HOW ON EARTH CAN ANYONE BELIEVE THAT THE BRITISH PUBLIC HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO KNOW THE RISKS ! ?

Environmental damage and loss of life from malfunction = potentially very high

Chances of malfunction = very low

That's the risk. Most people are happy with it.

Apart from Chernobyl, no nuclear workers or members of the public have ever died as a result of exposure to radiation due to a commercial nuclear reactor incident.

World Nuclear Association

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html

Compare that to coal:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053.600-fossil-fuels-are-far-deadlier-than-nuclear-power.html

1. 9000 people died from Chernobyl, but they don't make those types of reactor anymore.

2. Most deaths from nuclear are from the mining but coal mining deaths are much more considering greater mining operations.

3. From the above, fine particles from coal power plants kill 13,200 each year in the US alone.

No contest.

Glad to hear it.

If we are unable and/or unwilling to change our economy, and Industry and manufacturing continues to be the only priority, then nuclear power is entirely vital.

I would rather see renewables rolled out succesfully in an ideal world, but making fission safer as a stopgap until fusion is (hopefully) cracked is perhaps the best we can hope for.

Pleased to see we haven't kneejerked.

may have had a positive effect on public attitudes because, despite the severity of the crisis, no one has so far died.

This is why you get a figure of 41% of respondents agreeing the benefits of nuclear power outweighed the risks, the nuclear industry lies and distorts the truth. the effects of this nuclear disaster will be seen in the next few years, it was not a nuclear missile.

This survey seems a bit one sided anyway, why not ask the questions differently e.g.

The government is planning to spend billions of pounds on nuclear, do you think this a good idea?

Or

The nuclear industry produces tons of nuclear waste which is going to be extremely dangerous for thousands of years and costs billions just to keep 'relatively' safe.

Who would of thought that UK residents realise we live on one of the safest islands in the world when it comes to natural disasters. We don't have any volcanoes and we only have minor earthquakes and flooding. The triggers for the Fukushima disaster are almost impossible in this country.

popular...lol

@FrankLittle

Analyzing the first part of your comment, it is to do with surveys not scientific fact,
as per my comment above.

Because of this, then for this part of your comment: The government is planning to spend billions of pounds on nuclear, do you think this a good idea? - the answer is yes.

The nuclear industry produces tons of nuclear waste which is going to be extremely dangerous for thousands of years and costs billions just to keep "relatively" safe.

You are correct high level waste is extremely dangerous but considering the safety measures re being placed in tunnels/storage facilities in stable geological formations and then sealed, then there is no problem and cerainly none of "leakage" considering the placement locations.

I would also say the health costs for caring for millions affected by coal pollution are also "billions".

Bring it on! Create jobs and cut energy costs - build a more nuclear power stations and end the creeping blight of ineffective and expensive wind turbines and their iirational fundamentalist conspiracy theory supporters.

@everchanging

An EPR weighs 200,000 tonnes of which 180,000 tonnes is steel and concrete in its civil engineering, Anti-earthquake and tsunami measures will mean more of it. Steel can only be made (in bulk) from iron in a blast furnace with coke from a blend of anthracite and bituminous coal. Concrete building are mostly built with diesel-powered machinery. Scrap is added to electric furnaces with a sintered ore charge, but limited in supply.

So neither wind nor nuclear can be deployed without coal and a certain amount of oil, so we might as well just burn coal while it lasts. So arguing that there are fewer deaths from nuclear than coal is irrelevant.

The lasting problem of Chernobyl and Fukushima is the loss of habitable and productive land. After 25 years nuclear tourists are rushed through the Chernobyl exclusion zone but there is no incentive to return it to normal life. The evacuated people from the Fukushima zone have been told they will never return in their lifetimes.

Nuclear is simply not worth the risk.

everchanging
9 September 2011 8:17AM

Re waste -

Any idea why watse isn't dumped on the downside of a tectonic subduction zone?

