They called Chernobyl 'the new Venice'

[bananas]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/they-called-chernobyl-lsquothe-new-venicersquo-802533.html

They called Chernobyl ‘the new Venice’

Norman Dombey on myths and legends about nuclear power

Sunday, 30 March 2008


John Hutton, Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, said last week: "I want Britain to be leading the world in the development and application of this new generation of low-carbon power technology." He then called for the creation of a £20bn industry with 100,000 new jobs, making the UK "the gateway to a new nuclear renaissance across Europe".

Hurrah, hurrah! A new dawn! Except that we have heard it all before, and are yet to catch a glimpse of the previous bonanza we have been promised.

I'm not anti-nuclear power, merely sceptical about its supposedly magical benefits. It became the answer to our problems over 50 years ago, when the Queen opened the world's first nuclear power station, Calder Hall at Windscale. Eight years later, Fred Lee, Minister of Power under Harold Wilson, told the Commons: "I am quite sure that we have hit the jackpot ... We have the greatest breakthrough of all time." He was announcing another "new generation" of nuclear stations based on the British designed advanced gas-cooled reactor. He went on to say: "As we now know, there is something like a 10 per cent advantage in this development, and it could be greater ... Certainly a 10 per cent saving is involved." The first station of this new generation was to be built at Dungeness in Kent; Dungeness B was ordered a few months later, in August 1965. The reactor eventually started up, 10 years late, in December 1982. It cost more than five times the 1965 estimates.

Another exciting new dawn came shortly after Margaret Thatcher took office in 1979. David Howell, the Secretary of State for Energy, announced another new generation of reactors: this time a US-designed pressurised water reactor would be built at Sizewell in Suffolk. His junior minister, Norman Lamont, soon declared "the government's intention to build at least one nuclear power station a year for the next 10 years". One – Sizewell – was built. Eventually, in 1995, it produced electricity for the grid, 15 years after Howell's announcement, costing 50 per cent more than the original estimate.

<snip>

Norman Dombey, Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Sussex, advised the Commons Select Committee on Energy in 1979

[americanyouth]

1. While frustrating, trial and error is the only way to advance civilization.

[Turbineguy]

2. The Windscale reactor

was graphite moderated (like Chernobyl). It had a reactor fire during an annealing process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire.

The Chernobyl accident was due to a "prompt critical excursion" (don't you just love engineering terms?)