Allowed HTML - you can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

1,570 thoughts on “Nuclear Nightmare

1 2 3 4 53
  • BrianFujisan

    Its a VERY Dangerous game, I wonder what kinds of creatures all the contamination will spawn – Long after humans are gone

    Japan’s long war to “shut down Fukushima” will never end in near human lifetimes. The damage it has done, the waste it has created, the radiation released and still releasing, will travel around the world, leak into the ground and water, contaminate Japan, in human terms, forever.The fact that some of this contamination will be called “low” or “slow” will not lessen the pain and extent of this damage one bit.

    The tanks from the cold war are leaking, the legacy of cancer from atomic testing is ongoing. Underneath its cracked sarcophagus Chernobyl is still happening. No nuclear accident ever really ends except, perhaps, in geological time frames. The waste and multigenerational mutagenic harm remain the legacy of the greed and hubris of the human race.
    Dr. Helen Caldicott

    http://nuclearfreeplanet.org/

    We Need a new Tesla…They suppress everything (except HARP of course )

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    Never mind the spelling/typos, Mary – just tell us why you’ve dragged Israeli into this thread. Obsessional?

    ********

    La vita è bella, life is good! (support freedom and justice)

  • Courtenay Barnett

    If there is a nuclear scientist on this blog, then could you please explain to the rest of us ( mere mortals):-
    1. The nature of nuclear reactors relative to radioactive dangers?
    2. The pros and cons of reliance on nuclear energy?
    3. And – your personal choice relative to your scientific knowledge and the
    options that are available?

    If we are to be serious about the serious issues being canvassed – I think that thesss the three foregoing questions are a sensible and reasonable starting point.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    Mary asks the following about Ed Davey :

    “Is he bidding to be the new LD leader and are his loyalties to this country or to Israel, or both, one asks?”

    What a curious second question. What (and what mindset) could be behind it, one asks?

  • craig Post author

    The Lib Dem 2010 manifesto on energy summarised:

    Key environmental policies include:

    Insulating all homes to a good standard within 10 years
    Setting a target for 40 per cent of electricity will come from renewable sources by 2020 rising to 100 per cent by 2050
    Investing up to £400 million in refurbishing shipyards so they can manufacture offshore wind turbines
    Transforming electricity networks
    Launching a one-year Eco Cash-Back scheme
    Setting aside money for schools that want to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings
    Investing £140 million in a bus scrappage scheme to replace old, polluting buses
    Blocking any new coal-fired power stations
    Rejecting a new generation of nuclear power stations

    Now I understand in a coalition they can’t get everything. Other than blocking new coal-fired power stations (an EU treaty obligation anyway) have they kept a single one of those?

  • nevermind

    Why should there be any FoI in the cabinet when there is not a single Friend of Europe in it?

    Why this excruciating, overwhelming influence into British foreign policy by a country that is war mongering at the fringes of Europe?

    Are Israeli influences into our/British foreign policy the real reasons for the LibCons retraction from Europe?
    All portfolios will get their budgets cut, says Osborne.
    Well I bet if BAE or BA or Vickers went insolvent tomorrow, he would still bail them out, without asking us.

    Osborne has failed to tackle off shore havens, even if these are subject of the Crown and agreed to British jurisdiction. He failed to stop 1/3rd of the QE cash disappearing into these havens, mainly put there by banks, money that is useless because it does nothing but guarantee further fat bonuses and pay off.

    Our politicians are still in bed with Murdoch, Nigel Farrage has shown that nothing has changed at all in three years.

    If there was any other nation, even within the Commonwealth, with as much access to our politicians in power as the Zionist lobby has, perpetuating the traditional weak points of this so called democracy and exploiting them for the aims of Israels foreign policy goals, this country would go into lock down.

    If Russia’s GRU had this much influence in this country, or the Hanoverians, or any other clan of Oligarchs and establishment folks, talk of treason and betrayal would emerge instantly, opposition would form.

    But Israel can’t do no harm, not a whimper of alarm at their chequebook diplomacy and gerrymandering of consent, poor persecuted Jews have soooo much to cope with and they need our politicians to be their friends, because the public would not possibly agree with their massive influence.

    Thanks for the posts

  • November

    Of course, in an ideal world we’d have a decentralised energy system with small self contained, low risk, low waste, reactors if they’re economically viable, but that world isn’t here now.

    There exists already such a little reactor. Toshiba delivers installs it and then at the end of its life cycle decommissions it and takes it away.