The public are the last people who should be asked about the risks of nuclear - what qualifications do they have?

Remember - it's too cheap to meter and perfectly safe - what's not to like?

@FrankLittle suggests that the survey question should have been phrased "The government is planning to spend billions of pounds on nuclear, do you think this a good idea?"

Perhaps a more honest question would be:

"The government has the choice of spending billions on nuclear power, or substantially more billions on renewables to achieve emissions reductions objectives. Bear in mind that nuclear will produce reliable 24x7 electricity and renewables will not, so there will be further cost in backup up of those renewables. Do you favor nuclear?"

And a supplemental question of:

"How highly do you value keeping the lights on?"

Well, at least that's one victory for common sense among the public.

Now if only they could vote out the Tories too.

@SMOGBAD

HOW ON EARTH CAN ANYONE BELIEVE THAT THE BRITISH PUBLIC HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO KNOW THE RISKS ! ?

Here's a hint: making your point in moron capitals will not advance your argument.

As everchanging correctly points out, coal mining is much more dangerous than nuclear power. More people die mining coal in a week in China, than have died in any nuclear disaster to date. In fact, more people have died from hydroelectric power than from nuclear. When the Banqiao Dam in China gave way, 171,000 deaths resulted and 11 million people where displaced. The list goes on.

If Fukushima kills anywhere near that, then homeopathy must work, and the world will end in 2012. But of course, we have the usual juxtaposition of these dangerous energy projects involving many deaths from fossil fuels etc, but not a word is said, and when a single nuclear plant goes haywire, its kneejerk hysteria.

@Alok Jha

Scientists at the briefing discussed the future of nuclear power, arguing that thorium, rather than uranium, was the safer alternative fuel. Bob Cywinski, of the University of Huddersfield, said: "One tonne of thorium is equivalent to 200 tonnes of uranium and it doesn't need processing or enriching – 57 kilotonnes of thorium would provide the total energy need of the planet for a year, not just electricity but transport."

While true in itself, it is also true that fast spectrum uranium fueled reactors with fuel recycling would be similarly miserly in their fuel requirements and produce a waste stream of similar magnitude and nature. They are much further advanced in the R&D cycle. A full commercial scale demonstration GE-HITACHI PRISM based on the IFR program at the US Argonne National Labs could be built, commencing almost immediately.

Such a demonstration liquid fluoride thorium reactor is unlikely for a decade or more.

@Afteroil

You make very good points except that coal power stations also cannot be built without coal and a certain amount of oil - as you say.

But how do you counter the statistic fine particles from coal power plants kill 13,200 each year in the US alone and the associated health costs?

Having a majority of nuclear power stations over coal is clearly best, especially wrt the statistic no nuclear workers or members of the public have ever died as a result of exposure to radiation due to a commercial nuclear reactor incident

With a majority of nuclear over coal then the only health risks/deaths will be from carbon emissions to do with construction, uranium mining and practically no risks from emissions.
Coal will obviously have more health risks/deaths combined in these areas. And believe me, coal in is plentiful supply in the ground.

Finally have you not heard of global warming and coal stations? Try reading Professor James Hansen on this.

Some interesting comments here, interspersed with the usual mad rantings from the tin foil hat brigade.

Anyone with half a brain has already concluded that a proper analysis of costs/risks of nuclear vs other energy sources is of course hever going to be done in the public domain, and even if it was most of the public wouldn`t understand or appreciate the findings.

It seems pretty clear that nuclear is far from the perfect solution, but its completley necessary until we find something better.

Yes, it's still popular because people do not have the full facts. Nuclear waste will have to be looked after and guarded, probably by elite special forces, for the next 240,000 years, that being the nuclear half life decay cycle of plutonium.

Yes, on paper it looks like a viable option if we just look at present costs, but what if there was a nuclear accident? What then? We would probably have to evacuate all of Britain. As I said, give the people the full facts.

