Ireland needs a Nuclear Power station. (1 Viewer)

[fastfude]

I can't wait for my radioactive superpowers to kick in. Bags I get the one that can re-heat coffee (and a highly specific subset of related beverages) with my laser eyes.

 

[Froog]

Well, this is a low-information debate isn't it? Is anybody basing their opinions on anything bar something they might have read somewhere or overheard on a bus?

yes, i'm basing my opinions on this:

 

[GO]

Well, this is a low-information debate isn't it? Is anybody basing their opinions on anything bar something they might have read somewhere or overheard on a bus?

Well,I'm just going by my somewhat limited and no doubt shakey accumulation of knowledge regarding the whole energy environment thingy and what not.

 

[magicbastarder]

Well, this is a low-information debate isn't it? Is anybody basing their opinions on anything bar something they might have read somewhere or overheard on a bus?

we're just waiting for the thumped users who work in nuclear power to log on and provide the info.

 

[Jerry Twig]

Cutting down is'nt a solution.

I think lighting should be drastically cut back,the place is too bright by a long way.But you can't be turning of yer computer,what about the torrents!

Not to mention going acoustic guitar Gazz, God forbid!!

 

[GO]

Not to mention going acoustic guitar Gazz, God forbid!!

Thats like someone stepped on me grave.

 

[ann post]

hi egg, good man for pointing out that theres nothing to base anything on; did some research meantimes:

i'd say a uk home would be in similar proportions to an irish.

"A third of the current total number of houses in Ireland (547,000 houses – known as “the housing stock”) was built in the last ten years."

so, 200 kwh hours x 547,000 = 109.4 million kwhours to heat the gaff.

if all buildings were reduced to the recommended 15kwh, then it would take: 8.205million kw hours to do the same work. thats one reason not to go nuclear.

cars? my car hold 5 people and does 40miles per gallon, thats 4.5 litres of petrol.

a big fucking useless piece of shit does usually about 25 mpg.

an economic car does something close to 50 mpg

egg generally cycles, i used always see him on the bus into the hoot nights. he uses possibly 50ml of chain oil a year.

from an economic car to a big piece of shit, there is twice as much fuel used to carry the same amount of people for the same distance. on top of this, you must factor in that a big truck has to drive from cork to donegal every week to fill the petrol stations. smaller cars would half these journeys.

 

[Froog]

