Harry's Place

So does that mean, they’ll start attacking nuclear again, once Climate Change has been fully debunked or has fallen out of fashion?

Nuclear is the answer because it denies Islamist regimes and Chavez an income they don’t deserve.

Gene, may I ask what changed your mind?

Do you still worry about ‘waste’ being dangerous for a billion years?

I welcome your (and others’) change of thoughts on Nuclear Power, Gene.

Anyone who thinks the government of any western country is embracing alternative fuels is doing so for environmental reasons is smoking dope. It’s to reduce dependency on the middle east and Russia. I’m sure they’re happy to have the greens as cover though.

If it gets us off oil and dependency on ‘colourful’ nations, then nuke it up.

“And even if you’re a skeptic, surely you can appreciate that reducing demand for oil has the side benefit of reducing the global influence, and power to do ill, of regimes like Hugo Chavez’s in Venezuela, the royals in Saudi Arabia and the mullahs in Iran.”

I am sceptical about AGW.

And I fully support the construction of new nuclear generation in the UK. For all the reasons above, plus not being at the beck and call of the Russians.

The government announced the sites for new nukes in England & Wales recently to barely a murmur of public outrage, they should of course have grasped the nettle ten years ago. Beside any other considerations you can tell building nukes is a great idea because the Scots Parliament has rejected having any new ones built north of the border.

Though obviously they should do the new ones in a cheerful colour scheme like oldbury http://www.profeng.com/NR/rdonlyres/F7953B58-38E5-486B-8234-8F73A6EFEDF5/0/21160003.jpg rather than dismal bare concrete like the one in the washington post.

I think you’ll find a good proportion of skeptics are happy to have nuclear plants – it’s the Greens who are opposed.

The thing about nuclear power stations, is that we are a little scared of them. That is a good thing. It moves us to demand failsafe technology, and ever safer operating procedures. Just like we demand flight data recorders on passenger planes, but not on our cars. We appreciate that the former has the potential to kill more people, than the latter. We take it more seriously as a result. Then we get killed in our cars.

I live a few miles away from an old decommissioned coal mine, which in one day claimed more than 200 lives. And in this country we also saw the end results of not taking colliery waste seriously enough in Aberfan. Whatever we do to generate energy, it can always up and bite us. But if you want to sustain millions on this island, vigilance is the inevitable price.

In somewhat related news I went to have a look at this small scale hydro scheme the week before last http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/greenproperty/3394899/Eco-homes-The-power-of-water.html I dare say it’s running at full power right now as it’s been pissing it down with rain but it was only doing 80% or so of it’s rated 77kW according to the digital power meter when I was there. There was a sign up explaining they’d had to switch it off for a month in the summer due to inadequate river level. Apparently it cost 300 grand and saves 80 tonnes of carbon per year which for comparison is apparently a bit less carbon than 3 transits, 1 LGV and a HGV
http://www.rbs.co.uk/business/carbon/options/businesses.ashx

The French due to their incompetence, and being lucky in love own the energy in Europe in far more sustainable waty then even the Norwegian Blue! Surely these cretins like Dinsdale realize that a French blow out would be disastrous forall of us not just the French.

I believe that Kate Hudson of the CND has already developed a rather nuanced position when it comes to developing nuclear power.

Now if only the UK were run by a creepy megalomaniac dictator (insert Gordon Brown joke here).

whatever the merits or otherwise of nuclear power, talk about missing the point – Gene like his fellow head in the sand know-nothings blabbering on about global warming when they don’t have a clue. It’s nothing but hysterics, political correctness and a huge economic scam passed off as science. ClimateGate doesn’t mean anything to Gene and HP for that matter, all those e-mails and files from the CRU hacked into and put up on the web (from director Phil Jones, and other hotshots like Keith Briffa, Kevin Trenberth and others) exposing their misrepresentation of climate data, character assassinations of opponents, admissions of financial motives, admissions of burying and chucking data that doesn’t fit the AGW model, admissions of the GW sell resting on very shaky scientific grounds, wilful secrecy and self-censorship on keeping uncomfortable to AGW data in-house, and the like in selling AGW hysteria – it’s like it never even happened, even though this is the biggest news this last week in WORLD SCIENCE, never mind global warming “science”. Don’t mean a thing to Gene though who thinks his opinion on AGW actually counts for something, when he is clueless, like most of the HP brigade.

