1) It is bad systems design.
With small decentralised units, when technology advances (as it is doing, rapidly) you can swap in new units.
With nuke you’re stuck with a monolithic system for 50 years.
CHP[12] units are already used extensively by EU/Scandinavian countries, 8% of US power is generated using CHP. This is not rocket-science, though could be with the levels of investment that nuclear will cost… just to deal with its waste.
In addition to this, smaller decentralised units are more resilient to outages, are quicker to deploy and quicker to decommission. They create a competing ecosystem of technologies that is under pressure to advance. Nuke doesn’t.
To draw an analogy, Nuke is like a system of mainframe computers (from the 50s), while decentralised micro-generators is an internet of rapidly advancing, competing and evolving systems.
In systems-engineering terms, nuke stations also represent “single points of failure”. They’re less resilient.
From a military/terrorist perspective, they’re a giant “Kick Me” sign.
2) Nuke is dangerous.
Despite what the nuke industry says (you know, the people who last time around said it would be “too cheap to meter”), nuclear power is dangerous. When a fuse blows [1], you have to shut down a portion of the grid. Despite what the nuke industry says, cockups and accidents are happening all the time [2][3][4][5][6]
Nuke lobbyists now claim that it’s safe (funny, they said that last time round) but, (and this should be the first, last and only nail in the coffin of this idea) the UK govt has decided that nuke companies should not be responsible for the costs of cleaning up after an accident because no company should be reasonably expected to handle such a huge expense. This is an admission of risk – no company should have to pay for a Chernobyl… the public should.
This simple fact kills all arguments about safety.
And, once again, it’s privatised profits and socialised risks in a set up that resembles if not a monopoly then a cartel.
3) The economics stink
Nuclear power cannot work economically without massive government (that means you) subsidies. Anyone subscribing to ideas about free-markets should reject nuclear economics as a point of principle.
The potential for (distributed) profit from renewable technology on the other hand is vast – and this is technology that can be happily sold everywhere on the planet, without the paranoia we’re currently seeing over Iran etc. Instead of the benefit remaining in a few (gnarly old) hands, it can be distributed more democratically, planet-wide.
CHP (and other renewables) also offer much greater scope for local control.
Downstream energy savings (ie: efficiency) create huge upstream savings. The idea that our current escalating energy consumption needs to keep escalating at its current rate is nonsense. Amory Lovins’ (from the video above) company recently retrofitted the Empire State Building, reducing it’s energy consumption by 40% [9][10]
That’s a downstream energy saving – in the UK, 60% of energy generated goes straight up as heat. Our systems are inefficient… every watt saved at the wall-point, saves orders of magnitude greater of watts at source.
4) We don’t know what to do with the waste we already have.
Nuke is not clean, it’s incredibly dirty.
The Nuke industry have jumped on the idea that it produces low carbon emissions (and that’s ignoring that extraction/ running/ decommissioning etc are so carbon-intensive that nuke only represents a saving of 8% [13]) to promote the idea that it’s clean.
It’s not.
Nuke waste storage currently costs £1 billion a year, year in, year out, essentially forever. The half lives [7] of nuke waste runs to hundreds of thousands of years. How would you feel if… Oliver Cromwell’s generation say, had invented nuke power and left us with a billion pound a year storage bill? Feel a bit differently about them?
How about Willam the Conqueror?
The Romans?
The Sumerians?
Seems crazy doesn’t it? Look at it this way: one day, tens of thousands of years from now there will be cultures looking back at us as unimaginably distant memories… far far older than the Assyrians, Sumerians etc etc are to us…
…and they’ll still have to be dealing with this crap that ignorant morons from the 20th century left them with. That is our legacy. That’s the tyrrany we’ve already gifted to the future: taxation without representation.
This is assuming of course, that everyone producing this stuff is dealing with it responsibly. Know why the Somalian Pirates are seen as heroes by Somalis? Because EU ships have been dumping nuclear waste off the African coast[8]
Part of the sweetner that the UK govt is offering to the nuke industry to make new plants is to hide the costs of the waste in existing waste programs. They can’t do this without lying to us what the real costs are. Take a look at the history of the nuclear reactor that is being built in Finland [11]
Or to put it another way, they’re lying on behalf of big business, against your interests, again.
