After years of resistance to construction of nuclear-power plants, the British plan underscored how nations around the world are scrambling to find ways to generate more energy while slashing the emissions that cause climate change. To do that, nations including the United States are considering more reliance on nuclear power, which, while generating radioactive waste, produces almost no carbon emissions.
To keep the lights on in Britain while meeting strict goals to slash emissions, the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown identified 10 sites in England and Wales for new nuclear plants, with the first expected to come online by 2018. Many of the plants are envisioned to replace aging plants that are set to be decommissioned in coming years and are a vestige of a period of accelerated nuclear construction from the 1950s to 1980s.
"The threat of climate change means we need to make a transition from a system that relies heavily on high-carbon fossil fuels to a radically different system that includes nuclear, renewable and clean-coal power," Edward Miliband, Britain's energy and climate secretary, told Parliament on Monday.
As part of the plan, Miliband said, the government would forbid the construction of coal-fired power plants without carbon-capture technology, which allows the plants to catch the carbon emissions produced when coal is burned to generate electricity. He also reiterated goals of generating 30 percent of British electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar power by 2020; today Britain generates less than 3 percent from renewables, compared with 7 percent in the United States and 15 percent in Germany.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33821302/ns/world_news-washington_post/
Is nuclear power a viable energy alternative? If so, how wide spread should its usage be?
Current, France generates about 90% of its electricity through nuclear power. Th United States is far behind that and the Obama Admin (according to the NyTimes) is lukewarm on the issue of nuclear power.
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- current89
- added this
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All harmful energy generation should be outlawed worldwide. Poisonous electricity generation is not needed, especially when the waste will be around for countless future civilizations to deal with. What's the carbon footprint of that? Packaging and re-packaging into infinity. What's the cost to planetary species? The Ukraine is dying from the flu at record numbers. Their immune systems are compromised because of Chernobyl. Is this just a way for the nuclear industry to cover up all the mutations in the Ukraine and elsewhere? Kill them off with the flu before the world realizes just how devastating Chernobyl was? Hey Britain, put the money forward to cover all the health care/ cancer costs/ environmental mutations that your energy plan will cause. You have no right to further ruin our planet with your short sided, greedy, satanic energy plan.
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Thank you to JanforGore for posting this in the past. :
"....The impacts of the nuclear waste cycle are better described as inter-civilizational. Nuclear fuel wastes remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands to as much as a million years....The fact is that no political or economic system can assure the security or integrity of waste for a period of time even remotely approaching the time period during which waste poses extreme health, environmental, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation risks....Keep in mind that RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY has lasted for only 5,000 years. China, THE WORLD'S OLDEST, CONTINUOUS CIVILIZATION is 10,000 years old. Thirty thousand years ago NEANDERTHALS still populated the European continent. in that time period, the continental glaciers of the Wisconsin age have advanced and retreated, covering and uncovering and GRINDING TO DUST many of the locations of currently operating nuclear power plants and their waste piles......Put simply, the nuclear industry....has transfered and deferred the most expensive part of the cost of the nuclear fuel cycle to future generations and CIVILIZATIONS UNKNOWN."......Karl S.Coplan
This was the original URL for the article but it was 'censored/taken down' right after she posted this:
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Possibility of 10 more Chernobyls.. no thank you. Rather than invest any more time and money into this stupid fucking nuclear plan why don't you start thinking solar where there is no radiation to destroy generations after our greedy asses have been blown off the planet.
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- Timmyeatworld
- 13 days ago
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Nuclear power is a necessary evil, a bridge over troubled waters if you will, to break the dependance of oil and coal. It is not an acceptable replacement for clean energy research and development but there are no other options that produce adequate power.
I want to see a price reduction in solar/wind technology combined with a decentralization of power production putting the consumer in charge of their own power. Geothermal plants are the greatest infinite resource of power that need to be tapped into immediately.
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why is that everyone brings up Chernobyl. You cannot compare the operation of a nuclear power plant today to that of in the soviet union. Chernobyl is the only case in which radiation did leave the premise but that was mainly due to poor maintenance and employees who did not believe in consequences. Look at three mile island, that melt down was safely contained due to proper engineering of the power plant, no radiation leakage or deaths. Yes it would be nice if renewable sources were as efficient as nuclear power, but were not there yet. Nuclear power produces only 5% of the emissions of various non renewable power generation methods. At the moment Nuclear power is the best we have.
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- surgedmech
- 13 days ago
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I think the risks are too much against the benefits. If you think this is just a bridge to gap time between coal/oil to wind/solar, then it is going to be a hell of a job shutting the factories down.
I agree that coal is about the worst energy source ever, but I also think that all the money put into nuclear energy would serve better going into other alternative sources, even if the energy gain wouldn't be as much.
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at least someone realized that nuclear energy production when done under strict safety laws can be clean and safe.
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Darevalo,
I'm not totally against nuke power but the storage of the radioactive waste these plants produce is a big problem, where do you put it all? The US is a far larger country than the UK and we still are having problems finding and funding sites for permanent disposal of nuke waste.Another good point Argan makes is the fact that intentional sabotage is a real danger. Plus the nasty weapons that can be made with a little bit of stolen waste can make a city or area unlivable for the foreseeable future.
So its not risk free by any means, that is just wishful thinking.
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I am not absolutely opposed to nuclear power, either. I have simply developed a very healthy appreciation for the degree to which human incompetence must be factored into endeavors where the presence of such incompetence creates an unacceptable danger to human life. As a group, doctors are the people whose competence our society respects most. Google the average annual deaths in the U.S. that result from physician errors for a good scare. Then add the people who don't die but whose health is merely damaged for the rest of their lives. My point is that the people who design, build and maintain these plants ARE going to make mistakes. But their mistakes have the potential for consequences that are just not acceptable. We need to focus on the many, MANY energy sources that present a tiny fraction of the dangers associated with nuclear power and the unavoidable human element involved.
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At this time nuclear power is the only form of energy that provides a clean energy and is still efficient enough to provide a sufficient amount of power and then some. It takes time for technology to develop it is not instantaneous. We need a solution for the present, not just for the future. Currently in Ontario Canada most of our power is supplied by nuclear power plants, followed closely by hydro. Due to uneducated (non engineering since a BA does not really mean much in this discussion) fearful protesters, we are currently losing these power plants, the big problem with this is that our demand is exponentially growing. Due to the lack of efficiency of wind power and solar power Ontario will soon be having brown outs. This is an example of how nuclear power energy is important to society at the moment. For those who do not trust the safety of nuclear power, Three mile island. As i have stated before if a power plant from 1979 was able to contain a nuclear meltdown, then one today certainly can.
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- surgedmech
- 10 days ago
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Let them build their power plants and then we`ll charge them 10 times as much for the uranium, losers.