HP is a fucking joke, and Gene is the king jester here.

Gene – to echo Morgoth – you are becoming such an agreeable darling. At least we can agree on the science and engineering hard (and real) stuff.

Just a note that nuclear energy is expensive as compared to coal – so prepare to tighten the belt.

Now, can I issue my customary insult to Mohammed the pedophile or are you going to delete me as usual?

Hamid – a proud Muslim apostate.

Jon d – hydro energy capacity factors are anywhere from 30% to 45% (without storage). Still less costly than wind, nuclear, and far less than solar. 88% is pretty good for the occasion, but you’ll have to find the annual average.

Perhaps this would be a good time to mention that Larry Moonsong thinks that vaccines cause autism. That should tell us exactly what weight his comments on science should be given.

Larry Moonsong: HP is a fucking joke, and Gene is the king jester here (for agreeing to AGW).

You mean the green activists are now denying AGW because they are afraid nuclear plants will get built?

Another case of the radical left agreeing with the wingnut right?

Common ground? I don’t think so. Many on the left have been so far indoctrinated against nuclear power that they’d rather freeze to death than approve nuclear power generation. I can appreciate the risks of nuclear power but when you look at the damage burning coal is doing, it’s actually a better bet.

The Hard Left will go on opposing nuclear for the same reasons they did in the past – it benefits their masters in Moscow. It is just that now they are protecting Moscow’s gas exports, not improving their chances of invading the West and giving their local Quislings all the cool jobs.

Not that it will help with dependence on the Middle East. I doubt much electricity is generated with oil and those that export gas tend to be our friends. Still every little bit helps I suppose.

James Lovelock agrees with gene. I agree with both of them. I have thought nuclear power was the way forward for many years. I am on the Left. How far I leave to others to judge.

Note to right wingers: The last person to run Britiain’s nuclear industry as if it mattered was the Rt. Hon. Antony Wedgewood-Benn. I have no “masters in Moscow” and if I am in their pay I would appreciate a cheque.

they should of course have grasped the nettle ten years ago

When has this government ever grasped any nettle without a gun being held to its head?

Indeed they should have. Nuclear power is the only way to reduce CO2 emissions and dependence on medieval thugs.

they should of course have grasped the nettle ten years ago

When has this government ever grasped any nettle without a gun being held to its head?

Indeed they should have. Nuclear power is the only way to reduce CO2 emissions and dependence on medieval thugs.

Gordon,

By all means blame the government for failing to grasp the nettle ten years ago. But the government will generally do what public opinion dictates until other factors become imperative. Therefore some of that blame has to be shared by a public prepared to wallow in a miasma of prejudice and ignorance when it came to nuclear power, rather than confronting the reality of the necessary evils involved in sustaining modern life.

It is also worth noting that power companies have been free to propose and potentially build nuclear power plants for many years but for some reason have chosen not to.

@ Der Whigphilosophie der Geschichte

Yes, that’s true but I do wonder to what extent ‘public opinion’ – as opposed to the opinion of a vocal and well organised lobby – is actually opposed to nuclear power. France is hugely dependent on nuclear power for its electricity generation and this is happily accepted by most people. However, when strong opinions are expressed about the matter, it is the antis who make the most noise.

The company that owns the new mills screw has it’s AGM this week so presumably we’ll be able to see how the first full year went.
The telegraph report is misleading though, neither the supermarket nor anyone else have been able to throw away their mains connection, the screw can stop turning as it did in the summer and the food doesn’t spoil in the coop’s freezers. Also that location was pretty prime, a high weir in the middle of a town (making it cheap to hook up to the grid and transport the hardware in by road) there’s only a limited number of sites that good in the country.

