could anyone help me about nuclear power stations?

Question

helloo all im writing an essay about if the uk needs new nuclear power stations. if any of you know any information are no any websites about the issue then please could you reply to my question. im 15 so nothing to tequnical thanks lol. looovveee youuuu xxxxxxxxxx

Answer 1

The UK is becoming bound by increasingly tight internationally agreed targets on carbon (in the form of CO2) emissions into the atmosphere. There is also the question of price and security of supply of fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas). Whilst expansion of renewable sources of electric power such as wind, tidal, solar, hydro and bio fuels is desirable the rate at which they can be expanded is limited (one problem for example is that the wind does not blow all the time and ways of storing power are limited). Some existing nuclear power stations are coming to the end of their life. It does seem that there is a gap which must be filled with nuclear if the UK is to meet its commitments on limiting carbon emissions. One issue is safe disposal of radioactive waste but industry proponents argue that this problem has to be solved for existing waste and that new power stations do not add much to the costs of a problem that will be solved.

Answer 2

Nuclear potential is the way forward so some distance as I see it, it incredibly is the only capability source that could meet Britain's capability desires, supplies no carbon emmisions and is sustainable in the long term. In my recommendations the nuclear marketplace has a bad popularity it would not deserve. Chernobyl replaced right into a freak incident in a badly run soviet potential station and the priority with nuclear waste has been sterotyped. there is an entire marketplace outfitted around disposing nuclear waste and Britain is incredibly on the heart of it, taking in waste from different international places in any case. i think of the hot era of potential stations could be outfitted in a similar components as their predecessors. The communities there are already used to the marketplace and adapted to it. those positions have been additionally chosen for good reasons final time, mutually with being on the factor of the coast and to the water it incredibly is mandatory for cooling. The community economies are reliant on the marketplace staying there. I stay in West Cumbria, no longer all that some distance from the Sellafield internet site. Alot of persons i understand are employed there however the plant is winding down and being decommisioned. The decommisioning will final for years so it incredibly is no longer a quick term situation yet in the long term it would be a disaster for the section if the marketplace moved someplace else.

Answer 3

Sellafield is about the only viable site to store nuclear waste and the site is already very contaminated. Until an answer is found for disposal of nuclear waste don't think people in the UK will accept nuclear. We need to do more research into wave power and other types of renewable energy rather than risk contaminating any more of our country with waste from nuclear power plants. Already parts of the country are still contaminated by the Chernobyl accident of 1986

Answer 4

As simply as possible.

The use of fossil fuels to produce electric power has become a world-wide headache because of global warming due to the production of greenhouse gases.

(Electricity production is only a part of the problem, all industries using fossil fuels together with transport vehicles .. motor vehicles of all kinds, jet planes and many more are contributing to the problem).

Using nuclear energy to produce electricity, is a much cleaner method....

The heat energy from the atomic fission (splitting) of Uranium 235 is utilised in the production of high pressure steam.

This steam is superheated to a very high temperature to ensure that no water droplets remain in it.
(Water in steam is very damaging to equipment by erosion and corrosion)..
The steam is then used to drive large, powerful turbines that drive electricity generators.

The electricity produced is fed into the 'grid' that supplies the country's electrical power.

The advantage of using nuclear energy for this kind of purpose is that, there is no carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced because no fossil fuel is used.

Disadvantages are: The running costs of producing the Uranium fuel and of the power station itself. There is also the problem of nuclear waste.

Answer 5

try typing in "nuclear power" in google

Answer 6

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/talking_point/4340454.stm

Wednesday, 19 October 2005, 14:53 GMT 15:53 UK
Does the UK need more nuclear power?
Should the British government commission a new generation of nuclear reactors?
The UK relies on nuclear power for 20% of electricity, yet all but one of its nuclear power stations are set to close by 2023.
With ambitious targets on combating climate change, rising gas and oil prices and dwindling domestic supplies of fossil fuels, many argue nuclear power has to be part of the future "energy mix".
Prime Minister Tony Blair has said all options "including civil nuclear power" should be considered, and called for an "open-minded" debate on the issue.
http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/issues/fossil_fuels/index.html


Fossil fuels and nuclear
Energy is much cleaner that it used to be. But nuclear and burning fossil fuels cause problems of their own.
Carbon dinosaurs
The UK's biggest source of carbon dioxide (CO2) is burning fossil fuels - like coal, gas and oil - in power stations.

