Nuclear Power in Australia

[xXNovaxX]

http://nuclearinfo.net/

A website put together by the University of Melbourne's School Of Physics. One of the Physics staff was telling me about it just now, and it's a good read...

just with that, I don't understand "half-life" regarding the term it takes "stuff" to decompose. Why can't they write it as the FULL LIFE, and then we can mentally divide it by half when the need arises =.=*.

[Glockmeister]

What my biggest concern is not about the waste as such, because as other members said we have desert over desert, voer desert (hope desert is the correct type), I don't think in 50 or 100 years time we will have cities sprouting or expanding there.

What is my worry is TERRORISTS. Remember a few months ago when those group managed to get into/up to (can't remember) the army barracks in NSW? And the Chaser Team got somewhere meant to be guarded? And those guys who climbed into the top of the Opera House? Even ignoring THESE, there is the possibility of acts of sabotage, etc. Also I remember during the 2008/09 bushfires, thy almost reached Victorias main coal power plant, and t anotehr seperate incident there was like a landlside or soemtihng which made it in operable/dangerous.

Furthermore we have witnessed earthquakes this year and many otehr years.

My fear is the smallest "thing" or even a LARGE event could cause boom, radiation spreads across Australia. Yes we are much better positioned then developing nations which run power plants, and have not had an issue, but safety within is the issue here, but attacks.

Whereas if a coal plant or something was on fire, it would only be limited to that area.

I'm okay with nuclear power plants, but not in Victoria/in the area where should sometihng happen it wouldn't spread to many houses/urban areas.

I read somewhere once that putting nuclear power plants in desert areas amounts to environmental racism (whatever that means).

Look, terrorists, if they wanted to, could blow up our dams... and that would cause catastrophic amounts of damage. They could do a Mumbai-esque attack and shoot up Melboune CBD...

[TrueLight]

hmm i guess its ok... a few years ago i was definetly against it...cause of fears of a leak or explosion
but that was probably irrational

im sure they will be kept to the hgihest standards... and look at all the countries in the world with it, they don't seem to have any problems...
and besides we are one of the few countries with the largest? or large reserve of uranium (yellow cake or wateva) so we can use that...

i dunno... im wateva on this issue...we'll probably need it for the future...but in the meantime we have coal and we have a high amount of that too... so its not like we're desperate.

[excal]

http://nuclearinfo.net/

A website put together by the University of Melbourne's School Of Physics. One of the Physics staff was telling me about it just now, and it's a good read...

just with that, I don't understand "half-life" regarding the term it takes "stuff" to decompose. Why can't they write it as the FULL LIFE, and then we can mentally divide it by half when the need arises =.=*.

Because the decay over time is an inverse exponential relation (and thus, 'full life' is infinite)

[xXNovaxX]

Thanks Excalibur, that makes sense now.

In addition people forget that uranium is not renewable....it will run out eventually, then what will happen to the hundreds of $1 billion+ nuclear plants around the world?

What I'm trying to say is, instead of investing billions into nuclear energy and R&D, like we did for coal we should instead spend the money on FURTHER improving solar energy, ind (although I don't like this form too much) and geothermal. Then we can have countless energy. Look how far solar energy ahs gone, it used to be inefficient and expenis,ve now it provides so much more electricity.

With coal we kept building and building and mining, when it isn't a renewable source, and so now we are forced to put more research into renewables. So lets not once again fall into the trap for "short term electricity".

BTW, is anyone AGAINST renewables? I don't understand why people just say go nuclear, nuclear, nuclear. If it's because solar etc doesn't provide as much, well we are improving year on year. If we are able to send a man to the moon, and develop nuclear weapons we can discover better technology.

We have stretches of desert, and rooftops, so install solar!

And geothermal! I only found out about it recently, such a simple process. We pour water underground, and we use the steam generated form the water touching the  hot molten rocks near the surface to generate electricity! Furthermore, there are large reserves in QLD, NSW, and Victoria!

[methodsboy]

defs nuc, considering the state of our planet.

[/0]

Renewable energy is a long way from being able to sustainably provide for large populations. While nuclear power is not renewable, it releases massive amounts of energy. While natural gas may release ~50 MJ/kg, nuclear power can release 900,00,000,000 MJ/kg ().
Plus, it has no carbon dioxide emissions, and does not emit any other toxic chemicals. All radioactive waste can be stored underground with no harm to humans.
While it is not the final solution, I think it is an excellent solution in the meantime, until we develop more renewable technologies. Australia has large uranium deposits which could sustain us for a few hundred years.
Terrorist attacks is probably the largest problem... so I think they should be as highly guarded as Area 51.

[kurrymuncher]

Just wait until Anti-matter is mass produced. It will end all this renewable energy/carbon emissions business.

Although this may take thousands of years to do, so I guess this post is invalid.

[QuantumJG]

Gee everybody is being very creative and sort of eccentric.

In addition people forget that uranium is not renewable....it will run out eventually, then what will happen to the hundreds of $1 billion+ nuclear plants around the world?

