Nuclear Lies - Prof Simon

The worlds first nuclear power station at Calder Hall was opened in Britain by the Queen in 1956. The UK government told the people it made electricity 'too cheap to meter' but it never produced significant power for the UK national electricity grid. It was a plutonuim factory for the British Atom Bomb programme. Prof Simon shows you with unique archive film, how the British people were lied to.

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[brandonbaldwin]

Sir, I’m a nuclear engineer you make a lot of valid points. In civilian power plants U-238 (most common uranium element) does get breed into Pu-239, but the process of separation is super costly because of the byproducts of fission. Not to mention the Pu-239 gets used during operation. There are specific reactors that are used solely to breed U-238 into Pu-239 and are not for power uses. I urge you to look into thorium reactors. They will bring the promise of the cheapest energy sources the planet has ever seen. Not to mention you can’t make a bomb out of it!

[rayquirk]

Initially that was the driver. Not so much in later years. In fact the later design of reactor fuel (MOX) was intended to burn up Plutonium and Uranium.

[lorensims]

So why has NASA complained that they won't have enough plutonium to drive the power supplies on future space probes after the plutonium-producing reactor at Hanford Washington was shut down?
Nuclear Power is just as safe as you choose to make it.

[Flapjackbatter]

"... whos only use is for atomic bombs"
No. That is incorrect. Plutonium is used for fuel in nuclear reactors. And altso other uses. One use is in nuclear weapons. Not the only.

[bobdeverell]

I did a school project on Calder Hall back in 1959 when I was just 11 yo. My dad was enthralled for weeks. Anyone with half an ounce of brain understood the unspoken connection between reactors and weapons. Remember, unlike today's long period of peace, WW2 was fresh in our parent's minds and the Cold War was in progress. Support for UK deterrent was pretty general. While MSRs (thorium etc) would have been a safer solution it would not have supported the weapons industry and we could not afford to develop both technologies. Now that the cold war maybe it is time to refocus on non-plutonium solutions but you cannot rewrite history with sham indignation.

[johno]

"Nuclear power is too cheap to meter."
....But we'll charge you anyway!

[malcolmmarzo]

"Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy" by Gwyneth Cravens, is a good start to understanding this issue. Then you will see why James Lovelock, James Hanson, Stewart Brand, and other prominent environmentalists think nuclear power is the realistic answer to the climate crisis. That is if we want to keep living with enough electric power to maintain our civilization.

[rblibit]

THANK YOU, Professor. The truth is often difficult to come by, but you are a man of high quality, integrity and honesty.

[michaelkaliski]

Nuclear reactors can be set up to produce greater or lesser amounts of Plutonium. Plutonium can be used as a fissile material in reactors. The power stations did produce electricity but were run to optimise the production of Plutonium and enriched Uranium for weapons production. At the time, this was a priority to counteract the perceived threats from other nuclear power countries around the world, not excluding the USA. The USA effectively cut the UK off from their nuclear research until the UK developed and proved its own home grown thermo nuclear devices.

[ThomasTrue]

As much as I agree with you that we were lied to, Prof, and absolutely share your aversion to nuclear power, not all plutonium is suitable for nuclear weapons.

Now, I may get this wrong, but I believe reactors have to be run at a lower rate to get Pu239, which is the fissile material used, as the more usual Pu236 is too jumpy. It was long claimed that Chapelcross NPS in Dumfriesshire was ran at a lower rate for this very purpose.

I'm also interested to note that Dounreay was also part of the British nuclear weapons programme. The experimental fast breeder reactor there never did work, and all we are left with today is one of the most polluted nuclear sites - including notoriously 'hot' beaches - in the world.

[knightowl]

At the dawn of human history, one of our ancestors chipped away at flint to create an arrowhead so he could hunt to feed his family, nearby a second man chipped away a another flint to create an arrowhead so he could kill his neighbour and take all he had. Things never change.

[evbobdemon]

The power is good but the waste is bad

[pobembe]

Sucks for the UK. However I am watching this video with Electric power from US Nuclear Plants. (Carbon Free, I might add).

[obiwanceleri]

The funny thing is, the many people who say they're for nuclear energy quickly shift gears when they learn nuclear waste is going in their backyard.
They then discover most countries are the insurance for these costly projects since nobody in their right mind wants to be liable in case of an accident. Even the corporations / people that dream up these reactors invest as little as possible in them (they obviously ask for the state to do the heavy lifting).
And finally but not least, like in Canada, there are limits to liability, voted into law to ensure those reactors cannot be sued for more than a fixed amount after an accident. You're never going to guess who pays any claims beyond that amount. For the longest time, that amount was 75 million$ in Canada. The amounts of cash the states must pay when a reactor goes past critical is beyond belief.

So it's no surprise we are flooded with stories that such and such new reactor will be so efficient or whatnot. Corporations are rushing in to get as much state money they can to build reactors they will eventually run to the ground and ask the state to pick up the tab. Flooding the net with marketing material is cheap. The end problem is nuclear waste is an unsolvable issue and the state ends up being on the hook for 100, 000 years after corporations sucked as much profit as they could.
The person who coined the expression "You better be careful what you wish for" wasn't kidding!

[Charlie-UK]

Not strictly true Prof Simon. If we still had a British fast breeder reactor program, which we abandoned, foolishly at great national future cost. Leaving us without trained staff and technically unable to ever build a British nuclear power station of any kind ever again. Totally reliant on foreign countries, to build future nuclear stations. Fast breeder reactors could have used the plutonium to generate electricity. Currently we have enough plutonium in the large national stockpile to power the country for 1000 years. Which at the moment is useless because we don't have reactors to use it in...

