Consumer embargo against UK

democrates

In response to the UK decision to pursue the building of further nuclear power stations I am boycotting all UK businesses selling into Ireland with the exception of those dedicated to ecological responsibility and fair-trade.

This applies to business as well as personal expenditure.

BuffyBot

Good for you!

Now, off to Tesco with me!

murphaph

democrates wrote:

In response to the UK decision to pursue the building of further nuclear power stations I am boycotting all UK businesses selling into Ireland with the exception of those dedicated to ecological responsibility and fair-trade.

This applies to business as well as personal expenditure.

Whilst I admire a principled person, will you also be boycotting french and other goods and services from other nuclear nations?

mike65

I trust you are penning an angry missive to the government of Finland for thier flagrently selfish attitudes regarding power generation

You'll neeed to copy and paste sveral times over before you've covered all the bases.

from Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Soaring oil prices, uncertain Russian energy supplies and fears of global warming are fuelling a European and global nuclear renaissance just two decades after the Chernobyl disaster shook faith in atomic power.

Fears of energy shortages appear to be trumping anti-nuclear sentiments - even in Germany despite its decision to close all nuclear power stations by 2021.

Most surveys show a 50-50 split and some polls even show a majority of Germans in favour of nuclear power, compared to 65 per cent opposed after the 1986 accident.

'There's a lot more approval for nuclear power than there was 15 years ago,' said Christian Woessner, a spokesman for the German Atomic Forum, a pro-nuclear lobby group. 'We are at the start of a new investment cycle (in Europe.)'

Nuclear power is getting a hard second look not only because of oil prices and alarm over Russia's strong-arm tactics in cutting off natural gas to Ukraine last January. It also could provide a way to cut greenhouse gases blamed in part for global warming.

Andris Piebalgs, the European Union Commissioner in charge of energy, says nuclear power needs to be regarded as part of an 'energy mix' to ensure security for the 25-nation bloc.

'The EU must continue to develop its expertise in the field,' insists Piebalgs.

Numerous European countries are already watering down or reversing laws intended to curtail or abolish nuclear plants. That means many of the 170 nuclear stations operating on the continent, up to the Russian border, will operate far longer than anticipated.

Sweden, 47-per-cent dependent on nuclear power, has repeatedly delayed plans to shut down all its stations, extending some lifelines to 2050, well beyond a 2010 target date.

'Under Swedish law the plants cannot be closed until there is a viable alternative,' explains Woessner.

Switzerland, 32-per-cent dependent on nuclear power, has overturned a moratorium on new nuclear plants.

Belgium, 56-per-cent dependent on nuclear power, has extended its phase-out period for at least another 20 years, although it is unclear if new plants will be built.

'There is a clear and visible change of mood - most governments and political parties are now seriously reconsidering nuclear power,' said an economist at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who asked not to be named.

That means new nuclear plants are again being built across Europe, mirroring trends in the US, where 14 new plants are planned after a 30-year hiatus, and China, where nearly three dozen are set to be built.

New plants are slated to open in Finland in 2009; Romania in 2007, 2013 and 2014; and Bulgaria in 2013. The Czech Republic could build at least two more plants if needed.

The Baltic states, still not connected to the European electricity grid, are determined to pursue self sufficiency because they fear Moscow's political blackmailing tactics.

Lithuania, supported by Latvia and Estonia, is expected to approve a new nuclear station to replace the Chernobyl-type reactor at Ignalina by 2015. Part of the current plant was closed in 2004 and block two will be shut in 2009. Lithuania is 71-per-cent dependent on nuclear power.

Even Ukraine, home to the ill-fated Chernobyl plant and 50-per- cent dependent on nuclear power, is considering a big expansion in the field. Although critics note that Kiev's financing remains totally unclear, the government says it wants to build up to 20 new nuclear power stations.

France, which generates a whopping 78 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power, under President Jacques Chirac wants to build third and fourth generation plants to keep its position as the world's top civil nuclear power. A new reactor is slated to open in 2012 in the northern town of Flamanville.

In addition, France is home to an international effort to build the world's biggest experimental fusion reactor. The International Thermonuclear Reactor (ITER) - which is supposed to produce less waste and be safer than normal nuclear plants - has support from the EU, US, China, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

France also provides a lightning rod for environmental protests over nuclear waste, a hotly contested issue at Germany's Gorleben facility, for example. It has a reprocessing industry that not only handles waste from abroad, including Germany and Japan, but also helps fund the French nuclear programme.

Britain, after years of backing away, appears poised to join the trend and increase its 20-per-cent dependence on nuclear power.

Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to to call on private energy companies next month to build the country's next generation of nuclear stations.

However, Europe's largest economy - Germany - is still holding off. Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservatives support nuclear power but, under the government's grand coalition accord with the Social Democrats (SPD), the ban on new plants and a phase-out of 17 generators by 2021 remains.

But that could change if Merkel is re-elected at the head of a centre-right government without the SPD in coming years.

Get typing.

Mike.

fly_agaric

democrates wrote:

In response to the UK decision to pursue the building of further nuclear power stations I am boycotting all UK businesses selling into Ireland with the exception of those dedicated to ecological responsibility and fair-trade.

This applies to business as well as personal expenditure.

LOL. Funniest thing I've read all day!

Are you going to boycott electricity from the national grid when we interconnect with the UK mainland?:)

Will you be one of the future moaning minnies castigating the govt. for not building a nucular plant or two here if oil + gas start to get very costly and hard to obtain and you can't have your birthright of oodles of electrical gadgets, several hot showers a day, and florida-temperature central heating in every room during the winter?

SeanW

democrates wrote:

In response to the UK decision to pursue the building of further nuclear power stations I am boycotting all UK businesses selling into Ireland with the exception of those dedicated to ecological responsibility and fair-trade.

This applies to business as well as personal expenditure.

Man I needed a laugh today and you're post sure provided it.

Tell me, if you were Tony Blair, what would YOU have done?

You could do what Ireland does ... and burn Natural Gas. Most of which comes from Russia, which is very unstable, and likes to throw it's weight around, not a strategically sensible choice.
Or oil, the price of which is totally unstable, is in very short supply and has already been the cause of several wars ... one of which Britain is a particpant in
And don't get me started on the filthiness of coal, although it's plentiful fuel source, so are the pollutants that its burning causes, acidic compounds (which cause acid rain (ask the Norwegian government which spends NOK100,000,000 each year liming its lakes and watercourses to keep its aquatic environment alive)) mercury, arsenic, and radioactive emissions far exceeding that of nuclear, enough air pollution to reduce atmospheric visibility if enough coal is being burned, that's before we get to the hundreds of thousands who have died in coal mining accidents over the years and the many more who have died from coal-dust exposure.
All fossil fuels contribute significantly to the emissions of greenhouse gas, directly.

So what else is there if not Nuclear Power? How else is Britain going to produce an abundance of baseline load electricity, while keeping to it's Kyoto and climate change commitments? Remember Ireland has no nuclear power but our Kyoto strategy is to buy carbon credits from Germany ...

Renewables, due to their high cost, limited geographical viability and dependence on the weather, can never be more than a niche product.

It's all well and fine to say "Tony Blair is this and Tony Blair is that," but the real question is what would YOU do if YOU were in his shoes? I for one, can not see how the British PM could have done anything else in good consciense.

BTW if you're going to boycott British companies, then to be fair, you're also going to have to boycott anything sold by/made in the USA, Canada, France, Finland, Germany, China, India, Japan, The Netherlands, the Ukraine, Russia, and those are just the places I can of off-hand.

Oh and, if we ever suffer a gas shock, you'll have to boycott the ESB as well because they'll be importing Nuclear Electrcity from Britain and France.

You're gonna be a rich man because if you boycott anyone whose country uses nuclear power you're not going to have much to spend money on ... except maybe your share of Ireland's Kyoto fines ...

zuma

SeanW wrote:

Man I needed a laugh today and you're post sure provided it.

Tell me, if you were Tony Blair, what would YOU have done?

