taking account of decommissioning waste disposal and Chernobyl are nuclear power stations a good solution?

Answer 1

Chernobyl is an old design with many flaws (including in how people handled it) that have now been resolved. However there is always potential for a problem. Although I am not pro-nuclear it is reassuring that the nuclear industry is strictly regulated, especially compared to the chemicals industry that no one cares about. The word nuclear inspires fear in people (because of its association with weapons and disasters like Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island and Windscale).

The waste is a serious problem. Every nuclear power station will have to be decommissioned, this means taking it apart and dealing with the wastes. If you send in people or trucks to deal with this they can get contaminated, and things like protective clothing, gloves and equipment also become waste, and that has to be dealt with too.

In the UK there is a little high level waste (hot and dangerous), more intermediate level waste (still quite dangerous) and a lot of low level waste (not very dangerous but still has to be looked after). There is also the fuel.

The UK government and some organisations are discussing how the waste is to be managed at the moment. The current power stations (so not including any new ones to be built) will take years to decommission. In the next 50 years or so we will probably have some sort of underground facility to care for the high and intermediate waste in. As some of the waste will be dangerous for a million years, this is a long term problem.

The questions to ask are whether is is right to continue to produce waste which cannot be got rid of. Someone either in the future or in another part of the country will have to take on all this waste. There's already quite enough, so now we know how difficult it is to deal with, is it fair to make more. Although technically it is possible to dispose safely of the waste, it is hard to actually find a community willing to take it.

There are other solutions to global warming, which require investment. Personally I prefer these other solutions, although all need to be compared on the basis of the same information (people often try to compare apples and oranges). In the short term however it might be necessary to use nuclear power. The best solution would be if everyone cut their use of power!

I'll recommend some sites for further information, but remember that this is a highly political area. Assess information yourself, don't just believe everything you read.

Committee on Radioactive Waste Management www.corwm.org.uk
Nirex www.nirex.co.uk
NWMO www.nwmo.ca
Sustainable Development Commission www.sd-commission.org.uk

Answer 2

It is the only realistic solution. The design of the reactor at Chernobyl was inherently flawed. Even when it was designed 50 years ago, it would never have been allowed to leave the drawing board in Great Britain. The problem we have lies in the fact that for so many people the very word "nuclear", has a stigma attached to it. Many people ,erroneously associate it with thermonuclear weapons and until we can change peoples attitude away from this misguided way of thinking there will always be a problem getting people to understand and accept what is actually a superb and super-efficient method of generating electricity. If somebody were to come up with a really good design for a viable fusion reactor,(which is perfectly feasible),then we'd have the potential for virtually unlimited, safe, clean and dirt cheap electricity.

Answer 3

While decomissioning waste is a problem, research is always ongoing, and someday may remedy it.

Chernobyl was an accident caused by irresponsible and undereducated plant operators. If a nuclear plant is operated properly and run by the highly educated people that already do run them there is minimal risk of a Chernobyl like incident.

Nuclear power is a clean, and highly powerful energy source, that if harnessed properly could remove the need for coal burning plants and other such environmentally unsound energy sources. France currently derives 70 or so percent of all the country's power from nuclear, and they have never had issues anywhere near Chernobyl.

All in all, nuclear power is and should be a highly desirable replacement source for energy as we move into the future.

Answer 4

When the US Navy decommissions a nuclear submarine, they cut out the reactor section whole and ship it to an underground burial site in the state of Washington.

The question of plant decommissioning is the major issue to need a technical resolution. Reactor waste disposal itself has already been solved technically, its merely awaiting political resolution.

Chernobyl is an apples vs. oranges issue....it is basically a large scale version of the original squash court atomic pile built in 1942 and commercial reactors in the USA (and probably France) do not use that obsolete design.

A new design called the Pebble Bed reactor (being) built in South Africa does not even need cooling pumps to safely shut down in the event of an emergency, it can be safely cooled down by mere convention if everything else fails.

Answer 5

There is another factor to take into account and that is insurability. Unlike other public utilities nuclear power generation has no public liability in the event of an unintended event. That is, it is not insured.
Considering that you cannot take a car on the road without third party insurance BNF gets away with it because it is primarily a strategic supplier for the arms industry. Ask your MP about it, you will get a blank look. A pro-nuclear person once informed me that wind farms were vulnerable to attack by terrorists!
As regards Chernobyl there are official denials as to number of people killed deformed displaced etc.
IMHO to use nuclear physics to boil water to drive a turbine is a bit OTT .

Answer 6

Yes one of the worlds greatest man created powers available to us. If plants are built correctly one of the safest fuel sources you will find and clean.
It would have been great if nuclear fission was created for good and not destruction.

Answer 7

20 years ago I would have (and did say) NO! Today my opinion has changed due to the carbon emission issue. For the next 30-40 years (that's the next generation expected life time) then we would be better of having them, helping to bridge the gap to enable us to reach Fusion reactors without banging out millions more tonnes of CO2.

Answer 8

they have a reasonably good safety record, are one of the cleaner methods of generating electricity and can provide all the power we need.

however all it takes is 1 accident for things to go very wrong indeed and accidents will always happen.

Answer 9

eventually we will use up the earths natural resources &there will only be nucerler left what needs develerping is a safe way of nutralizing the toxic waste