Risk ahead: overheating planet or nuclear disaster?

April 2007
From The Age (Aust)



This post links to an interesting debate about Nuclear Energy in Australia. Climate Action Brisbane does not support Nuclear Energy for Australia. It may be relevant in other places in the world where they lack the alternatives, though in Australia we have many alternatives. Specifically, why we don't agree with Nuclear Energy for Australia for these reasons:

• we have enormous amounts of sunshine and wind (all across the country - this distribution helps with baseload requirements),
  
• we don't have much spare water which is required for Nuclear Energy
  
• it would take a long time to have a nuclear reactor up and running in Australia - time we don't have with the Climate Crisis hanging over our heads
  
• the cost to build a reactor is enourmous
  
• the cost to decomission a reactor is many times bigger though we don't fully know because this has not been done anywhere in the world
  
• Uranium mining takes enormous amounts of energy and disturbs the carbon locked up in the ground, releasing it into the atmosphere
  
• Transporting the ore takes considerable energy
  
• Processing Uranium takes enormous amounts of energy, and as the amount of high-grade Uranium reduces, the cost to process less-pure forms requires more and more energy
  
• Nuclear proliferation is a real posssibility when Nuclear Energy and reactors are considered the norm along with all the radioactive wastes they produce
  
• A de-centralised model of energy generation is much more efficient and will produce far more jobs over a wide area rather than concentrated in one area. By spreading out our energy production we lessen the damage caused by a malfunction at any big centralised energy production centers (think terrorists here). Decentralised energy means that people are more in touch with where their energy comes from and will assist them to understand conservation and being more lean. (See "There is no shortage of energy" in ZMag: Global Warming: Limits of Solar and Wind Power)
  
• the world is moving away from Nuclear Energy - Germany is switching away from nuclear to solar for example
  
• did I mention that Australia has abundant solar and wind energy available to be tapped.
  
• because Nuclear and Clean Coal is what big business wants and is just wrong. These people don't get it. We have to change how we view the world. But no this statement does not mean we will be travelling around by horse and cart (for starters this is a very inefficient form of transport). It means that we will be leading leaner lives. It means that we will grow and eat more food locally. It means that we will have a greater use of decentralised water gathering (rainwater tanks, gray water systems) and more decentralised energy producing centers. It means that we must learn to accept other people. It means that there will be less need for agression, war and the military in general.
  

Read the article.