Chris Packham - Champion for the Countryside or Out of Touch Fool ?
Comments
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Tangled Metal wrote:
If you think Sellafield is even in the same league as Dounreay (league of one in the UK) then you don't know enough about Dounreay.Rick Chasey wrote:Tangled Metal wrote:BTW Dounreay was a case of weak oversight allowing incredibly bad practise to go unchallenged. I don't believe there is any other site to compare with it. It was not the lax standards of the day but much worse. It has tarnished the nuclear sector badly I reckon.
Err....sellafield?
"Sellafield - it could have been worse" isn't a great slogan.0 -
Are you sure you're not confusing the two?
Sellafield is the one with all the radioactive sludge pools that no-one can go near for more than two minutes and are so bad no-one knows how much bad stuff there is in it!!
Which then started to leak!
Has its own £40m armed police base.0 -
Rick Chasey wrote:Are you sure you're not confusing the two?
Sellafield is the one with all the radioactive sludge pools that no-one can go near for more than two minutes and are so bad no-one knows how much bad stuff there is in it!!
Which then started to leak!
some of us can remember when it was called Windscale - they fixed everything by renaming it so don't you be worrying unnecessarily0 -
I think that was the power station and sellafield includes the entire waste, decommissioning and reprocessing piece.
A while ago since i looked at it.0 -
Rick Chasey wrote:Are you sure you're not confusing the two?
Sellafield is the one with all the radioactive sludge pools that no-one can go near for more than two minutes and are so bad no-one knows how much bad stuff there is in it!!
Which then started to leak!
Has its own £40m armed police base.
Just to get that into perspective, coal, oil and gas still provide the majority of primary inputs and pollution from those shortens the lives of thousands of people a year in this country alone, let alone the damage climate change will do. The risk is of a different order of magnitude. Nuclear has its issues like any human activity but we have no painless options.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Just in terms of deaths per kwh produced, oil and gas are orders of magnitude worse than nuclear it's just it tends to happen a long way away so we don't mind so much.0
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Well this has feck all to do with Packham so why not start a new thread "The pros and cons of nuclear energy"
or something...0 -
Rick Chasey wrote:I think that was the power station and sellafield includes the entire waste, decommissioning and reprocessing piece.
A while ago since i looked at it.
Winscale was a reactor for generating weapons grade plutonium. It did not generate a single watt of power as it has no power generating equipment.0 -
bompington wrote:
On waste:Rick Chasey wrote:bompington wrote:
Sadly that's true. Just ask anyone looking for a job in the far north of Scotland (or, for that matter, anyone looking for safe, cheap, low carbon energy)Robert88 wrote:Dounreay is so last century.
Dounreay is many things but safe and cheap it really really really isn’t.
Folk who bang on about how cheap nuclear is usually haven’t considered the cost of decommission and hazardous waste storage (stuff with 100,000 odd year half-life) and who is supposed to bear the cost of decommission. Wanna hazard (pun intended) a guess on how much the Uk’s legacy and no longer operating nuclear power decommissioning is gonna cost? Around $150bn. That’ll take around 120 years to complete, over double the amount of time they were operational.
Given how the costs are distributed it’s like the ultimate baby boomer energy source. Cheap for them, a very expensive headache for everyone else who comes after.
And the “safe” comment amuses me as usually folk who are pro any other energy form don’t usually feel the need to say it’s safe.
On balance nuclear probably has some benefits but there needs to be a more rational understanding of the actual cost, who bears that cost and long term consequences.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshe ... 32e7d7562e
On safety:
https://fee.org/articles/if-climate-cha ... ear-power/
As for economics, by far the greatest factor in the cost of nuclear energy is the imposition of unreasonable saftey measures caused by the superstitious fear-mongering of the anti-nuclear zealots.A common (legitimate) concern with nuclear is unhealthy radiation, its usage actually emits less radiation than the burning of coal
As someone who designs and manufactures remote handling equipment for this very sector I am somewhat relieved that we have engineers putting multiple barriers to prevent the release of radioactive material into the environment. There has been several instances within the world wide nuclear industry where humans have demonstrated that they could not run a nuclear facility as humans are inherently human and tend to cut corners. All those barriers don't get lazy, unprofessional or distracted when they realise the missus is banging the postie. Humans on the other hand have all these behavioural traits and more.0 -
What I find interesting is that as part of my degree we did a little bit of cost modelling for various different types of power plant. The thing that ecomically kills nuclear power is the large capital expenditure at the start, and the long lead time on building a station. This means you never really see the benefit of their super low running costs.
