Does Scotland Need Nuclear Power? - BBC Landward

A report on hydro power from the superb BBC Scotland programme Landward. It's on Friday nights BBC2 and makes for excellent viewing. It does a good job of leaving politics out of the programme - although this topic is quite a hot political potato. This report suggests because Scotland has so much water that small scale hydro could supply up to 54% of Scotland's enegry needs. My opinion is that Scotland does not need nuclear power. (In fact we could do without nuclear weapons and nuclear submarines as well). The Scottish Parliment has voted against nuclear. Yet Westminster are trying to convince the public that there is no choice. In the main the entire Scottish media are also trying their best to say we have to have it. However, thankfully this programme shows that we shouldn't need it.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• nuclear
• power
• energy
• politics
• Scotland
• England
• Ireland
• Wales
• SNP
• Labour
• Holyrood
• Westminster
• Conservative
• Liberal
• Democrat
• Lib
• Dem
• Salmond
• Gordon
• Brown
• Green
• North
• Sea

[jambed2010]

i work for hunterston b power station on the west coast of scotland and there has been no 'leaks' in nearly 20 years and the only 'leak' thats ever occurred was carbon dioxide from a broken valve and that had an ionization of 5 seconds so in around 15 seconds the gas was no longer radioactive and it was just harmless carbon dioxide and the statistics show that you have a higher risk of getting cancer if your house is built on a granite deposit than living next to a nuclear power station.

[RobQos]

@jambed2010 from Sunday Herald, 20 September 2009. Thousands of litres of radioactive waste have accidentally leaked into the Firth of Clyde from the Hunterston nuclear power station in breach of pollution law, the Sunday Herald can reveal. That's not going to be good.

[RobQos]

@jambed2010 An official study from the German government shows the risk of getting cancer is increasing for children growing up in the neighborhood of a nuclear power station. This is in particular true for leukemia, a special case of cancer. The closer to the nuclear power station, the higher the risk of leukemia and cancer.

In Germany, all cases of cancer of children are being recorded.

[RobQos]

@RobQos Therefore it was possible to investigate into the cases of children's cancer between the years 1980 and 2003. There were 1592 children of age less than five years who got the disease and 4735 healthy children involved in the study.

[jambed2010]

of course we need nuclear power if that only produces 50% and the other 50% by nuclear whats the problem? and we're not being told its advised!

[RobQos]

@jambed2010 What about all the leaks, the local towns having cancer rates 100's of times higher than average, the decommissioning costs, the lack of availablity of fuel and getting rid of the waste? Nuclear is a messy, ugly horrible solution. Germany and Italy have both followed the Scottish Governments example and said they will not invest any further in nuclear. If they think it's bad then that's good enough for me.

[MrZambology]

This video's brilliant. Sorry Hunterston B, nuclear.s last century's technology.

[jambed2010]

@modgemtb that your uncle was killed from a leak of radiation from the station.

[jambed2010]

@modgemtb a full WANO World Association of Nuclear Operators report was taken and to this day the reports have all said that no injuries or fatalities have came about from hunterston b and to prove this for example one of my colleagues done a vessel entry to do routine maintenance on one of the gas circulators on reactor 4 because it is on statutory outage and the dose he received was 1200 micro sieverts and thats more than has ever been released and he isn't dead, so therefor i do not believe

[modgemtb]

@jambed2010 it's thought my uncle died because of a radioactive particle from huntersone B while sailing on the clyde

[jambed2010]

@RobQos that is absolute rubbish we would be shut down if something that catastrophic happened its safe and low carbon with next to no waste ask any well educated person that knows about it and they will give the same answer its just uneducated members of the public making random assumptions about the topic of nuclear energy that give it a bad name.