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The Forum > Article Comments > What does the nuclear lobby want, for South Australia? > Comments

What does the nuclear lobby want, for South Australia? : Comments

By Noel Wauchope, published 19/3/2015

The central premise of Oscar Archer's promotion of this nuclear chain of events is that Australia should go out on a limb – be the first country in the world to import nuclear wastes and to order a mass purchase of PRISM reactors.

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"There is another, underlying premise here that needs to be examined. This is the premise that it is OK for Australia and the world to continue to consume energy endlessly."

So lets examine this premise here, because you didn't in your article. Do you disagree that the world should "continue to consume energy continuously"?

Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you mean by this statement, but it appears as though you disagree with the existence of life on earth, in other words, you believe that energy consuming beings should cease to consume energy, which is necessary for life to be sustained? I mean, even in the green utopian imagination, humans are still able to consume energy provided by the sun, wind or food.

Or perhaps you are suggesting that we need to decrease energy consumption to a level supportable by more sustainable energy sources? If so what do you propose
Posted by Stezza, Thursday, 19 March 2015 8:42:30 AM
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I think SA interests are getting ahead themselves talking about PRISM reactors and taking in overseas waste. SA should establish a domestic reactor and fuel facility which can replace Pt Augusta and imported Victorian coal power and increasingly expensive gas. Note the 400 MW Torrens Island A gas fired unit is to be retired. Something like the 700 MW Enhanced Candu 6 now backed by Chinese money should be suitable and it can be bought off the shelf for about $5bn.

The UK should buy the first PRISM reactor when it is developed perhaps a decade from now. The UK has 120 tonnes of plutonium to burn up, SA has 0 tonnes. The Candu reactor can also fission unenriched uranium and thorium though the burnup rate is not as high as the PRISM. However it's ready now.
Posted by Taswegian, Thursday, 19 March 2015 9:22:09 AM
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No we can't do any of that, better our world is destroyed by runaway climate change; than change over to carbon free energy? So saith the blinkered greens?

Simply put, as dangerous or comparatively safe as modern nuclear reactors are, they just happen to also be carbon free.

And as dangerous or as safe as storing used nuclear rods may or may not be. Neither of these things are currently threatening our inevitable mutual destruction?

Whereas runaway climate change indubitably is!

So, what's the answer, keep on pumping out larger and larger amounts of carbon? Or accept inevitable change; however unpalatable!

And given Nuclear Power seems to be the only other AFFORDABLE option on the table? Well?

Storing the waste could earn S.A's basket case economy trillions! As could safely reusing and reusing it in FBR's, which then reduces the half life of any waste to just 300 odd years?

And surely we are smart enough to safely store this stuff for that long, by which time we may have perfected fusion energy, to possibly use up what is then left?

Our so called experts may know all the reasons this can't be done, but for mine an expert is better defined as; an X is an unknown quantity, and a spurt is merely a great big drip under extreme pressure!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Thursday, 19 March 2015 12:37:40 PM
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From Noel Wauchope, in reply to Stezza
Perhaps I did not express it clearly when I wrote about the "underlying premise that it is OK for Australia and the world to continue to consume energy endlessly."

The world's ever rising consumption of energy is a future envisaged in the pro nuclear advertising film "Pandora"s Promise"

Oscar Archer's talk is in line with this view, as he talks about a future of "rapid development in conventional Generation III+ nuclear technology receiving a strong boost"

Apart from a few nice "motherhood " statements, at the beginning, about conserving energy, Archer really is in harmony with "Pandora's Promise" and its view of ever motre eneergy and material consumption.
Posted by ChristinaMac1, Thursday, 19 March 2015 3:43:06 PM
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from Noel Wauchope - in reply to Taswegian

As to buying "the first PRISM" reactor. That's not the way it works. For these Small Modular Reactors the only possible way to commercialise them is for a government (using tax-payer money) to order as Oscar Archer suggests - not just one, but a fleet of mini reactors. The makers need "an ironclad commitment" to a mass order, so that they can do a mass production.

The PRISM reactor is not without its problems. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fast-reactors-to-consume-plutonium-and-nuclear-waste

However, it would be a less bad bet than the Candu reactor, given that the Candu is marketed by the Canadian company Lavalin - notorious for corruption
Posted by ChristinaMac1, Thursday, 19 March 2015 3:51:09 PM
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Has anyone asked why waste dumps have been suggested only on non-white, non-mining, non-agricultural land?

Australia would make a great nuclear Waste Dump because of our natural advantages. Australia's geographical isolation makes nuclear disasters safer - umm safer for the rest of the world.

Storage in isolated places in Australia makes it safer - for those hundreds of kms away from the disaster that is.

We know companies and countries honour the necessary Pay for Waste Storage for 10,000 Years contracts. There is nothing forcing a waste exporting Great Power to pay up. Oh yeah we could force these large nuclear energy countries (many are nuclear armed) to honour the contracts or get the UN to shame them or something.

All new and old style reactors leave some hard, expensive to handle, high level waste.
Posted by plantagenet, Thursday, 19 March 2015 4:57:39 PM
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Plantagenet: What you say is essentially correct but only in reference to oxide reactors; which may only actually consume around 5% of their fissile material; leaving the rest to be disposed of or somehow reused in a FBR i.e.

Thorium on the other hand consumes around 95% of its fuel type, and the 5% waste left at the end of the process is far less toxic than that emanating from oxide reactors; and is eminently suitable as long life space batteries!