About 25 years ago, newscaster Edwin Newman told the American people in an NBC
broadcast that our rivers would boil within a decade because of the thermal pollution
from nuclear power plants. Jack Anderson once claimed that a white nuclear cloud was
descending on Denver. The Las Vegas Sun converted a one-millirem leak near Beatty,
Nevada, into a full-blown nuclear cloud, which was descending on the community about
five miles away. By the time it reached Beatty the millirem was distributed through about
500 cubic miles of air. We get about fifty times that much radiation from a simple X-ray
distributed over the puny volume of a single human being.
In the face of such concerted propaganda, it is no wonder that Americans are fearful of
nuclear power. They are not told the facts of the case, nor even of places where nuclear
power is successfully and safely used. It is fortunate that the facts are as they are, rather
than as they have been painted to the American people, for if they were as painted, we
would soon have to go without most of our light, heat, and electric power. The energy
source that has been advertised to us (sun and wind) is a delusion; if we had to depend
on that we would be doomed. But the energy source that we have been told is fraught
with mortal danger is, fortunately, and contrary to popular opinion, cheap, clean, and
comparatively safe. In it lies our best hope for the future.
Meanwhile, the “alternate energy” advocates are urging us to dismantle our nuclear
power stations, to stop exploration for domestic oil, to curtail construction of coal-fired
plants, and to start basing our existence on their “tomorrow we will do it” promises. Jane
Fonda and Tom Hayden succeeded in shutting down the Rancho Seco nuclear power
station near Sacramento. Some of their disciples went house to house telling mothers
that their children would glow in the dark unless that plant was dismantled. And yet the
population of Sacramento is growing at an explosive pace, and so is their need for
electricity.
How is it possible, in the span of a brief article, to prove the comparative safety of
nuclear power? Here are a few examples of how nuclear power works and what its
effects are on consumers of that power. For an excellent longer treatment, see Petr
Beckmann's incomparable book The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear.
1. How safe are our nuclear reactors? Very safe indeed, compared with any other kind of
power. Every nuclear reactor is built on the principle of defense in depth. In October
1966 a metal plate broke loose in a reactor, partially blocking the flow of coolant,
overheating two of 100 fuel assemblies and melting some of their fuel. The reactor was
promptly shut down, and all precautions worked as planned. As Beckmann says, “If the
reactor had lost its coolant, it would have been automatically replaced. And if it hadn't,
the containment building would have contained the radioactivity. And if it hadn't (though
it is hard to see why not), it would have disperse into the atmosphere without doing any
harm. And if it hadn't, because a temperature inversion kept it near the ground, a slight
wind in an unfortunate direction would have had to blow it 30 miles to Detroit before a
Detroit fly got hurt.” (Beckmann, p. 50) And yet this incident was the subject of a book,
We Almost Lost Detroit, which scared many readers half to death with a flagrantly
unscientific account of what occurred.
2. What about radioactivity? The International Commission on Radiological Protection
has set 500 millirems as the maximum permissible annual dose that an individual should
receive. “A single chest X-ray will expose the patient to some 50 mrems; a coast-tocoast
jet flight will expose the passengers to some 5 additional mrems; watching color
television will deliver an average of 1 mrem per year. Yet all of these doses together are
smaller than the dose the average U.S. resident obtains from Mother Nature: 130 mrems
per year. Most of this comes from cosmic rays, the ground, and from building materials.”
(Beckmann, p. 56) For example, Grand Central Station in New York has so much
radiation emanating from its granite blocks that it violates all permissible standards for
nuclear plants. Now, “how much do all the U.S. nuclear plants add to the dose of 250
mrem per year that the average U.S. citizen receives already? About 0.003 mrems per
year. Yes, that is what the nuclear critics are protesting: 0.003 mrems on top of the 250
mrems that they get anyway.” (p. 58)
In thirty years of operation, not one death, not one injury has resulted in the U.S. from
nuclear plants or radioactivity. The Three Mile Island accident did not cause a single
casualty, and the extra radiation the residents in that area received during that event
was less than half the dose each airline traveler gets by flying from Boston to Seattle.
Radon gas gives millions of American home-owners hundreds of times more radiation
than they receive from all of our nuclear plants combined. And even this is not nearly the
problem it was previously deemed. Moving up one floor in an apartment house gives
tenants more extra radiation than all the nuclear plants do.
“But nuclear reactors are clearly unsafe. Consider what happened at the Chernobyl plant
in the Soviet Union in 1987.” Very well, let us consider it. The main differences between
the Chernobyl plant and ours are these: Ours were designed to give maximum safety to
their neighbors; theirs was not. Heat increases in our reactors cause their reactivity to go
down, but reactivity in Chernobyl models increases with heat and therefore selfaccelerated
the Soviet unit to destruction. Ours are surrounded by containment
buildings; theirs was not. Our plants had multiple defenses in depth; theirs did not.
These were among the facts given in a report by a team of U.S. experts, led by former
National Academy of Science president Dr. Frederick Seitz and Nobel Laureate Dr.
Hans Bethe—both of them members of Scientists and Engineers for Secure Energy.
The Chernobyl accident killed 31 people from radioactivity; an unknown number are still
dying of cancer. Yet if, a month after the Chernobyl accident, one were to drink 60,000
gallons of “Chernobyl contaminated water,” he would have received the same amount of
extra radiation as from a simple thyroid check. Many “radioactive deer” in Finland and
Scandinavia were slaughtered, but the killing stopped when some people, including
scientists in those countries, offered to buy and eat the meat. Since the beginning of
time each of us had thousands of times more radioactivity in our bodies than the extra
amount found in these deer.
3. What of nuclear wastes? Here as elsewhere, one has to unlearn what one has been
told. When the uranium in a nuclear fuel rod has been spent, it remains radioactive, and
is immersed in pools of cooling water for a few months to allow the short-lived
radioactivity to go down. The spent rods are shipped in sealed casks to fuel
reprocessing facilities, which separate out the uranium and plutonium. There is no
physical problem with all this—a reprocessing center can handle many tons of fuel per
day. The problem in the United States has been not physical but political. The Carter
administration was filled with people who wanted us to perform miracles and go solar
immediately. They hindered offshore oil drilling and, to vanquish nuclear power,
prohibited further recycling of nuclear residues. As a result, these residues—which today
constitute a 300-year source for our nation's electricity needs—started to accumulate at
power plants. The anti-nuclear lobby, which caused this accumulation in the first place,
now claims that these “wastes” are a main reason why we should shut the plants down.
When sealed and packaged to U.S. specifications, this material is not dangerous—it is
far safer than open wastes from oil or coal.
Nuclear power plants provide the safest, cleanest form of energy the world has ever
known. Yet “alternative energy” advocates attack it as unsafe, and propose instead
something far less safe, which in any case cannot be put into operation on a large scale.
Instead of facts, they give us scare stories, which find a receptive audience because that
which is new is always, or can easily be made, very frightening. The fact is that safe and
inexpensive nuclear power is now available and can easily be developed further to
provide clean energy for vehicles now run on oil.
The anti-nuclear lobby is not strong enough to turn off our lights and factories
completely; they are not (yet) demanding that we deactivated our fossil-fired electricity
plants. Yet they have already done considerable damage. (1) They have stopped us
from building new nuclear power stations. (2) They have prevented the operation of fully
or nearly completed nuclear power plants, which are required to fill the burgeoning
energy needs of New York and other cities. (3) They have blocked the reprocessing of
nuclear residues, and thus denied our country access to an enormously large,
environmentally clean energy source. And (4) they have thus far prohibited the burial of
the same nuclear residues at any site.

makes sense to me.

