ATAR Notes: Forum
General Discussion => General Discussion Boards => Rants and Debate => Topic started by: Pe_me on April 13, 2011, 04:18:49 pm
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Should we have Nuclear power in Australia?
Why/why not? :uglystupid2:
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In general, I think nuclear power is a good option, but I think it's inappropriate for Australia because solar power could work even better here if we could just invest in it. Wind is good to. That's with the added bonus of being able to build solar and wind power plants quite quickly and cheaply compared to nuclear. Also, coal and oil power is probably the most evil industry ever, and there are so many financial interests involved it's no wonder why we haven't gotten rid of it yet :(
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Good point, any other opinions?
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No, I don't like nuclear power.
I understand some of it's advantages, but it's consequence after a disaster strikes...
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I watched some vid in Physics that at the state of America's coal usage expected fossil fuel outage etc, they wouldn't even have enough time to make the power plants before its too late, pretty damn interesting.
But as far as Australia goes I definitely reckon Solar's the way to go, blah blah blah it costs so much (meanwhile paying to use coal powered electricity which made us look to alternatives in the first place),
People need to make a decision despite its flaws, there is no perfect system to generating power.
But back to the point, I think Nuclear Power is a good choice, especially if scientists can figure out how to fuse atoms, which will power the world for like, infinite years.
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I think this is a rather heavy choice.
The one thing I’m against is people being afraid of nuclear power, just because its nuclear power. That’s a little irrational there have been thousand of nuclear plants operating in the past 30-40 years and there has only been the odd major accident or two. (Chernobyl, the one recently in japan, 3-mile island, ect). That is not really a huge rate. A lot more people die in coal mining operations every year than the death toll,\ those accidents caused.
Especially in an Australian case; it would be cheapish compared to a lot of the other countries. We would not have to import uranium, since we have bucket loads right here. I think it isn't a good permanent power-source but it is a good stop-gap measure until we come up with something better. If global warming is a legitimate phenomenon and if what they say is true, that we will one day pass a point of no return and it will kind of feed into itself like a loop and then it will be far too late. If these things are true, i really think we need to act now. The government/power companies/corrupt officials/whatever else aren't prepared to accept things like solar and wind full scale just yet.
That said on a global basis Australia contributes relatively little, so just on a local, Australian scale; it is perfectly fine for us to keep burning out coal really. If you mean should everyone, everywhere take up nuclear power that is an entirely different story. The greenhouse gas emissions are a lot lower.
However, just on an Australian scale, i don't really think its worth it. We should go either totally renewable or nothing. The uranium will run out one day too (at least cheap sources). Solar alone is not sufficient as far as I’m aware for power generation though. What about if it suddenly gets cloudy or at nighttime (yes, I’m not stupid i know batteries exist and things like this but still that creates other problems), so it still needs a lot of work. However, i think its either go down the solar/wind road or just keep burning coal cheaply. There isn't much of a middle ground for nuclear.
Another concern with nuclear is the waste, it will be around here for a longgg time. They have some reactors that produce waste that only lasts a couple hundred of years instead of thousands but still that isn't ideal.