And I’m like Gene on this. I would have been reflexively anti-nuclear when I was younger but have now moved to a fairly neutral position: aware of the risks but open-minded and wanting to see a dispassionate debate informed by science. What I do know is that Chernobyl was a failure of the Soviet system rather than of nuclear power per se.

Btw the Met Office is asking for your climate change questions for their chief scientific officer… http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/explained/asktheexpert.html it’s a golden opportunity for you deniers to prove that reading a few semi coherent conspiracy blogs makes you more knowledgable than years of training, study and research.

@ Jon d

I’m not seeing much evidence of deniers on this thread…. It isn’t even what we’re talking about.

I was counting Mr Moonsong @0700 twice for being extra annoying.

lol

I agree up to point, but nuclear power is no silver bullet. It is a useful transitional technology at best – there are better technologies being developed.

Gene doesn’t like Chavez and Ahmadinejad, and says nuclear power is the way out of the bind.

He’s behind the curve though.

One word: Lula. As well as Chavez, Lula of Brazil is signing agreements with Iran at some pace, and solidly supports Iran’s right to develop nuclear power – indeed he states that Brazil will happily partner Iran to develop nuclear power.

Meanwhile, Obama recently noted that Lula is the most popular politician on the planet.

There is a growing partnership between Iran and South America, and not all this is bad; Iran had an internationally recognised right to develop nuclear power – there is no way to escape that reality – particularly in the context of global warming.

there are better technologies being developed.

Of course there are.

Ahmadinejad now says he will be happy to buy nuclear fuel. By the way, recent friendly visitors to Brazil (as well as Ahmadinejad) include: Avignor Lieberman, Israeli Foreign minister; Shimon Peres, Israeli President; Mamoud Abbas, PA President. Lula recently proposed a football match between the famed Brazilian side and a mixed Israeli/Palestinian side.

So… Work all that out :-)

What I do know is that Chernobyl was a failure of the Soviet system rather than of nuclear power per se.

George,
Chernobyl was a Russian RBMK (Реактор Большой Мощности Канальный) reactor, i.e. early 1950s technology and was completely obsolete by the 1960s never mind 1986.

Trying to use Chernobyl to argue against Nuclear Power would be like trying to use the fragility of WW2-era Shermans as a reason that the British Army should give up their current Challenger IIs.

Er, Morgoth, that was what I was saying….

Obsolete design doesn’t necessarily mean dangerous design. Those soviet reactors were an inherently dangerous design before they even got off the drawing board (which they never would have done in any western country)

George,

I’d broadly agree with your point about how activism by a particular lobby has influenced ‘public opinion’ (or the politician’s perspective of what ‘public opinion’ might be). But we (the public) are still responsible for the final result; if we don’t interrogate the activists and understand their agenda to be partisan (however well-intentioned and valid their case may be) we are the ones ultimately responsible for failing to properly inform ourselves.

To address the point made by Short order cook about power companies being free to propose earlier nuclear developments, I believe this was always going to be governed by the same factors, e.g. public resistance during the labyrinthine planning process which can only be overcome by government backing for shortcuts in that process. Absent that government backing, no energy company (not even the crypto-Gaullists of EDF) would be willing to confront the existing anti-nuclear consensus through the kind of process involved in Sizewell B.

Personally, I’d like to blame the media at this point for effectively confusing the promotion of activism with objective inquiry. If, as George states, the antis are making the most noise, it is partly because the media provide them with the opportunity to do so to the virtual exclusion of other perspectives. To push my personal interpretation further, I believe the failure of the media to subject activism to sufficient scrutiny extends into other contentious areas to the detriment of the public interest in informed debate, e.g. on the Iraq war.

I think the differing position of the French might be explained by the different attitude of governments operating a more nationalist energy strategy, rooted in a sense of Gaullism which socialist governments have to some extent shared. But that may just be my personal prejudices speaking.

