According to ABC Online, New South Wales Premier Bob Carr has called for a debate on the benefits and risks of nuclear power as an alternative energy source.
“The world’s got to debate whether uranium-derived power is more dangerous than coal,” he said.
“Coal is looking very dangerous – there ought to be a debate.”
Mr Carr says a new energy source needs to be found because alternative power sources such as wind, solar and hydrogen are not yet viable options.
“You could have a wind farm across all of outback New South Wales,” he said. “It’d kill every kookaburra but it wouldn’t provide the base-load [power] we need.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Poor Bob, looking for a distraction.
If wind energy isn’t viable, then neither is nuclear. They are roughly the same cost in Australia, though wind is much quicker to develop and install.
Wind energy kills less kookaburras (and other birds) than buildings, or cars, or communications towers, or powerlines, or coal power.
Wind is more viable in Australia at present than nuclear. Nuclear would cost billions to install, is double the cost of coal, and would require a subsidy that would make farm aid look like copper coins. Wind requires a similar subsidy, but you can isntall it incrementally – much more manageable.
$100 says bob carr doesn’t know what ‘base load’ means. Wind energy is installed to reduce greenhouse emissions, not deal with peak demand. It is irrelevant whether it is base load or peak load or intermittent load. Wind is extensively used overseas, and we are a long long long way short of having grid management difficulties because of wind – NSW only has 17 MW of wind energy installed at the moment!!!
To the best of my knowledge, wind cannot make up more than about 10% of the supply or else the resultant instability of the grid becomes a problem. Denmark has more than 20% wind, but it is a small energy economy attached firmly to the side of a very large German nuclear power grid, which means it is effectively a small proportion of the whole grid.
I am concerned about nuclear, but it seems there are a very wide range of factual arguments which on one side prove nuclear is the best thing since sliced bread, or conversely provide irrefutable evidence that nuclear is an economic blackhole with long term waste problems. In the face of this, I am totally confused and don’t know who to believe.
I heard a Canadian nuclear proponent today on the radio stating that a nuclear station that would supply 40% of Sydney’s power for a century would produce long lived highly toxic waste equal in volume to the volume of your fridge. This sounds attractive, but I strongly suspect that what he didn’t say was that that material cannot be handled in a couple of pallets of drums. It has to be diluted with very large volumes of other materials to make it safe to handle and store. These sorts of wildly exaggerated arguments do the nuclear industry no good at all.
In the distant past I participated in the examination of a radioactive waste disposal proposal. The proponent reassured us that “there are only 7 grammes of radium per year going into the pit and it’s only a teaspoon full”. Both true. But radium is 3.3 million times more radioactive per unit mass than uranium 235 (the unstable isotope) and this minute amount of radium had to be disposed of thoroughly mixed with 76,000 tonnes of other material to reduce it to the definition of low-level radioactive waste. Which according to international standards requires secure storage for about 5 times the half-life of radium (5 x 1,600 years). Nuclear physics seems to excel in adding or subtracting several orders of magnitude in the blink of an eye. It’s all very counter-intuitive.
Yes, I think we need a debate, but I fear it will be dominated by lies from all sides and the decision will be a political one, just like the debate about the greenhouse effect, which has triggered this subject of nuclear power again. Confusion heaped upon ignorance. Bugger.
jennifer , peregrine falcons painted on the blades i’d suggest,would deter most birds from their proximity .in secluded areas not on the skyline ,with their cabling buried they might get my vote .also painted with more natural colours and fitted with some type of hi tech sound deterrent might save birds if we have to have them .
why not some Aboriginal art work on them as a plus for Reconciliation ?
Gidday again Jennifer,
Yes the Bob Carr trial balloon re nuclear power electricity generation for NSW sure must have stunned many.
I guess Bob will be hauled back into line in the weeks ahead.
It seems obvious to me that the problem of where to find the power for a $Billion plus worth of seawater desalination plants is at the back of this.
Here in Perth the production of 17% of our water from seawater desalination (in construction) would add 6% load to our already rickety power grid, if they were to use grid power.
May I point out that France supplies 80% of its energy needs from nuclear reactors, and so far as I can tell, does not seem to have a nuclear waste disposal problem.
