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Your opinion on nuclear power  

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Alot of the chemists here are pro nuclear power and ive been discussing it with them laterly.

The points they make are:

1) Nuclear power is cheap after initial setup cost

2) Its clean compared to other energy sources like coal

3) Quite safe, one mentioned more people have died from installing solar panals then from nuclear power in the last 20 years.

4) Nuclear waste has a bad reputation

5) Not much waste is produced per year

6) Providing its stored in a lead container and it doesnt leach the radioactive particles (alpha, beta and gamma) wont travel far enough to cause anyone any harm.

Im not pro nuclear but im not against it but I am pro solar and wind. They argue that yes sustainable sources are required but nuclear is the ultimate for supplying the base load.

The one point that I dont like is still what will happen to the waste, I dont know of any time that somthing was buried and it did not come back to haunt us.

What you think?

Edited by teonanacatl

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Great idea for a poll Teo. I have done a bit of doco-watching on the idea of nuke-power and I am still 50:50 both for and against. There is no doubting the fact that it has huge advantages over other sources (clean, available, resourceful, etc), but still there are some significant downsides (health dangers, storage of spent uranium, import/export of uranium, using fuel for weapons, location of nuke-power facilities, etc, etc). At this opint, I can see a few more dangers involved in the whole idea than positives and still think that it is a far off option that simply shouldnt be considered at this point (but research MUST be done and continued in depth - something easy to do when there are already several countries with nuke-power stations in operation and soon to be).

Renewable energy needs to be implemented in the now, whereas nuke power will be something of the near future (50-100 yrs from now). Coal is something that should be avoided as much as possible, as the same with oil (if you havent seen the doco 'Crude', I suggest you track down a copy - it is fantastic and shows the process of how it was made and how it has been used and raped thru the ages - VERY good doco IMO) and we should be looking into solar (even if there are a few deaths attributed to installation of panels, as Teo pointed out - lets not go forgetting how many people would have been killed working in coal mines and on oil rigs, etc...), wind, geothermal, hydro, alcohol (from plant crops), etc.

Such an interesting topic tho, I am quite keen to see people's opinions! I can see it now tho - anti nuke, but with a lack of understanding of its possible benefits... :( Lets not forget, there are plenty of actual benefits, but these are no doubt reflected with serious consequences.

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Uranium, the new oil.

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It takes a lot of fossil energy to mine uranium, and then to extract and prepare the right isotope for use in a nuclear reactor. It takes even more fossil energy to build the reactor, and, when its life is over, to decommission it and look after its radioactive waste.

As a result, with current technology, there is only a limited amount of uranium ore in the world that is rich enough to allow more energy to be produced by the whole nuclear process than the process itself consumes. This amount of ore might be enough to supply the world's total current electricity demand for about six years.

Moreover, because of the amount of fossil fuel and fluorine used in the enrichment process, significant quantities of greenhouse gases are released. As a result, nuclear energy is by no means a 'climate-friendly' technology.

more good info on the unsustainability(?) ov nuclear power here

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I recently attended a week long course on the mining of radioactive ores. All very interesting. I was really suprised at the footprint of the mines, they were nowhere near as big as I was expecting and the precautions needed for mining of radioactive ores is really no different to the mining of any other toxic metal, in fact the mining of uranium ore seems quite safe really as what is classed as contaminated is quite low and nothing to get too excited about.

I guess the problem with nuclear power is the enrichment of Uranium as you are left with something massively radioactive and extremely toxic to boot. Depleted uranium is of limited use other than for munitions or gamma shielding.

Personally I believe that the nuclear option is unnecessary, say it takes 10 Billion to set up what are the running costs and the cleanup costs and the disposal of radioactive waste? So there are 20 million people in Australia say approximately 5 million houses and a self sufficient solar bank on the roof of 1 house will cost $12000 per house, that is 6 billion to give every house for free the energy needed to run the house and not have any further electricity bills. Now say it was heavily subsidised and we had to pay 1/3 the cost, I know I would gladly pay $4000 to have solar cells installed on my roof and not have to pay electricity bills again, depending of course how energy hungry I become.

