Triumphrat

richb

So why the NIMBY attitude to nuclear power? Hi-D tells us its as safe as houses, and he should know. It would easily replace aging coal and oil power stations.

Never one to duck a challenge...

A high incidence of birth defects and childhood leukaemia were (anecdotally) a fact of life in Cumbria and Northern Ireland, near to or on the opposite side of the Irish Sea from the Sellafield Plant.

It's articles like these that seem to put the fear of God into people about nuclear power. Are these allegations false? Are they explained by other factors? Has subsequent research disproved the link to Sellafield? Genuinely curious, no axe to grind. I think nuclear power seems an obvious alternative to coal and oil, but people are scared about it. Who's hoodwinking who?

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Tonybaloney

The fear of Nuclear Power is akin to a fear of flying on an airliner; Statistically, it's much safer than the alternative, but there no fender benders on a 747. You either arrive intact or you don't arrive at all. Until there are methods devised to safely store or dispose of nuclear waste, there will always be opposition. And NIMBYs are everywhere.

HiDesert

Actually, there are fender benders in reactors. That's why there's a graduated scale of accidents, from "we didn't sign the log that shows we tightened that nut over there, even though we did tighten it" up to "you know that core thingy we used to have in the big building over there?"

Rich, the short answers to your questions are a) fearmongering, b) the woeful state of scientific education in general and risk analysis in particular, and c) people aren't wearing enough hats. I took a quick look at your link, and it looks to me like a PR piece by a group with an axe to grind, and that axe ain't scientific accuracy. I'd rather live downwind from ten western reactors than one coal plant, clean or otherwise.

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joeswamp

The problem with nuclear power is sort of the problem with risk analysis in general, it's like you always get burnt by the problem you didn't foresee. Back when I worked in aerospace people used to do these big Markov models of failure; they'd quantify the failure of individual parts (which was easy to do because commercial airliner parts have so many hours on them) and then build a system model of how each part failure tiered up to the whole system.

Problem was, every time there was a big incident people would look at the charts and a failure mode was missing (oops). It's like you don't know what you don't know. An airliner accident is bad enough but a nuclear reactor accident is like a whole different category...

Nickwiz

I'll drag a quote of my contribution in from another thread to illustrate why I have misgivings about nuclear power for this Island.

"I think that's the plan here. Problem I have is that we don't have the wide open spaces here. Just one major nuclear accident and its bye bye UK and probably half of Europe given the prevailing wind direction.

So I think for us there are better options, than Nuclear."

That's my take on it.

jimbon

Build 'em on the east coast (wind from west).

MickSprint06

I can't see a problem with nuclear power, it is the only REAL answer we have to the so-called 'dirty' coal fired power stations. Australia is well placed as a world nuclear waste dump which we could profit from on a huge scale. We also have one of the world's largest reserves of unranium. All good.

Nickwiz

Like Sizewell?

So we build things that have to stand for thousands of years undamaged in order not to contaminate the planet on a coastline vulnerable to erosion? How sensible!

HiDesert

Why is it that no one grasps this concept when we're talking about Anthropogenic Global Warming and computer models?

For nuclear power, however, the nut has been well and truly cracked. There are things we don't know, but the safety aspects of running a nuclear power reactor are very well understood. We have decades of research, decades of controlled, representative experiments, and decades of actual power plant operation experience. The safety systems in western reactors have worked in serious earthquakes, tornadoes, and even core meltdowns. I know people who model reactor cores and safety systems. I see about less risk of a significant overlooked missing failure mode in reactors than I do in pneumatic motorcycle brakes.

Nick, who's proposing to store waste under the conditions you describe?

__________________
I won't stop riding because you tell me about someone who died in an accident, just as I won't stop eating because someone died of e.coli.

HiDesert's ride photos

leftarmlogan

No lie, a man I work with has lived less than a mile from a nuclear power plant all of his life and cannot grow facial hair, had to drink some sort of supplement -the same one given to minimize the effects of radiation-when he was younger and dated his own sister. I wish to God I was making this all up but I'm not.

What scares me the most is that I now live four miles from the same nuclear power plant.

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