The state-owned power company Vattenfall has unveiled plans that may lead to at least one new Swedish nuclear power station, according to a press statement by the firm.
At a recent press conference, Vattenfall acknowledged its ongoing relationship with Industrikraft Sweden — which was formed in 2008 to provide nuclear power to the Swedish industry, according to The Local.
“We at Vattenfall are very happy to be able to continue our close partnership with representatives for Swedish industry and work together to develop energy solutions for the future,” said vice CEO Hans von Ulthmann. Several major Swedish firms including SCA, Boliden, Holmen paper and Eka Chemicals have thrown their support behind Industikraft.
Industrikraft Sweden is an extension of the successful Norwegian organisation and was created just months before a moratorium on new nuclear plant construction was lifted by the Swedish government. The decision has allowed for the potential construction of ten new reactors at existing nuclear facilities, with the next phase to investigate partnership projects.
“The partnership is fully in line with our long-term strategic goal ‘Making Electricity Clean’ and contributes to the achievement of stated climate goals,” said Lars G Josefsson, CEO of Vattenfall.
The Swedish state retains the final decision on any new nuclear facility construction on its soil.
CO2 can be converted into a usable product, as you can see here
http://www.carbonrecycling.is/index.html
This factory will generate 4m liters of fuel made from CO2,
if we replace our cars with electric cars we could drive all our cars on 100% clean energy,
there is plenty of CO2 here to process,
http://www.mannvit.com/AboutUs/News/Readarticle/1588
Nuclear waste is not so bad, you only have to dig a hole some 5 kilometers into the ground, put it into the hole and hope it will not surface for the next 100 million years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4949096.stm
Meanwhile, the UK is being even more green than Sweden. Our government has just named 10 new nuclear sites. If we were any more green, we’d be photosynthesising.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Nuclear-Power-Ed-Miliband-Unveils-Plans-For-New-Generation-Of-Stations-To-Avoid-Energy-Crisis/Article/200911215445064
The real problems of nuclear waste haven’t happened yet, but that doesn’t really matter as we’ll all be long dead by then and they will be the problems of generations far into the future. By then, humans may even have evolved to benefit from radioative waste, so no need to worry about it now.
Coal particulate deaths in the US are responsible for many Chernobyls per year and it’s not even an accident.
And if you want to see really horrifying accidents you’ve got to look at hydro power; e.g. banqiao dam.
“one is created in volumes tiny enough to never have to be released to the environment”
It may not “have to” be released, but it is anyway, eg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
The difference between radioactive waste and carbon dioxide is that one is created in volumes tiny enough to never have to be released to the environment and one is created in such enormous quantities that it must be immediately released. Every year, for example, the world burns a little more than 6 billion tons of coal. That results in the production of more than 20 billion tons of CO2 (along with a lot of other nasty waste products like CO, NOx, SOx, mercury, and fly ash) that must be dumped into our common atmosphere.
In contrast, the world also uses about 6,000 tons of low enriched uranium, which produces about 6,000 tons of high level radioactive waste products. Uranium fission produces about 1/4 as much energy every year as coal burning, so if we replaced all coal with uranium fission we might need 24,000 tons (or we could improve our technology and do better than our current 4% consumption, but that is another story).
Put those numbers in better contrast:
24,000 versus 20,000,000,000
Then take into account the fact that the 24,000 is a very dense ceramic material that can be stored inside engineered containers while the 20,000,000,000 is a gas that is dumped out of a smoke stack.
Yes, I think nuclear is enormously cleaner than burning coal, oil or gas.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
Build more nuclear power plants to make electricity clean? Until now, I didn’t know that radioactive waste was cleaner than carbon dioxide. You learn something every day.