Old coal fired power stations produce more dangerous C02 than gas ones.
In the 1990s, our emissions fell as electricity companies switched from coal to gas. This trend has reversed as gas prices have risen making coal more economic.
Did you know?
German utility company - RWE - which owns power stations in the UK - produces more C02 in a year than the whole of Spain.
Innogy
Why aren't big energy companies - like Shell - doing more?
Nuclear power - the end?
Some argue nuclear power is a solution to climate change.

Nuclear Power is dangerous and expensive because:
oSecurity threats
Power stations could be terrorist targets.
oToxic waste
Pollutes environment. Waste needs careful management for generations.
oGlobal proliferation
Availability of deadly materials increased.
Friends of the Earth research has shown we don't need nuclear reactors to stop climate change.
There is a safer, cheaper and cleaner solution to the problem of climate change - green energy.
http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/issues/green_energy/index.html
Green energy
Natural forms of energy surround us - and they can be used to power our vehicles, homes and business.
Renewable energy
Examples of renewable energy sources include:
oSolar
Converting the Sun's energy into electricity and heat.
oWind
Electricity from wind energy
oHydroelectric
Energy in flowing water is harnessed
oBiomass
Natural materials, like wood, are burnt or turned into gas to provide energy.
They are:
oclean and won't cause climate change
osafe - unlike nuclear power
owon't run out - unlike oil, gas and coal
- and there's a vast resource that's largely untapped.
Did you know?
The UK has, in the form of wind power, the largest renewable energy resource in Europe
British Wind Energy Association
Investing for the future
What's more, the more renewable energy we use the cheaper it will become.
But the UK Government's record on helping new green technologies is patchy:
Renewable energy Support?
ElectricityGood
Transport fuelsPoor
HeatingPoor
Energy efficiency - more from less
Using less energy will also help stop climate change. It's also very cost effective. But it's not the complete answer.
Friends of the Earth says:
oEnergy companies should change to make money from selling us less energy not more.
It's time the Government and businesses took action to make the switch from polluting fossil fuels. You can help too!

