Nuclear industry needs wider acceptance
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You’d be forgiven for thinking The Engineer’s online editorial is somewhat geared toward the greener, renewable end of the energy market and to some extent you’d be right.
After all, The Engineer focuses on innovation, and with legislation pushing UK and other EU nations down the route to significant cuts in their overall carbon emissions, this sector is the focus of much of the R&D in the energy industry. This is in turn is generating a significant amount of business and technology news from all engineering sectors.
An event starting this week, however, could soon have our news desk looking more frequently at nuclear new build.
Starting tomorrow at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London is the ‘Nuclear New Build Conference: Nuclear’s New Generation Overview’.
The topics on the agenda for the two-day conference include supply chain issues, the skills gap, regulation, decommissioning and best practice.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is currently overseeing decommissioning activities at 20 sites across Britain, putting the UK at the forefront of innovation in legacy waste. However, Sizewell B, Britain’s newest nuclear power station, gained its rating certificate some 15 years ago, and questions about home-grown skills will, once again be brought to the fore at the conference.
On a broader level, the conference will discuss the thorny issue of ‘hearts and minds’, and sessions will be held on public opinion toward new build. Nuclear issues seem to polarise opinion in much the same way as hunting with hounds, and conference delegates might do well to turn their company’s respective PR budgets to national campaigns in the pursuit of winning public opinion.
How so? Let’s look again at Sizewell B, where construction began in earnest in 1988. For seven years, that normally quiet corner of north-east Suffolk became a thriving, confident community that embraced the opportunities brought to it by the nuclear power plant.
Since gaining its rating certificate, the power station’s owners have been a good and seemingly transparent neighbour to Sizewell and the adjoining small town of Leiston. So winning ‘hearts and minds’ at proposed new-build sites which already have an existing nuclear presence – which many of them do – is maybe not the issue here.
Conference delegates might care to remember that, to the wider public away from the existing nuclear sites, the nuclear industry is shrouded in secrecy; or that nuclear power is not something they can have a say in. Then there are the effects on public opinion of the high-profile accidents; the incident at Three Mile Island or the Chernobyl disaster.
These are clearly exceptions in an industry that has generated safe, clean electricity for years. An industry that offers a diverse range of highly-skilled, well-paid engineering careers that can take people across the globe.
It is up to the nuclear lobby to bridge this knowledge gap and in doing so win the battle for the hearts and minds of the wider public.
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Readers' comments (21)
Alan Fielding | 1 Mar 2010 1:01 pm
Until there is a proved, tested and foolproof method of "neutralizing" nuclear energy waste the public will never fully accept nuclear power stations, and who can blame them. What country in its right mind would build large numbers of these power stations without knowing what to do in an emergency!
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Jonathan Douglas | 1 Mar 2010 1:03 pm
In one sense it beggars belief that this is still a matter of debate. Being anti-nuclear power in the UK today is a preposterous stance, and has been for decades. Nuclear has its drawbacks, but they are less than almost any other form of power genreration. I agree with you, all that is needed is a little simple education of 'the public'.
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Anonymous | 1 Mar 2010 1:14 pm
Alan, How does 'neutralizing' nuclear energy waste and knowing what do in an emergency have anything to do with each other!?
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Nigel | 1 Mar 2010 1:18 pm
How to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the wider public?
Easy, don’t build nuclear power stations, then wait until the lights go out, general acceptance will come thick and fast. Of course by then it’s all too late - but this is Britain isn’t it?
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Norman Pratt | 1 Mar 2010 1:25 pm
I firmly believe that, in view of the fact that new nuclear generation is the only way to achieve green energy, a total rethink on the way new nuclear plants are designed is required.
new nuclear sites should be designed as PODS which would place 4 ( or more ) reactors on one site. each reactor would need to be designed to be easily decommissioned and would, before being finally sealedhave all the medium and high level waste generated during its operating life placed in the pod. this would remove the need to store waste offsite. each pod could be built as the preceeding pod was coming to the end of its rated life.
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Ken Raven | 1 Mar 2010 1:26 pm
The people we need to convince are the activists such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc. They seem to be the one who have sway over public opinion. They need to think things through to their logical conclusion. We have seen the call for biofuels accelerate de-forestation. The campaign against GM foods with potential to help feed the starving third world and the finally years of political procrastination, when we should have been building nuclear plants. You only have to look over channel to France a country largely free from the worry of security of power supply.
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Anonymous | 1 Mar 2010 1:51 pm
Nuclear will never be anyone's favourite..but it is proven technology that provides the countrys needs. Waste can be recycled and people have to understand it's a learning curve and we will get better at it. So stop bickering and let's move forwards!
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Anonymous | 1 Mar 2010 1:52 pm
The world needs energy produced with minimum emission of "greenhouse gases", and superficially Nuclear Energy fills that need.
The disadvantage is that when the fuel is "spent" by current standards, it still retains enough energy to be dangerous, for a very long time.
And we do not yet REALLY know how to deal with it, other than to bury it and hope for the best for our "Great to a large index" children that all will be well by then.
Should we not be VERY actively exploring methods of extracting more of that energy so that the spent fuel is no longer dangerous?
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Niel Leon | 1 Mar 2010 1:57 pm
Alan:
We do know how to "neutralize" nuclear waste. This is done by reprocessing it and using the reprocessed fissionable material in a reactor. By doing the reprocessing multiple times you can eliminate all radioactive nuclear products from the wastes stream.
The reason this is not done is because some of the fissionable product are elements like plutonium, which scares the general public even more than uranium.
The understanding of the technology to do this safely exists and can be readily implemented, so that in the end the waste is essentially zero. Unfortunately under the current systems, nearly 95% of all the available energy from nuclear fission is still in the waste stream.
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Charles | 1 Mar 2010 2:05 pm
Maybe we will need nuclear energy - to keep "the lights on". But maybe we would be able to stick with conventional power for much longer if the world wasn't over-populated. More people, more demand - fairly simple. Increased contraception would be a safe alternative to lots of nuclear plants.
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