You could do what Ireland does ... and burn Natural Gas. Most of which comes from Russia, which is very unstable, and likes to throw it's weight around, not a strategically sensible choice.
Or oil, the price of which is totally unstable, is in very short supply and has already been the cause of several wars ... one of which Britain is a particpant in
And don't get me started on the filthiness of coal, although it's plentiful fuel source, so are the pollutants that its burning causes, acidic compounds (which cause acid rain (ask the Norwegian government which spends NOK100,000,000 each year liming its lakes and watercourses to keep its aquatic environment alive)) mercury, arsenic, and radioactive emissions far exceeding that of nuclear, enough air pollution to reduce atmospheric visibility if enough coal is being burned, that's before we get to the hundreds of thousands who have died in coal mining accidents over the years and the many more who have died from coal-dust exposure.
All fossil fuels contribute significantly to the emissions of greenhouse gas, directly.

So what else is there if not Nuclear Power? How else is Britain going to produce an abundance of baseline load electricity, while keeping to it's Kyoto and climate change commitments? Remember Ireland has no nuclear power but our Kyoto strategy is to buy carbon credits from Germany ...

Renewables, due to their high cost, limited geographical viability and dependence on the weather, can never be more than a niche product.

It's all well and fine to say "Tony Blair is this and Tony Blair is that," but the real question is what would YOU do if YOU were in his shoes? I for one, can not see how the British PM could have done anything else in good consciense.

BTW if you're going to boycott British companies, then to be fair, you're also going to have to boycott anything sold by/made in the USA, Canada, France, Finland, Germany, China, India, Japan, The Netherlands, the Ukraine, Russia, and those are just the places I can of off-hand.

Oh and, if we ever suffer a gas shock, you'll have to boycott the ESB as well because they'll be importing Nuclear Electrcity from Britain and France.

You're gonna be a rich man because if you boycott anyone whose country uses nuclear power you're not going to have much to spend money on ... except maybe your share of Ireland's Kyoto fines ...

Well said!!!

Muggy Dev

I agree with Fly Agaric it is hiliarious although it does bely a political gob****ery that is unfortunatly all to common in this country today.

It was only last year that Russia decided that she no longer liked the cut of Ukraine's gib and turned off the gas at the mains.She relented in the end but sovereign countries everywhere(well at least the smart ones) realised that in a climate of dwindling resourses,rockerting prices and uncertain geo-politics,there was only one party in town,self sufficiency.The guest of honour at this party is of course,nuclear.

In a perfect world our politicions would have already read the writing on the wall and announced a major wind farm project offshore the lenght of the western seaboard along with the commissioning of three nuclear power stations(phased in) thereby ensuring Ireland's complete independence for domestic energy from 2017 to 2070.

But since we cannot even agree to burn our rubbish unlike our continental neighbours who have been doing so for years,and since there are still objections being lodged to the erection of windmills....I fear the worst.
Rest assured,Britain,France,Germany,Finland,Sweden and all the rest will not get caught short here.

mike65

The joke is that Dermo Aherne is suggesting legal action against the UK gov if they proceed. I presume he'll be told there are no grounds for taking UK to court as if this state did they'd have to take similiar action against every other nuclear state.

Mike.

Muggy Dev

I would suggest that Mr Aherne's time might be more usefully spent explaining to the thousands of less well off in our society why their gas bills are going to be 35% dearer this winter.

democrates

Lol, I like issuing grand international edicts from my 3-bed semi, glad you all enjoyed it. My measures will have little impact as I've a small eco-footprint anyway.

I disagree that nuclear is necessary, the fact that many governments are pursuing it doesn't amount to an argument in its favour for me.

There are a lots of measures we can take to reduce energy consumption. Teleworking is a key area to reduce unneccessary journeys, and better public transport. Compost waste rather than trucking to landfill. Natural foods rather than packaged factory-processed food (home-grown even better, use the compost). Turn off appliances rather than leaving them on standby. LCD's instead of crts. CFL's and LED's instead of tungsten or flourescent lights, and so on.

On the supply side renewables have come nowhere close to their potential. The vagaries of weather vs demand are not an insurmountable problem because a variety of storage solutions are feasable, so wind, wave, solar, geothermal or what not are all good options and will become more so if given a fair chance.

Economic viability is a relative measure, comparing disadvantaged fledgling renewables against entrenched oil and gas or semi-costed subsidised nuclear at todays prices is unfair, you've got to account for the entire life-cycles and include subsidies and risk guarantees which have an equivalent insurance value.

Oil and gas are on a permanent upward trend, end of. I'll assume people agree on that.

The existing uk nuclear clean-up bill stands at stg£72Bn, that excludes military waste which brings it to stg£100Bn. That figure has repeatedly been revised upward, so we still don't know the final figure which taxpayers must foot, that's some subsidy folks, a perfect example of socialising the risk and privatising the profit as Noam Chomsky observes.

As for the great Finnish experiment:

"Evidence from abroad shows nuclear power is not competitive. Last year the US government was forced to offer nuclear subsidies of £13.7bn to persuade investors. "The new nuclear power plant being built in Finland needed hidden subsidies through export guarantees from France, 30-year-long contracts and government guarantees over future decommissioning and waste.

Now the UK Govt. state that theirs will be funded by industry at no cost to the taxpayer.

"It would be for the private sector to initiate, fund, construct and operate new nuclear plants and cover the costs of decommissioning and their full share of long term waste management costs."

Will they require the industry to contribute to a fund sufficient for the aftermath using independant actuarial estimates based on the prudence principle, or are they just hoping they'll still be around and making sufficient profit to reprocess, vitrify waste and store it securely for a few hundred years? Maybe there's a big dome sitting idle somewhere.

The fact that they refer to 'their full share of long term waste management costs' suggests a bill for future generations, and we may yet learn of other hidden subsidies. The side-effect of subsidised nuclear and the unsustainable carbon industry is that it has created an artificially low energy price, creating economies built on sand, stifling the development of the renewables industry, and allowing unrealistic comparisons to be bandied about to argue that renewables aren't economic.

If I was Tony Blair I'd do exactly the same thing, because I'd be Tony Blair. But if it was me in his position I'd rule out nuclear and go hammer and tongs for reduced consumption, greater efficiency, renewables, and also crucially, greater self-reliance as opposed to having the nation over the barrel of ever-intensifying competition.

SeanW

Normally I don't think too much of Blair but he's redeemed himself hugely in my eyes over the last few days. We have no conscienable alternative but to embrace nuclear power, and fast. Here's why:

Every other form of power generation has downfalls that are infinitely worse than Nuclear Power. Look at the Eirgrid Portal for an accurate estimate of Ireland's power usage on a quarter hourly basis. See some patterns? Energy demand peaks out in the 3.5GigaWatts to 4GigaWatts (GW) range, but wind output is extremely variable, and almost always drops off to almost nothing during the night. It can never be more than a niche product. Even if the government gave away billions to the Wind sector, we'd still need someting else.

Democrates: let's be really generous and say that we could knock 500MW-1GW constant off our electricity needs, and that it were possible, through large investments in turbines and international interconnection, to generate 1GW constant from wind farms (both of these are hugely optimistic) that still leaves us with well in excess of 2GW of power that has to come from a reliable, baseline load provider.

Since you're ruled out oil and gas (although we're using a lot of gas here, much to our peril). Peat is also environmentally unconscionable, as it's use destroys pristine boglands, a mistake the Dutch people know all to well. They destroyed most of their boglands and what remains is expensive to maintain and extremely fragile. Seeing us in Ireland make the same mistakes, the Dutch stepped in and bought a section of Irish peat bog. Source. That leaves us with just one major choice.

Coal.

The reasons why NOT to let that happen make even the worst Greenpeace type of anti-nuclear FUD pale by comparison. Just from a small amount of research, I could write a book about why getting to strategically rely on coal is fundamentally insane thing to do.

Tony Blair no doubt has done his research and looked at all these issues very closely. He knows that a rejuvanation of his country's nuclear sector is the right thing to do. And he has the courage to stand up for what he knows to be right. I admire him for that, even though I don't agree with everything he's done to date. Noone who is pro nuclear says that it has to be an either or of nuclear, renewables or increased efficiency. It has to be all three, each an indispensible part of a greater vision.

