New UK nuclear plant sites named

[wjfox]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13887579




New UK nuclear plant sites named

Ministers have announced plans for the next generation of UK nuclear plants.

The government confirmed a list of eight sites it deems suitable for new power stations by 2025, all of which are adjacent to existing nuclear sites.

The sites are: Bradwell, Essex; Hartlepool; Heysham, Lancashire; Hinkley Point, Somerset; Oldbury, Gloucestershire; Sellafield, Cumbria; Sizewell, Suffolk; and Wylfa, Anglesey.

The announcement comes three months after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

The future of nuclear as a power source for countries around the world was called into question after the disaster which occurred in March when a Japanese earthquake and tsunami rocked the reactors at Fukushima, leaving radioactivity leaking from the plant.

The proposals for new UK nuclear power plants are part of a series of national policy statements on energy which have been published following a public consultation.

'Affordable energy'

The plans will be debated and voted on in Parliament, but ministers are hopeful that, with a pro-nuclear majority in the Commons, they will win the argument.

Energy Minister Charles Hendry said: "Around a quarter of the UK's generating capacity is due to close by the end of this decade. We need to replace this with secure, low carbon, affordable energy.

"This will require over £100bn worth of investment in electricity generation alone. This means twice as much investment in energy infrastructure in this decade as was achieved in the last decade."

Mr Hendry said industry "needs as much certainty as possible to make such big investments," adding that the plans "set out our energy need to help guide the planning process, so that if acceptable proposals come forward in appropriate places, they will not face unnecessary hold-ups".

Hinkley blockade

Andreas Speck from Stop New Nuclear - an alliance of eight groups opposed to the plants - said campaigners had expected the government to go ahead with its plans despite Fukushima.

"It was always clear," he said.

But Mr Speck said Stop New Nuclear would continue to oppose the plants "more than ever" and would blockade the Hinkley Point site on 3 October.

EDF Energy has already submitted planning applications to the West Somerset District Council for preparatory work on the planned new reactor at the site.

If EDF could be made to abandon its plans at Hinkley, the alliance hoped work at the other proposed sites would also be stopped, Mr Speck said.

"We believe the nuclear programme is not safe - and Fukushima is the latest example of that - but it's also not needed," he said.

Mr Speck said power could be generated without the use of nuclear energy, which he said was expensive and provided too few carbon reductions.

Friends of the Earth said the UK's energy needs could be met through "clean renewable power".

"After five decades of nuclear power the industry still needs huge public subsidy, while solar is set to operate without taxpayer support within a decade - even in cloudy Britain," spokesman Simon Bullock said.

"The Government is obsessed with putting a new nuclear millstone around Britain's neck."

Divisive issue

The issue of nuclear power divided Conservatives and Liberal Democrats when they entered government together.

The coalition deal allowed a Lib Dem spokesman to speak out against any new nuclear plants, while Lib Dem MPs could abstain on the issue.

However, Lib Dem Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has since given his backing to new reactors.

He stressed that they would not be subsidised by the taxpayer, although MPs have warned that reform of the electricity market could favour nuclear power and amount to a hidden subsidy.

The new reactors are designed to maintain electricity supplies and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

[WatcherZero]

They took the easy option, to build them where the public are generally welcoming because thousands are already employed at the sites.

[stimarco]

Interesting definition of "disaster". Last time I checked, nobody died* at Fukushima. Yes, it coughed and spluttered a bit, but nothing that can't be repaired in a reasonable time. Even the two meltdown failed utterly to produce the necessary media-friendly death tolls.

In the meantime, a major earthquake and tsunami killed thousands, destroyed billions of Yen in ports, shipping, tankers, (how much pollution will those have caused?), refineries, chemical plants, not to mention the likelihood of deaths or serious injury caused by having to clean that mess up.

But apparently, when a 40-year-old nuclear power plant designed for a much small seismic event breaks a bit, yet fails utterly to directly kill a single fucking soul, it's a "disaster" too? Fucking hypocrites.

And the greenies can shut the hell up too. Seriously: when was the last time the UK suffered a massive earthquake and tsunami? And who in the hell is going to build a brand new nuclear power station to a forty-year-old design?