Amused,

Yes, I would also see nuclear power as useful transitional technology. But for the immediate future it is necessary for environmental and strategic reasons. If some activists are now prepared to recognise that, and implicitly turn their back on the kinds of gesture politics which have contributed to allowing us to dodge difficult but necessary decisions in the past, then better late than never in my view.

By all means blame the government for failing to grasp the nettle ten years ago. But the government will generally do what public opinion dictates until other factors become imperative.

A useful excuse, that …

I agree with the thread. It’s interesting that both George Monbiot and Mark Lynas have come out in favour of nuclear power. It seems like a decision between two evils, but the scale of human catastrophe predicted by global warming far outwieghs any localised nuclear dangers. If we are going to maintain lifestyles at anywhere near their current level there is no other option.

If we are going to maintain lifestyles at anywhere near their current level there is no other option.

No no no no no. Virtuous privation is called for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

So, two heads are better than one, eh?

Er, Morgoth, that was what I was saying….

Oh sorry, so you were. My apologies

That’ll teach me not to have my knee strapped down strongly enough.

I even have an ‘Atomkraft Ja Bitte’ teeshirt.

…which might suggest an even stronger view than the one I hold, but it’s good for winding people up.

Have you ever thought about the fact that increased use of nuclear energy means less use of fossil fuels? Who benefits, then, when Greens work hard to stop new nuclear projects because they then do not lose market share or control?

Perhaps the virlulent anti-nukes are unwittingly working for coal, oil, and gas interests.

Rod Adams.

To be fair to them, I don’t think the Greens and their fellow-travelers could ever seriously be thought to be in the pocket of energy companies. In my limited experience they have opposed all forms of non-renewable power generation simultaneously. Personally, I find it hard to explain that approach without accusing them of hypocrisy or selective ignorance but I do credit them with sincerity.

I, too, welcome the change of heart when it comes to many people’s view of nuclear power.

When discussing clean energy, I think it’s too bad the climategate issue is being ignored on this site.

Regardless of the AGW issue, we need to at the very least replace our nuclear plants here in Britain. The last will go offline in 10-15 years and these supply a large proportion of our electricity needs.
Also, unlike most religious, sorry, I mean Green groups, skeptics have recognised the salient fact that energy demand, like the world, never remains constant. The demand for electricity is going to keep rising, even with efficiencies and the current supply is barely ahead of demand.
A programme of ANY future government must be a large scale powerplant building programme.

Regardless of the AGW issue, we need to at the very least replace our nuclear plants here in Britain. The last will go offline in 10-15 years and these supply a large proportion of our electricity needs.
Also, unlike most religious, sorry, I mean Green groups, skeptics have recognised the salient fact that energy demand, like the world, never remains constant. The demand for electricity is going to keep rising, even with efficiencies and the current supply is barely ahead of demand.
A programme of ANY future government must be a large scale powerplant building programme.

If we are going to maintain lifestyles at anywhere near their current level there is no other option.

The idea that we should and/or could maintain lifestyles at anywhere near their current level, where every Tom, Dick or Lindsay can jet off to the Seychelles for half-term, is beyond lunatic.

What we need to do is aim for much more economical lifestyles. This will happen anyway: if not voluntarily, or semi-voluntarily by government action such as taxation or prohibitions, then it will be imposed on humanity by the laws of physics – with a great deal more suffering.

Gordon Bennet – “The idea that we should and/or could maintain lifestyles at anywhere near their current level, where every Tom, Dick or Lindsay can jet off to the Seychelles for half-term, is beyond lunatic.”

Sorry but why? The question of could is an easy one. We can. There is no scientific or technical reason why we can’t. The should is a moral question and anyone who thinks we ought to return to the sort of poverty you see in Haiti – with the resulting higher death rate – has some pretty serious questions to answer. Like, why do you want to kill so many people? So over to you, why shouldn’t we?

“What we need to do is aim for much more economical lifestyles. This will happen anyway: if not voluntarily, or semi-voluntarily by government action such as taxation or prohibitions, then it will be imposed on humanity by the laws of physics – with a great deal more suffering.”