And recent advances have eliminated the need to fire up the thorium reactor with uranium, just a thorium isotope; called thorium 302, if memory serves.

Thorium just doesn't present with the spectre of a nuclear meltdown like Fukushima.

First the largest prototype is only 40 MW, and being small can be mass produced and trucked on site and ready to produce in just days?

And the are usually buried deep in bedrock to improve the normal safety factors.

They are 50's technology abandoned because there was no weapons spin off.

Thorium reactors can also be paralleled to increase output, should any industrial process or industrial estate require better than the usual 40 MW.

However, siting under the intended consumers, reduces the need to string wires, and that in turn dramatically reduces transmission line losses, and numerous power outages.

Therefore, thorium power is not only seriously cheaper, but arguably far more reliable as well; and just what we need on our defense bases/facilities.

And think, anything that can be transported as a wide load on the back of a truck, can probably be carried into some very remote communities on the back of a barge or perhaps hooked in on a Chinook?

And given that they consume so much of their total fuel, able to run for the term of their natural economic life, on a couple of dozen truckloads of fuel?

And as long as A points at G, we're never ever going to run out of fuel in my grandkids' lifetimes, we have so much of it!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Thursday, 19 March 2015 8:39:14 PM
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I guess I'm a simple soul.

I have always wondered why all wastes, after some energy is extracted, aren't dumped back in the hole the stuff came from in the first place.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 19 March 2015 9:17:46 PM
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"its view of ever more energy and material consumption."

Noel, your comment actually suggests you think energy consumption is a bad thing.

The conversion of matter and energy into forms that improve the quality of our lives is something that every living thing does. In fact, you could argue it is what defines life as "living".

You seem to continue to argue that consumption of energy is a bad thing. If you want to ague against specific technologies, or propose better means of producing energy then do it, but your negative attitude to the existence of life itself does not make any sense.

I suppose your solution to air pollution is to tell people to stop breathing?
Posted by Stezza, Thursday, 19 March 2015 11:09:06 PM
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Hi Rhrosty

I'm sold! Can you please put me down for 3 thorium reactors, just the biggest currently available. Simply truck them over and drop them off in the deep bedrock holes that the public dug last Sunday in their burbs.

As these reactors are safe to place in country communities there's no reason why they'll be unsafe in city centers full of white people. And no need for environmental impact studies, security protection or any public consultation with the great unwashed.

The Federal Government has designated 3 nuclear zones for these test reactors on low rent sites in:

- Toorak (that is in Vic)

- Byron Bay (NSW) and

- Upper Yarralumla (ACT)

No opposition from the eco-terrorists or truck hijackers is anticipated.

The newly demoted Minister for the Environment, Happy Joe Poodle, said this morning:

"Like it, love it or lump it suckers".

Cheers

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Thursday, 19 March 2015 11:21:31 PM
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Nuclear terrorism - a problem for Japan today and Australia in coming years?

"...Japan is no more immune to nuclear terrorism than it was to a catastrophic reactor accident [which happened at Fukushima]. In this context, the combination of safety and security concerns represented by spent fuel pools at reactors is a critical variable in the risk profile arising from the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Japan’s choices have global significance for the threat of nuclear terrorism, and therefore demands serious consideration as part of a national and international risk-benefit assessment of the future evolution of nuclear power." see http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=0de7e0e84dc3aff619f936a70&id=06f03f7a60&e=ae85b3aafb

All reactors produce some high level waste (such as at Lucas Heights) in fuel rod form requiring spent fuel pools to disperse the heat of the rods. Claims for future but not yet industrially developed reactors are about as useful as claiming rocket assisted aircraft (feasible) can solve some passenger airline problems.
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 24 March 2015 10:55:14 AM
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I can't believe the Federal and State legislation bans NUCLEAR power because of radiation? Haven't they analysed how much radioactive material gets dumped into the air and rivers and groundwater and soil by burning COAL! At least nuclear waste is contained. At least they're watching nuclear waste like hawks. At least nuclear waste can be re-fissioned until it's 10% the original mass and then only has to be buried for around 500 years and then is safe!

But coal? Coal kills more people in a *week* when it goes *right* than the whole history of nuclear power going *wrong*!
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

Banning nuclear power because you're frightened of Chernobyl or Fukushima is like banning modern aviation because of your terror of the Hindenburg! It's that emotional, and about that rational as well! Modern reactors have passive safety systems Chernobyl couldn't dream of and Fukushima wasn't designed for. Homer Simpson couldn't break these!

Lastly, the Japanese could resettle most of Fukushima right now. Kerala India is 3 times as radioactive *naturally*!
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/nuclear/five-surprising-public-health-facts-about-fukushima
Posted by Max Green, Saturday, 28 March 2015 8:55:39 PM
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The proof is in the pudding, Money wasted on RET is money denied to the only real solution to GHGs emitted by fossil fuels, nuclear power.

A comment attached to the following article encapsulates the fundamental issue, "we need power, not energy" (power being the rate of energy production):

http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/germanys-green-energy-bust

Greens want to empty our resources for achieving something into a bottomless pit with no prospect of achieving carbon abatement, just a warm inner-glow.

I love trees as much as the next guy but at least I can still think. I'll vote for the party that advocates nuclear energy, Labor or LNP. Its getting too late to waste focus on matters of political colour.
Posted by Luciferase, Sunday, 29 March 2015 9:44:41 AM
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