In light of this FACT, I find the Australian anti-nucleaur posture somewhat interesting.
Kartiya
Painting Peregrine Falcons on wind generator blades assumes of course that the birdlife are familiar with a peregrine image rotating madly around a centre bearing on a tall tower.
Not the least is the additional problem when the wind does not blow.
Louis, when you compare australia to france, don’t forget to mention how much more expensive french electricity is than Australian, and don’t forget to mention how heavily the French govt subsidises French nuclear.
While we have cheap coal as our main form of power, we won’t have nuclear. Debates about the environmental issues are irrelevant – current govt support for greenhouse mitigation isn’t sufficient to support nuclear vs coal here. Its a deregulated market remember? Compete or die.
Rick, I think you are right about the 10%. One study i saw done for the Australian Greenhouse Office said that Australia could accomodate about 9000 MW of wind without grid difficulties. We have It seems obvious to me that the problem of where to find the power for a $Billion plus worth of seawater desalination plants is at the back of this.
>It seems obvious to me that the problem of where to find the power for a $Billion plus worth of seawater desalination plants is at the back of this.
I doubt that Warwick. We have plenty of coal to meet our power needs, and it seems like the NSW Govt is planning on a new coal fired generation. You could make use of the thousands of MW of generation that is idle at night and most of the year and do your desalination at non-peak times without the need for additional generation. I’d say instead that the nuclear debate is a good way for Bob to get people seeing the alternative (more coal) as not so bad while minimising damage to his green image.
Actually the French are just storing it and hoping for a miracle. This is a quote from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html
“Fighting the objections of technical experts who argued it would increase costs, Bataille introduced the notions of reversibility and stocking. Waste should not be buried permanently but rather stocked in a way that made it accessible at some time in the future. People felt much happier with the idea of a “stocking center” than a “nuclear graveyard”. Was this just a semantic difference? No, says Bataille. Stocking waste and watching it involves a commitment to the future. It implies that the waste will not be forgotten. It implies that the authorities will continue to be responsible. And, says Bataille, it offers some possibility of future advances. “Today we stock containers of waste because currently scientists don’t know how to reduce or eliminate the toxicity, but maybe in 100 years perhaps scientists will.””
So maybe in 100 years someone will do something about it.
To all polititians who want nuclear power I say “sure as long as it will be built in your electorate with the waste dump there as well”
If nuclear power is so safe and clean and the waste harmless, how can anyone object to this?
I would happily have a wind turbine in my backyard. And for all you people suddenly so concerned for birds then we should knock down all large glass office buildings and also replace all your windows with frosted glass. Windows kill millions of birds per year. Also you would also all be in favour of halting all land clearing and development that kills birds by removing their habitat. With a large slow turning wind turbine the bird has to be extremely stupid to be killed by it.
Nuclear power only allows is to waste as much power as we like.
Do France consider it “not a problem” or do they have an answer that they are not letting on about???
Gidday Steve,
I think seawater desalination plants are best run more constantly than you are envisaging with this idea of “…do your desalination at non-peak times without the need for additional generation.” I am not getting the idea that would be practical following the issue in Perth.
In your final sentence you may well be right about Bob Carr’s motives in flying nuke kite.
And for Enders.
When you say “..sure as long as it will be built in your electorate with the waste dump there as well”. Just remember that society through planning processes sites industries away from residential areas in zones that should not relate to electorates. Facilities such as a sewerage works should be sited on engineering & scientific grounds, for the benefit of all. The same should apply to nuke waste which could be treated and buried say deep in drill holes in stable archean granite. We do not place our toilets in our dining rooms Enders; why should we consider having nuclear waste in some proponents electorate rather than disposing of it taking account of what the most qualified scientists & engineers say ?
Exactly becasue nuclear power is supposed to be safe and clean and the waste harmless so why should we put it in some industrial area where it can be forgotten. We normally put dangerous materials in industrial areas so are you saying that nuke power is not safe?
I can put solar panels on my roof so why can’t I have a nuclear power plant next to my school?
Steve,
I merely note the total absence of “criticism” by the usual suspects of the use of nuclear energy in France. I am not concerned with the cost of French power since France is essentially a socialist state in which the state and industry are inseperable; in such states costs and prices are essentially meaningless numbers.