If you're totally anti-nuclear and can't see the inherent sense in it, fair enough, good luck with your protest. But I think you need to take a fresh look at this.

flogen

fly_agaric wrote:

LOL. Funniest thing I've read all day!

Are you going to boycott electricity from the national grid when we interconnect with the UK mainland?:)

When is this happening; I was reading about the unification of the North/South electricity market next year but that's it.

mike65

Did someone say mainland!??????

http://www.eastwestinterconnector.ie/

Mike.

dermot_sheehan

It's Blair taking a hard, unpopular but necessary decision.

Currently the economics for wind don't stand up. Yes we should have as much wind as possible but the output per turbine is so small and it varies depending on the wind speed.

Oil is running out, gas would leave us dependent on the Russians throwing a tantrum like they did earlier this year and the gas will run out eventually.

The only other non-nuclear option is coal, and here's the thing, a properly functioning nuclear station would emit less raditiation into the environment then a coal station!!! Why? because in the tonnes and tonnes of coal that would needed to be burnt are miniscule amounts of radioactive materials (radium, uranium, thorium etc) that would be emited into the environment as particulates, ready to be breathed in and cause lung cancer.

Nuclear seems the only sensible choice, yes there's the problem of waste, the Finn's have adopted deep geological storage which seems sensible. The deep geology of the earth kept the raditation from that natural nuclear reactor in the Gabon safe for millions of years, it can keep man amde nuclear waste.

Muggy Dev

"we can import a few Giga Watts of nuclear power from Britain"


1) Assuming they'll have it to spare in the first instance.

2) Expect to pay top dollar.Other countries will be competing fiercely for those giga watts.

If the future raw energy policy of this country is to be rooted in the importation of the excess production of our neighbours than God help us.

fly_agaric

Democrates wrote:

Lol, I like issuing grand international edicts from my 3-bed semi, glad you all enjoyed it.

Yes - it was quite good! Very dramatic.:)

Democrates wrote:

I disagree that nuclear is necessary

Would that be for us or for the UK?

I don't know. Maybe we can get away without it by tapping our massive renewables potential + interconnecting with the UK but what of the UK itself?

I just heard someone from the Greens on Newsnight tonight giving out about (among other things) how nuclear will tie the UK into a centralised power generation system that will not suit the development of local renewable sources.

However, they seem to be forgetting that most of the UK's best wind/wave energy potential is right at the opposite end of the country from where all the people live (i.e. in Scotland, its northern Islands and on NI's west coast) so will they not need the national grid to distribute that anyway?

Democrates wrote:

a variety of storage solutions are feasable

Would that be on a local scale or for big wind farms, hydro projects etc?

Democrates wrote:

Economic viability is a relative measure, comparing disadvantaged fledgling renewables against entrenched oil and gas or semi-costed subsidised nuclear at todays prices is unfair, you've got to account for the entire life-cycles and include subsidies and risk guarantees which have an equivalent insurance value.

Are the UK not giving renewables plenty of subsidies + aid? If they aren't they should be!

Why does it have to be either renewables or nuclear?

If the nuclear makes up about 20% or so now there is still alot of the energy needs currently met by fossil fuels for renewables (local scale and big projects) and improved efficiency to handle.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/electricity_calc/html/1.stm

Dumping nuclear completely is taking a very large and dangerous gamble on renewables IMO.

Democrates wrote:

Now the UK Govt. state that theirs will be funded by industry at no cost to the taxpayer

I don't believe that, but talking about how the miraculous private sector will provide for all seems to have become a political staple now.

Democrates wrote:

When is this happening; I was reading about the unification of the North/South electricity market next year but that's it.

I don't know when - but it seems to be being discussed and a company want to build it.

mike65 wrote:

Did someone say mainland!??????

Its funny. The dodgy political significance of that term passed over my head there.
Since the North is part of the UK - the rest of it, which is much bigger, is the "mainland" IMO.;)

I was trying to discriminate between interconnection with the North and interconnection with Britain.

fly_agaric

Democrates wrote:

LCD's instead of crts. CFL's and LED's instead of tungsten or flourescent lights, and so on.

I wonder how much energy these things save if the energy required to produce them is factored in?

Anyone have an idea?

It may not look it, but a high-brightness LED is a hell of alot more sophisticated than an incandescent bulb.

Also,just to nitpick, CFL's are actually "compact fluorescent lamps" (same principles as the big things used in offices).

democrates

Sharp points all, I have given it a fresh look.

In my defense there is some inexcusable FUD around nuclear (wait 'til you see that!). We could do with less of that sort of thing, it's just scaremongering, it's alarmist, no-one with a good argument resorts to warning about anything or expressing doubt, in fact given their uncertainty about safety the only logical conclusion is that there is no risk, no human could ever be capable of perpetrating such an extreme act again.

Besides, anyone who knows anything about geopolitics knows that western corporations and militaries and trade negotiators are so selfless and kindly abroad that Muslims are getting more moderate and friendly by the day, I heard that many are so impressed they're converting en masse to The Christ (I think they call him Jihad), so anyway we can all rest easy on that one. And sure that video could be doctored to make it look risky. Where were the lifegaurds with red yokes for instance?

The argument for nuclear now seems quite powerful. Each nation must have cheap electricity at all costs, be self-sufficient and protect themselves from exposure to the international energy market in order to be competitive in international markets. Need I say more!

If I may. In order to secure that primary input we must take the benefits now and leave the clean-up and storage costs to our grandchildren, great grandchildren etc etc. Don't mind the bleeding hearts, the nay-sayers with no plans for a better tomorrow, someone will invent a new bacteria that eats uranium, farts oxygen, sweats ballygowan, and sh1tes pots o' gold, but that's for people in the year 2500 to figure out if they're as good as they claim to be. We have to focus on economic growth here and now, because, if we don't, someone else will. So get consumin' there.

Nuclear has been out of favour with our uneducated masses (who obviously don't understand something if they oppose it) ever since Long Mile eh, Chernobyl. As a result no EU Government has built a new reactor for over a decade, that's nearly ten years, daylight saving. But what people clearly fail to realise is, that was rusty ruskie old tech, now we have shiny happy new tech.

Bush as usual has been the clever one and supported the free market all along (which just needs the government to back the hell off in order to thrive) by transferring billions in subsidies from taxpayers to investors in order to get the competitive edge of cheap energy. Genius. You can see why USA is No.1. Frontier country, first they conquered the moon, invented potatoes and tobacco, J Edgar built a hoover that sucked, and then on earth Edison discovered the bulb.

I've gained new respect for the Bush, he's decider, and rich people always want what's best for everyone. Other nations with also wise leaders making decisions in good con-science have emulated his extremely eloquent exemplary examples, but oh no, not those Eurocrats in Brussels.

Now less FDI comes to the EU tree-huggers and scaredy cats, instead it runs where it earns higher returns, where the input costs are lowest for industry, where the people are willing to do whatever it takes to get the cheap electricity to attract investors, some are even working for a pittance, clever clog nips caught us out there, didn't see that coming but now I see the way forward, I see the light.

We thought we were doing great but really we've been slacking off! Everything investors need to survive must become cheaper. Cheap electricity. We need to work cheaper, harder, longer, smarter! Like everyone else in the world. Rejoice in the wonders of competition. De-regulate and privatise anything that moves, let the invisible hand of the market work its magic. Increase taxpayer subsidies to attract investment. Bigger tax breaks for the rich. Save the climate with nuclear. Welch on Aid promises which were obviously never meant to be honoured in the event that we became the second richest country in the world, children starving to death need to cop on to themselves and understand that. All EU citizens must make any and every sacrifice to get back in the game and reverse the economic stagnation, because everyone knows we must be competitive and strive for more economic growth, but don't take my word on all that, ask Mary Ellon Synon.

