OT True cost of nuclear power.

[harryagain]

Easy to predict this one. Except to certain thickos here. Not even the start of it either.

[newshound]

MPs can never resist "grandstanding" and occasionally they even get slapped down for it. If you want a more dispassionate view, look at National Audit Office reports.

[Tim Streater]

What has Sellafield to do with nuclear power?

[John Rumm]

Nothing, but to certain dim witted types with an agenda, anything with the word "nuclear" in it is "all the same" and "bad". It saves having to think, you just engage the reflex.

[dennis]

It has nuclear in its description, something like ".. reprocessing nuclear weapons waste..". Some people are too thick to work out the difference between nuclear weapons and nuclear power and mix them up.

[harryagain]

You don't know?

[harryagain]

You are well known to be one of the thickos Den.

[Nightjar]

Magnox reactors were designed and built to provide plutonium for nuclear weapons. The electricity was a by-product.

Colin Bignell

[Huge]

Hence the change in name from NMR to MRI.

[Another John]

That is not the cost of nuclear power: it's the cost of today's ultra-litigation-sensitive society, coupled with pusillanimous politicians, from the great (Westminster) to the small (low-grade managers in every large business in the country).

John

[Brian Gaff]

We really have not grasped the nettle about what to do with radioactive stuff have we. I suspect in the main, the deep sea is maybe the safest as long as you don't eat fish that live in the deep places that is. Brian

[Tim Streater]

Which particular stuff are you referring to? The power station stuff that is glassified could just be put in a salt mine.

Well, fish don't eat glass as far as I know.

[Nightjar]

... and don't mind that it is banned by international treaty.

The best way, at least for spent reactor fuel, would be to recycle it. However, that is a relatively expensive answer.

Colin Bignell

[newshound]

Let's just correct this one. The Calder Hall and Chapelcross reactors were built to produce plutonium and other material used in nuclear weapons, with electricity (and, at Calder, steam) as welcome by-products. The Magnox reactors from Berkeley and Bradwell onwards were designed and operated to produce electricity. In their equilibrium fuel cycle, the fuel burnup was so high that the plutonium produced had the wrong isotopic mix to be suitable for weapons. It has been claimed that early in their operation, when some fuel is removed "early" to help optimise the cycle, weapons grade plutonium could have been extracted from this fuel. This is not easy to confirm because the same reprocessing plant at Sellafield is used for both "civil" and "military" fuel and details of its operation were therefore confidential. One of the last CEGB chairmen (Glyn England) tried to investigate the true history and he told staff on his "retirement" tour (after his contract was not renewed by Tony Benn, as would have been the norm) that, so far as he had been able to establish, no plutonium from the CEGB plant went into weapons. England was a man of the utmost probity (I was always of the opinion that the reason for his termination was that he did not suffer fools gladly) and I am personally in little doubt that his statement was correct.

[The Natural Philosopher]

wee have grasped it, but the nambies run away when they see nettles growing let alone touch one...

[Nightjar]

The fact that we did not produce plutonium at all of them does not change the fact that producing plutonium for nuclear weapons was the purpose of the design and why we built them. Had we needed more plutonium, the other reactors could have been adapted to make it, even if we never actually did so.

Colin Bignell

[The Natural Philosopher]

All uranium reactors make plutonium

Add a neutron to U-238 and you get Pu-239.

Some make more than others of course.

Pu-239 is an excellent reactor fuel and is being used up gradually in conventional reactors, we probably have 20-50 years worth of 'free' fuel stacked up at sellafield.

[SteveW]

We do know - much of the problematic materials, buildings etc. are such a problem simply because they were the products of the weapons programme, not a purely civil nuclear programme. No thought was put into how things would be decommissioned, stored, cleaned up, etc., because military requirements overrode all that.

Yes civil nuclear is a part of it, but even that was skewed by military requirments.

SteveW

[Nightjar]

Not all are designed for, or even capable of, making it in weapons grade though.

Don't tell Harry. That is all 'waste' to him.

Colin Bignell

[harryagain]

For the simple minded.

Astonishing how thick some people here are. Nuclear waste from nuclear power plants around the world as wellas our own is processed here. But not profitably as was envisaged. In fact at a loss. Note the date.

Might as well read this report too.

Nuclear power. Total balls up

And another one.

Taxpayer picks up the tab again.

The true cost of nuclear power. Pigeons are coming home to roost.