Sellafield

[winsocker]

While your on the topic of Nuclear weapons why don't you give some consideraion to countries who remain neutral, The UK has sufficient energy resources to survive without nuclear power. If a terrorist attack was targeted at sellafield other countries would suffer to, how would the British government feel if the constructed a nuke plant in central London?

The only analogy I can make to your comments on Britain threatening the Middle East with nukes is:

Police in US carries 9mm Glocks, so in turn the average crook needs to carry Glock or better, the same applies with nukes.

No one likes to feel at a disadvantage so if you make vailed threats against the middle east of course they are going to acquire something to equal it, it's human nature.

winsocker

[c2R]

I don't know if you've ever been south of watford, but you'd notice there are actually nuclear plants on the east coast around London...

Also there's no real option but an expansion of the nuclear programme across the entire world in the coming years - the reason for this is simple, fossil fuels are sadly running out and there needs to be a replacement to maintain our current standard of living.

Secondly you'd need to cover the south east in about 3 million wind turbines to power a city the size of London, so wind power isn't practical. Neither is solar energy, for obvious reasons. This just leaves us with nuclear, which contrary to popular belief is relatively safe.

[winsocker]

In reply to your comments, have you heard of hydroelectricity? This would produce sufficient energy.

Nuclear reactors are safe? mmm... not when BL and his crew get an opportunity to drop a Boeing 747 on it, which is unfortunately a very real possiblity in today's twisted world. Sellafield does not even have a no fly zone around it, crazy.

[Bilbo Baggins]

There are very few parts of the UK that could support a hydroelectric power station.

[c2R]

Firstly I'll just point out that the UK has a population of 60 million people, compared with 3.5 million in Ireland (1996 census figures). Therefore a massive amount more energy needs to be produced in the UK than in Ireland.

While I do really like hydroelectricity (the Hoover dam is one of the most impressive man made things in the world, as are the large high-level dams in the alps) as Bilbo rightly pointed out the UK is rather flat for the most part, which makes hydroelectric dams quite difficult to situate. A further problem is that there actually isn't that much rain across the UK (particularly on the East coast side). Add to this the inevitable environmental distruction a hydroelectric dam causes (loss of land habitats upstream where the lake will be, and marine habitats downstream where the river is reduced to a steady trickle). Also fish cannot migrate upstream past the dam, which causes species to die out. Flood plains downstream no longer flood, which causes fertility problems on the land and therefore the resultant need for increased use of fertilizers.

Back to nuclear power, of course if someone tries to hijack a plane and crash it into a power station there will be problems. The problem there is with allowing the plane to be hijacked in the first place. I personally don't like airplanes, and don't really see the need for them at all for domestic / European flights... I'm much happier driving anywhere in Europe than using a plane.

Also it would be difficult to enforce no-fly areas around all nuclear plants in the world - there really are alot; they're dotted all round the coast of England and Scotland (which makes sense from the point of view that if someone sabotages one, the others will still be ok). It's the same in Europe - France generates over 70% of its energy from Nuclear power, and thus has the plants situated up and down all it's major rivers.

I'm not saying nuclear power is a fantastic solution (I mean there obviously have been cases of radioactive discharges into the sea and everything), but in the end (i.e. when all the fossil fuels are gone) I believe there is no other alternative for countries as heavily populated as most of the European states.