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Shadow over Sellafield

Closure of Japanese plant casts doubt on viability of Sellafield's Mox operation

Future in doubt for plant at nuclear complex in wake of Fukushima disaster / Japanese operation that is key customer set to close amid earthquake fears

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Monday, 9 May 2011

Severe production problems have meant that the first fuel shipments will be delivered more than 10 years behind schedule.

REUTERS

Severe production problems have meant that the first fuel shipments will be delivered more than 10 years behind schedule.

The future of a nuclear fuel plant at Sellafield in Cumbria hangs in the balance after the Japanese Prime Minister called for the closure of a nuclear power station near Tokyo, which was to be the UK plant's most important customer.

The setback is the latest blow to Britain's faltering strategy for dealing with its growing mountain of reprocessed nuclear waste, and further evidence of the extent to which the devastating Japanese earthquake of 11 March has changed the nuclear picture – in particular the international trade in reprocessed nuclear fuel.

If the power plant at Hamaoka, 200km from Tokyo, closes, shipments of nuclear fuel to Japan from the Sellafield Mox Plant would stop before they had even started. It is the latest in a long series of problems for the nuclear fuel plant at the Sellafield complex which had already cost taxpayers £1.34bn even before the impact of the earthquake and tsunami was felt.

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Nuclear officials in Britain have demanded urgent talks with their counterparts in Japan after the proposal by Naoto Kan. The Prime Minister wants the Hamaoka complex closed on the grounds that, following the earthquake-triggered disaster at the Fukushima plant, it too is at risk of a major earthquake. The consequences of such an event could be serious enough to cause the evacuation of Tokyo, 200km north-east of Hamaoka.

Japanese nuclear authorities are still struggling to control the stricken reactors at the Fukushima power plant which were inundated by an 18-metre wall of seawater. Residents living within 20km of the plant have been evacuated and there are no plans as yet to allow them to return to their abandoned homes.

Hamaoka, which has been described as the world's most dangerous nuclear power facility because it sits on two geological faults, was to be the first site in Japan for the delivery of mixed oxide (Mox) nuclear fuel made at the troubled Sellafield Mox Plant.

If the Japanese premier gets his way, however, Hamaoka will be shut long before Sellafield is ready to fulfil its only definite order for Mox fuel. This would torpedo the entire rationale for building and opening the £498m Sellafield Mox Plant, which was to fabricate hundreds of tonnes of Mox fuel for Japanese reactors.

Mr Kan's proposal last Friday stunned Japan's power industry. "This is a decision made for the safety of the Japanese people when I consider the special conditions of the Hamaoka plant," Mr Kan said. He added that studies by earthquake experts at Japan's Ministry of Education predicted an 87 per cent chance of a magnitude 8 earthquake in the Tokai region of Hamaoka within 30 years and the risk of a major tsunami similar to the one that devastated Fukushima.

Japan is crucial to Britain's attempts to generate a market in Mox fuel, which is made by mixing plutonium dioxide retrieved from spent fuel rods with uranium oxide. The promise of lucrative Japanese contracts for Mox fuel was the primary reason the Mox plant was finally licensed in 2001 after years of legal wrangling. However, since it was given its operating licence by the previous government, the Sellafield Mox Plant has been beset by problems. Instead of producing 120 tonnes of fuel a year, it has managed just over 13 tonnes in eight years, at a total cost to the taxpayer of £1.34bn – and a further £800m in future running costs expected this decade.

British Nuclear Fuels, which ran Sellafield before the site was taken over by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, boasted 10 years ago that it had enough interest from Japanese power companies for Mox fuel to make the plant break even, if not make a profit. However, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said that it has only one guaranteed order, from Chubu Electric, to supply Mox fuel to the nuclear reactors at Hamaoka.

Meanwhile, the severe production problems at the Sellafield Mox Plant have meant that the first fuel shipments will not be delivered until at least the end of the decade, more than 10 years behind schedule.

A spokesman for the authority said that the contract to manufacture Mox fuel rods at Sellafield for Chubu was signed last year and that the preparations for manufacturing fuel rods are "ongoing". These preparations involve an extensive refurbishment of the troubled plant. "We will be discussing with Chubu at the earliest opportunity what impacts, if any, will result from this latest announcement," he said.

The developments come at a difficult time for Sellafield and the Government, which said that it wants to build a second Mox plant on the Cumbrian site in order to tackle the enormous waste stockpile of British-owned civilian plutonium, the biggest in the world.

The Government's public consultation over what to do with the civil plutonium stockpile ends this week but it has already indicated that its preferred option is to build a second Mox plant at Sellafield to use up the waste plutonium as nuclear fuel.

However, nuclear officials are deeply embarrassed over the existing Mox plant, which has been described as one of the biggest disasters in Britain's industrial history. They had been hoping to gloss over its problems in order to secure the estimated £6bn it would cost to build a second Mox plant at Sellafield.

Now, the near-meltdown of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima has cast further doubts over the international trade in Mox fuel. One shipment to Japan from France on ships operated by Sellafield has already been abandoned and some commentators believe future shipments may end altogether because of growing hostility in Japan towards nuclear power. Another unsolved difficulty is that Mox fuel is about 30 per cent more expensive than ordinary uranium fuel made from ore dug out of the ground, which is why nuclear operators prefer not to use Mox if they can avoid it. If the Government builds a second Mox plant to deal with the UK's plutonium waste stockpile, it will have to subsidise power companies to burn it in their reactors – yet it has insisted there will be no subsidies for nuclear operators.

The Sellafield saga

September 1996

The Sellafield Mox Plant is built on the coast of Cumbria at a cost that will eventually reach £498m. Its purpose is to convert nuclear waste into Mox, a fuel used in reactors. However, the plant does not yet have a licence to operate.

September 1999

The first consignment of Mox fuel bound for Japan, made in a smaller Mox Demonstration Facility, is ordered to be shipped back to Sellafield after The Independent reveals that quality control data had been falsified. Quality checks had been bypassed using data sheets from previous samples, meaning some batches of rods were passed as safe when they had not been checked.

October 2001

After five public consultations, the Sellafield Mox Plant receives an operating licence. The economic case is made in a heavily redacted report by independent consultants, which states that the plant would provide the UK with a profit of £150m over its lifetime. The plant goes on to cost a further £840m.

August 2002

The plant's operating company, British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), is forced to hire its main rival, the French firm Areva, to cover an order of MOX from a Swiss facility because of delays in getting the plant into production. The next month, fuel from the first 1999 consignment to Japan arrives back in the UK unused.

August 2003

BNFL admits it has again subcontracted an order of Mox to Areva. Environmental groups estimate the cost could have been as much as £20m.

October 2004

Areva is called in to fix the plant – still yet to produce a single finished product – leading two former environment ministers from opposing political parties to demand a parliamentary inquiry.

September 2006

A report cites more than 6,000 minor failures of equipment in two months, equating to 37,000 failures a year, each stopping the production line for between 15 minutes and an hour, along with 100 significant failures a year, with an average recovery time of several days.

May 2010

Sellafield signs first and only contract with a Japanese utility, Chubu Electric, to supply Mox fuel from the plant to the company's Hamaoka reactors.

March 2011

Former chief scientist Sir David King recommends British taxpayers should spend between £3bn to £6bn on a new facility for making Mox fuel at Sellafield, despite the existing MOX plant being well-documented as one of the biggest industrial failures in British history. Former environment minister Michael Meacher calls for an official inquiry into the evidence used to justify the operating licence.

May 2011

Five people are arrested for taking photographs of Sellafield, underlining the potential security risk posed by the site. They are later released without charge. Meanwhile, Sellafield admits that no Mox fuel is likely to be shipped to Japan until the end of the decade, 10 years after the plant was supposed to have completed all its orders.

