Nuclear Energy In Australia

[aniken]

According to the boffins at MIT (the original) we can expect about 4 nuclear accidents around the world between now and 2055, based on actual experience with reactors to date. That doesn'take into account near misses (eg, in the US in 2002, and France in 1991, where major faults were only discovered while parts of the plants were offline for routine maintenance, despite early warning signs that something wan't quite right). (http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/)

Any volunteers for a reactor near your city?

And, btw, why the assumption that someone that doesn't agree on a topic must be ill-informed or uneducated?

Ani, BEc. MEnvPln.

[sixfan]

According to the boffins at MIT (the original) we can expect about 4 nuclear accidents around the world between now and 2055, based on actual experience with reactors to date. That doesn'take into account near misses (eg, in the US in 2002, and France in 1991, where major faults were only discovered while parts of the plants were offline for routine maintenance, despite early warning signs that something wan't quite right). (http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/)

Any volunteers for a reactor near your city?

And, btw, why the assumption that someone that doesn't agree on a topic must be ill-informed or uneducated?

Ani, BEc. MEnvPln.

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Yup.

I'll take one, but Darwin has too many earthquakes for it to be a good Idea here I suppose.

People probably assume those who disagree are ill-educated because quite often the media focuses on hairy-arm pitted, dreadlocked perpetually unemployed protestors shouting and ranting instead of the voices of reasoned dissent.

Just wouldn't make good news if we all sat down and discussed it logically.

[SHOCK]

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People probably assume those who disagree are ill-educated because quite often the media focuses on hairy-arm pitted, dreadlocked perpetually unemployed protestors shouting and ranting instead of the voices of reasoned dissent.

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Come on mate, be gentle, these ferals work very hard at not getting a job...

[ZAP]

Apparently they want to put the reactor in Port Stephens, near Newcastle.

Nice tourist spot and it is meant to be a good location for cooling water.

I think that we need to investigate the options of this type of power source as it beats burining coal and causing more greenhouse gas

[tab]

We must have a lot of nuclear scientists on this site.

I don't support it as a viable energy alternative, at the moment, because:

- I don't believe the technology is fool-proof enough to be safe. Accidents happen. Even if we locate a nuclear plant in the desert (what about the enormous loss / waste of energy in transmission lines?), the radioactivity from an accident could spread to major population centres quite easily (especially given the prevailing west-to-east weather patterns, which would blow it all straight over the Eastern states)

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How many people died as a result of the “worst tragedy ever” that was Chernobyl? More people have died in workplace accidents in the last few months alone in Australia.

- re-processing and storing the waste will be hugely expensive, a cost that cannot be justified when alternative sources of energy that don't generate as much waste (and are certaintly not as toxic) are available.

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Effectively counter-balanced by the inexpensive fuel to begin with

- nuclear plants are built largely out of concrete and steel. Making both uses huge amounts of electricity. On balance, its likely that a move to nuclear would cause an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, not a decrease.

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Initially perhaps, but not that much more than the equivalent output coal fired station

- nuclear energy generation is just a fancy way of boiling water to make steam, which drives the turbines that make the electricity. Where is the water going to come from, in this largely drought-stricken land?

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As opposed to coal-fired??? Same basic principle, but the only waste released from nuclear stations directly into the atmosphere is steam.

I'm not ruling it out forever, but nuclear technology needs to improve by an order of magnitude before I'd support it.

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Technology for everything could always continually improve to be safer, but Australia would have to be one of the last developed countries to use nuclear power generation – are we really smart or very misguided?

[Antisocial]

I am amused by those who dismiss Chernobyl as just a sh!t happens type thing. And justify the death of over a thousand people, by saying more are killed on Australian roads each year. Any avoidable death is unacceptable.

So let me preface this by explaining that whilst I am certainly not a nuclear physicist, I do work servicing and installing medical imaging equipment so I work daily with ionising radiation both, from nuclear isotopes and x ray emission.

I have also met one of the leading nuclear physicists who assisted with the aftermath of Chernobyl. He was based at a university over a hundred kilometers away and become aware of the disaster, not from the govt, or the media but when is own monitoring and safety equipment when nuts.

Obviously this is a situation specific to communist Russia of days gone by.

