Kyshtym?

But yes, it's very hard to estimate death rates from nuclear as I said earlier but using sudden increase in cancers is one way, as in Windscale. Not sure that stress and worry can be a major cause though

Likewise it's hard to estimate deaths from burning fossil fuels but they must be considerable too.

Wind and solar technology, in fact all the renewables are in their infancy. I liken them to the first computers, taking up vast spaces. With more investment and research there's no reason that renewables in the future will not be more efficient and affordable. I hope so, as the resources of the planet are finite unless we rely on nuclear, which brings its own problems.

Estimating deaths from nuclear accidents is extremely difficult and there are many different estimates - and no definitive answer. Some argue that adverse health effects of nuclear accidents are more a result of the stress and worry than the radiation.
This blog points out the fact that many forget - millions die prematurely from the effects of air pollution caused by burring fossil fuels.

blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/04/02/nuclear-power-may-have-saved-1-8-million-lives-otherwise-lost-to-fossil-fuels-may-save-up-to-7-million-more/

It was published in 2001 but, despite Fukishima I see no reason why the circumstances should have changed significantly in the last 14 years.

Is this out of date Flick or why else isn't it showing more recent events?

www.psi.ch/ta/risk-assessment and quoted in James Lovelock, 2006, The Revenge of Gaia, p130-133, Penguin.

The Paul Scherrer Institute is the largest research centre for natural and engineering sciences within Switzerland.

nuclear death rates

Yes, better than the legacy of coal mining and far better that the legacy of nuclear power.

As far as death rates, it's easy to count the dead in accidents like coal mining, far harder in nuclear. People are still dying today from the radiation emitted at Chernobyl and there will be a legacy from FukuShima too. We'll never have accurate statistics on these.

I would suggest that each individual big hydro project will have a different economic profile depending on geographical features and who has to get compensated for loss of their land and livelihood.
Here are some eye-watering facts about the world's biggest hydro scheme.
There are concerns about whether it should have been built - seismic stability and sediment.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam
We don't hear much about small hydro do we, which is something upland land owners could use. There is a mill near my sister's in Ireland that is now a pottery and uses the old mill race to generate electricity to fire their kilns.

Can you give figures, Flickety? I cannot find any.

Hydro costs a lot to build, but low maintenance and they can last for up to 100 years, longer than nuclear power stations. If they are affected by earthquakes, the results are not as dire as nuclear, either.

The powers-that-be on the Isle of Man are talking about installing them in our offshore waters to generate electricity which would be an absolute boon here as utilities (all of them) are very, very expensive. I'm hoping the ones in NI are doing well and are prosperous for the local communities.

....and killed building them

More people have been killed and injured by failing dams than by nuclear power.

Hydro costs a lot to build, but low maintenance and they can last for up to 100 years, longer than nuclear power stations. If they are affected by earthquakes, the results are not as dire as nuclear, either.

They will all have to just starting saving up bacteria, then. My house should be fine, I have loads.

Oh don't want fracking either. Or pollution. One thing about not fossil fuels, less air pollution.

Well yes, they would... Also about exploding nuclear plants, wind turbines killing seagulls, and houses falling down mine shafts. But they all want heating.

I will ask DH about the turbines in N Ireland.
Huge engineering costs to big scale hydro. The one near here is pumped storage involving hollowing out a whole mountain. People do get very cross about flooding valleys as well don't they.