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/why_nuclear_power_is_not_t_28092005.html
Why nuclear power is not the answer
Sep 28 2005
Following the Prime Minister's announcement at the Labour Party Conference that nuclear power must be considered as a way of tackling climate change, Friends of the Earth spelt out why it is not the solution.
oThere are more cost effective and far safer ways to reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions - the UK has a significant renewable energy resources.
oThe Government could show global leadership on developing renewable resources, rather than promoting nuclear power which would increase the risk of nuclear weapon proliferation around the world
oNuclear power is expensive and has consistently proved more expensive than industry claims. In 2003, the Cabinet Office estimated that nuclear power would cost more per KWh than either on-shore or off-shore wind.
oNuclear power does not necessarily offer substantial reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed doubling nuclear power generation in the UK would cut our carbon dioxide emissions by no more than eight per cent.
oNuclear power would not make the UK self-sufficient in energy so will not guarantee security of supply. It won't replace gas, which we will increasingly get from Norway and the Netherlands. Nor will it replace oil, with much of our imports coming from Norway. We have significant renewable sources, including biomass, with which we can produce all our electricity.
oNuclear power creates nuclear waste which poses a threat to public safety for generations to come because no solution has been found for its disposal. Management of the waste is also expensive.
oNuclear energy only produces electricity and will not replace petrol or diesel as a fuel for cars, lorries, ships and planes - road transport is currently the source of around 22 per cent of UK carbon dioxide emissions, and aviation is the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions
oNuclear power will not replace gas for heating our homes and for business - natural gas currently accounts for 33 per cent of our total final energy use [1].
oNuclear energy will not meet our short-term energy needs. Even if give the go-ahead, according to the nuclear industry, new nuclear power stations would not come on-line for an estimated 10-15 years [2].
oNuclear power has a poor safety record and is a potential target for terrorists.
Friends of the Earth Executive Director Tony Juniper said:
"Nuclear power is not a solution to climate change. It could only ever provide for a tiny proportion of our energy needs and this would be at great cost to the taxpayer, the environment and would pose a threat to the safety of the public. Clean technologies are available and they need the Government's support. Tony Blair must stop talking to the nuclear lobby and speed up investment low -carbon, renewable and efficient energy technologies."
Friends of the Earth's Big Ask campaign is calling on the UK Government to set legally binding targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions by three per cent each year.
http://www.nuclearpowernothanks.org/
Myths and Facts
Twelve reasons why nuclear power is not a solution to our energy needs
1.Reducing demand, energy efficiency and renewable technologies are sustainable, safe, non-nuclear solutions to climate change
2.Nuclear power is not a solution to the energy gap from 2010-2020
3.The national grid and base load: their implications for nuclear power and renewables
4.Nuclear power is very expensive
5.The financial costs of nuclear power do not compare well to other non-nuclear options
6.Nuclear power carries ‘hidden’ financial costs to the taxpayer: subsidies and government support
7.Nuclear power is not good for jobs or the UK economy
8.Nuclear waste is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years and no-one know what to do with it
9.There is nowhere safe: new nuclear reactor designs and where to build them
10.Nuclear power is deeply dangerous as shown by the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and other nuclear incidents
11.Nuclear power stations and waste dumps make ideal targets for terrorist attack
12.Nuclear power and nuclear weapons go together: new power stations will encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world
Nuclear power is not the solution to climate change
•In 2003 the government believed we could reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050 without nuclear power. Patricia Hewitt (Sec of State for Trade and Industry) said “If we achieve a step change in both energy efficiency and renewables we will be able to move beyond 2020 to 2050 without the need for a generation of nuclear power stations.”1 Nothing has changed since then.
•Even if 10 new nuclear power stations were built, they would only reduce total carbon emissions by about 5%. This is because only 30% of emissions come from electricity generation – another 60% come from transport, industry, homes, waste and agriculture. Nuclear has no effect on these at all.
•Building new nuclear power stations takes a long time – even the first would not be up and running until 2018. We can’t afford to wait that long (especially for such a tiny saving of carbon emissions). Emissions need to be cut now.
•Nuclear is not carbon neutral. Mining, processing and transporting uranium ore for fuel all produce carbon emissions (7% of Australia’s carbon emissions come from its uranium mining), as do the building and decommissioning of nuclear power stations, production and enrichment of fuel and the treatment, transport and containment of nuclear waste which has to be kept for hundreds of thousands of years. As high grade uranium ores run out (which will happen within the next 50 years) the amount of carbon dioxide generated to support nuclear power production will increase massively.
