Nuclear industry too big to fail?

Your argument is one big straw man.

The anti-nuclear lobby often come forward with nonsense arguments about how nuclear is so dangerous. We are often reminded of Chernobyl and more recently Fukushima. They often put forward comments like "when nuclear goes wrong, it really goes wrong". Well, let's start off by saying that the worst disaster in terms of energy generation was in fact to do with hydro power - Banqiao Dam disaster.

Another thing we should acknowledge is that Chernobyl is a terrible argument over nuclear power. The only thing Chernobyl is suited for, in terms of argument, is that to argue that safety protocols are vital. Chernobyl was a Soviet era plant which had all of the safety protocols turned off - those protocols exist for a reason, when they are turned off of course something will go wrong, that's obvious.

If we look at Fukushima, on the other hand, such a disaster would never happen in Europe or more important the United Kingdom. Why? Two reasons. Firstly, we don't experience those kinds of natural events, they don't happen here. Secondly, the technology that failed in Fukushima is 1960s technology and, if I recall correctly, doesn't actually exist in the UK. Newer power plants have completely different cooling technology.

So we have ruled those two examples out, both of which are straw man arguments if you ask me because they are heavily reliant on massive natural disasters which would damage any nuclear power plant; but as I have mentioned, those kind of natural events don't exist in the UK, or, they are heavily reliant on safety protocols being ignored and over ridden a la Chernobyl.

So, why should we go with nuclear power, what's so good about it?

Well quite simply it's cheap, reliable, carbon-free and pretty damn safe. Unlike renewable energies, it doesn't require large amounts of space and nor does it blight the landscape as with wind farms but it achieves brilliantly in terms of producing energy at low carbon cost.

Now people will often then get onto the issue of radiative isotopes and that evil substance uranium. Now, uranium isn't a pleasant substance, but people who criticise nuclear on the basis of this resource are out of luck.

There are a few substances which can be used as nuclear fuel and one of those is Thorium. Thorium is, in my view, a miracle substance. It has all the benefits of uranium and none of the downfalls.

Unlike uranium, thorium does not produce weapons grade fissionable materials, that is to say that the likelihood of creating nuclear weapons from it is extremely small and cannot be done safely.

Thorium produces between 10 to 10,000 times less radioactive waste than uranium which means disposing of it is incredibly easy in comparison. Furthermore, it doesn't remain radioactive for as long as uranium.

Unlike Uranium which is about 0.7% usable isotope, Thorium, when extracted from the ground is 100% pure usable isotope - no need to enrich it at all. That makes it incredibly more efficient and incredibly cheaper.

Another huge bonus of thorium based nuclear plants is that thorium cannot, I repeat, cannot sustain a nuclear reaction with priming, that is to say, when you turn the plant off, fusion stops. In the case of Japan, if they were using a thorium based reactor, turning off the plant should have turned the reactors off resulting in absolutely no problems what so ever.

This next reason for thorium based power plants is perhaps my favourite. Unlike most other fuels, thorium is ridiculously abundant. In the United States alone, there is enough thorium to maintain the countries current energy consumption for the next millennium. As we can see it's incredibly abundant and will last us for centuries if we want it to; we could use it until we have mastered various other energy techniques such as cold fusion.

Thorium can do something else as well - it can burn up existing nuclear stocks and medical waste.

President Barack Obama could kill America's dependence on oil if he pushed for thorium based plants. Both India and China have made huge pushes to thorium based nuclear plants because they recognise the fantastic potential of this technology and we should be doing the same. We should be ignoring the fanatics and pushing ahead with more investment in thorium based nuclear plants.

Unlike with renewable energies, thorium will result in the closure of oil and gas plants. It means we can genuinely become a low carbon economy. It means we can really get to grips with pollution from energy production. It means we can destroy the hideous coal and gas plants and replace them with clean nuclear power plants.

I will end on an answer to a question I get asked a lot. "Would I care if a nuclear plant was built near me?" NO I wouldn't give a damn. There is no where to build one without destroying green belt land, but if it were possible, I would welcome it - it would create huge job opportunities in my town as well as creating cheap, clean energy.

Nuclear is the future. Yes thorium will require a lot of investment, however, until such time as it is in widespread use, we can rely on uranium. Nuclear power is an incredibly clean form of energy generation and it's no wonder the French rely so heavily on it.

The issue of cost often props up when discussion nuclear power. You always have people screaming that nuclear power is expensive compared to other technology. At the current time, in comparison to fossil fuels, nuclear power is more expensive in purely financial terms. However, when we consider environmental impact, nuclear power is very cheap my friends; we don't have the massive emissions from fossil fuels.