France has been exporting nuclear energy to the UK and Italy for decades. How much safer does nuclear need to get?



* Before anyone jumps on this: one worker was killed by the seismic event. Another died later, of natural causes.

[WatcherZero]

2 recieved lethal radiation doses and 45 died at the local hospital (Mainichi) from dehydration and abandonment when the evacuation order was given due to radiation risk.
Three reactors suffered meltdown, a 4th suffered explosions and fire. They cant even access two of them three months later because radiation is still too high, their all still leaking. Food grown in the entire province was destroyed due to dangerous levels of contamination and drinking water was flown in from China. it will take 10 years to make safe the fuel rods and 100 years before the sites completley decontaminated.

[wjfox]

Originally Posted by stimarco

Interesting definition of "disaster". Last time I checked, nobody died* at Fukushima. Yes, it coughed and spluttered a bit, but nothing that can't be repaired in a reasonable time. Even the two meltdown failed utterly to produce the necessary media-friendly death tolls.

^ You talk as if Fukushima is somehow a minor event that's over and done with.


http://aljazeera.com/indepth/feature...828302638.html

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind"
-- Arnold Gundersen, former nuclear industry senior vice president.

"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl."

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.

"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."

"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

...

Vast area of Japan contaminated

Japan is dangerously contaminated by radioactivity over a far larger area than previously reported by TEPCO and the central government according to new reports from multiple sources. The prefectural government of Iwate released new data that shows radioactive contamination of grass exceeds safety standards at a distance of 90 to 125 miles from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plants.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/0...ed?via=siderec






Michio Kaku: Cleanup will take 50 to 100 years

Originally Posted by stimarco

And the greenies can shut the hell up too. Seriously: when was the last time the UK suffered a massive earthquake and tsunami?

Earthquakes and tsunamis are the only possible thing that could cause a meltdown?

How about deliberate human action? i.e. terrorism or sabotage.

Originally Posted by stimarco

How much safer does nuclear need to get?

4th generation nuclear plants, which are probably 20+ years away.

[stimarco]

Originally Posted by wjfox

^ You talk as if Fukushima is somehow a minor event that's over and done with.

Compared to everything else that happened at the same time, it's hardly the biggest headache facing Japan right now. Just one of many.

I'm not saying it's nothing to worry about. And there's an awful lot of FUD doing the rounds at the moment too:

http://aljazeera.com/indepth/feature...828302638.html

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind"
-- Arnold Gundersen, former nuclear industry senior vice president.

Ah yes. A man who is clearly absolutely neutral in matters of energy and has no vested interest in stirring up shit to trigger some lucrative litigation at all.

(And note that being in the upper management of any industry doesn't mean you know what the hell you're talking about. As the banking industry recently proved.)

"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl."

So the possibility that something bad MIGHT, conceivably, happen, but hasn't ACTUALLY happened, is "The biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of Mankind", is it? I wonder what the victims of Bhopal would have to say about that.

Besides: a nuclear reactor designed for a much less destructive seismic event that wasn't completely wiped off the map suggests that the engineers and construction workers behind it didn't do such a bad job as is implied. Fukushima is forty years old. Our understanding of construction, earthquake-proofing, nuclear power generation, and all the other related fields of science have improved somewhat since then.

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.

The qualified "may well" is a sound basis for this assertion. And while radiography will have been part of their courses, neither an epidemiologist nor a medical doctor could be considered major experts in the nuclear sciences.

The fact that a MAJOR FUCKING EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI occurred at the same time may also be a contributing factor: contrary to popular belief, nuclear reactors are not the only sources of radioactive materials. Coal-fired power stations actually release more radioactive material into the atmosphere than any nuclear reactor does. As will a large surge of ocean water washing up the coastline and well inland. Many minerals are naturally radioactive.

"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."

Perhaps these people might want to look into the concept of vulcanology while they're at it. Last time I looked, there were two major volcanic eruptions in the last 90 days, and those tend to spew out a surprising amount of naturally radioactive material. (Why do you think the Earth's core is molten? It's not just pressure.)

"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

Why of course! Nobody has EVER considered the possibility of a meltdown in the past! How silly of those silly nuclear scientists! Playing God with Things That Should Not Be Known!