5) Centralised control.
You’ve seen what centralised control of dwindling resources (yes, there is such a thing as Peak Uranium, we have at most 50 years worth) did to the 20th century. You really want that for the 21st?
One of the things about renewables is that they’re oligarchy-breakers. They obviate the need for trillion-dollar wars.
They’re representative of participatory cultures (which is what we’re moving into) as opposed to nuke, which is representative of command-cultures (which is what we’re moving away from, but which all of our institutions are firmly entrenched in)
6) Proliferation
Nuke power provides the perfect shelter for proliferation of nuke weapons.
–
Why? Why do all this? We already have alternatives – we’re already building them. Why invest all these hundreds of billions into something that is so inadequate?
–
[1] http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12731668?nclick_check=1&forced=true
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/us/03nuke.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss
[4] (UK) http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/may/29/britishenergygroupbusiness.nuclear
[5] (Fr) http://www.euronews.net/en/article/24/07/2008/france-fourth-nuclear-incident-in-a-fortnight/
[6] (De) http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,576550,00.html
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
[8] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html
[9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKnxDcIUfdY
[10] http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid598.php
[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/business/energy-environment/29nuke.html
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration
[13] http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/nuclear
Contact your local elected officials - for free
by Jericoa
19 Jul 2009 at 09:53
That has the feel of a coherent and well reasoned out argument to me and I have not even looked at 1/2 the links (it is a Sunday after all). I kind of get the feeling now I may have been sucked in by the incumbent propaganda on nuclear power after reading this.
Does anyone out there have a counter argument to this?
Should it be kept (for example) purely for research purposes not mass power generation?
Are there realistic alternatives considering the ever increasing power demands. Can we get what we want (note I did not use the word ‘need’) from renewables alone?
Nuclear would appear to be on the verge of getting dropped from the energy manifesto at this point in time.
by Nick Taylor
20 Jul 2009 at 03:46
There’s an article here about civil servants delaying feed-in tarrifs that are widely (and successfully) used in the rest of Europe here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/12/renewable-energy-feed-in-tariffs
and an analysis/comment on why your government is lying to you about nuclear power about 1/2 way through this podcast:
http://audio.theguardian.tv/audio/kip/world/series/guardiandaily/1247469596840/4309/gdn.gd.090713.hjg.guardian-daily-podcast.mp3
These people, in my most humble of opinions are utter scum. They should be in prison.
by Jericoa
24 Jul 2009 at 21:59
I suppose the bottom line is if they invested even 1/2 the cash and political will in renewables as they have in nuclear we would already be well on our way to sustainable energy.
Harvesting the energy from the moons gravity must be the biggest un-tapped renewable resource. Twice a day you can fill up a huge pond without using a pump, then empty it via a turbine to harvest the gravity with very little environmental impact. Anybody who has been tossed around in moderate surf on the beach will appreciate how much energy is available even in slightly moving water.
The trouble is renewables seems to be encouraged in the rhetoric but not in practise. A colleague of mine tried to install a micro generation scheme in a field hw owned with a small stream running through it. It needed a very small pond slightly offline from the stream a tiny turbine a bit of cable and not much else for him to come off grid and probably sell a bit back to it in the summer.
What happened you ask.
He gave up.
The red tape was so onerous in terms of surveys and permissions required to ‘modify a watercourse’ that it would cost thousands in professional fees and could even then still be rejected.
I see this sort of red tape strangulation of worth while schemes all the time in my job.
he had to jump through the same hoops fro his micro scheme as N powewr would have to jump through for impounding a river. It did not matter that it was bloody obvious there are no salmon in this tiny mountain stream, they had to pay aprofessional to assess it etc etc etc etc.
The whole system is feeding on itself. There are not enough useful things for people to do so we invent red tape to keep people busy, people who are trained not as free thinkers but to tow the line to make sure the red tape carries on in order for them to keep thier job, in order for them to consume stuff they dont need in order to keep the economy growing.
