Nuclear Power

[Jeremy]

So Australia is debating this issue right now. It's probably fairly likely that like it or not, we will have nuclear power plants in Australia in the next twenty years.

How do you feel about nuclear power? Does the country you live in have nuclear power? What consequences has this led to?


Here are my thoughts:

Pros of nuclear energy:

Relatively cheap. Not nearly as cheap as the current power we have in Australia - Coal fired power - but still significantly cheaper than wind and solar - being the other two viable power sources.

Clean. Not as clean as wind or solar - in fact still creates a huge amount of greenhouse gasses - especially in mining and in setting up the inferstructure but much cleaner than coal.

Cons:

Still a fossil fuel. As oil levels get lower and lower surely we should learn the lesson that using non replacable fuels can not be sustained. Eventually we will have to stop using nuclear power. It won't happen in this generation but it will definitely be a problem we are creating for future generations.

Nuclear Waste. I'm unsure of how serious an issue this is. Certainly there is a lot of fear around this however we use radioactive materials for a large number of other applications - smoke alarms, xrays etc so we have to learn to deal with nuclear waste anyway. However I've also heard reports from people living near nuclear power plants in England who say that everything around them gets contaminated and there are significantly higher rates of cancer for people living near nuclear plants or working in them. I haven't seen this verfied or denied.

Fear of Nuclear meltdown/disaster. Irrational. The effects of the greenhouse effect could be equally as bad. Serious Nuclear disasters are so rare it's not worth considering. If we're going to worry about that, why aren't we forming plans for when a meteor hits earth and a battle plan to defeat the aliens with. I think we should worry about what has a statistically significant chance of happening.

Terrorist Attacks. I amashed to be opposed to nuclear power when people bring up this issue as a reason to avoid it.

Aging power plants. Cleaning up an aging power plant costs huge amounts of money and often those cleaning up costs are long ongoing projects. This is money we have to spend to avoid disaster so in building nuclear plants we are essentially placing a financial burden on the future generations to deal with problem that we won't have to. Some would say that this is morally wrong.


So overall I'm opposed to nuclear power because I don't think it's a sustainable option and I don't think it is cost effective. When working out the costs of nuclear power vs solar or wind we really need to look at the environmental and social costs as well as the financial costs. Anyway there is more I wanted to say but family guy is about to start.

[janis]

I really don't understand why this is being debated as it is such an absurd proposition, no coal power plants will be shut down, and no greenhouse gas emmisions will be saved.

If thorium was being used in the reactors, I would be all for it (Australia has the greatest natural thorium deposits, thorium has a half life of 500 years and can't be used in neuclear weaponry). The people in the Physics department at uni are all for it(I got the idea from them ), but as usual research money is extremely hard to come by....

The government has been very skilled in "framing" the debate, making the debate in peoples minds about the merits nuclear power based purely on economic considerations. No mention is made of the ridiculous subsidies made to the coal industry and no proposal is made to subsidise and clean alternative power, ie wind power and solar power(cause Australia is sunny have a look at the image)


1000W/squre meter(250W is average over 24hours) is a lot of energy, With nuclear power plants 500MW - 1000MW is common, but there are plans to build 300-500MW solar plants, which when you think about it is a lot of power.

Relatively cheap. Not nearly as cheap as the current power we have in Australia - Coal fired power - but still significantly cheaper than wind and solar - being the other two viable power sources.

It's actually not cheap at all, wind power recovers the cost of manafacture the fastest of all current power sources, and solar power in a country like Australia (little cloud, fkn hot, particuarly in the desert) recovers the cost of manafacture the faster than nuclear. And imagine if even half of the money that is pumped into coal power went into renewable energy, the ensuing mass production and effeciencies of scale resulting from this would make wind and solar even cheaper again.

besides, it is only the ingenious "framing" of this debate has made it seem as though nuclear power is cheap and clean. If we keep arguing about the economic benefits we have severly missed the point and have fallen directly into the much maligned "greenie" frame(in Australia at least), where we won't be taken as seriously.