Finland is the perfect example to get us back on the nuclear track, the wind refuseth to blow in winter (like a French strike-monkey) so the poor divils would freeze to death in their igloos if they had to depend on windmills that weren't all atwirl, also the Ruskies are going to potski so they're too risky, and ere o' God Ted we all know coal is shoddy shoddy fuel, don't start me on that I could write volumes, so it has to be nuclear because they can't buy electricity from a stable supplier, like other EU countries who all have to focus on themselves and not be selling their electricity to Finland just because they need it, that's the last thing the european grid is being designed for but try telling that to people.

Poor Tony in Downer Street has the nuclear lobby chewing one ear, the military the other, and international investors the other, accusing him of not getting his people to compete for investment hard enough. Verily, they could make a lot more investing in Chiny-wares, the profits they make in the commonwealth are really charity out of the goodeness of their busoms.

Since Tony faces no election and feels the hand of history on his shoulder he has done the brave thing and given the rich what they need to survive. We need to do the same and go nuclear to catch up with France the UK and Germany. We must go forwards, not backwards, upwards, not forwards. For cryin' out loud, get with the program, going forward, reality check, HELLO! Now sing it with me "we worked night and day by the big cooling tower, they had their health but we had the power!"

Hobbes

democrates wrote:

In response to the UK decision to pursue the building of further nuclear power stations I am boycotting all UK businesses selling into Ireland with the exception of those dedicated to ecological responsibility and fair-trade.

This applies to business as well as personal expenditure.

Will this include the english language?

banaman

SeanW wrote:

Man
Renewables, due to their high cost, limited geographical viability and dependence on the weather, can never be more than a niche product.

Sorry mate you're going to have to prove this statement.
From reading i've done nuclear is AT BEST a temporary fix. Uranium deposits worldwide are finite and if ALL power generation was to become nuclear reserves would last LESS than 9 yrs.
Also power generation only contributes about 1/3 of CO2 emissions.
What needs to change is our lifestyles. We need to be more energy efficient in ALL aspects including transport, consumerism, building, heating etc.
Money spent on the DEAD-END technology that is nuclear power cannot be spent on local sustainable eco-friendly power generation. For example bio-mass generators with carbon-sink technology could provide a local cash crop for the farming industry and meet local power needs. Granted heavier industries require higher voltages but larger plants would provide these needs.
Also the current bill to the UK taxpayer is variously estimated to be in excess of £100 billion to decomission and store the waste from today's stations, do you really believe that the bill will be less in 50 year's time when the proposed stations are due for decommissioning. Blair says new nuclear stations must be built by the private sector but the private sector told Thatcher that unless the taxpayer payed for decommissioning they were NOT interested in nuclear power. Hence nuclear stations were not privatised. Given the history of mutli-national big business shirking its responsibilities when it comes to cleaning up its pollution what gaurantees are there that the operating companies will adhere to their committments? Think pensions, Bhopal, asbestos, toxic sites around the globe and illegal dumping.
At best nuclear power is a temporary fix. However it leaves such a legacy for the future that its is unacceptable.
I doubt if Blair and the British establishment will listen but i supprt the protest at this decision that will rank alongside his illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as monumental folly.
Read the following for background info,
http://www.arena.org.au/ARCHIVES/Mag%20Archive/Issue%2082/editorial_82.htm
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/faqs/questions/nuclear_energy.html
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/nuclear_power_answer_climate_change.pdf
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0415-23.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0519-04.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0614-34.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0614-34.htm
I could add lots more but if you're interested you'll find them yourself

Moriarty

banaman wrote:

Sorry mate you're going to have to prove this statement.
From reading i've done nuclear is AT BEST a temporary fix. Uranium deposits worldwide are finite and if ALL power generation was to become nuclear reserves would last LESS than 9 yrs.

Not true. There's enough proven uranium depoists around the world to fuel most of the worlds energy requirements for anywhere between 10,000 and a couple of billion years if and when more effecient nuclear fission reactors are used. [source]

banaman

democrates wrote:

Bush as usual has been the clever one and supported the free market all along (which just needs the government to back the hell off in order to thrive) by transferring billions in subsidies from taxpayers to investors in order to get the competitive edge of cheap energy. Genius. You can see why USA is No.1. Frontier country, first they conquered the moon, invented potatoes and tobacco, J Edgar built a hoover that sucked, and then on earth Edison discovered the bulb.

I've gained new respect for the Bush, he's decider, and rich people always want what's best for everyone. Other nations with also wise leaders making decisions in good con-science have emulated his extremely eloquent exemplary examples, but oh no, not those Eurocrats in Brussels.
"

Love your sarcasm but doubt your grip on reality.
"rich people want what's best for everyone" ??? You really need to reread your history. Why throw out the English landlords, why set up Social welfare,why the Combat Poverty Agency etc? Rich people want to be rich and to get richer they don't give a **** about anybody else. As for Bush's US and his decisions read Rogue State by William Blum and What We've Lost by Graydon Carter to see how much the US rich care for their fellow citizens never mind the rest of us.
US industry and their "good Science" decisions this is the home of Monsanto
( DDT banned in the US so what do they do? They export it everywhere else) Union Carbide of Bhopal fame, Enron, Ford motor co and the Pinto etc etc. Invented potatoes and tobacco I think you'll find that they were invented by either God or evolution depending on your beliefs. US cheap energy is based on lack of environmental regulations, massive tax breaks, deregulation which led to power cuts in California and unchecked pollution.
I agree that Brussels is not any better and less accountable than US Congress (hard as that may be to believe) but to hold the US up as a shining example of anything except greed, selfishness and exploitation is misguided in my opinion.

banaman

Moriarty wrote:

Not true. There's enough proven uranium depoists around the world to fuel most of the worlds energy requirements for anywhere between 10,000 and a couple of billion years if and when more effecient nuclear fission reactors are used. [source]

According to the sources I've read Uranium is an abundant element BUT the deposits have to be above a certain level of purity in order to be viable to extract/purify the uranium. At present around half the energy contained in the uranuium is used to extract and purify it.
Uranium in rocks such as granite and in seawater is just too low ppm to recover.
Wikipedia is not neccesarily a reliable source since there is no vetting of who posts the info. Thus what you are reading may be biased.
I realise the sources I refer to also have biases but I know who they are and can check their credentials if I wish to do so.
I dont have the article that discussed ore purity, resources and thorium cycle to hand, as it is stored on my laptop. I will find it and post it over the next couple of days.

dermot_sheehan

banaman wrote:

According to the sources I've read Uranium is an abundant element BUT the deposits have to be above a certain level of purity in order to be viable to extract/purify the uranium. At present around half the energy contained in the uranuium is used to extract and purify it.
Uranium in rocks such as granite and in seawater is just too low ppm to recover.
Wikipedia is not neccesarily a reliable source since there is no vetting of who posts the info. Thus what you are reading may be biased.
I realise the sources I refer to also have biases but I know who they are and can check their credentials if I wish to do so.
I dont have the article that discussed ore purity, resources and thorium cycle to hand, as it is stored on my laptop. I will find it and post it over the next couple of days.

If there was an economic incentive to search for deposits, more deposits would be found. Also if breeder reactors were employed plutonium could be bred from relatively abuntant uranium 238, which then could be used in reactors.

With regard to only 1/3 of CO2 coming from power generation. If we have cheap abuntant power generated, we could run transport on it, either directly as electrict vehicles, or by using electricity to electrosise water and produce hydrogen to run cars on.

Moriarty

banaman wrote:

According to the sources I've read Uranium is an abundant element BUT the deposits have to be above a certain level of purity in order to be viable to extract/purify the uranium. At present around half the energy contained in the uranuium is used to extract and purify it.
Uranium in rocks such as granite and in seawater is just too low ppm to recover.
Wikipedia is not neccesarily a reliable source since there is no vetting of who posts the info. Thus what you are reading may be biased.
I realise the sources I refer to also have biases but I know who they are and can check their credentials if I wish to do so.
I dont have the article that discussed ore purity, resources and thorium cycle to hand, as it is stored on my laptop. I will find it and post it over the next couple of days.

That part of the wikipedia entry is further referenced to this piece, written by a fairly reputable person by all accounts.

