So what do you think of our future energy needs being met by nuclear? I feel over the next 2 years we will begin to see a much greater nuclear plan in the UK, just this morning I read this on nuclear storage How would you like to see our energy needs met in 15 years, when oil and gas are no more?
hm there is a severe lack of tidal power considering we are completely surrounded by water. on our coastline we have windmills out in the see. i do prefer to see windmills in the hills, not ruining a good horizon, however, theyre growing on me...
Let’s see nuclear power needs uranium which in the last five years has quintupled in price, and for years production as been less than demand, also it takes large amounts of fossil fuels to mine and refine uranium. Firstly whatever we do we need to cut back on consumption ,its possible to design houses that need hardly any heating so we need to look at the new housing we build and try to improve as much of our old housing stock as we can . we need to look at things that use electricity and redesign them , I also think we should consider banning things if they are inefficient or pointless, I think we need to get over building pointless crap that falls apart . During world war two we had a thing called utility so you could make clothes but they had to make good use of materials and be of a good standard of quality, I think it would be a good idea to bring back something on the same lines As for production of energy I would say mainly wind with some biomass generation, and we need to start building as fast as we can if we don’t want to see rationing. I personally like wind turbines but if people don’t like them they need to use less electricity, I would like to see people near wind turbines getting cheaper electricity giving people a incentive to have turbines near to them. The other thing we should be doing now is planting lots more trees, we could also look at wave power and try some projects but the main thing would be wind. Oh we need to re-organise the railways if we can opening up the lines that we got rid of in the 1960s would be good , also we should make more use of the canal system and reverse globalisation and start manufacture things in the uk . There will be no advantage in buying shoes made in china over shoes made in the uk if you factor in much higher future transport costs, so you can expect to see the return of a lot of industries that we have been losing for a long time and most people cant ever imagine returning
A good thing - In my lifetime it will not dominate more than 20-30% of the total 'fuel needs'. I agree If you liked that you may like thi http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5169888.stm that is if you have not already read it ?. Well it will be longer than that but for the sake of arguement Nuclear/Renewables/Reduction in peoples usage
If we get Nuclear, this will not be a good thing. For one thing, the waste takes years to disintigrate. So far we have dumped our nuclear waste into the irish sea. God knows what new species of fish we have down there.
I live in Scotland - We generate enough wind power here to supply energy to half the households in the country - that means Scotland - not England. Unfortunately Westminster seems to want us to have to house nuclear power plants that WE DON'T NEED here. This is to supply mainly London and the South East. I believe that most, if not all, homes should have their own renewable power supply sources in the form of small windmills and solar panels. Nuclear power is a short term solution with long term issues and problems put in place by short sighted politicians with short term careers.
It's wrong to rule out nuclear, though it's very far from ideal. There are problems with nuclear waste containment and storage, very low-level contamination getting into the environment, and the possibility of accidents. These can be worked around to a large extent, and the risks from these are still FAR less than just continuing to burn fossil fuels in an unrestricted way. We have to accept some risk to avert catastrophe. Nuclear is not a long term solution or the answer to all our problems, but it will form part of the stopgap solution in the medium term... renewables alone are incapable of coming anywhere near filling the energy shortage yet, so a combination of some nuclear power and continued investment in renewable energy technology and infrastructure is probably a good idea. Combined with reducing demand and greater fuel efficiency, we might - just might - manage to avoid catastrophic climate change. Well, it looks like inuclear is inevitably going to happen anyway. It's not ideal, but it's better than the alternative...
Currently we generate ~25% from gas and ~35% from coal to meet our energy needs, the foremost will need to be replaced in 10-15 years if costs aren't to increase exponentially, and coal is only a short term sollution. As Jonny says, the price of nuclear fuel has increased dramaticly over the last decade, yet we will have to strike a balance between this and renewable energy. And Sea Breeze, as you say Scottland has vast wind resources, so nuclear should not be needed. They wouldn't build a nuclear station there to meet the South England demand as there would be vast network losses transporting the energy
Just heard Mr Tony on the news saying nuclear power is essential to reduce carbon emissions and reach our climate change targets. You'd think he'd be keen for everyone else to go nuclear, but I've not heard any criticism from him of the US/Japan deal with North Korea to close down their main nuclear reactor in exchange for fuel aid in the form of up to one million tonnes of oil.
well lets see with global warming we will have sea level rise and most nuclear plants are on the present coast line, building more of them is just digging us in a bigger hole. Then the mining of uranium is more harmful to miners than just about any other type of mining . The mining of uranium is very oil intensive will we be able to mine the stuff in the future with much less oil . we dont know what to do with nuclear waste now when we are rich and have plenty of raw materials and energy , what hope will we have in the future. Now most importantly it takes quite a while to make nuclear powerstations and if lots of countrys start using nuclear power or to increase the amount they use, useable uranium is going to get very scarce . Eventually we will have to go to system of totally renewables and using a drastically smaller amount of electricity . you have two things happening resource depletion and global warming both of these things should push us in this direction , but sadly we dont seem to have got the message .
Is there a big Nuke near Blackpool ? How about purchasing electricty from Nuclear France ? The State of New York purchases lots of juice from Quebec.
I think we already get some electricity from france not sure about whats near blackpool . And the thing is I dont like nuclear power but I dont think its going to help the situation we face even if I liked it I wouldnt think that . when you look at nuclear you need to look at the long term picture because the waste will need to be looked after far into the future , you also should look at the fact that we are able to run the system now with other fossil fuels, would we be able to run a nuclear system without cheap oil and gas and coal . we can be sure that with rising sea levels some of our nuclear stations or dumps will leak do we really need to build more . Even if we have nuclear power it wont be able to replace oil, you can run some electric cars but not that many you cant make paints or plastics out of it . Anyway Im sure that plants will be attempted to be built but its going in the wrong direction . what we should do is accept that we are heading for a much different lifestyle where we are forced to use far less energy, this doesnt mean the same lifestyle we have now but with low energy lightbulbs . Green organisations should stop opposing windfarms and maybe things like the seven barrage we need to look radically at the things that we manufacture , we should look at redesigning much of our housing stock, because we will be unable to heat most modern houses yet we are still making lots of these houses . At the present we can do lots of things but we are doing nothing , things like cement and concrete are energy intensive to make and transport so if we were wise we would make them now while we still have the energy, or in the near future we are going to be very cold