The decommissioning costs never really came into it.
That being said, if you are serious about low carbon, then a nuclear power station is a no brainer.You live and learn. At any rate, you live0 -
Rick Chasey wrote:Are you sure you're not confusing the two?
Sellafield is the one with all the radioactive sludge pools that no-one can go near for more than two minutes and are so bad no-one knows how much bad stuff there is in it!!
Which then started to leak!
Has its own £40m armed police base.
I've had spells on Sellafield over the past couple of years and inadvertently got an AirBNB in a house owned by one of the lead Mechanical Engineers for the site (who was subbied out to Jacobs at the time). Another guy who stayed there is a Mechanical Engineer on the decommissioning side, Thorpe etc. Was telling me everything involved in Windscale fire clean up just got thrown in the pools (rods, JCBs, bulldozers, even fire engines), and they're now working with engineers cleaning up Fukushima to develop robots and ROVs that don't get scrambled by radiation within minutes and are recoverable. Stuff like removing any edges or recesses so it's easier to clean down and stuff. Pretty cool to be honest."A cyclist has nothing to lose but his chain"
PTP Runner Up 20150 -
ShockedSoShocked wrote:Rick Chasey wrote:Are you sure you're not confusing the two?
Sellafield is the one with all the radioactive sludge pools that no-one can go near for more than two minutes and are so bad no-one knows how much bad stuff there is in it!!
Which then started to leak!
Has its own £40m armed police base.
I've had spells on Sellafield over the past couple of years and inadvertently got an AirBNB in a house owned by one of the lead Mechanical Engineers for the site (who was subbied out to Jacobs at the time). Another guy who stayed there is a Mechanical Engineer on the decommissioning side, Thorpe etc. Was telling me everything involved in Windscale fire clean up just got thrown in the pools (rods, JCBs, bulldozers, even fire engines), and they're now working with engineers cleaning up Fukushima to develop robots and ROVs that don't get scrambled by radiation within minutes and are recoverable. Stuff like removing any edges or recesses so it's easier to clean down and stuff. Pretty cool to be honest.
Given I have been in most of these pond facilities I can confirm that the above is nonsense. Hard to miss a jcb or a fire engine in a fuel pond when you can see the bottom. The fuel that could be pushed out of the back of the wind scale reactor during the fire was but a reasonable amount still remains and will be removed as part of future works. Thank cockrofts folly with the late addition of filters to the chimney. Not such a bad idea that defence in depth. All of this information could be found on the internet.0 -
john80 wrote:ShockedSoShocked wrote:Rick Chasey wrote:Are you sure you're not confusing the two?
Sellafield is the one with all the radioactive sludge pools that no-one can go near for more than two minutes and are so bad no-one knows how much bad stuff there is in it!!
Which then started to leak!
Has its own £40m armed police base.
I've had spells on Sellafield over the past couple of years and inadvertently got an AirBNB in a house owned by one of the lead Mechanical Engineers for the site (who was subbied out to Jacobs at the time). Another guy who stayed there is a Mechanical Engineer on the decommissioning side, Thorpe etc. Was telling me everything involved in Windscale fire clean up just got thrown in the pools (rods, JCBs, bulldozers, even fire engines), and they're now working with engineers cleaning up Fukushima to develop robots and ROVs that don't get scrambled by radiation within minutes and are recoverable. Stuff like removing any edges or recesses so it's easier to clean down and stuff. Pretty cool to be honest.
Given I have been in most of these pond facilities I can confirm that the above is nonsense. Hard to miss a jcb or a fire engine in a fuel pond when you can see the bottom. The fuel that could be pushed out of the back of the wind scale reactor during the fire was but a reasonable amount still remains and will be removed as part of future works. Thank cockrofts folly with the late addition of filters to the chimney. Not such a bad idea that defence in depth. All of this information could be found on the internet.
Haha I think he's had me over then!! I had plenty of time sat in the cabin staring out at the piles they're demolishing and reading up on Cockcrofts Folly, which I think given what eventually happened after their installation is a bit unfair!"A cyclist has nothing to lose but his chain"
PTP Runner Up 20150
