Tony Williams wrote:

Lots of information about the reactors that we should
be building alongside PWR's and comparison tables of
cost and working life of different reactor tecnologies.

I don't mind nuclear power, in fact it is probably
inevitable. What has dismayed me though is that the
govt first announced our continuing possession of
nuclear weapons, then a few weeks later announced
an expansion of nuclear power stations.

2+2 = Power stations designed to produce weapons
grade plutonium, and all that goes with that.


Sorry, that's a 2+2=5. The reactor design and operating conditions for
sustained base-load power generation are almost exactly the opposite
from those required to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

For the latter, the irradiated fuel needs to be removed and reprocessed
long before the end of its useful energy-generating life. That was one
of the less widely advertised reasons for locating the Calder Hall
reactor on the same site as the (then) Windscale reprocessing plant, so
that some of the fuel could be removed very early. In contrast, by the
time the fuel for a power generating reactor has reached the end of its
economic life, the plutonium content (if the fuel were ever to be
reprocessed to extract it) would definitely not be weapons-grade.


I think we should go CANDU.

Ah yes, a heavy-water moderated reactor whose major byproduct is
tritium. Continuous supplies of fresh tritium are needed to support an
H-bomb programme (Google for "chapelcross tritium") but tritium
effluents are notoriously difficult to control - being mostly water and
steam - and have been a continuing problem for the CANDU system.

However, it would be wrong to single out CANDU for too much individual
criticism. Every nuclear reactor system has its advantages and
disadvantages compared to the others.

And of course the same is true in a broader sense for every energy
generating system. A grown-up debate on energy strategy needs to
recognise the need for diversity. We need a mix of energy sources that
has been specifically optimized to allow each one to do what it's best
at, without leaving the whole of the UK exposed to any individual
weaknesses. That means several different energy generating systems will
each have a useful part of play - but the optimum mix should be chosen
by strategic design, and not as the result of political tug-of-wars or
short-term greed.



--
Ian White