  • tigerfish
    The situation is clearly not stable in Fukushima and NHK press releases contradict the misinformation you post here. NHK reports TEPCO examined a water sample from the SPF of Reactor #3 on Sunday. The sample contained 140,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium-134 per cubic centimeter, 150,000 becquerels of cesium-137, and 11,000 becquerels of iodine-131. None of these substances were detected during an inspection on March 2nd, before the accident triggered by the March 11th disaster. TEPCO says these substances may have come from damaged fuel rods in the reactor rather than the damaged spent fuel rods in the pool, because it has detected radioactive iodine, which has a short half-life. Radioactive substances such as iodine are generated during nuclear fission inside a reactor. The company says the radioactive substances may have become attached to debris and entered the pool together. Obviously TEPCO has little idea what is happening in the reactor buildings. Additionally NHK reports TEPCO is falling behind its own remedial schedule of April 17. The most important steps involve the cooling of the reactors. These include pumping water into the reactors, injecting nitrogen into the containment vessels to prevent a hydrogen blast and filling them with water, as well as a study on the possible installation of heat exchangers. Workers have entered the No.1 reactor building to prepare to inject water into the containment vessel. On Tuesday, they started calibrating the water gauges, and a plan has been drawn up to install a heat exchanger. However, none of these measures have been carried out at the other reactors, apart from pumping water into them. The high levels of radiation detected inside the No.1 building could force TEPCO to change its work plan. Contaminated water has been leaking into the basements of the Dai-Ichi #5 and 6 reactors. Bloomberg reports on the human suffering: At Shoyo Junior High in Date City, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) northwest from the Dai-Ichi nuclear station, students are advised to wear masks, caps and long sleeves to protect themselves as their exposure to radiation is on pace to equal annual limits for nuclear industry workers. ?Students are told not to go out to the school yard and we keep windows shut,? said vice principal Yukihide Sato,?Things are getting worse, but I don?t know what to do.?
  • Rockingham
    I never said or mentioned car use, but if you concentrate on the average semi and do the work required to bring it up to as near carbon neutral as possible then 40% is conservative, new insulation techniques on exterior walls and/or on internal room walls plus cavity, 12 inch insulation in the loft and insulation between joists if it is ground floor boarding, then replace windows with a minimum 30mm double glazing and most of the energy escaping will be eliminated, a number of self producing energy sources are available and can be mixed to suit, from the most obvious solar cells on south facing roofs to conventional wind turbine, VAWT's take up much less space, ground source energy is a lot more efficient and cheaper than most think, the list is endless, 5KVA of produced home energy 24/7 by one or numerous sources would make a house after insulation work most likely a net exporter, so it can be done if governments roll out meaningful grants and make all new buildings 90% minimum carbon neutral, yes a bit more expensive in the short term but the long term advantage far outweighs it, nuclear energy and the waste it produces is a stored legacy that should never be placed on future generations, many thousands dead/dying through the Chernobyl disaster, a whole swathe of people and farmers across Europe to Wales who cannot take stock or produce to market even now, Japan when the full contamination is released will be the same, vast areas of Nevada a no go area because of contamination, deep storage facilities in the Yucca mountain nuclear waste repository that could be victim of a chain reaction should the San Andreas fault wakes up and effects Yellowstone, as it is it can contaminate water sources, the world does not know how to deal with nuclear power stations and their waste when working and even less when it goes wrong, and make no mistake there will be more disasters just hope it's not in your own back yard. In a message dated 09/05/2011 17:54:57 GMT Daylight Time, writes: BillyU7U wrote, in response to Rockingham: "if the money wasted on Selafield was used to make houses more efficient and produce 40% + of their own energy on a progressive scale then the need for more stations would no longer be there" Grand claims like this really require some solid evidence. I can't believe someone living in a standard semi-detached house in an average suburban estate is ever going to produce 40% of the energy required for their home and car use. The real question is the health affects of nuclear vs. fossil fuel vs. no/expensive electricity. Of the three, nuclear is by far the safest for human health and the environment, it just happens to also be the most directly measurable. However, just because you can detect radiation very easily and precisely pinpoint its source doesn't make it worse than say air pollution which kills tens of millions of people a year, tens of millions more than the maximum of a few thousand deaths anthropogenic radiation likely causes a year. Link to comment: http://disq.us/1wldwa
  • The risk of damage to a nuclear plant by a plane is already accepted by the HSE. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/21/nuclear-risk-plane-crashes No group has tried to get access to a nuclear power plant, but many people have breached higher security at nuclear weapons sites. It is relatively easy to close down nuclear power plants, as the link I already provided proves. The computer security at the eight British Energy plants is especially poor, as I've previously explained to you.
  • zwitterion2
    Tiggy, I personally dont believe that there will be any further incidents at fukushima. You I think do believe that there will be right? Im happy to accept that you believe that. Lets see what happens shall we? Do you want to tell us what you think will happen? In my opinion, things are now under relative control. Air purification systems are being installed with some working already. Auxiliary cooling systems are being installed currently. Water purification has started. Bulldozers are covering over small radioactive sources on the site and larger ones are going to be located by a robot apparently and picked up one by one. Decay heat must be down to about 100kw to 200kw in the largest reactor now, which is only about the amount that 5 to 10 domestic heating boilers produce and is quite easy to remove. The speed of the cleanup is going to accelerate because as the site gets safer, more staff can be let on at the same time for longer and can do more work. The buildings are being made safe to enter. Soon I suspect that removal of spent fuel might start. My guess? Another couple of months. Might be wrong, we will see. First, I think we will see cranes start to clear some of the metal from the tops of the buildings. Im interested to see what exactly you think is going to happen now to suddenly change this?
  • tigerfish
    Perhaps you should spend a little more time getting yourself informed rather than posting nonsense here. Lest anyone is inclined to believe Zwitty's soothing blather that the Fukushima plant is being brought under control, the recent temperature readings in the three reactors over the last week are a sobering reminder that the situation is still dire. In each case the temperature has more than doubled. Radiation readings have also spiked. Temperature in Centigrade. Reactor 1 - 93.7 (1/5/11) - 206.2 (8/5/11) Reactor 2 - 122.3 (1/5/11) - 256.3 (8/5/11) Reactor 3 - 99.6 (1/5/11) - 314.5 (8/5/11) Reactor 4 is of course empty of fuel, although the SFP is a major concern, along with the entire structure which is in danger of collapse.
  • were all all ears! No comment.
  • 2blue
    So build the car plant on the fault line and the nuclear plant elsewhere.
  • Must be really nice to have 100% of people in any argument on your side. :)
  • Guest
    dye sol dot com - hope this gets thro
  • Guest
    Wait a minute, couldn't we burn turkeys for electricity instead?
  • Guest
    What is it in the smoke that causes the deaths - particles or chemicals , or a bit of both? If it's particles only , then is it not possible to filter them out in the giant smoke stacks?
  • Guest
    dyesol.com -- one good alternative.
  • zwitterion2
    Correct. I wonder if Danny, Smokey, NJ and the other antinuclear shillturfers are actually the journalist writing the piece? I wonder if the journo gets paid per page impression ('hit' on his article)?
  • zwitterion2
    Superb news. Thats how classic renewables need to be used. The japanese must do their best to make up whatever they can from these alternative sources and simply use nuclear for whatever they cannot get from classic renewables, rather than resorting to increases in the use of fossil fuels. I fully support this strategy too.
  • zwitterion2
    I cant find any references to the building leaning, likely building collapse, or vast run-off into the ocean. Perhaps you would be so kind as to post your sources? Temps are still not stable in the reactors and are still going up and down. Reactor one has an ETA for being fully covered of about 18 days now, and although im not sure of the other two reactors, iirc at least one of them is already fully covered now. Once the cores are covered, the temp spikes should reduce. Its still not pretty but its getting better.
  • zwitterion2
    Hi Tiger, At chernobyl they used hastily cobbled together robots which did fail yes. But the radiation fields there at chernobyl were around 300 sieverts per hour, whereas at fukushima most of the site is around 10 to 100 microsieverts per hour, around 6000 times lower. So the radiation field is much lower - the same robots would be expected to last 6000 times longer in fukushima than cherbnobyl, which is enough time for them to get plenty done (some weeks). Also however chernobyl and TMI amongst other situations have taught us how to harden robots against radiation. So for example, hydraulic hoses are made of different materials etc. Electronics are based on larger die sizes and heavily shielded. The fact that they are already using robots to do this demonstrates my point anyway. Youll hear a lot more about this over the next few months, as many different types of robots are planned to be introduced.
  • paracetamol
    thanks.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    The amount of reporting on something generally depends on how many papers that reporting sells. "Nuclear Disaster: End of World Expected" sells papers. "Nuclear Accident: Not as bad as the tsunami though" doesn't.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    And this is your evidence of me and others being shills. Basically your argument is: "Shills exist, you disagree with me, therefore you three must be shills".
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    " I am quite skilled and experienced in detecting propaganda." You mean you are quite skilled and experienced in accusing people of spreading propaganda. Everyone who disagrees with you is a shill to you Smokey. You admitted you don't listen to their arguments once you know they're a shill, and your shill detector is simply your gut.
  • My apologies. When I asked for a reference I meant a reputable scientific journal or industrial document. I wouldn't count the Herald as either of these, although I'm sure they do a fine job of reporting, they are not technically trained, and it was the technical information I was interested in. They also quote Peter Roche as an independent energy consultant, a very quick (2s) google (I have actual work to do here as well as talking about all this ;) ) shows he's actually a lead anti-nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace - do you have any other references for this? I'm not calling it into doubt, I'd just like to read the reports. You do appear to be confusing two separate issues though - the cracking of graphite within the core itself (which can be a serious problem and is rightfully closely monitored to ensure the reactors are safe to operate), and the cracking of pipes within the boiler which, as the article you so helpfully copied and pasted goes on to say (immediately after your copy/paste in fact); "Spurr said that the vast majority of cracks are too insignificant to warrant repair " and goes on to list the ways the others are successfully repaired. One point I would make - these are reactors which are at the end of their life expectancy. They are running still because they are still safe, but are subject to regular testing to ensure that this continues to be the case. Minor problems would be expected on reactors whose life expectancy is continuously reviewed, and that review taken on the evidence available. Pointing out that they have been turned-down a notch to keep them well within safe-limits isn't massively convincing as an anti-nuclear argument to me, it more points out that those safe-limits are being monitored and adhered to.
  • Outside of the US, we say kudos to someone, not props. I presume you mean 'turn off power to parts of the site' rather than parts of the state, but perhaps I am wrong since the effect would be the same. You asked about a cruise missile? Watch this video How many container vessels and lorries pass within range of nuclear power plants every day without being inspected? Millions of them. Just because something hasn't been done doesn't mean it is difficult to do. Similarly, you are just plain wrong about an airliner crash. Look at Fukushima, an active reactor core was stored in a pond on the roof. These ponds are made of steel, but they have openings with plastic/rubber inflatable fastenings which wouldn't survive even a small aircraft crash. Similarly your reassurances about nuclear plant security have already been blown out of the water by the activities of protesters at Faslane and Coulport who got into secure areas and actually onto the subs despite not only the armed MoD but the heavily armed contingent of Royal Marines, plus regular security testing by the SAS. Edit for Zwit below: You don't believe a light aircraft couldn't get through the thin outer-building? Does the word momentum mean nothing to you? Pretty irrelevant any since this article is about Sellafield and lot's of it's nuclear waste is stored in ponds open to the skies, plus the UK Health and Safety Executive have already said light plane crashes are a risk.
  • Zwit earlier claimed that Japan is going to push ahead with nuclear regardless of Fukushima. I won't be surprising you to tell you that is not the whole truth. Japan had planned to increase it's nuclear power contribution to electricity from 30% to 50% by 2030. It has now abandoned those plans in favour of increased investment in renewables, an effective cut of 20% from nuclear. Kan told a news conference that nuclear and fossil fuel used to be the pillars of Japanese energy policy but now the government will add two more pillars: renewable energy such as solar, wind and biomass, and an increased focus on conservation... ?I believe the government bears a major responsibility for having promoted nuclear energy as national policy. I apologize to the people for failing to prevent the nuclear accident,? Kan said.
  • I imagine it is the same in North Ayrshire, but in Hamilton Council there was a wee lassie who would cut out all the press clippings in all the newspapers each day that mentioned Hamilton. That was her job. Then the councillors would write in to the newspapers under the assumed name of someone on the voters roll defending the council. Nowadays on the internet they call that astroturfing but I think the lackeys have always been called shills.
  • tigerfish
    The temperatures of the reactors, as well as the radiation releases have both spiked in the last week. In addition, the containment building of Reactor #4 has developed a lean of several degrees and the Japanese are desperately trying to shore up the building before it collapses and disgorges vast amounts of nuclear fuel from its SFP, which would exponentially increase the radiation on site. In the meantime TEPCO continues to pump at least 7 tons of water every hour into each reactor building which then flows into the ocean or the ground. Is this what you mean by "things are clearly coming under control"?
  • herrmann1211w3rd
    Danny, I must commend you for your persistence in refuting the lies and propaganda being spew by shills such as Zwit, Rofl, and the latest member of the paid liars club, Joel. As I have stated previously, I make no claims as to being an expert in nuclear energy, but I am quite skilled and experienced in detecting propaganda. I appreciate the fact that you have taken the time to share your knowledge of nuclear energy and to thump these paid lackeys of the nuclear industry upside the head. I've got your back and will also keep reminding people that the nuclear industry thrives on dispensing lies and misinformation. Keep the faith!
  • herrmann1211w3rd
    People who are speaking the truth have no need to proclaim that they are being honest. Using such a statement is a very good indicator that the person is in fact not being honest; just as someone who says "I'm not lying", probably is lying out their bung-hole. Professional interrogators know this fact and use it to detect subterfuge and deceit. Zwit and his buddy Rofl have clearly been shilling for the nuclear industry, but they have lost all credibility because it quite apparent that they are paid spokesperson's for the nuclear industry. I would have thought that they would have been dismissed for incompetence and replaced with more skilled liars. Instead, it seems that their sponsors have simply added more shills to the payroll in hopes that they can stem this tide of anti-nuclear sentiment that is sweeping across the planet in response to the widespread destruction and misery that the nuclear industry has caused in Japan. Polticians in America who were making tentaive proposals to restart the building of nuclear power plants have suddenly grown very silent on the issue. Every nuclear plant in America is being thoroughly inspected and any chance of reviving the industry died at Fukushima. It is now official that the Hamaoka plant will be shut down. This is very significant because it proves that an outraged public still has more power than the nuclear industry, despite its massive spending on corrupt politicians and propaganda.
  • Sigh, here we go again, demolishing the old lies one by one. Let's start with Scotland. There are two elderly nuclear power plants here, both about to close, not to be extended and not to be replaced. As a nation we will be 80% renewables by 2020, free of nuclear by 2023, and yet we'll remain an electricity exporter. The technology is therefore obviously available, and yet the political will is short in some parliaments due to the most base and transparent nuclear industry lies.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    I doubt it, it's actually quite a clever bit of word-play.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    Made-up dollars from the bank of Smokey's imaginationland.
  • Akk Dang-nabit. How did you catch me out. I am of course Hugh Laurie. Simultaneously American and English, devilishly handsome and oh so witty. Hats off to you sir.
  • Any idea if I get paid in pounds or dollars - there seems to be some confusion!
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    Reinforcements? You are actually crazy.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    Oh shut up you nonsense peddling twit. I've tried posting technical information here backed up by proper sources, but I just get shot down by you lot as being a shill, regardless of what I write. I don't have the same patience as Zwitterion2 so haven't been as active of late. If you're missing me Danny, I can post more specially for you? It's OK though, Joel seems to know his stuff, so I'm sure he'll provide you with all the ritual humiliation you must crave.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    It's only a matter of time Joel. You'll be a "shill" just like the rest of us (zwitterion2, DaveMart, Me to name but three - there are more). Just how many shills they think the nuclear industry employs I don't know. You have to realise that SmokeyWest is incredibly stupid, so logic and reasoning have no sway. He refuses to answer direct questions about evidence and logical arguments with regards to "shilling", which I put down to sheer pig-headedness. He believes the only explanation for anyone not agreeing with him on this is that they're in the payment of the nuclear industry to post here. Oh, and welcome to the thread. Just make sure to keep track of your posts, as we get paid by how many posts we make.
  • ..... k.
  • paracetamol
    im terribly sorry, but im anti nuclear, and you are indeed wasting a lot of oxygen...no doubt you are using the opportunity to spread your slant on things..soapbox, n all that.. i say no to nuclear, and no amount of your %s will make one blind bit of difference
  • paracetamol
    im countering your extremely biassed posts, in my own sweet way.
  • tigerfish
    As was discovered at Chernobyl, any robot working on the wreckage above the leaking SFP will have its electronics fried by radiation in a very short period of time. It will thus be transformed into more wreckage that the next robot will have to dismantle in order to access the spent fuel. A sad end end for such brave robots after they've parachuted onto the roofs of the reactor buildings from drone helicopters. Unfortunately it seems you've mistaken Terminator films for reality.
  • Plenty of likes? Is this some kind of competition or something? I'm not really all that bothered to be honest, although I am intrigued as to who you think I am! :D
  • So, by your logic people you call liars either admit to it, or refute it - thereby proving their guilt? Gotta be honest I'm finding this quite exciting, i've never been accused of being part of a conspiracy before! Do I get a tin-foil hat or anything? :D
  • 'We want to export electricity and get some money'. Are you aware that roughly 30% of the UK's energy production comes from nuclear? (closer to 40% in Scotland I believe) and that we already currently are a net importer of fossil fuels? If we stopped using nuclear right now there is nothing to replace it, we wouldn't lose money from selling it, we'd have rolling blackouts! 'it has to be nuclear, it just has to... why?' See above, the post you just replied to. It has to because there are no alternatives at present. Not a single one. The technology simply isn't available yet. It'll be brilliant when it is, but it's not at the moment.
  • paracetamol
    in my usual bumbling fashion, i missed the fact, perhaps as i dont know what shills means, so i skipped over the posts talking about them