Red Alert

We have a de-facto Tesco boycott in our house, preferring Superquinn and Dunnes because they're Irish.

democrates

Red Alert wrote:

We have a de-facto Tesco boycott in our house, preferring Superquinn and Dunnes because they're Irish.

In the UK small towns where local businesses have been wiped out refer to The Tesco Chainstore Massacre.

ronbyrne2005

Red Alert wrote:

We have a de-facto Tesco boycott in our house, preferring Superquinn and Dunnes because they're Irish.

so superquinn and tesco only stock irish goods now?? you could buy irish goods in tesco if you were that concerned.

ronbyrne2005

democrates wrote:

In the UK small towns where local businesses have been wiped out refer to The Tesco Chainstore Massacre.

would YOU deny consumers the right to choose?what about poor people who can buy more in tesco?

Red Alert

i choose not to buy british goods from a british retailer, when i can buy british goods from an irish one.

democrates

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

would YOU deny consumers the right to choose?what about poor people who can buy more in tesco?

Classic. I'm expressing my own choices, that's all. Unless of course you see a way that I can be more powerful than Tesco, I'd be very interested to find out out if I have such hidden powers.

Muggy Dev

Thats funny...its gone all dark in here...and smelly...it couldn't be...surely not.......oh ****!...we've dissappeared up our our own a***holes!

Nice one Demo...If you had a brain you would be dangerous.

democrates

Muggy Dev wrote:

Thats funny...its gone all dark in here...and smelly...it couldn't be...surely not.......oh ****!...we've dissappeared up our our own a***holes!

Nice one Demo...If you had a brain you would be dangerous.

I lent my brain to you, when am i getting it back.

SeanW

democrates wrote:

Classic. I'm expressing my own choices, that's all. Unless of course you see a way that I can be more powerful than Tesco, I'd be very interested to find out out if I have such hidden powers.

Well, I think you're "embargo" is a little misguided, actually I'd so far as to say it's completely nuts. But hey, if that's what gets you through the day, so be it.

Lidl FTW

democrates

SeanW wrote:

Well, I think you're "embargo" is a little misguided, actually I'd so far as to say it's completely nuts. But hey, if that's what gets you through the day, so be it.

Lidl FTW

I'm glad someone brought that up. I chose the term embargo because it's usually reserved for governments to apply, but since I see individual sovereignty as more fundamental I use it myself, so I see it as rationalised from first principles rather than misguided.

Academic economics assumes consumers make rational choices based on narrow criteria, but in the real world it is natural that some of us introduce our value system to the equation. In this case we are to be put at additional risk of harm from new nuclear power facilities, and as that is contrary to my best interests I choose not to support their interests and thus contribute to their energy demands.

Even if all Irish consumers did similar I think it would do nothing to reverse the decision. But that's not why I'm doing it. Being true to my beliefs brings a deep contentment, so I don't have to get through my days, I enjoy them and feel good. As an employee for 21 years before I set up my own business I had to compromise in the workplace to secure a roof over my head, it is an absolute luxury I have now of far greater freedom, so I sure won't be a hypocrite and expect everyone else to be of the same disposition.

Also rather than be my own council, I humbly offer my views for discourse, I'm open to persuasion, indeed eager to hear other views. Boards offers great opportunity not just to harvest facts but to study other analyses to see if they can be synthesised in whole or in part with my own, pattern-matching is fuel for creativity with I enjoy immensely. And it's free

fly_agaric

Democrates - about your generally anti-nuclear attitude:

There are billions of people on Earth who use damn all energy compared to the rich consumers [who are mostly in the "Western" countries] and the population of Earth is still increasing quite fast.

Oh, and for better or worse all these people really want to live the high energy life we have in countries like Ireland.
If they all attain it, and are as wasteful as we are and rely as much on fossil fuels as we do, the planet is pretty much screwed - no matter how much we scrimp and save on energy use.

People in the rich countries do not want to turn their back on the industrial, modern lifestyle they've gotten accustomed to. When you were talking of saving energy, you advocated replacement technologies which are more efficient - not doing without.

Even if we free ourselves from the dogma that we must have constant growth, bigger profits, more consumption, use more and more energy etc and manage to reign in our very wasteful lifestyles and stop our energy use growing or decrease it somewhat - the world in future is still not going to be using any less energy than it does today. Unless you think all these people I mentioned should continue to use zero energy.

Now, as was mentioned already I think, if we stop relying so much fossil fuels for transport (we must if we are serious about cutting down the amount of CO2 being dumped into the atmosphere) we are going to have to generate even more electricity than we do currently.

Not every country is blessed that it can devote lots of good agricultural land to growing of biofuel. If arable land grows biofuel crops - where do you grow the food? We are going to need ever-increasing amounts of that too of course.

Can renewables really supply all this energy we will need if we drastically cut back on fossil fuel use? Can they also supply the increasing needs of all these people in developing countries sufficiently well that they can keep their CO2 emissions low?

I suppose we won't know how much energy a mix of different renewables can actually provide until someone tries in a big way, but I'd prefer to have a safety net of other power-generation methods and nuclear (love it or loath it) is an important one of those.

In your sarcastic piece, you also mocked the worries about oil and gas security of supply.

I don't know why. They are not some myth manufactured to frighten everyone.

It is a fact that these resources are concentrated in some of the world's great politically unstable regions (perhaps unstable partly becuase these resources are there, providing a quick source of wealth for despots and an incentive for powerful countries to meddle where they should leave alone).

If you think China, and India are going to be any less rapacious and downright amoral than the US, the UK, and the other European powers and their corporate interests have been in trying to get their hands on these resources for their use you are kidding yourself.

Whatever about Russia, Western countries, as you pointed out, are not exactly well-loved in the Islamic world - the other great oil suppliers. Its entirely possible - maybe even probable the way the world is going - that many of these countries will be run by popular Islamist govt.'s in a few years time.

Draw your own conclusions from all that as to whether its sensible or not to keep the nuclear option open in general and for developed countries like the UK to at least continue to build new plants to replace antiquated ones, and to continue to research and develop nuclear energy.

Sorry about laughing at your "embargo". It's just I'm a deeply cynical person. If you really are committed to trying to live a "green" lifestyle as far as is practicable, fair play to you.

oscarBravo

Muggy Dev wrote:

Nice one Demo...If you had a brain you would be dangerous.

Banned for a week.

LordSutch

democrates wrote:

In response to the UK decision to pursue the building of further nuclear power stations I am boycotting all UK businesses selling into Ireland with the exception of those dedicated to ecological responsibility and fair-trade.

This applies to business as well as personal expenditure.

So you are boycotting all "UK" business & goods from all over the UK? surely not, and why blame the whole of the UK for New Labour's nuclear initiative? I just cant take this boycott idea seriously ~ sorry!

ronbyrne2005

did you know theres areas of the world such as in iran with very high natural radiation levels and the locals seem to have no ill effects from it. the chernobyl and three mile island incidents were /are so overhyped.

democrates

Well put OscarBravo, I see those facts too, I don't dispute them and agree with you and ESSO that biofuels are immoral given starvation, there are other facts, and my conclusion about future options is different.

I did a simple graph back in the 90's projecting resource usage to 2100. At the time average consumption of a US citizen was 400 times subsistence. It was difficult to get a basket of 1970-1996 figures for the rest of the world so I assumed it was already fairly robust, but still the overall trend is staggering and clearly unsustainable. If you project average global resource usage rising to even 100 times subsistence for a population rising to 10Bn that's the equivalent of a trillion hunter-gatherers albeit an over-simplistic view (you can only eat one dinner).

Note that adverse climate effects have occurred since the 1970's, a red line if you will, and there's been a lot of growth in consumption and pollution since and more to come, it's obvious we're headed for many more 'natural' disasters and hundreds of millions will die needlessly, mostly the worlds poor as we see re-runs of 'Trevelyans corn'.

If I could see that coming, so could others, but those who could make a difference don't seem to care much about that.