•Support for nuclear undermines the real solutions to climate change. Patricia Hewitt 2003: "It would have been foolish to announce... that we would embark on a new generation of nuclear power stations because that would have guaranteed that we would not make the necessary investment in both energy efficiency and renewables. That is why we are not going to build a new generation of nuclear power stations now."2 To ensure we deal with climate change we need to change the way we generate and use energy now. Waiting for nuclear in 15-20 years time will be too late, and will keep the focus on electricity instead of addressing all carbon emissions. Already this government is watering down targets for energy efficiency and renewables.
Reducing demand, energy efficiency and renewable technologies are sustainable, safe, non-nuclear solutions to climate change
•In its energy review3 in 2003 the government itself identified ways of achieving a 30% reduction in energy demand. In fact, energy efficiency could reduce UK emissions by 40% by 2050 and a further 20% cut could be achieved through proven and safe technologies like wind, solar and combined heat and power programmes.
•Woking Borough Council has cut its carbon emissions by 70% through energy efficiency, combined heat and power and renewables operating through private grid networks.4
•Paying to put in place energy efficiency measures is a permanent way to reduce demand for energy. At least twice (and maybe seven times)as much carbon dioxide can be saved through energy efficiency than nuclear power for the same cost – and the efficiency savings are permanent.5
•If 25% of central heating boilers were replaced with Combined Heat and Power units over the next 15 years, they would provide the equivalent of 6 new nuclear power stations worth of energy.6
•Policies the government could/should implement which would reduce demand, increase efficiency and encourage renewables include: improving public transport, reducing car use and tackling the growth in air travel, reducing food miles; making old buildings more energy efficient and ensuring that new build is carbon neutral; increasing micro-generation and local generation from renewables and decreasing reliance on the national grid, and building more efficient power stations for example Combined Heat and Power.
Nuclear power is not a solution to the energy gap from 2010-2020
•If the government does go for nuclear, the earliest power stations won’t be operational until 2018, which is too late to deal with any energy gap. However, with renewables, efficiency and demand reduction and gas, there is no gap. The problem is the government implementing these measures while spending its money and energy on new nuclear build.
The national grid and base load: their implications for nuclear power and renewables
•The national grid favours a centralised market dominated by a few big companies. This means that it undermines more energy- and carbon-efficient, smaller-scale technologies by failing to accommodate their input.
•Decentralised generation is generated where it is used, increasing its efficiency. It can also put surplus energy back into the national grid – but only if the grid is upgraded and adapted to accept it. Adaptation would cost less than 5% of the £56 billion the government is going to have to spend decommissioning our current nuclear power generation system.
•Since nuclear power stations are inflexible and can only run at maximum, they can only provide what is called the base load of a centralised power system. In a more flexible national grid the base load could be provided by tidal power and biomass energy, which can be stored and used when needed.
Nuclear power is very expensive
•It is always cheaper to save energy than to generate more,7 and according to the Rocky Mountain Institute, every pound invested in efficiency displaces nearly seven times as much carbon dioxide as a pound invested in nuclear power.8
•The start-up costs (research and building) for a nuclear power station are enormous: the cost of developing a ‘first-of-a-kind’ nuclear power station (so far AP1000s are being proposed and they haven’t been built before) is about £250 million. Building additional nuclear power stations after that would cost about £100 million each.9
•The track record of the nuclear industry in completing to time and budget is poor. For example, the last nuclear power station to be built in the UK was Sizewell, and during its planning and building its capital costs doubled.10 The THORP nuclear waste reprocessing plant at Sellafield was a new design. It was supposed to cost £300 million but eventually the bill reached £2.8 billion (i.e. ten times as much). And it started up in 1994 rather than 1987, as planned.
•Radioactive waste (which includes the power stations themselves once they are decommissioned), must be stored, looked after and guarded against terrorism for thousands of years. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority estimates that £56bn will have to be spent cleaning up the existing 20 sites.11
•It is estimated that the cost of providing security against terrorism for nuclear power plants is around £50 million per year.12
The financial costs of nuclear power do not compare well to other non-nuclear options
•The Government concluded before the 2003 Energy White Paper that technologies such as wind and biomass are potentially the most cost-effective ways of limiting carbon emissions in the UK.
•Even the World Nuclear Organisation concedes that when the external costs of various fuel cycles are included, the cost of wind power is already up to four times cheaper than nuclear power.13
•Nuclear power is 300 times less efficient at lowering its costs than renewables. It is a mature technology, and therefore unlikely to become much cheaper. It cannot lower its costs through mass production of identical units, unlike renewables which are flexible and can be adapted to fill a range of markets.