And what law of physics do you think will impose any new conditions on us in the immediate future?

(Besides, the market would probably do it with less suffering than Government decree if there was any reason to think it was needed)

There is another row brewing up over the New Zealand branch of the AGW brigade now. It appears that their raw data did get into the public domain. When someone entered that data, the graph they got was fairly static. But the official graph shows the distinctive significant warming trend. It appears that you only get that trend by introducing “adjustments” to that raw data. They are refusing to release the rationale for those adjustments, hence the rumpus.

I still want to see us sharply reduce our use of imported fossil fuels though. And nuclear is the way to do it. And when that generating capacity is built, I’d like to see us applying our imagination and resources to radical new transport technology.

I like nuclear power.

Larkers – “I have no “masters in Moscow” and if I am in their pay I would appreciate a cheque.”

The fact that most supporters of CND are well meaning liberals does not mean that it was not, in fact, run by supporters of the Soviet Union. Its head is still the former head of the pro-Soviet Communist Party after all. The point of a United Front group like Stop the War is that the Marxists can hide behind the non-Communist appearance while recruiting and control people Lenin called Useful Idiots.

Jon d – “Obsolete design doesn’t necessarily mean dangerous design. Those soviet reactors were an inherently dangerous design before they even got off the drawing board (which they never would have done in any western country)”

The problem with the RMBK reactor was that carbon (in the form of the graphite moderator) reacts badly with steam, producing hydrogen and heat. So you need to keep the moderator and the coolant apart. One of the nicer Western designs is the Canadian CANDU. Which is cooled by heavy water and has a heavy water moderator. Now if they mix they will not produce hydrogen but an explosion is not unlikely. What happens when a large amount of water is heated and turns to steam? They also need to keep the moderator and the coolant separate. You think there are similarities?

“So Much For Subtlety
One of the nicer Western designs is the Canadian CANDU. Which is cooled by heavy water and has a heavy water moderator. Now if they mix they will not produce hydrogen but an explosion is not unlikely. What happens when a large amount of water is heated and turns to steam? They also need to keep the moderator and the coolant separate. You think there are similarities?”

Err, no. That the RMBK reactor had a graphite moderator was important to the accident, but the fact that hot graphite reacts with steam, producing hydrogen, did not. Graphite/water cooled reactors are very good for generating weapons grade uranium; which is why the UK/US and Soviets used them first, but they require enriched uranium and they can go runaway if coolant is lost or the operators are stupid assholes who do not follow the manual.
At Three Mile Island, the operators were very, very stupid, didn’t follow the book and no one was in charge.
At Chernobyl, the operators were very, very stupid, didn’t follow the book and no one was in charge. The operators dicked around with the reactor, tried to get it to a low power status, overshot, didn’t allow it to come to steady state; all outside the operating parameters of reactor and NOT IN THE BOOK. They allowed a build up of Xenon-135, a neutron poison, and then withdrew the control rods. The books says, NEVER do a quick power up if you have an unexplained low or high neutron flux density. Withdrawing the control rods burnt off the Xenon-135 and boiled the light water coolant. The light water is also a neutron poison and when it boiled the nuclear flux went up. BOOM.
The first explosion was a steam explosion.
The second has been ascribed to a hydrogen explosion, but the smart money is on a nuclear/thermal explosion.
Then air rushed into the core and ignited the graphite; third explosion.
This accident was rather like seeing smoke and flame licking under your bedroom door, then opening it to see what is going on.

The CANDU reactor uses heavy water, D2O, as the moderator and coolant burning natural, unenriched, uranium. D2O reduces the speed of fast neutrons allowing them to slow down enough to split uranium atoms. If the water boils away, no slow neutrons, no nuclear reaction, no boom.
The CANDU is intrinsically safe, by design, it would take real dyed in the wool stupidity to have a runaway reaction. Even if you do the most stupid thing possible, like opening the pressure vessel, you have a hot exposed core, that does not burn or boom, and a containment room full of mildly radioactive steam.