China is also commissioning 2 nuclear reactors per year – not much noise about that from our local greenies too I notice.
Look my comments may have sounded frivolous however they conceal a deeper meaning. I fully realise that power stations are built in industrial areas however the usual thought is that they will be built a long way from me.
When you think of nuclear power please think of it being built in the industrial suburb next to YOU. See if you you like it as much then. I mean they have to be built somewhere. When the fuel rods are first removed from the core they are too hot to transport. They are left in large ponds of water for a couple of years until they are ‘safe’ to transport. Imagine this amount of nuclear material in the next suburb.
Usually when people call for nuclear power they mean it to be actually built somewhere else. This is cynicism of the highest order. To be in favour of nuclear power as long as it is out of sight – out of mind is wrong. Sure you can build it in the country somewhere however why should those country people, who use less electricity, put up with the dangers of a nuclear plant to supply the city with power.
Loius – there has been critisism of nuclear energy in France, Sweden is shutting down its reactors and Germany is scaling down nuclear power. China can do what it wants free of protest however this is not usually regarded as a good thing. The French have done a good job if convincing its people that unlimited energy is worth the cost. Is actually easy because we, the current generation, do not pay the major price of nuclear power. We are leaving a legacy for future generations to clean up.
Ender,
I have no problem with nuclear power – I was one of the team which discovered and evaluated Yeelirrie in West Australia in the early 1970’s.
While in high concentrations uranium 235 is dangerous, u238 which forms 97% of naturally occurring uranium is harmless.
As an aside, the Jabiluka uranium deposit in the NT was found when the exploration company discovered elevated levels of uranium in the streams draining the deposit. It was “natural pollution” that allowed it’s discovery in the first place.
I would have no difficulty living next to a nuclear reactor.
this is such a distracting furphy, no? the real question is whether we willl have sufficient energy to meet our current and future needs. and will we have that energy without compromising our health and the health of others? are we ‘sustainably harvesting’ for our energy needs? or are we ‘mining’ and just stripping out what we need as we go along….and hoping nobody breaks a leg in the many big black holes we leave lying about the place? or has his brains fried by high voltage transmission lines? or scrambled by microwaves? or chokes to death on the millions of tonnes of soot from vehicle and industrial exhausts? surely the question needs to include ‘why are there no incentives to invest in sustainable practices, and why are non sustainable practices given such a ‘leg up’ in terms of current fed and state government policy?
Ok so Loius has no problems living beside a nuclear plant – how about the rest of you?
U238 is relatively harmless true however nuclear plants to not use much U238 – they prefer to enrich it and use a mix of U235 and U238 as you well know. After being in the reactor there are all sorts of radionucleides in the waste including plutonium and the extremely dangerous strontium-90. If this is re-processed to be re-used then it becomes almost all plutonium that is almost directly weapons grade.
Geoff – I totally agree – for the price of one nuclear plant we could better invest the money in electricity conservation to avoid building the plant in the first place. Also if we invest in water conservation then we will not need such a large de-salination plant so we do not need the nuclear power.
Just to confirm what I have been saying – read this from http://au.news.yahoo.com/050605/2/ulmq.html
“Building a nuclear waste dump in NSW is against the law and does not make sense, says Premier Bob Carr.
Mr Carr warned the federal government against establishing a nuclear waste dump in NSW, saying it contravened state legislation.”
Pretty much confirms what I have been saying. Build the nuke plants and ignore the waste problems.
Geoff, Talking about “distracting furphy”, I wonder if you realise that our city air quality has been improving for decades ?
In my opinion this entire issue of “sustainabilty” is one of the great furphies of our times. To illustrate what I mean, just think back to late 18C and I am sure horse manure in city streets was a huge problem. If contemporary Greens could be transported back to those days I can imagine the arguments that all this increasing pony poo was “unsustainable”. My point is that nobody at that point could forsee the solution was being discovered in the automobile.
The history of our progress is marked by unforseen beneficial discoveries. This preoccupation with “sustainablity” should be abandoned.
I would have no problem living next to a Nulear PP.
I’ve been working with ionizing radiation for over 10 years and my kinds dont have two heads.