Also consider for a moment that fossil fuels are, by their very nature, inherently finite. That means they will begin to diminish and we all know how the market works right? The more fossil fuels become rare, the higher the price which inevitably means that nuclear power will become the cheapest form of energy generation is the foreseeable future.

There is no way on this Earth renewable energies can become the majority source of energy; they are too inefficient and too weak to do so. Nuclear is the only option we currently have in terms of ensuring we drastically lower emissions, reduce pollution and reduce environmental degradation as a result of energy generation; environmentalists should be proud to support nuclear and one famous environmentalist has done so - George Monbiot.

Too short did not read.

Anyway I think this is all this thread needs. Really it should be locked after this post

Thread/

I hope you actually read it Aj

Your argument is one big straw man.

Well quite simply it's cheap.

If we look at Fukushima, on the other hand, such a disaster would never happen in Europe or more important the United Kingdom. Why? Two reasons. Firstly, we don't experience those kinds of natural events, they don't happen here. Secondly, the technology that failed in Fukushima is 1960s technology and, if I recall correctly, doesn't actually exist in the UK. Newer power plants have completely different cooling technology.

The issue of cost often props up when discussion nuclear power. You always have people screaming that nuclear power is expensive compared to other technology. At the current time, in comparison to fossil fuels, nuclear power is more expensive in purely financial terms. However, when we consider environmental impact, nuclear power is very cheap my friends; we don't have the massive emissions from fossil fuels.

There is no way on this Earth renewable energies can become the majority source of energy; they are too inefficient and too weak to do so. Nuclear is the only option we currently have in terms of ensuring we drastically lower emissions, reduce pollution and reduce environmental degradation as a result of energy generation; environmentalists should be proud to support nuclear and one famous environmentalist has done so - George Monbiot.

I did, but I thought a thorium reactor was still fission not fusion?

My argument is one big straw man?

Until your edit removing your straw man arguments left me with this.

I didn't say it was fusion did I??
.

I didn't say it was fusion did I??
Actually my edit didn't remove a thing, it merely expanded it.

If you genuinely believe a Fukushima type disaster will happen in the UK you are beyond help.

Not when nuclear can see us through several centuries.

Exactly. Before your edit it was one big straw man.

"when you turn the plant off, fusion stops"

Should it not be fission stops rather than fusion?

No it wasn't - everything I wrote was central to my argument. However, when I posted it I realised I hadn't mentioned much on the cost side, so I edited it in. Your argument is a straw man - it effectively says nuclear is bad because a giant disaster stopped it working. Whereas my argument is about the science of nuclear.

Sorry Mr Straw Man.

The worst energy generation disaster wasn't nuclear it was hydro-electric.

The UK doesn't get the sort of natural disasters you are talking about and even if we did, which we don't, the technology in our plants are different. The system that went faulty in Fukushima doesn't exist in the UK any more (as far as I am aware).

It doesn't cost more than renewables

On what measure?

Death and cost.

". But it isn't beyond possibility that a Fukushima sized disaster could happen in the UK"

That makes it extraordinarily clear that you believe such a disaster or scale of natural disaster could happen.

Of course a nuclear disaster could happen, however, as the result of geological/natural disasters? not likely.

Death and cost.

". But it isn't beyond possibility that a Fukushima sized disaster could happen in the UK"

That makes it extraordinarily clear that you believe such a disaster or scale of natural disaster could happen.

Of course a nuclear disaster could happen, however, as the result of geological/natural disasters? not likely.


I don't buy it, but perhaps.

If barclays decided to place > $130 billion in the asteroid belt and then had it wiped out by a meteorite, maybe.
Fukushima was avoidable.
The financial system is flawed as it relies on government insurance, just like nuclear.

Nuclear is most certainly not either.

How exactly was fukushima avoidable? Silly japanese, their fault for having a tsunami....

If we got rid of all the nuclear reactors and built thousands of offshore wind farms which were subsequently wiped out by a hurricaine, the cost would be enormous: many hundreds of times greater than the cost of repairing the relevant number of Nuclear plants.

It’s not like we have another option with the banks, but with nuclear we do and what’s more nuclear is a dead end. It’s not the answer to our energy requirements, it will never be commercially viable, it’s becoming less and less so and it’s a finite resource.

So why are we so happy to plough money into a failed industry?

Nuclear energy is commercially viable, hence why may countries the world over use nuclear reactors to generate electricity.

How much?

UK nuke plant cooling systems are passive aren't they? I was under the impression it was mostly done by gravity so even in the case of a massive power cut or whatever the reactor would still be cooled?