I just can not get my head around how bonkers it all is when what potentially on offer is the opportunity for people to all work less, consume less and pursue things which provide genuine pleasure. We have the technology to do it for ***** sake for the first time in human history!
What does it take to get through to people now?
Its like we are all hypnotised, sleepwalking, subdued.
Will noboddy do a damn thing until the requirement to do something is forced upon us.
Why do we all sit on our arses watching u-tube or TV eating too much and avoiding talking to the neighbours?
Its like some kind of mass catatonic state.
I get so distressed about it sometimes. Do people not see how beautiful this place we live in is?
I better stop now, this kind of outburst often preceedes a bit of a downward spiral bourne of frustration and an acute sense of helplessness.
I am going to make myself a stiff drink and go for a short walk and watch the trees blowing in the wind for a bit.
by Jack Gamble
31 Mar 2010 at 20:56
Perhaps you are prepared to back up your bogus claim that nuclear is dangerous??
Can you name one single member of the American public that has ever so much as sneezed because of a nuclear power plant?
No you can’t, because it’s NEVER HAPPENED. You’re too stuck in your Greenpeace dictateed mentality to realize that the US nuclear industry has a better safety record than the school you send your kids to!
by Nick Taylor
01 Apr 2010 at 12:19
Sorry Jack, maybe you should try reading the “danger” bit again.
Did you notice how I said that private companies are not prepared to take on the risk of an accident and that it has to be underwritten by the taxpayer… you?
Do the words “bail-out” mean anything to you?
–
Now in regards to your question
1) It’s one thing to think that the only people who matter are Americans, it’s quite another to assume that because Chernobyl (or any of the other 5 citations I gave) happened outside America, that accidents don’t happen at all.
I’m not sure if this is a Logic-101 failing, or Geography-101… or what… it’s a bit embarrassing though.
2) Did you know that there were fires in 3 different US nuclear reactors over the weekend?
http://www.nuclearcounterfeit.com/?p=1945
According to the NRC Inspector General and the U.S. Government Accountability Office, most US nuke reactors haven’t complied with fire safety regulations.
3) How do you feel about Italian nuke waste being stored in Tennessee?
http://www.wsmv.com/news/14740825/detail.html
Now – seeing as your take on nuke safety appears to be something of a Comprehensive Failure… care to address the other 5 points I provided?… at least 2 of which are not on an Greenpeace website?
–
How do you feel about the socialised-risk / privatised-profit aspect of nuke?
I presume from your literary ability that you’re right-wing… does it bother you that nuclear power won’t happen without the government taxing you, and giving your money to someone else for it to happen? So they profit, and you underwrite all the risks?
Because unlike you, the companies bidding for this know that it is too dangerous for them to consider dealing with without taxpayer help?
Hmmm?
by I'mnotreallyhere
01 Apr 2010 at 15:32
“This is an admission of risk – no company should have to pay for a Chernobyl… the public should.
This simple fact kills all arguments about safety.”
————————————————————-
“Risk” is often defined as “Damage” multiplied by “Probability”.
The problem, and we’ll be coming back to this in a minute, is that the perceived result of this equation is often skewed out of proportion by “Fear” or “Surprise”.
You could live next door to a nuclear reactor and a road-traffic accident would still be a more likely cause of “untimely” death (to assign a catch-all term) rather than cancer, metal toxicity or catastrophic explosion.
747s crash very rarely. When they do it is all over the news. There is a significant proportion of the population who are afraid of flying, some to the point where despite their professions they point-blank refuse to. Being English, I tend to cite the example of former Arsenal footballer (soccer player to the Americans) Dennis Bergkamp, who would get driven all around Europe for continental competitions rather than step on to a flight with his team-mates.
However, approximately a 747-load of people die every day from smoking related diseases, mainly lung cancer. I do not know of anyone who is “afraid” of smoking. I do know people who refuse to smoke (myself included) but “fear of death” is rarely cited. Ironically, I know some people who are terrified of flying and yet smoke.
Incidentally, if the flying/smoking comparison seems a little trite: flying, driving and catching a train all have about the same risk of death in terms of passenger-miles. How many people do you know who freak out about getting into a car?
