The motion, adopted at conference, removes a “blanket opposition to nuclear fission” and instead commits the Green party of England and Wales to assessing nuclear projects alongside other low-carbon technologies.
Its electricity generation policy still prioritises offshore wind, onshore wind and rooftop solar as the primary sources of electricity, but allows elected representatives to support new nuclear reactors on a case-by-case basis.
This was one or the few areas I didn’t align with the Green Party before, as I believe that a bit of nuclear is kind of necessary to help round out less consistent energy sources as things stand. I think this is a reasonable stance.
I see that they’re passing round the nuclear Kool Aid. Remember kids: it’s radioactive for thousands if not millions of years. And in the UK there’s no plan for what to do with the waste. Drink up!
Millions of years huh? Which material would that be, specifically? Since you’re clearly an expert on the subject.
Also, breeder reactors exist. They literally re-process the spent fuel for more power.
Breeder reactors are conceptually cool but nowhere near economical enough to be a practical solution at present. Only two still exist in the world, and both are operated in russia - they were phased out for a reason.
Regardless, to run a breeder reactor you still need to separate out fission products from the waste, which we havent been doing since the 60’s or 70’s. The sensible thing to to with fuel is to reprocess it by PUREX/SANEX like we used to. But unfortunately we now have this giant build-up of screaming-hot unprocessed waste
Which one would you like me to pick? How about Iodine-129 with 15 million or so years?
Have you been reading Russian propaganda again? Breefer reactors. Next you’ll be spouting the benefits of cold fusion for skin care.
France
hashad used breeder reactors for years to great effectEdit: turns out their breeder reactors have been offline for a few years now.
They do, however, still process and recycle the spent fuel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle_in_France
Not true. The ones they used from the 1960s onwards were phased out by 2009. All were pretty much still in testing mode and never deployed at scale. The Superphenix (the last) was shut down over leaks and safety concerns. France’s nuclear are all now 100% Pressurised Water Reactors.
So misinformation or worse, deliberate disinformation, in this thread.
Ok then I’ll change a single letter of my previous comment.
France had used breeder reactors for years to great effect.
I’ve edited my comment to reflect it. The point remains that France has an established cycle for nuclear fuel that includes processing the spent fuel and recycling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle_in_France
There is a plan. It’s putting it in the ground where it’s perfectly safe, just like the radioactive ore that’s also down there.
True, however the fact that nuclear power has been around 70 years and we’ve still never been able to actually do this is a valid criticism. Even if the limited number of deep geological disposal projects all come online today, we’ll still be generating high-level waste much more quickly than we can bury it
So, you know that all the existing waste in the UK isn’t in the ground. It’s been in temporary storage at Sellafield for decades. No plans to bury it just yet.
How many people has that temporary storage killed, zero? It’s not really a problem
It’s radioactive before you dig it up, and it’s radioactive after. The difference now is that we have the tech to keep using it as fuel after it’s “done”.
It is far, far more radioactive afterward.
After fuel has been in-pile for a full lifetime, it has fissioned, decayed and transmuted to the point where half the periodic table worth of radioactive isotopes have been produced and are all present in the same waste
I mean, it’s called enriched uranium for a reason. 😅
So it’s ok to handle radioactive waste… with a shovel?
The vast majority of the process is automated. I used to work with a guy who designed and tested nuclear plant automation. Makes Satisfactory look like stacking wood blocks.
Here’s a radical idea- store it.
Give that man a job! So, where are we going to store this utterly toxic material? If you bury it there’s a chance it’ll leak into the water supply. Maybe launch it in missles at at the moon?
I don’t mean to be an absolutists and say it could never under any circumstances leak if handled poorly, but even if you just dumped it in a hole in the ground the odds are against that.
We primarily don’t have long term storage for us becuase it’s too valuable and we’re only currently using a small percentage of its potential energy. In other words we are not done with it.
Long term storage that exists like Yucca Mountain are heavily engineered to remove risk.
But if we’re talking about great brittian I mean, build storage on the French model, or pay France or the US for storage, or just do what you always do and toss the damn things into the Thames.