I have to disagree with that. Energy is abundant, and a fantastic boon to human civilisation. Why should we want to consume less? Consumption is not a bad thing in and of itself – it is harmful consumption that matters.

In this case the problem is the cheap energy we’ve had for generations having an unwanted side effect of releasing climate altering gases into the atmosphere.

While increasing energy efficiency is a nice idea, it can counter intuitively increase rather than decrease energy consumption. Google “Jevons Paradox.”

Really, a fair price on carbon is the way to go. Then nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric and others can become cost competitive with fossil fuels and we can enjoy energy without disturbing the Earth’s climate.

Uranium Resources
Nuclear power is not a renewable resource, and I never claimed it to be. However, reactor technology is progressing rapidly, and with it, significant advances in plant safety, reactor efficiency and fuel reprocessing. If Australia were to build a nuclear power plant, it would be a Generation III, which have huge advantages over the majority of plants currently in operation.
If Generation IV reactors become a reality (which is likely to be sooner than clean coal and carbon-capture and sequestration technology), then this will extend the life time of existing fuel reserves, as well as use existing spent fuel and waste as a fuel source.

Nuclear Safety
To the best of my knowledge, nuclear reactors now employ “fail-to-safe” engineering. What this means is that when a component of a reactor fails, or is used inappropriately, the system shuts down in a way that is intrinsically safe.
sgneist, you alluded to the number of nuclear incidents and accidents. What is your source on this statistic? I reiterate the point in my article, and repeated by Luke Weston, that, other than Chernobyl, nobody has died from a nuclear incident.

Simon raised a very good point about the impact of radioactive waste on underground water tables. Obviously the process of burying radioactive waste is more sophisticated than just digging a hole anywhere and dumping it in, and of course, not every site in the world is appropriate. Factors such as water tables, accessibility and seismic activity are just some of the many factors that would be assessed in determining the suitability for a deep geological repository. Any final waste site would meet stringent safeguards to ensure the protection of the environment and health of the community, and do so on geological timescales (that is, tens of thousands of years).

In relation to cooling water: nuclear reactors require water as a coolant. In a water-scare environment as Australia, this presents a number of challenges. Sea-water is an option, so an ideal Australian site could be on the coast. The excess energy from a nuclear reactor could also be used to run a desalination plant, lessening the impact on local water supplies.

The idea of nuclear power being better than others was criticised as being “silly”. I’m not sure exactly what the author meant by that comment, but I personally don’t think it’s silly to take into account all options for tackling climate change and assessing them on the basis of their merits, using a set of reasonable, rational and realistic criteria. I think that’s what Australia needs.
I also don’t think it’s silly to consider options that are available right now, and to think of practical measures we can take using a proven, existing technology to address the problems of today.

sgneist also suggested that I have been dishonest, claiming that I wouldn’t want to live near a nuclear power plant, because deep-down, I know they’re dirty, dangerous and just plain bad. This is completely untrue. I came to my pro-nuclear stance through a thorough examination of the facts and resources, considering various opinions and sources based on their merits of reliability and accuracy and through lengthy debates and discussions with people on both sides.
I would like to go on the record as saying that I would have no problems with living near a nuclear power plant, however, the suggestion that I move to live near one is about as logical and useful as suggesting that I move to Los Angeles because I like movies.

A word on renewables: just because I am pro-nuclear does not make me anti-renewable. I support the Government introducing Renewable Energy Targets, and I believe that renewable energy resources are crucial to maintaining energy security in Australia. Unfortunately, many people on all sides of the fence, try to reduce the solution to Climate Change to a single, magic bullet solution. This is short-sighted and unrealistic.
The key to maintaining energy security so that we can maintain our economic prosperity is diversity: having the bulk of our power from one source is not a good idea, be that coal, nuclear or renewables. My opinion is that we need to diversify our energy sources, which includes a mix of coal, gas, hydro, nuclear and renewable energy.
Let’s not also forget that the first steps to combating climate change should be reducing our energy consumption and increasing energy efficiency, regardless of where it comes from.
Environmental and pro-renewable groups, as well as the pro-coal and pro nuclear lobbyists need to lose this “us vs them” mentality. Instead of sniping at each other, and calling those who disagree liars, slaves to big business or misinformed rabble rousers, let’s actually work together to address what could be one of the greatest threats to human society in history.
I think that’s the best approach for Australia, and what everyday Australians deserve.

However, does it compete for price? I am curious as to how much cheaper it is compared to fossil fuels.”

Nuclear energy is more expensive than, say, coal. However, pretty much everything is more expensive than coal, when it comes to clean energy generation. Something like solar power, for example, is far, far more expensive than coal, and more expensive than nuclear energy.