 

[ratmonkey]

Why did the Smart car never take off here? They're all over the place on the mainland.

 

[Froog]

so, 200 kwh hours x 547,000 = 109.4 million kwhours to heat the gaff.

if all buildings were reduced to the recommended 15kwh, then it would take: 8.205million kw hours to do the same work. thats one reason not to go nuclear.

??

 

[Froog]

james lovelock, longtime respected environmentalist, on nuclear energy:

[SIZE=-1]Published in The Independent - 24 May 2004[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, was far-sighted to say that global warming is a more serious threat than terrorism. He may even have underestimated, because, since he spoke, new evidence of climate change suggests it could be even more serious, and the greatest danger that civilisation has faced so far.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Most of us are aware of some degree of warming; winters are warmer and spring comes earlier. But in the Arctic, warming is more than twice as great as here in Europe and in summertime, torrents of melt water now plunge from Greenland's kilometre-high glaciers. The complete dissolution of Greenland's icy mountains will take time, but by then the sea will have risen seven metres, enough to make uninhabitable all of the low lying coastal cities of the world, including London, Venice, Calcutta, New York and Tokyo. Even a two metre rise is enough to put most of southern Florida under water.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The floating ice of the Arctic Ocean is even more vulnerable to warming; in 30 years, its white reflecting ice, the area of the US, may become dark sea that absorbs the warmth of summer sunlight, and further hastens the end of the Greenland ice. The North Pole, goal of so many explorers, will then be no more than a point on the ocean surface.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Not only the Arctic is changing; climatologists warn a four-degree rise in temperature is enough to eliminate the vast Amazon forests in a catastrophe for their people, their biodiversity, and for the world, which would lose one of its great natural air conditioners.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2001 that global temperature would rise between two and six degrees Celsius by 2100. Their grim forecast was made perceptible by last summer's excessive heat; and according to Swiss meteorologists, the Europe-wide hot spell that killed over 20,000 was wholly different from any previous heat wave. The odds against it being a mere deviation from the norm were 300,000 to one. It was a warning of worse to come.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]What makes global warming so serious and so urgent is that the great Earth system, Gaia, is trapped in a vicious circle of positive feedback. Extra heat from any source, whether from greenhouse gases, the disappearance of Arctic ice or the Amazon forest, is amplified, and its effects are more than additive. It is almost as if we had lit a fire to keep warm, and failed to notice, as we piled on fuel, that the fire was out of control and the furniture had ignited. When that happens, little time is left to put out the fire before it consumes the house. Global warming, like a fire, is accelerating and almost no time is left to act.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]So what should we do? We can just continue to enjoy a warmer 21st century while it lasts, and make cosmetic attempts, such as the Kyoto Treaty, to hide the political embarrassment of global warming, and this is what I fear will happen in much of the world. When, in the 18th century, only one billion people lived on Earth, their impact was small enough for it not to matter what energy source they used.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]But with six billion, and growing, few options remain; we can not continue drawing energy from fossil fuels and there is no chance that the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and in time. If we had 50 years or more we might make these our main sources. But we do not have 50 years; the Earth is already so disabled by the insidious poison of greenhouse gases that even if we stop all fossil fuel burning immediately, the consequences of what we have already done will last for 1,000 years. Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendants and for civilisation.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Worse still, if we burn crops grown for fuel this could hasten our decline. Agriculture already uses too much of the land needed by the Earth to regulate its climate and chemistry. A car consumes 10 to 30 times as much carbon as its driver; imagine the extra farmland required to feed the appetite of cars.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy. True, burning natural gas instead of coal or oil releases only half as much carbon dioxide, but unburnt gas is 25 times as potent a greenhouse agent as is carbon dioxide. Even a small leakage would neutralise the advantage of gas.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The prospects are grim, and even if we act successfully in amelioration, there will still be hard times, as in war, that will stretch our grandchildren to the limit. We are tough and it would take more than the climate catastrophe to eliminate all breeding pairs of humans; what is at risk is civilisation. As individual animals we are not so special, and in some ways are like a planetary disease, but through civilisation we redeem ourselves and become a precious asset for the Earth; not least because through our eyes the Earth has seen herself in all her glory.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]There is a chance we may be saved by an unexpected event such as a series of volcanic eruptions severe enough to block out sunlight and so cool the Earth. But only losers would bet their lives on such poor odds. Whatever doubts there are about future climates, there are no doubts that greenhouse gases and temperatures both are rising.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]We have stayed in ignorance for many reasons; important among them is the denial of climate change in the US where governments have failed to give their climate scientists the support they needed. The Green lobbies, which should have given priority to global warming, seem more concerned about threats to people than with threats to the Earth, not noticing that we are part of the Earth and wholly dependent upon its well being. It may take a disaster worse than last summer's European deaths to wake us up.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from overheating in Europe last summer.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Even if they were right about its dangers, and they are not, its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-2]James Lovelock is an independent scientist, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis which considers the Earth as a self-regulating organism, and a member of EFN - the association of Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy - www.ecolo.org[/SIZE]