  • paracetamol
    actually, we all lap up smokeys rantings... he s genuine prairie-fire likable excessively and ineffably our very own smokey ranter.
  • paracetamol
    joel, we ve been pretty rough with you, and you are new on the block..im going to give you plenty likes to get you started. i guess by the end of the month, you ll have surpassed me, if you are who i think you are... and , by the way, i ll like em whether i do or not...
  • paracetamol
    i like that one, danny of discus!
  • paracetamol
    yes, ive read your post over and over again written by others, since i started posting about a couple of months back... its always the same...oh! it has to be nuclear, it just has to... why? because we want to export electricity, and get some money. once again, moneys the big baddie. if the government forces us into a corner by not funding the other green methods of power. we ll vote em out. nuff said. except long may the local planning laws continue...
  • paracetamol
    aye mines like a mashed spud too.
  • Why is it unbelievable that somebody with an admitted bias and knowledge of a situation would want to comment? I'm really not sure I follow your logic at all, and I'd hardly say I'm enraged, more sort of, mildly incredulous that you seem to think my very existence is some sort of scam by an industry just to wind you up.
  • Thanks for the information - and you're accusing me of being one of these? Am I right in thinking that or did I mis-read what you've put in some way?
  • zwitterion2
    Ahh Joel, youve really done it now. If you havent been following the last 6 weeks of posts, youre in for a jolly funny ride if you continue to post here. Danny takes great offence to any facts being posted here, and will accuse you of any number of lies, dishonesty, stupidity, arrogance, ignorance, vindictiveness, bullshitting, base tactics, dissembling, distracting, faking, and being of low intelligence. His favourite subject, apparently, is quantum mechanics, although he feels he is so far above the rest of us on that subject that he wont demonstrate his masterful command of it. Hes highly educated having studied engineering and physics, and will happily back up his points with working and referenced facts from the peer reviewed literature. Welcome to bedlam ;-)
  • So you were browsing the archive of the Independents Environment section, and you came across this article on Sellafield that so enraged you you thought you had to register to comment? Incredible. Literally unbelievable.
  • zwitterion2
    I know Danny. You told me in the past: Appendix A: One 24 hour periods worth of your accusations of 'liar' to me: you are a peddlar of lies However, you have lied. You lied that the evacuation... You lied about the hydrogen You lied about the extra coolant water You lied about the clouds You lied when you said you would be happy you continue to lie about it being safe. People believe the lies the biggest lie being told is you are a repeated liar, morally repuignant coward, and a total sham. he has lied repeatedly You tell lies Your lies are deadly Your lie there And that is a lie. I have caught zwit out on four seperate lies lied about previously your responses simply prove your dishonesty. dishonest. Appendix B: Some additional select quotes over the next few days: My young nephew has more nuclear and maths than you ever will You aren't just a proven and repeated liar, you yourself are a lie. You are the very personification of arrogance and ignorance Good Zwitty Bad Zwitty you are repeatedly lying utterly vindictive and personal You are a bullshitter constantly being proven wrong sinking to any base tactics you are a delusional fraud You are just a faker paid to distract you have lied so often you were commissioned to post here You couldn't even work out the tax fomula Zwit is lying You are just bumping your gums, dissembling, distracting, lying Fakir. you aren't half the intellect I am (nice, that last one:-))
  • zwitterion2
    Does anybody else use it Danny or is did you make it up?
  • Yeah, you started out by calling me and other posters mentally insane for disagreeing with you, sadly the moderator deleted most of those posts. Yet you are a repeated and proven liar. Guy Fawkes is proof that everyone in the UK knows of at least one conspiracy, or do you think he was working alone?
  • You should really read the previous articles comments Joel - btw, are you really claiming not to be a yank with that name? Astroturfing is the name given to fake 'grass-roots activism' employed by states and corporations to mislead the public and manufacture consent. Edit for Zwit below: Read the link dunce, and use a browser that inhibits white space while you are at it, plus a spell-checker shouldn't be beyond your wit. Your 'persona management software' is showing it's flaws. Political parties also astroturf.
  • See this is what always confuses me. Any basic study of the available and currently ready technologies show that you essentially have fossil based generation - gas, coal etc or nuclear. Wind and solar just simply wouldn't work in this country at their current state of technology. Not only the generation technology itself but storage systems required for when the power goes away. You have either the choice of dirty (and demonstrably deadly) coal, or nuclear and you'd chose coal? Green energy doesn't yet exist as a viable generation tool. About the only 'real' green option I can see working at the moment is to shove a dirty great hydro-plant across the Severn, but that's argued against by green campaigners constantly and has been for years. There is no way to generate the amount of electricity we use as a species without damage to the environment and ourselves, there simply isn't an easy magical option to make every problem go away. At the moment nuclear is the cleanest way of generating that power on the scales required. Nuclear waste is a problem (and always will be) but it's manageable and containable - high level waste accounts for a tiny fraction of the total waste produced and can be contained - the only reason we don't currently have a repository for it in the UK is local planning laws!
  • paracetamol
    proponents of recycling are more into green than nuclear, joel. we dont want nuclear...at least scotland wont have it forced on us anymore.
  • Ach, parahandy, I think you are great too but you know Hunterston isnae a joke. There is a wee butt and ben up north somewhere with your name on it, just make sure it has internet access cos ye'd be missed here. If ah'm a nippy-sweety then it's cos ah ken it's more than me who has suffered from the effects of this toxic misinformation. My face is like fizz.
  • paracetamol
    thats what i said...theres hunterston leaks.
  • Do you mean I should pay 30 quid for a flying lesson and crash into the nearest fuel pond? Apart from not wanting to kill myself, I also don't want to spread nuclear waste everywhere just to prove that it can be so easily done. I don't have the million quid it would take to buy a Club-K cruise missile but some people do - are you still on your six-figure salary? I could break into any nuclear power-plant but since I won't be going in to destroy the place then you would simply say that proves nothing - even though it does. I could also hack into each of the eight British Energy sites and put anti-nuclear propaganda on every computer screen there, stop the business from running for a day or two, but again since I have no malicious intent what would be the point. The point is I really could do all these things, and I'm not exactly a criminal mastermind am I? So why are virtually unprotected dirty bombs left littering our country run by incompetents?
  • zwitterion2
    :-)
  • zwitterion2
    Excuiese me? I havent got a clue what youre on about Danny. November the 5th? Astroshillers ruining my turf? Youre a raving loonie mate.
  • The Hunterston dilemma Experts also claim that the biggest problem at Hunterston is the cracked graphite bricks, as opposed to the boiler tube cracks which caused its closure last winter and its low power operation this winter. They claim no technique is known that can eliminate the cracks but the Nuclear Safety Directorate has required British Energy to carry out more frequent inspections of the bricks. The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) claims there is an expectation that most of the graphite bricks in the core of Hunterston could crack in the near future, jeopardising the safe running of the reactors. British Energy's bifurcation blues The AGR reactor core is surrounded by 12 boilers, which are contained in the steel-lined concrete pressure vessel. The bifurcations (528 per reactor) are located at the top of the boiler where access is restricted. Inspections of the bifurcations have been carried out since 1993, when the first leak occurred as a result of cracking. Since then, there have been some 20 leaks, though none have been serious enough to cause water ingress to the gas circulators.
  • paracetamol
    danny, youre not usually so nippy with the inoffensive...save it for later, we need you to bat em down.
  • Out of interest, can I ask what an 'astro-turfer' is? Presumably we're not talking fake-grass here?
  • paracetamol
    i always give out likes as if they were confetti, and you always get plenty, you jealous thing you..
  • Buy me lunch and i'll think about it ;) i think you're mildly confused - I joined today having read the comments posted under this story. I haven't 'propagandised' (good word by the way) the nuclear industry, my own views are pro-nuclear, although that's more through the education i've received than any burning passion to see the world covered in fallout. Perhaps the increase in interested parties on these boards since Fukushima is down to the increase in stories, rather than some burning desire from the nuclear industry to convert you, Danny of Disqus, to their wicked wicked ways.
  • paracetamol
    im sorry, wasnt it a nuclear explosion????.....just mischief, zwit. use the brains with the weird and doleful..thatll make you think even harder... so good to talk...
  • The fact the nuclear industry industry employs astro-turfers to spread their PRopaganda is no secret, most genuine posters here have already realised it. Next you'll be calling everyone who remembers the 5th of November a conspiracy theorist. Yet again though, you distract from the hugely damaging issues around with petty and dishonest distraction. So why the sudden reinforcements? That has to be a slap in the face for you.
  • Ah, poor rofl, always the cheerleader, never the player. Which is especially pathetic given you were the only one of the nuclear advocates here with a presence that pre-dated Fukushima.
  • Props? That is US slang for 'proper respect' and is virtually unknown outside of the US. So you are not a Yank, despite that, and you aren't a lobbyist despite being one of several people who registered solely to propagandise the nuclear industry here since Fukushima. Dodgy as Fukushima, as the censors force me to say. So go on then, I'll feign interest, give us all your 'back-story'.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    Yeehaw dagnammit.
  • My apologies, I thought I'd been clear - I meant purely the Herald article. Would you care to respond to my other points?
  • Again, still not American. Not lobbying either to be honest.
  • Interestingly Danny I'm in the UK not the US, and I say props, horses for courses ey? No I mean, turn off power to parts of the state as it 'states' (LOL!) in your article you so helpfully provided, which also helpfully says there was no nuclear danger. With regards to that video, i am truly terrified by the potentially of something so carefully rendered in CGI. If you could try to stick to genuine sources (hell I'll even take GreenPeace as an acceptable source if it helps you out a bit, you seem to be struggling) and not poorly rendered youtube videos that'd be fantastic! I'll respond anyway, because I'm lovely like that - If you're talking about cruise missiles then yes, considering the range can be several hundred miles, then many containers pass within range of nuclear plants every day. It is still not as simple as 'having a six figure salary' to buy, understand, support and use the latest weapons technology. Give Lockheed-Martin a call and ask to speak to their sales dept, I dares ya ;) MoD sites are a very different ball game to civil nuclear sites, and again despite that (you'd assume MoD sites would be more secure than civil anyway) I'd question what action the protestors could genuinely have taken even if they got within a properly secure area. These systems are hard-coded to not respond to potentially dangerous orders, (think Skynet but in reverse - a nice cuddly friendly machine that wont let you blow yourself up.) Regarding the reference to Fukushima, in what way was 'an active reactor core stored on a pond in the roof'? I think you're confused slightly about the difference between something which is critical and something which is potentially critical. You are right to suggest that, in some areas around the world, spent fuel ponds are less well protected than active reactor cores, however I think you are wrong to suggest that a light aircraft would be likely to cause a large explosion within the fuel itself. For that to happen the aircraft would have to pass through a concrete roof and then successfully penetrate what is typically 12m of water in order to reach the fuel. That would be no easy task, and certainly not something you could pull off on a £30 flying lesson, you be better with some kind of submarine and a large catapult, but the authorities might notice that I guess.
  • zwitterion2
    Ahh must be a conspiracy Danny... You never complain about Americans on your side Danny, in fact you lap up Smokeys rantings.
  • I find it amusing that an American suddenly registers with Disqus to lobby for the British nuclear industry, and not the only new face on this thread. either. I guess this means Zwit has been demoted.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    These reports come out regularly, it's part of the life extension process. Seeing Danny's reference was pretty unsatisfactory here's an example (see actual thread for link): http://www.hse.gov.uk/foi/releases/ar6106.pdf The HSE's fear is that this will potentially cause a problem in the future. Remember these plants are in some cases operating in excess of what they were designed for, so you'd expect the life extensions they're being granted to be subject to such scrutiny, especially from the regulator. The cracking thing isn't as big a problem as it may seem from the outside. It's not that the core's going to fall to bits, it's that the channels for the control rods will become non-linear due to irradiation induced graphite deformity and the rods won't be able to enter and exit easily. In fact, the cracking can also be very useful in many situations, as it allows stresses to creep away from the areas of highest concentration, and relieve some of the pressure. This all forms part of the safety case for life extensions. So long as these things are monitored, and steps taken to reduce the effects (through continued monitoring of the safety cases), it won't be an issue. One solution proposed involved articulated control rods to snake into channels if there is a failure. Remember also (more for Danny this bit), that the control rods are simply the first method of reactor control. If for some reason the control rods fail to control the reactor, this doesn't mean a disaster for the environment or human health, the reaction will simply be killed using other methods.
  • I am sorry you don't consider Nuclear Engineering International a 'reputable scientific journal'. The fact you consider that an anti-nuclear argument shows just how deluded you are and how gullible you think we are.
  • zwitterion2
    'These ponds are made of steel, but they have openings with plastic/rubber inflatable fastenings which wouldn't survive a small aircraft crash.' Says you Danny. I disagree. Got any evidence? A light aircraft would not even penetrate the outer building IMO. And even if it managed to pass through and by some miracle the engine was on a direct ballistic trajectory for a bellow, the design of storage pools are safe against the bursting of a single bellow. You must think youre an amazing designer if you think you are imagining scenarios that the designers of these plants, some of the best engineers in the UK, have not thought about, in 50 years of operations. 'the activities of protestors at Faslane and Coulport who got into secure areas' Right. Got into the car park yea?
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    A reactor's not enough. You'd need either enrichment facilities or an advanced weapons programme to utilise Pu. I don't think Saudi has that; but the Iranians do.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    Yes they were. They were either fizzles or conventional explosives. If Zwit's right in that they detected fission products, then they were fizzles. It may be a pretty damn big bomb, but it would be cheaper to assemble a bomb that size using conventional explosives than design an atomic weapon. A fizzle means it's blown apart before the full potential of the fuel is realised i.e. a failed endeavour.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    Gas fired I believe.
  • zwitterion2
    'jeopardising the safe running of the reactors' I would be interested in reading that report, got a reference?
  • MOX fuel isn't just economically important - it's one of the principle ways we deal with high level active waste. By recycling waste in this way we reduce the overall high level waste and burn it into less dangerous components. As the piece points out it is also a method of dealing with the plutonium waste produced by nuclear weapon production during the cold war. The current MOX plant is ludicrously behind schedule, and has delivered almost no fuel to date For any other industrial project, where success was based purely on economic reasoning, it would surely have been shelved long ago. It confuses me that it seems to be the economics of the problem that is focused on here then - this is recycling spent fuel into new fuel, an idea that should surely be attractive to proponents of recycling, or those concerned about the production of nuclear waste? The ability to sell produced fuel is surely less important than the desire to produce it, helping solve the problem many people on here seem concerned with .
  • zwitterion2
    Yea yea tigywiddy. Youre a silly person I think. I have provided you with several referenced facts to prove that some of your previous assertions were not correct, but you just get more shrill in your complaints about me. Sorry!
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    Now have an image of the demise of Ives in The Great Escape.
  • zwitterion2
    I think personally that 'classic' (generation 1) reactors have done a pretty good job. They have saved a few million lives (maybe a few tens of millions - I have not done the calculation) and delayed global warming (if its true - not that I am a disbeliever but still open minded about it) by displacing coal for the last few decades. We should be thankful of them. This CHP station burnt some kind of oil, not kerosene but not heating oil, somewhere in between. It was a fixed jet engine so the fuel had to be relatively clean, but it was preheated so kerosene was not required. I was certainly not senior at this plant - I was only in my early twenties. Just a spanner operator at the time.
  • tigerfish
    Zwitty has been spouting nonsensical rubbish about Fukushima ever since he started posting here. He has been wrong on so many occasions and details, his pronouncements have zero value. He is clearly a shill for the industry, or else a know-nothing posing as a know-it-all who gains some self-esteem from being a contrarian on this issue. Everybody now knows this disaster is a game-changer. The nuclear power industry has been exposed as a criminally reckless gamble, even as the Japanese reaction to Greenpeace shows they are still attempting to hide the severity of this catastrophe.
  • Out of interest do you have a reference for this? Which pipes do you mean?
  • No. Just no. This is (no offense intended, although it might be tricky to take that way) one of the daftest things I have ever read. As has been said, a light aircraft simply doesn't have the mass to damage a fuel pond, external impacts are taken into account at the design phase and form a significant part of the safety case. You can buy a cruise missile? Really? And launch it accurately at a guarded civilian target? Really? Considering that still remains a feat that global terrorists have failed to perform, hats off to you sir! On a more realistic note, no, no you couldn't, and even if you could modern plants (I haven't read the safety cases for the AGR's which make up most of the UK fleet) such as the EPR which is the prime candidate for 'new build' in the UK are blast proof up to and including airliner impact, and designed to operate and cool safely after two such impacts on opposite sides of the building. You could break into a nuclear plant and do damage? Not just write something angry and uniformed on the walls? Really? No. No you couldn't. Sorry but unless you are (as well as an engineer, a physicist and a world renowned computer hacker as you seem to claim) a ninja, then no you couldn't. Having toured operating nuclear sites in the past I can assure you that, despite the feat of human ingenuity it would no doubt take to access the site itself (wire cutters and fast running might get you 50m or so). You wouldn't be able to get even close to anything dangerous. Even assuming you were some kind of ninja (props to you if you are, busy guy!) safety systems are hard coded into the operating controls - you couldn't do damage. As for hacking, the very link you posted just below this quite clearly states that all the access the guy could get would be to turn off power to parts of the state for a few hours. Nothing nuclear what-so-ever. If you're going to quote articles at least read them!
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    "Sorry but unless you are (as well as an engineer, a physicist and a world renowned computer hacker as you seem to claim) a ninja, then no you couldn't." ROFLCOPTERY says: rofl
  • The risk of damage to a nuclear plant by a plane is already accepted by the HSE. No group has tried to get access to a nuclear power plant, but many people have breached higher security at nuclear weapons sites. It is relatively easy to close down nuclear power plants, as the link I already provided proves. The computer security at the eight British Energy plants is especially poor, as I've previously explained to you.
  • IIRC there is still a fossil fuel plant on the edge of the Sellafield site, which had been originally scheduled to be within the boundary. It was moved once it became clear that operating a fossil fuel plant releases levels of radiation which are unacceptable for a nuclear site.
  • footsoretiredandweary
