Nuclear energy has no place in a green Scotland

Nuclear power leaves a long and toxic legacy.

Mr Ruskell said: “There is nothing safe, secure or green about nuclear energy, and many people across Scotland will be dismayed and angry to hear that the Secretary of State is seeking to open a new reactor in Scotland.

“Aside from the brazen entitlement and the message this sends, it ignores that people in Scotland have long rejected nuclear energy. I hope that all progressive parties will unite in condemning this environment wrecking overreach.

“A new reactor would not only be unsafe, it would be extremely costly and would leave a toxic legacy for centuries. It would also distract from the vital work we need to do to boost clean, green and renewable energy.

“That is why I hope all progressive parties can rule out any return to nuclear power once Torness has been decommissioned.

“The Hinkley point shambles has exposed the UK government’s total inability to deliver nuclear programmes on budget or on time. We would be far better investing in the huge abundance of renewable resources that we already have here in Scotland.”

kabukimeow,
@kabukimeow@lemmy.world avatar

True about budget and time on these things but i still think it’s worth going for… It’s better than coal or oil. And wind turbines and small scale hydroplants are not nearly as effective as we’ve sometimes been told, unfortunately. I’m not a Scot tho so you guys do what u will

baru,

And wind turbines and small scale hydroplants are not nearly as effective

You can easily see how much energy those wind turbines produce. I haven’t seen your claim made in many years. It simply isn’t true. Just check the production of the various wind farms.

kabukimeow,
@kabukimeow@lemmy.world avatar

I saw it recently, in a large paper. Idk where you are but here, people will gladly greenwash their actions by destroying vulnerable forests for wind turbines that don’t even produce enough to excuse their existences. Doesn’t mean wind turbines are always ineffective in every case. But it can be done inethically.

misk,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Dang, that’s a bummer. Let’s import some russian natural gas.

pastermil,

Gazprom to the rescue!

poVoq,
@poVoq@slrpnk.net avatar

What a dumb comment. Scotland is an oil and gas exporter themselves. If anything you could blame them for being in the pockets of their own local fossil fuel industry.

10_0,

Guess they cant use their hydro power from the Highlands : (

dysprosium,

Well what happens in a war or apocalypse. Then we won’t be able to actively cool the cores. I’m just playing devil’s advocate. But isn’t this one major reason against nuclear?

solo,

Well what happens in a war or apocalypse

I don't think you need to go that far. Accidents happen regularly in all industries. Here is a list of some that have been public:

List of nuclear power accidents by country wiki

TheGrandNagus, (edited )

Nuclear plants are designed to withstand a passenger jet flying into them, as well as minor direct missile barrages.

And with modern reactors, they can’t really have Chernobyl-style meltdowns — if the cooling system fails, the fission stops by itself with no active involvement required.

I.e. you have to actively keep modern fission reactors going otherwise it stops on its own, as opposed to actively keep it cooled and safe, like the reactors of the 60s/70s.

Nuclear energy has, by a staggering margin, the lowest death toll of any form of energy generation per kW produced. And almost all of these come from Chernobyl, where 31 people died due to the explosion, then a further 46 died due to radiation poisoning from the cleanup.

By far the biggest issue with modern nuclear is the cost and them taking 7-12 years to deploy, as opposed to safety. SMRs are supposed to help with that aspect, but not enough have been rolled out to get a very good picture of that.

Really we have two choices, because renewables can’t provide 100% of our energy mix yet:

  • build out nuclear as a base energy load and massively decrease fossil fuels in the short term
  • ignore nuclear and temporarily build out more fossil fuel plants, hoping that planet-scale energy storage will become cheap and extremely ubiquitous in a very short timeframe.
rurudotorg,

You rely on the official Russian death tolls for Chernobyl? Are you serious?

TheGrandNagus,

No I rely on the UN numbers.

clifftiger, (edited )

if the cooling system fails, the fission stops by itself with no active involvement required.

At that point i already stopped reading since it emphazises that you got no clue.

Yes the fission stops. But the fuel still have to be actively cooled for month or years, because it still produces a lot of heat:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat

Guess what happened in Fukushima. The reactors shutted down successfully, but the power supply for the cooling failed due to the flooding.

Oneser,

This hits the nail on the head! It’s rare to see a sane and realistic take on nuclear online.

DarkThoughts,

That's some wild take on Soviet propaganda.

TheGrandNagus,

Soviet propaganda? What the hell are you on about?

DarkThoughts,

Nuclear energy has, by a staggering margin, the lowest death toll of any form of energy generation per kW produced. And almost all of these come from Chernobyl, where 31 people died due to the explosion, then a further 46 died due to radiation poisoning from the cleanup.

TheGrandNagus,

That’s not soviet propaganda though. That’s UN numbers.

Maybe if you weren’t such a fucking moron you’d be able to look into it yourself.

DarkThoughts,

lol
It's the official numbers provided by the SU. But your ad hominem projection really shows that you don't have any argument in this anyway. Fucking clown.

solo,

You find "sane and realistic" to claim that 77 people died due to the Chernobyl accident?

Oneser, (edited )

It appears to be a widely quoted official figure and have no insight on if it is realistic. I am also aware that this does not consider the considerable environmental impact of the disaster, nor the economic cost to clean up the mess.

My comment was more relating to the facts about the current state of renewables.