Oh wait: they could always just dig a big, deep, hole and push everything into it. We've been drilling mines that run for miles underground for decades, so it's not exactly hard. Expensive, yes, but compared to the alternative of just leaving it there, it's certainly acceptable.

(As for the "What do we do with nuclear waste?" question, earthquakes are likely to play a large part in the long-term solution to that: Subduction zones.)

Japan is dangerously contaminated by radioactivity over a far larger area than previously reported by TEPCO and the central government according to new reports from multiple sources. The prefectural government of Iwate released new data that shows radioactive contamination of grass exceeds safety standards at a distance of 90 to 125 miles from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plants.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/0...ed?via=siderec

Again, read my points above: there are many, many causes for such changes in natural radiation. Hotspots are normal too, but the IAEA report makes it clear that these aren't quite as panic-inducing as the media wants us to believe: of over 800 samples taken, only 50 were found with higher than acceptable concentrations. This level of contamination can certainly be remedied: the radioactive iodine has a half-life measured in days, so it's going to take itself out of the picture within a month. The radioactive caesium will need money spent on removing it, but the key point to take away here is that most—though not all—of the designed-in safety systems worked. Some problems have been found, but given the magnitude 9 earthquake, and its 14m. high tsunami, it's a testament to its design and construction that the Fukushima plant wasn't smeared to rubble the way entire nearby towns were.

This could have been a hell of a lot worse. If the nuclear industry had just gone with "good enough", instead of that expensive gold-plating, we'd be looking at a smoking crater being filmed from very, very, far away.

Nevertheless, TEPCO did NOT claim there was no radiation leakage at all during the early stages of the shutdown process. They even warned people, in advance, that some hydrogen explosions were extremely likely! (The media naturally mis-reported this in its usual Chicken Little style.) Some radioactive material was definitely ejected, but this has been monitored and is being managed.

The IAEA website includes detailed updates and reports on the subject. They're not hard to find: just go to their website and you'll see a big, friendly, link right there on their homepage.

I'm rather more interested in science from experts than pseudo-science from media whores who are deliberately selling fear, uncertainty and doubt to their audiences.

Michio Kaku: Cleanup will take 50 to 100 years

Michio Kaku? Seriously? He's a theoretical physicist, "media personality", and pop-science writer, not a bloody nuclear power station designer or engineer. Why the hell should I listen to a word he says? This is the TV presenter who once fronted an episode about the "science" of "light-sabres", for fuck's sake!

Earthquakes and tsunamis are the only possible thing that could cause a meltdown?

How about deliberate human action? i.e. terrorism or sabotage.

Incompetence and ignorance are far more deadly than the occasional random nut-job. I spent over 35 years of my life living in London. At the IRA's peak, that was terrorist bomb central. (Al Quada didn't invent this concept.) I got to witness one of their bombs going off from my own bedroom window once—at Kent House Station. (The police claimed everyone was evacuated first, but they didn't. Either that, or Network Southeast were using some horrifically vandalised trains.)

More people were killed in the Lockerbie Bombing alone than have been killed in every single nuclear power station incident combined. Nut-jobs are a fact of life. (The trick is to stop pissing people off so much. Some day, governments—and the braying herds of sheep who elect them—will cotton onto this.)

If you insist on claiming nuclear is "inherently" unsafe, you'll have a hard time defending most other forms of energy production: hydroelectricity is one of the worst offenders, thanks to the Vajont dam collapse (due to incompetence and corruption), and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam]the Banqiao Dam failure[/url). What would happen if someone were to detonate a suitably large bomb at the Hoover Dam?

And need I mention the UK's own Buncefield explosion? How much overall damage would that have caused had it happened on a workday?

4th generation nuclear plants, which are probably 20+ years away.

Interesting choice of link, given your signature. You'll forgive me if I treat it with the respect it deserves.

Do you seriously believe the likes of EDF are building nuclear power stations today using utterly unmodified 40-year-old designs and technologies?

NOTHING is 100% safe. Ever. You could get killed by a passing bus tomorrow. It's nice to aim for that goal, but it should not be a surprise to anyone when we occasionally fail to achieve it, regardless of the technology involved.