The nuclear power industry is offered (and requires) government level financial protection in the wake of the minutely probable “Chernobyl-esque” incident. Why? Because the wake of such an accident, in a growingly litigous western world, would be cataclysmic in financial terms for the company.
No insurer could back that kind of financial outlay. No major corporation could take that sort of a hit without collapsing. See how fragile even the some of the world’s biggest financial institutions were/are. Only the kind of blank-cheque level funding that comes from owning your own mint could handle such an event.
But, I hear you cry, why not let them go bankrupt? Their plummet through the Financial Times a fitting hommage to the dozens / hundreds / thousands / fifty-six dead. Well the problem is that then no-one would have lighting to read the financial times with. Who’s going to run the other power plants without earning anything?
Whilst power is functionally run by private companies, its nature as a core utility means its continued sound operation is a top priority for any government. There is no part of a western economy not reliant on electricity, water and gas. Security of supply, both from direct aggressions and economic and political shifts, is a fundamental cornerstone of our world.
And so, despite the pitiful “Probability” of a severe accident (and it is pitiful, the industry has gone 8,000 reactor-years since Chernobyl without an “accident” by the official classification of the word) the “Damage” is cataclysmic and hence the “Fear” is incredibly high. Not helped by people who insist that nuclear power isn’t safe…
————————————————————-
As a quick nod to some of your other comments:
A) I note with some amusement that one of the 5 sources you cite was simply the leaking of a list of locations. I’d have thought the reference to stockpiles of nuclear weapons was more significant than the locations of the nuclear power stations since they can basically all be found on a map.
B) If you’re going to discuss the finer points of nuclear safety, it’d be useful to use the International Nuclear Event Scale (referred to above) as it clarifies the terms “Incident” and “Accident”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale
C) Bad systems design? Well only in the sense that you have to try to balance the economies of scale with distribution costs, just like any other industry. And the industry is known to be working towards smaller scale power reactors, but it’s really your choice, you can have a big one in the countryside or a little one on the corner of your road. Would that affect your arguments that much?
D) The economics are a mess, but so are the economics of any other utility, the public transport sector, healthcare, schools and so on and so forth. Indeed, the proposed move to smaller reactors might cut the construction costs and lead to more independent financing but as-is, like most major utility projects the amounts involved are too large to be put up only by the companies involved.
Referring back to my previous point about government interests in energy security, put yourself in the government’s shoes. I’m aware that you probably don’t have the required thousand-or-so legs but bear with me. Ultimately, you’re in competition with the other nearby governments. Country A offers the best financial backing gets the power station. Country B offers the worst, and so gets to import electricity at an inflated price and has no say in the management of the supply.
Dibs on a house in Country A.
E) You wonderfully refer to Peak Uranium. When growing up I had a Blue Peter annual from 1982 (to non-Brits the best summary is that Blue Peter was/is the best non-fiction kids TV ever). In my Blue Peter Annual 1982 it said that we would run out of coal in 1995, oil in 2005 and gas in 2020. Now I can’t speak for the gas, I’ve not been to 2020, but I think it’s fair to say we aren’t out of oil and coal just yet.
F) The Proliferation-by-Power thing is actually a joke set up by the nuclear power lobby to laugh at the anti-nuclear lobby. It was deliberately spread as a wind-up and have let it run because it allows them to easily filter those who check their facts from those who don’t.
To be a little less cruel, I refer you to the well-known case of T. Blair versus The Truth, aka “Why Britain went to war in Iraq”. Do not fall into the trap of mis-classifying your weapons of mass destruction. By implication you are indicating that a nuclear-powered state is A Nuclear Power and can blow up cities etc etc. This is patently untrue for a dozen reasons you can look up on, say, wikipedia.
Yes, with dedication and effort some noticable destructive power can be wrought from power-plant fuel or power-plant waste. However, the same is true for the range of exciting chemicals you keep under your kitchen sink and you’d be surprised how often people don’t get killed by Cif-bombs and Mr Muscle grenades.
