Fracking good or bad?

I learn to drive in 1974, and all the older blokes were saying, I dont know why you are bothering, the oil is going to run out in a couple of years,

Anyone remember the so called "energy crisis" of the 70s.

Mind you we had lots of "crisis" back then.

 

If the spin doctors are to be believed, there are no more crisis, only "challenges".

 

I must confess I haven't properly read everything I've missed, so apologies in advance if my forthcoming rant covers what's already been said.

Fracking, as has been said, its all about getting the last dregs out. Its not a long term solution. Its a dangerous solution for no long term gain but the potential for considerable long term damage.

Nuclear, I agree with Jack and Shiney. Lets consider some facts.
* Of the two nuclear disasters I'm aware of, one reactor was built right on the coast in a part of the world where major earthquakes are so normal that buildings are built with hydraulic shock absorbers, and some towns have emergency flexible tunnels for people to evacuate through. It was waiting to happen. The other one was Chernobyl. Here's the thing. In a 'modern' reactor, it takes energy to hold the boron rods (the rods that absorb the energy and control the reaction) out of the chamber. If the power fails, they fall into place. In Chernobyl, the design was far more primitive, and it took energy to push the control rods in, so when it started to run away and the control room chaps tried to bring it under control, the mechanism had seized due to the heat, and the power to motors that drive them in had failed, so it was doomed to fail. That was an old design, long since abandoned by pretty much everyone.
* In a past job, I worked on the British Coal compensation scheme for miners and their families affected by illnesses directly related to exposure to coal dust. There were around 800,000 genuine claimants in the database (each one was actually checked out as genuine). That doesn't include those that had died before the scheme started, those that simply didn't want to make a claim, and it was just one company, the former British Coal. It also didn't include anyone killed in mining accidents, any of the surface workers who would also have been exposed to the dust, or anyone who had no direct connection with British Coal but were still made ill from coal dust and smog. When untreated coal reacts with moisture, it reacts with the sulphur that is in it and producing sulphuric acid. In laymans terms, that's car battery acid. Its potent enough to corrode steel, and volatile enough to release sulphuric acid vapour into the air. When coal is carried in ships, the ships have to have a double skin, and that skin has to be washed and inspected regularly to check for corrosion. The chaps that check it have to wear full protective gear and breathing apparatus because the environment in there will kill you very quickly if you go in unprotected. Yet people consider nuclear energy to be dangerous while not batting an eyelid at coal.
* When I was at school, our physics teacher scared us by taking a piece of uranium 235 (the refined uranium used in reactors) and pointing a gieger counter at it. It went a bit mad. Then he pointed it straight up to pick up the cosmic background radiation that we're all constantly exposed to 24/7, and the gieger counter went even more mental. Yet people fear the idea of being anywhere within a thousand miles of a piece of uranium that's inside a 14ft thick wall of reinforced concrete. Its also worth noting that uranium in its natural form (u238) occurs in abundance in the bedrock under Cornwall.

So basically, nuclear is the way to go. We have the raw materials here, its safe, clean, and we have the technology here. The only thing we lack is the will.

But, saving the best til last, my biggest energy related rant. Just a couple of miles from me is one of Europe's biggest petrochemical plants. They quite literally have their own on site power station which is there to put a tiny dent in their energy requirements. They buy most of the electricity from the grid, at around £3 Million per WEEK, and that's not even including the gas they buy in to fuel the boilers that turn a small percentage of the collosal amount of crude oil they use, into plastic and fuel grade gases. Then in spite of that, WE, the consumers, the ordinary folk, get told to unplug our mobile phone chargers to save energy. But wait, what happens when the computer in the control rooms of these chemical plants detect a fault? Any fault, no matter how minor? Failsafes kick in and the flare stacks burn the entire contents of the boilers. A flame roars maybe 100ft tall, at times it looks like the entire site is on fire. Now personally I'd rather it get vented and burned than let an accident happen, but why not spend a few grand or a few million and stick a generator on the end of the cracker, so that when it has to flare, it generates electricity? I asked this question once, when speaking to one of the management team. The answer was a simple one. Between the environment agency, planning authority, and health and safety executive, the amount of red tape involved means it would not be commercially viable. I.e. because of red tape, its cheaper to waste it. Same with all the superheated water that comes away from the cooling system and then travels in deep pipes to be pumped into the sea. It could just as easily be pumped under the neighbouring towns to cut the amount of energy needed for domestic heating, as indeed they do in parts of Germany.

If someone more articulate than me was to write this all in a kids story book, kids would dismiss it as even less believable than the Three Billy Goats Gruff because its so ridiculous, yet its so normal that nobody ever thinks to question it.

 

I think your Country should be insulating your house for you Jack, so that it is as warm as it can be with the minimum cost to you for fuel.

You could perhaps have a company install Solar Panels - the sort of company that charges you nothing, you get the electricity, they get the government grant (FIT). There are catches with some of them - e.g. when / if you sell your house, and there are probably Sharks about too ...

 

Absolutely.
I often wonder how those people sleep at night when day in and day out they stand in front of cameras spewing out lie after lie.
The only thing I can think of is that they have been fibbing for so long that they actually believe their own .......

 

True, but again only a worry because people are aware of it, while not batting an eyelid at many other potentially far worse things that again are so normal that they never get discussed. For example, some of the nasty toxic byproducts of the chemical instrustry are pumped into cavities in the sea bed under pressure. Often just off the coast in built up areas. An example would be just over at Seal Sands near me, where its only the weight of sea water that stops the surface of these cavities from rupturing and letting all the nasties out.

 

Yep, a few thousand bucks a day keeps the morals away.

 

They had a sea wall at Fukushima, wasn't high enough for the Tsunami that came though (and with benefit of hindsight it wasn't designed high enough ... but it seemed OK at the time ...)

Flipping big earthquake that one. Biggest ever recorded in Japan, and 5th largest ever recorded in the world. Not an excuse, but jolly bad luck :(

I saw a documentary about that recently. As you might expect the medical Follow Up on all the effected people has been massive, 'coz you don't get that sort of data very often ... At the time of the disaster thousands of premature deaths from Thyroid cancer were predicted. I forget the exact number that there has actually been, but it was around 10 from memory - might even have been single figures. Conclusion was that the human body is much more resilient to Radiation than was previously thought. I think they issued Iodine fairly promptly to effected people, and that had also helped.

Good idea. I've seen that flare stack going off, scared me! and someone told me what it represented in lost revenue, that was scary too.

 

My understanding is that it is not as much as people imagine. The "waste" includes lots of low grade waste (that has to be stored too, but is not so toxic). The amount of High Grade waste is only 3% of the total. It is stored for 40 years (at the reactor) during which time its radioactivity falls by 1,000 fold. The sting is in the tail though, as you said, because it then takes a further 1,000 years to fall to be the same level as the Ore that was mined in the first place. The high grade waste of the nuclear industry in the UK, for a human lifetime (70 years or whatever) is 35 olympic swimming pools - 2L per year per person. We already produce 517 kg of municipal waste and 83 kg of hazardous waste (per person per year).

http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_170.shtml

Reminds me of the French saying which, translated to English, is "If you listen to a bell you only hear one sound"