jez9999 wrote:
I'd happily live next to a nuclear power plant compared to a wind turbine.

Their opposition to nuclear is so utterly ludicrous I'm not going to bother looking at their energy policies, because they operate on a false premise. I will tackle their stupid nuclear claims (which I'm sure I've read before, which is why I pretty much ruled out voting for them):

1) Nuclear power will not help meet our short-term carbon reduction targets to prevent the risk of runaway climate change.

• In the UK, nuclear power provides less than 4% of our energy.

This is ludicrous problem-stating. We don't have much nuclear now? Well, build some more then! Also, where do they get the 4% figure from? Wikipedia says it was 19% in 2012, so this just seems like an outright lie.

We don't run our cars on nuclear power, and we don't heat our homes with nuclear power. And housing (27%) and transport (21%) comprise 48% of the UK's total carbon emissions.

..................

I can tell they're just trying to find reasons to oppose nuclear power instead of actually analyzing the situation. We don't run our cars on or heat our homes with wind turbines either, do we? It's called electricity, Greens. Look it up. Oh, you did, that's why you propose using wind turbines to create electricity for... cars and heating. Seriously, this "justification" is so facile I feel like punching whoever wrote it.

Globally, even if nuclear power capacity was quadrupled by 2050, the share of nuclear in world energy consumption would be below 10%. Doing that would require one new reactor to be built every 10 days from now until 2050. This would cost over US$10 trillion.

And they don't mention the equivalent cost for wind and solar because it would be higher. Disingenuous anti-nuclear nonsense.

Nuclear power carries inherent risks, and is particularly vulnerable to the potentially deadly combination of human error, design failure, and natural disaster.

Utter crap. Modern plants with passive cooling are virtually impossible to cause death or even harm. But if your thinking is stuck in the 70s...

• Commenting on the risks of nuclear power, Caroline Lucas said:

"Since Chernobyl, nearly 800 significant problems and accidents have been officially reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"If a catastrophe does happen, then the impacts when we're dealing with nuclear power are potentially uniquely catastrophic.

"Significant problems and accidents" do not equal "ohmygod everyone is going to die panic panic panic", you fucking fucking fucking morons. With all due respect. And Chernobyl was known to be a bad design of nuclear plant, even when it was being designed - 50 YEARS AGO.

"The nuclear industry is engaged in a massive fight-back, trying to present itself as a safe clean energy of the future. Fukushima reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth."

Fukushima was older than Chernobyl and had been running for 50 YEARS, you fucking fucking morons. We are not talking about building a 50 YEAR OLD PLANT with 50 YEAR OLD designs.

3) Investing in nuclear power will deter investments in renewable energy.

Probably true, but that's only an issue if you've already accepted the ludicrous premise that nuclear is somehow worse than so-called renewable energy.

The nature of their opposition is so fundamentally flawed that I find it hard to believe their justifications for opposing it are actually genuine; I think they have an anti-nuclear doctrine, and the page you linked to is their attempt to justify that doctrine with totally broken logic and outright falsehoods. Yeah, thanks for reminding me why I rule out voting Green. How could one vote for a party that is so dishonest about something so important?

Keep It Real wrote:

jez9999 wrote:

1) Nuclear power will not help meet our short-term carbon reduction targets to prevent the risk of runaway climate change.

• In the UK, nuclear power provides less than 4% of our energy.

This is ludicrous problem-stating. We don't have much nuclear now? Well, build some more then! Also, where do they get the 4% figure from? Wikipedia says it was 19% in 2012, so this just seems like an outright lie.

They're just saying that nuclear power isn't going to solve our problems; ie it's something of a red herring. I don't know why you trust the wiki figure over the Green figure. How do you know it's an outright lie? Anyway, I agree this point is largely irrelevant - they're probably just stating that it's not like we are tied into nuclear in a massive way through strong reliable tradition.

DU405 Cannabis would be removed from the 1971 Misuse of drugs act. The possession, trade and cultivation of cannabis would be immediately decriminalised, roughly following the Dutch model. The trade in Cannabis would be the subject of a Royal Commission (see below), with a view to establishing a fully legalised, controlled and regulated trade. Small-scale possession of drugs for personal use would be decriminalised. The starting point would be advice to policing authorities to caution rather than prosecute for offences of drug possession for personal use and to refer offenders to the health-care services (see DU411). Subsequently, regulations would be brought forward removing criminal sanctions for simple possession of controlled drugs for personal use. The recommended sentences for small-scale supply would be non-custodial options. The possession of pipes made for the use in connection with smoking of opium would no longer be a criminal offence. A Royal Commission or similar body would be established to review currently controlled drug classifications, within a legalised environment of drug use. This commission would, after wide consultation, consider and recommend frameworks of social, economic and health conditions for drug use and supply.

