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Q: Why do we need electricity?
A: Electricity is absolutely essential for everything we do. Without it we
have no TV, radio, computers, telephones, mobiles, treatment in the hospitals, heating
in our homes, petrol in our cars, food in the shops, water from the taps, lights
at night; in fact all modern life would cease.
Q: No petrol in our cars?
A: The petrol refineries rely on electricity to work. Petrol pumps need electricity
to operate.
Q: Power stations work at the moment-on coal or oil or gas, why can't they
just go on?
A: All these stations burn "fossil fuels", and these produce carbon
dioxide in huge quantities. Natural gas has been mentioned, this gas is, in fact,
23 timed more environmentally dangerous than carbon dioxide! These are both gases
which causes global heating which is dangerous to our way of life.
Q: Why?
A: Global heating can, and if it is allowed to go to far, will, cause changes
to our weather, cause sea level to rise, much stormier weather, and can even cause
ocean currents to change. If the Gulf Stream ceased to flow , we in the UK
would be suffer near Arctic conditions.
Q: Does that just leave nuclear power stations?
A: For the production of large, reliable quantities of electricity, yes.
The so-called "renewables", wind power, wave power, use of the
tides, and growing fuel to burn cannot provide the "base load" needed
to be on tap, all the time, and in sufficient quantity.
The wind does not blow all time, and even if did it would need over one thousand
turbines to replace just one reactor. This would be ten lines each of one
hundred turbines. To replace just one reactor at the Dungeness power station
by willow tree wood, would mean growing willow over the whole of the county of Kent,
one million acres. Wave and tidal power are not of proven reliability, or
of known environmental consequences.
Q: Isn’t nuclear power dangerous.?
A: Nuclear power has had a very safe history under close supervision by official
inspectors. The amount of radiation to which the population has been exposed
from nuclear power programme is comparable with the natural radiation received when
flying for only a few hours at normal altitudes. It is, in fact, far less
that 1% of that received in the course of normal living.
Q: What happens to all the dangerous radioactive waste from reactors?
A: One answer to the disposal of the very highly radioactive wastes is to
turn them into glass, encase them in sealed canisters, and place them about a mile
underground in solid granite where they can never be of danger to us. The technical
processes are well understood, and they are comparatively inexpensive.
Q: Can terrorists get into reactors and blow them up?
A: Nuclear power stations are really quite small and can be made very secure
against these sorts of attack. The reactors themselves are behind immensely
strong reinforced concrete shields. They are constructed to be earthquake proof
and resistant even to large aircraft crashing into them. They are extremely
strong.
If you have other questions please write to us at:
joanpyeproject@googlemail.com and we will
be happy to answer them.
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