gallois wrote:
It’s a strange world isn’t it?
It’s human nature!
If humans are given the choice if they want a) clearly identifiable local consequences in short term that have high degree of variability or b) unsharp, global, long term consequences that are pretty certain the vast majority would opt for b).
This can not only be observed in energy/environment protection but also in many other areas of life: Take self driving cars/trains/planes. They would have much better overall safety but every casualty can be clearly attributed to the self drive system – while the terns of thousands killed by driving under influence every year are more unsharp….
Yes, although times are changing.
The waste is not a problem; you can store it very cheaply for the length of time required, bury it deep underground, etc.
Chernobyl was a very defective design and cannot happen with current Western reactors.
Maybe small fusion reactors are the future. Some good progress has been made in the last few years.
I am sure nuclear will come back. With electric cars it will have to, because most of them will be charged overnight. Electric cars are not large-scale viable for serious driving due to power distribution networks all needing to be ripped up, but they will work in the form of little ones for local driving. And I reckon the UK govt should just pay for it; forget the external investors. It is self evidently a stupid thing to get “foreign countries” to finance your capital projects: if it produces a return for investors (China, EDF, whatever) then you should pay for it yourself. It is like an airport having a cafe franchise: though should run the cafe themselves!
China is laughing all the way to the bank, as the saying goes. The capitalist will sell you the rope which you will hang him with 
The UK defence spending thing is probably unrelated to this; it is one of various public spending projects they are looking at to restart the economy post-CV19. Every country will need to do that.
How is cutting the strength of the army in order to buy 40 nuclear warheads, probably from USA, restarting the economy after Covid?
Fusion has been the future all of my life and that’s quite a long time. Good progress is announced every few years since at least the 60s.
The waste is a problem by its sheer scale especially once you start decommissioning power stations.
But you are correct China is laughing all the way to the bank and beyond.
Chernobyl was mainly human error, according to Lord Marshall of Goring who was head of the CEGB at the time and also one of the world’s foremost experts on nuclear matters, having also headed up the UKAEA and several other atomic energy agencies.
Chernobyl should never have happened and I agree lessons have been learnt and technology is much better. But unless you are a dictatorship you will have to persuade the public that is the case.
Peter wrote:
For a start, you have absolutely zero during the night Then you have 5-10% under any overcast. In the UK it just gets silly.
The main problem in the UK for solar is the supply and demand are 180 degrees out of phase. UK solar probably makes quite a lot of power in the summer, just when we don’t need it – and makes nearly nothing in our long, dark winters when we need lots of power. There are other places where demand is higher in the summer due to A/C, solar is more suitable there (and they need the A/C because it’s very sunny).
Peter wrote:
The waste is not a problem; you can store it very cheaply for the length of time required, bury it deep underground, etc.
It’s true that you can store it cheaply, as a requirement is that the store be maintenance-free – it has to contain the radioactivity for literally thousands of years. The question is if it is possible to make a maintenance-free long time storage and how it should be done. The jury is still out on that one.
gallois wrote:
How is cutting the strength of the army in order to buy 40 nuclear warheads, probably from USA, restarting the economy after Covid?
As a matter of fact, the UK is lauching a series of smart aerospace projects at a scale unseen in decades. It is so unusual from the UK mainland Europe is a bit suspiscious about its reality. This is a refreshing industrial ambition (you know, the one that disappeared from EU 
).
Let’s get back to the topic
I can’t get around how the green parties make much electoral ground. Their intentions are coming in the open and few like them. I see 2 factors :
Airborne_Again wrote:
The question is if it is possible to make a maintenance-free long time storage and how it should be done. The jury is still out on that one.
The other question with that is can we keep these places “known” as “do not go here” places for thousands of years?
We have very little recorded history from thousands of years ago. And yes, we have vastly improved means of recording and storing information now, but I’m not convinced that will save us. Most of us would struggle to place a music cassette tape from the 80’s! What chance do we have of reading our database now in 1000 years?
Imagine in 1000 years some new technology comes along. Perhaps for underground exploration, or requires mining for some particular mineral. Fission will have been long forgotten by then, having been replaced by nuclear fusion. Will anybody even think to go look up a 1000 year old database to see where fission waste dumps were, before they go digging for those minerals, or doing their exploration? Never mind be actually able to read the data or understand the coding system!
Jujupilote wrote:
I can’t get around how the green parties make much electoral ground. Their intentions are coming in the open and few like them. I see 2 factors :
Might differ from country to country, but in Germany it is clearly based on the renaissance of egoism and a strong nimby mentality – although the Green Party is very carefully to make it look to the not so close observer to be exactly the opposite.
The Green Party today is mainly supported in Germany by a young urban population that likes to think about self as progressive but in reality is the rebirth of Biedermeier. These voters mainly live in apartments in metro areas and therefore do not care if the Green Party wants to ban individual homes. The do like a SUV ban because they would not find a parking lot for an SUV anyways and in general is opposing individual traffic because in their lives there is nothing further away than biking distance.
I think there are other factors driving this in Germany – the elephant in the room called the AfD – but it would belong into the politics thread and anyway it is a white hot (not red hot) potato
In our little village, there are already more Teslas than I can count. It is really fashionable. They are really big cars and just about manage to squeeze past me on some of the lanes I cycle on. Obviously I have to stop and lean against the hedge. But the countryside is full of T34 tanks anyway (the 4×4 is mandatory for the “long haul pilot spouse school run”)
Thanks for the explanation.
We had the same here for major cities elections. On a national scale, we’ll see how it goes.
Putting a 10 km lockdown on Paris is seamless. Parisians never leave Paris :) (they used to spend weekends in Lisbon and Marrakech of course).
The last sign from the french greens shows “Hunters, boomers will vote ! You must vote too !!” It tells a lot.
