Not to mention the 20 year build time, … or as I said, … virtually the whole country vehemently opposed.
Fusion maybe.
It would be a hard sell. Not sure what would be more difficult, convincing people scared to live near one, or convincing people it is ok for it to be built by the Chinese.
1 Like
More logical response
we’ve built worse for more dollars over shorter time frames… desal anyone?? cleaners were on over 100k a year…
Don’t know why HM bothers when you twist his words and then have the nerve to call his arguments infantile.
3 Likes
I entirely admit that massive environmental and climate changes have happened before.
What I keep saying and what you keep ignoring is that even thought they do sometimes happen naturally they are still fuckawful times to live though, and that when they happen, over 50% of species of life on earth DIE ALL THE WAY DEAD NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN and the sea level rises by 50-100m. Which would seriously inconvenience … Melbourne for starters. And Sydney. And Perth. And Venice, New York, London, Miami, Barcelona, San Francisco, and a hundred other cities.
It just beggars the imagination why anyone would want to condemn their children to living in times like that, by refusing to even make an effort to prevent them.
4 Likes
Comes down to space… put it this way…
NSW is what, close to the same size as France? France have 58… 58 reactors mate… if people are scared stop visiting france!!!
15 here in the UK which is slightly smaller than Victoria.
The new one will be built by the Chinese.
The climate has changed before, so it can’t be affected by human activity.
People have died of natural causes forever, therefore this gun won’t blow my brains out.
Infantile huh? You can drive a truck through this logic.
1 Like
There’s actually quite a few new ones being built here and there… mossed the opportunity to be able to distribute power to China, was in talk in 10 year ago but china are building now for themselves as well… basically that’s wheee our uranium is going now… oh and off topic, our raw steel goes there for processing so we can buy it back in shapes and forms… we continue to bend over
No, they haven’t unfortunately.
I’m not philosophically opposed to nuclear power or anything, but renewables are many times more practically achievable at the timescales we have.
- The great majority of nuclear generation capacity was built decades ago, the economics are different now
- Since Fukushima, nuclear plants are utterly uninsurable and nobody will build or run one without an ironclad guarantee that the government will pick up the entire bill in the event anything goes wrong
- Disposal of waste is a problem that has not been meaningfully solved. Here in Aust we’ve been arguing for decades and we can’t even decide where to dispose of relatively-innocuous medical radioactive waste. If you go to nuclear power generation the amount and noxiousness of waste goes up by orders of magnifude. The US hasn’t even decided where to store their waste long-term, it’s currently just sitting around in rusting barrels in Utah i think, disaster waiting to happen. And nobody has even TRIED to decommission and clean up an old nuclear plant yet…
- Fusion is theoretically cleaner but it hasn’t even happened sustainably in the lab yet. It’s still decades and decades off as a power source, as an optimistic estimate, and we need to decarbonise much sooner than that. And while it doesn’t have fission’s potential for ‘poison everything within a hundred miles for a hundred thousand years’ type accidents, it DOES still have potential for ‘really really big boom which at least leaves no radioactive fallout if you insist on looking at the bright side’ type accidents instead.
- nuclear plants are slow to build - 5-10 years as far as I can remember - and that’s AFTER there’s years worth of anger and fear and controversy about where the thing is going to be built and who gets to live next door. This is just too slow if emissions targets are going to be met. We can build solar and wind capacity in a fraction of the time
- and finally, solar and wind are cheaper than nuclear NOW, and are getting cheaper at an very rapid rate.
3 Likes
You clearly haven’t responded and bitten lightly on this from a pub on your iphone watching ■■■■ footy like i have… so allow me the opportunity, to retort or agree within a clear mind in a day or two… I respect such an answer and would love to continue this discussion on climate change and idealistic solutions
4 Likes
Well if the proverbial does hit the fan let’s hope whomever is in charge can navigate us through it as skilfully as Rudd/Swann did during the GFC.
Regardless of whether you think climate change is real or not, For a country to put all there eggs in 1 basket economically is suicide.
Australia is falling behind. Investing in coal is like investing in VCR’s when Netflix has just launched last week. It’s f*cking irresponsible. So all these climate change deniers can keep coming with excuses, but the world is moving towards renewable energies whether they like it or not.
We are going down a track of not just concerns over the world our children and grand children will live in environmentally, but economic catastrophe.
And we are wasting our existence on our earth still arguing over it.
3 Likes
HM, have you seen the Gen4 Power Generation mini nuclear reactors currently being developed. Apparently they have sold about 100 units .These are about the size of large house and can be transported. they will power up to 20,000 houses. Price is about 25Mil. The nuclear material is low grade uranium and there is no risk of melt down. Still studying the benefits/problems but looks very promising. And they work 24 hpd unlike solar/wind that are totally unreliable.
1 Like
Yeah, but when everyone’s Netflix is on the blink we’ll be sitting back laughing with our 80s/90s VHS catalogue.
If those numbers are right then it truly does seem a good option.
Have nuclear reactor, will travel.
Amazing how rubbish gets likes. I have done no twisting of words.
I’m not up with the finer details of the tech, but if the sales pitch becomes reality they could be promising.
Main issue is that I’ve been hearing about how gen IV reactors will revolutionaise power generation ANY DAY NOW for the last 15 years, and it still doesn’t seem to be on the verge of becoming commercially viable tech at a large scale. The roadmap of the international gen IV forum targets commercial availability as 2030, but this is basically advertising copy and I expect significant overruns to that, given that major overruns ALWAYS happen when you’re trying to productionise cutting-edge science in a hurry - the f35 or any other major military procurement program for example. 2030 is simply too late, and 2040 or whenever the things are REALLY ready is even worse. We need to make major inroads into emissions before then. Once it IS available, then there’s no technical reason that gen IV nuclear shouldn’t be a long-term part of the energy mix, but I’m not counting on it being a realistic option on the timescales we have to avoid climate tipping points.
But the issues with waste and location don’t go away. Sure, gen IV reactors produce less waste and it’s ‘only’ dangerous for centuries rather than hundreds of millennia, but that’s not going to reassure the people who live near the waste dump. And a gen IV reactor is still a reactor, and I suspect there’s not going to be a lot of enthusiasm for having on in your neighbourhood, so the task of building them will be politically complicated. And maybe with some reason - when they’re ready, gen IV reactors will be brand new tech, and brand new tech, by its very nature, has bugs and goes wrong and there aren’t many experts around to help you out with it.
1 Like