Nuclear Power.....

[Loosehead]

This has been in the news recently with the governement saying that Nuclear power is the only viable way forward. The Green oriented (not just the green party) argue that it is unnecessary and that renewable sources will be viable in the future. Of course they are against using fossil fuels also so Is it possible to manage without Nuclear power? are the alternatives ever going to be up to the job?

[youngmafbog]

Well nearly 9/10 Frenchmen (and women and children) are using Nuke power as 85% of their power comes from reactor I'm not usually with the French but on this one I am. There is no way other fuels will be ready. Of course the tree huggers like us all back in caves (with no chopping of trees for firewood of course).
On the plus side for nuke power is it should help us reach targets for cuts in emissions !

[Drusilla]

I don't think anyone is comfortable about using nuclear power and I'm sure we all wish the renewable sources of power were the highly efficient answer, but they are not, just yet.
I guarentee emerging nations like China, India and Brazil will exceed in usage, every fossil fuel reduction made in the west, and why shouldn't they. They have their own populations to feed, clothe, employ and enrich.
The human races desire to grow and advance is not going to change and the industrial societies of the world face anarchy if power strikes become an ever more regular occurence and standards of living are reduced dramatically.
We need industry and we need power. I believe we have to grit our teeth and accept nuclear power as our uncomfortable bedfellow for the foreseeable future and it really pains me to have to admit that.

[funnywebsite]

What is wrong with wind power. We have plenty of wind in this country. People say it looks ugly. I don't think it looks ugly it is natural energy and safe energy. I would have it in my garden if I could. What about solar energy? Even in the winter on a sunny day you get a lot of heat in South facing directions. I would be happy to have solar power on my house if I could. Some areas you cannot have it because they say it looks ugly. My kitchen is south facing and is always warm on sunny days.

[jake-the-peg]

What is wrong with wind power and pretty much all "green" power sources is that they're not controllable ( you can't rely on the wind to blow or the sun to shine on cup final day)

And they tend to be limited location wise which means you have to transmit the power a long way from say Lincolnshire to get to somewhere like Birmingham. Thats incredibly inefficient.

I think the UK uses about 40GWatts (correct me If I'm wrong) that's about 30 nuclear power stations like Sizewell B or 20,000 wind farms like Delabole in Cornwall

[shaneystar]

We have a huge wind farm off the coast from us.It makes a horrible whining noise and has affected the wild life.It drives the people who live facing it to distraction. A blot on our lovely landscape.Unfortunately nuclear power has to be the way forward or we will all end up scouring the woods for kindling.
In Germany they say..Atomkraftgegner �berwintern im donkelheit mit kaltem hintern:
People against nuclear power will sit in the dark with cold backsides.
It's clean effecient energy with less emissions.I would love to be a tree hugger..but in the modern world this is impossible.

[Artemis]

Fact - Nuclear Power is the cheapest form of commercial energy.

Fact - Wind Power is the most expensive form of commercial energy.

I think the rough figure is wind power costs four times as much as nuclear.

Wind power is great but are you willing to pay?

[Loosehead]

We've had a few answers now, personally I think that Nuclear energy is the only source of power that can continue after fossil fuels. Although there is huge potential in wind, wave, hydro and solar power the fact remains they are at the moment not "industrial strength" enough to reliably supply the needs of mankind. Of course in the future we can hope that science can find ever more efficient ways of harnessing nature but I think for the forseeable future Nuclear power is inevitable. As artemis rightly points out it's also the cheapest so therefore it will be attractive to governments.

[Ralph]

It's cheap to produce electricity with nuclear fission, but the decommisioning costs aren't included in this calculation. These are big and the technology involved is quite crude. The high level radioactive waste is encased in glass and concrete, then buried. The thoughts of leaving that sort of process to the lowest bidder isn't comforting, no matter how regulated they tell us they are.

Then, there's the possibility of an accident or incident that releases radioactivity into our environment. It may be a small possibility, but it's there and Chernobyl has shown us that it takes a very very long time to go away, if it ever realistically does.

The real future, as has been pointed out already, is wind etc., but not in their current form. They are too unpredictable to just connect to the mains (as has also been mentioned already) but what they will do really well is split water into hydrogen and oxygen so that we can use the former in our hydrogen fuel cells. Yes, these are still stupidly expensive, but that's because they are really lacking in decent funding and the units are still hand built by PhD students. The cash that would be spent on decomissioning the next round of nuclear power stations could sort that out.

In the meantime, the best half-way solution would be natural gas fired power stations. It's still fossil fuels, but it emits half the carbon dioxide as oil for the same amount of energy generated. Decommisioning costs would be no worse than anything we've got now (nukes excluded of course!) and the balance of the cash we would have spent on nuclear can be used to get us properly into the 21st century, or even towards the 22nd with renewable energy sources and a permanent ent to our reliance on hydrocarbons.

[jake-the-peg]

I agree about hydrogen/oxygen but disagree about the long term solution. The real future is Fusion but I'll think myself very lucky if I live to see it.

Wind energy will always be expensive because you need to build so much over capacity in order to cover the low production days

And how are you going to supply large inland cities?

The current position with Fusion is that ITER is being built in France and is the last step before DEMO the first fusion power reactor.

It's massively cleaner than either fission or coal and no Uranium will need to be mined or plutonium disposed of.

check out www.iter.org

[Gef]

Just to point out to Jake that electricity is already transmitted over long distances via the national grid. You don't have to live near a "power station" to have electricity.