    I have not yet read the particular paper in the Lancet, but I question your interpretation of it. On the question of convincing people. 1. I'm not the first person to call you Dr Strange Love. 2. At the beginning of the Fukushima nuclear accident I was somewhat ambivalent on the subject of fisson based generation of power. After reading your numerous post on the subject to many of the other people who commented on the incident, I would now willingly chain myself to the gates of the nearest nuclear power station. I'm even contemplating joining Greenpeace, though I despse their methods. I'm sure I'm not alone in this view. You are obsessed with just one technolgy. You have the certainty of a fanatic. If "classic" green technology is not much use then equally the record of classic nuclear technology has a lamentable record and such be shut down to-morrow. Oh you used the term small scale fossile fuel not me. By the way combined heat and power station usually burn waste collected from dustbins, willow cuttings etc. These are examples of hydro-carbons. Material such as coal or oil are examples of fossils fuel, household waste and willow cutings are not. That's why I question your use of the term small scale fossile fuel power station. How long did you last as the tea boy at this plant? Just a joke, no insult intended. I'm not the first person to question your lack of a sense of humour. Will you stop commenting on this thread after your have reached your one thousand comment, or have you alrady reached this target. Just a joke.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    50 you say.... Let's hear them then.
  • FundMe
    One has to admire the Japanese in that after a level 9 earthquake followed by a massive tsunami they have 66% of their reactors either in planned shutdown or operating. Out of a total of 54 reactors only 16 are in unplanned shut down. Really amazing and it shows just how reliable Nuclear power is.
  • zwitterion2
    Trips have been started, and will continue I guess until the population are allowed to go back to their homes permanently. I was just checking the radiation map. Most of the area is about 2.5 times the background of cornwall. Just as I said a few weeks ago, almost totally insignificant. Once we know the isotopic makeup and ratio of the area we will be able to say when it will be the same as cornwall. Will you have an objection to people moving back to an area as radioactive as cornwall?
  • zwitterion2
    You really think that a little private plane would do much damage to a spent fuel pond? Also you might not be aware but most of the UKs spent fuel is clad in stainless steel which is much stronger than zirconium and totally non-reactive with water. If you took an airliner - perhaps you could damage a spent fuel pond significantly, perhaps not. Certainly studies into it have concluded not but I am not going to say its certain because no full size tests have been done yet on it. In the UK though, I think your hijacked airliner would be shot down anyway once it had gone that much off course. You could break into any nuclear plant? Youre not just talking about snipping a hole in the fence I assume, but actually getting access to anything remotely dangerous right? Want to go into details because I know of no greenpeace type organisation that has successfully accessed dangerous material in the UK though a break in. You are also a computer hacker it seems eh. So you are an engineer without a degree, a physics student who does not understand quantum mechanics and a computer hacker who thinks he can hack into a web site. Of course I appreciate that youre not saying you can hack into a nuclear power station but since I know one of the top 20 security experts in the UK, work with him and have regular conversations about the extent that big corpa goes to protect its sites I feel that youre bullcrapping here. I am sure than BNFL or whatever they call themselves now have some pretty decent firewalls and I would love to see you try to get through them. Anyhows, its only a frigging web site. So the point remains. Can anyone do any damage to any nuclear material in the UK? I think not. Do you really think yes? Any better explanations than the above?
  • I think those Hunterston leaks are finally getting to you.
  • They are not going in 'to visit' - visit who? They were given brief couple of hours to collect a lifetimes possessions since they are being legally banned from being their again. Anyone who stays is being arrested. And this is out with the evacuation zone that you defended as being adequate. You can't change facts either, but it doesn't stop you spinning like Alistair Campbell in a centrifuge.
  • zwitterion2
    So tell us about the time you hacked a nuclear power station then Danny... Go on, do... were all all ears!
  • zwitterion2
    You mean 70% power not efficiency.
  • zwitterion2
    When did I say there have been no deaths in all of history from nuclear power? Chernobyl we know killed 31 people quickly, and another 4000 are expected to die. According to some estimates from less scientific organisations, up to 1 million are apparently going to die (or have already) although such an assertion is dismissed by the scientific establishment as bunk. There is uncertainty as to whether more will be affected (one poster here, Danny, likes the figure 11k to 59k, although I personally disagree with it, since it relies on a model of harm from such low levels of radioactivity, comparable to natural rates, that it can not be tested and for which there is plenty of evidence against). Lets compare that to the lives chernobyl saved. Lets average that chernobyl produced about 3GW for 6 years.In that time, it produced about 158 TWh.Since coal in china currently is responsible for about 278 deaths per TWh, assuming the russian alternative coal fired power station was as clean as a current chinese one, 44,000 lives would have been lost by the generation of that amount of power by coal.If we assume the mid point of Dannys preferred calculation according to the LNT of between 11k and 59k long term mortalities from chernobyl (Which I do not support but I will include here to prempts his reply) we would be comparing 35k mortalities caused by chernobyl with 44k mortalities saved by it.So even taken on its own, despite the accident, taking the worst case view that the LNT is valid down to zero dose, chernobyl still saved 9,000 lives.
  • I can guess who was doing the laughing so you should know that you were correct. I remember Zwit claiming that nuclear power stations can't be hacked, which I know to be untrue from personal experience. The first time Scott Lunsford offered to hack into a nuclear power station, he was told it would be impossible. There was no way, the plant's owners claimed, that their critical components could be accessed from the Internet. Lunsford, a researcher for IBM's Internet Security Systems, found otherwise. "It turned out to be one of the easiest penetration tests I'd ever done," he says. "By the first day, we had penetrated the network. Within a week, we were controlling a nuclear power plant. I thought, 'Gosh. This is a big problem.'"
  • Hunterston and Hinkley Point nuclear plants are run at 70% efficency all the time out of safety concerns due to thermal cracking in the pipes. Many Scottish windfarms run at 60% efficency and have no such safety fears. Oh, and the BBC are reporting that Tepco is asking for government help in paying the estimated $100bn in compensation it faces. This industry is the ultimate Ponzi scheme, the shareholders take all the profit but the public pay for the risk with their health and their wealth.
  • OpenEng
    The closure also means that only 37.6% of Japan's nuclear generation remains in operation. (Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/09/nuclear-japan-status-idUSL3E7G61IV20110509 ) In the UK in 2007 a third of the nuclear generation capacity was out of action because of safety problems - much of it remaining off-line for a year. Amongst its many problems, Nuclear is too unreliable.
  • zwitterion2
    Hehe... yes wrt humour, im not much of a comedian (one of those fairly serious people in real life) unfortunately. But I do appreciate it from others :-) Heavy water thats a good one!
  • preventionoriented
    Check out this link: http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=5031 ?There is enough potential energy from onshore wind power alone to meet Scotland?s peak winter demand for electricity twice over,? added Finnie. ?In all, the total resource amounts to 75% of the total UK existing generating capacity.? Wales has recently passed legislation to be energy self-sufficient using renewables by 2020. Energy self-sufficiency for the UK from renewables is entirely possible if there is the political will to do it.
  • If this "mountain of waste" is the High Level Waste reported here - http://www.nda.gov.uk/ukinventory/documents/Reports/upload/2010-UK-Radioactive-Waste-Inventory-Main-Report.pdf then it equates to about the volume of medium sized house. Please don't use poetic licience if you're not writing poetry.
  • What is this " mountain of reprocessed nuclear waste" ? If it's the the HLW (High Level Waste) mentioned here (http://www.nda.gov.uk/ukinventory/documents/Reports/upload/2010-UK-Radioactive-Waste-Inventory-Main-Report.pdf) then it amounts to just over 1000 cubic metres or a 10metre cube or about the volume of medium sized house. The words "molehill" and "making a" come to mind. If you're going to write a factual report, stick to the facts. If you're going to write poetry then warn us.
  • zwitterion2
    Thanks Para :-) I enjoy posting here I have to admit because it makes me think really hard sometimes and I havent had to really think about nuclear physics for years. Which is a shame because its one of my fav subjects (just fascinates me). I hope im not overbearing sometimes though, and I apologise for snapping at people sometimes (I hope this is only when they bait me though). Need to show more self control... Also posts that are way off the mark with regards to impossible situations (like, fukushiuma was a nuclear explosion etc) annoy me too and I just have to comment.
  • zwitterion2
    The animation is labelled 'potential releases' and its just an implementation of the FLEXPART code. I mean Bob I am not particularly interested in computer models of the 'plume' because there are real measurements. So I dont want to spend much time criticising this as its just off topic for me. I dont know if its been done by a reputable organisation or some hacker who downloaded the code and stuck some silly numbers into it. Still, I strongly disagree with his hypothesis that a fuel pool went critical. I really think its way off the mark.
  • jeffgoebbels
    I knew you would, and you should . But as a little light relief why not have a knock knock joke/why did the (irradiated?)chicken cross the road gag now and again ,all related to nuclear power of course . I mean this topic can be a bit heavy(water?) oops there I go again .I'll get my coat.
  • zwitterion2
    AI now eh... I guess I should see it as a compliment! 'Could Iron Man survive in those reactors taking into account metallurgical factors?' Hmm is iron man iron? If so yes, although defects would occur causing embrittlment.He would have a long life though as the above happens slowly. :-)
  • zwitterion2
    Fair enough, you dont believe papers published in the Lancet eh. Well good luck convincing people that your gut is right and the Lancet is wrong. Oh the small scale power station is called a combined heat and power station. It was a 15 MWe system. It was used to power an industrial complex.
  • zwitterion2
    What rubbish! I bet its disappointing to you tiger, the fact that things are clearly coming under control. As I originally said.
  • zwitterion2
    Saudi is not closer at all. Design of a nuclear weapon is not quite as simple as you imagine Danny. Even little boy had a lot more technical complexity than you probably realise. Saudi will only develop nuclear weapons if Iran does. Your second point, that a lmimited nuclear exchange would wipe out humans - how do you think this? Somethign like a hundred of more nuclear weapons have already been detonated in the atmosphere but we are not wiped out. How many weapons do India and Pakistan have together?
  • zwitterion2
    They are using all sorts. Standard construction machines, custom robots designed for use at chernobyl, custom robots designed for use in other parts of industry (dioxin was mentioned in the article). What they are covering up is being covered so that they can work there more easily. It will not be left there! The top few inches of soil will end up going for reprocessing anyway. As I said, People are being let back to their homes in the evacuation zone to visit. You cant change the facts Danny. Its simply not that dangerous - not that contaminated.
  • zwitterion2
    Go on Danny, go and do it. It would be beneficial for the country for you to try - either you would show a genuine problem, or would cease to be able to spread your misinformation.
  • paracetamol
    zwitt is telling us what he knows...we all like his posts, and it gives us more to chat about, he spends a lot of time and thought on his posts.... one of our best.
  • zwitterion2
    There have been some modifications I believe - but its not true to say that they accumulate radioactivity with each generation. The radioactivity is not passed on through the egg or sperm, it has to be 'reaccumulated' for each generation.
  • Bob_T
    Hi Zwitterion2 there seems to be a lot of Xenon 133 in the atmosphere over the USA. See here transport nilu no/browser/fpv_fuku?fpp=conccol_Xe-133_;region=NH. The spaces need a dot
  • zwitterion2
    If they were a kiloton or two, thats considered a fizzle. I would not like to be sitting on top of it when it went off though.
  • zwitterion2
    Watch. Converted normal construction tools.
  • zwitterion2
    Ahh its a great film...
  • zwitterion2
    I dont understand whats youre trying to say Dan.
  • tigerfish
    Arne Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates continues to provide updates on the situation at Fukushima. His latest assessment on May 6th was pretty chilling about the radiation leakage into the groundwater. He considers that Fukushima will result in the worst ever nuclear contamination of groundwater, and he describes how the radiation has already invaded Japanese society via unpredictable means. Unfortunately the direst forecasts made during the earliest days of this crisis seem to be coming true, and this situation will persist despite the mainstream media pretty much ignoring the growing catastrophe. At the end of of his update Gundersen relates how Greenpeace has been forbidden to take samples from the ocean within Japan's territorial waters. Such small details have very ominous implications.
  • zwitterion2
    Not an expert Danny, I would say I am average at nuclear physics. I am surprised at how little some other people like you seem to understand about nuclear physics though.
  • Dear Prime Minister, My name is Anthony Hogan. I own a small cheese business in Sussex called the Cheezerie. I keep a weekly blog called the Cheese Seller?s Blog at the URL cheesesellersblog.co.uk where I share with my readers light-hearted observations about being a cheese seller in Sussex. Recently after writing Part 3 of my blog I came to the conclusion that there was a curious overlap in the meaning of Big Society, or that there were two possible meanings behind the Conservative party?s grand manifesto invitation. I suggested the first possible reason for the existence of the term Big Society was a political call to prayer like that of Labour Isn?t Working (1979) or Back to Basics (1993). I explained to my readers that I suspected a young researcher in the Conservative party had been given the task of reading George Orwell?s I984 and Aldous Huxley?s Brave New World over a weekend. ?Come up with a manifesto title, something sticky by Monday morning!? she had been told. Of course we can imagine that this young reseacher had a deep appreciation of reality TV and of the programme Big Brother and bingo! by Monday morning she?d invented the term Big Society to show the new caring side of Conservative government. Big Society would make us feel less watched and more in control of our communities even though councils spent millions last year on installing thousands more CCTVs forgetting that CCTV cannot glue broken communities together or stop crime. I suggested secondly that the term Big Society had a darker meaning that certainly wasn?t intended by its architect. I wrote in my blog, ?Everything in Britain was now big from food to oversized coffees that flowed out of Starbucks and the other two or three coffee chains that pumped coffee into the stomachs of millions everyday. The coffee chains had changed coffee size names from medium to regular, from large to medium and from a bucket of coffee to large; sadly there was no more room for poor small anymore. The obsession for big was everywhere now. Supermarkets were getting bigger and so were airports, pubs, restaurants and the food portions you got in these places, the choice of processed food on sale was big and the people who ate bigger portions were also getting bigger too. How much longer could we all stay on this tiny island together, everything and everyone getting bigger and bigger before shops and people started to fall off the cliffs at Dover?? Well of course Prime Minister you can see my dilemma and that of my readers as to just what exactly is the meaning of Big Society? I have now promised my readers who I dare say many are party faithfuls down here in Sussex a letter to you on this urgent subject. Please would you very kindly clear up any misunderstanding we might have and clarify the meaning of Big Society. Might there really be a reality TV show as I suggest in my blog called Big Society House where contestants trade scandalous insults with each other across the house, the winner getting the chance to become a member of parliament, even if it?s just for four years. I would like to point out that my letter is not a spoof as I do sell Sussex cheese for a living. People in Sussex, especially in Horsham where I have a Saturday market are patriotic to Sussex, its food and heritage but not so keen on change. A letter from your Right Honourable self would be very welcomed by my readers and the customers of the Cheezerie. I look forward to your response. Yours sincerely, Anthony Hogan
  • paracetamol
    a month or so ago, when i mentioned the danger of terrorist threat to nuclear stations, i was excessively laughed at....must be the naive way i tend to put stuff.. or something!....hey danny! hows you?
  • We also already done the terrorist threat here. Sellafield is the biggest potential 'dirty bomb' ever anywhere. Of course these tourists are innocent of everything except being Bangladeshi, real terrorists don't travel en masse to photograph their target. I could probably list at least fifty ways I could on my own turn Sellafield into an international disaster. I don't list that because I see it as irresponsible, but it is far more irresponsible for you to claim it is safe. Put it this way, anti-nuclear protesters regularly get onto Trident submarines.
  • zwitterion2
    Source is Tepco via Yomiuri. Search for 'Yomiuri Blast may have helped cool rods' should find it. You say - 'Caesium does not need to be vaporised to cause a threat.' Ceasium does need to be vaporised to be a threat unless you are very close to it. IE if you walk up to a large lump of caesium 137, it is a threat to you. But if you are a mile away its not. Its necessary for it to be vaporised to threaten you or to threaten to contaminate land. Its good that the security arrested the idiots at sellafield, but lets face it, these are the guys that think that if you set light to a gas canister, its going to explode (aka glasgow). I really dont think we have much to worry about. They are playing with the big boys, the ones with machine guns, in sellafield.
  • Tepco said on Monday detected radiation levels in the unit 1 building at Fukushima were as high as 700 millisieverts per hour. The temperature of the unit 3 reactor, the one containg MOX, rose 50 degrees to 217C over the weekend. A confidential document prepared by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission last month suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown ?up to one mile from the units?. Pieces of highly radioactive material that fell on-site were ?bulldozed over?. This may have been caused by the hydrogen explosions, or as seems increasingly likely was lifted from the fuel ponds by the vapour from one of the fires. Workers have been pumping nitrogen into the primary containment vessel of unit 1 to reduce the risk of another hydrogen explosion, but also flooding the entire containment to prevent overheating. The weight of this water makes the unit particularly vulnerable to any new seismic activity. 79,800 people live within a six-mile radius of the Hamaoka plant, whose vulnerability to the sea is shown in this photograph. I urge everyone to read this prescient warning from 2004 of imminent nuclear disaster in Japan, which mentions Hamaoka. Leuren Moret states "I realized that Japan has no real nuclear-disaster plan in the event that an earthquake damaged a reactor's water-cooling system and triggered a reactor meltdown." It also quotes Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist and professor at Kobe University. "It's like a kamikaze terrorist wrapped in bombs just waiting to explode." The UK Office for Nuclear Regulation reported that a brown puddle found at Sellafield contained plutonium levels five times the ministerial reportable limit. They also reported that radioactive tritium from two pipelines contaminated groundwater at Torness, and a faulty valve was found at Hartlepool. Sellafield has been releasing waste into the sea since 1952, but this increased hugely in the 1970's when spent fuel rods stored in cooling ponds started to corrode. At its peak in 1975, Sellafield pumped out 5,000 terabecquerels of cesium-137 and even current discharges are around 10 terabecquerels per year.
  • zwitterion2
    Not as far as I know. Xenon isotope ratio will be characteristic for fission yes, but fission is fission and it wont be different for fission in the spent fuel pool compared to the reactor. Time since fission can usually be worked out with isotopes that are not too short lived but I have a feeling that Xe 133 which has a half life of only 3.6 mins is too short - there might not be enough left after a few days to make a sensible measurement. Personally I would look for activation of the structure (probably the stainless steel liner) if I wanted to look for other evidence of criticality there. Xe ratios could come from criticality in the reactors if any was detectable. Plus, the stuff floats away pretty quick for obvious reasons. But I am 100% certain that his scenario is wrong personally. Such a massive criticality - enough to heat that much fuel to such a temp - would have made a whole large mess. You could not mistake it. EDIT: Xe 133 has a half life of 5 days sorry, was confusing it with Xe 137. So it will hang around for significantly longer, and in terms of what might be detectable in the states, Xe might be a good contender. Reason for this is that if there is enough of two isotopes to measure you can measure the ratio. Xe having blown around nicely might be goo. However theres a problem. The other reactors will have released Xe too. This will have an older isotopic ratio so I dont know if you could draw any conclusions from a Xe sample. You have the Xe (various isotopes) from the reactors which would have started decaying 2 months ago, and from the fuel pools a couple of days later. I very much doubt that any conclusions could be drawn from that.
