piss off the coal for other uses.. bring on the uranium

we need to save fuel for cars..!

I'm not a nuclear scientist, however... there are certain things that can go wrong with a nuclear reactor... however none of these are beyond control (short of a massive explosion from an outside attack, and no crashing a 747 into a well designed reactor will do stuff all...)

For those who don't know what happened in 1986 at chenobyl a situation occured, basically where the coolant was allowed to drain away from the fuel rods this resulted in them heating up in an uncontrolled fashion ( yes this is the simple version so don't go off if I miss stuff)

Uranium is a metal and like all metals expands with temperature, so with no collant around the fuel rods. The fuel inside the rods expanded so much that it cracked the rods escaped and well 13 days later the world found out what happend... Cause the Russians sure as hell wern't going to tell anybody.

Anyway metal only expands to a point, so these days the rods have enough free space to allow for the expansion if the same thing were to happen again.

The point that I'm getting at is while it seems opions on nuclear power have not changed among the less educated of us in the last 20 years the technology certainly has... and for the better.

Nuclear waste is crap however you look at it, but like everything else it can be minimised and managed. For example plug "fast breeder reactor" into google and you'll find that these breeder reactors produce there own fuel from what would otherwise be depleted uranium waste....

This is a massive and interesting topic that you could go on for hours...

In short get over it or get informed we will have no choice soon.

End of rant.

Coal fire power stations are one of the worst creaters of pollution in Australia, would be quite happy to see the back off them

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Yeh, I'm sure all the people that rely on the coalfields for a crust would agree.... Wonder what would happen to QLD if the Bowen Basin was shut down......

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Its always been the way, as new technology comes on line the people who the tech has replaced move on to other jobs. I agree on a personal level this does suck but if this did not happen we would still be making cloth on spinning wheels and hand looms.

Ive just be involved in a $110m project for a dragline for a mine in the Bowen Basin. I guess they might be planning to use spinning wheels for a while into the future yet..

Australia has one of the worlds top 10 largest empty land masses. Yep, in the middle of Aus is a big arse desert...

Now, we also have a fairly successful mining industry (don't go there please...) with the right equipment to bore very large and very deep holes in places such as, the desert.

Where do you store chemical waste? In tripple sealed containers out of harms way...

Ooer! I know a great, uninhabitable place just like that!

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Nuclear waste problem solved....

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If and when it happen's can we make sure the transport carrying the Nuke Waste from wherever they build the plant enroute to the uninhabitable place goes straight past Lawsy's front door ....maybe even make it a lunch break stop....

Australia has one of the worlds top 10 largest empty land masses. Yep, in the middle of Aus is a big arse desert...

Now, we also have a fairly successful mining industry (don't go there please...) with the right equipment to bore very large and very deep holes in places such as, the desert.

Where do you store chemical waste? In tripple sealed containers out of harms way...

Ooer! I know a great, uninhabitable place just like that!

...

Nuclear waste problem solved....

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If and when it happen's can we make sure the transport carrying the Nuke Waste from wherever they build the plant enroute to the uninhabitable place goes straight past Lawsy's front door ....maybe even make it a lunch break stop....

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This topic was brought up once before Dags. See if you can find it. This will put your threadmining skillz to the test

Where????

American Warships

Nuclear accelerators for hospitals....

Imagine an engine for a car the weighed only 200kg and produced 9000 KW's for 200 years.... (If ya dont crash it) ...

Bring on the nuke I say.........

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What about the 1500kg of water to cool the reactor?

Scotty

The aluminium in solar panels takes as much energy to produce as the solar panel would be lucky to produce in its lifetime. Wind energy is great abiet slighty unsightly. Nuclear seems great, I would like to see the waste go out into space, try and launch it into a black. Not buried in the middle Oz.

Scotty

Well...

Firstly I have had occasion to deal with quite a few junior Mining companies (ex .com mob) who are now on the Uranium bandwangon. Most of them I wouldn't trust to mine thier own nostrils with a closely clipped pinkie.....But then again, most of them have on intention of turning a sod of earth..they're mining the share market.

If we mine it and sell it, we have an obligation to accept the waste back. WA is made up of the oldest most stable rocks on the planet, they've been pretty much as they are for ~3billion years...25,000 years is SERIOUSLY sweet FA when you consider the geological timescale. There's an absolute abundance of abandoned Underground mines in WA that you could backfill with waste, seriously, never to be seen again.

Coal also contains radioactive elements that are released during mining / processing so it aint a "radiation free" option... How many of you live on top of granite? Did you know that most granites give off radon gas? It percolates up through the soil and can get trapped in your house if you leave the windows shut. You get lung cancer even if you don't smoke! There are granites in the blue mountains that "Hot" that if you slept on one overnight you'd get the equivalent dose of an x-ray....Radiation is everywhere.

Um..I guess I'm for it, but I doubt we'll make any real progress as there's too much emotion and misinformation surrounding nuclear power, I'll stick to mining Gold.

And I'll stick to refurbising and making you equipment to do it...

cheers