Here is some food for thought, with the specifics taken from the World Health Organization report found here

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/cher...t_report_EN.pdf

Lets assume that a Chernobyl type situation happened in Adelaide last month…

By now the entire population of Adelaide has been evacuated and people would not be allowed to return for at least 300 to 600 years, your homes, your cars, businesses and all your personal possessions would be contaminated with radioactive dust, and could never be cleaned. They would all fall to ruins over the next few centuries.

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The prevailing winds in April (see windy pic) would blow a cloud of radioactive dust 200,000km sq, filled with Plutonium, Cesium, Strontium and Iodine across the Barossa, northern Victoria, the Riverina, the snowy mountains, Canberra and as far as Sydney and Wollongong. The plutonium is heavier and most of it would fall in SA, some of the other gaseous elements could be detected as far away as NZ.

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20 years from now fish caught in lake Eucumbene will be thousands of times less contaminated with radioactive Sr90 than today but still over a hundred times more than they were last year.

Over the next 10 years there will be a four fold increase in the number of children, becoming teenagers with Thyroid cancer, as a result of drinking milk contaminated with Iodine 131 this month, unless treated with Iodine tablets.

Of course the type of reactor at Chernobyl would never be installed these days, and the actual chain of events leading to the disaster would be prohibited by design criteria.

Even still would you trust the same government that invaded a sovereign country (admittedly run by a ruthless dictator, but no different to about 20 other dictatorships currently in existence) on unfounded intelligence, to use the same ill-informed decision making processes to run a Nuclear power station in your backyard?

Or would you prefer an enormous multinational corporation, focused on quarter by quarter grown to bleed such infrastructure dry with maximum output a and minimum of maintenance and upgrades to maximize shareholder returns, to do it for us?

Yes we need to cut our reliance of fossil fuels for electricity generation, but at what cost and for how many thousands of years should someone slip up. I think we should focus on efficiency gains, for example a new yuppie designer house with eight 50W down lights to perform the same function as a 12W compact fluorescent lamp. Admittedly in a far less trendy and aesthetically pleasing way consumes more that 30 times more electricity to light up your family room. Apply the same sort of waste across industry and we can achieve massive savings.

But it must be driven the market will not drive up efficiencies, if a company knows that it costs more to upgrade a production facility than to keep polluting and pay a fine when caught….it will take the low cost option every time.

I know I am a hypocrite in being so anti corporatisation whilst at the same time working for one of the worlds largest companies, but I have my phone set to play “Sleep now in the Fire” by Rage against the machine each time the office calls…..does that count?

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[sixfan]

Obviously this is a situation specific to communist Russia of days gone by.

Of course the type of reactor at Chernobyl would never be installed these days, and the actual chain of events leading to the disaster would be prohibited by design criteria.

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Um OK,

you've just admitted that the hypothetical chain of events you've laid out won't happen with the new reactors......so your point was?

If you don't like it because you just don't, that's OK it's a democracy and if enough share your views, Australia won't be having reactors, good, bad or indifferent science notwithstanding.

[tab]

Good post Alex, and there's no doubting it was a tragedy......but the number that lost there lives was around the 30 mark - not thousands.

You still have very valid points if it were to happen again, but that's the key point, could the same thing happen again given that this was 20 years ago and so much has changed since?

[Macktheknife]

I think the first question that needs to be answered is, do we need it?

Right now, I can't see any need whatsoever.

In twenty years? Maybe. In fifty years? Much more likely.

To start the debate now is a good thing however because it's the next generation who will be faced with the questions more, so the greater exposure now, the more informed the answer will be.

What will impact us sooner is our national lack of WATER.

[Antisocial]

My point was to put it into terms we as Australians can relate to.

So what you are both saying is that a man made, computer controlled, built to a cost device composed of tens of thousands of parts is going to be infallible from the date of construction till the day it is decommissioned, including waste disposal.

No unforeseen human errors, computer hardware or software glitches…..ever.

I understand some current prototype reactors do not rely on carbon moderating rods to prevent a chain reaction as occurred at Ch…but still the price of failure is rather extreme don’t you think?

I mean these are systems designed by the French and Americans, that should scare the cr@p out of you if nothing else.

Yes the number that lost their lives as a direct result in 1986-7 was about 32 but if you think that all the other cancer related deaths in the area in the subsequent 20 years are a statistical anomaly then I have some shares in a crosscity tunnel you may be interested in…