  • jeffgoebbels
    I agree . If nuclear energy stops them raping, pillaging, building slave railways through the malarial jungles of Asia while conducting germ warfare experiments on civilian populations, its a good thing .
  • jeffgoebbels
    Theres a method to my madness . You may have noticed that zwitterion2 has an incredible amount of knowledge on the subject and never seems fatigued or emotional.My question to him was to test his sense of humour capability. To all intents and purposes he has nt got even an elementary one.(Sorry zwitterion2 no disrespect) 'I'm merely testing parameters ) My theory is that he is A.I as he just keeps talking about robots and data all the time and doesnt seem to understand the deleterious effects of radioactivity on biological life. My question to him was in the hope of getting an emotional/human reaction but his reply was a rather lame ' Im not an expert on biology Im afraid' My next question will be 'Could Iron Man survive in those reactors taking into account metallurgical factors?' Sophisticaed A.I. MUST have the ability to recognise irony and tell jokes and take the piss..
  • footsoretiredandweary
    Dr Strange Love, a small scale fossil fuel power station, just think about it for a moment, you will be telling me that you have designed a user safe nuclear hand grenade. Who is this "we" that have decided currently that "new" uranium is cheaper. So you think you are every country that has a nuclear power industry, every trader in every stockmarket. It is tin-foil hat time Zwit is hearing voices again. You may think you impress people,but 1.9 million case of minor illnesses attributed to burning fossil fuels. I want to read this paper in the Lancet that can directly attribute minor repiratory illness to any one single cause. What is the basis for the methodology, which hard pressed G P decides which minor respiratory illness is specifically due to his patient being too close to a coal fired power station? Minor illness Did it come from the same issue that A Wakefield's study was in. Old mate, Baron Munchausen did they consult with Harold Shipman by any chance. Even somebody as highly ignorant me can smell the BS when you post.
  • They don't have a power plant yet - why would they? - but they do have reactors. Plus they have bought all the blueprints and resources, plus trained all the scientists that they'd need. Saudi Arabia is closer to having a nuclear missile than Iran is by a great margin. Many other countries are equally poised but find it better politically not to commit. And yet even a limited nuclear exchange between minor nuclear powers like India and Pakistan would likely extinguish our species.
  • They are using standard construction vehicles equipped with remote control, but you are right, it is far from enough to clear that debris. They are bulldozing radioactive waste into the ground, unbelievably irresponsibly short-sighted. I am more interested in Zwit's reassurance that 'People are being let back to their homes in the evacuation zone to visit'. In fact limited access will be granted for a few hours at a time to gather personal items, but the exclusion zone was made mandatory since the 20th of April. Residents get arrested for staying there for longer. And just in the past couple of days, the true spread of on-land contamination has been released which shows the inadequacy of any set exclusion zone. And the current evacuation zone is far more than the original 12km Zwit defended.
  • I'm afraid it is a myth that fauna is flourishing around Chernobyl. The Royal Society Biology Letters published proof that insect, bird and other animal populations have dramatically diminished there. There have been subsequent studies that confirm this. What animals there are smaller, shorter lived and accumulating radioactivity with each generation.There are more genetic abnormalities in each species studied. Also, as one species is wiped out, another fills the niche only to suffer the same fate. This has been offset greatly by the fact humans cannot hunt or disturb the fauna. In contrast, the flora does seem to be unaffected, and this is postulated to be because plants evolved at a time when radiation on earth was far higher than when animals and insects evolved.
  • The DPRK nuclear tests weren't 'fizzles' and they weren't conventional explosives. The US Geological Survey and many other international agencies reported a magnitude 4.7 seismic disturbance at the site. That is a pretty damn big bomb.
  • Nuclear free by 2023. 80% renewables by 2020. You must live in the most advanced country on earth, inhabited by the most forward-looking and intelligent of people.
  • Strangelove: Mr. President, I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy... heh heh...at the bottom of ah ... some of our deeper mine shafts. The radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep. And in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in dwelling space could easily be provided. Muffley: How long would you have to stay down there? Strangelove: Well let's see now ah, cobalt thorium G. Radioactive half life of uh,... hmm.. I would think that uh... possibly uh... one hundred years. Muffley: You mean, people could actually stay down there for a hundred years? Strangelove: It would not be difficult mein Fuhrer! Nuclear reactors could, heh... I'm sorry. Mr. President. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country. But I would guess... that ah, dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided.
  • No, but you like to give the impression that you are an expert on nuclear physics. You've already said you have never worked in the industry and are currently paid to manipulate statistics to part gamblers from their money on-line. I think that is a fair summary of what you are doing here too. Or as a genuine nuclear engineer, Yoichi Kikuchi, put it you are participating in "gambling in a dangerous game to increase profits and decrease government oversight."
  • tigerfish
    There is no robot that has been seriously conceived, let alone built, that could possibly clear the tangled containment building wreckage and collapsed cranes above the SFP of reactors 1, 3 & 4.
  • Sort of like Chernobyl? A hand grenade is dangerous whatever the political beliefs of the child you give it to.
  • We've already done the Marvel Comics trip here. For every Spiderman there will be 100 Hulks. Nuclear disasters 'smash puny humans'.
  • Japan has secret aims in making its own weapons, but I feel that they them selves dont see that the land they occupy is to unstable to make the weapons grade stuff they need, who would have thought that you would have to include the long term stability of your land before thinking about what grand bombs you can have, seems that Hollywood are behind most these plans as they are not thought through fantasy's. Mox fuel is much the same as giving your friends plutonium, so why not sell it to iran, lol Japan would do best to use gas from pipelines from Russia, would have been much cheaper to build than the weapons grade power plants they built, with gas it can be turned off in a earthquake, which is handy if you have them, plus it will not pollute much, better than oil.
  • That's the plot of "How to Get Ahead in Advertising" - wholly appropriate analogy given the spin merchants here. "They are not worried about the nation's health. What is concerning them, is that the nation appears to be getting worried about its health"
  • jeffgoebbels
    Oh! You mean like what happened to my uncle Wayne?
  • Bob_T
    What about the ratio of Xenon released, could that prove or disprove his theory?
  • IgglePiggle
    Do you have a reference for that Reactor 4 explanation zwit? Because I have yet to see any official explanation for what happened at Reactor 4. In fact the only comment from TEPCO that I am aware of was a press release on 15th March stating that an explosion was heard at 6am and when workers went to investigate they found a fire. There was also a Reuters report that the Japanese had requested the US military to help contain the resultant fire. That is the sum total of official information AFAIK. I would be most grateful for any further official references. Caesium does not need to be vaporised to cause a threat. I believe it was the Sellafield security agencies that arrested the five people taking photographs of the nuclear plant so perhaps you should call them paranoid? I visit the Lake District regularly and take hundreds of photographs there every year, but surprising as it may seem I do not possess a single photograph of Sellafield. Perhaps I am a Luddite or perhaps I am not a terrorist.
  • zwitterion2
    I strongly disagree with his hypothesis. Reasons are: The explosion in unit 3 is larger because there was more hydrogen build up in unit 3. Possible reasons for this are many including a different amount of decay heat being generated and different venting schedules, etc. Were pieces of nuclear fuel found off site rods or tiny fragments? My understanding is tiny fragments, as would be expected because of the conditions in the pools during the explosions. Uranium dust was not found thousands of miles away, uranium aerosol was. There is a world of difference. Fuel got very hot and a tiny amount would vaporise under these conditions. It would condense into an aerosol, escape the reactors with the venting, and distribute worldwide. To be expected and I see nothing unusual about that. We know that fuel was damaged and volatilised at fukushima - it does not require his scenario. Reactor and containment was intact while building was blown up because hydrogen escaped from the reactor via a seal into the building and exploded, the same as the other reactors. Fuel pond was empty? Where did he get that from? Spent fuel pools would always be full of water. Black cloud does not indicate volatilised uranium and plutonium. To create a black cloud like that fuel would need to be given a huge amount of energy - enough to burn it in air. If that had happened, the scale of the contamination would be that of chernobyl. At fukushima we see almost zero contamination of uranium and plutonium. Black cloud does indicate something slightly different about the explosion, but not necessarily something significant. More energy in the blast would damage more structure and create a different damage pattern and different debris field. Detonation and deflagration give different flashes? I have never witnessed a difference and have witnessed both types of combustion in hydrogen / oxygen mixtures (having designed, built and tested a 'water welder' which uses hydrogen / oxygen mixtures). Hydrogen and oxygen will detonate if confined and even sometimes if not. One of my most serious objections to his hypothesis though is his claims about the distortion of the fuel configuration during the explosion. Water is incompressible so how can a pressure wave quickly reconfigure it without such a large explosion that it destroys the whole building? The water has considerable mass and is not going to move very quickly under a fast pressure pulse (a blast wave) in the short term. Although energy will be imparted to it and it will move eventually, were talking about a blast wave which passes very quickly. He proposes that during this pressure pulse, the water was moved enough to allow the rods, which would be in 'fluid equilibrium' with the water, as if they were made of jelly for instance and were part of the water, to reconfigure to a more compact shape. This just does not make sense. Its hard for me to describe this but I will try. At high speeds water behaves like a solid. And at high speeds solids behave like liquids. The line is blurred between them because dynamic forces become overwhelmingly stronger than weak static strengths. Its all about mass and compressibility at high speeds. So the fuel rods act like a fluid at high speeds, and the water acts like concrete - in fact they both act in the same way from a different standpoint. The rods have negligible strength at high speeds, whats important is their mass. And the water does not behave like a fluid at that speed, because its resistance to 'getting out of the way' is just as strong as that of a solid would be or almost so. Hence the rods and the water make a solid lump at high speeds. It can be moved out of the way as a whole, but then you have to fight its mass. If you subject it to a pressure wave, it will tend to move as a solid mass initially - for enough time for the blast wave to pass. Little differential velocity will be imparted to the rods in relation to the water because they are locked together with hydrostatic forces at high speeds. Its a bit like jumping off a high bridge. When you hit the water youre going so fast that the water does no move, and you suffer damage almost equivalent to if you had hit concrete. So there is no way I can see that could allow the fuel rods, inside a pool of water, to move against that water rapidly and reconfigure into a critical mass. Were not just talking about pushing a couple of rods slightly closer together - were talking about going all the way from safe non critical config to prompt critical. That fuel has to be an awful lot more dense to allow that. The easiest way to discount this though is the other half of the equation. If a prompt criticality happened, enough to heat the fuel to the point where an explosion happened, a certain amount of energy needs to be released. Whether it started with nuclear heat and then changed into zirconium heat or was pure nuclear heat, a lot of heat would be produced. The fuel would have been white hot and would have burnt in the air, and similar to chernobyl there would be extremely high levels of radiation around the site and for many miles away. The difference between this site and chernobyl in levels of radioactivity are well over 1000 times - perhaps 10,000 times even - its hard to say at the mo because of average readings being given. That radiation came at chernobyl from fuel which had been sprayed around the area as chunks and as molten ceramic. Thats what happens when you get a prompt criticality which causes an explosion powerful enough to rapidly disassemble a core, or blow a building up. We see levels of radiation on this site so much lower that we can be absolutely sure that there was no prompt criticality. Lastly we see that out of 5 samples from the site, 3 show levels of plutonium higher in plutonium from the atomic weapons tests of the 60s, thousands of miles away, than from a reactor. So we can really be very sure that there is no significant release of plutonium. And since the uranium is always with the plutonium in spent fuel, the same is true of the uranium. You cant have a core go prompt critical and rapidly self disassemble without uranium and plutonium all over the place. This guy seems to have decent credentials so I wonder why he is suggesting this? The icing on the cake is the plutonium readings from the site really, and the lack of seriously high levels of radiation on site.
  • If the EU's 2009 Eco-design Directive were to be implemented fully, the end-use energy savings by 2020 could alleviate the need for another 98 Fukushima-sized nuclear reactors, according to calculations by the European Environmental Citizens' Organisation for Standardisation. But delays in implementation that have seen just 11 of the 41 named products groups covered by the directive approved so far ? with two more pending ? are jeopardising the energy efficiency harvest. ECOS found that the implementation of the directive so far had saved around 340 TWh of end-use energy a year, the equivalent output of 62 such reactors. But the product groups that remain to be approved would save another 540 TWh of end-use energy, the same output as 98 ordinary reactors, or 49 of the more powerful European Pressurised Reactors.
  • PeterGee
    I mention again the answer I have just given to your rather ridiculous assertion that there have been no deaths caused by nuclear power stations - or, as you said, "no nuclear deaths". Chernobyl caused 31 deaths immediately after the 'accident', with the expectation of a further 60,000 people to die (many already have) because of the nuclear 'accident' (Greenpeace considers that 200,000 will be a more accurate long-term figure). It rather casts everything you claim for nuclear power in a rather deep shadow, does it not?
  • zwitterion2
    OK I will watch, but how can any criticality occur in a spent fuel pond with no reconfiguration of the fuel? The optimum configuration of fuel is with a fully flooded pond, with the fuel tightly packed. The ponds are laid out to prevent fuel being 'dropped' in an accident and going critical. No previous explosion of a magnitude high enough to reconfigure the physical layout of the fuel occurred. And further, once criticality had occurred, voids would form in the unpressurised pool, meaning the power density would be very low. Why does he suggest prompt criticality? I see no method for the rapid insertion of reactivity which would be required for prompt criticality. Sounds like a load of bull to me but I will check it out and comment again after I have seen it.
  • PeterGee
    @zwitterion2:disqus Zwitterion2 You claim that: "Nuclear kills or harms no one." Might I mention the deaths at Chernobyl, where 31 deaths occurred immediately due to the nuclear accident - with an expected death toll of 60,000 people (Greenpeace suggests the figure will reach 200,000). Explain to me again where your idea that there have been no deaths from 'Nuclear' power?
  • zwitterion2
    Reactor 4s spent fuel ponds explosion is fully understood afaik. The water level dropped and uncovered fuel whos cladding oxidised in the steam produced by the cooling pond water. The result was hydrogen. This exploded and broke the barrier which was holding water from the flooded reactor back (the reactor was flooded at the time for maintenance). When the barrier broke, the water flooded back into the spent fuel pond and the rods were cooled again, and hydrogen production ceased. Caesium requires temperatures of 700 C to vaporise it. Chernobyl managed this by having a nuclear reaction going at the time in the core where the caesium was. At Sellafield the caesium is stored in a much more safe configuration. Some one turns up outside sellafield with a camera and you call them terrorists? Paranoid?
  • wikikettle
    Follow the money when it comes to everything especially NP. Compare the amount of reporting on Japan to that of Libya.
  • Bob_T
    Hi Zwitterion 2 , he postulates that the prompt criticality occurred in the spent fuel pool. He is a respected nuclear engineer and his video gives a very convincing argument of how it occurred. Evidence that support this are the fact that fuel rods bits were found 2 miles from the site after the unit 3 explosion and the fact that the explosion was far too energetic to have been caused by hydrogen alone. I would be interested to here what you think of his explanation. Could you watch the video, it is 8 minutes long. (google Vimeo arnie gundersen prompt criticality )
  • This is after Sellafield was rebranded from Windscale due to actual human disasters. All of the UK nuclear plants should be closed ASAP because we haven't yet figured out what to do with the waste, which is a danger for the next 100,000 years while it and the plants are a danger for all of us today. There are 250,000 tons of highly radioactive waste sitting around the world in storage ponds that are highly vulnerable and which require constant maintenance. I watched an excellent Channel Four documentary last night, True Stories 'Nuclear Eternity', about the massive and unpredictable endeavour of Finland trying to bury it's own relatively small amount of nuclear waste safely. It was scary. The only existing repository is in the US and they only bury military waste, they haven't dealt with an ounce of all the thousands of tons of civilian waste they have produced. Anything is better than the current state of affairs, as a species we cannot afford this 'power'. Nuclear power is the biggest snake on the evolutionary game of snakes and ladders. It is a dead end for humanity.
  • zwitterion2
    I suspect that England's finances will look a lot better if that does happen...
  • zwitterion2
    Im not an expert on biology im afraid.
  • zwitterion2
    Four km deep for 100 degree coolant temps, minus inefficiencies - condenser temperature what, 20 degrees if youre lucky? Using the organic rankine with that is going to provide you with what efficiency exactly? 5% perhaps? Nice! I can see us all signing up to that! Youre description of a 'binary cycle' was insufficient for me to understand what you meant but a quick search revealed its just another name for using a different working fluid to the extraction media. This is a given Footso, with water temps of 100 C you cant generate any electricity with it. Of course you need a working fluid with a higher vapor pressure. Still, this is not going to get you very far. Efficiency depends on the thermal gradient between source and sink, or ground and condenser. With ground temps of 100 C and condenser temps of 20 C, you aint going to have a very efficient system. The figure for 4000 deaths in the UK per year, plus 35,000 cases of serious illness, and 1.9 million cases of minor illnesses comes from a study by Markandya, A. and Wilkinson, P. (2007) Electricity generation and health. Published in the Lancet 370; 979-99 'you are [] including the deaths from emphysemia due to smoking cigarettes in your figures' What are you on about? There are no figures for tobacco smoking mixed into those figures. Of course I know what fluidised bed is you idiot. Its not complicated. In one of my jobs in the past, I have worked at a small scale fossil fuel power station, a combined heat and power plant. What the hell does that have to do with anything? Fluidised bed is just a convenient way to burn coal. Nothing more. 'I think the case of the small community of Gigha's off the mainland of Scotland who bought a windturbine and went off grid proves my point' The fact that you can pick a community that has gone off grid shows it can be done. Your point is proven wrong. 'If there is no need for "new" uranium as you put it, what are the poor beggars doing down mines or working open cast sites,' Because we have decided currently that new uranium is cheaper than MOX, people are still digging it up from the ground. Once the price goes up, MOX will take over. 'This is my last reply to you on the subject,' Good riddance I have to say, you are highly ignorant and really seem to understand nothing of this subject.
