Thursday, February 15, 2007

Bloody Greenpeace

Sometimes I get really frustrated at people that most of the time I tend to think do a pretty useful job. This is just one such case, Greenpeace has managed to get a Judge to rule that the British Government has to rethink its plans for a new generation of nuclear power plants. The reasons for Greenpeace's objection are the usual, nuclear is bad, mountains of waste, cost etc. The BBC has a story about it here. Now before everybody jumps on me, I am not particularly pro-nuclear, I am however very much anti-turning-the-world-into-a-giant-f*£$ing-desert-through-global-warming.

Greenpeace's attitude in this is particularly irksome, its just so black and white, the world isn't black and white its shades of grey. Yes it would be great if we could cut our green house gas emissions through renewables and energy savings but this just isn't practical, especially in Britain where about 20% of our electricity is currently generated from nuclear power. This fraction is going to decrease over the next 20 years to zero as the old plants are decommissioned, leading to the building of even more coal and gas fired power stations. All of the cuts that could have been made by using renewables and energy savings will be offset by the need to replace the carbon-neutral nuclear plants with fossil fuel burning ones. Nuclear is costly, it is a pain to have to deal with the waste, but it is much easier to deal with the waste from a nuclear plant than it is to try and contain all the C02 from a fossil fuel fired plants.

Get a clue Greenpeace, yes nuclear is not ideal, but it is the least worst option, at least until ITER manages to demonstrate that fusion is a practical method of energy generation on Earth. Oh I've just noticed that Greenpeace objects to fusion power as well apparently, a project that could cut out all greenhouse gas emissions is not worth the effort, what a bunch of short sighted fools.

4 comments:

jps said...

why on earth are they opposed to fusion?!

CMB said...

I wondered exactly the same thing, jps. Found an article on the greenpeace website

It is pretty much the most reactionary and shortsighted thing I have ever read.

Greenpeace deplores the agreement by the Representatives of the Parties to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) (1) to construct one of the world's largest nuclear fusion experiments in Cadarache, Southern France. The project, estimated to cost 10bn euros, will not generate any electricity, instead it will need massive amounts of energy to heat up.

"With 10 billion, we could build 10,000MW offshore windfarms, delivering electricity for 7.5 million European households," said Jan Vande Putte of Greenpeace International. Advocates of fusion research predict that the first commercial fusion electricity might be delivered in 50 to 80 years from now. But most likely, it will lead to a dead end, as the technical barriers to be overcome are enormous.

Mark Norris said...

Bunch of luddite fools, they have seriously earned my disdain today. Spend 10Billion, peanuts in terms of the worlds resources and has a very good chance of saving the planet. Idiots.

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