Greenpeace on the roof

i thought he was taking the piss josh, anyway chris is a cunt but he's my kind of cunt

nuclear energy is the future.

It really annoys me when narrow minded eco warriors put their blinkers on with nuclear energy, and instead choose to espouse the virtues of renewables. It solves so many problems we have nowadays! This isn't the 1960's any more, aren't fighting a war with the Soviets. Times have moved on.

The only prohibitive factor is COST.

mr burns

Faith in humanity definitely isn't too smart, not if everyone's got your outlook.

Protesting in a law abiding manner does nowt. The Iraq protests proved that. A million or so people showing their opposition on the streets... and it happens regardless.

Maybe all that getting on the roof does is keep it in the headlines. That's something.

a million people isn't a majority (which you need in a democracy)

The only prohibitive factor is COST.

it also takes an awful lot of carbon (concrete) to build and decommission nuclear fission plants, and to store the waste.

and to claim nuclear fusion is the future is hedging our bets on a technology that doesn't currently work that well. scientists are only able to get out more energy than they put in for a short amount of time (read: seconds).

i don't see what is wrong with developing existing renewables.

would wind, wave, solar, tidal, and hydro-electric on a massive scale in the UK be able to meet all of our energy needs?

^no. not even slightly.

They only have to store the waste for a hundred years or so, whereupon as technology improves further energy yields can derived from the same material.

The future is Nuclear or a return to the dark ages. Anti-nuclear protestations have merely set back the course of advancement in what, (carbon spend upon building withstanding) is essentially free clean energy.

somebody can't be serious in comparing what happens in Italy(which is a state where the Mafia controls a significant portion of their Society and Berlusconi has spent his political career passing laws to ensure he is never prosecuted for his crimes) to a country with a functioning first-world legislature?

it also takes an awful lot of carbon (concrete) to build and decommission nuclear fission plants, and to store the waste.

and to claim nuclear fusion is the future is hedging our bets on a technology that doesn't currently work that well. scientists are only able to get out more energy than they put in for a short amount of time (read: seconds).

i don't see what is wrong with developing existing renewables.
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would wind, wave, solar, tidal, and hydro-electric on a massive scale in the UK be able to meet all of our energy needs?**

The technology used in fission has greatly improved meaning that lots of the waste can be reused now.

I listened to a interesting interview a while ago on this very subject. Some physicist out of curiosity did about of energy accountancy effectively and wrote a book in the end. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the book.

He calculated stuff like how many wind turbines we would need at current usage who many this how much that e.t.c.

He concluded that we need some significant nuclear input to achieve our energy aims.

It is worrying that this seems not to have been done, the government seem to hit blindly in the dark at this problem rather than have a defined goal and how to achieve that goal they seem a bit like underpants gnomes.

They only have to store the waste for a hundred years or so, whereupon as technology improves further energy yields can derived from the same material.

but there will still be nuclear waste - nuclear fission produces small amounts of very toxic waste, and large amounts of low level waste. you can't get around the fact that the nuclear products are the same, and that we can't figure out how to make an atom release all its radiation at once. not that i am saying nuclear is bad, just that long term storage needs to be considered seriously.

Fucking hippy layabouts

I'd take offence but I'd have to get off my beanbag..

but there will still be nuclear waste - nuclear fission produces small amounts of very toxic waste, and large amounts of low level waste. you can't get around the fact that the nuclear products are the same, and that we can't figure out how to make an atom release all its radiation at once. not that i am saying nuclear is bad, just that long term storage needs to be considered seriously.

Isn't that what the moon is for?

Isn't that what the moon is for?