  • zwitterion2
    Havent seen, but a prompt criticality is impossible in a core which has been used (ie is partially spent fuel). I posted this previously but cant find the post now so I will repost it. If the original claim you refer to was not that a fast fission super prompt criticality happened but only a thermal prompts criticality then skip the first bit referring to fast fission. Its clear to anyone with an ounce of understanding that prompt criticality was not a credible scenario at fukushima because the reactor pressure vessels are intact (at least to some degree) rather than exploded like chernobyl: A nuclear explosion requires whats called super prompt criticality. Super (more than) prompt (prompt rather than delayed neutrons) criticality (you know what this means - a critical mass, enough U235 in a compact enough shape to make the chances of each fission neutron cause another fission event). Additionally, it requires highly enriched uranium (HEU) compared to perhaps 3% at Fukushima. Why enriched? Because U238 steals fast neutrons with such a great efficiency that a low enrichment fast neutron critical mass is impossible, no matter how large your quantity of uranium. How does MOX fuel affect this relationship? Not at all, because the problem is not the neutron cross section of U235 to fast neutrons being low, but the neutron cross section of U238 to fast neutrons being so high! The U238 will always mop up the neutrons whether it's mixed with Pu239 or U235 or a mix of the two. Only when you get at least 5.4% enrichment can any sized lump of uranium fast fission, and similar levels of MOX Pu would be required (far more than is in the fuel at fukushima). In practicality you would need enrichment of at least 20% to achieve a fast fission reaction, required for a 'nuclear explosion'. Since the enrichment at fukushima is about 3% (if that) there is physics reason number one why it can not happen (and did not happen). Second however is another just as difficult to over come problem and that is preventing a chain reaction from happening until you are fairly 'super prompt critical'. This is hard to explain so stay with me. Lets do a thought experiment. Imagine 2 hemispheres of uranium 235, or plutonium 239, being slowly brought together - this is sort of what happens in a nuclear bomb (vastly simplified). As you bring them closer they form a 'critical mass' - there is enough U or Pu in a small area for the chain reaction to happen. Spontaneously a neutron is released and that neutron starts the chain reaction. It hits another uranium (or Pu) atom, splits it, releasing 2 more neutrons, each of these hit 2 more uranium atoms (total of 4 this time) and so on, about 64 times. After 64 generations of neutrons the amount of energy released by this fission in the core has heated it up to many million degrees centigrade, turning it into a highly compressed gas of metal, and it starts expanding - as it expands, it ceases to be critical (being critical requires the lump of uranium or plutonium to be compact - once it expands, it is no longer compact and the reaction stops). So this core starts expanding and then you get the usual effects, a huge fireball etc. We looked at it in slow motion there, but in fact all the above steps happen in less than a millionth of a second. The problem for bomb designers is how to get the uranium or plutonium together fast enough before the reaction starts (before that first spontaneous neutron kicks of the above process). If you dont get it together and super critical fast enough, it will not result in any yield. Its essential to do two things to ensure this - one, use very pure plutonium or uranium with a very low level of spontaneous neutron emission, so that its unlikely that a spontaneous neutron will happen at the wrong time and start the chain reaction too early, and two, put the bomb together very fast - about 20 times the speed of sound (high explosives are used to crush a hollow ball of plutonium into a critical mass). If plutonium is used it has to be very special plutonium which has come out of very young fuel rods (with a very low burnup) because contaminants build up in plutonium if you leave it in a reactor for the usual time a fuel rod is left in there. In a reactor however there is a problem. The neutron background is massive, so you dont have a chance to get your lump of uranium or plutonium super critical - physically smaller than a critical mass - before the first stray neutron starts the nuclear reaction. In a bomb, its essential to make the mass of uranium significantly super critical - significantly more compact than critical - before the first neutron starts the reaction, because you only get about one millionth of a second to compress it further. Yield depends on how super critical the mass is before the chain reaction starts. As soon as the reaction starts, heat is produced, but if youre not very super critical, not much heat. Enough to melt your piece of uranium / plutonium, enough to make it expand and stop the reaction, but not enough to produce any measurable 'yield' - any atomic explosion. The reaction is in a way self regulating and automatically stops itself. This is why nuclear bombs are in fact so hard to make - North Korea for instance has tried 2 so far and still despite having a fairly advanced nuclear program, info on how to build a bomb from Kahn, and plenty of western trained scientists, they still cant get a decent yield from their bomb. Its very hard to do so.
  • zwitterion2
    I do believe so yes. Nationalised nuclear is better imo.
  • paracetamol
    anyone say youve got a highly toxic imagination?....you rock jef.!
  • zwitterion2
    I do but thanks anyway. I can also highly recommend yomiuri dot co dot jp.
  • zwitterion2
    Certainly. If I lived in Spain or anywhere with higher levels of solar radiation, I would certainly invest in solar panels to offset my electricity bill. Living in the UK though, I will never bother, unless they become cheaper than chipboard...
  • paracetamol
    youd get a boil thats swells up and bursts into another head... then you and you could talk about it...
  • IgglePiggle
    Reactor 4 at Fukushima did not have a running reactor but has been subject to explosions and fires which have released unknown quantities of used fuel into the atmosphere and/or ocean. No cause has been identified. Used fuel still needs to be continually cooled to prevent overheating and re-criticality. 113 tonnes of high level radioactive waste are stored at Sellafield. It is stored in liquid form in stainless steel drums. These too need to be continually cooled to prevent overheating. There are circumstances that can lead to an explosion in these tanks. Earthquakes are also a risk factor in Cumbria (I personally have experienced two earthquakes in that part of the country, albeit small ones). There are also risks from terrorists of course as we have seen in the news only last week. Chernobyl reactor contained 70kg Caesium-137 of which 30kg was released to the atmosphere. Sellafield stores 2,100 kg of caesium-137.
  • BillyU7U
    "Five people are arrested for taking photographs of Sellafield, underlining the potential security risk posed by the site." Wow, some security risk there. I suppose they were planning to use the stolen photons in their cameras for some sort of 'photon bomb'! Sounds really scary, maybe you should run a story about it, you could copy and paste most of it from all the other scare stories as per the usual procedure.
  • paracetamol
    "nuclear officials in britain have demanded urgent talks with their counterparts in Japan" are they going to try to persuade the japanese to keep their risky power plant open? boy, are they desperate!
  • No we wouldn't, you are really naive Zwit or you just like believe what you believe. The Nuclear Lobby in Britain is extremely strong, it allows Politicians to put their hands in it's pockets, it has used very great influence on some very stupid and venal people. It chaired committee on Renewables and pronounced it unworkable.
  • herrmann1211w3rd
    Hopefully, by that time Scotland will be a free and independent country once again. I can't imagine how distasteful it must be to have your country tied to the whims of the British government. By the way, why does that fool Zwit continue to post his lies and misinformation about nuclear energy? Do you think he really believes that anyone is fooled by his endless prattle?
  • IgglePiggle
    Imagine having to impose an exclusion zone around Sellafield. The entire Lake District rendered inaccessible for hundreds of years.
  • It's slightly off-topic but I believe John is correct to say that Japan is one of many countries that has plans to develop nuclear weapons in a rushed period of about twenty weeks 'should the need rise'. Any nation that has ballistic missile technology, often developed under the smokescreen of a national space programme, and enriched uranium facilities, developed under the smokescreen of a civilian nuclear programme , is a de facto nuclear armed state since the technology to develop a bomb is so widespread. Other nations in the same category include Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Argentina and Iran. I could find a more comprehensive list if you are interested. The relevant thing is this makes civilian nuclear a technology that we cannot afford to export, and is one major reason that prevents it from being a global solution to electricity generation.
  • Rockingham
    Nuclear power has never been the holy grail scientists want us to believe, neither in cost or environmently, there are large communities around the world that are still suffering the consequences of Chernobyl even in this country where bans on meat sales are still in operation, governments are resorting to storing waste in underground complexes which is extremely expensive and because they haven't got the faintest idea what else to do with it, that is storing up big problems for future generations who have been ignored for far too long, if the money wasted on Selafield was used to make houses more efficient and produce 40% + of their own energy on a progressive scale then the need for more stations would no longer be there, good for the nation but no good for the suppliers, having seen first hand the effects radiation has on people and their lives I don't want to see more of the same when other instalations fail as they surely will.
  • Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
  • rob_rouge
    September 2006: 6,000 failures à 15 minutes = 90,000 minutes = 1,500 hours = 62.5 days!! So it fails more than 24 hours a day! Or is my arithmetic wrong? It is amazing how anyone can even consider transporting nuclear fuel - spent or otherwise - over such long distances considering the danger of accidents en route.
  • jeffgoebbels
    A technical question for you zwitterion If I was bitten by a radioactive spider from the Fukushima no 1 nuclear power plant would I have spider powers and fight crime as a hobby?Thanks.
  • NitroFan
    Given the fact Japan has few "natural resources" and a distinct lack of land mass so it is perhaps not quite as bonkers as it might first seem. One forgets history at their peril! One reason Japan got involved in WW2 was a lack of "natural resources" and given that Japan has set her course as a "Developed Nation" she therefore needs cheap energy regardless of any risks. I firmly believe Japan will continue with their Nuclear energy program and will continue to build plants in what we might see as risky locations they simply have no choice! But they will just keep quiet about it until the Japanese leaders think their public there have forgotten about it a bit! The exact same will apply in the UK
  • 2blue
    Building a nuclear plant over two fault lines? I may be no expert but that is just plain ridiculous surely?
  • Bob_T
    Hi Zwitterion2 Have you seen the videos on Vimeo by Arnie Gundersen. He thinks unit 3 exploded after a prompt nuclear criticality. This released uranium dust which has been detected in the USA. He also says that the groundwater contamination is the worst in nuclear history.
  • BillyU7U
    "if the money wasted on Selafield was used to make houses more efficient and produce 40% + of their own energy on a progressive scale then the need for more stations would no longer be there" Grand claims like this really require some solid evidence. I can't believe someone living in a standard semi-detached house in an average suburban estate is ever going to produce 40% of the energy required for their home and car use. The real question is the health affects of nuclear vs. fossil fuel vs. no/expensive electricity. Of the three, nuclear is by far the safest for human health and the environment, it just happens to also be the most directly measurable. However, just because you can detect radiation very easily and precisely pinpoint its source doesn't make it worse than say air pollution which kills tens of millions of people a year, tens of millions more than the maximum of a few thousand deaths anthropogenic radiation likely causes a year.
  • footsoretiredandweary
    The figure you quoted was at the lowest limit of the range, in the most unsuitable places. So I will concede the narrow point. Even so, how deep do you think they can drill an hole, four kilometres and you have a viable system? What nonsense you are taking about the machinery down a mine generating the heat. Old mate it is the very rocks themselves that are generating the heat, the heat produced by the machinery is of very small concern in comparison to conditions where the rock explodes due to the heat of rock and the pressure the rock is under. The mines are so inhospitable they have to cool, condition, the air so that human beings can breath down there. I bet you think a Blair winder is a relation of Tony Booth. You honestly have no idea what an EGS actually is, or you would not question what a bnary system is. Quiet simply the medium that is used to transfer the heat from the "hot" rock to the generator returns down the bore hole back to the "hot" rock is in a closed circuit. A bit like the system of seperating the reactor and generator in a nuclear power station. So there is no need for you to attempt a patronising reply and to further display your ignorance on the subject. Where do you get the figure of 4000 deaths per anumn, you are not including the deaths from emphysemia due to smoking cigarettes in your figures? Who collects these figures you quote? Emphysemia develops over a good number of years. What amount of coal-fired power stations presently use fluidisedbed technology in their boilers in the UK? I sincerely think you do not know what fluidised bed technology is. If you know anything about it, then you would know what nationalised industry did the research on it and where they did it. The correct form should be your not "youre" hypothetical small community. I think the case of the small community of Gigha's off the mainland of Scotland who bought a windturbine and went off grid proves my point. They could do it because they were an isolated community and as such they collectively could raise the capital sum. The generality of my point stands, it is beyond most small nations ability to build a nuclear power station, never mind a city with a population of milions. No private sector company will invest in nuclear power without government subsidy. How big do think that a nuclear power station is, how many reactors does each station need to have? It has to be helped, no such system could survive in a truly free market. Talk sense man. If there is no need for "new" uranium as you put it, what are the poor beggars doing down mines or working open cast sites, getting a sun tan? Does your mother still have to tell you to coming when it starts to rain? This is my last reply to you on the subject, because far from poking holes inpractible arguements all you show is that you no real useful knowledge on the subject of generation of energy. Your rebuttal of my comment has more holes in it than a string vest. I repeat do some research on the subject before display your "fairly" sound judgement of the subject.
  • zwitterion2
    A few snippets which some might find interesting. Robots are being deployed to clean up the rubble around the site. People are being let back to their homes in the evacuation zone to visit. They are not allowed to stay permanently yet tough due the the situation at fukushima reactor not being stable yet. The radioactive water stored at the plant is to be cleaned with zeolite and precipitants to remove the radioactivity, and then recycled to cool the reactors. 'By the end of the process, radioactivity in the water will be reduced to 0.0001 percent of its original level' A robot will be used to investigate hard-to-reach places at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant,
  • NitroFan
    It might be worth noting the company that runs the plant that failed during the earthquake was sited no less than 29 times for safety failures in the months before the disaster!!! perhaps Nuclear power is safer once the profit motive is removed?
  • FundMe
    For up to date reporting on Japanese issues look at NHK WORLD english I cant post the link but just google it as written.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    Yes, it's a nice stroke of luck that U-235 is hard to get hold of, and that the lensing is difficult for Pu-bomb tech. Does anyone know for certain whether they were genuine fizzled nukes yet or just some extravagant use of conventional explosives?
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    True, I hadn't factored that in. Assuming peak demand is during the day though, it would be prudent to invest in them provided they're for intermediate load only, and in somewhere with plenty of sun.
  • zwitterion2
    I agree. However they might take the safety issue more seriously now, and actually use modern plants which are capable of withstanding the problems they get from their geography.
  • zwitterion2
    And then theres the storage problem - day to night.
  • zwitterion2
    Plutonium is a different story IMO. Implosion technology is difficult, thankfully. Thats probably why N Koreas 2 attempts were fizzles... EDIT to Rolf, I think fission products were detected, hence nuclear. But yes its a good thing that U238 could not be used for a bomb, or our civilisation would probably no longer exist...
  • zwitterion2
    IMO, the best way to restrict proliferation is to allow reactor use for other states while retaining control of the fuel cycle. I dont like other countries having enrichment technology either I have to say.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    What's the problem with us sitting on so much Pu? Let's build some reactors than can use it! Problem solved!
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    That's because calculators, watches and radios only use very small amounts of electricity. Per sq/km, I don't see why solar wouldn't be more efficient at generation than say, our AGR fleet, however not in the UK, you'd need somewhere with more powerful and reliable sunshine.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    The idea of being cheaper is in terms of generating costs. Uranium prices are never going to be as volatile as oil/gas prices. If the companies that sell the electricity sell the electricity generated from nuclear at extortionate prices, it makes little overall difference to the consumer - but that's a managerial issue that should be monitored by the regulator, not a technical or environmental one.
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    There's slightly more to it than just having the ballistic missiles and the plutonium, but you're essentially right. If nuclear war were to kick off though, having the ability to knock one up in 5 months may not be good enough. Wasn't aware the Saudis had gone nuclear yet - is that true?
  • ROFLCOPTERY
    Don't forget that U-235 is normally 0.7% naturally. To get to 5% U-235, you need to multiply the concentration by 7x. You'd only need another 16x on top of that to get it up to weapons grade, so it's not that much harder to get up to that level. My point is, that with the technology to enrich to 2%, you can essentially enrich to 80% if you wish. A rogue state could remain on-side for the "peaceful" stage of enrichment, then start blocking the IAEA once it looks like 80% is within reach. It's a risky game to play, but I can think of at least one Middle Eastern dictator who likes these kinds of games. Proliferation is a real problem with this technology, and I'm not sure whether the world has the solutions to deal with the too many politically backward regimes with this level of weapons technology. A nuclear club comprised only of 5 large powers was fine under the rules of MAD. But a club with those same powers and the volatile Middle Eastern nations, N. Korea and Indo/Pak too? The future looks scary to me.
  • zwitterion2
    The 25 degree per km is an accepted figure but if you have a different figure with references I will accept it. Down a mine, because of the lack of material to absorb the heat produced by machinery, heat will build up faster than that though. Im not sure what you mean about binary system to generate electricity but if you clarify I will comment on it. WRT coal and fluidized bed combustion and clean coal technology, I understand both. Neither make any difference to my argument. We use fluidized bed in the UK, we use electrostatic scrubbers and other approaches to clean up the emissions as much as is currently practical. Yet 4000 die a year in the UK alone from coal emissions. Before scrubbers and filters, health effects of coal were orders of magnitude higher. Although I am sure youre right that africans working conditions are bad, the use of reprocessing makes the requirement for new uranium almost nil. There is no technical reason for the african miners to work in bad conditions so that argument is invalid imo. No one is stopping youre hypothetical small community from generating power however they want. No one, in the UK at least, holds a gun to anyones head and says 'you will buy our power or else'. If you want to buy a windmill and go off grid, no one will stop you. If you do not realise this then youre way off the mark, and if you do realise it then youre just being disingenuous with your remarks about 'big business'. My understanding of alternative forms of electricity generation is in fact fairly sound, but is based more from the scientific viewpoint than the commercial one. The simple fact is that the energy in the environment is of low density which makes it hard to harness easily, safely, reliably, and with consistency. These are the problems with most forms of classic renewables. If there was potential for them, they would be invested in by private enterprise. Some are. Most forms of classic renewables need huge subsidies to make them economically viable - and thats not a genuine future resource, its just a PR exercise, a total waste of money and time. Im perfectly happy to not converse with you btw, but please do understand that I will not cease to poke holes in impractical arguments despite this.