The trick is to learn from the mistakes, and make sure they never happen again. Not to throw the baby, his family, the bedroom and everything else in the house along with the bathwater at the first sign of trouble. If we just gave up on a technology without even giving it a chance, we wouldn't have bothered with the water-wheel.

[regis91075]

Originally Posted by WatcherZero

They took the easy option, to build them where the public are generally welcoming because thousands are already employed at the sites.

That may be true but given how hard it is to get anything even remotely controversial built in the UK at the moment can you really blame them? The planning rules need changing so that vital infrastructure projects can't be so easily blocked or we risk having no power because nimby's object to all forms of power generation.

[Republica]

you cannot deny that there is massive over reaction to anything radiation related, most likely due to the a bombs. not to say that these nuclear plants are not dangerous and should have very tight controls, it should stay that way.

the petrol in our cars is way more harmful in total. ffs i bet even mobility scooters kill more each year than nuclear meltdowns.

build them!

[LNGCats]

More people died in Chernobyl due to the reaction of the 'greens' that from the nuclear fall out.

Let me explain.

The number of direct linked deaths to Chernobyl is in the tens, it is very very low. There was a very low increase in cancers etc from the fall out.

Yet, because of all the hype from the greens about how 'scary' it was, alcoholism and drug use in that part of the world rocketed - they all thought that they would die. Many many more people died as a result of the drug and alcohol abuse than the radition.


If the greens etc had come out and said don't worry, the effects will be minor, many lives would have been saved.

[Officer Dibble]

Nuclear is low-carbon. Some of the more responsible green groups therefore support it. Handle with care of course, but we'd be in big trouble without it.

[slother]

I see there is nothing planned for the River Severn. Does this keep the door open for some tidal generation in the future? (I'm thinking of the concern over pooling very mildly radioactive water I believe there was with the barrage options)

[stimarco]

Originally Posted by slother

I see there is nothing planned for the River Severn. Does this keep the door open for some tidal generation in the future? (I'm thinking of the concern over pooling very mildly radioactive water I believe there was with the barrage options)

Possibly.

The problem with extracting energy from the tides (or wind farms, or solar power) is that the energy is supplied at the whim of natural forces, rather than when it's actually needed.

It's a little-publicised fact that most of these technologies require either some form of power storage system, or a backup generation plant (usually fossil-fuelled), if they are to be of much real-world use beyond greenwashing.

Tidal energy would work well with a hydro-electric plant: the tidal energy pumps the water back up to the reservoir, which acts as a giant, water-based "battery" to store that energy until it's actually needed. This does, however, have inherent limitations: there are only so many suitable sites for a reservoir large enough to make the system viable. In the UK, most are already taken.

Solar power is getting there, but the current panel designs are still inefficient and expensive. Buying now would be like buying a Betamax video recorder: it'll work, but you may well find yourself lumbered with yesterday's technology much sooner than you expected.

Photovoltaic power is much more viable in countries like Italy, where electrical power supplies to the home have never been high: a typical rural or suburban home only gets 3kWh at the door; even most city apartments get just 6kWh. For Italians, who already have to pay through the nose as much of their electricity is imported, photovoltaics make a lot of sense. As do solar heating panels—the hot water variety.

Compare with the UK, where 10kWh or more (I've seen 20kWh!) is common. Solar heating panels have some benefits, but, again, the climate isn't really suited, and Britons are used to being able to not having to switch off the washing machine before switching on the electric kettle.

Geothermal energy is something Italians (like the Icelanders) are also spending lots of R&D money on as they have the geology for it. Nuclear isn't really an option given the seismically active land and the lack of suitable sites.

Wind power's benefits are dubious at best. Europe has actually seen periods of no wind at all—a recent one lasted 11 days. As with tidal energy, it needs a storage or backup generation system to make it truly viable. The only reason we're seeing wind turbines being built in the EU at all is entirely because the taxpayer subsidises them to a quite shocking degree.

The UK does have a lot of tidal anergy available to it, but there are always knock-on effects with any technology: Tidal barrages may cause problems with local marine ecology, for example.

In short: climates vary, and each will have an ideal mix of energy generation solutions. One size will not fit all, despite the US-biased documentaries implying the contrary. Watching some of these programmes, anyone would think the US was the only nation on the planet, and that every nation had a climate like southern California, and a convenient desert on its doorstep.

