MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Japan steps away from nuclear power
As Japan and France move away from nuclear energy, is it the endgame for nuclear proponents? Read full article
As Japan and France move away from nuclear energy, is it the endgame for nuclear proponents? Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesWe should all adhere to the green lobby's demands and go and live in a cave.
Sep 25th, 2012 - 09:15 am - Link - Report abuse 0Perhaps Japan has jumped to quickly,
Sep 25th, 2012 - 10:07 am - Link - Report abuse 0Without a proper alternative, it may yet turn out to be a unwise move,
Still,
China may very well heat Japan up for free. [Soon]
..
The mistake Japan made was the complete stupidity of placing the reactors on a coastline vulnerable to tsunamis. When you look at the overall picture nuclear is as safe as any other type of energy production. How many thousands of coal miners die every year in China? The stats are horrific. Nuclear waste is the real issue for the industry and developing a fusion reactor should be one of the world's top priorities - not the current underfunded sideshow that it is.
Sep 25th, 2012 - 10:21 am - Link - Report abuse 0A knee-jerk reaction perhaps..
Sep 25th, 2012 - 10:28 am - Link - Report abuse 0Lets be honest. With Japans history of dealing with earthquakes, if they can not build safe plants, no bugger can!
Sep 25th, 2012 - 10:45 am - Link - Report abuse 0true,
Sep 25th, 2012 - 10:47 am - Link - Report abuse 0very true.
If you were to analyze many people have directly died from just the pollution produced by coal power plants, not even counting the coal miners death as #3 stated, then coal is clearly more dangerous to human health than nuclear. As more research is done in nuclear power, it will become safer and even cheaper with time.
Sep 25th, 2012 - 11:47 am - Link - Report abuse 0True, but unlike most fossil fuel pollution, there is only one thing that cleans up nuclear pollution? time! Mess up nuclear energy today and generations pay for.
Sep 25th, 2012 - 12:41 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Perhaps if all the money wasted up to now and that future money in-built to taxes for the ludicrous green agenda and their windmills among other nonsense had been spent discovering the real solution to the nuclear waste challenge then we would be facing a much better future.
Sep 25th, 2012 - 03:53 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Britain will be out of electricity VERY SOON. In fact it is already too late to avoid future black-outs because all governments have been hijacked by the hockey-stick liars.
It has shades of the old 'Dad's Army' show with 'don't panic, don't panic' being shouted by the 'coalition twats'.
If you think I am upset then you are damn well right.
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Sep 25th, 2012 - 06:19 pm - Link - Report abuse 0We need help now,
But we have no money to invest,
We only have billions for overseas aid,
But just pennies for home use,
We love it, when the British government, puts Britain first,
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,nuclear waste,
Put it into vast space ships,
Hire the best argentine pilots, train them, And send them into the sun,
Justa thought.
.
Solar panels last indefinitely. Theres no moving parts! Theres no way to comparatively calculate their cost for this reason. But even using a 20 year horizon, solar cost less than new nuclear.
Sep 25th, 2012 - 06:28 pm - Link - Report abuse 0And that was before the price of solar dropped in half this year :)
Should not then
Sep 25th, 2012 - 06:32 pm - Link - Report abuse 0we cut down the winmill things,
and try your idea, on a country wide scale.
Solar energy has two very obvious problems:
Sep 25th, 2012 - 08:31 pm - Link - Report abuse 01) When the sun goes down, or the clouds come in, there is no energy production.
2) The space required to create a significant amount of energy makes it enviable.
Nuclear waste is not a big deal people. It came from the ground, it is mined remember. So if you simply make some nice containers and store them well things should be okay. If they leak, clean it up. Yes there are methods to clean it up. New ones are being developed such as bacteria that clean the contaminated areas. Allow money to flow into the industry and the problems will get solved.
Ironically clean energy has probably killed more people than dirty coal energy. Just by having diverted billions to an industry that didn't deserve the money, you prevented it from being spent on useful things and thus improving the world as a whole. What if that money had been spent on say finding a vaccine against malaria? Or maybe new methods of farming to increase food production and lower food prices? Get my point? Governments need to stop trying to control societies because they only create more harm than good.
11 Ayayay
Sep 25th, 2012 - 09:34 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“Solar panels last indefinitely”
No, they do not and are you aware that the energy used to make these devices is GREATER than the energy they will capture throughout their existence?
Solar panels are only useful for saving other energy usage such as remote cameras and safety devices where the running of power lines, etc. would be impossible or prohibitively costly.
Please read 13 BAMF Paraguay above he has covered it nicely.
Please enjoy some Fast Company!
Sep 26th, 2012 - 05:40 am - Link - Report abuse 0Solar is cheaper than new nuclear -in the U.S.-
http://www.fastcompany.com/1675672/solar-power-now-cheaper-nuclear-energy
Nuclear is uninsurable.
-typed w solar
Japan left the door open on nuclear. Forget the nonsense of global warming and we can go back to using the plentiful supplies of coal, oil and shale gas for many centuries. Nuclear is also part of the mix, but on reliability not global warming.
Sep 26th, 2012 - 09:01 am - Link - Report abuse 015 Ayayay
Sep 26th, 2012 - 03:43 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Did you bother looking at this link?
If you did do you understand what it said?
Some of the 'comments' are clearly from people with no engineering or scientific knowledge.
'Dark storage' for producing energy when the sun does not shine (like at night) is not explained at all, just given as 'a fact'.
The standard of litteracy is also abysmal. One commenter making the claim that a new sign warning of nuclear radiation was needed because some people opened drums of radioactic material and died.
Sounds like survival of the fittest worked. The dummies die!
BTW the article did NOT say get rid of nuclear.
Neither did I.
Sep 26th, 2012 - 11:21 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I believe in a patient transition using existing nuclear is fine, to solar and onwards..
My state doesn't want it or have it.
Howevers, there has been hundreds of over 5s off the coast of Honshu since the biggie. They can compromise previously weakened structures, so I understand the desire of many Japanese to put security first.
I gave you that link for the study inside,, and cause it's FUN!
#13 “Nuclear waste is not a big deal people. It came from the ground, it is mined remember”
Oct 03rd, 2012 - 12:46 am - Link - Report abuse 0You've stumble on one of the main problems with nuclear, its actually a finite resource like oil and coal. Plus I think your being far too blase about the waste, its not the same stuff that came out of the ground once its been enriched. I'm not 100% anti-nuclear but solar is probably cheaper and safer as well as a real renewable resource
@19 BSK
Oct 03rd, 2012 - 06:25 pm - Link - Report abuse 0No, the constituen materials used for the present generation of solar panels come out of the ground as well, BUT as I said above the energy used to make this damn things FAR outways the energy that they will ever generate befor ethey fail.
So the net energy balance is NEGATIVE.
That's a great reason for using them, NOT.
#20 The materials come out of the ground, but there is no specific limit to their use is there? Of course we could even say the sun isn't really renewable because in a few billion years it will be gone, but it will certainly outlast the oil! And the uranium supplies
Oct 04th, 2012 - 02:59 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@21 BSK
Oct 04th, 2012 - 04:55 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You miss my point so I will use this analogy.
You have a product that costs you £1000 to manufacture but you can only get £800 use out of it. How long can anyone afford to go on like this until the money supply (energy) dries up?
Doesn't make any sense, even to you does it?
BTW the sun will be a red giant well before it goes out. It will be that big it will encompass the earth from the position it is in now.
Infra red will kill everything on the planet well before then of course. But as you say it's about 4 million years in the future.
I wonder if man can last that long without blowing the planet up?
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