"Men sweat, women perspire gracefully."  Richard142
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Greater London, United Kingdom
Joined: Apr 2009 |
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A contribution to the energy debate by Richard142.
You will see that I am a supporter of the nuclear option as major contributor to base load power generation so helping to guarante an energy future for now and future generations. I'm making this contribution here as I'm finding it difficult to find a forum that enables a full discussion of even apparently unpopular and difficult choices.
The existing location of Nuclear Power Stations for base load electricity generation, being widely spread arround England near the coast, is a good place to start building the next generation of new stations. They are costal for water coolant and low level waste discharge. Alternatives to water should enable stations to be located inland.
I want the public debate to be extended to include also the type of nuclear stations and that the industry become less defensive as there are so many advantages in the nuclear rout.
Both aspect of nuclear, power and weapons, developed at about the same time during the Cold War period. Hence the secrecy under which safety became compromised.
The major incidents, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were triggered by defects in the water cooling / energy transfer stage so I think not primarily nuclear but have targeted that energy sector as dangerous. Simelarly waste is a big issue, the discharge of low level waste and the storage of high level waste. Also Fast Breeder reactors got a bad press due to the fear of theft of weapons grade material. The use of road and more especially rail in transporting fuel / waste is also an issue. This is how I read the history of Nuclear energy.
My proposal would include that we invest in Fast Breeders so that waste generated can be recycled into fuel. This would use some of the high level waste, and so reduce it's transport, [except for irradiated metal and other construction materials that have have developed secondary radioactivity by irradiation].
Given this latter issue of secondary radiation to partsof the Nuclear Power stations structural material then decomissioning costs must be included when comparing options for base load power stations.
We should invest in alternatives to using water as the main energy transfer system and in steam driven generation of energy. One path would be to use liquid metal and/or a pressurised inert gas. If this coolant was in an ionised form it could be sent between powerful magnets and so produce electrical energy directly. We would be then be developing a reletively safe heat transfer system that could be used in the next generation of Nucleat Fusion Power Stations.
This is the path I'd like the Nuclear Energy Sector to go along.
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