Essay: Is nuclear power only way NZ can solve enery crisis?

[BalinorNZ]

I am writing an essay with the title "Is nuclear power only way NZ can solve enery crisis?".
It is actually quite interesting, all the research I have read is facinating but the useful bits are few and far between.

My key points will probably be:
1. Nuclear safety myths.
2. NZ clean green renewable resources - why go nuclear?
3. Nuclear solves CO2 Emissions problem from burning coal etc
4. Setup cost - Fossil fuels < Nuclear < Renewable
5. Big Nuclear plants vs small local power sources.

Its only a 1000 word essay, I kind of wish it was more so I could get into it but oh well.

If your an expert on nuclear power generation or know a lot about power generation in general why not shoot me some ideas

btw nice forum idea Brad!

[junkyardjew]

Me n' my buddy (and co-blogger) Neil have been arguing about this since maybe grade eleven (six years ago? something like that...). We have yet to reach an agreement on the best course of action, but here are some of our most recent blog posts

His:
http://smallflightlessbird.blogspot.com ... r-age.html

Mine:
http://smallflightlessbird.blogspot.com ... power.html

Read the articles that are linked and you'll get a lot of good numbers (from his) and some fairly passionate invective (from mine). It's a good place to start anyway.

My personal opinion? Fifty years of fairly cheap energy, with ENORMOUS start up costs, thousands of tons of radioactive waste left at the end and another power crises once all the uranium is gone. Carbon dioxide is spent into the air during the uranium refinement process, and nuclear power won't drive our cars and trucks.

[C-Fan]

You probably already looked into this, but if not, research eolic (wind) power. I think New Zealand is one of the countries with the best potential in the world to harness eolic power.

[Jeremy]

3 issues that need to be addressed are;

1. The mining of Uranium - ie. where is your uranium going to come from. Also there are many environmental issues to do with mining uranium - ie. it destroys the environment - not so green.

2. Disposal of any nuclear waste - ie. where is this going to take place - how will you get the nuclear waste there - for example if you're taking there in trucks what will happen? In Australia when it was proposed to drive nuclear waste from Sydney (East Coast) to the middle of South Australia (Center of Australia) - many people who lived on the road protested and I think the idea was scrapped. Also nobody wants a nuclear dump near their house no matter how keen they are to have it.

3. Public pressure. You can argue as much as you like about the safty of nuclear waste - but reality has shown that people are not scientists and don't trust scientists - as such it's very hard to convince people of the safty of nuclear power and there is always going to be a large amount of people opposed to it. How would you deal with this? By going ahead with the plant you'd risk an anti nuclear power party defeating you in the next election. Public awareness is obviously an issue that could stop nuclear power from solving the energy crisis in NZ.

Also as Ken mentioned - perhaps there are other more sustainable ways of generating the power needed? Hydro, wind, solar, tidal energy etc.

[sPinko-Mania]

I wrote about a 4k word essay on this last year, except my title was 'Environmentally, is nuclear power acceptable for NZ' or something like that.

I could e-mail it to you or just post it here if you want it.

The short answer is no, it's not the only way. Coal could be done, and it wouldn't be very expensive, just terrible for the environment. Wind could be done, it would just cost a lot in start up and isn't great for baseload production. Hydro probably could (we'll honestly run out of rivers to dam), but it would just fuck up a whole lot of river systems, and would have substantial protest from river users. Solar...Would take a *lot* of investment and even moreso with tidal, they would be pretty far out options.

[kester]

I went to a conference on the NPT (non proliferation treaty) and something interesting that was brought up there was that if you build a nuclear power plant, it will take seven years of operations before you "break even" regarding greenhouse gas emissions (compared to a coal station) because of the extra infrastructure required to build the nuclear station and the transportation of equipment + uranium etc.

You'd probably want to check that out before you put it in your essay though.