  • Yonatan

    HaddockUK continues to obsess about Mary mentioning Israel.

    The title of this thread is ‘Nuclear Nightmare’. That seems to be a perfectly appropriate description of Israel. Where are it’s nukes? Is it time for it to be brought under the inspection regime of the IAEA?

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    “The title of this thread is ‘Nuclear Nightmare’. That seems to be a perfectly appropriate description of Israel”

    Don’t be silly-clever, Yonatan. You know that this thread’s not about Israel’s nuclear capacity.

    Are you pitching to become an associate member of the Egregiousness of Excellences?

    ********

    La vita è bella, life is good!

  • JimmyGiro

    I wish we had a nuclear power plant here on the Isle of Wight, it would shoo off all the pinkos back to the mainland. Plus, I’d probably get a job: doubleplusgood!!!

    Oooh nooo! my prostates going critical…. BEEP BEEP BEEP…!!!

  • Kempe

    “The Lib Dem 2010 manifesto on energy summarised”

    Have we or anybody else come to that ever had a government that fulfilled it’s promises? One of the first things the Blair government diid was to privatise ATC after Tony himself swore that “our airspace is not for sale” and Harold Wilson once elected on a promise to rid Britain of it’s nuclear weapons bought Polaris.

  • BrianFujisan

    Of things Nuclear, and things bliar –

    According to sources inside the administration, George W. Bush was planning to invade Iraq and remove its government well before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Such an invasion violates the UN Charter, which the United States signed in 1945 after the bloodiest conflict in history. The Charter permits countries to use military force against another country only in self-defense or with Security Council permission. But the evidence indicates that the U.S.-led invasion satisfied neither condition and is therefore a war of aggression, which constitutes a Crime Against Peace – exactly the kind of war the Charter was meant to prevent.

    Shock and Awe—and the Consequences

    Despite the absence of Security Council authorization, a quarter million troops from the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq in March 2003. Delivering on their promise to “shock and awe,” the “coalition forces” dropped several 2,000-pound bombs on Baghdad in rapid succession, in what the New York Times dubbed “almost biblical power.”

    Since then, the use of cluster bombs, depleted uranium, and white phosphorous gas by U.S. forces in Iraq has been documented. These are weapons of mass destruction. Cluster bomb cannisters contain tiny bomblets which can spread over a vast area. Unexploded cluster bombs are frequently picked up by children and explode, resulting in serious injury or death. Depleted uranium weapons spread high levels of radiation over vast areas of land. White phosphorous gas melts the skin and burns to the bone. The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War (Geneva IV) classifies “willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health” as a grave breach. The US War Crimes Act punishes grave breaches of Geneva as war crimes. The Bush administration is committing war crimes with its use of these weapons.

    “Operation Iraqi Freedom” unleashed a tragedy of immense proportion. More than 3,000 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Close to 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in July and August 2006 alone. In October 2006, the British medical journal the Lancet published a study conducted by Iraqi physicians with oversight by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study estimated that 655,000 Iraqi civilians had died since Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003.

  • Mary

    Clegg and Cameron go back to nursery school. Hardly a good use of their time.

    On the meaninglessness of politicians and their photo ops.

    ‘What struck me about the Cameron and Clegg pictures was how extraordinary it is that the Prime Minister is taking his deputy anywhere, considering that he has just stitched him up on the question of press regulation in alliance with the leader of the opposition.

    As Chris Mullin memorably put it, Clegg is easily “the biggest charlatan of the lot”. Yet somehow this ridiculous figure, the poor man’s Colin Firth, is now the most powerful man in British politics. The Prime Minister has got himself into a position where he needs Clegg to stick around, must run everything past him and is not really in control of the Government. Yet he must also watch as Clegg and Miliband spend the next two years playing footsie and openly forming the next coalition. Who knows what the Labour and Lib Dem leaders will cooperate on next? They have Cameron by the balls.’

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100207947/clegg-and-miliband-have-cameron-by-the-short-and-curlies/

    http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/3/19/1363692970698/Cameron-and-Clegg-on-smal-008.jpg

  • Mary

    Chinese solar power firm defaults on debts
    Suntech, once lauded by the Chinese government for its renewable energy leadership, runs short of cash following heavy losses over the past year

    Suntech, one of the world’s biggest solar panel manufacturers, has defaulted on a $541m (£358m) bond payment in the latest sign of the financial squeeze on the struggling global solar industry.