Would you give up plasma tv and dishwasher or accpet nuclear power and risk poisoning enviornment for a thousand years

public vote for tv and dishwashers.. no shock there

To be fair if we do not start to reduce carbon soon it probably won't matter a great deal as the worlds most stupid species with no preditor moves ever closer to destroying the ecosystem it depends on.

The accident at Fukushima in Japan in March this year seems to have had little overall impact on the UK public's confidence in nuclear power, according to a poll.

I very much doubt it would dilute the confidence of the British public's view on nuclear power. Why would it? The Fukushima disaster was down to a Tsunami (I know we all know this, bear with me) and the knock on effect was the disabling of the cooling function.

If the disaster had been down to a problem with the Mark I BWR containment units or the Standby Liquid Control System (SCLS) then we may have observed a drop in confidence.

@everchanging

By the end of the century when the temperature rise from global warming is thought to be the problem, there will be little fossil fuels left of any kind, so we have to work out what we can do with what's left to produce some sort of sustainability. At least the climate change problem will be self-resolving.

A certain amount of replacement will be possible from renewables, but not sufficient to maintain current lifestyles.

Certainly travel and movement of goods will be restricted, so we might as well get on with Pickle's Big Society and go for localisation. Local solar and wind power will make use of the existing distribution wires and we don't then need more national grid pylons or centralised nuclear stations.

See the now world-wide Transition Town movement for some answers to peak everything.

I find most of the responses in this thread deeply sad, and shows just how effective the nuclear lobbyists have been spreading their disinformation (the same lobbyists who have been working for the tobacco companies for years) - nuclear power will be too little (at best a few percent of our greeds), too late (the grid will start falling over way before it's onstream), and will cost far too much to ever do anywhere near safely/properly, and will require gobbets of government funding for millennia, starving real renewables of funding.
There's little doubt the schemes will start (the brown envelopes have been trousered), but I sincerely doubt they'll ever reach fruition - look at all the problems with the Finnish reactor, and then realise we'll be even worse at it! They'll be costly white elephants that'll do little but be a bottomless pit for funding...
And I've not even touched on the fact that we've never "cleared up" after the last lot, we should apply sound parenting "no, until you clean your hamster out, we won't think about having a puppy"

Fortunately the only place we're likely to get a new nuclear power station is in the imagination of George Monbiot and on some biased survey sheet from a desperate industry sponsored university department.
There's simply no money to build these travesties of engineering. The economics just do not add up. Gas is cheaper and plentiful and wind turbines are simple to build and get up and running quickly. Wind power has already surpassed nuclear power globally in electricity generation and solar technologies are expanding at an exponential rate.
The developing third world nuclear market only exists because these countries want nuclear weapons. Ask them if they want Thorium reactors and you'll be flogging a dead horse. Just like this article.

@Brosville

I find most of the responses in this thread deeply sad,

And I find you anti-nuclear position to be irrational, illogical and anti-science because it refuses to weigh up risk based on the scientific evidence, preferring instead to ascribe almost magical risk to nuclear. In the face of the essentially unbounded risk of unmitigated climate change, it is part of the problem.

and shows just how effective the nuclear lobbyists have been spreading their disinformation (the same lobbyists who have been working for the tobacco companies for years)

Offensive nonsense unsupported by evidence.

nuclear power will be too little (at best a few percent of our greeds)

Nuclear power supplies 21% of electricity in OECD countries. Nuclear and hydro are the only technologies than make any meaningful difference to emissions.

too late (the grid will start falling over way before it's onstream)

See above for punctuality. The grid is most likely to fall over due to difficulty in balancing intermittent renewables.

will cost far too much

The UK Climate Change Committee assesses nuclear as most likely the least expensive low emission technology. But what would they know eh?

the brown envelopes have been trousered

Tin foil hat stuff.

