myp wrote:
Wasn't the main issue in Japan down to the fucking earthquake? I don't think we'll have quite the same risk factor here.
Of course, I totally understand that the likelihood of the UK suffering an earthquake anything like the scale of Japan's is minute. However, earthquakes are by no means the only disaster that could befall a UK nuclear powerplant. For example, there are super-storms/flooding (which I understand are likely to become a reality within the next few decades). After all, it was flooding that did for Fukashima; not vibration from the earthquake per se, causing a catastrophic failure of cooling systems, leading to core overheating.
Of course, natural disasters are one thing, but what about sabotage/terrorism? It's hardly as though the UK hasn't pissed off/radicalised enough peoples over the years; we've had suicide bombers et al. Thousands of people work in nuclear power plants; it could only take one to blow it up.
Most tellingly of all, nuclear power plants are run by human beings and are therefore prone to
human error. These were the principle causes for both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the latter causing 100,000 cancer deaths alone according to Greenpeace, untold human misery and plenty of harrowing, heart-rending deformed children and all the rest. Anyone who says this can't happen again is a fool, but with nuclear power the stakes are far, far too high.
These seem like perfectly reasonable, rational reasons to me to be against nuclear power and I haven't even mentioned decommissioning and the complete lack of any technology to handle or store the resultant nuclear waste - for hundreds of millenia - longer than for the complete duration of human history, from the moment the first ape stood up on his legs onwards. (As an engineer, rather than a scientist, it is a *complete anathema* to me to even consider embarking on any project or enterprise that is so inherently dangerous without a complete understanding of all project stages, including final decommissioning and environmental reinstatement, let alone without any at all - CRAZY).
I understand Doccy G's argument about 'a small volume of waste' (as compared to landfill) but of course, we are dealing with the most lethal, toxic materials to life where one millionth of a gram of plutonium will kill, whose half life is measured in millions of years. Just ONE 1 gigawatt nuclear plant produces 27 tonnes of "high level" nuclear waste a year, and in total, the
annual global production is 12,000,000kg, and that's before we start building more nuclear power plants (Source: Wiki). Given the extreme, unprecedented toxicity, not just to us but to life in general, and immense longevity involved, not to mention the complete lack of any technology to store, much less still deal with the stuff, I wouldn't call this a 'small amount'.