 

[ann post]

??

sorry, too many numbers, the basic point of all that is that based on the number of houses in ireland and how much energy they use, efficient buiding would mean it only takes 7.5% of the present amount to heat everyones house.

while reading up on that, i also came across a thing on esb about the ardnacrusha power station on the shannon that was kinda interesting.

 

[Bold Lump]

The global warming debate needs to fuck off, seriously. It's a red herring of an issue.

Instead of having a pissing contest predicting the effects (or not) carbon emmissons have on the massive, chaotic system that is our athmosphere we should be looking into sustainable means to meet increasing human demand.

Nuclear power is not sustainable in the long run. Uranium, plutonium and other nuclear material is just not that plentiful and the investment costs are huge compared to what is put into renewables.

The net energy input into this planet is energy from the sun and this needs to be taken advantage of. Be it through photoelectric cells or better use and managment of our plant resources.

As a shitty wet rock on the edge of an ocean and the end of the russian fuel pipelines we should be looking into developing wind and tidal energy production.

 

[plug]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9888020-54.html

 

[hugh]

Nuclear power is not sustainable in the long run.

True but Lovelocks point (here, are these two Lovelocks related?) is that it can get us out of a hole while we wait for things like ...

wind and tidal energy production.

to become feasible on a mass scale ....

I dunno where I stand on this. I was reading George Monbiot's "Heat" and felt his dismissal of Nuclear was a bit weak. At the same time, every gut instinct I have says that Nuclear is a bad idea.

 

[It Will Never Last]

the gulf stream carries more energy in one day than the entire world uses in three months.

The gulf stream can fuck off unless it's a minimum 10% cheaper than the ESB.

 

[flashback]

Pebble Bed Reactors are probably grand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor


Solar is a goer too. Also wind to some extent.

This is a pretty good book if you are into that sort of shite.
http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/physics_for_future_presid/

 

[broken arm]

although I recognise it is currently part of the current energy mix and
there is research being directed at new generation reactors my main
concerns with nuclear power are:

technological lock-in - In my mind, energy production and
distribution needs to be decentralised where possible. There needs
to be a greater diversity of supply. Developing a programme of
nuclear power is a long-term issue and it will be determining a
centralised system for the next 40-80+ years.

Economics - I don't see any private investors stepping up to the
plate to invest in nuclear power plants. (if anyone can point me
towards some please do). This concerns me that too much public
money is being diverted away from more sustainable technological
research.

I also think that Lovelock hasn't considered the costs of producing
the level of nuclear power that he is proposing. Has anyone
calculated/considered the costs and timescales required to move
Ireland towards a nuclear economy?

Will it make economic sense when you consider the full life cycle
costs of construction, production, waste treatment and
management, safety and security, decommissioning, new
regulations, new departments...

Actually from a neoclassical economists perspective it probably will
because treating nuclear waste contributes to GDP... but are these
the economic measure we want?

intergenerational equity - this may seem abstract but it is a
traditional sustainability principle. Basically, we still don't know what
to do with nuclear waste (other than make weapons) and we are
potentially causing great harm to future generations.


We are still dealing with the legacy of old nuclear plants.

international security and non-proliferation - I can't square up
the hypocrisy in the system of global governance that controls who
can and can't have nuclear power. Also if we are exponentially
increasing the amount of nuclear waste production there are greater
security risks.

Uranium supply - well, where is it and how long will it be
economically and politically viable to mine? After Canada and
Australia the political stability of the regions where is can be mined
reduces significantly. Is Ireland in a position to broker in the
international uranium trade? What political trade-offs are we willing
to make?





but life is full of tough decisions and they don't always go the way you want .

 

[Cormcolash]

There is plenty of wind power in Ireland to power the country, and that's not even going into tidal power and hydro power available.
Still I've nothing particularly against the idea of nuclear power as long as the waste disposal/storage situation is addressed properly and safely.

 

[It Will Never Last]

There is plenty of wind power in Ireland to power the country, and that's not even going into tidal power and hydro power available.
Still I've nothing particularly against the idea of nuclear power as long as the waste disposal/storage situation is addressed properly and safely.

This is Ireland, it'll be fucked out of a fast-moving Hiace on a country lane late some winter's evening.

Shure t'will be grand.