PM me if you wan't lengthy ramblings on political framing/ cognitive stuff, cause I'm studying it at the moment.

[Scott]

I don't have a problem with nuclear power and wouldn't mind if australia had nuclear power but only if it was really a benefit (economically and environmentally) to the country.

As far as using non-renewable energy sources is concerned it still makes sense to use the cheapest energy source even though it might not last forever. As the cheap energy sources are used up we will be forced to move towards the more expensive ones. So we might as well make the most of the cheap options while they're available.

The problem with nuclear power in Australia is that i can't imagine it really being economically viable. We already have adequate sources of energy and the rate of growth in our demand surely would not warrant the kind of expenditure required for a nuclear station.

In more densely populated countries nuclear power would certainly be viable.

It would be good to see some independent studies done comparing the economics of all the energy options.

[MegaFighter_X]

I live in Nevada. In Nevada, they are proposing a nuclear waste dump for the storage of... yeah. I think it's only about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, where I live. Yucca Mountain, if you care to look it up.

We're fighting to try to get that stopped. In essence, the entire country's nuclear waste is going to be shipped by train in "indestructable" contained cross country into the dump site though states that don't even have nuclear power plants.

This site is also near a fault line...

[Switch Kicker]

I don't know alot about this kinda of stuff, so i'm not going to get too deep into it.

But in California, it's becomming an option for people install solar panels on the roofs of their houses. And in most cases, it provides all the electricity you need, and any extra electricity that you produce, goes to the power company, and by law, they ahve to pay you for any electricy that you give to them. Same law applies if you own a windmill and it's linked to your power company. Any extra energy produced is given to the power company, and they have to pay you for it.

I honestly dont see why we don't just cover the lands with windmills and start putting solar panels on skyscrappers and on our rooftops, and any other place we can put them. It's a "never-ending" energy supply... I mean... eventually, all energy must come to an end and then explode with the big bang to go through it al again... but guess what. Humans int he future can work on their own techinques for surviving hte sun blowing upand stuff like that... Not gonna happen for billions of more years, so who cares? Anywho.

If we can put solar panels on all of our rooftops, and put windmils all across the lands.... we should do it then...

But that's coming from an uneducated person on this subject.

Peace,
Fred.

[MegaFighter_X]

I don't know alot about this kinda of stuff, so i'm not going to get too deep into it.

But in California, it's becomming an option for people install solar panels on the roofs of their houses. And in most cases, it provides all the electricity you need, and any extra electricity that you produce, goes to the power company, and by law, they ahve to pay you for any electricy that you give to them. Same law applies if you own a windmill and it's linked to your power company. Any extra energy produced is given to the power company, and they have to pay you for it.

I honestly dont see why we don't just cover the lands with windmills and start putting solar panels on skyscrappers and on our rooftops, and any other place we can put them. It's a "never-ending" energy supply... I mean... eventually, all energy must come to an end and then explode with the big bang to go through it al again... but guess what. Humans int he future can work on their own techinques for surviving hte sun blowing upand stuff like that... Not gonna happen for billions of more years, so who cares? Anywho.

If we can put solar panels on all of our rooftops, and put windmils all across the lands.... we should do it then...

But that's coming from an uneducated person on this subject.

Peace,
Fred.

You've got a good point. The main reasons against that (from what I belive) are laziness and cost... Nevermind that it would eventually pay for itself.


And as kind of a side note, with this energy "end" actually comes... I think it was called the big sleep or something like that... I forget the name. But eventually, under this theory, Everything becomes spread so far apart that the total energy of the universe is dissapated too far to be effective... kind of a creepy though... The big bang is everything coming back to a central point for one big fuckfest keplowie so we can have this discussion all over again.

[sniikeri]

I consider (fission) nuclear power "an evil we have to accept". In the long run it can't be the ultimate choice, but if we really want to save the environment from carbondioxide pollution, it's a necessary option that needs to be chosen.

I can't see any other way for better energy producing than the fusion energy that is being developed at the moment. Until that, I support fission and any green energy.