Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

What do you lot think about nuclear energy?

three-eyed fish?

I was having a conversation last night with someone. Peak energy need not be as hard as it WILL be, but people WILL hold on to their existing lifestyle to the bitter end, hence the mad max

Think of how easy it would come to pass if everyone accepted it.

Nuclear energy is the most economical clean energy source currently available... if the byproducts are stored properly and the plant is operated under the strictest conditions then it is perfectly safe. No CO2 is produced, only steam, and if the fuel is contained in the reactor the water will not produce 3 eyed fish... you lot watch far too much simpsonsss... doh!!

Nuclear energy is the middle step to get rid of coal and gas power stations... solar, hydro and wind are the way of the future, but for now it is not going to happen...

I really, really, really want a turbine... maybe when we're finished with AP we can build one... HAH!

Nuke? Apart form the 100,000 yr life span of the radiation producing waste? I like it.

Seriously, i cant help but laugh when people say it will be completely safe in this bit of ground, becasue it geologicaly stable. Yeh, and australia was also part of europe 100,000 years ago!

Short term yep, clean safe energy, and safe disposal of waste, but i'd hate to think that something i supported might casue irrepairable damage 100's of years from now........................thats what it comes down to for me, i'm not so wedded to my lifestyle that i'll forsake the future, even though i'm not in it.

Thoughts?

I'm holding out for nuclear fusion power to become viable... and do-able of course I think they have only managed to control a fusion reaction for fractions of a second in labs...

actually the half life of DU is 4.5 billion years... it is supposed to survive longer than the earth... which is really really bad. But I am hoping there is a way to convert it to something useful in the future... it is either that or CO2 and global warming....

S77, fusion has been sustained for much longer there is a research reactor i think in europe? And they have reached a point of producing more power out than is required to sustain and contain the reaction, but not by an amount that would make it feasible.

TimC, good, i was hoping i wasn't understating the half life! Also, did a wiki on energy crisis and followed some links peak uranium if we converted ALL existing power generation to U238 is only 25 years! I think that pans out to about 150 years if we use fast breeder reactors that "re-cycle" the DU into Plutonium 239 which can be re-used as fissionable material, but considering the world arena do we want to produce tonnes of Plutonium 239 which only need to be refined to a higher % to make it weapons grade?

Also, (and my figures are from memory so someone will need to correct me) the uranium ore has only a tiny percentage U, and the refining process is by no-means "clean" LOTS of hexa-fluoride is involved..............Hmmmm better fire up the cavity band-wagon to "dispose" of it.

Steve

Don't get me started on fluoride steve.. that stuff is nasty... one of the many reasons I never drink tap water... my teeth are fine without it...

My father was an orthodontist, we grew up in Brisbane (where the fluoride argument still rages). For some reason my parents decided that along with a vitamin C tablet each day, we would also have a fluoride tablet. These tablets were pastel coloured and looked to me like musk lollies. I used to eat them by the handful

Sometimes we tend to loose sight of the cause in trying to treat the symptoms.. USE LESS..... !

That link Steve made in the other post with the story about Cuba was a classic example of the fact that we just don't need to consume as much as we do. And that doesn't mean we have to go back to riding donkeys and living in a cave. Alternative technologies are there. If more effort is put into efficiency of use and alternative production there is no reason to even debate nuclear.. Nuclear energy will just fuel us further on the downward spiral of pointles consumption and waste..

Got any fillings Jaymie?

Nuclear power is often touted as cheap, clean and safe, but in reality, if you look right into it none of the above is actually true.

Sweden is the foremost civil nuclear power generator in the world and in terms of responsible usage, is miles ahead of most other countries. Unlike many other nations, they've spent exorbitant sums to 'safely' deal with the waste from their nuclear facilities - drilling massive storage chambers in undersea bedrock.

Yet despite their historically unprecedented steps to generate nuclear power safely in the long and short term, only a couple of months back, Sweden was very lucky not to have a meltdown of catastrophic proportions:



Having previously invested heavily in nuclear power, you'd think Sweden would be going further down that path - yet the opposite is true. They're building energy self-sufficient housing developments like this (Click to view) and doing their best to get off the nuclear path (the future of all their reactors is up in the air pending review).

Nuclear energy is clean? Nope, in actual fact, fossil fuels are used in heavy amounts during every phase of the extraction, refinement and transportation processes...and electricity gained from nuclear can replace almost none of these phases:

Does nuclear energy produce no CO2? (Click to view)

As the price of fossil fuels rises and scarcity/rationing become common, what will be effect on the price (already expensive), safety and viability (even at huge price cost to the consumer) of nuclear power...an industry which is utterly reliant on cheap fuel despite often claiming the exact opposite?

Industry claims that nuclear power produces no CO2 are patently dishonest - with CO2 generating fossil fuels the industry is totally unviable.

Nuclear power advocates often claim that the byproduct is harmless, in actuality, the byproduct (effectively hot water) can have significant impact on the surrounding environment:



Luck our country is not subject to drought, has healthy river systems which don't drop dramatically in level and that's it's not as hot here in Australia as it is in Europe huh?

Then we come to the legacy impact of 'cheap' nuclear power. Britain is currently grappling with the enormous issue of decomissioning some of its nuclear plants:



Lucky the generations that follow us will have flourishing economies still riding the wave of cheap, abundant oil isn't it? They will easily be able to afford such trifling (and spiralling ever upwards) costs...and not just wish that they could afford to clean up our blunders...

And finally, while our clueless and corrupt politicians try and pull the wool over our eyes and sell us on the nuclear issue, they are at the same time trying to bury reports from our premier scientific organisations which give us all the answers we need:



Between the mining giants and the government (who collectively commissioned then buried the report unpublished), it's a miracle the report came to light at all - fortunately someone with a conscience leaked it...so all the major newspapers (who are firmly in the pockets of the government and big industry) could subsequently ignore it...and so our magnificent PM could run around like a chook with its head cut off, ranting about the only alternative to nuclear being a zillion wind farms dominating the coastline of the entire continent...

If three short term reactors, can replace all the coal and gas power plants in Australia, would that be a small step forward in the small run for lowered greenhouse gases... Less efforts can be spent on mining coal and gas and more time focused on renewable energies, which is too expensive at this current point to be feasible... money is the major issue in this... it is all to do whats economical instead of ecologically feasible...