Keith,
I have been anti-nuclear [or 'nucular' as dubbya says] for many years
and bombarded my son with literature when he became a Navy Nuke. He now agrees
with me. The most compelling issue, however, re:
If nuclear power is so
wonderful why aren't countries falling
over themselves building more
reactors?
Is the quadrupling of the cost of raw materials that occurred in the last
few years. It just doesn't make economic sense when you consider the millions of
dollars it costs to decommission a plant.
Bill
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 07:24:28 +0100 Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes:
Harry,
The needle got stuck in your case when nuclear power came around!
There's always a small and vocal lobby for nuclear power. (There's a bunch of them in the House of Lords and I've just been listening to brief snatches of their debate from last night.) I wasn't making a case for nuclear power in my reply to Ed. I was just instancing it as another example of where we live on the edge of our expertise. No engineer or scientist of any note can be found in this country to take an interest or responsible positions in nuclear power because their careers will be hostages to possible accidents of enormous proportions. Nuclear power is headed by accountants because they can easily escape blame if anything goes wrong.
If nuclear power is so wonderful why aren't countries falling over themselves building more reactors? The truth is that it's a pain in the neck -- engineering-wise, maintenance-wise, long-term storage of waste-wise. And it's expensive -- at present it's highly subsidised. And nuclear power can only supply electricity. Important though this is, nuclear power doesn't supply the enormous bulk of feedstock chemicals that modern industry also needs.
Take China. More than any other government in the world, it is pro-science. The Poliburo consists of nine engineers and scientists. Why isn't China going in for nuclear power in a big way? Instead, they concentrate on hydro schemes and old-fashioned coal for the time being (as well as being a potential contender with America for the last remaining cheap stocks of oil in Iraq and Saudi Arabia). They are at the leading edge in several modern technologies and nuclear power is not high on their agenda.
The future energy technology that will gradually start taking over from fossil fuels during the remainder of this century will have to be of gigantic proportions. Relative to this, nuclear power is only a few candle-power. The only possible practical source for electric power and, just as importantly, chemicals in the future is solar power of which prodigious quantities fall onto the earth every day -- thousands -- repeat, thousands -- of times more than we produce from fossil fuels. Electricity and heat will be supplied by a variety of photovoltaic and photo-receptor methods (and other solar-based technologies -- wind-power, wave-power, tidal-power), and chemical feedstock by a variety of biological methods (e.g. sugar cane for ethanol production, bacterial production of hydrogen).
Nuclear power is largely irrelevant in any balanced discussion of future scenarios.
Keith
At 12:23 08/10/2003 -0700, you wrote:Ed,
I fear that one of Keith's few blind spots is his denial of nuclear energy. So he brings up Chernobyl and Three Mile Island as if these are convincing antinuclear arguments.
Chernobyl was a pretty awful disaster -- but it was a Russian disaster and cannot be compared with Western nuclear operations.
Three-Mile Island didn't hurt anybody except indirectly. They closed the second reactor for a very long time. During this time we replaced nuclear electricity with coal produced electricity. Coal kills a lot of people every year. So the closure of the second reactor led to additional mining deaths.
Yet no one was killed, or hurt, in the accident. This was the original technology. there have been many improvements over the years. This is led to much more production of electricity from the same reactors than was possible when they were first built.
Now the technology is 40 years old. There is no doubt that modern nuclear reactors would be improved in every way. They would be safer (though they've been remarkably safe over the last 40 years). They will be much more efficient. Their fuel is abundant and pollution is nonexistent.
So, why aren't we building more in the US?
The answer is, of course, politics. Such non-problems as waste can be settled simply. We drop it in the deepest part of the Pacific trench.
So-called alternative energy sources have been just as well subsidized as nuclear ever was, but are unable to produce the power that is needed. Perhaps they will be able at sometime in the future but future power doesn't help us now.
Keith has eloquently pointed out how the world was changed by the discovery of oil. The reason for the changes was that suddenly we seemed to enjoy unlimited power. Nuclear offers the same great prospect. Solar , wind, and the rest, do not offer us any possibility of power without limit. Maybe, one day -- but we need power for next winter.
Harry
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