Sorry if those references flew over the heads of non-UK folks.
by Nick Taylor
01 Apr 2010 at 17:43
1) You’re measuring risk in terms of number of deaths… to try to trivialise the scale of the damage.
This isn’t a car crash – this is a large area of land, and the food chain being contaminated by radioactive isotopes – a number of which have half-lives of 10s of thousands of years. Next time you see a picture of the pyramids… please remember what a short time they’ve been around – compared to the poison that we are leaving behind.
This is the cost that corporations don’t want to deal with – so we (the taxpayer) have to underwrite it.
This simply isn’t a problem renewables / CHP / Negawatts etc.
2) > “I note with some amusement that one of the 5 sources you cite was simply the leaking of a list of locations”
(from the cite)
“The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked “highly confidential,” ”
So much for security – and I note with amusement that you seem to think this gives you license to skim over the other 4.
3) > “If you’re going to discuss the finer points of nuclear safety, ”
I’m not – that was the whole point of “This is an admission of risk – no company should have to pay for a Chernobyl… the public should.
This simple fact kills all arguments about safety”
Which by the way, you didn’t negate by trying to measure risk only in terms of immediate deaths.
4) >”Bad systems design? Well only in the sense that you have to try to balance the economies of scale with distribution costs, just like any other industry. ”
Well – no, that’s got nothing to do with it – if you’d just re-read the original post.
It’s bad systems design because it’s monolithic and once built, we’re stuck with each unit for a hell of a long time.
Saying that “they might in future make smaller ones” is pretty flimsy – considering alternatives already fit the bill of maneuverability.
5) > ” The economics are a mess”
The economics are more than a mess – I refer you back to the pyramids – the billion pound a year nuke-waste storage bill will be around for longer than the pyramids have been around.
The reason no company will get involved in this without being massively subsidised and underwritten is because the economics are too bad to contemplate otherwise.
6) > “Country A offers the best financial backing gets the power station. Country B offers the worst, and so gets to import electricity at an inflated price and has no say in the management of the supply.”
Fake dichotomy. Those aren’t the only choices, and you know it.
7) Blue Peter’s projections being wrong are an embarrassingly inadequate basis for assuming that all projections being wrong
Which may or may not be true, but given that the pro-nuke-lobby are professional liars I’d treat it with a grain of salt. They would say that wouldn’t they.
The fact remains that “nuclear power” is a convenient umbrella for proliferation – sorry, it is. Trying to conflate me with Blair and his WMD does nothing to change this.
9) the fact that bio and chemical weapons are considered by the military to be more dangerous than nuke, is a ludicrous rational for building more nuke stations.
–
So all in all I’d say that you provided a fairly verbose exercise in skimming over some facts, fallacious trivialising others, creating fake dichotomies etc etc…
… and I just can’t get this image out of my head of someone trying to attack a bulldozer with a kite.
Sorry old boy, not terribly convincing – whereas the anti-nuke arguments are.
Still, enough of this banter.
by super_jambo
02 May 2010 at 21:03
The link to CHP is broken (you’re missing an h of the http).
CHP you refer to is ‘combined heat and power’ this is not a power source, it’s an efficiency saving using the waste heat from burning stuff to heat homes. This is of course a great idea and reducing our power usage through improved efficiency is definitely worthwhile. But you cannot scale an efficiency saving from giving you 8% of your power to giving you 100%
You have not answered the question of how we generate the power. I’m not in favor of Nuclear power because I’m pro-nuke. But because I do not see a viable alternative. How do you generate the power?
Tidal generation, wind farms and solar all vary in supply. Biomass requires vast growing areas. I do think all these technologies have their place and reducing red tape in their implementation would be a good start.
However, the dangers of nuclear power are vastly overstated, France has been predominantly nuclear powered for 25 years! They have some of the cheapest electricity in the world. How have they managed this miracle when nuclear power is so dangerous and un-economic?
And then pit nuclear against it’s real competitors, natural gas, coal and oil. These are all fantastic portable sources of incredibly high-density low-volitility energy. It’s a crying shame to waste them in large static power stations which could be nuclear.
They’re also all non-renewable, use em up and they’re never coming back, they produce gobs of carbon & certainly within my lifetime demand will have largely outstripped supply.
