punkscience: Enemy of the people

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Or so Sir Bernard Ingham, former civil servant, would have you believe.

I'm proud.

I got it from a book by David MacKay called "Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air" that's currently being deconstructed on Open Democracy. Its awesome. Here's a question:

"If climate change is “a greater threat than terrorism,” should governments criminalize “the glorification of travel” and pass laws against“advocating acts of consumption”?"

Well?

as previously observed, nuclear generation sucks big, floppy donkey dicks

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Merrick rules:

"No British nuclear power station has ever been built to budget. The last one, Sizewell B, cost more than twice the estimate. The first of the new generation stations, Olkiluoto in Finland, found itself more than a billion pounds over budget and two years behind schedule at only two and a half years into construction.

Even with the taxpayer coughing up for a load of British Energy's debts, it couldn't stay afloat on its own. In 2002, just six years after privatisation, the government bailed it out with over £5bn of taxpayer's money.

These days, our government assures us that the owners will pay for all the decommissioning. They are lying. In order to get the industry and investors to sign up, the government agrees a set maximum price for waste disposal and decommissioning when it gives approval for the station. Any over-runs in cost (and when has the nuclear industry not delivered those?) will be paid for by the taxpayer."

nuclear power stations are shit

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More evidence to add to the mountain.

do you want a new nuclear power station at Hinkley?

You can register your opinion with the Western Daily News.

. . . . . . . you what?

John Hutton has dealt the government's attempts to limit climate change a significant blow by announcing his intention to make nuclear produce significantly greater proportion of the country's electricity than at present. Despite there being little to gain, in terms of carbon emissions from an expansion of nuclear, despite the clear and damning ethical reasons not to expand nuclear, despite the utterly unfeasible economics of nuclear generation that will leave the tax payer footing £billion clean-up bills, despite the absurdity of pushing this technology over truly renewable ones that will generate for millenia- not just for a few decades, despite the shortage of uranium reserves and despite the fact that new plants likely won't be generating for a decade- leaving us with continued rising fossil fuel generation for another ten years to add to the existing carbon emissions . . . . . there's so many more reasons not to do this.

So, so wrong.

new light shed on the nuclear debacle

Another North-Eastern blogger to give props to.

Good work, that man!

main hope for safe nuclear fuel disposal fails test of time

I have been looking for this for months now as its particularly pertinent to the current climate. I read it when it was published but forgot where I read it and have only just come across it again. Anyway, vitrification as a technique for immobilising nuclear waste for the hundreds of thousands of years necessary for its radiation to fade to safe levels is actually more likely to release its lethal radioactive burden after a mere millennium and a half.


Addition: Sellafield clean up will cost tax payer £34 billion!!!!

In another cheery bit of news from nukesville we have the revelation today that the British Nuclear Group, a subsidiary of BNFL, stands to contribute only ~£8 billion to the clean up operation that will cost a total of ~£42 billion. Why a public listed company should be allowed to simply hand its liabilities over to the government without being held to account eludes me. Apparently BNFL is desperately trying to shed the group to avoid this liability falling back onto them. No-one seems to have factored in any long-term costs for storing the several tonnes of high-level plutonium which the site currently holds and seeing as the proposed solution for safely disposing of this material has just gone down the pan I really do struggle to comprehend why this government is proposing that more of this material should be produced.

of nukes and bonuses

Two CiF articles to mention today, one on the abhorrence of escalating executive pay and another calling for abandonment of the government's nuclear fetish.

kicking the pro-nuke brigade in the nuts

I mentioned this before but its turned into such a righteous ding-dong that I had to draw further attention to my awesomeness. I'm commenting as thesimpletruth, check out my manly handling of the nuke-lovers and ecocidal maniacs.

I rule. Totally.

Oxford Research Group piss all over the nuclear fire

Their' latest report deals descriebs how new nuclear generation capacity will not aid the fight against climate change and will create new terrorist threats by propagating the spread of fissile material throughout the world. Not only that but it increases the chance of a nuclear war.

Pretty conclusive, methinks.