Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Bruce wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 12:15:17 +0100, Roger Chapman
wrote:
So you keep on saying but it isn't me you need to convince.

I don't need to convince anyone. I just don't like it when ignorant
people propagate lies.

Unfortunately, ignorant people don't know any better.

It's exactly the same with climate change. With both climate change
and nuclear power, people are polarised into believers and
non-believers whose ignorant prejudices are fed by lies and propaganda
from both sides.

Having worked in nuclear power for almost 15 years way back when, and
having reached senior management level, I am particularly sad that, in
2010, the basic untruths of the 1950s and 1960s keep reappearing,
thanks to vested interests who, on the one hand, stand to make
billions of pounds out of nuclear power, or on the other hand, are
misguided environmentalists who fail to realise that a non-nuclear
future would be particularly bleak.

In a propaganda war such as this, truth is the first casualty. I am
merely trying to point out the truth, which unfortunately seems
equally unpalatable to the quasi-religious zealots on both sides.

Eventually, we will build new nuclear stations, but they will need a
hefty subsidy. Alas, there is no other way they will happen.

And that is my last word on the subject for now. ;-)

Oh no it isn't!

I've got some questions you may be able to shed some light on, as you
worked in that arena:

1) What aspects of nuclear power station construction push up the cost
so much (i.e. over and above that of coal/gas, given that all types need
cooling towers, generators and so on).

2) I could imagine that the control systems were not that good, given
these were first generation type stations. Is it likely that control
systems would have improved significantly in the 40 years or so since
today's stations were designed, such that construction or operating
costs might be lower.


Indeed. I was talking yesterday to someone about HIS experience in the
nuclear power industry. Early stations were not much cop, and they
needed many modifications to make them effective, and often didn't work
as planned and were very expensive. They were also hand built: No two
are the same. All parts are special.

Sizewell B - the latest IIRC - has been by contrast a very steady
supplier of electricity to the South East for many years, and it and
even later reactor designs, are far more cost effective.

Its a standard trick of the Anti-Nuclear brigade to extrapolate from the
UK's original small and very experimental series of reactors, and claim
the same issues will apply to later designs and that economies of scale
have not improved construction costs on iota.

Conveniently ignoring real construction and running cost data from the
later French and Canadian designs.

Thanks,