•Renewables need up-front subsidy for research and development, and policy to stimulate markets. They can then become even more competitive within a short space of time and attract investment.
•
Nuclear power carries ‘hidden’ financial costs to the taxpayer: subsidies and government support
•In all the countries where new nuclear power stations are being built, the government is either paying for it completely, or providing heavy financial support.
•Costs of nuclear power that governments invariably end up paying for include insurance, licensing, safety, security, decontamination and waste management.
•The up-front (research and building) and back-end (waste disposal and eventual decommissioning) costs of nuclear power are very high. Therefore to make nuclear power economic, there has to be a guarantee that the electricity generated by it holds a certain percentage of the market to pay back its costs over the power station’s life. If the price of electricity drops too low, as happened in the UK in 2002, nuclear-generated power cannot compete. As a result, in 2002 the UK government gave British Energy (the privatised part of the nuclear industry) a £650 million credit facility and took on additional liability for up to £5 billion of their waste and decommissioning costs.
•The government also insures against unlimited costs in the event of a nuclear accident. Up to 1998, the Ukraine estimated it had lost between $120 and $130 billion because of the Chernobyl accident a decade earlier. Belarus estimated its economic loss at $35 billion.14 When there is nuclear power, local authorities, the health services, emergency services, police and military all have to be prepared for nuclear accidents and terrorist attacks.
Nuclear power is not good for jobs or the UK economy
•Nuclear power is one of the least labour-intensive methods of energy production. It provides around 75 jobs per year/TWh15 compared with over 3,000 for bioenergy, 250 for hydropower, and 1000-2000 for wind.16 In addition to this, the government is currently selling most of the UK’s nuclear companies abroad, so many of the jobs in the industry will be going overseas. For example, the UK Atomic Energy Authority is contracting decommissioning and clean-up work to US companies.
•New UK nuclear power stations would almost certainly be built by overseas companies: Finland’s new nuclear plant is a French-German 'evolutionary' pressure water reactor being built by France's Framatome and its turbine hall by Germany's Siemens.
Nuclear waste is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years and no-one know what to do with it
•At the moment the government has no clearly defined policy on how to manage and store existing or future nuclear waste, or the standards of clean up required for nuclear sites after decommissioning. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has said that new nuclear construction should not go ahead until this problem has been resolved.
•A new generation of 10 nuclear power stations would produce four times as much high level waste in the form of spent fuel as already exists.
•Most of the intermediate and high-level nuclear waste is currently stored at Sellafield in Cumbria, but only 10% of this is ready for longterm storage. The rest has yet to be conditioned and packaged. The government Committee on Radioactive Waste Management is due to report on management options for high level nuclear waste in July 2006, but not where facilities might be sited.
•Low level waste currently goes to Drigg in Cumbria. However, it is expected that Drigg will be full by 2050 and there are no plans yet about where a new low level waste dump should be. The waste from decommissioning our current nuclear power stations will fill another 15 facilities the size of Drigg (and this is before dealing with the waste from a new generation of nuclear power stations) but official waste options are not yet taking this 50-fold increase into account.
•Stored nuclear wastes are presently “poorly characterised” (we don’t know their physical, chemical or radioactive properties), have the potential to leak, and are stored in degraded conditions. At some point in the next few thousand years they are bound to leak, and they need to be stored and looked after in such a way that it is ensured the radioactivity doesn’t get anywhere dangerous when that happens.
•Each nuclear power station runs about one nuclear train carrying a flask of nuclear waste to Sellafield each week. Sometimes such flasks are kept in goods yards or siding for some hours waiting for crew changes or other flasks to come in, or commuter traffic to subside.17
There is nowhere safe: new nuclear reactor designs and where to build them
•In order to use air for final heat dissipation, the new reactors have a hole in the reactor dome. This means that there is a layer less to protect the reactor from terrorist attack, or to prevent the escape of radioactivity in the event of an accident.
•They also have a “passive” safety system which cuts out operator error. Unfortunately it also prevents operators from taking action if an unforeseen emergency occurs.
•Sea level rise and coastal erosion are already threatening many nuclear power stations as well as the waste dumps at Sellafield and Drigg. Given climate change, it is unlikely that even artificial sea defences would be sufficient to protect new nuclear power stations from these threats, especially as nuclear waste remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
•The problem with inland areas is lack of access to enough water for cooling – in France in 2005 the drought meant that some nuclear power stations built inland had to be turned off as the rivers ran too low to provide sufficient water to cool them.