@Afteroil

I didn't know about the Transition Town idea - it looks really interesting.
You may also know that the UK Gov. is heavily promoting renewables. For instance, no planning permission is now needed for people to install solar PV, solar hot water, wind etc. at home. I am presently involved in a project to get this idea across to businesses and homes - it's taking off but slow.

But my point about nuclear is a larger issue to do with energy security in the UK and abroad. Before nuclear fusion comes onstream and beyond, a stable clean energy source will be needed in our new "climate-changed world". Massive cities simply cannot run off renewables alone.

This is encouraging. The guardian have been gleefully running stories to the effect that the world has turned its back on nuclear since the accident. To support this they've largely ran stories on countries which already had a clear anti nuclear agenda. In Germany anti nuclear zealotry runs rife and Italy has 20 years of anti nuclear policy (though unlike Germany they haven't made any significant renewable progress)

Let's hope we can follow France's successful example and get a long term sustainable, low carbon and secure electricity supply.

everchanging

9000 people died from Chernobyl, but they don't make those types of reactor anymore.

actually I think this is an upper level estimate. I think the provable death toll is about 60 and the number that unscear settle on as most likely (including future deaths ) is a conservative 4000. We could have a very long conversation about how uncertain the science is of finding a reasonable estimate for the chernobyl death toll though.

For fukushima no death toll seems to be the prediction.

Half life is 24 000 years for plutonium, this means it takes 24 000 years to become half as radioactive, It takes another 24 000 years to become half as radioactive again. so it takes 48 000 years to have 1/4, it would take 2 000 000 000 years to really decrease. life on earth is 4 000 000 000 years and humans have been here about 2 000 000 years.

One molecule of plutonium is enough to smash several human cells.
The human body takes up Plutonium in the same way as calcium and it does glue itself to our DNA.

The grid will fall over because it is desperate need of updating, and the inputs will never be able to keep up with the present lunacy of "Mackayism" whereby there is bog all being done about cutting consumption, and instead additionally loading up an already tottering system with such lunacies as air-source heat pumps and electric cars.
I note the usual sad "nuke company line" muttering about "dangers" whereas my main thrust had been on other practicalities

@Brosville

I note the usual sad "nuke company line" muttering about "dangers" whereas my main thrust had been on other practicalities

And I note the same offensive accusations, oft repeated but never justified. A convenient refuge from having to confront the evidence.

Surveys can be designed to say whatever the company paying for the survey wants it to. This smacks of twaddle. In all my acquaintances I know of only one supporter of nuclear power - and only because he's fanatically worried about green house gases and thinks (mistakenly in my view) nuclear presents the best way to avoid them

PS and how does 79% of women opposed translate as popular anyway? Even when the Government funds the Research Council UK which part funds the Science Council which funded the survey they have to spin the results?

Fukushima was about poor non-nuclear design, poor operating practices, and a bit of bad luck re timing of a tsunami bigger than planned for. The tsunami was only the trigger.

The station was built in a known tsunami zone but the flood protection wasn't tall enough - there was a significant probability of a tsunami overtopping the wall in the 40-60 year lifetime of the station.

It should have been obvious that IF there was any worthwhile tsunami, not necessarily a huge one, incoming electricity would likely be lost. And to an extent it was taken as obvious, so there were backup generators on site.

Unfortunately the site design put the backup generators at a level where if the tsunami protection was overtopped, the backup generators would be dead (due to flooding) too.

In addition, the site operators hadn't been bothering with the required regular maintenance checks on the backup diesel generators, so even if the backup generators had been positioned somewhere they'd have survived the flood, there was no guarantee they were in a workable condition.

The problems described above are not specifically nuclear problems. In fact some of them aren't particularly tsunami-related problems.

The problems above are standard not-properly-thought-out (generators below flood level) or "costs too much" (taller tsunami protection) or "can't be bothered, we'll never need it" (routine diesel maintenance) problems.