The UK is actually well suited to nuclear energy. It is geologically stable, surrounded by oceans, and is also not prone to tidal waves caused by undersea earthquakes either. The French have been using nuclear energy for generations now, with no notable ill-effects; it makes sense for the UK to follow their example.

[slother]

Wow. Does pursuing a nuclear option have any drawbacks, Stimarco?

[eXSBass]

Originally Posted by slother

Wow. Does pursuing a nuclear option have any drawbacks, Stimarco?

The grid can't ask a nuclear station to shutdown in periods of low demand (well it can, but it'll be expensive if it does). It's more or less a base load station. If a nuclear station is tripped unexpectedly, then nearby stations will also be tripped.

Nuclear power generation coupled with strategic renewables is the answer to Britains low carbon energy generation.

This makes sense especially as the carbon floor tax comes into play.

[Republica]

nuclear and wind are two things we can be good at, but we need something more.

as said, nuclear cant turn off, and wind happens when it wants to.

surely tidal power is very reliable though? we know exactly when and where and how high all tides are, surely the actual weather effect on tides is minimal and the moon is the main player.

the answer is probably pan european sharing, spain and north africa can give us some solar power when europe has no wind maybe?

[Tallsmurf]

When I was young and idealistic I was anti-nuclear. I then slowly came to accept nuclear power as a risk that was managed to acceptable levels. But seeing what hapened in Japan when it all goes wrong has pushed me firmly back into the anti-nuclear camp.

Incidentally I live in an area (Eastern Cardiff) that was flooded in 1607 by a Tsunami that killed around 2,000 people, with wave hights estimated at 6m. If the same wave happened today it would kill at least 10 times that number and would also swamp Hinckley Point nuclear reactor, which is less than 20 miles from Cardiff, and could lead to the evacuation of all of South East Wales.

It is not a risk that is worth taking.

[LNGCats]

Originally Posted by Tallsmurf

When I was young and idealistic I was anti-nuclear. I then slowly came to accept nuclear power as a risk that was managed to acceptable levels. But seeing what hapened in Japan when it all goes wrong has pushed me firmly back into the anti-nuclear camp.

Incidentally I live in an area (Eastern Cardiff) that was flooded in 1607 by a Tsunami that killed around 2,000 people, with wave hights estimated at 6m. If the same wave happened today it would kill at least 10 times that number and would also swamp Hinckley Point nuclear reactor, which is less than 20 miles from Cardiff, and could lead to the evacuation of all of South East Wales.

It is not a risk that is worth taking.

Tell us about the risks of the other technologies.

How many people die mining the coal for power stations?


What about the deaths mining the ores for the metals for the windmills?


It's amazing how people forget that no power production is risk free.


Anway, the tsunami in Cadriff 400 years ago would have been orders of magnitude lower than that in Japan, plus now we have seen what happened in Japan we can design out the problems that they experienced there.

[Tallsmurf]

Risk management is all about assessing the probability of an event happening and the consequences of that event.

In the case of a coalmining accident, the probability is relatively high, but the consequences are relativley low, say:

1 fatality event ocurring 1/year
10 fatality event ocurring 1/100years
But no event having impact outside of immediate area. Coal mining only affects those directly involved.

But in the case of nuclear, the probaility is relatively low, but the potential consequences are huge, and more importantly the effects have an impact well beyond the immediate activity and affect innocent bystanders.

And if the Japanese did not prepare properly for the effects of a Tsunami, then what chance do you think the UK nuclear industry has considered it.

The risk assesment for nuclear installations in UK must include an assesment of risk from Tsunami - not as a theoretical possibility, but as a proven historical event!

[Tallsmurf]

ps - the event in Severn Estuary 400 years ago was on the same scale as the recent Japanese tsunami. It killed 2,000 in what was then low populated rural areas in south Carmarthenshire, South Gwent and north Somerset. The same wave today would devastate Llanelli, south & east Cardiff, Newport on the Welsh side, and Avonmouth and Weston Super Mare on the English side, and the death toll would be in the tens of thousands.

[Tallsmurf]

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