Given Australias wealth of space, light, heat, wind and tide, choosing nuclear power seems like a big step backwards and a big waste of tax payers money.

I could rant for pages on a number of tangents associated with this but I have to get back to work.

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Id rather they develop solar and geothermal sources of power generation and see if we need any more power after that. If more power is needed then Nuclear should go ahead only after all the waste thats been created so far is properly disposed of, if there is a way of doing that? Oh yeah, and all nuke plants should be erected under parliament houses to show the people that the poli's have utmost confidence in the safety of these plants.

Nuclear free for me. thanks.

(more people have died from donkey attacks thank nuke plant accidents, but id rather have a mule in my bacc yard)

:blink:

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all nuke plants should be erected under parliament houses to show the people that the poli's have utmost confidence in the safety of these plants.

:o No, thats just down the road from me! Perhaps I ought to move... :P

Id rather they develop solar and geothermal sources of power generation and see if we need any more power after that.

Exactly. Why jump to a huge and very risky (well, at least it appears that way at this point in time) option when there are very good and resourceful options already available? Start with what makes sense here and now and move on to bigger and more drastic options when these start looking insufficient.

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I completely agree there is a need for 'environmentally friendly' power supplies but the move from a big power grid to smaller microsection type stuff will take a while and I think better nuclear then coal and oil atm. Solar and wind are my favourite and the same argument about efficiency of solar compared to how much goes into it is valid.

Nuclear certianly is not renewable like oil but then the same goes for fusion which is most scientists ultimate powersource. I guess all that changes is the amount of waste and the length of time it can sustain us for. Coal->oil->nuclear->fusion.

Sustainables are the way to go but really somthing is needed for the baseload and it aint all gonna come from solar, wind and hydro.

updated the poll to add another Q :)

Edited by teonanacatl

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While I've already voted and cant add votes for the second section, I'd probably go for nuclear. but like I said above, a lot more research should be done before jumping head first into it. Until then, i guess whichever is most available and replenishable between coal/oil (I suppose neither really are)... It would be great to see every house (especially in the cities) with at least one fully funtional solar unit on top to ease the strain on powerstations, but I cant see that happening anytime soon...

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Personally I can see nuclear having a role to play in some parts of the world, densely populated areas, probably not in australia. However the GHG improvement over fossil fuels is very low in most situations for the following reasons.

Electricity generation accounts for about 35% of GHG production in Australia and between 30-50% in other countries

Nuclear energy is probably about 2/3 as GHG intensive than coal when all stages of the cycle are considered.

That means we could get our electricity related GHG production down by 1/3, or about 12% overall if we replaced all our coal fired powerstations with nuclear powerstations immediately.

This would be economically and logistically impossible. Nuclear power stations are very expensive to build (the US hasn't built any new ones since the 80s, partly for this reason). Insurance companies won't underwrite them so taxpayers will have to cover that. And as nabraxas mentioned, the uranium won't last forever either. I have heard various figures about how long, but the longest was 70 years. And we'd still only get a 12% reduction. If we are going to completely transform our energy economy, we need to see bigger gains than that, and longer lasting ones.

A Commonwealth Government energy taskforce report a few years ago identified a set of energy efficiency improvements, using currently available technologies, that would pay for themselves within 4 years, and would achieve GHG reductions of 20%. The nuclear 'option' shouldn't even be on the table until all the recommendations of this report have been implemented.

Oh yeah, I didn't vote because I find the questions are too simplistic - it's like one of those "Liberal or Labor" polls. I know this was your intention but I can't bring myself to do it ;). You forgot gas in the second question too - which Australia has lots of.

Edited by creach

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I think the edited poll is stuffed it says I've already voted & there all on 0%.

I voted no in the original post although I do think Nuclear energy could be the way of the future just not in its current form, fission, fusion on the other hand looks to be very promising but is some ways of yet. Will be interesting to watch the developments.