The big lesson from TMI, paint your concrete and that way you don’t have water depositing radioactive elements into your containment building (no joke, they painted all of them world wide after the accident).
The big lesson of Chernobyl was don’t pay bonuses to reactor operators, to do experiments that are not in the manual, if they can do them before payday (no joke, the Chernobyl operators were promised an extra months pay if they managed to do a reactor safety experiment)

M o r g o t h – “Chernobyl was a Russian RBMK (Реактор Большой Мощности Канальный) reactor, i.e. early 1950s technology and was completely obsolete by the 1960s never mind 1986.”

I don’t disagree with you here and I love nuclear power but the first American Pressurized Water Reactor, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, went on line in 1957. The PWR remains the main design used across the world. If Britain gets new ones they will be the same basic design. The other main American design, the Boiling Water Reactor, was the first in commercial use in the United States. Also in 1957 at Vallecitos in California.

By way of contrast, the first RMBK reactor I can find was built in 1970 and entered commercial operation in 1974. Just outside Leningrad.

this thread is getting old, but I think it’s worth pointing out something that I should have mentioned, but didn’t. As far as nuclear power goes – the nuclear lobby has always propogandised in favour of AGW, because it is in their interests to do so. Lovelock after all has a background in nuclear physics. There is an irony here that people are blisfully clueless of – AGW hysteria was originally a right-wing political agenda under Thatcher’s govt, before it became a fashionable leftwing PC agenda. The reason being that Thatcher wanted to undermine the power of the coal miners (hello remember all that back in the early 80s? the strikes and all the rest), one way of doing that was to reduce Britain’s dependency on coal, by increasing our dependency on nuclear power. That is why Thatcher pushed AGW in a big way, no Western government did more to sell and promote AGW than Thatcher’s in the 80s. It was Thatcher’s govt that put AGW on the map, in the public and media consciense – all motivated by the cynical political and economic agenda of pushing nuclear power at the expense of coal.

Her govt made it clear to physicists, climatologists that there was money on the table to prove man-made fossil fuel emissions were causing global warming. That’s when the whoring of the physical sciences to promote AGW began in the Western world – the UK govt corrupted it with big money (before the US followed the British lead). Scientists tend to follow the money trail, like most everybody else. This is well-known to those who know the history of the AGW sell ie none of you lot. Thatcher and her cabinet were the central figures in the invention of the AGW myth (not only in the UK but in the world), and now it’s all those Leftists who hated her who have hijacked and hysterically froth at the mouth about AGW. Talk about irony, talk about an irony over everybody’s heads.

The left adopted AGW for its own reasons, not that they are conscious of these reasons, but PC has a lot to do with it, blaming the evil West and America in particular, the evil corporations run mainly by rich white men for fossil fuel emissions and supposed global warming, rather than face up to uncomfortable non-PC facts about the nature of environmental destruction the world over, overpopulation, corrupt Third World regimes and their role in ecological damage, deforestation of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the soil erosion, loss of species – plant and animal, dwindling fresh water supplies, the decimation of fish stocks in the world’s oceans etc. Something called the sixth extinction, but don’t worry about it, continue to scream hysterically in support of a political Thatcherite agenda misnamed science.

Let me guess: HP will run a piece about these safety concerns raised by the government nuclear watchdog?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/27/nuclear-power-reactor-design

Raphael Levy – “Let me guess: HP will run a piece about these safety concerns raised by the government nuclear watchdog?”

Well why not? Especially given those complaints are so serious:

“The design put forward by Westinghouse, the American firm now owned by Toshiba of Japan, is also criticised, with the HSE saying the safety case on internal hazards has “significant shortfalls”….. It also complains that the reactor design was submitted in feet and inches rather than metric figures.”

“The fact that most supporters of CND are well meaning liberals does not mean that it was not, in fact, run by supporters of the Soviet Union. Its head is still the former head of the pro-Soviet Communist Party after all. The point of a United Front group like Stop the War is that the Marxists can hide behind the non-Communist appearance while recruiting and control people Lenin called Useful Idiots.” So Much for Subtlety 27th Novemebrr 12.37 a.m.

