• Question: Do you support nuclear power stations?

    Asked by 9eltu to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 25 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Gemma Staite

      Gemma Staite answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I wouldn’t say I support them, but I am not opposed to them either. There are risks involved, as there is with anything. The difficulty is that the consequences of anything going wrong are so bad, but we do need to explore other options.

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      I’m not in support of any more nuclear power stations being built when renewable resources are just starting to come into their own.

      We now have the UK first 100% renewable energy provider, called Good Energy, which are a company that buy excess energy made by small and medium sized renewable generators (like from small holdings with water mills or large solar panels) as well as investing in the building of wind farms and water turbine generators (they provide my electricity!).

      In m opinion investments in renewable research, such as investigating efficient fuel cells and improving solar energy harvesting photovoltaic cells should be invested in rather than the building of new nuclear plants. Nuclear power has enough of a problem worrying about the waste it has already generated without compounding the problem by making more.

      This is just my opinion though. :S

    • Photo: Andrew Thomas

      Andrew Thomas answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      At the moment they’re the best alternative we have to reduce CO2 emissions. However, I don’t like the fact that instead of CO2 they produce waste that will be a problem for generations to come. So, yes we unfortunately need to build them BUT it is extremely short sighted not to be heavily funding research into renewable energy sources such as solar energy to produce fuels (artificial photosynthesis), tidal, wave, and improving the efficiency of cheap photovoltaics (the ones that make electricity directly from sunlight). If we stick only to the nuclear option how many years before we are asking “When will the Uranium run out?”

      So overall I’m like @Gemma, I don’t really support them but I don’t oppose them at the moment.

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      I agree with Andrew… at this point, nuclear power is MUCH better than fossil fuels! We just need to figure out how to engineer nuclear power plants to be even safer and have many back-ups in the case of disaster.

    • Photo: Ashley Cadby

      Ashley Cadby answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      I think that we should do a lot of research into Thorium reactors. I’m not convinced that nuclear power is going to help unless we move away from uranium, I think it is too expensive to mine high quality uranium considering there may not enough to sustain energy production for more than 50 years. Thorium reactors could be our best bet, and of course they are much safer ( in my opinion). I’m not sure that renewables are there yet, I would love renewables to take off. Many of my recent papers have been on solar cell technology, but base load production from wind and solar is going to be difficult for quite a few years to come.

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