I'm not surprised that the English establishment with Sir this and Lord that in power positions in many large corporations pursue economic empire. I'm not surprised the European settlers in the USA after the near-genocide of native americans, cling to believing that might is morally right. I'm not surprised that at Bretton Woods, Harry Dexter White on behalf of the USA insisted on a new world order based on concentrating wealth and power, rejecting Keynes breakthrough plan (far beyond traditional Keynsian economics) that would equalise it over time. They claim the British had bamboozled them into agreeing to the Sterling area and that it had contributed to the great depression in the 1930's and thereby WWII.

Given their expressed analysis that trade blocks lead to economic differentials which in turn lead to war, their behaviour since seems puzzling, but in fact is absolutely predictable once you factor in the atom bomb. That changed everything. Now you could have economic differentials and no war, because you could wipe out any enemy in a day and that threat would keep them compliant. Add the fact that western democracies are variously corrupted by private interests while nation-states readily fall at each others throats in the game of international competition and the result is predictable. The cold war put many foreign resources temporarily beyond investor reach but was a great justification for all sorts of other profitable measures.

Since then we have footloose private global capital playing nation against nation, each competing for fdi to bring jobs and prosperity and trying to grow its economy as fast as possible. We have the dirty tricks of paying off despots to get access to their resources, funding militias to overthrow leaders who are not compliant, and green-room strong-arming at the Gatt and now WTO to establish asymmetric trade deals.

Those deals go back further. The old English divide and conquer tactic has been applied during the decline of their empire from Northern Ireland and the Free State to India and Pakistan to Israel and Palestine. With the locals preoccupied fighting each other there is a demand for armaments, and leverage for asymmetric trade 'agreements'.

The Americans were slow at first to get into the game because they had a lot of popular domestic founding father morality to neutralise, but have been dedicated players for many years now and any Presidents who sought to do otherwise have failed, the USA in cahoots with the UK and others have many countries currently lined up for processing as identified by investors.

Iraqs oil is now to come under OPEC control as planned with oil and gas investors set to make out like bandits clicky. [FONT=Georgia,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]

But a comprehensive assessment of Iraq's oil and gas endowment is essential not only for Iraq's future, but also for the economic and strategic security of the United States and the world at large. Iraqi reserve estimates are the basis of economic planning and a decision-making tool for investors.

[/FONT]
That's what the war is about, and it get's better, you lend them money to build infrastructure for your resource extraction which they pay back with interest. But it's always entertaining to hear dubya claiming the triumph of democracy given their own state, the supposed servant of democracy is a puppet of private interests, and the same is planned for Iraq. This injustice will incubate many more Bin Ladens.

Africa has been the worst hit of all. 500 years of resource extraction continues by foreign powers dealing with despots they arm, the reward is bills for Billions payable by the oppressed tribes instead of reparations, and little respite despite the make poverty history hype.

Nuclear power generation is not just scale economies and cover for a nuclear military, it has the double-benefit of allowing benefits now with many costs deferred to future generations. But by insisting upon it as a civilian necessity you also forfeit the case against Iran and every other nation doing likewise, so now you must either make war or buy them off and ensure none of them use it to build nuclear weapons increasing the risk of proliferation to extremists. Either way your taxpayers foot the bill, not investors, as usual.

Just as the investor elite have no compunction enriching themselves over the corpses of their own nations soldiers and foreign victims, they gladly rob future generations. The global investor elite are not evil, some are philathropists, but they are also to various extents blinded by capitalist dogma, psychopathic, nationalistic, and corporatistic.

What the world needs is a global plan for sustainable socio-economic cohesion. IE co-operation on key paramaters and within that capped competition, equalising wealth over time. In that scenario with everyone including Muslims getting a fair deal and so fundamentalists starved of support, if all costs are fully borne by beneficiaries, the technology is safe, and it still compares favourably against alternatives, I would accept nuclear power generation.

But we don't have that. Even if my plans for a worker co-operative without share capital are achieved and matched worldwide tansferring control of production to the people, and swiss-style direct democracy with much greater transparency freed the people of every nation, that still leaves self-interested competition. Hence a longer term goal is to join with others in a worldwide political movement for both direct democracy, and that crucial global compact.

Either we choose co-operation on drastic cutbacks and fair trade for sustainable peace, or, climate destruction, global famine, and potentially nuclear war and/or terrorist attacks yielding multiple Chernobyls. Though investors are the Machiavellian architects of this crisis, most people in developed nations are willing participants, and resist any thought of foregoing their wants. Look how much flak anyone who mentions self restraint gets. It is of course impossible to justify against the backdrop of a growing gap between the rich and the aspirant middle-class, which is why a wealthy elite is socially retrogade and unsustainable. Politicians could start solving it all tomorrow if they had a popular mandate.

My grandiose sounding embargo is such a trivial individual measure it has of course a comedic side, but it joins much more important measures. It's taking time to adjust my lifestyle but I'm on the right track. You don't have to become a hunter-gatherer to improve things, already cashflow is way better so I can give more to charity and get that mortgage paid off early, and I'm much happier without such conflicts between morals and actions. Maybe if saving the world is just an added bonus people might be persuaded to cut back on consumption to reduce their debts. Hope springs eternal, I think it is reasonable to have faith in the better angels of human nature, even if our inner demons are easily amok. It's encouraging that people are ready to discuss, absent that and we'd be lost.

oscarBravo

democrates wrote:

Well put OscarBravo, I see those facts too...

Um, what? What did I put well?

democrates

oscarBravo wrote:

Um, what? What did I put well?

Correction, Fly a garlic...

Dave!

ehhh.....???

SeanW

that biofuels are immoral given starvation

This is fundamentally flawed. In fact it's outright wrong. The problem is not that there is not enough agricultural land and capabilities to feed the peoples of the world, the problem is economics - i.e. the countries and peoples that have starvation do not have the resources to buy food. One of the contributing problems is Western export subsidies, like the recently dissolved Sugarbeet subsidies.

To explain it simply: The EU and US govenrments, rather than allowing the free market to provide for all (which would allow 3rd world agricultural producers and their nations to prosper, because their costs are much lower) have turned the home markets into domestic agriculture friendly secluded 'bubbles'. These are supported in 2 very damaging ways:

1: Import embargos, quotas and other restrictions.
2: Intervention in the national market: Intervention purchase by the governments, keeps the prices of produce in the national market up, therefore keeping X number of farmers in high cost business. However, the produce has no use to the commissioning government and is usually dumped at rock bottom prices on the 3rd world, in doing so the commissioning government makes local producers uncompetitive, devastating the local farming industry. Efforts to tax the dumped produce to give home producers a chance are usually met with threats to suspend aid, loans etc.

I see biofuels as the answer, if the world's economies turned to biofuels for energy (the biofuels economy) there would be plenty of business for all those who wish to farm, and no need for the disasterous and immoral interventions and subsidies by rich world governments. An example would have been if the Irish government had stepped in and, for example, mandated that all petroleum fuels sold in Ireland contain X amount of Irish sugarbeet ethanol - it would have kept our sugar industry alive while letting the 3rd world get into the sugar foodstuff game. Of course that didn't happen

democrates wrote:

Nuclear power generation is not just scale economies and cover for a nuclear military, it has the double-benefit of allowing benefits now with many costs deferred to future generations. But by insisting upon it as a civilian necessity you also forfeit the case against Iran and every other nation doing likewise, so now you must either make war or buy them off and ensure none of them use it to build nuclear weapons increasing the risk of proliferation to extremists. Either way your taxpayers foot the bill, not investors, as usual.

Much as the rest of your post raises a wide range of issues, which themselves are worthy of study and debate, it doesn't REALLY deal with the crunch issue of nuclear power and our need for it in the battle against climate change.

Realistically speaking, there is nothing to suggest that our demands for electricity are going to fall any time soon. Nor is there any indication that there will soon be a huge, wonderous, ultra-green, super-squeaky clean, abundant, sustainable, cheap form of power to satisfy it. Now we debate the reasons why this is for the next 5 years.

For various reasons, the amount of sustainable, plentiful power options are limited to 2: coal and nuclear.