Warwick – You argument about horse manure is just that – manure. The manure problem was not global and the manure was used as fertiliser in sustainable farming practices that we have largely abandoned in our quest for profits.
Sustainablity is foreign concept for most people as most corporations and governments are short term – per quarter. Humans are short term as most problems are considered solved if the solution can be put off until after the affected person is dead. This is exactly what most solutions for nuclear waste are – store it until I no longer care.
Reducing power consumption and relying on renewable resources such as wind and solar will last at least 500 million years until our sun becomes a red supergiant. True we may not be able to waste power the way we do but that is one of the prices we should be prepared to pay if we want our civilisation to last beyond the next resource shortage. Uranium is limited too.
Is Ender serious?? Manure and dead horses were a huge problem, not to mention a source of disease, disease-carrying insects and stench.
We only need to look at the 3rd world to see what kind of “sustainable” existance the greens and their apologists have in mind for us.
Entirely serious. Manure and dead horses, as bad as they might be, did not and could not affect the world climate.
Unsustainable economics that fails to take into account limited, instead of infinite, resources are doomed to change the climate of our spaceship in possibly dramatic and totally unpredicateble ways.
Conservationist – noun, a person unwilling to adapt to changing circumstances called life. Also frightened of future because it is unknown.
And I forgot to mention I went wading and swimming in the main costean at Yeelirrie – uranium in the water – and nothing happened to me, no two heads or other wierd things.
Of course the immersion in the U238 water could explain my politics.
No Loius your eyes must be playing up on you again that is the definition of CONSERVATIVE.
And you can swim all you like in U238 water as long as it is not radioactive as Uranium is very insoluble in the human body. The problem is with the fission products, most specifically radioactive isotopes of elements that are in the same column of the periodic table or the same as elements in the human body. Examples of these are strontium 90 which replaces some of the atoms of calcium in bones of growing children and increases the chance of cancer or radioactive isotopes of iodine that can cause thyroid diseases.
These isotopes can leach out of even the best waste dumps and get into the groundwater where they become part of the food chain.
I refuse to waffle here as Aaron has a better waffle degree than I have on this matter.
And of course mining tails dumps are not really known to be upstream, downstream, overstream or for that matter understream of the human food chain.
Actually the NT Aboriginals having been living with the nuclear effects of Jabiluka for 40,000 years, so they say. Any evidence for pollution in their food chain? (chain – misplaced metaphor – since when did tribal humans living at the subsistence level, have the means to invent chains in the first place).
We need another noun to replace chain !
Ender, your efforts here would qualify you for this important task.
Ender
Uranium 238 is radioactive, with a long half life. I suggest you go to Martin PLace in Sydney, go to the old Commonwealth Bank Building and see how much radioactivity is coming off the granite.
Under Greeny rules granite would not be mined.
Strange world we live in, isn’t. Some radioactivity is ok, others not.
The aboriginals may have been living with U238 but this is exactly what you do not want to discuss. They did not live with radioactive FISSION products. It is not the radioactivity so much but the danger that the radioactive elements will be incorporated into the human body to do great damage. You are deliberatly confusing U238 and nuclear fission products to try to make the radioactilty more benign when you know full well it is the strontium-90 that is like calcium in bones and Iodine-131 that is taken into the thyroid that are the main problems.
Ionizing radiation from these isotopes,close to human tissues, do damage to DNA and can cause increased cancer and thyroid problems.
Greeny rules, as you term them, are to prevent harm to humans from people who do not care and only care about money and personel power.
Again as you well, and do the Greens, know that unless you stand in Martin Place a lot you will not get a harmful dose of radiation from granite. It is quite another thing to have the same radiation in your thyroid gland with atoms of Iodine-131 in the T3 and T4 hormones destroying your thyroid and giving you Hashimotos. The costs are not obvious – once your thyroid is ineffective you have to have artificial thyroid all your life and suffer quite bad symptoms even with them.
And you are also correct some radiation is OK when it is controlled and known. How would you know that there is Stontium-90 in the milk your kids are drinking? I am sure the nuclear plant operators would move heaven and hell to explain away contamination and be dragged kicking and screaming into compensation cases.