The Royal Academy of Engineering weighs in: Go nuclear.

NNadir

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Sun May-15-05 08:35 PM
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The Royal Academy of Engineering weighs in: Go nuclear.

Edited on Sun May-15-05 08:38 PM by NNadir

"Nuclear power 'is critical to Britain's future'
By Mark Henderson
Renewable power will not stop global warming or blackouts

BRITAIN must build a new generation of nuclear power stations to prevent blackouts and fight global warming, the country�s most senior engineer said yesterday.
Sir Alec Broers, the president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said that government plans to generate 20 per cent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 were unrealistic and investment in nuclear power was critical if shortages were to be avoided.

All but one of the nuclear plants that now generate almost a quarter of Britain�s electricity are due to close in the next two decades, and ministers have refused to make a commitment to building replacements.

The recent Energy White Paper instead set ambitious targets for renewable power, such as wind and tidal energy, and plans to meet remaining electricity needs from fossil fuels.

This policy made over optimistic assumptions about the potential and cost of renewables, and would do little to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, Sir Alec said.

While the Government was right to invest in wind power, it would be a huge and misguided gamble to ignore nuclear power as an important element of the energy mix..."

...The Energy White Paper, he said, had been too generous to the potential role that renewables can play. �The view of wind power is over-optimistic � that we can get to 20 per cent renewable energy by 2020 and that it will be as straightforward as that. Some forms may be far more expensive than we think they are.

�All of these energy sources should carry the costs of their overheads with them. If you have wind power, you have to have back-up from gas generation, for when there is not enough wind, and the cost of those plants has to be added to the cost of wind power.

�We can�t just put up wind turbines and generate a lot of electricity for free. We will need to redesign the grid, set up reserves for when the wind isn�t blowing strongly enough, learn how to store power...� "

http://www.countryguardian.net/Broers.htm From the London Times.

Comment: These comments are of course, from an engineer, an engineer being, for those who are apparently unfamiliar with the concept, being a class of people who build real systems in the real world as opposed to fantasy systems in imagined heavens.

We are about to be bombarded with links from scientifically illiterate journalists saying that the chief engineer of Britain is a liar, that he doesn't know what he's talking about, etc, etc, etc ad nauseum. The links will be posted by people who claim to understand radioactivity - even to make rather fantastic claims to have worked with it - in spite of the fact that they clearly cannot understand even the basic radioactive decay law. Before posting the links they will recite the "nuclear exceptionalism" rosary bead by bead, "waste, Chernobyl, terrorists, accidents, weapons...blah, blah, blah..." while you are choked by heat and the lives of your children are destroyed.

So be it. Here is the situation folks: The words of engineers fall below the words of illiterate reporters repeating religious mantras. There is a word, of course, for a historical period very much like the one we are now entering. It was called, ironically enough, "The Dark Ages," mostly because religion prevailed over reality.

It is always the province of the religious to place their unsupported faith over science, to repeat dogma no matter what the cost in ethics, economics, hope and lives. Now, of course, it is not just merely human lives that are involved, but the lives of most organisms on the planet.

But we are already long past the point where history will forgive us.