Tony Blair is trying to go nuclear despite the fact that it could cause mass loss of life and mutation - Why?

Question

Tony Blair is supposed to be a strict christian and christians see themselves as the stewards of the earth. tony blair is trying to go nuclear despite the fact that it could cause widespread illness and enviromental damage. The other thing is some people claim that nuclear power plants aren't as safe as governments say they are - surely tony blair wouldn't risk a nuclear disaster - we already know the results of that.

Answer 1

My, My, such bitterness. You people do all realize that the world is far more afraid and offended by Bush and Cheney than Blair, don't you?

ANYWAYS, ignoring the waste of nuclear power (Don't worry, I'll address that too.) There actually isn't that much of a problem with nuclear power. There is DEFINITLY no disease, mutation, or environmental damage from the energy, just the waste. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were mistakes. Chernobyl occured because the Russians decided to do something very stupid and test how their safety oerameters? worked. How did they do this? They turned them off. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Three Mile Island however, while there was a problem, was CONTAINED. There was no damage done. On top of that, after these occurences, safety was tripled, so there is actually very little to fear from the plants themselves.

The problem, as most people know, is the waste. America is currently trying to create a permanent "warehouse" by hollowing out some mountain or another in Arizona I think. Starts with a T I believe, I just can't remember. Anyways, I don't necessarily support this, as radioactive materials can still be leaked into ground water and contaminate the ground water. Normally toxic waste is stored on site in pools. As you can understand, this isn't a viable long term option.

France however has an interesting plant know as a "Breeder". They take the cast off uranium and the byproduct plutonium, and reuses it. This is actually rather a good idea as, there is more usable plutonium created from what uranium is used, so in effect they're created EXTRA fuel. It's working quite well so far, and Japan is looking into trying it out. The other countries of the world simply cast off the plutonium and then worry about it, because some of it IS weapon Grade.

I'm not necessarily advocating nuclear power, I'm simply stating the facts...

Answer 2

There's no 'could' about it, they can't dispose of the waste they've already produced and they've lost a couple of pounds of plutonium.
Originally nuclear energy promised electricity so cheap they wouldn't bother to meter it, we'd just pay a flat fee depending on how many people lived in the house. They said that science would solve the disposal problem by the year 2000.
After 911 they said that nuclear facilities were obvious targets and yet now that doesn't seem to be the case.
All of the available water in the world and all of the air is contaminated with man made radiation, and not just from Chernobyl.
For some reason companies are still allowed to pollute with dioxins and radiation, and we're supposed to pretend that there can be safe and acceptable levels of emissions.
All this after only 50 years. The whole thing is a ridiculous farce.
While some Christians interpret the Bible as meaning 'stewardship and caretaking', others interpret the meaning as 'dominion or domination'.

Answer 3

Where is the reality here?

Greenpeace and the greens keep trying to say chernoble killed thousands and will kill many millions.

Most of the scientists and certainly all those pre-eminent in their field tell a different story.

When the motor car was invented it was seen as the work of the devil. As was the invention of almost every new technology in its day.

As it stands alternative energy cannot replace enough of the generating power that will be lost when oil and gas run out. Oil and gas will continue to pollute. Environmental change will accelerate and some scientists say that in a very few years the damage could be irreversible!

Nuclear power at present is the only technology likely to stop that.

If you think nuclear technology is so dangerous and kills so many how come the population of France is se nuclear stations till alive with all ththey have?

Look around the world any you will find it is not just big western countries with reactors many other countries do to - South Africa for example. Where are all the dying people there?

Nuclear waste has now been stored for years. Not one person has died from it and as far as I am aware no one has even got sick from it.

Nuclear fussion is being developed and if it can be made to work it will offer very cheap totally non poluting and non waste producing power on an immense scale. That sadly is many years down the line.

It is time to stop listening to pressure groups with an axe to grind. Perhaps we need an organsation to publish a magazine giving the truth from the eminent scientists in their fields. I have no doubt many would disagree with each other on many topics but it would at least be unbiased and allow us to form our own opinions.

The danger of listening to the current green groups is that if we accept they are right and as a consequence do the wrong thing it really is likely to make the situation a whole lot worse. Doctors do not operate on supposition and we aught to learn from that.

