SAY NO TO A NUCLEAR AUSTRALIA

Remember Chernobyl... April 26, 1986.

Alternative Energy

3:26 PM, Tue 6 Feb 2007 .. Posted by rrpl

Hi Tina,

I think the Alternative Energy Institute have already done all the work for you.

The Alternative Energy Institute is a nonprofit, educational organization. Historically, AEI's mission has focused on two areas: (1) raising consciousness about the dangers of fossil fuel dependency and the viable alternatives to fossil fuels, and (2) linking consumers with suppliers of alternative energy. However, AEI is expanding its focus on the basis that there is no progressive change toward sustainability without taking a systemic approach that includes one essential element: community. As a result, AEI is carving out a unique niche of raising consciousness about community sustainability and providing action response opportunities for individuals throughout the world.

You can find the link to it from my latest entry in my blog
http://www.blognow.com.au/NuclearPowerEqualsClimateDisaster/

I did start one after all. Perhaps we should exchange links to our pages as well?

I see that, Kevin. Good job.

6:36 AM, Wed 7 Feb 2007 .. Posted by tinacee

When I got around to replying... eventually... I was going to suggest that you start one anyway. It never hurts to have several voices speaking the same words. You have some great articles, and when I've figured out the template I'll definitely use some of your links, such as the Alternative Energy Institute, The Wilderness Society, Greenpeace, etc. (yes, I may be a hippy, but at least I'm neither ignorant nor blind) I'd also like to add a link to your blog (as well as a couple of other good environmental blogs that I've seen), and I'd be happy for you to do the same on yours.

Keep up the good work... such as all that great research. It saves me doing it
;o)

Solving nuclear problems

5:56 AM, Wed 13 Jun 2007 .. Posted by Joffan

Can anyone tell you how to solve nuclear power's problems? I guess that depends on what you see as the problems, and how much you believe the answers.

The problems I see talked about most for nuclear power are the threat of contamination from power plants; links to nuclear weapons; and waste disposal. I don't see any of these as unsolvable.

*Contamination* from power plants. Chernobyl was and is the big example of contamination from a power plant accident. There are a number of reasons why you can be confident that this level of contamination will never happen in any new power plant. The issues that have been fixed are:
o containment - Chernobyl had no containment vessel, unlike most plants at the time and all new plants;
o safety culture - Chernobyl's operator were engaged in a dangerous experiment, breaking all operating pracatice, worsened by conflicting priorities from power requirements;
o design - Chernobyl was flawed in a number of ways including moderator rod design and (crucially) the core design which allow a ten-day fire;
o response - there was no well-organised response to the disaster; and
o mitigation - simple distribution of KI pills and impounding certain foods could have reduced the health effects significantly.

None of these contamination problems are going to recur. In normal operation, nuclear power plants emit less radioactivity than the average supermarket. Stories about tritium leakages sound scary but are contained at ludicrously low levels. Orange juice is more radioactive. (Incidentally, it helps to understand just how detectable radioactivity is. It can be measured at vanishingly low levels, which is why it is a great medical and industrial tracing mechanism.)

*Nuclear weapons* links. Here is the issue that (I think) more than any other created the anti-nuclear movement. And it is a strange issue. Nuclear weapons are not dependent on nuclear power. I don't think that any nuclear weapon state used nuclear power reactors to assist in the development of nuclear weapons. There are plenty of countries using nuclear power that do not have nuclear weapons. Really the two issues are very little related.

*Waste*. There's a lot of big numbers thrown around about waste; make sure that the ones you read refer to power plant waste, not the much messier and less well-handled business of nuclear weapons. For each year's operation of a 1GW nuclear power station, about 25 tons of waste will be created. [Just for comparison, a 1GW coal-fired plant will generate about 25 tons of carbon dioxide in about one minute, use 25 tons of coal in about 3 minutes and generate 25 tons of ash in about half an hour. Now that scares me.] So nuclear power generates relatively small amounts of solid waste. Coming out of the reactor, this waste is intensely radioactive - no two ways about it. This is bad and good. If it drops down your shirt, like Homer Simpson - you're dead. Not slightly inconvenienced, not hurt, not even fired - just dead. It's also thermally very hot. But, on the good side, nobody can touch it. It's basically tamper-proof and requires respect.

So the fresh hot waste is stored underwater for at least 5 years, by which time all that intense radioactivity has basically burned itself way down and you're left with something that can be air cooled and handled more easily. At this stage it's possible to separate out the worst of the waste - fission products - from the remaining uranium and the useful heavier elements, which can be reused in a reactor. Taking just those fission products, they too can have uses but assuming you just want to dispose of them, make them into glass blocks and put them into a hole in the ground. Within 500 years, the radioactivity of the fission products will have dropped below the radioactivity of the original uranium ore that you started with. The obstacles to this pretty simple and well-known process have been entirely political.

Thanks for the space, keep asking questions!