Comments on: More on environmentalists

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:59:05 +0000

Not sure that the nuclear waste problem is that big compared to the health risks caused by coal and gas. Poisons being released into the air, carcinogens, acid rain and the like — and that’s on top of all the carbon emissions that nuclear doesn’t have.

By: Colin Campbell

Colin Campbell — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:20:13 +0000

And where shall we bury the nuclear waste? The Frances Colliery? A solution to waste management has to be in place before nuclear can really represent itself as a real solution?

By: Toxic

Toxic — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:30:19 +0000

Yeah but Clive if you use that logic how do you try and cover up the fact you lost an election and handed the world over to a moron and then win the Nobel Peace Prize?

By: Clive

Clive — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 02:58:11 +0000

We are carbon-based life forms. Without carbon, we don’t exist. All this stuff about carbon emissions is the biggest load of nonsense I’ve heard in a long time. You’re being duped, folks.

By far the greatest contributors to global carbon dioxide emissions are the oceans. Beside them, we are very minor league indeed. What are you going to do – drain the oceans? And anyway, carbon dioxide levels follow global temperatures, they don’t affect them. Stands to reason really, since the oceans emit more CO2 when you warm them…

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 17:57:16 +0000

No, that is quite the point. Nothing is carbon-free. It is impossible to live without emitting carbon.

By: SupaFly

SupaFly — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 17:55:33 +0000

The question people should be asking is : Is anything carbon neutral these days?

I’d probably give a chance of saying no unless you live in the middle of nowhere!

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 13:56:38 +0000

Ah, but wind, hydro and solar aren't carbon neutral either. Of course, the materials and equipment used to make windmills, solar panels and whatnot all needs to be moved around the world as well, just as with nuclear. If nuclear power plants are cheaper to build and run, that suggests that nuclear is much more resource-efficient than wind, solar and hydro are -- so far. According to Tim Worstall at least, wind and hydro create only a small amount less carbon dioxide than nuclear, and solar creates around twice as much!

The electricity [nuclear reactors] produce creates about 15 tonnes of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour (after accounting for the carbon costs of reactors), compared with about 350 from gas and 900 from coal.
That number is fractionally above offshore wind (from memory, 13 or 14 tonnes) and hydro (again, 13 or 14 tonnes from memory) and a fraction of solar PV (36 tonnes, again, from memory).

By: Bison Bison

Bison Bison — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:04:03 +0000

‘Environmentalists’ are getting a bit misrepresented here. Nuclear power is far from carbon free – the amount of energy required to mine, process and transport the Uranium required is huge. So, is the amount of energy involved in construction, and again in decommissioning and dealing with the waste. Sure, it’s lower than a coal plant, but where we’ve got a limited amount of money to invest in sorting out our energy infrastructure then investing it in big, expensive, centralised energy generation that still leaves us dependent on some dodgy foreign places for fuel supplies is a poor use of our investment.

If Sweden can successfully convert whole cities like Malmo to run on decentralised, renewable energy then we can too. Renewable technology is available, and working in these places now. And it would get cheaper too, if only the right policy instruments were put in place. Watch this film from Greenpeace – http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/the-convenient-solution-20070718

Agree with you about the ‘hair shirt’ opposition to the cheap cars, though

By: SupaFly

SupaFly — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 01:59:43 +0000

Yes but what happens when they have to shut them down they’ll make the place look ugly! (Hey I’m a woman lol). Plus I just don’t like the risk they impose on the country. There are other ways to make electricity not just wind farms

I have to laugh though if you ever go to Heysham you’ll find a nice beach there where people swim in the sea and have a nice few of the power station.

By: Clive

Clive — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 18:18:59 +0000

Windfarms? You have to be kidding. To supply modern energy needs, you’d have to cover the whole country with them and still fall short. They’re okay as a sop to the environmentalists but that’s all.

And why does no-one ever consider the potential damage to the environment of windfarms? Think about it – you are proposing to cover the land with thousands of windmills. What each one does is take the energy from the wind and transform it into electricity. But the wind has lost that much of it power. With thousands of the things sucking power from the wind, what happens to the wind? It dies, that’s what. And, if you kill the wind, you start getting into serious climate change. That low pressure that demands to be filled will just find another direction from which to draw in winds. And what does the wind bring? Rain. You are proposing a solution that will alter precipitation patterns, potentially with disastrous results for agriculture. And it’s agriculture that feeds us…

Nuclear power is the only answer, both in the short and long term.