No New Nukes in the UK Petition
February 14, 2006 by admin
Filed under Green Living
To my readers in the UK, there’s an online petition available to put your name to in opposition of the new nuclear power plants currently being considered by Mr Blair and his government.
Despite claims by Tony and his cohorts that nuke power generation doesn’t produce carbon emissions, that’s a bunch of baloney. When you consider the the mining of the uranium, the milling, conversion, and enrichment of the fuel and then the fabrication of the fuel rods, you’ve got ton’s of nastiness – not to mention what the hell we do with this radioactive crap after we’re finished with it – and one realizes this isn’t a sane solution. Many sensible folk believe that aggressive alternative energy development combined with aggressive conservation will put us further ahead for less money.
If you’re of a resident of the UK and would like to voice your displeasure, then you’ll find that petition here.
For more info on the current nuke issues in the UK, check out these pages from EcoStreet.com (here) and Greenpeace UK (here).
[via How to Save the World for Free]
I happen to like nuclear power stations. They are a great family day out they give you free tea and coffee when you visit (it doesn’t cost them much to boil the water).
Seriously though, one power station is much kinder on the eyes than a hundred windfarms spoiling the mountains, as we’re finding out in all UK upland areas right now.
If you want to talk fabrication, then compare the amount of energy required to create the cement and mine the aggregate for giant concrete foundations required to support a 120m windmill in a peat bog against that for a power station per kilowatt generated, I think power stations might just end up more in favour.
And do you think that in 30 years time when these windmills rust and start to fall down that these upstart little power companies that have sprung up to build them will be around to decommission the units and remove the foundations, restoring the hill to it’s previous state? No, me neither.
In fact I think they should start an alternative petition to highlight people’s wishes for more nuclear power and less windmills. Save our hills.
Hey Adam – What about solar? Small scale wind? Tidal power? Conservation? We have so many other options available to us. Nukes are simply not sensible in my mind.
Personally, my biggest issue with nuke power is the waste management. I believe it is supremely arrogant of us as a society to burden future generations with having to deal with the radioactive crap that we produce today. We do not have the right to do that and we need to stop doing it as soon as humanly possible. We have other options.
Fair point Kevin. Small scale wind energy I can deal with – a windmill in the garden or on the roof to provide each house with a source of energy is a great plan. Tidal energy – it’s a shame we didn’t fund one of our leading wave energy companies on this and he had to go work for Portugal instead:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4563077.stm
Instead of leading the way we’ll be playing catch-up on it.
With nuclear it does seem strange that the radioactive waste cannot be reprocessed into a less dangerous isotope or a non-radioactive compound before it is dumped, perhaps utilising some of the nuclear energy that the material originally produced to power that process. Ah but that would eat into the profits of the power companies, so no chance of that then. If the nuclear industry was forced by law to reprocess into a safe waste material I’m sure we’d see a lot more supporters of nuclear.
I do stand by my statements that these giant windfarms are bad news. The industrialisation of our wild landscapes is something that will affect future generations and I’d rather not pass that onto my son either.