The resurgent Green party is to target a dozen seats across England, which it believes it could either win or come close to seizing in next May’s general election, as membership rises and confidence grows that it could outpoll the Lib Dems.

Last week, the number of Green party members in England and Wales passed 22,000 – a 57% increase since 1 January – with the number of young Greens (under-30s) having risen 100% to more than 8,000 since 1 March.

Party leader Natalie Bennett told the Observer that the weakness of the Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and the rise of Ukip, all pointed to the next election being the most difficult to predict of recent times, and one in which the Greens could realistically step in and gain half a dozen seats or more.

Green politician Jenny Jones arrested in Occupy London protest

Police have arrested 15 demonstrators at Parliament Square including, for a brief period, the Green party politician Jenny Jones.

Jones, 64, chairwoman of the London assembly’s economy committee and deputy chair of its police and crime committee, went to see what was happening at the Occupy London protest on Tuesday morning after her office had been contacted by protesters complaining about heavy-handed police tactics.

She was arrested for “obstructing police” and could now face prosecution, Scotland Yard said.

It added that she was “de-arrested” after giving details suitable for a summons.

“The evidence in this case will be considered and a decision made whether to proceed with a prosecution,” a Met spokesperson said.

Jones said she was released because, “they [the police] don’t want more trouble”

mrjonno wrote:Society as a whole is already pretty efficient

wtargentina wrote:I would imagine that the Green party is against nuclear energy for some of the following reasons -

the problem of nuclear waste - still not solved and a problem for hundreds of future generations to deal with - some estimates say that the waste will need to be stored for the next 100,000 years - to put this in perspective 100,000 years ago humans still hadn't developed language

the massive financial costs - we all pay heavily for building the plant, running the plant and decommissioning the plant - Douneray in Scotland ran for only 19 years and will take £2.5bn to clean up with the site only returning to "normality" by the year 2336 (ie 322 years from now) the new plant being built in England at Hinkley will receive something like £30bn of public subsidies despite it apparently being a private enterprise

the environmental costs - the raw materials required have to be mined with a huge environmental cost - the extraction of the uranium ore for one plant for one year will leave approx 100,000 tonnes of toxic mill tailings - often in less developed countries with little or no proper regulations , The uranium ore then shipped halfway round the world using vast amounts of carbon based fuels - hardly helping emissions levels

the ongoing danger - remember fukushima?

or what about the dangers posed by a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant; pretty unlikely I know but still with horrendous outcomes if successful.

Go and read up on integral fast reactors and pyroprocessing. The small amount of waste released by them has a half life of a few hundred years, which is more manageable, and they're 100 times as efficient at using the uranium (which is why there's much less long-term waste).

Building one big nuclear plant is not going to be more expensive than building (and maintaining) thousands of wind turbines, especially offshore ones.

Evidence for this please? Especially when one considers that we have enough existing nuclear "waste" lying around in the UK for integral fast reactors to run for hundreds of years?

Yeah, the design was 50 years old and the plant had been running for 50 years under a totally corrupt and incompetent management regime in bed with the government. Nevertheless, it didn't kill anyone, unlike the tsunami which killed 20,000 people.

Evidence please?

Some nuclear waste may be distributed around if someone flew a 747 right into a nuke plant, but this would be small beer compared to the death and destruction caused by flying a 747 into central London.

Society is not efficient

Keep It Real wrote:So it seems that in many constituencies where the greens have a small historic presence many fairly intelligent people will vote labour or lib dem in order to keep the Tories and UKIP out of office. What arguments are there against this?

Keep It Real wrote:So it seems that in many constituencies where the greens have a small historic presence many fairly intelligent people will vote labour or lib dem in order to keep the Tories and UKIP out of office. What arguments are there against this?

minininja wrote:

Keep It Real wrote:So it seems that in many constituencies where the greens have a small historic presence many fairly intelligent people will vote labour or lib dem in order to keep the Tories and UKIP out of office. What arguments are there against this?

Tactical voting just encourages the three main parties to keep doing what they're doing. I will never again vote for a party that almost entirely fails to represent me just because it's the lesser of two evils - I tried that last time with the LibDems and we all know how that turned out.

If labour lose this election because they've gone so far to the right that the left wing vote splits, it will be bad news for the next 5 years but will make a real change for the future. Either Labour will be forced back to the left or the left will rise up in another form.

Short term thinking is one of the main problems in politics. Other regions of the UK have their own successful left wing parties but it took them a long time before they got power to make a difference. There are no wasted votes if it helps a party grow, and the Green Party will save about £200,000 of their relatively limited funding if they get the majority of their deposits back - which requires 5% of the vote in any given constituency. And if they do relativity well, and the media are forced to pay attention, and the membership continues to grow as it has been, and they get many more councillors over the next few years, then in 2020 they may really be a force to be reckoned with.

What matters to you more, the next 5 years or the following 50?