Now add the nuclear-specific stuff in and see where that leads.

"a bit of bad luck" - ROFLMAO - unless it was missed, reactors are intrinsically damn dangerous, and should be designed to withstand anything that could conceivably happen, including "bad luck" - as I said, FAR too expensive to ever be done anywhere properly or safely (or cleared up properly afterwards)

This says a lot about Britain

The British plants will not go ahead, despite the desperate attempts of the British nuclear lobby.

The real issue in Britain is that A nuclear industry is considered vital to "defence", i.e. nuclear submarines and nuclear weapons - it would be very difficult to maintain those without a civil nuclear industry to meet the costs of nuclear infrastructure, such as uranium enrichment.

Look at the countries backing out of nuclear power - Germany, Switzerland, Italy, China, ...

When the full facts about Fukushima eventually become known, it will be impossible to proceed with any new nuclear construction

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/30/british-government-plan-play-down-fukushima
Revealed: British government's plan to play down Fukushima

http://enenews.com/huge-spike-in-us-infant-mortality-in-the-four-months-after-chernobyl-video
“Huge spike” in US infant mortality in the four months after Chernobyl vs. Is “dramatic increase” in US baby deaths a result of Fukushima Fallout?

http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-northwest-sees-35-infant-mortality-spike-postfukushima-20110617,0,5968165.story
[Canada] Northwest sees 35% infant mortality spike post-Fukushima

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/fukushima-cover-up-unravels.html
Fukushima Cover Up Unravels

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/04/04/radiation-study-estimates-200k-cases-cancer-fukushima-nuclear-fallout-13880/
Radiation Study Estimates Over 220,000 Cases Of Cancer From Fukushima Nuclear Fallout

Startling Revelations about Three Mile Island Disaster Raise Doubts Over Nuke Safety
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25757

@FrankLittle

This survey seems a bit one sided anyway, why not ask the questions differently

You might not like the question, but key point is they've been asking the same question over the years, and support for nuclear has risen. It isn't so much the absolute number that matters, more that despite Fukushima support is still rising.

Afteroil

Re:

An EPR weighs 200,000 tonnes of which 180,000 tonnes is steel and concrete in its civil engineering, Anti-earthquake and tsunami measures will mean more of it.

The construction of existing 1970-vintage U.S. nuclear power plants required 40 metric tons (MT) of steel and 90 cubic meters (m3) of concrete per average megawatt of electricity (MW(ave)) generating capacity, when operated at a capacity factor of 0.9 MW(ave)/MW(rated) (Fig. 1). For comparison, a typical wind energy system operating with 6.5 meters per second average wind speed requires construction inputs of 460 MT of steel and 870 m3 of concrete per average MW(ave). Coal uses 98 MT of steel and 160 m3 of concrete per average MW(ave); and natural-gas combined cycle plants use 3.3 MT steel and 27 m3 concrete.

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/pb-ahtr/papers/05-001-A_Material_input.pdf

So, unless you're arguing that we do without power generation at all, your argument seems to favour a nuclear-gas mix, not count against it.

My issue with Nuclear energy is the dispossal of waste. It's all well and good to lock it in concrete tombs deep in the earth or the ocean but certain radioactive elements (such as plutonium-239) in “spent” fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other creatures for hundreds of thousands of years. Earth is not the most stable of planets with the tectonic plates moving continuously so it is safe to assume that at some point in the future these nuclear waste tombs will break open (be it by earthquakes or any other tectonic related activity) and the radiation will inevitably scape.

Personally I'm really looking forward to Venusianvan's balanced and insightfull analysis of this article.

One thing they did seem to have a lot of at fukushima was steam. Why not have your standby generators running on steam - then the hotter the reactor gets, the more electricity you would generate?

