Better ways to boil water!

In order to generate electricity we boil a kettle of water and push the resulting steam through a turbine. Yes, okay there are slightly different ways of doing it but they still push a gas through a turbine which moves a coil through a magnetic field. But let's think about the kettle and how we get it hot. Burning coal, gas, oil or biomass are the traditional ways with all the associated side junk that they produce. Focusing sunlight with mirrors onto a hot spot is one of the less traditional ways. And there are a whole range of temperature differentiation methods that, in theory at least, could work. And then there is the nuclear option. This uses the immense energy loss when an atom breaks up to boil the water. This is nuclear fission.

Nuclear fission power station were first put on line in the 1950s and almost from the start they began to break down and spread unpleasant things into the environment. The problem with these nuclear power stations was that they were designed to be dirty. They were designed to produce side products from the decay of Uranium atoms which could be used to make very powerful bombs. If this sounds a little improbable consider this. The Iranian government want to develop up a nuclear power industry, so they say. The Americans and Europeans are having seven kinds of fit about this prospect, and why? Because they know that nuclear power stations produce what is needed to produce bombs and if the Iranian's get nuclear bombs they will use them.

There is a call now in Britain to produce "New" nuclear power stations. This would be great if they were actually new, that is the process they use to boil the water was new. The shell of the building will be new but the pile at its heart will be the same old dirty fission device that has changed little since the 1950s. I believe that Nuclear energy could be a good way to produce clean energy - some time in the future that is - not now though. Now we must continue to take a stand against these monstrosities and find better ways of boiling water. Ways that, if the kettle bursts, we can control. The nearest nuclear power station to me is at Hartlepool. Hartlepool may have its detractors but as far as I am concerned it is far preferable to Chernobyl.

Oh, and just don't get me on to fusion power!