Should Australia build Nuclear Power, and Should it Expand Uranium Mining?

Question

Is it the only way of making real reductions in carbon emissions? Is it really too dangerous? Are renewables a realistic option? Is more uranium mining a decent economic opportunity?

Answer 1

A report last week in NSW concluded that renewables wouldn't be able to come anywhere close to meeting the power demands in the next 15 years, and that there would very likely be more Coal Plants. If we are serious about making emissions reductions, then I don't think that their is an alternative to using Nuclear as a major power source. Nuclear Power is Very Clean and Very Safe, and technology advances continue to make it less and less expensive to run.

The idea that Nuclear Power is dangerous or risky is quite a false one. There have only been two meltdowns in the history of the industry. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Three Mile Island caused zero deaths, and did no measurable damage to the area; they actually still run an adjacent nuclear power plant. It caused no deaths because the meltdown was contained. Chernobyl was an old model plant, in a third-world country with poor procedure and poor staff. Chernobyl simply could not happen again in a modern plant.

These are simply unlikely occurences that Environmental Extremists like to use to attack Nuclear Power; and they only get more and more desperate. For example: Greenpeace's "estimate" of the Chernobyl death toll is 93 000, this is a far cry from the World Health Organisation and the United Nations, who estimate 4050 people. The founder of Greenpeace, Dr. Patric Moore, has quit the organisation, and now advocates powering the world 90% using Nuclear Power. Environmentalists are coming to realise that Nuclear Power is necessary, and perhaps even a preffered type of power.

As far as uranium mining goes, It makes sense to greatly expand our operations. I can't think of another thing that Australia can do to that would reduce carbon emissions on an international level, than providing uranium for nuclear power plants overseas. It also represents an excellent economic opportunity for Australia in that there are many countries building or expanding their nuclear industries, especially India and China, which plan to expand massively.

Though the new government in Australia is opposed to Nuclear Power, and the ALP is divided on the issue, in Five years there may come the realisation that it is necessary, and indeed, perhaps inevitable that Australia will have nuclear power, and an expansion of Uranium mining.

Answer 2

Uranium mining cannot be much more dangerous then coal mining and since that is an important activity in Australia the miners will need something to do. Uranium is also in extremely high demand right now so it would be a phenomenal economic opportunity. As renewable go the jury is still out but Australia can probably get a fair amount of power from solar but it is still fundamentally flawed as it cannot be on all the time. Nuclear is probably not the absolute only way but it is likely to be the way that does the most. Safety wise nuclear is safe, nuclear accidents flike CHernobyl happened because of arachaic reactor design, gross incompetence and bureaucratic structures inherent to communism that caused people to not take action in a way that would never happen in a society like Australia. The risks of an accident much less a meltdown ina pebble-bed reactor are zero

Answer 3

"Should Australia build Nuclear Power"
Australia whilst having the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world doesn't really contribute much to the problem (having a small population) so it really wouldn't matter all that much what Australia does domestically (though I think it'd be a good idea to build nuclear power plants as coal and methane (the only two realistic alternatives to nuclear) really are bad power sources).

So to answer the question, I'd say yes but that it won't really matter all that much.

"and Should it Expand Uranium Mining?"
Expanding Uranium mining is a good idea (and is probably going to happen) and would allow Australia to help the rest of the world (70% of greenhouse gasses come from the US, China, EU, Japan, Russia and India) reduce their emissions, given that Australia has the most Uranium of any country it'd be stupid for Australia not to sell as much as possible to the world market.

Australia probably has a lot more low cost Uranium than we know of (some states have banned looking for it but have probably got some and there is probably a lot well underground (Olympic Dam which is one of Australia's uranium mines (actually a cooper mine that produces Uranium among other things as a by product) is about 400 m underground)).

"Is it the only way of making real reductions in carbon emissions?"
Right now it is. The only power source other than nuclear that doesn't emit carbon dioxide and supplies a significant proportion of the market is hydro which has serious problems of its own (most of the good sites for dams already have dams and the ones that don't probably never will because of environmental reasons, read up on the attempt to dam the Franklin river to see how much future that power source has).

There are some potential future technologies that might be able to do the job but right now none of them are actually ready to be deployed whereas nuclear fission is.

"Is it really too dangerous?"
If anything is too dangerous it is coal power. Nuclear kills less people than coal, methane, hydro and wind per unit of power generated even if you use assumptions that bias the comparison against nuclear.

"Are renewables a realistic option?"
For what? If it is for providing our electricity needs without destroying the environment then I'd have to answer no, they just don't have the reliability to be useful baseload sources (nor can they handle peak loads since you can't turn them on when everyone decides to use their heaters on a still night).

Storage of energy for when the sun isn't shining and the wind not blowing is physically possible and would allow renewables to become a realistic (albeit expensive option) but right now we just don't have the technology to do it and we really can't wait until we do before switching away from fossil fuels.

OTOH if it is for preventing the coal industry from being destroyed by convincing people that they don't need nuclear power to save the environment then they are very good at that.

"Is more uranium mining a decent economic opportunity?"
Yes, it does bring in money and create jobs and it is going to be what other countries will want to buy so the choice will be between selling Uranium or selling nothing.

The one caveat though is that for those who mine the materials per unit of energy coal is a lot more profitable then uranium (nuclear is very capital intensive with expensive power plants but cheap fuel and operations expenses) and also requires more miners so the governments would have an incentive to prefer to sell coal instead of uranium (since coal brings in more money and jobs) but the economics would also cause other countries to be better off with uranium so they'll want to buy uranium and if Australia doesn't sell them uranium because the government would prefer they buy coal they'll just buy uranium from another country.

It may also be a good idea not to want a natural resources based economic opportunity since a resources dependent economy can often get pretty screwed up, especially if it becomes dependent upon natural resources and causes that to become the only industry of note (Australia though has managed to avoid the primary industry curse that most of OPEC suffers from though).

Answer 4

I would add to One Ugly Cats outstanding answer that at least one scientist in Japan who is working on uranium extraction from seawater estimates there to already be a 5 billion year supply of U already in solution in the worlds ocean, with more on the way as mountain streams leach U and other metals out of rocks on the way to the ocean.

Remember the big stink about tightening the allowable U in drinking water early in the Bush administration? Its because U naturally occurs in almost all natural water sources.

Answer 5

The developed countries should develop nuclear power and sell the technology to other countries, provided they do not have access to the fissionable material.

Power generation is responsible for 50% of all green house gases. Going to nuclear power reduces ghg's by this much the moment they go on line.

Answer 6

As long as you don't put 6 power plants at the intersection of 3 tectonic plates, you are fine. If you do, you are an idiot.

Answer 7

Its your thing do what you want to do.