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yeah sorry about stuffing the poll :o

Lol yes creach simple polls :) I wont add gas cos it will fuck it again.

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GO URANIUM! MONEY FOR THE ECONOMY AND EMPLOYMENT!

for some countries it may be very appropriate but it is not in australia. We have so many other options that we dont NEED nuclear power here unlike countrys in europe, france ect, we have solar and ground thermal heat power, huge amounts of land for windpower ect ect.

yes to dig it up (we gona make lots n lots of money baby)

absolutly no for us to use it

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Edited by Tepa

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Sexy legs Tep :P Regarding exporting Aussie uranium - yes, this would be fantastic for the economy and would boost employment rates even further, but it has also been speculated by prospective buyers that they will have the option to dump their spent uranium back in Oz. I know it would be great to offload some of our excess gear, but at the same time, I cant see it being the last time we see it.

But what happens if we decide to become a mass exporter of uranium while we stick to the old renewables? What happens when the time comes that we need to go nuclear? Our resources will have already been tapped, and could very well be quite depleted, possibly costing us in the long term if we run so low that we need to import (though I know that isnt very high on the cards). I guess its kind of like having a pantry full of nice food. Every bastard wants a bit to eat, but we arent hungry just yet. Do we decide to share our food now, or hold onto it for when we get hungry? At this stage we dont even know if we will get hungry, but it is certainly high on the cards. What happens when someone wants to leave their foodscraps in the pantry or in our kitchen? It will be us having to clean it up and dispose of their crap.

Anyway, I'm sure there is a lot more to it than that, but thats what I have going on between my ears atm :P

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When uranium is exported Australia should be explicit in negotiations that nuclear waste and by products associated with it are solely the responsibility of the country that purchases it, its just logical that we do that, if politicians dont then their just stupid...

What happens when the time comes that we need to go nuclear?

We have more then enough ability for solar power generation and other methods of energy production that I hope Australia never needs to go nuclear, Its risk/benefit ratio just does not make it a justifiable option in our circumstances.

Edited by Tepa

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its just logical that we do that, if politicians dont then their just stupid...

Totally agree - when I heard it I almost choked. If we do start exporting, then I at least dont want no refuse brought back for a 5c refund... :unsure: (well, as long as it's only in SA :P)

I hope Australia never needs to go nuclear

True, we do have more than enough, but sooner or later I can still see nuclear being on the cards, and is probably our Ace of Spades (so to speak). I dont want to see it used until we have nothing else to play with, but I'm sure if we happen to put the wrong person in charge, it wouldnt take long to whip it out... I certainly hope that a LOT of effort goes into renewables, but has there been much happen over the past couple years? I probably should go do a bit of reading - but from the bit I know there hasnt been a huge amount of government funded research and application (though I could be talking out my coit...).

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Every man made or conceived system is always going to have SOME kind of downside, thing is we tend to hear about it only after we've all gotten used to the upsides. When all you have heard in PRACTICAL terms is Chernobyl, Hiroshima, leaking containment bays in built-on-the-cheap uranium mines in the NT, and have yet to have a nice cup of "atomic coffee" or read a classic work of fiction by the light of your cheerfully glowing bedfellow, it IS hard to be unbiased or entirely intellectual about the nuclear question. I hear there's only enough of the yellow shit laying around to keep even a fraction of earth nuclear fueled for the next 80 years, or something... and in the meantime we need to invest massive amounts of traditionally generated energy and fuel to get the shit out of the ground.. usually at the expense of the local residents, as in all things, whether they are microorganisms in a billabong or unamused macroorganisms wondering why they get sick a lot since Ranger went in upstream.

wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, all have their upsides.. but I think most of the downsides of any energy production come into play mainly during transit...either getting fuel, or getting the outcome, from A to B... rather than looking at a Big MoFo Nuclear Plant to fix everyones problems, we could probably make enough hot water for a streets worth of people to have hot showers just from burning all that bloody junk mail that turns up :P Ok not quite... but a locally relevant approach seems important. EVERYONE'S locality, not just the well fed and educated end users.

