| Topic: | Re:Re:DoW: Should we go nuclear? | |
| Posted by: | David Fox | |
| Date/Time: | 10/01/05 19:22:00 |
| Good debate (fairly good programme too). I'm not particularly worried about nuclear waste, because there will eventually be bacteria that will break down these wastes - there is already bacteria that can live on some of the lesser radioactive material (and many other common contaminants). No doubt others will be bred to survive on the man-made elements, such as plutonium (or genetically modified - although given the adaptability of the most simple bacteria, if you put enough of them in a dish of caesium sludge, then a small number will probably mutate to thrive on it). A bigger worry might be that terrorists would fly into one of these nuclear power stations, and that likelihood needs to be addressed in the design - I'd cover them with a thick layer of soil and grass, so they wouldn't even be eyesores.... or easily spottable from the air. Windmills: There are two of these on top of the university building on the Uxbridge road in Ealing, which seem to spin around on even the calmest days. They could easily be added to the roof of every tall building (at the very least as a planning condition for any new ones) - not much of an eyesore and won't disturb any sheep. Planning laws should also be amended to ensure that all new houses include solar panels of some sort (water heaters or photovoltaic - this would help bring down their prices for the rest of us too), and for house/building design to have to take greater account of environmental design principles (such as passive solar - where the southerly aspect has plenty of glass, the northerly doesn't). Agree totally on wave power. Britain led the way in wave power research in the early 80s, with Salter's Duck, but the then government pulled the funding from it (a few million - after lobbying and disinformation against it by the nuclear lobby!), forcing Professor Salter to move abroad. If you build wind farms out to sea, then you could fit turbines to the underwater columns holding them up, making the most of the expensive cable runs carrying the energy back to land. On the biofuels front, why not grow more fast-growing trees, such as willow, on flood plains, which would soak up a lot of water and simultaneously help reduce flooding from all the extra rainfall we've been getting recently. Also, because solar and wind energy are inconsistent and nuclear power stations are best left on all the time, use pumped storage facilities to act as a type of battery. I visited one in Ireland that has an artificial lake at the top of a mountain, linked by a hydroelectric turbine to a lake at the bottom. When energy isn't needed on the grid (usually at night), the turbine works in reverse, filling up the top lake, which then generates electricity at peak times during the day (it activates in about a minute, so it can respond a great deal more quickly than coal, oil or even gas power stations). I believe there are a couple of these in both Scotland and Wales. |