[christainmarks]

Professor Simon I had no idea.... 😮 wow thank you for that information sir

[garethevans]

Something that I find interesting is that only the 1st two nuclear power stations to go online using cooling towers, the rest didn't. I do wonder if that is due to the public's perception of them being smokestacks. New-clear sounds better.😏

I had a tour of Hinkley B as a kid (I grew up in what would be the exclusion zone👍). I remember a couple of things from that tour (aside from never seeing so many pipes, big Mario fan at the time🤘): They talked about the water being returned to the Bristol Channel being within 1c of the inlet water, be the mentioned they had explosive bolts as a backup to SCAM the reactor. Oh, and it looked like a ship at night from the hills towards Kilv (West), but I've never seen a picture from the same angle.

You have to wonder how much effort is taken to cool the return to such a level. Kinkley is on the coast so I imaging salt could be an issue evaporating so much water, but that isn't true of all power, but that isn't true for all locations and there's a sizable river nearby. Also what I know about nuclear reactors (especially the graphite), is that if the graphite ever did get damaged (and they run it for years longer than expected), that would be a problem that fancy bolts wouldn't ever fix. It is impressive how they made the graphite so strong that it is able to withstand decades of high temperatures, nuclear bombardment and with boiling water running through them (earlier reactors (actually designed to produce plutonium, it was never a big secret, I thought..), used co2 as the coolant).

There has been some talk lately about how to power/ build nuclear submarines since the UK has literally let the nuclear industry crumble. Same goes for the new aircraft carriers NOT being nuclear powered, but I guess the rest of the carrier group needs conventional fuel so I guess it doesn't make a huge difference in logistics and it may actually make sense. It still baffles me how the Chinese are a major partner for Hinkley C, yet there's a trade embargo for tech exported to China.🤷‍♂️

[Johannes_Brahms]

Thanks everybody for your informative responses! 🙏

[lewisdoherty]

There was a push to use Thorium based reactors for commercial electric generation and a test one was built and safely operated. But Richard Nixon fired the scientist pushing it. The uranium based reactors fit into the nuclear weapons program and since the military had been the prime mover in paying for developing reactors for the navy, everyone understood them and then the civilians could use those who had been trained in the program, they went with that. It was similar to how airlines recruit retired military pilots.
What I always thought was laughable was the program to move spaceships with small nuclear bombs. What was really being developed were the "suitcase" nuclear bombs.
How much of the space programs were really about exploring space versus weapons' technology?

[rblibit]

After the 6000 farms closed and thousands of cases of cancer after Chernobyl, how anyone can say nuke plants are safe is beyond me. And I haven't even mentioned the worst nuclear accident that will not be cleaned up 10, 000 years from now - or 50, 000 years from now (even if they tried). Each reactor at Fukushima was 100 times the size of the Chernobyl reactor, and 3 of these massive reactors completely melted down radiating most of Japan, the entire Pacific, Canada and the United States with high levels of radiation. The food chains in the Pacific are being destroyed more each day as 160, 000 gallons of highly radioactive water from underneath the plant pours into the ocean. Congenital heart defects are up 10, 000 percent in Japan as thousands of children are born with holes in their hearts from the radiation all over the greater Tokyo area. Doctors in Tokyo are resigning because they are told to lie about what is causing cancer and diabetes and dozens of other diseases while they KNOW it is the high levels of radiation around Japan. The people who run and support the nuclear industry are MONSTERS! That is the only thing you can call them (and still be polite). The news agencies are lying to you with CNN, ABC (AU), and others using Green Screen technology pretending they are in Reactor building 4 watching the NON-EXISTENT fuel rods being "safely" removed when we all watched building 4 explode in a huge dark cloud the morning of March 15th 2011. The MASSIVE explosion vaporized the 25 years worth of fuel rods that were blown out across Japan and into the air across the ocean to Canada and the US. Rods were stored in pools located in the top 1/3rd of the buildings (over 115 feet up inside the building). Pictures of Building 4 clearly show the ENTIRE UPPER HALF COMPLETELY GONE. No human can get within 1/2 of mile of ANY of those 4 reactor buildings and LIVE to tell about it. With over 1 million Sieverts registered with special equipment spewing out of the holes that are melted into the Earth where the Coriums of the reactors are still burning. We know that just 8 Seiverts is fatal to humans (even with advanced treatment). In fact, most counters that measure doses (sieverts) only go up to 10 since 8 is guaranteed 100% fatal to humans. They have NO IDEA where the Corium are or how deep they have gone, but they know that the ground water is spewing into the Pacific killing every living thing it comes in contact with and it will be for the next 25 thousand years. Sadly, this is most likely a slow human extinction level event. And there isn't a damned thing anyone can do about it. The Pacific will be dead soon, and only then will most of you listen to the TRUTH. And I don't want to beat a dead horse, but every one of these power plants were built to support H-Bomb weapons production. The Professor is right on the mark. If only you knew the truth. But I am sure you can't handle it, so I won't bother you with it. As far as the Pacific, every river waiting for the salmon to return will wait a VERY long time - they are NOT coming back. And Salmon are quite resilient. It was not a 2 or 3 degrees of a "Global Warming" problem that has killed them off. And 2 large bird species are dying off, plus the marine mammals are washing up in record numbers on Pacific beaches emaciated since their food sources have been radiated To DEATH. Yes, they will only be able to lie to you for a few more years... I promise you, the TRUTH WILL COME OUT, and when it does, YOU WILL want to lynch every one of these lying bastards.