What's happened here is that Fukushima brought the issue of nuclear into the light, and there was a lot of open debate, and this allowed people to weigh up the pros and cons with more information than previously, with a lot of detailed comparisons being set out. The result is that most people saw that the risks aren't as big as the anti-lobby have made out, and many have decided, quite reasonably, that the risks are bearable -- especially when we consider the alternatives.

Incidentally, today there's been good news on the nuclear fusion front. Laser fusion experiments have worked much better than anticipated. In light of these results, the government should ramp up its investment in HiPER. We could have fusion power very soon, and this would make all our arguments about wind turbines versus pressurized water reactors redundant.

This is the same British public that think X-Factor is entertainment.

Nuff said

Or to put it another way 60% say risks outweigh the benefits of nuclear power.

@£wanB

Let's hope we can follow France's successful example and get a long term sustainable, low carbon and secure electricity supply.

Where did you get the idea that France is a successful example of nuclear power?

Last year EdF had to sell prime assets to reduce its mounting debt, while reducing its annual revenue by ca. Eur 5 billion, thus worsening its financial meltdown.

Also it has been severely criticised by the nuclear regulator ASN for its lax attitude to safety, see the report on the state of nuclear safety in ASN's 191 Review, April 2011

"However, in the field of nuclear installations, ASN considers that EDF needs to improve its forward planning of a certain number of maintenance and component replacement operations. Belated decisions of this nature meant that EDF had to submit files to ASN to justify continued operation in degraded mode. These files were not felt to be acceptable by ASN from the safety standpoint. This type of management is neither efficient nor optimised, be it for ASN with regard to safety and the mobilisation of its resources, or for EDF"

Right now 19 of its 58 reactors should be down for their 10-year three month inspection, which is why ASN describes EdF as operating in "degraded mode".

By 2018, 48 of EdFs 58 reactors will be more than 30 years old, of which 4 will be more than 40 and due for closure. Is it successful to preside in "degraded mode" over an ageing fleet of reactors?

The only reason the British public arent up in arms about nuclear power is because of the media blackout on Fukushima !

roopman

Environmental damage and loss of life from malfunction = potentially very high

Chances of malfunction = very low

That's the risk. Most people are happy with it.

Yes I'm sure the Japanese are really enjoying the experience of option 1
nor are the Germans too happy about it !!
So who comprises 41% ? A selected audience perhaps?

roopman

Environmental damage and loss of life from malfunction = potentially very high

Chances of malfunction = very low

That's the risk. Most people are happy with it.

Yes I'm sure the Japanese are really enjoying the experience of option 1
nor are the Germans too happy about it !!
So who comprises 41% ? A selected audience perhaps?

@Brosville

nuclear power will be too little (at best a few percent of our greeds)

Doesn't Nuclear Power provide something like 80% of France's energy needs?

As much as there are problems with nuclear power generation, anything that cuts emissions and reduces dependance on oil rich countries can surely only be, at the very least, a useful stopgap.

Yes, ultimately fusion and useful solar energy are what we would like, but these are probably at least 30 years away from being viable alternatives.

It's great to see that the general public are applying sensible risk assessment and thinking to this in forming their own opinions on nuclear power.

@Atomant77

My issue with Nuclear energy is the dispossal of waste. It's all well and good to lock it in concrete tombs deep in the earth or the ocean but certain radioactive elements (such as plutonium-239) in “spent” fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other creatures for hundreds of thousands of years.

The you should give serious thought to advanced fuel cycles such as molten salt thorium reactors or fast spectrum uranium reactors with fuel recycling. In both cases the waste contains very little plutonium, uranium or other actinides, and decays to very low levels of radioactivity in a few hundred years.

In either case a golf ball sized piece of fuel would supply the entire energy needs of an individual at western consumption levels for a lifetime. The prospect of a a lifetime of energy in the palm of your hand/ is not something to be sniffed at.

This is not sci-fi. Construction of a full commercial size demonstration Integral Fast Reactor (GE PRISM) could commence almost immediately. The R&D is already done.