So, if you only ask how much it costs, and that’s all you care about, it’s impossible for any clean option to compete with coal – unless you factor in the massive external costs associated with coal, for example the grave risk posed by tens of millions of tonnes of dangerous coal waste in the form of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere each year by every coal-fired generator.

Since corporate beancounters never factor in those external costs themselves, the idea of a carbon tax or emissions accounting scheme is ostensibly to force the free market to factor in that cost.

“By keeping a large, centralised power system, generators can ‘crowd out’ thousands of mums and dads, small and large businesses from generating energy close to where it is used.”

In general, centralized generation is used because it is cheaper, more efficient, and is subject to economies of scale, and larger plants are more efficient and easier to run and maintain.

“Alternative” generation technologies such as wind and solar are usually strongly associated with decentralised, small scale generation, because they are intrinsically diffuse, distributed sources of energy, and require huge areas for any practical energy generation on the grid, and they just don’t scale up.

Usually, opposition to larger centralised generators stems not from any technological argument, but simply from the idea that larger centralised generators symbolise capitalism, or business, or ‘The Man’, concepts that one may be opposed to.

“Nuclear power produces dangerous waste, is dangerous, is extremely expensive and, there is only a limited amount of material (uranium). Certainly not enough for a ‘nuclear power renaissance’.”

Civilian commercial nuclear power in the Western world, outside of the notorious Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, has never hurt anybody. Doesn’t sound very “dangerous”, does it?

How many examples, with a demonstrable factual basis, can you show me where a person has been injured or killed by ionising radiation* in connection with nuclear power generation throughout the history of the technology; excepting Chernobyl, which is simply totally irrelevant to all nuclear energy today and to the entire history of nuclear energy in the Western world?

(* The rare case of “Woman hit by car at nuclear power plant”, or “man falls off ladder at nuclear power plant” for example does not, of course, count as a nuclear accident.)

The answer I’ll give – again, feel free to try and disprove this if you can do so in an academically credible way – is none. Not one person ever hurt by ionising radiation in conjunction with nuclear power, except for Chernobyl.

Similarly, can you demonstrate that this “dangerous waste” has ever hurt anybody?

There is sufficient uranium, if it is used efficiently and not wasted, to meet the energy needs for all of humanity – to supply ample energy for development – up to the point where the evolution of the sun extinguishes all life on the planet. The use of nuclear energy from fusion of the light elements and from thorium as a fission fuel is all additional on top of the uranium resource.

“There are plenty of mistruths in the claims made by the author of this post, as are there resources that debunk the myths continually peddled by the nuclear industry.”

Is that so? Well, let’s see you provide good, credible evidence that that is the case, and resources to that effect which stand up to fact checking, to science and to skeptical enquiry. Please.

Yeah, solar panels are a massive economic threat to all other existing forms of power, and it is a conspiracy by coal, oil, nuclear, and all the other energy industries that holds them back from economic viability. Of course that’s what it is.

All forms of power generation have drawbacks. Renewables have yet to take over the world because they are currently too *expensive.* And how much things cost is *important*, as much as certain ideologues seem determined to pretend otherwise.

Every additional dollar you spend per kWh produced by renewables that could be produce in nuclear reactors is a dollar that could be spent on something else. Research into treating nuclear waste, or into curing malaria, or extracting existing CO2 from the atmosphere. Hell it’d buy a fair bit of rice for starving children in Africa.

Meanwhile climate change is the greatest single anthropogenic threat to the environment we face, a far greater threat to life as we know it than nuclear energy could ever be; but we can’t use fission to combat it in this country because of ridiculous attitudes like this.

Greenpeace should hang their heads in shame.

At least, with luck, our uranium will be mined regardless of protests, and end up overseas in the reactors of countries like France, America and China. Thank heavens for free markets.

Also, just wondering if you can include some facts about the water use to cool a nuclear power plant and thoughts about the potential leaking of radioactive waste and radiation into this water.

Cheers, Simon.

By keeping a large, centralised power system, generators can ‘crowd out’ thousands of mums and dads, small and large businesses from generating energy close to where it is used.

Nuclear power produces dangerous waste, is dangerous, is extremely expensive and, there is only a limited amount of material (uranium). Certainly not enough for a ‘nuclear power renaissance’.

There are plenty of mistruths in the claims made by the author of this post, as are there resources that debunk the myths continually peddled by the nuclear industry.

Here’s what greenpeace says, but there are plenty more.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/climate-change/solutions/nuclear_fallacy

I’m a supporter of nuclear power, I think from a scientific point of view it’s a lot better than coal.

However, does it compete for price? I am curious as to how much cheaper it is compared to fossil fuels.