According to the BBC, the government is making preparations to back a new series of Nuclear Powerplants in the UK. About sodding time.
Half the opposition to Nuclear power seems to come from idealistic wooly-headed environmentalists and the other half from people who don’t understand science.
The environmentalists point to renewable power like wind and solar energy as the solution. This would be the preferable option if it were, indeed an option. I personally love the idea of renewable energy, it’s a keeper and something for the future.
However, in the here and now, massive batteries of wind turbines (the most reliable generators) would cost so much to run and install that the average British electricity bill would rise by 500%. With energy prices already high that’s just not an option.
In addition to which, the reliability of renewable energy sources is a massive factor which its proponents seem keen to ignore. Energy from turbines and solar panels is unreliable and tends to come in bursts, that spells disaster for a national grid of our size.
I would love to see renewable energy sources which are capable of meeting 100% of our energy requirements but they’re just not going to appear in the next 5 years.
Then we have the idiot section.
Chernobyl proved what could happen with an old style fission reactor and incompetent employees. Fortunately today we don’t use reactors that bear any resemblance to the reactor in Chernobyl.
The new reactors would be pebble bed reactors which are physically incapable of melting down. Further nuclear waste has such a small ecological impact if disposed of safely that it’s a joke. Blinky the three eyed mutant carp from the Simpsons is a straw fish.
The people who are opposed to pebble bed reactors on grounds of them being “dangerous” are the same idiots who say we should pursue nuclear engines for space flight because and I quote from a forum “we don’t want to dump radiation in space”.
What the hell people… Just… What the hell. Space is frikkin saturated with radiation from those giant gamma torches we call stars.
Anyhow. Efficient, Powerful and Safe.
No amount of fearmongering is going to stop this one guys, go home and take a frikkin shower, m’kay?
Sorry for the polemics, I just hate hippies.
Viva la fission! Viva la fusion!
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at July 11, 2006 04:09 PM