    Suntech Power Holdings’ announcement was a severe setback for a company lauded by China’s Communist government as a leader of efforts to make the country a centre of the renewable energy industry. Its founder, Shi Zhengrong, became one of the industry’s most prominent entrepreneurs and a billionaire, only to see most of his fortune evaporate as the company’s share price plummeted.
    [..]
    China’s solar producers have been battered by a glut of supply in the market brought on by their own government’s efforts to promote the industry.

    Lured by tax breaks and subsidies, hundreds of small Chinese producers piled into the industry and new arrivals were springing up as late as 2011, when weak demand and a supply glut forced producers to slash prices.

    Other major Chinese producers including Yingli Green Energy, LDK Solar and Trina Solar have reported heavy losses. That has prompted expectations that the government will intervene and force companies to merge or shut down.
    [..]

    /..
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/19/suntech-china-solar-power-default

  • nevermind

    And then there are
    plenty of wind farms operated by the establishment and related Norwegian royal hang abouts, good ol blighty does not know who they are subsidising
    Solar farms by the hectare, quick quick before the April deadline when Osborne halves the subsidies.
    Waveny MP Peter Aldous, for example, who is egging his parents on to develop hectares of good farmland into solar tax dole money.

    These dole recipients are not hard up usually but they are expedient as any good Tory is. Get as much as you can from the taxman, before the subsidies half.
    North Norfolk has got a spectacular new development, some 48 hectares of tax subsidised and inefficient solar madness.

    Roll up, roll up, anybody else from the hoity poloite who want to earn themselves a golden nose before the bargain basement offer is halved?

    Nuclear power is the cowards way out, the trick of over consumption is covered up with nuclear power, there’s plenty and it will make us bombs, that is why we do it, we would not except any other moral reasoning as we apply to Iran now would we, its just to make bombs, tiny teenie weenie one’s that fit into suitcases and look like cotton wool.

    If we wanted power and were desperate to watch a MI5/6 buggered BBC, we would be able to generate it from any of the rivers flowing and the estuaries ebbing and flooding and the currents scouring up and down the east coast, and the waves rolling, up and down and up and down, the British isles have kinetic energy coming out of just about every orifice, the largest capacity of all in the EU and…. we….. are….. building…. nuclear power stations…… with French expertise?
    Oh nutty madness, take me away and kill all my children…

    jobs for the boys, same as it ever was…..

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    Mary; Photovoltaics is only part of the equation. We are still in the Industrial age when it comes to storage. Battery tech needs a Manhattan project in order to bring the maintenance and cost of huge battery banks to an efficient level. The grid needs continuous feed except for off-peak hours when consumption is lower, but the slack can be picked up by traditional sources. It’s never easy for politicians to look down the road with a long-term strategy because they must go to the taxpayer for huge funds (infrastructure) at a time when there is no public perception of an emergency. And, when the emergency hits, of course it’s too late.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    Another massive project is desalination. Water is the new oil. The time is coming when we will need to harness the vast oceans, and that is a HUGE energy expenditure. Just another chink in the energy armor.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    The Saudis are way ahead of our curve…….http://hir.harvard.edu/pressing-change/saudi-arabia-and-desalination-0

    “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which already produces 24 million cubic meters of water per day from desalination, about half the world’s total, is building the largest solar-powered water desalination plant in the world in the city of Al-Khafji on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The recent initiative in Saudi Arabia to enlarge its water desalination capacity using high-tech green technology is a smart move, multi-dimensionally strategic and future-oriented.”

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    I once participated in a panel of local politicos in San Luis Obispo, a true progressive community. Although it was long ago (1990) it still resonates in real time. All they could talk about was building more reservoirs , which capture rainfall.

    I asked “Does it make a lot of sense to spend resources on projects which depend upon rainfall, when we live in a Coastal desert?”

    After suggesting solar-powered desalination, the response was: “People don’t want our beautiful scenery marred by ugly solar panels”

    This relates to my comment to Mary @ 11:29

  • Richard

    Please look at the figures. Nuclear power isn’t “the last option”, it should be the first one. Overall, nuclear is the safest form of energy generation the world has ever seen (and the statistics since 1950 bear this out).

    Just to take one counter example, more deaths have occured in the UK due to Wind turbines than nuclear.

    I am not arguing for complacency, or lack of rigorous standards, but let’s be honest: if we don’t have nuclear, we’ll fall back on coal… and the number of Chinese coal miners that die every year because of our failure to get on with new nuclear build is shocking.

