howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
16 November 2010
21:1580351this issue has been resurrected today in the commons, the honourable member for folkestone and hythe made an impassioned plea for a nuclear power station in order to fight high unemployment in his constituency.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
16 November 2010
22:4780370Nah! Don't want it!
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
16 November 2010
23:5480383you may not want it alex, a lot of people in lydd, romney and dungeness do.
i thought you were in favour of employment opportunities for kentish folk?
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
17 November 2010
00:1680384The costs for a neclear power station would be enormous. The cost for a new-model wind-turbine, with tens of thousands of turbines running, would be so much cheaper, and would also create employment in the infrastructure industry for wind-turbines.
Not those big fragile things they use nowadays, but as smaller and robust version, that can turn in strong winds too. Just off the coas is the best place, where winds are stronger and more constant than inland. A few hundred yards out to see would be optimal, concentrared in small areas.
Dungeness is also a wind-swept area. They could be placed on short piers going out from the coast.
Sellafield was a scandall, and still is, I believe.
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
17 November 2010
08:0880400The costs of these power stations is indeed high but I dont think we have any choice. We are going to need future power bigtime and the only thing that can supply it on a huge and reliable scale is Nuclear Power, thats why the government are going for it. They have already sanctioned 8 new Nuclear Power Stations so it is clearly an accepted and acceptable policy. They have looked at all options.
They, HMG, have also sanctioned windfarms on a grand scale, that one off Thanet is very big indeed and expensive, but as I understand things it does not furnish anything like the scale or volume of power needed.
So the question isnt whether Nuclear Power is good bad or indifferent at this stage, its why on earth if they are building them at all, why they didnt opt to build one in Dungeness. The area badly badly needs the work, and the spin off work for tons of businesses in the immediate region.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
17 November 2010
11:5580458Our White Horse must have challenged back!
17 November 2010
13:5180477Dungeness may be a National Nature Reserve, a SPecial Protection Area, a Special Area of Conservation and a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeness_%28headland%29 But we musn't forget that it is just a pile of shingle and not a stable land mass. Isn't anybody worried about rising sea levels ? Or the threat of ever increasing storms. This interesting article explains the history of this beach. Page 21 has some conclusions.
http://www.geography.dur.ac.uk/information/staff/personal/long/Dungeness.pdfGuest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
17 November 2010
14:4380483Due in part to continental drift there is a slow natural sinking of the British coastline roughly from the Wash around to Portsmouth. Coastal defences here need a regular updating, the last major works between Sandgate and Greatstone being about 15 years ago. One fairly obvious solution would be to link such work with tidal power generation in order to spread the cost and achieve maximum benefit. Unfortunately, the last I heard about this there were only two universities doing any work in developing this system, there being no profitable sideline in weaponry and disposal contracts as there is with nuclear fuel. Even without climate change this area needs coastal defence (not to mention the major fault line that runs from Switzerland past Dover and through London) so it would be practical to develop a useful, safe and more aesthetically pleasing solution to both coastal protection and power generation. Of course with no vested interests in just saving the land it is just a pipedream.
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
17 November 2010
17:0480509That is one reason why I proposed piers going seaward from Dungeness, with wind-turbines on them.
Apart form the wind-energy and electricity supply, and the stable foundation for the turbine infrastructure, the piers would collect shingle and moving sand and form a further stable basis for the existing South Kent shoreline.
17 November 2010
17:1280511Cassandra says.
If you want to look at what happens over the next few years in terms of our 'new best friends' look to France and Norway.
Nuclear + gas is what the game is going to be about.
Power no longer speaks from the barrel of a gun but from a kw/hr.
What a shame we ran down the former and spent the benefits from the latter on plasma TVs?