Only when we have filled up the 3rd world

but there will still be nuclear waste - nuclear fission produces small amounts of very toxic waste, and large amounts of low level waste. you can't get around the fact that the nuclear products are the same, and that we can't figure out how to make an atom release all its radiation at once. not that i am saying nuclear is bad, just that long term storage needs to be considered seriously.

hey, i really do not see what the problem is with respect to waste. it always comes up in discussions about nuclear energy. it can be buried underground in concrete bunkers 1m thick! where it poses NO risk to ANYONE, or animals/plantlife/wildlife.

oh and somebody - terrorist attacks? unlikely. nuclear power plants are extremely secure places, they build them for earthquakes and all sorts of catastrophes.

YouTube - 800 KM/H CRASH TEST. PLANE AGAINST WALL

it's not like we aren't already dumping massive amounts of rubbish in landfill sites already, rubbish which isn't toxic but does harm the environment a whole lot more.

like i said, the only thing stopping us developing plants all over our little island is the high cost involved in building them, and maintaning them. but it's an investment worth making. reduction in C02 emissions, we will be able to rely on ourselves for our energy needs, not one or two arabs who control all the oil (which, by the way, appears to be increasing in price and running out fast).

but for some reason, environmentalists still can not see this. renewables are nowhere near good enough for what we need! it's unrealistic to believe you can run a prosperous, developed country of 65 million on wind power.

May i strongly recommend reading www.withouthotair.com

hey, i really do not see what the problem is with respect to waste. it always comes up in discussions about nuclear energy. it can be buried underground in concrete bunkers 1m thick! where it poses NO risk to ANYONE, or animals/plantlife/wildlife.

most nuclear waste is low level - i.e. not very radioactive at all, like gloves etc. but some is very radioactive and very harmful. there are 3 main kinds of radiation - alpha beta and gamma, alpha and beta can both be stopped with aluminium foil, which makes them dangerous if you swallow them as the radiation is absorbed by your tissues. gamma is stopped with several feet of lead or several metres of concrete, and at high energies cause serious tissue damage.

the problem is that high level waste needs to be cooled - you can't just dump it in a hole as it would catch fire - for a looong time, before you can just bury it and forget about it.

it is not as simple as putting it in a hole - the hole is subject to geological movements which could damage the integrity of the structure for example. there is also the problem of moving it do the disposal site. and the problem that some countries may be less scrupulous in there disposal of radioactive waste - for example.

nuclear waste disposal does look pretty though:

tl;dr

And raw material. It is a finite resource, after all.

it is finite, but it's not in the same league as oil, not by a very very long way.

vl - that's a crap counter argument. so it has to be cooled? who cares. i am sure they don't take any risks wrt geological movements. they know what they're doing. don't worry yourself about that.

the only valid point you make is other countries not doing it properly (Ukrainian SSR comes to mind), all I can say is safety controls are much more stringent than they were back then, and there haven't been any ecological disasters since then.

people and governments are stupid, you can't just protest about something as ambiguous as "climate change" how would that be addressed if they even wanted to take a tiny bit of notice?

thousands of people protested about going to war in Iraq and they didn't listen one bit, do you think this has a better chance?

At least try to identify the key contributors to this "climate change" and address them, ie: protest about vehicular emissions in cities, or consumer packaging, or procreating humans, etc...the list goes on.

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Whilst I support Nuclear there are other options that can be explored, not that I'm saying they would solve our power problems but thermo conversion plants that can turn a fair amount of stuff into Fuel Oil and waste incinerator energy production can provide energy and save waste from the land fill which can only be a good thing.

vl - that's a crap counter argument. so it has to be cooled? who cares. i am sure they don't take any risks wrt geological movements. they know what they're doing. don't worry yourself about that.

it wasn't a counter argument - just a comment that it is not simple. in theory it is possible for nuclear fission to be fine, just i don't trust people to do it right 100% of the time, people are fallible, just look at the nuclear accidents there have been with the few plants in the world (chernobyl, three mile island), if there are more, there will be more accidents.

if all the safeguards are in place it is fine, but i do not have faith in humanity's ability to sufficiently plan for nuclear disaster.

for the record, i am a physicist in training and radioactivity is one of my favourites.