Answer 4

There are a lot of very smart people who think they can control the risks of nuclear power and they are advising governments such as Tony's. Tony is not a nuclear engineer so he doesn't know whether Nuclear power is safe or not so he has to rely on the advice he receives.

In my opinion the risks posed by nuclear power are unacceptable and the costs imposed by having to store nuclear waste for 10,000 years out weighs the relatively low up front cost. However I recognize that we face a very severe energy supply problem starting to form now. Peak Oil will destroy the world economy and send the world into a devastating depression unless alternative energy sources are found now.

Governments are faced with that dilemma: on the one hand we are facing a looming disaster from both global warming and peak oil so they know we need to get off fossil fuel ASAP; on the other hand they look at alternatives and see only nuclear power as a well developed option and most experts are telling them it is safer now - solar power looks attractive and is growing very fast but is still a very tiny industry and is generally opposed by corporate energy interests because they are concerned that solar will spell the end of their energy monopoly. Faced with that choice most governments are going to put a lot of support behind nuclear power.

If we are lucky there will be no more huge nuclear accidents and we will successfully contain the waste.

In the meantime solar is growing at 40% per year and accelerating. In less than a century we will get virtually all of our energy from renewable sources with solar being most of it. It is inevitable.

Answer 5

Tony Blair and other government members are pushing for nuclear because they need to - they have almost no alternatives. Oil prices have gone through the roof and Will be eventually depleted, while the plutonium supply will last for thousands of years before being depleted.

The other reason is carbon dioxide. Nuclear creates 100 times less carbon than coal and alot less than other fossil fuels. In the Kyoto Protocol, the UK government were too generous, and got it wrong.

Environmental do-gooders seem to be shrouded by the Chernobyl disaster. Modern nuclear technology and safety standards mean it is extremely unlikely these events will be repeated. Oil burning creates far more problems than nuclear in the form of carbon emissions. It is probably more likely that everyone on earth will die from global warming than from nuclear energy plants.

PS: If you have any questions about this answer, please email me.

Answer 6

Because British governments have always put economical, military and political priorities before moral, safety and environment ones.

Britain used to be a thick woodland, but it was used up to maintain the wooden fleet of the Royal Navy.

Tony wont be in power when the plants go into operations and surely he hopes to threatening Iran into stopping nuclear research in order to steal their uranium by paying them a tenth of what it cost.

Christianity has never been taken too seriously here.

SHANE: the problem is waste cannot be disposed safely. If they go nuclear there will be many times more than now. I have no questions but you only talk about the advantages.

Answer 7

Could... and the probability of that happening is, according to Dr. Lovelock (author of the Gaia theories) is 1 hundredth over 100.

Tony Blair is only right in going nuclear because, as the esteemed scientist said, it is an alternative source of energy we should take.

You should weigh both sides of the equation before concluding that nuclear energy is destructive... as a matter of fact there are much worse ways to destroy nature... nuclear energy is the lesser evil.

Answer 8

Nuclear power is generally safe, however there will be nuclear disasters, but even multiple incidents on the scale of chenobyl, will not cause the loss of life due to climate change. and we don't yet know how to deal safely with the waste for 1000s years.
And the US won't let anyone it doesn't like (and can bully) have nuclear power; Israel has already launched air-raids to destory arab nuclear powerstations

The problem is the option of reducing our ecological footprint to a sustainable level has been ignored by most people and business fixed on an unsustainable industrial growth model and life-style.

If people just turned off their pcs & TVs instead of leaving them on stand-by we could avoid building new nuclear power stations.

How many could christians "save" if they just turned off the floodlighting on their churches and turned their heating down?

Answer 9

The burning of fossil fuels has already done more damage to the earth and people than another major nuclear disaster would. The prime minister is looking beyond the obvious and is indeed looking after all of our and our kids and their kids best interest. You should go do some reading on affects of present and future climate change and you will see all 6+ billion of us (or rather our kids etc) ARE going to be affected. Other options such as wave & wind energy are just not up to providing your energy needs - yet.

Answer 10

This is not a Christian issue. The world will run out of oil, coal and gas within this century. So we have to look at finding suitable renewable alternatives, (and be less wasteful). Nuclear energy has many problems, but it deserves to be taken seriously, along with other renewable sources, such as wind, solar, tidal power etc.