Nuclear hasn't made a real mess of anywhere for a lil while, it's true... but that's to me a little like saying "i know tigers are quite vicious, but I've been using this one as a footwarmer for a couple nights now and it hasn't eaten me yet".. in civic and social planning the worst case scenario always has to be considered, not necessarily dwelt upon, but certainly looked at long and hard. One thing I have noticed is that people without kids tend (just IME) to be more likely pro nuclear or undecided than people with kids... one chernobyl doco too many, maybe I just like my offspring to have brains forming INSIDE their skulls. Maybe , irrationally, I find the black choking smoke from traditional energy generation gone wrong a little less threatening than the idea of some insidious, almost eternal toxic agent that yes, will be locked away in the desert for now... bummer if some smartarse drops a rocket into it on a day whe nthe wind is blowing towards a major city, though. And we think those occasional dust storms that roll out of the dry areas set off sickness NOW. Or maybe due to unforseen events the location of the dump may be lost, those charged with its care become distracted, disbanded, discontinued..what do we do with it then? I know all this also applies to factories producing pesticides, medical waste storage, disease research, etc.. but with that many things already presenting a similar risk, why go building another one?

Coal, gas, oil... blatant downsides, and in a cumulative sense it would seem just as lethal as poorly managed rads. But it HAS been a while since an exploding oil refinery flatted my house... course to get the good stuff to run thru the refinery, there is a good chance someone else had their house flattened, one way or another. Damn, going to take a direct debit setup with Wilderness Society to get over this sense of first world guilt!

The only certainly to me is that we simply cannot keep living the way we live... it was "ok" in a social sense, when the downside was mainly felt in exploited developing countries, poor areas etc... but like Johnny Howard or meth, now that the bad things are bothering Nice White Folks With Good Jobs, suddenly its a priority to have the spun aluminium water bottle, the fistful of lonely planet books, carbon offsets for your local juice bar, nature themed desktops, eat things labelled "organic" and buy a whole new car cos it runs on fuel only half the time, despite that fact the car you already have works just FINE and has already been manufactured... maintaining the same systems but with slightly disguised products isn't going to help. It makes drones feel better, and has its "oh but you know man, its raising awareness that matters" value of course.. but a flat tire needs changing, or the road needs improving, rather than just sitting around sipping shiraz explaining how "oh i really worry about the roads and flat tires, so i send money to hungry kids in africa" . A greater tolerance all round for doing outlandish things like growing veggies on your roof, using greywater for something useful and running your own still is the necessity now. being happy enough to poo on your own property and keep it there, grow your own cold n flu medication and decide television is shit anyway... though those lovely documentaries that tell us on a weekly basis how "you're all fucking doomed!" are certainly uplifting. Bummer they took up even more time/energy/resources/bullshit to produce in the first place. Maybe we can render Al Gore into useful basic compounds and run our cars on his portly self for a while, use those nice suits as insulation in our geodesic domes. Take the roof off his house and turn it into a market garden for local poor families or something.

Also has to be remembered that no matter what the "dominant tech" turns out to be in times to come, it will be managed, produced and provided by the lowest bidder or the most well connected bidder... clean and green can go down n brown pretty quickly in the wrong hands, like all the treehuggers that want to move out of town and run the house on firewood...then realise that woodsmoke is one of the worlds greatest pollutants even now, and a leading cause of death in the developing world. I hear asthma puffers sell really well in places like Launceston, assuming you can see the chemist from your house to start with. When the same fuel burnt in a better designed and managed sytem can easily have 3/4 of its nastiness cut down.. double combustion and the like.