•For the nuclear industry to agree to invest in new power stations, it will require guarantees that timescales will not be stretched by long and costly planning inquiries. The industry would like to claim that all safety and environmental issues have been resolved before going to local planning inquiries for new power stations, thereby by-passing public consultation and debate. The government is considering issuing pre-licensing of nuclear power stations as part of the energy review in order to provide this support.
Nuclear power is deeply dangerous as shown by the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and other nuclear incidents
•The US department of the Environment calculated that there would be 40,000 deaths worldwide as a result of Chernobyl.18
•Other agencies put the eventual death toll at up to 6 million 19 20
•In the Ukraine about 5 million people were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation and the health ministry estimates that 3.5 million have suffered illness as a result.21
•Contaminated milk was destroyed in huge quantities in Poland, Hungary, Austria and Sweden, and farms in Cumbria, Wales and Scotland are still monitored for radiation as a result of the fall out from Chernobyl.
•The area around Chernobyl still has a 30km exclusion zone.
•In Belarus, the country most affected, birth defects have doubled,22 about 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, mainly in children, have resulted, and children have a life expectancy of around 40 years.23
•In the Ukraine, 50% of men between 13 and 29 have fertility problems (the highest rate in the world) and the Ukraine and Belarus are the only two countries in Europe with falling populations ? this is partly because of child mortality and health problems stemming from Chernobyl.24
•The THORP reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria has been closed since April 2005 when a massive internal leak of 83 cubic meters of uranium, plutonium and nitric acid was discovered. A way of cleaning up the leak has yet to be devised.
Nuclear power stations and waste dumps make ideal targets for terrorist attack
•Nuclear reactors are not designed to withstand a large fuel-filled plane flying into them. A big nuclear accident could be 20 times worse than Chernobyl was. Do we really want to build all these extra terrorist targets?
•Waste stores, nuclear trains and fuel transporters are even more vulnerable to attack. Nuclear power plants also harbour radioactive materials in spent fuel ponds, which are often in more vulnerable buildings than the reactors themselves.
•A smoke plume from an explosion at Sellafield which released 17% of the high level waste in tanks, or less than 1% of the plutonium stored there, would be 10 times as devastating as Chernobyl.23
•Much of the nuclear fuels and waste produced for and by the nuclear industry is suitable for making nuclear weapons – either warheads or dirty bombs.
•Material unaccounted for in 2005 at Sellafield amounted to enough plutonium for 7 or 8 nuclear bombs.24 Sellafield say this is a problem with the accounting, not a real physical loss, but with such large accounting losses how can we tell if material is stolen?
Nuclear power and nuclear weapons go together: new power stations will encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world
•The UK has some of the best wind and wave resources in the world. If we chose to use nuclear power, the rest of the world is less likely to turn to renewable energy and more likely to turn to nuclear electricity production.
•At the moment the UK exports nuclear power production technology. By ceasing these exports and refusing to replace its current nuclear power stations when they are decommissioned, the UK could send a message to the rest of the world that the risks of proliferation and accidents associated with nuclear power are unacceptable.
•Nuclear power stations produce quantities of plutonium and uranium which have to be stored for hundreds of thousands of years. Nuclear waste can also be reprocessed to produce plutonium. Facilities where such waste is stored can be stolen from and keeping track of such waste for such a timescale is almost impossible.
•The processing of uranium to make nuclear fuel also produces depleted uranium which can be used in weapons. Depleted uranium is radioactive and has devastating health effects.
•To make the fuel for nuclear power stations, uranium ore is enriched to 3%. If a country has the technology for enrichment, then it can use it to enrich uranium to 90% for use in nuclear weapons. This is why there is so much concern around Iran at the moment.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.htm
The Economics of Nuclear Power
(February 2007)
•Nuclear power is cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation, except where there is direct access to low-cost fossil fuels.
•Fuel costs for nuclear plants are a minor proportion of total generating costs, though capital costs are greater than those for coal-fired plants.
•In assessing the cost competitiveness of nuclear energy, decommissioning and waste disposal costs are taken into account.
The relative costs of generating electricity from coal, gas and nuclear plants vary considerably depending on location. Coal is, and will probably remain, economically attractive in countries such as China, the USA and Australia with abundant and accessible domestic coal resources as long as carbon emissions are cost-free. Gas is also competitive for base-load power in many places, particularly using combined-cycle plants, though rising gas prices have removed much of the advantage.
Nuclear energy is, in many places, competitive with fossil fuel for electricity generation, despite relatively high capital costs and the need to internalise all waste disposal and decommissioning costs. If the social, health and environmental costs of fossil fuels are also taken into account, nuclear is outstanding.