There are pious canons that Green Warriors take as unquestionable dogma, in regard to Nuclear Energy.
Firstly, nuclear opponents state that nuclear energy is “... more expensive than conventional or alternative power sources...”
Fortunately, in The Age, 28/04/2005, there appears an article by Lesley KEMENY containing favourable quantitative costings of nuclear power versus other sources – including waste disposal & decommissioning, see
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Going-nuclear-its-the-new-green/2005/04/27/1114462096097.html
The companion opinion article on 28/04/05, by Peter GARRETT, was starkly revealed as only that - unjustified opinion.
Secondly it is asserted that there are no adequate technologies “... in place to safely quarantine radioactive waste
...”
This is abysmal luddite ignorance, and for better information, one should now consult the ABC news article on-line at:
http://www.abc.net.au/ news/newsitems/200504/sl 346616.htm
Also see:
http://velocity.ansto.gov.au/velocity/ans0008/article_03.asp.
These internet articles report on 25-year old Australian SYNROC technology, invented by Ted RINGWOOD, which more than matches any safety requirement for disposing nuclear waste. This technology can store the entire world’s current annual nuclear waste in a small 20metre cube, unharvestable by terrorists, buried underneath any stable Australian geology, (a mere nothing) for eons. A portable or permanent SYNROC plant set beside every reactor can immobiise its waste into a deep rock-steady mass, avoiding the necessity to transport any unstable waste overland or water.
Thirdly, there is raised the spectre of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. These were mainly political disasters, not so much as technical ones. The Luddites of this world should remember that - “The cure for BAD technology is not NO technology, but BETTER technology”. No one is going back to living in caves as some kind of halcyon rebirth! Even greenies need electricity and computers and transport to distribute their views. Yes, recyclable energy is environmentally attractive, but it can’t be developed quickly enough to cure the crises which confront our energy hungry populations. Only nuclear technology can get there in time, and one better nuclear technology is the High Temperature Gas Reactor (HTGR), which can be explored at:
http://www.iaea.org/inis/aws/htgr/topics/article 04.html This reactor is intrinsically stable, and cannot “go critical” - any loss of moderator gas just causes the nuclear fires to snuff out like a candle.
Fourthly, in terms of “the risk of terrorists attacking reactors”, such reactors can be buried deep underground, to minimise nuclear leakage from any militant attack. Though one notes that every kind of above ground power plant is equally vulnerable to attack, it is granted that radio-active isotopes need special protection against dispersal.
Fifthly, other letter writers have expressed concern about “Nuclear Mining” – a separate topic to nuclear energy to be sure – but not so distant that it can’t be solved in one further paragraph. The concern is about Australia shipping Uranium ore to countries with poor supervisory & management schemes which might allow U238 to be diverted into a weapons program.
Solution? Don’t ship the U238, refined or not, but ship the energy it represents. We know Northern Australia has abundant ore bodies of Uranium and Aluminium. So build the nuclear reactor(s) close to the Uranium ore deposits (reduced transit risks), bring the Aluminium bauxite to the reactor (which outputs abundant electricity), and smelt the bauxite into pure Alumium metal, now become in effect “congealed electricity”. Pour the Aluminium into enormous ingots to be constructed as hollow floating barges, and one tug-boat can tow vast quantities of this congealed energy to any country in the world.
Burn this Aluminium as Thermite, (see
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sci/chem-faq/part4/, or
http://www.textfiles.com/anarchy/INCENDIARIES/ns1.txt) thus creating heat for steaming electricity generators, and creating no CO2 whatsoever.
Australia gets to keep the used Uranium fuel rods, and processes them via the excellent SYNROC process, and buries the consequent safe SYNROC under a desert somewhere in outback Australia. It is just crazy to currently mine bauxite and ship it south to be smelted in Victoria, where the domestic user subsidises the electricity costs to the smelterers.
We readers look forward to further productive debate about solving environmental concerns, but with more erudition, and less perdition. Green Alarmism gains enemies, rather than friends, when falsehoods are propagated to defend what is admittedly a worthy ethical concern for the environment.