On purely aesthetic terms, I think wind gen looks the nicest... something terrifyingly serene in those massive blades flying around, like big berserker sunflowers. A mate worked out he can run an mp3 player off a turbine set in the top of a dozen car tires sitting in the sun. People are inventive, and if one day there simply wasnt power coming out of the wall on a reliable basis, we'd adapt. Eventually, in the meantime there'd be a lot of deceptively cheap solutions to our problems, whining, general wailing and gnashing of teeth. But we'd live. Quite possibly for longer, and with real memories, real stories, not "hey did you see what happened on that entirelyl fictitious show full of fake people I don't actually know?". An unplugged life might be a lil dimmer of a night time, but I suspect its a lot brighter during the day.

"he said, from from his mains powered laptop..." though it is nearly 10 years old :lol:

VM

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An unplugged life might be a lil dimmer of a night time, but I suspect its a lot brighter during the day.

Here here mate! What a rant (I've been waiting on a big VM rant for some time) and this one certainly filled the gap :P:worship:

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IMHO, if humans are really clever enough to develope and utilise 100% safe, fully guaranteed, cheap, clean nuclear power then i reckon we must be just as clever to live without it.

It isn't more, cheap power we need, it's needing less.

We try to make and do everything as easily as technologically possible with as much energy as possible, to save what?

Our time? Our energy?? WTF? :scratchhead:

I'm sorry to say it but we just aren't that fucking important.

We are out numbered in ecological importance by all the 'lesser' animals and life forms that actually comprise our meaning of the term 'world'.

We are over supplied with crap we don't even need.

Take a look in yr local supermarket dumpster next time you walk by.

The energy we have is wasted not unavailable. Wasted. We don't use it properly! :BANGHEAD2:

If there were a lifeform on this earth 'higher' than us I reckon they would have destroyed us out of pity long ago.

"Useless!" they would say.

We aren't worth as much as we think we are. Not nearly.

Selfishness and destruction is the basis of our society, so there is alot more we need to accomplish and understand before we even think about making life that little bit more easier with something so obviously dangerous.

peace, fucking seriously x.

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I reckon the best example of trying to tech your way out of a problem and failing miserably is the rubbish we all thought highly of , once upon a time, about how once everyone has a decent computer and the net, everything will be easy, instant, all working 6 hour days, all the paper we'd be saving (remember the "paperless desktop"? I can barely see my fucking desktop for bits of paper. Cheques can still take a week to clear, the forum software still thinks cheques is spelled with a "cks"...I still recieve a good 6 inches of phonebook on a yearly basis, despite the fact that last years are still fairly intact and the company sending them to me KNOWS I have the net ANYWAY. My bank periodically sends me a carefully crafted pack of ratshit, containing oddly printed documents about how they're workinng hard for me and the planet, how life is too short to worry about details, how looking at this blandly smiling lady holding a phone to her ear is better for you than reading the lil text at the bottom that mentions "this month we will be increasing service fees by....".

I hear centrelink has an SMS system these days, online services etc... but are still sending people a three page letter the day after they get paid that says "you were paid x amount yesterday". Applying for rentals around here means making a seperate 20 or so page application package, plus attachments galore, for every last place you want to live in, even if they are listed with the same agent. Johnny howard has sent me a glossy printed plastic wrapped waste of my fucking time in the mail every two weeks for the last 5 years, from what I can work out... some pointless propaganda you cant even use as mulch because the ink will kill your worms. All the propaganda says, most of the time, is "relax, and this won't hurt as much". Major supermarkets feel compelled to take up large tracts of my letterbox space with the highly enlightening information that "we sell a range of food and homewares!", Bunnings points out "we sell hardware stuff!" and the Wilderness Society collectors give me an a5 piece of paper on which is written two or three words. My super funds are always keen to send me the startling insight that "we havent done much with your money, as it happens".

That, and brisbane roads... many entirely rational seeming people around here will happily tell you without the trace of a smile that more roads means fewer cars.

But you can always write a letter to the local MP, who will be shown a photocopy of it...

