Recently I got seriously pissed off by people, who think they understand the issues surrounding nuclear energy and by stupid Bulgarian politicians are not willing to work on THE conflicting issue in Bulgaria's Euro integration - the closure of 3rd and 4th block of NPP Kozloduj.
You can see the forum here
Read my opinion in the extended section of this entry below.
After that I found pretty interesting stuff in Wikipedia regarding nuclear reactor designs. CANDU and pebble bed reactor designs especially caught my sight.
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This is an extract form a longer forum flame go here for the complete version.
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Get some reality first.
Global scale
Global warming is THE environmental issue.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,912530,00.html
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=698
When you get the head of a huge oil company talking directly against his business interest, you know it is important. I'm more worried for global warming than land, sea and air pollution or even extinction of certain top of food chain species. See the numbers before commenting on this further! Until humanity stops burning stuff for energy and transportation the future of the planet does not look good. Not good at all. In as little as 100 years the northern polar ice cap will completely melt. Glaciers are disappearing right _now_ and it is not only sad, it changes the environment drastically in some places. The fact is that not every nation is capable of sustaining its energy balance with clean energy sources as water dams, geothermal, solar and wind energy. Most countries burn coal or oil based fuels to produce energy. And some countries use nuclear energy in addition to that. It is absolutely clear that throwing huge amounts CO2 in the atmosphere is much worse than storing the nuclear waste for another 50 to 200 years. And by the way have you seen burnt coal ashes? It takes quite a lot of space for the amount of energy produced. In some countries, as Bulgaria, this space would otherwise be used for woods or arable land. And again it takes another 1000 years to reclaim the land for use.
I live in a small nice country in the northern Atlantic Ocean - Iceland. Iceland only uses water dams and geothermal energy. But Iceland is really abundant in energy and has so little population, so it does not need anything else to sustain the energy balance of the country.
This is not only because of our nuclear plant it is for the good of the planet.
Misinformation
Greenpeace and other wackos spread misinformation on this. And the public in countries as USA has accepted as a fact that nuclear energy is bad for the planet. Absolutely not true. Well it is a dangerous technology. But statistics show that both nuclear power plants use and nuclear waste storage is a clean business with NO environment affecting incidents, when you do it in a politically stable place OR don't try to push the technology beyond its limits OR follow the procedures precisely. ANY of the three is enough to prevent incidents.
The cumulative dose received by all earth population by air flight radiation is much greater than the cumulative dose received by nuclear plant or waste emittions, including incidents. Get the facts!
Local scale
On a local scale after the closure of the 3rd and 4th block Bulgaria will have to significantly increase output of the thermal plants or import energy in order to sustain the energy balance.
Bulgaria is still an exporter of energy. Cheap (including waste storage!) nuclear energy is keeping us competitive on the Balkans energy market. Close 3rd and 4th block and the picture changes dramatically. Referendum would be an obvious choice. People just don't want the reactors closed. And why not wait until 2010 for Belene to come online?
It sure bugs me.
Boyan Krosnov
now in Iceland
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end of quote.
Btw, am I missing something, or did the Constitutional court decide that the government's decision to shut down Kosloduy was anti-constitutional? Or was it only about the first and second blocks?
Posted by: Vasil Kolev at July 2, 2004 10:06 PM