  • zwitterion2
    Well, in a way we all bet our lives on these kinds of things. Im unlucky enough to have to take the tube every day in London. I know there are serious particulates on the tube - in a long tunnel, the air is white with some kind of contamination. Asbestos? Or something harmless? I dont know. But I dont like it. But I bet my life, based on the fact that londoners dont seem to be dropping that much more than those who live and work in the country, that it will be only a small risk factor in my life compared to other things I do. Hope im right.
  • zwitterion2
    Sorry about the long posts - I just try to be clear though, and include some numbers and facts to back up what I am saying. Re oil, yes its dispersed and broken up - to be honest in my opinion the releases of oil we suffer are pretty insignificant also. But dispersed oil will get into the food chain, and statistically it will have a health effect, in theory. Whether its significant or not I dont know - the way I look at it, once a statistical health problem becomes as unlikely as say one in a million, or one in ten million, I think it becomes somewhat irrelevant. We, as a race, have much bigger fish to fry, in terms of improving our health. Effort spent reducing the danger of something (oil, nuclear power) below say one in ten million is just wasted effort, since spending that effort working on something more statistically dangerous (particulates from fossil fuels for instance) would produce better improvements in health for the same effort and cost. And as a race we can only devote so much resource to improving health, we have to stay 'solvent' as a race (IE we cant employ everyone in the whole world in health care for instance, because then there would be no one to produce food, run power stations, etc and society could not function - we have limited resources as a race).
  • zwitterion2
    As you say I personally hate coal. Its an ongoing ecological disaster imo. Yes there have been accidents in the nuclear industry which the media have made much of. The reason I am not so worried about those is because to me, looking at the figures of the releases of contamination, they pale into insignificance in comparison to fossil fuel releases which are normal. If coal or other fossils were placed under the same strict rules as nuclear as far as radioactive releases go they would all immediately, today, be classified as 'huge nuclear accidents'. Each of them just with what they release today would come under the umbrella of a nuclear accident. My point is that the rules are different for nuclear power compared to everything else. If a nuclear power station releases a few fractions of a curie its a nuclear disaster. When a coal power station releases several curies a day nothing is said about it because thats normal. The general public is not aware of this though and that really annoys me.
  • MikeBoyes
    Please stop trying to massage the search engine rankings for your blog by farming links to it from the Indy.
  • zwitterion2
    Japan would be able to create nuclear weapons easily yes. But theres a world of difference between uranium enriched to 5% for nuclear fuel use and 95% for bomb use. The other nations like Brazil that are developing a uranium enrichment facility are only installing capacity to enrich to 5% so I dont think its exactly a threat as far as proliferation goes. And what do you propose to do about it - strike first to prevent it? Fact is most industrial nations realise that their best bet as far as electricity generation goes is nuclear, with good reason, and they intend to pursue it. The technology is already out there for them to do so and they have it. Our best bet is to support the IAEA and ensure that they dont install the facility to enrich to a high level than 5%.
  • zwitterion2
    Various other options are possible - just not as easy, efficient, workable, safe, clean, etc as nuclear - at the moment. Im not saying that tomorrow some genius (or non genius hippie eco warrior for that matter) will come up with a magic idea that really will work. Its just that that has been my dream for a couple of decades too, and I have given up in the end, and learnt to love nuclear, as Danny puts it, once I trundled through the maths of the matter for the umpteenth time.
  • zwitterion2
    More like: How I learnt to stop worrying and love nuclear power. I just became informed about the real risks and the risks from the alternatives.
  • As I said previously I hope it never come down to betting your life on that.
  • You always have such large, long Posts Zwit that it becomes impossible to reply to you. I have been told that the sea breaks up Oil, we have been tipping sewage into it happily for years and now it is okay to tip a load of radioactive water into it and ho hum, it wil just continue to swallow it. If you like to believe that all I can say is I hope your life never come to depend on that. I have probably 20 years tops so I will just stop worrying.
  • footsoretiredandweary
    I was a mining engineer, so I question the figure (25 Centigrade per kilometre depth) you quote. Try being down a deep mine in South Africa, when the ventilation system fails. Every form of energy generation is essential nuclear, I think it has something to with the sun. E.G.S uses a binary system to generate the electricity. So adopting that standard of potential contamination, we would have closed down every Nuclear generating plant tommorrow. With respect to coal, what do you not understand about fluidized bed combustion and clean coal technolgy? There are more heavy metals released when uranium is mined. Do you think they buy the stuff ready packaged from the Local branch of Uranium R US next to Starbucks? The working conditions of the African workers for example, who actually mine the stuff is a scandal . Why private enterprise is not interested in alternative energy is that they wish to totally control the whole energy market. Nuclear power is a very costly technological intensive method of generation, a small community can not buy a nuclear power station unlike like a wind turbin, solar panels, geothermal system or tidal system. So they private enterprise using nuclear power can charge what they want. From reading your comments over the months, you seem blinkered and obsessed by fission based nuclear power generation to the total exclusion of reason. Every problem with nuclear power is unrealisticacal minimised and every problem with any alternate source of power generation is maximised beyond belief. From reading your comments you have an understanding of nuclear power generation. Though your knowledge of any other form of generating electricity is minimal at best. Quiet frankly it would serve you to spend sometime researching the subject of alternative energy power generation, before you have anything of worth to say on the subject. This is my last conversation with you until you demonstrate such effort in that direction
  • The Zero Deaths from Nuclear. I know you dislike coal, I can even understand it, but we have just seen gallons of polluted water tipped into the sea. The Nuclear Industry is no better than any other big organisation and they also have managed to ensure that their safety record/injuries/deaths are kept, if not secret, but more under wraps for as long as they can with the help of Politicians. There have been more accidents in Nuclear Establishment that are only now coming to light. Many in Sellafield. Considering that you are worried about water quality, how does polluting the earth's water a good thing.
  • Nowheelsnorma
    Let's just hope you don't get a drought in Scotland.
  • So you say Zwit, so you say, but until all these things are tried and seen to fail you will perhaps allow me to believe that all is possible. We have done so much damage to this world, yes with fossil fuels but nuclear is not the answer yet, if ever.
  • No I would hate you to think that, but we are determined to change things, You will have to get up and do some shouting too. I used to have the nice stuff pass my door in Edinburgh on it's way from Torness, another problem we share, to Sellafield. I am one of those who wants it to stop.
  • No argument on that, but think of it, how quickly will they find a solution to the waste.
  • Go on Guess.
  • zwitterion2
    I would say the opposite - nuclear power is a no brainer for the UK, we have no earthquakes and we are running out of gas, we dont want to contaminate the country any more (hosting the industrial revolution put us off to a bad start that way). Yet we have no new build of nuclear for decades. Why? Because the antinuclear lobby is so powerful. The fact that the renewable drive is so strong in the UK, despite it being technically impossible to use classic renewables for the generation of significant power, is putting us in great danger of rising fossil fuel prices which might catch up with us in the next few years. If that happens, I worry that we will hastily have to build many new reactors without the attention to detail that we would use if we approached the building of new plants more slowly and carefully.
  • The reason we Scots are justified in being parochial about this is because we are leading the way in the UK. We will be nuclear-free by 2023, 80% renewables by 2020, and we will still be exporting electricity to England and Northern Ireland.
  • footsoretiredandweary
    Old mate during the 19th century (1845), the UK Parliament in its wisdom decided to use the present standard gauge for the railway lines instead of the superior broad gauge alternative. Now the present gauge (4 feet 8.5) inches for the railways is based upon the average width of farm carts in the Stockton/Darlington area at the time of the building of the railway.These cart were never, could never be used on the railway. So if I have doubts about the decision making process in the UK. Please do not jump down my throat so to speak, but like the case of the "Edingburgh Duck", the UK does not behave in a honest rational maner when they are vested interests with plenty of cash to splash out. E.G.S. seems to have the potential to provide the base load for the UK for at least 1,000,000,000 years to come. M.I.T. (2006 Congressional Report 93-377) seems to like the technology, but hey, what do they know. The problem with the debate is that the nuclear side limit the green renewable energy generating capacity to the technology of 30 year old on-shore wing turbines. Whilst they wildy underestimate the costs of nuclear generation. About the maths as you put it, I have some small knowledge in that area and have explored the question. Quite frankly the nuclear option is not the best long term solution for the UK. Nuclear powered generation should only ever be considered as a last resort. A situation that is definately not the case at present, whatever the proponents of Nuclear Power would have everyone believe.
  • LordHawHaw
    On a trivial point of clarification perhaps it is the Three Mile Island partial core meltdown of 1979 in Pennsylvania to which you refer, Nine Mile Island is also a nuclear power plant in Oswego, N.Y. Coincidentally they declared a site area emergency back in August 1979 due to an electrical fault in the power room.
  • zwitterion2
    Engineering is one huge struggle against nature. Sometimes it goes wrong. Proper engineering takes into account the potential effects of failure and mitigates against it appropriately. Nuclear power is perfectly acceptable if the danger is appropriately countered. What surprises me is that we have not shut down the coal stations already considering the fact that they have not had their danger appropriately mitigated.
  • CROXTONBOY
    Independence for Sussex then!
  • FundMe
    "If the power plant at Hamaoka, 200km from Tokyo, closes, shipments of nuclear fuel to Japan from the Sellafield Mox Plant would stop before they had even started" Chubu expect the plant to be made safe within 3 years whereupon it will reopen. This will in fact save Sellafield money as they wont have to subcontract Areva to supply mox to Japan at a cost of £20m according to environmental groups cited in the article. Over the 3 year shut down at Hamaoke this should save £60m. The Japanese have no intention of reducing their reliance on Nuclear power.
  • Nowheelsnorma
    You are just like the Japanese. They didn't consider the possibility of a sunami, because they was no precedent. The trouble with humanity is that they only act on precedent, and not possibility. They act when it is too late.
  • Nowheelsnorma
    Has everyone forgotten the dead lakes in Scandinavia? Countries like Sweden campaigned for years without success, to get the British government to install filtration on the chimneys to cut emissions and consequent acid rain.
  • jeffgoebbels
    Actually why didn t they go the whole hog and put it next to an active volcano in the middle of a missile testing range.
  • corporeal4now
    The problems with nuclear failure are that : - usually the failure is difficult to control as the materials cannot be handled easily. - the leakage will impact many people over a very long period of time. - the failure is not geographically contained, at the worst cause it impacts the whole world. - nuclear leaks have no smell, invisible, no taste, penetrating flesh at the nano scale so cant feel. - the illness caused by nuclear materials can appear many years down the line, making it difficult to associate with a past incident. Most lifeforms can handle background nuclear particles ripping through the DNA without too much damage, even so its possible to get cancer. Increase the amount of nuclear particles and the chances of DNA damage increases. The damage caused by nuclear shredding of DNA in cells is dependent on the structure and complexity of the DNA of the species. Humans having the most complex programming are more at risk than almost all other species of life.
  • Nowheelsnorma
    I live within sight of Dungeness Nuclear Power Station, and we also had no choice in the matter. We also have nuclear waste being transported by train through the countryside on a regular basis. Please stop acting as though everything only affects the Scottish people.
  • Nowheelsnorma
    I wonder where you come from?
  • There's enough in the way of toxic emissions coming out of Westminster as it is, thank-you very much.
  • zwitterion2
    Personally I am not against the use of classic renewables, I am only against the use of fossil fuels. My two reasons for this are the pollution released by fossil fuels, and energy security - I see the problems in the middle east as a product of our need for oil and gas. Without the money flow from west to middle east for energy, the middle east would develop more slowly and we would be unlikely to see any Islamic theocracies possessing nuclear weapons - which is a pretty scary scenario to me. Classic renewables, being generally small but of great numbers, are cheaper to invest in, and there is no reason that private enterprise can not implement any that are shown to be economically viable. We can see this with the wind turbines that are sometimes seen in the UK. They are generating a profit for the investors who set them up. However wind has a limitation in the UK because of the lack of pumped storage to even out the supply, and there is little more potential for pumped storage in the UK, so wind would seem to be fairly saturated now in the UK. If however someone comes up with another idea and can contribute to the grid, great. If enough power can be generated to switch off a nuclear power station one day, great (only once all the coal power stations have been switched off though imo). ETC - I hope you understand my direction. Nuclear is simply the least bad of a bad bunch of options I feel. Better than coal or oil or gas really even, but worse than any classic renewable. However the classic renewables that we currently have simply can not work sufficiently well in the UK in my opinion. However nuclear has to be made more safe than the current generation of operating power stations in the UK are to satisfy me, hence I support the phasing out of the current fleet, building of new ones to replace them, and building of new ones to allow us to switch off the fossil plants (coal, oil and gas).
  • zwitterion2
    Thats why irrespective of our chosen route with nuclear power, we should still be working on transmutation of the waste to get rid of our current stocks of it.
  • Thank you for your comment which is very instructive, but I cling to my opinion that there are better and cleaner energies which could obviate the use of both nuclear and organic sources. The sea, the sun and the wind are there for ever because when they fail we will also fail. Only that being cheap energies the bills to be presented by operators would not reach the height of the present ones, which is a strong handicap for our leaders to proceed to changes. We would also suppress dependence on conflictive countries and even use our own devices to provide individual electric power in accordance with our needs. Thank you again.
  • zwitterion2
    No, that calculation is based on projected figures. The medical and nuclear industry has accepted maths to work out the damage from radiation to humans over their whole life times. This is so that we can gauge whether its worth, for instance, using X-rays to detect breast cancer. If we dont know how much cancer will be caused by an X-ray we cant work out whether its better to xray people and detect cancers early, or not xray them. Hence the maths is mature and accurate. Using those maths, I worked out the projected harm to the workers from fukushima. The result was 0.3 cancers over the rest of their lives (ie there will be 0.3 extra cancers caused in the whole group of workers that tended to fukushima over the whole rest of their lives) - as this is less than 0.5 it is rounded to zero.
  • Brodric
    Though you are right about the numbers killed, I am not advocating fossil fuel industries. Just because we have to find a way to get rid of current waste doesn't mean we should continue with nuclear. We are not getting rid of it - future generations who have no say in the matter will have to take care of it.
  • zwitterion2
    What harmed the sea? Fukushima? Not really. The sea is significantly radioactive naturally. Fukushima will increase its radioactivity by about 0.00000000001% - ie a totally negligible irrelevant quantity. (I did the calculation in a previous post if you want an accurate number with working, find it with google). Think of the oil and heavy metal pollution that would have ended up in the sea from oil refinery fires etc after the tsunami and the effect they will have on the marine life in comparison.
  • zwitterion2
    Come on what? You dont believe the 12 deaths per day from 'clean' coal? Or the zero deaths per day from nuclear?
  • Don't you actually mean, yet?
  • zwitterion2
    Helena, there is a fundamental problem with solar in the UK. The level of solar radiation which falls on the country is mostly blocked by clouds. This reduces the level of energy to such a small level on the ground that it really is not possible to generate a significant amount of electricity with solar. Most of the time, each square meter produces about 10 watts. The country needs about 60,000,000,000 watts currently. That means we would need about 6 billion square meters of panels, or since the sun only shines for about 8 hours a day average (with a decent intensity) thats more like 18 billion square meters. Its just not practical.
  • activesail
    I have a good idea!! Instead of making a fuel nobody wants, why not mix it with glass and dispose of it? The problem of producing more and more Plutonium, as a by product of the Nuclear fuel industry is not going to go away. Neither is the fact that the existing Mox plant has been a massive failure, with the first experimental shipment of Mox ending up a disaster. So building another makes no sense whatsoever. However investing £6 Billion in sustainable energy sources, including the biggest Nuclear reaction ever (the Sun) might actually put this country ahead in a revolutionary energy technology. When I travelled through Turkey recently, I noticed nearly every house had photoelectric cells on the roof.. Nuclear is not the only option, so lets develop other technologies and reduce the Plutonium pile...
  • No it did not harm the land but it did end up in the sea, humanity has used the sea as it's dustbin for too long and will eventually pay the price. I will not be here and as I leave no descendants I really should not care, but I do. We are a dirty race and too many excuses are used to keep dirty pet projects going because they make money.
  • Okay Zwit, you can have it, I suggest you start building a cellar and I have one more stipulation, it must not be anywhere near the Scottish Border, somewhere in the South East of England preferably in London. Oh here is an idea, Westminster, must have cellars. We will stuff it under there, see how long it stays there.
  • zwitterion2
    Well while there is relatively cheap fossil fuels around still, I would not say that nuclear (to my personal level of safety which is extreme and hence expensive) is cheaper. However within a few years, its going to be cheaper (even my preferred ultra stupidly safe preferred designs). Not because of nuclear becoming cheaper, although I believe it will become so through the economies of scale. But since fossil fuels are about to rocket in value, soon it will be cheaper than fossil. To me though whats important is cleanliness. Take a look at some of my other posts on this thread that highlight how much pollution we are pumping into the environment every day in the UK from fossil use. And thats long lived radioactivity which lasts for hundreds of millions of years, much longer than the iodine or caesium released by fukushima (which I hasten to add should be specifically protected against in what I classify as a safe design), plus heavy metals which last for ever.
  • Come on......
  • They do manufacture cells which work in daylight or do you not have a calculator/watch/ anything else than runs on solar power. The negativity is amazing.
  • I notice you do not say cheaper, that bubble should be well and truly burst and as for cleaner, well I have serious doubts on that scale, we are still waiting on Dounreay being cleaned up. It will take till 2036 before it will be regarded as a brownfield site and according to Wiki will cost 2.9 billion. No wonder we don't want any more of this rubbish here in Scotland.
  • fairpetethebold
    I LIKE IT, and a nice cheesy plug to boot, hope DC reads your letter! P.S. I hope there are no nuclear power plants near Horsham, I know the nearest one to us is Dungeness.
  • zwitterion2