VM

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[/url]

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html

It was the most notorious scientific experiment in recent memory - in 1989, the two men who claimed to have discovered the energy of the future were condemned as imposters and exiled by their peers. Can it possibly make sense to reopen the cold fusion investigation? A surprising number of researchers already have

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Hi all I dont think I've posted for about 6 months, anyway here goes

Nuclear power is the last thing we need. It costs billions to build with no plant world wide ever being built to budget. No plant has ever been successfully decommissioned. It is all very well to say the energy production is cheap, but you cannot just ignore the building and dismantling costs which are enormous. Nuclear power is in no way clean or green, recent earthquakes in Japan resulted in leaks from a power station. It is still the most toxic substance every created and the only solution we have is to dig a hole in the ground. You might think they have some advanced storage facility, but all they do is bury it with some lining and hope it never reaches the groundwater.

What we need to focus on is energy efficiency first. We actually produce & use far more energy than we need to carry out the required tasks. Our electricity grid is outdated, flowing only in one direction, losing energy along the way. If we had a system where energy can flow in both directions, then renewables would be much more effective.

Nuclear power would only divert funding from renewables, it would take at least 10-15 years between a decision being made and power being produced with coal being used in the interim. Climate change requires action now. Nuclear power is also the most water intesive form of energy. In a continent predicted to go through increasing drought it is innappropriate.

Hopefully now that Johnny's gone, it is no longer on the agenda

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Hi,

I saw this topic and just had to post on this subject.

While working with the British Armed Forces, I had the unfortunate occasion of learning about and disarming Nuclear weapons. We were taught all about the different types etc, their egnition devices etc.

When learning about these, the subject of the future of nuclear power came across as a question to one of the Docs was the commission and dismantling of Nuclear power stations.

These power stations take 150years to totally neutralise and dismantle, radioactive material is removed and stored in certified and high security silos.

Uranium destined for these stations is refined into Plutonium 236 (weapons grade) and once "activated" in the station, it takes roughly 5 years (after shutdown) for them to be removed safely (well as safely as is possible as they are still extremely radioactive)

The life of a power plant is usually 25-30 years depending on the design.

The new fasination in the world of power is the highly experimental "Fisson" power (Google it!) , supposidly easier to deal with and less downsides to full nuclear.

Finally, a new plant to build (2-4 reactors) today costs 200 million (pounds sterling) and to dismantle the cost is 1 billion (over 150 years)

I don't know the ration on how much power the station actually produces , though service to say it covers costs and is "cheap" power.

I should make it clear, that I am neither for or against nuclear power .With all I've seen, it would be refreshing to have a peaceful use for all this technology we have produced to perfect the art of mass killing and for the construction of the nuclear deterent (The Doctorine of Mutually Assured Destruction) as a means of defence. Amazing, since in the wrong hands OFFENSIVE!

Cheers

DrG

Hi all I dont think I've posted for about 6 months, anyway here goes

Nuclear power is the last thing we need. It costs billions to build with no plant world wide ever being built to budget. No plant has ever been successfully decommissioned. It is all very well to say the energy production is cheap, but you cannot just ignore the building and dismantling costs which are enormous. Nuclear power is in no way clean or green, recent earthquakes in Japan resulted in leaks from a power station. It is still the most toxic substance every created and the only solution we have is to dig a hole in the ground. You might think they have some advanced storage facility, but all they do is bury it with some lining and hope it never reaches the groundwater.

What we need to focus on is energy efficiency first. We actually produce & use far more energy than we need to carry out the required tasks. Our electricity grid is outdated, flowing only in one direction, losing energy along the way. If we had a system where energy can flow in both directions, then renewables would be much more effective.

Nuclear power would only divert funding from renewables, it would take at least 10-15 years between a decision being made and power being produced with coal being used in the interim. Climate change requires action now. Nuclear power is also the most water intesive form of energy. In a continent predicted to go through increasing drought it is innappropriate.

Hopefully now that Johnny's gone, it is no longer on the agenda

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Googling "fisson" came up with nothing about energy production (other than misspelled results for "fission"). I assume you meant "fusion". What do you mean by "full nuclear"? Is that a technical term? I'm sure they give the task of dismantling nuclear weapons to people who don't know that much about the subject. :P

Edited by ballzac

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