The 2 options this comments OP provides at the end are what I mostly agree on, where we either go 0 carbon now and accept nuclear (with its flaws) as base load, or continue with carbon intensive tech as base load and continue to build out renewables on top.

solo, (edited )

Nuclear energy has, by a staggering margin, the lowest death toll of any form of energy generation per kW produced. And almost all of these come from Chernobyl, where 31 people died due to the explosion, then a further 46 died due to radiation poisoning from the cleanup.

The number of people that died on the spot, could be as low as you say. 77 people is far from being the death toll of the Chernobyl disaster, and that is taking into consideration the fatality numbers are disputed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) suggested in 2006 that cancer deaths could reach 4,000 among the 600,000 most heavily exposed people, a group which includes emergency workers, nearby residents, and evacuees, but excludes residents of low-contaminated areas.[26] A 2006 report, commissioned by the anti nuclear German political party The Greens and sponsored by the Altner Combecher Foundation, predicted 30,000 to 60,000 cancer deaths as a result of worldwide Chernobyl fallout by assuming a linear no-threshold model for very low doses.

A disputed Russian publication, Chernobyl, concludes that 985,000 premature deaths occurred worldwide between 1986 and 2004 as a result of radioactive contamination from Chernobyl.[29]

TheGrandNagus, (edited )

That green party estimate is so laughable I’m not even going to comment on it further.

The WHO states it could be up to 4,000 in the long term, but may be substantially lower. The UN Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation concluded that even this figure is far too high.

Harvard university says that 8.7 million people die from greenhouse gas emissions each year. And that doesn’t even account for direct accidents from generation and coal/gas extraction. Having a nuclear base load would save millions of lives, and do a huge amount to curb fossil fuel emissions. But “greens” want us to keep burning fossil fuels.

solo, (edited )

I find it difficult to follow your reasoning. Initially you said 77 people died from the Chernobyl disaster.

Now you have opinions related to the different estimations but talk about thousands of people, without retracting your previous position.

TheGrandNagus,

77 people died directly. Up to 4000 (although that’s a very high estimate) may die in the long term.

Millions die from fossil fuel emissions each year.

It’s not hard to follow at all. You want the death toll to increase, I don’t.

TheGrandNagus, (edited )

The “Green” Party rejecting low-carbon energy production. Name a more iconic duo.

The green party candidate in my constituency stood on a platform of scrapping plans for a local wind farm. Unbelievable. NIMBYism is a disease.

kralk,

Which constituency?

federalreverse, (edited )

New nuclear reactors do not make sense as they routinely arrive late and massively over budget. They also steal away resources from cost-effective, realistic production with wind and solar. Also, CO2 is not the only environmental hazard there is: Humanity does not know how to safely store nuclear waste for hundred thousands of years.

TheGrandNagus, (edited )

Wind and solar cannot provide all our energy. Nuclear does not replace wind and solar, it complements it. The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow.

Yes it costs more than burning gas or coal, but that doesn’t take into account the environmental cost or the cost on the health of living things.

And yeah we do know how to store nuclear waste for *hundreds of years. We do so already. I don’t know where you’re getting the “hundreds of thousands of years” from. Even old reactors althat don’t recycle waste didn’t have half-lives anywhere near that long.

baru,

The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow.

Which is why you connect countries together. Combined with having more than enough capacity. And battery storage.

All of that is still significantly cheaper than nuclear. Plus it can be built way faster.

Nuclear is expensive and takes ages. And that’s just the budget, it’ll easily go crazy over budget and be a decade late.

TheGrandNagus, (edited )

Battery storage and connecting grids together (which we do already) doesn’t even come close to solving our energy needs. And no it can’t be built way faster. We cannot have worldwide, practically unlimited, cheap battery storage right now.

Don’t get me wrong, I really, really want to live in your fantasy world, but for now, that’s all it is.

UrbonMaximus,

I agree and I don’t understand why people like op keep bashing green parties. There’s a reason why nuclear is not a viable option. Ignoring the financial burden - Nuclear waste is not a technological issue, but a political one. People don’t trust politicians and corporations to keep it safe for multiple millennia. Look at the state of the UK rivers, chronical waste dumping to save money. People who don’t think it will happen with nuclear waste are delusional or don’t know their history, as we already had nuclear dumping incidents near Australia, Baltic Sea, Mediterranean Sea etc…

GoodEye8,

The issue is that you still need something to replace fossil fuels. Solar and wind are not going to replace fossil fuels, they’re simply not efficient enough. If you look up the global energy production solar and wind barely even register. Hydro or thermal are much better, , but they’re too dependent on geography and are also expensive. Assuming our energy demands will keep growing, whether we like it or not, nuclear is the way to go.

And we don’t really need to keep nuclear safe for a millennia, just long enough to make it safe and cheap to shoot it into the sun. Since we need to go to space anyway we need to keep it safe for a century, maybe max two centuries.

The issues you’ve brought up are all valid and the adoption time of nuclear is also a factor (I think it was something like 10 years just to build a plant), so realistically we’re fucked anyway.

Zoot, (edited )
@Zoot@reddthat.com avatar

Why does everyone keep ignoring the fact that we can reuse the spent fuel rods. If we go the nuclear reactor way, this will inevitably need to happen anyways.

solo, (edited )

These articles are also quite interesting:

Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors

Why Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Won’t Help Counter the Climate Crisis

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