You introduce C.N.D for some reason of your own. (One might just as easily bring in the A.A. or R.A.C. or Mr Jeremy Clarkson, but no matter. It is your choice.) C.N.D. is the ‘Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’ whose views on global warming, the ostensible subject of this thread, are unknown to me. I suspect they may have one but what of that? Among the ‘useful’ fools’ today must be counted then Richard M. Nixon, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and others, all of whom were involved in nuclear proliferation talks aimed at reducing nuclear weapons. Why, pray, is it wrong to do this if one is ‘left wing’ (pace Mr Obama) and commenable if one is right wing?

Now, how do I get my hands on the Soviet gold?

Smfs the crafty canuk’s anticipated the sort of steam explosion you describe and specified reinforced concrete buildings designed to contain the force for CANDU type reactors… Rather like the far more common civil PWR designs around the world that also use superheated coolant water.

Jon d – “Smfs the crafty canuk’s anticipated the sort of steam explosion you describe and specified reinforced concrete buildings designed to contain the force for CANDU type reactors… Rather like the far more common civil PWR designs around the world that also use superheated coolant water.”

Yeah, them’s a tricky lot in Canukistan. Most Western reactors have concrete containment shields. But it is not really a design issue with the reactor is it? The much older CO2 cooled reactors Britain used to use didn’t have such shields, yet we had no problems with them. The RMBK design always had problems and were forever leaking.

The one design issue I can think of is that the Canadians and the Soviets both wanted on-line refueling so the reactor did not have to be shut down. The Canadians cut their fuel rods into short pieces and inserted them horizontally – the tubes ran from side to side. The Soviets kept their fuel rods long and inserted them vertically. Which meant they needed a crane. The height of the building needed for the crane meant that they could not build a concrete shield even if they had wanted to – and they probably didn’t as they are expensive. Which makes me wonder what the British did – we built a reactor that owed a lot to the CANDU but the tubes were vertical and it was cooled by light water – the Steam-Generating Heavy Water Reactor. Anyone been to their site to see if they have a proper containment building? I would guess not.

So maybe I would have to concede design played a role. Still, putting steam near graphite is, I think most people would agree, a bad idea. Not as bad as putting molten sodium near steam which most Fast Breeders, in Britain, France, America, Japan and the Soviet Union, did. But bad enough.

If we get any new reactors I hope we buy some CANDUs from Canada.

If we don’t get cracking soon, I’m going to build one of my own. I shall call it the Rad-O-Matic. I’ve already worked out how to enrich Uranium, you plug your spin-dryer into the HT at the nearest pylon. That kind of speeds things up. It’s a centrifuge like you’ve never seen. Just don’t put your cardigans in it.

I’ve bought the concrete, dug a hole in the back yard, and I’ve got five thousand pencils to use as moderators. It’ll be all done by next summer. In fact I’m buying the nails next week.

Everything is absolutely under control, and you’se all have nothing at all to worry about, ‘cept if I have one of my funny turns just as it all goes critical.

Monty – “If we don’t get cracking soon, I’m going to build one of my own.”

Well you laugh but you know that an American Boy Scout did actually try to build one in his backyard. He wanted the badge. I didn’t even know the Scouts gave them out for reactor construction. Given the amount of radioactive waste he seems to have produced it looks like he did a pretty good job of it too.

You mean I could get a free badge too? I never thought of that.

I have known everything there is to know about hazardous waste disposal since I was seven years old, and brought a jellyfish home from the beach in six buckets. You just have to get used to the smell.

I think he got hosed, literally too!, and didn’t get the badge. Not a good sign – because if the Americans wouldn’t give him the badge, tight fisted Brits surely wouldn’t give you one.

The story has been written up here:

The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor, by Ken Silverstein, Villard; First Edition edition (January 11, 2004), ISBN-10: 081296660, ISBN-13: 978-0812966602