So, what is the viable alternative?
by Nick Taylor
06 May 2010 at 04:01
CHP you refer to is ‘combined heat and power’ this is not a power source, it’s an efficiency saving using the waste heat from burning stuff to heat homes. This is of course a great idea and reducing our power usage through improved efficiency is definitely worthwhile.
I know what CHP is, and as about 60% of energy generated from centralised stations is lost as heat, it does make a fairly large difference to the balance-sheet in terms of consumption.
But you cannot scale an efficiency saving from giving you 8% of your power to giving you 100%
Why are pro-nuke people so obsessed with 100%?
Nuke won’t give us 100% – and it would be stupid to ever become that reliant on one source – particularly one where the raw-materials are controlled by someone else.
CHP uses gas or Biomass, and as such provides a small modular means of getting us through the next 10-20 years – by which time it’s not unreasonable to expect that biotech will fill the gap.
Along-side (obviously) wind, solar, nega-watts and legacy power-plants.
CHP in Scandinavia / Holland and (gasp) Woking, uses a mixture of gas and locally sourced materials – Sweden for example uses agricultural byproducts.
If the experience of Finland’s attempt at a new nuke station is anything to go by (and I think it probably is), any new station will be obsolete by the time (a decade or so later) that it’s finished.
This will be payed for by the taxpayer, to private corporations… who have lobbied the govt… and if you think the millenium dome (or any other PFI project) was bad, the nuke stations are going to be a LOT worse.
I promise you, you’re going to get screwed.
You have not answered the question of how we generate the power. I’m not in favor of Nuclear power because I’m pro-nuke. But because I do not see a viable alternative. How do you generate the power?
As above: A mix of legacy-power-systems, new CHP (using gas / biomass), wind, solar and negawatts until biotech (probably gen-engineered algae) comes online.
This is what the whole non-nuclear world will be doing… and this is therefore) where the money is in terms of investment. THE economic opportunity of this century is renewable energy. Investing in nuke is stupid. As I’ve said.
The long-term scenario will probably be localised (possibly even to house-level) solar with bio-backup. This is about 10-20 years out. This will be met the other way by reduced consumption due to increased efficiency.
However, the dangers of nuclear power are vastly overstated, France has been predominantly nuclear powered for 25 years! They have some of the cheapest electricity in the world. How have they managed this miracle when nuclear power is so dangerous and un-economic?
State subsidy. And please be aware that 57% of people in France don’t want nuke. And please be aware that they’ve had a couple of accidents recently (in fact I think there was another in the last couple of days)
and please be aware that they still don’t know what to do with the waste, so they’re hiding the costs by getting their kids to pay for it.
The dangers are not over-stated. The nuke industry tries to down-play them (through one side of their mouth) while expecting the tax-payer to underwrite the risks through the other.
If nuke wasn’t incredibly dangerous, the industry would underwrite its own risks. It doesn’t.
This single fact renders all arguments to the contrary void. Follow the money.
They’re also all non-renewable, use em up and they’re never coming back, they produce gobs of carbon & certainly within my lifetime demand will have largely outstripped supply.
You might want to check out the work of Craig Venter. We’re in the first few years of a biotech revolution. If it’s organic, we can probably make it.
But you know… even though your children’s children will be making their own cheap, renewable, clean energy… they will still be paying the clean-up bill for what your generation did.
Just as we are now. We are still paying for energy that was used in the 70s. Sellafield costs each individual taxpayer £100 a year. It’s a hidden cost, but it’s there. You see that “Life on Mars” TV program? Where the guy gets transported back in time to the 70s? You are still paying for the stupid decisions made by those people… and now you want to make them again.
Your passing the costs on to your kids. That’s… um… repugnant.
–
I’m not saying that negotiating the peak-oil transition isn’t going to be tricky – but panicking and investing in nuclear power is… just
that. Panicking.
by johnbray
06 May 2010 at 21:49
If nuclear power really is a seriously-stupid idea, then it would surely be so whether or not there is an alternative method of generating power. Or is stupidity a relative – rather than an absolute – value??