You clearly don't seem to grasp the sheer insanity of relying on the former, it's time to discuss just how bad coal really is. Coal power is the worst per kw/h for CO2 emissions, which contribute to global warming, the worst emitter of Nitrogen Oxides and Sulpher Dioxide, components which become liquid in the atmosphere and cause acid rain, which damages forests and kills everything it touches in lakes and watercourses, although there are temporary, expensive solutions such as liming lakes, which costs the Norwegian government NOK100,000,000 each year, this is asboutely essential to keep its aquatic ecosystems alive. Where do all these acidic compounds come from? Most of it comes upwind from coal burning pollution in more Southern parts of Europe. Coal burning is also a horrifically high source of mercury emissions. This toxin contributes to birth defects and other health problems, and there's a lot more of it out there in lakes and small seas espeically since the Industrial revolution, read, Coal. It also contains arsenic, another toxin, and radioactive element. An ORNL report found that

They concluded that Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations.

in an article: Coal combustion. Coal causes 25,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.

And that's before we look at coal miner deaths, which are staggeringly high in some places. Like China, which loses several thousand miners directly each year.

NONE OF THESE STAGGERING HUMAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS ARE EVER CHARGED OFF AGAINST COAL.

I hope everyone on this thread now realises how fundamentally insane it would be to use more coal in the years ahead, but we run that risk if the FUD about Nuclear power continues to maintain a life of it's own.

ANY alternative to this complete madness, must be seriously considered, and that includes Nuclear Power. It may be the only way produce large amounts of clean, relatively cost-effective, baseline load of electricity.

Bet your 'embargo' isn't looking so good now?

democrates

SeanW, I already agree on the problems of coal (hard to escape these things when you have a subscription to the ecologist) and have never touted it as an option, the black satire post was a lampoon of an extreme position rather than a statement of my position. Maybe Bush is right and any day now they'll have a way to clean burn coal to make hydrogen, but I'm fairly sceptical on that.

I put that point on biofuels hastily and carelessly in fairness, in the current economic situation I can see an immoral aspect, when food is grown for cars while humans starve to death, that's all. You rightly point out that it's asymmetric trade that is the cause of starvation, and the solution is fair trade. So I fully agree with the need for a new economic regime, and a biofuels economy that yields greater agri-employment.

If you add wind, wave, solar, and geothermal to the biofuel economy, develop more efficient technologies that require less power, far cleaner technologies using less of the remaining oil and gas and use CO2 sinks, cut back significantly on general consumption, then it doesn't come down to a simple choice between coal or nuclear as you seem to assert, rather I beleive in time both can be phased out.

But for the reasons I explained I think there is no motivation among investors to reduce the global economy or for changing to renewables, and many people lose the plot at any suggestion of reducing our consumption, hence governments are unlikely to do what's necessary any time soon.

The other aspect is the threat from terrorism, both trying to cause a meltdown and capturing spent fuel rods etc. in transit or storage for bomb-making. The salaries, equipment, and overhead of providing this security, some of it for centuries, should be costed into nuclear, but it is not. It manifests as a stealth tax to fund the general military budget. If the true cost to the taxpayer of nuclear is compared with that for renewables, the fallacy of it being a cheap option is exposed. I wish it was a silver-bullet solution though, and damn Pons and Fleischman for getting our hopes up on cold-fusion.

I saw the Horizon documentary reviewing nuclear and noting the media scaremongering. However some of the science was questionable. Proving that the Hiroshima/Nagasaki distance from ground zero vs cancer risk research was an innaccurate predictor of what to expect from nuclear plant accidents/attacks, was a red herring. Of course there is no comparison between the blast from a nuclear bomb and an explosion and fire at a nuclear plant, they are not the same at all. A key for plant risk vs proximity is how big the explosion is, how much material is available, how fierce the fire and how long it burns, and what way the wind blows.

The ecological health around Chernobly since the very expensive (in both life and money) clean-up was not news to me I've seen that reported before. Sellafield with it's far greater repositories, and proximity to Dublin presents a risk to me. While Chernobyl could be well cleaned I wonder how they'd tackle the Irish Sea.

They used statistics on background radiation from all US States and compared them with background radiation levels. The inverse relationship was taken to suggest that radiation doses below 100 milliSieverts may actually be good for you. Of course the high cancer level states are the ones with the big cities, could it be that urban pollution has something to do with cancers versus clean country living? Maybe that's not the conclusion their research was funded to ascertain.

In other research on genes, they noted radiation activated many of them, and theorised that this may help the body to fight cancer. Maybe, it could cause a lot of other things too, but I'm open to persuasion in the event of better science. And I've also gone for plenty of x-rays before and will again, I'm not phobic on it.

Since I believe I will be at additional risk given this new policy, and it is contrary to what I see as the right way to go, I must report, the embargo stays.

SeanW

democrates wrote:

I put that point on biofuels hastily and carelessly in fairness, in the current economic situation I can see an immoral aspect, when food is grown for cars while humans starve to death, that's all.

Fair enough, but just as long as you realise that it really isn't that simple.

If you add wind, wave, solar, and geothermal to the biofuel economy, develop more efficient technologies that require less power, far cleaner technologies using less of the remaining oil and gas and use CO2 sinks, cut back significantly on general consumption, then it doesn't come down to a simple choice between coal or nuclear as you seem to assert, rather I beleive in time both can be phased out.

With some exceptions, I question the ability of renewables to provide for large amounts of our energy needs. I also do not believe at all, that we can reduce our energy requirements as you claim without seriously damaging our quality of life, which I don't think anyone would support. We're going to need more energy in the future, of that I am certain.

We will realistically never be able to switch off both coal and nuclear. So, at best, we can work at switching off one, and mitigating it's loss. My choice would be coal, without any question.

The other aspect is the threat from terrorism, both trying to cause a meltdown and capturing spent fuel rods etc. in transit or storage for bomb-making. The salaries, equipment, and overhead of providing this security, some of it for centuries, should be costed into nuclear, but it is not. It manifests as a stealth tax to fund the general military budget. If the true cost to the taxpayer of nuclear is compared with that for renewables, the fallacy of it being a cheap option is exposed.

Commerical nuclear power and military weapons are two radically different pursuits. For example, the degree to which Natural Uranium U238 must be enriched to more fissionable U235 - for commerical nuclear power, you need only enrich to 3-5%. For nuclear weapons it's 90%. That's a whole different gig.

As for Chernobyl - Chernobyls don't just uncerimoniously happen. In Chernobyl's case, there were so many problems with the plant itself and so much carelessness and ineptitude running from the top of Soviet society to the lowest trainee operator that a nuclear catastrophe was inevitable. I've done a lot of reasearch into this and it could only have happened in the former USSR. Indeed, the country where the accident happened, now the Ukraine, has continued to embrace nuclear power!! Now they're Chernobyl scarred, financially broke, but have plenty of coal that they could use instead. No dice. They're continuing to invest in nuclear power because it makes sense.

fly_agaric

I'll just say seeing as I brought up the tradeoff between growing biofuels and growing food that I was thinking not of now, but of the time when the world may have to grow enough food for a population 9 or 10 billions.

I have not examined any of the figures involved other than population projections for the world in 50 years time or so, so I don't know how difficult this will be.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html

Maybe we will need to resort to the "evils" of GMO's to get us over that hump. We'll definitely need very efficient and high-yield factory farming (greens don't really like this much either).

fly_agaric

^^Democrates - there is too much in your post (which goes a long way beyond the negatives of nuclear and on into the dire need to improve human nature) to address and too little time so I'll just concentrate on one big negative for nuclear - proliferation of the technologies to nasty people.

Apart from what SeanW posted on this I'd add that nuclear technology exists and the know-how will spread no matter what the gatekeepers do independent of allowing countries that want it to have nuclear energy.

The US has already failed miserably to prevent Israel (well, maybe they didn't mind too much about this one!), S.A., India, Pakistan and probably North Korea from developing fission and even fusion weapons (Israel and India) and they'll probably fail to stop Iran from getting an A-bomb too (well, Israel may start a war with Iran before the latter can finish off their weapon).

democrates

SeanW, a key element in the Chernobly accident was that the supervisor went against the safety warning of subordinates on duty at the time because he was afraid of having to report to his superiors the next day that he had not completed the test. This central command hierarchy is not just a Communistic control mechanism, it is deployed in virtually all western corporations, so a supervisor under pressure in the latest greatest western facility may still take chances. You can state policy all day but you can't predict all human behaviour.