    Many more workers are killed each year by the fossil fuel industries - if you cared about your health and you worked in power generation, nuclear would almost certainly be your first choice from a point of view of your safety. As for the waste generated, transmutation will take care of it. We need to develop the technology anyway, to get rid of the waste we have already generated.
  • Brodric
    I think you are off the mark with the idea that Japan has secret weapon making aims. Japan is the only country where not one, but two nuclear bombs were dropped on civilians. People are still suffering from the physical effects and the psychological scars remain. But the Japanese, being pragmatic , wondered if there was not some peaceful means of utilising nuclear power. Many were against it, even with assurances from the government and the nuclear industry. Their fears have been realised. As for your idea of turning off the gas, it is not so simple as flicking a switch.. In a serious emergency as happened in Japan fires caused by gas would also be prevalent.
  • zwitterion2
    We already perform some of the most high tech scrubbing of the coal emissions in the world on our coal power stations and that still captures only 99 % of the emissions (iirc off the top of my head). The remaining 1% or so is what kills 4000 a year. If we did not scrub the gasses many many more would die (as they used to). Further, the ash we do collect is not treated as nuclear waste which it is (being significantly radioactive with uranium, radium, radon, polonium and other natural nuclides) but dumped in land fill, being too voluminous to process and remove the contamination, to release its radioactivity into the water and land, where is finds itself in our drinking water and food. The use of coal is a global silent long term catastrophe in my opinion. The contamination is long lived (hundreds of millions of years). Hundreds of thousands worldwide die from it each year. Millions acquire serious illnesses from its products. Mutations and cancers are rife as a result of the contamination. Yes people focus on fukushima despite its real long term effects being minuscule in comparison. The radioactive contamination from fukushima will reduce by 100 times within a few weeks. Did you see my comparison of the amount of radioactivity released by fukushima compared to coal each year?
  • Jake_W5
    I also watched True Stories 'Nuclear Eternity'. Superb program and absolutely riveting.
  • olivercromwell2
    It would cause some fowl pollution. It would be better if we had them or Hamsters running in a treadmill producing electricity . : )
  • zwitterion2
    Geothermal might have potential for heat - but at 25 centigrade per kilometer deep, its not going to be of much (if any) use for generating electricity. There are problems though - geothermal is essentially nuclear power, and natural radioactive substances are often released when we drill that far down (in the water that we circulate). Still, I can see potential for heating there. However if it was economically viable, private enterprise would be doing it large scale. The lack of such action to me demonstrates its either not mature yet or has little potential. As for nuclear being a last resort, personally I think it should be the second to last resort. I think fossil should be the very last resort, then nuclear, then everything else. But thats the state of play. We are still using fossil (coal no less - the very worse form of fossil) and we are still killing 12 people and causing 120 serious illnesses a day in the UK alone by doing this. By moving to the next least bad, nuclear, we can save an awful lot of lives, and reduce the contamination of our land by a large degree (thats nuclear contamination in addition to heavy metal contamination). However I do not see any potential today to switch to solar, wind, wave or any other classic renewable.
  • Brodric
    Nuclear industry leaders and governments are in cahoots in trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Nuclear power is NOT a cheap, safe option - quite the reverse. The cost of supporting nuclear waste in a so-called safe environment (doesn't exist) is phenomenal and goes way beyond our life times. It is volatile, highly dangerous, open to terrorist attack - and the poor beggars who work in the industry are the ones who have to sacrifice themselves in the event of problems. Have we forgotten Nine Mile Island, Chernobyl and now Fukoshima. And the cost goes way beyond boundaries. How many years were we unable to eat Scottish or Welsh lamb after Chernoby? Milk was also undrinkable for a short period. Who are they kidding? Bring on the alternative energy Alex.
  • zwitterion2
    'You recon' - you know, I have a saying with my mates about that phrase. If someone comes up with a totally unsubstantiated and fundamentally baseless claim, we call it an 'I recon'. Thats exactly what youre doing here. Just because you recon, dosent make it fact. If classic renewables could do the job, we would be using them.
  • tom
    Why dont we get rid of nuclear fuel and just burn the banknotes that would have been used to build these time bombs....Lets face it.....the banknotes will never run out...and if they ever did, then the only energy we would need is a belly full of carrots. Nuclear is useless if you let idiots try to exploit its uses...we dont have the brains at this point in time...all we kow is that it gets hot!...monkeys,petrol and matches!
  • zwitterion2
    Less radioactivity is put into the environment from nuclear power than from the burning of coal per unit of electricity produced. In the future, if we worry about radioactive contamination of our planet, it will be the coal ash tips and the coal and other fossil fuel ash which is dispersed over the planet which will worry us. Each year in the US alone (at 1982 coal use rates which are much lower than today) 2600 curies (about 100 Tbq) or radioactive waste is released from the burning of coal. This is not treated as radioactive waste and is allowed to be simply buried, while much of it stays as particulates and floats around the US being breathed in by the population. Using the INES adjustment factor for uranium of 600 to 900 times (average 750)(page 35 of the handbook), this is equivalent to about 750,000 Tbq of iodine 131 released per year. Assuming fukushima released about 450,000 Tbq, this means that fukushima only released about 60% of what is released each year in the US alone from the burning of coal. Hard to believe but there is the facts. Each and every year in the US alone more radioactive waste is released into the environment from the burning of coal than fukushima released during this accident. Further, most of fukushimas radiation is iodine 131 which a very short half life. Most of the radiation from coal is uranium with a huge half life of millions of years. Fukushimas radiation will be 100 times lower in a few weeks, the radiation released from the coal we burn will be almost exactly the same as it currently is even in 1000 years.
  • I reckon that £1.5billion alone pumped into developing renewables would have made quite a dent in the power deficit. If we added in all the money currently spent maintaining our crusading forces in the middle east then I suspect the fear that we're about to run out of energy would subside significantly. I've never understood why oil is still considered a cheap source of fuel; when you add in the cost of subjugating other nations so as to protect our supply it isn't cost effective at all.
  • g0annahead
    The arrogance of the west, expecting else to take their toxic waste. They just don't get it, people are awakening and just don't want the risk. So come on stop dumping the countless amount of our rubbish on the rest of the world. It's time to accept our responsibility.
  • Cleaner? What about the nuclear waste?
  • zwitterion2
    Japan could have made weapons years ago, so I dont think its true to say they have secret aims of it. Their reasons not to are political not technical. As for MOX fuel being 'the same as giving your friends plutonium' - if you mean weapons grade plutonium thats not true. Civilian plutonium is poisoned for bomb use with other isotopes of plutonium which make it pretty much useless for a nuclear bomb because of the high neutron background. And it cant really be purified either.
  • zwitterion2
    Ridiculous to insinuate that our stockpile of plutonium is 'waste'. Only the indie could claim that. Its worth £330 Billion. Plutonium is the most expensive metal on the planet. Its 'pure energy' - something we are going to be getting pretty short of soon when Russia starts putting the squeeze on the price of gas. Maybe we should just sit on it and wait to see how the global energy markets shift over the next few years. Diesel at £1.46 - up from less than a pound about 2 or 3 years ago - at this rate we will be unable to afford to live in the UK soon. That plutonium might just save our skins.
  • zwitterion2
    The only hope we have of getting rid of the current waste generated by a global weapons program for the last 50 years is to continue on the path we are on, with the aim being transmutation of the waste back into safe elements. That is our only hope of getting rid of the waste currently stored. If we stop now, we will have to live with the waste for the nect 250,000 years as you say.
  • zwitterion2
    There was actually zero deaths from radiation at the japanese plants. Considering the long term, and the fact that some workers got a higher dose than is usually allowed when they had to go and fix things in the reactor once radioactivity had leaked, still there will be no long term extra deaths according to the standard models of harm from radiation. A small number (less than 10 iirc) of workers got less than 250 mSv and another 50 or so got less than 100 mSv doses, meaning that about 0.3 workers will get cancer early because of the radiation they were exposed to. Since 0.3 is less than 0.5 (and hence is rounded down to 0) 0 workers will be effected. (this is worked out from the accepted data that 1 sievert of radiation to a human will cause a 4% increase in the risk of cancer)
  • egbutnobacon
    It explains the dire food then I suppose.
  • zwitterion2
    Most nuclear proponents are not going to argue with you that chernobyl was good. I certainly would not. However fukushima is not chernobyl, its around 100 times less severe in terms of land contamination. Chernobyl was unique, a product of the former USSR. The requirement with future nuclear is to reduce the potential severity of any kind of accident to negligible proportions. If that can be achieved there is no reason to oppose nuclear.
  • I'll agree they are clean when you put your mouth over an exhaust tube at one of the plants and breathe deeply without coughing.
  • I love exaggeration and personal attack, it really gets to the core of a debate. Consider what you are saying and also what I said. The standing proof at the moment is that the radioactivity in the area is not harming the local wildlife population.
  • zwitterion2
    The sunlight in Turkey or Palestine is roughly 100 times stronger than in the UK - that means that they can get roughly 100 times more electricity from solar panels than in the UK. With respect, the UK would be already using classic renewables if it was feasible. You explore the maths a bit and you will see that it is not.
  • zwitterion2
    Interesting how the indie has to spin everything and omit that fact! I noticed it myself. Hugely biased from a paper which claims to be 'independent'!
  • zwitterion2
    Plutonium is harder to control when used in normal reactors. The fraction of delayed neutrons is lower compared to the prompt neutrons. I dont think this is actually an issue though.
  • zwitterion2
    The coal industry in the UK still kills about 12 people every day with its emissions, despite being so called 'clean'(ish). Nuclear kills or harms no one.
  • zwitterion2
    The plutonium produced by nuclear power is not exactly a problem, unless we wish to phase out nuclear. Its new fuel to replace the old. One criticism of nuclear claimed by opponents is that 'there is only 80 years of uranium left' - well there might be 80 years of cheap recoverable uranium 235 left, but theres a thousand years of plutonium left from the U238. As I say, separating the issue of phasing out nuclear, the production of plutonium is a logical part of the nuclear fuel cycle.
  • zwitterion2
    A lot cleaner than if it does not go on and the electricity it produces is produced instead with fossil fuels.
  • olivercromwell2
    "Nuclear Power" energy that costs the Earth!
  • Your on the right track there. Perhaps we can use the nuclear waste in every lasting light bulbs - isn't it supposed to glow in the dark?
  • cardigan
    On what basis do you describe coal and oil plants as "dirty"? Filtration and emissions control is quite extensive.
  • cardigan
    I think the sun shines a little more throughout the year than in the UK, I could be wrong...
  • need to be investing in building Thorium Cycle reactors... do a GIS on it... you can make very small ones and put them where they're needed... if we get our act together, we can make them so simple even trained monkeys could supervise them...
  • golding
    ?AVOIDING NUCLEAR AMNESIA? Shaun Burnie 2010 ?NUCLEAR WASTE AMNESIA Easy to forget ? Sellafield contains the world?s single largest plutonium store thousands of litres of liquid high level waste and no solution?. ? THE PROBLEMS OF NUCLEAR POWER ? ? Timeframe (they can?t be built on large scale within the time necessary) ? Economics (unknown real cost even with subsidies and are more expensive than alternatives) ? Uranium supply (limited economically recoverable reserves leading to fast breeders and large scale plutonium reprocessing) ? Proliferation and security (existing threats are real, nuclear expansion will led to thousands of tons of plutonium in global circulation/transport no adequate security and safeguards exist)?
  • olivercromwell2
    If it has to be Nuclear, then it has to be Thorium fuelled. Cleaner, Safer, Cheaper, more abundant, and more important its difficult to make "Nuclear Weapons" out of its waste.
  • olivercromwell2
    Turkeys food supply, is badly polluted from radioactive Chernobyl fall out. I think it is the worst contamination outside of the Ukraine.
  • Old_Horse_Put_Out_To_Pasture
    Don't hold back on the fear factor now.
  • preventionoriented
    Explore the latest research on solar power, battery technology, wind, geothermal, biomass, wave energy etc. and you will be very surprised at how realistic it is to make the UK energy self-sufficient with green technologies. Go to Turkey or Palestine and see how almost every building has solar panels. We have some of the best universities in the world but they are light years behind other countries in developing green technologies, which will cost us jobs and the opportunity to export British-made products. With your reliance on nuclear power how are you proposing to get rid of the nuclear waste materials? How can you guarantee that there won't be releases of radiation? How would you explain to the Japanese that their recent disaster was actually good for the environment or tell the people of the Ukraine that Chernobyl was a good thing? As I said, if you value life itself you would never support nuclear power.
  • Even with huge investments in renewable green energy technology it will be many decades before the UKs constantly increasing energy demands could be met by "green energy" Nuclear power is actually the greenest energy we have at the moment with high energy output and essentially zero emissions. The waste is produced at the plants is re-processable and even when left uncontained has a rather minimal effect on the environment. Consider Chernobyl. The greatest nuclear disaster in human history has turned out to be beneficial to the local environment. Many near extinct species are now thriving in the local area. Local plant life grows unchecked and undamaged by human intervention. The radioactivity in the area does not seem to effect the animals within their short life spans. The Greens need to educate themselves on nuclear power a bit and stop badmouthing it as the route of all evil. Without it our gas and oil reserves would be depleted within a couple of decades if not less.
  • Old_Horse_Put_Out_To_Pasture
    Why exactly should that happen? There is no running core over there.
  • What are we gonna do, have a two day week while we work out how to provide the power they currently provide?
  • fairpetethebold
    All production is too be moved to Iran I have heard in a secret memo leaked by an unnamed official!
  • It'd also take decades to build new nuclear plants... and not to mention, they're expensive as heck. And blah, blah, blah, the rest are just the usual propaganda. "Consider Chernobyl. The greatest nuclear disaster in human history has turned out to be beneficial to the local environment. Many near extinct species are now thriving in the local area. Local plant life grows unchecked and undamaged by human intervention. The radioactivity in the area does not seem to effect the animals within their short life spans." That has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and I've already heard that one from a pro-nuclear dude. All I can say is LOL. Just because the radioactive contamination has left the area uninhabitable for humans and the wild life is thriving doesn't mean that radioactivity is somehow good for them. It just means that human activities are harmful to the environment.
  • millsmess88
    You silly boy. The ocean dilutes the radionuclides and they simply disappear harmlessly into the food chain. I'm sure you'd love munching some Norwegian lobster loaded with spicy Sellafield Tc-99. And the duck eggs have that extra special flavor only the extended gamma ray decay of Technetium can impart. Furthermore, it's good for you. And who could possibly argue with Ann Coulter! All you green wussies need to remember is one simple 'fact': radiation exposure is good for your health. That's why it is imperative that the global bastion of truth, justice, and freedom, the great and powerful USA, should immediately begin atmospheric testing its latest thermonuclear weapons over Iranian airspace. Indubitably, this will improve the health of these wayward people.
  • Bad idea... this whole MOX fuel thing was a disaster all over the world. It'd be much cheaper to use uranium just once. I believe that you can already use MOX fuel in regular reactors, but they cost more and they're more dangerous. Who wants to use that?
  • I shudder at the thought how the world will be in 20 years' time if this nuclear madness goes on.
  • Consider a nuclear plant in the UK or anywhere in Europe. If even an old reactor in Japan can face a 9.0 magnitude earthquake then surely the much newer plants in Europe have very little to worry about. There was one actual death from radiation poisoning at the Japan plants. A few people had to be evacuated. Compare that to the many thousands that died due to the eathquake and tsunami and it really puts things in perspective.
  • Clearly the answer is to build a nuclear power plant in the UK which can use MOX fuel. That way, that UK gains a big source of clean, green, energy, the MOX plant is saved, and maybe one or two of the dirty coal or oil generating plants can be closed.
  • stickywicket
    Reports on the Sunday news programme said that the plan was to close Hamaoka plant while construction was carried out to protect the plant from a tsunami.This was expected to take three years.There was no news that this is to be a permanent shut down. One commentator pointed out that with no firm decision to close down the plant permanently it makes it very difficult to search for alternative sources of power to replace the power generated by the nuclear reactors if they are going to come back on line in three years time.
  • "September 1999The first consignment of Mox fuel bound for Japan, made in a smaller Mox Demonstration Facility, is ordered to be shipped back to Sellafield after The Independent reveals that quality control data had been falsified. Quality checks had been bypassed using data sheets from previous samples, meaning some batches of rods were passed as safe when they had not"Is it just me or should falsifying data regarding nuclear energy be slightly more important? It's not like selling a second hand robin reliant. It won't just stop working! And the Japanese signed more contracts with this company even though they could have used the French company which was doing the work anyway??? Why would anyone do that? Surely, no taxpayers money would have been used to grease things up?:)
  • zwitterion2
    Hahaha excellent. See, some other people can inject the humour I lack :-) 'write something angry and uniformed on the walls' lol... 'wire cutters and fast running might get you 50m or so' - before the bullets from several machine guns splat you over the grounds as a reminder to anyone else who might have the same idea that its not a good one! Excellent!
  • zwitterion2
    The link you provided shows that a hacker managed to gain access to distribution network control systems, which are not in any way part of a nuclear power stations systems. I have explained this to you in the past. Further I have explained that a nuclear power plant has systems which in decreasing order of sophistication would ensure a shutdown in a case of out of normal operating conditions, like someone trying to deliberately break them. The risk of 'damage' to a nuclear plant is accepted by the HSE - I dont doubt that. But release of radioactive material? No I dont think so. If you know otherwise, references please. Youre talking out of your vent again Danny.
  • zwitterion2
    Haha thats so typical. I can totally believe it too. A normal fossil power station has a nuclear accident every day it operates...
  • preventionoriented
    If we value human life above profit then we should be putting much more effort into developing renewable green energy technologies.
  • Can we assume that the 19 directors of the Sellafield MOX factory would have intended to claim their full £8m salary until the end of the decade, if allowed? I think I understand now why there was so much PNS - pro nuclear spam - flung at all the online newspapers when the Fukushima plant blew up. One common thread was that the explosions actually proved nuclear safety. Salary safety, perhaps they meant..
  • This whole MOX fuel thing is the most ridiculous thing ever devised... Japan has spent about $130 billion to reprocess MOX fuel to create about $9 billion worth of nuclear fuel... LOL. What the hell? Who the heck came up with this whole thing? There is a joke that it would have cost less money to buy out an entire uranium mine.
  • Hear, hear.
  • JaitcH
    Another British nuclear success story in the making. The concept might have been along the right lines - recycling spent fuel - but to produce only 13 tonnes in 10 years! No further nuclear work should be done until they find a *viable* way of disposing of or storing waste. AND THIS DOES **NOT** INCLUDE DUMPING IT AT SEA!

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