What I'm trying to say is, instead of investing billions into nuclear energy and R&D, like we did for coal we should instead spend the money on FURTHER improving solar energy, ind (although I don't like this form too much) and geothermal. Then we can have countless energy. Look how far solar energy ahs gone, it used to be inefficient and expenis,ve now it provides so much more electricity.

The rate at which we are using our uranium reserves at the moment technically makes it renewable. I was arguing about this with my chemistry teacher as he said that it is renewable and I thought wtf, but after he spoke about how we use a very small portion of our uranium reserves it made sense.

Solar energy is a dream but the fact is it takes HUGE quantities of energy to convert our mined silicon into the form we need it to be in for solar power. Renewable energy sources just do not provide enough energy to be able to support modern society, my physics professor stated that even if we covered all of Australia in solar panels it still wouldn't be enough.

Just wait until Anti-matter is mass produced. It will end all this renewable energy/carbon emissions business.

Although this may take thousands of years to do, so I guess this post is invalid.

Anti-matter is one of the eccentric options put forward. Anti-matter like fusion is a terribly ineffiecient source of power. The energy it takes us now to produce a very, very small amount of anti-matter is enormous and if you weighed them up you would be operating at an energy loss. Nuclear fusion is another very cool idea, but, the odds of using nuclear fusion is very slim (especially in our lifetime).

I don't understand "half-life" regarding the term it takes "stuff" to decompose. Why can't they write it as the FULL LIFE, and then we can mentally divide it by half when the need arises =.=*.

In nuclear physics we use half-life to express how long it takes half of the material to decay so say I have some radioactive material (say 1 gram) in a lab and it has a half life of 1 hour.

when I first have it (t=0) there will be 1 gram of radioactive material

when t = 1, there will be 0.5 grams left (the other 0.5 grams are is the material it decayed into + a bit of energy in the form of thermal energy), t = 2, there will be 0.25 grams left, t = 3, 0.125 grams, t = 4, 0.0625 grams, ..., more importantly the mass of radioactive material left over will approach 0, but never be zero. Once you get to extremely small amounts of the material the half-life will become more uncertain.

half-life measures how radioactive something is. Lawrencium-253 has a half-life of about 1.5 seconds, whilst something like Uranium-238 has 4.5 billion years. So if you put a geiger counter over Lr-253 you would hear a whole lot of clicking for a while and then it would die down very quickly, whilst if you put a geiger counter over U-238 you would hear less clicks and it would stay pretty much consistent throughout the whole time.

[xXNovaxX]

I sort of agree with you. Because I have read how like 1 gram of uranium (something small like that) equals like 100kg/tons or something of coal.

What i think is interesting is microwave energy, or I think its called solar energy from space.

It seems like a good idea because in space solar panels are not affected by earth's day/night cycle (that is we have continuous sunlight =more electricity) .

http://www.spacefuture.com/power/introduction.shtml  describes how the solar energy that reaches the Earth is about 10,000 times total human energy production. I know it is a long way off, but yeah, an interesting concept.

However very little research has gone into Solar panel satellites.  SPS research to date is - about 1/1000 of 1% of the approximately US$1 trillion that governments have spent subsidizing the development of nuclear power over the past 50 years.

With your statement about solar energy not being enough, I agree to an extent. But how is it many countries like Iceland are able to derive 89% of its renewable energy, and many other nations between 20-40%. My point is, I am not syaing we should get 100% of our energy from renwables, but anywhere up to 1/3 should suffice. At least have solar panels on every home and school.

Also, we don't JUST have to use solar, we could also have a mixture of geothermal, solar, hydro, wind etc so as to meet these targets more easily. Just how computers used to be the size of rooms and now are miniscule and getting smaller due to Nanotechnology (as well as more faster and efficient), so can solar cells.

I am not a 100% advocate AGAINST nuclear, but I fail to see why when we had billion dollar surpluses for last decade we haven't developed large scale renewable projects- what have we got to lose? We know the technology works, well then utilise it. In China they have created a green CITY, and it just goes to show the possibilities available.

[/0]

I think we should put more funding into fusion power research... if we can sustainably produce from fusion power then we will have more energy than we could ever possibly need.

[Eriny]

I am fairly confident in nuclear power. However, as a long-term solution it's not too good because uranium is limited just as coal is. It could be an effective solution for some time, but I think we still need to invest in alternative energies that are even cleaner and more renewable.

[xXNovaxX]

I am fairly confident in nuclear power. However, as a long-term solution it's not too good because uranium is limited just as coal is. It could be an effective solution for some time, but I think we still need to invest in alternative energies that are even cleaner and more renewable.

agreed

[Collin Li]

I am fairly confident in nuclear power. However, as a long-term solution it's not too good because uranium is limited just as coal is. It could be an effective solution for some time, but I think we still need to invest in alternative energies that are even cleaner and more renewable.

agreed

+1 cept it'll happen via the marketplace as coal/uranium become scarce enough.

[happycat]

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, I know next to nothing about this topic but ...

What about the radioactive waste or whatever it's called?

We have lots and lots and lots of desert. If somehow that fills up we can ship it to New Zealand.

EDIT: spelling error D:

I would STRONGLY disapprove of disposing it in the desert, there are lots of unique plants and animals that live there so no no no no to that.