I recently started working for EDF - Electricite De France. In our wonderful globalized world, they've taken over some of the old UK regional power companies and are one of the country's major energy providers.

In our induction course our trainer (lovely girl but, as we shall see, not terribly well-informed) actually came out with the following statement:

"Nuclear power is much greener because it doesn't have the carbon emissions and it's renewable".

Sadly, I just can't let this kind of thing lie. I tried, but I just couldn't control myself.

"How do you mean, renewable?"

"Well, it works by heating water into steam to drive turbines, and then it cools down and becomes water again, so you can re-use it."

Oh dear.

I tried to suggest that this is not congruent with the commonly accepted meaning of "renewable". The energy to turn water into steam had to come from somewhere. Water doesn't just turn into steam for no reason. If it did, EDF would not exist. Of the people in the room, I was the only one able to offer a sensible explanation of how a nuclear reactor works.

They had to get someone else in to talk to me about it. Minor victory: I did get her to accept that nuclear energy is not renewable. Ignominious surrender: out of sheer politeness, because the girl had admitted in front of the class that it wasn''t renewable, I caved in to the assertion that NE is "cleaner" than conventional power station technology.

What's really disturbing is that I've since come across colleagues who have told me they've had the same nonsense fed to them in previous inductions and have similarly objected which means that this BS is being pumped out quite consistently.

All in all, a depressing little episode, but one entirely characteristic of corporate life.

[edit on 27-5-2009 by rich23]

Great story from the corporate world!

Incredible sales pitch! - it's renewable, sort of! - Well, oh dear!

What on Earth would they gain by twisting the facts about how nuclear power works? - that's just silly!

And they would only look stupid and ignorant as a company for promoting this!

Aarrrgghh! corporated twits!

On the subject of the corporate world, I note (again) that whereas one joined ATS not merely to join the debate but to get away from annoying adverts, now they are inescapable and even in the borders of this very thread.

Naomi Klein talks about the encroachment of the corporate into our daily lives and how it's so difficult to escape. ATS used to be an escape. No more. For shame.

As one who works with power boilers I guess I could state that a coal or natural gas plant is renewable too....lol.
After all once the coal is burned to create the heat for the water to make superheated steam to turn the turbines the steam is cooled in large cooling towers until it returns as hot condensate to be reintroduced to the boiler.
So therefore the returning heat from the process makes it renewable....lol.
Nevermind the 26% or so of the heat which is immediately lost to the atmosphere in the combustion process.
So in that regard nuclear is much more efficient but certainly not renewable, unless there are some reactors somewhere I don't know about that don't need refueling...lol.
Also nuclear is thermally more efficient (and cleaner)by a long shot but not so much financially due to the vastly increased cost of initial construction, maintenance, the production of nuclear fuel, the cost of shipping and storing depleted nuclear fuel, etc, compared to a conventionally heated steam cycle power plant or gas turbine setup.

It's a shame that all the propoganda that circulates the MSM and from the gal at your training class falls on so many ignorant ears and no one bothers educate themselves. Not knocking nuke plants, just making a point.
After all I guess according to the experts all that CO2 from a gas powered plant must be much worse for us than little plutonium pellets that once depleted past their useful life as power plant fuel still have the power to radioactively kill you now from a good distance away and will remain dangerous for countless generations to come. But hey, it's renewable right?

Well, in much the same way that plastic is "recyclable" because you can melt it down and use it to create useless things that hang in men's urinals, spent nuclear fuel can be recycled into bullets and shells, which can then be fired and aerosolise on impact, allowing Iraqi children, for example, to develop interesting lymphomas and birth defects.

And they say that the truth is the first casualty of war...

Originally posted by rich23
Of the people in the room, I was the only one able to offer a sensible explanation of how a nuclear reactor works.

that's really disturbing in itself, how can they work in a nuclear plant and not know how a nuclear reactor works? how is it even possible to function?

I had a similar experience. I started training to work at a power company, and some of the trainers said things that I knew where not only not true but unethical in their lie.

I stopped working there the next day. They would have actually expected me to repeat this unethical rubbish.

Their stuff wasn't about nuclear power, but deregulation.

I'm not against nuclear power. I'm against stupidity when it comes to dealing with nuclear power consequences.

I believe that the key issue facing the OP was the 'trainer'. Presumably, she was from HR (Human Resources). As a very wise man once opined, "Those that cannot do teach. Those that can neither do, nor teach, end up in HR."