  • Jives

    Kempe,

    “Nuclear power may have its problems and its critics (unless it’s in Iran)”
    ****

    What a silly doctrinaire comment but i guess you had to try and get it in.

    Most people worry about nuclear power regardless of where its from.

  • Fred

    “If we are to be serious about the serious issues being canvassed – I think that thesss the three foregoing questions are a sensible and reasonable starting point.”

    I’m not a scientist but I lived a long time, I remember the dangers of coal, I remember the dangers of pit disasters, I remember Aberfvan. I remember the dangers of oil and gas, the pollution when oil tankers went aground, Piper Alfa, the helicopter crashes taking oil workers to work.

    I don’t remember reports of people being killed in Britain because of nuclear, there may have been some but if there were I don’t remember.

  • Jives

    Habbabkuk,

    Stop being a silly spoilt child.

    This thread is about nuclear power.

    Israel is one country where the issue of nuclear power is well worthy and valid of discussion herein.

    Honestly,you’re quite the desperate embarrassment here.

  • Fred

    “We are all bombing around using up resources; think how much wood to burn would ne required next time you slap the kettle on for just one more cuppa.”

    It takes very little wood to boil a kettle, a few ounces that’s all. I made a little stove burns wood chips produced by a chain saw. Forced secondary air fed from a little computer fan means it’s very efficient and it doesn’t smoke, the flame burns blue.

    Apart from that I have a stove I burn wood on, recycled when I can get it, burning old pallets at the moment. Hot plates, oven, back boiler to heat the water. The kettle is always hot.

    I use very little resources, very little indeed.

  • BrianFujisan

    Mary @ 6:01 pm

    – Yes it’s Boring, But We / i Can put up with Boring. But it’s the Evil of it that hurts…it has said it’self it is a deliberate term to annoy certain Souls.

    Now, annoying people is not an act of evil of course, Even the ignoring of repeated Pleas to stop using L is G, is Down right nasty but not evil.

    But to keep using the offending term after Clark’s heartfelt plea to drop it
    ( Clark 17th mar @ 9 ;01, Habbabkuk, my life isn’t good, and I feel like you’re rubbing my face in the probable fact that your life is a lot better every time you post that. You stated that you put it there to annoy people. Well, it does more than just annoy me, it hurts me.

    Life is not a spectacle or a feast;
    it is a predicament

    Clark 17th mar @ 11 : 55pm. Clark thanks it for dropping L is G for a short time

    Clark 18th mar @ 12 :05. Habbabkuk, our comments crossed. I score quite low on your list of what makes life good. I expect that there are other readers here who score considerably lower. Life is not good for a large proportion of people, that proportion is increasing, and quality of life is falling for the majority. International events are inextricable from the future prospects of our species, and not caring about that seems incomprehensibly callous to me; it’s the fact that too few of the critical people care that is degrading so many lives and the world we live in. In conscience, I would rather die than stop caring.

    How could it go back to using L is G, after such heartfelt impassioned request to stop, uncaring fucking evil.

    My life is shit half the time, struggling against hearing Loss, often bad athsma, Despair at whats going on at the Global leval,
    it Trolls through the information provided by so many genuine commenter’s And still rubbs our faces in it… LisG It’s even Funny Eh…Woof Woof, Sickening

  • Jives

    Brian Fujisan ^

    Indeed Brian,indeed.

    Actually it’s beyond sickening.

    It’s pathetic really.

  • Clark

    BrianFujisan, 19 Mar, 10:48 pm

    Sorry Brian, but I feel that I should point out the following so you that you can avoid discrediting your own arguments in future.

    “Depleted uranium weapons spread high levels of radiation over vast areas of land.”

    Depleted uranium (DU) has very low radioactivity; that’s what’s depleted about it. It’s what’s inevitably left when they make enriched uranium. Calling DU “weapons of mass destruction” weakens the argument against real weapons of mass destruction.

    Uranium dust, vapour and compounds are produced when DU projectiles hit whatever is in their way, and they’re all very nasty stuff, but radiation is a very minor concern; uranium’s chemically toxicity is about one million times worse than its radiotoxicity. But modern weapons produce a whole host of toxic chemicals; focusing on DU will just let the warmongers get away with other stuff, and focusing on its radiation hazard is plays directly into their hands.

1 2 3 4 53

Comments are closed.