The design of system safety may not foresee all scenarios either, be it snowed in for a week of no-fly blizzard with a salmonella outbreak, a breakdown in the supposed failsafe system itself, or whatever, and anyway could be circumvented by an insider or intruder. I'm not going for edgy here, the odds of meteor stikes or accidental airline collisions are much more remote.

All of the facilities operating for years would appear to be fairly sound in fairness bar two major incidents, and the next Chernobyl is likely to be Chernobyl as the sarchophagus continues to degrade. But we now have fundamentalists within nuclear power countries plotting attacks, the risk scenario is becoming far more adverse.

Ukraine are going for nuclear though they have coal, so is Finland, so is the UK. I argued that it wasn't as simple as coal v nuclear if we did all the other things we could. You say they're doing it because it makes sense, it does based on certain assumptions about national goals and what costs, risks, externalising and deferral are acceptable, but I disagree with those.

For arguments sake if at some time it is established that we have gone too far and coal v nuclear is a choice we have to make to avoid deaths, I too would choose nuclear over coal, despite the risk and gargantuan cost, it is cleaner when done right, so if we can afford it and get away with the gamble over centuries we're fine, whereas with current coal technology horrendous damage is guaranteed. I remember smoggy Dublin winters. No argument if that were the choice, far better for future generations to have an expensive clean-up bill than a poisoned habitat.

But I don't think that's the only possible choice today, I believe we can still choose otherwise, we don't need anything like current energy demand if we cut back on consumption, every car, tv, stereo, newspaper etc cost energy and habitat to produce, I still want to enjoy a few of these things, but I want them to be efficient, repairable, upgradeable, and recycleable so they last for decades rather than get frequently dumped and replaced. There are compromises, it would take another round of resource consumption to get to sustainable.

As for cutbacks affecting quality of life and therefore being unpopular, I think many Irish have gone so far into splash the cash territory and now being the second richest country in the world that they've forgotten that quality of life, after the basic necessities, is all about relationships. We knew that once, but now TV says it's better to be selfish - “it's not your wadi it's mi-wadi”, “There's motherly love and there's Mueller love”, “Hey Debbie, wanna go boogie woogie?”, etc etc. Caring and sharing is yesterday and it's all about me. Greedy single/divorced consumers are more profitable than happy families, as they try to fill the void left behind by quality human interaction, with products.

We're a bit like London in the '80's, New York in the '20's. According to economic statistics and TV ads there's a big rich party going on somewhere and everyone expects to join in, eventually. Woe and betide anyone who says it won't happen for most people, and shouldn't happen. Money is now our God and the car/suv you drive, holidays per year, foreign property, and home help you hire is your statement to your fellow citizens of how you are part of the celtic tiger, you're not a loser, but one of the winners, we've all worked hard and we're worth it. The Irony is that so much of the bling we see paraded about is enabled by debt, the well-to-do accessories are a facade for diminished wretches, struggling victims of the capitalist delusion. So calling for restraint in Irish consumption today invites the simile 'like expecting turkeys to vote for Christmas', though that's far from apt in my view: the consumerist orgy itself is what's bringing Christmas.

Though this elite country of 4m is no barometer of what the rest of earths 6.5Bn are going through, hostility to accepting substantial cutbacks in consumption as a moral imperative is probably just as widespread, too many people have been seduced. Given also the absence of strong and wise political leadership, I'm resigned to the probability of watching avoidable disasters unfold, but I'll do what I can and be content at that.

Fly_Agaric, I agree nuclear proliferation is hard to avoid. I dislike the Capitalist mode because of its wealth concentration, its predator-prey 'ethos', its corruption of markets and democracy, within and between nations. This vast global exercise in anti-social engineering is fomenting extreme vindictiveness in some of its discontented victims, and that makes Nuclear facilities and the weapons they enable much more risky. If we had that plan for sustainable global socio-economic cohesion aka justice, we'd be a lot safer.

As for feeding the worlds billions, I question the sustainability of the GM silver bullet. If you engineer a plant to grow more, it takes more water and nutrients from the soil. Now you need to turbocharge that which provides those inputs, and this cascades to the entire ecosystem. Maybe nature has been slacking off all along, and failed to balance growth, diversity, and resilience. Or maybe we're like chimps climbing a tree thinking they're going to the moon because they're getting closer.

Safety concerns are by no means allayed either, more on this thread. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054927357

The food problem is exacerbated by the fact that all of those excess resources we consume diminish our habitat. This road, infinite growth of consumption and pollution within a limited biosphere, leads to disasters and horrible dilemmas. On the other hand if we work together we can reverse the decline of our biosphere and the fabric of our societies. Place your bets.

bk

democrates wrote:

SeanW, a key element in the Chernobly accident was that the supervisor went against the safety warning of subordinates on duty at the time because he was afraid of having to report to his superiors the next day that he had not completed the test. This central command hierarchy is not just a Communistic control mechanism, it is deployed in virtually all western corporations, so a supervisor under pressure in the latest greatest western facility may still take chances. You can state policy all day but you can't predict all human behaviour.

Sorry Democrates but that is a vast over simplification, that was only one of many, many mistakes made. The biggest mistake was building a RBMK type reactor in the first place. Even before Chernobyl, these reactors were known to be extremely unstable and dangerous, that is why non has ever been built outside of the Soviet Union.

The reason that the Soviet Union knowingly used these type of dangerous reactors was because the primary goal of these plants was not to generate electricity, instead the primary goal was to enrich uranium for the use in Nuclear weapons, which these types of reactors are excellent at doing (but very unsafe).

The reason they are unsafe is:

1) They are so large they can't have a full containment building like all other western nuclear reactors.

2) They have a High Positive Void Coefficient, this means when they start to melt down, they do so very quickly, leaving little time to respond and fix it. Western power plants have a low Positive Void Coefficient which means it takes days for them to meltdown, leaving plenty of time for extra engineers to be brought in to fix the problem and stop it if necessary.

democrates wrote:

The design of system safety may not foresee all scenarios either, be it snowed in for a week of no-fly blizzard with a salmonella outbreak, a breakdown in the supposed failsafe system itself, or whatever, and anyway could be circumvented by an insider or intruder. I'm not going for edgy here, the odds of meteor stikes or accidental airline 'arrivals' are much more remote.

Again in curret western power planets it takes days to melt down and therefore leaves plenty of time to fix them.

It also ignores the new generation of passively safe reactors like the PBRs, basically unlike the current reactors which require manual intervention to shut them down (stop them from melting down) in a case of loss of coolant, passively safe reactors use the laws of physics to shut down if they loose coolant without any manual intervention.

So even if every single person in the plant died or even if some terrorist tried, these plants simply can't melt down, due to the laws of physics. Basically the hotter the temperature gets in the core of the reactor (start of a meltdown) the slower the chain reaction gets and eventually stops the chain reaction.

BTW Most Nuclear plants are designed to withstand a direct hit by the largest plane full of fuel. They are also designed to withstand, tornadoes, earthquakes and hits from bombs and missiles.

democrates wrote:

But I don't think we're that's the only possible choice today, I believe we can still choose otherwise, we don't need anything like current energy demand if we cut back on consumption, every car, tv, stereo, newspaper etc cost energy and habitat to produce, I still want to enjoy a few of these things, but I want them to be efficient, repairable, upgradeable, and recycleable so they last for decades rather than get frequently dumped and replaced. There are compromises, it would take another round of resource consumption to get to sustainable.

While I agree that we can cut down on our energy use, I don't believe it will be enough. The problem I see is that the world population is increasing and more importantly, many formally poor people in Eastern Europe, China, India, etc. are now starting to become rich and want to live the high energy lifestyle of the west. I believe that the best we can hope for is that through reduction in energy use and efficiency we can balance out the increase in the newly rich persons, but that still leaves us with massive energy use and I fear that it simply won't be enough and energy use reduction is a green dream that just isn't practical.