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The Forum > Article Comments > Federal inquiry gives glimpses of public opinion on nuclear power > Comments

Federal inquiry gives glimpses of public opinion on nuclear power : Comments

By Noel Wauchope, published 11/9/2019

Even on the pro-nuclear side, there are some reservations, and not all are sceptical of renewable energy.

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Wind, solar and the hoped-for energy storage will not be enough for what lies ahead. That includes electric car charging, desalination, gas appliance replacement and air conditioning as a public health issue. We would need about 6X as much installed wind and solar as the 2018 level plus 2 Twh of energy storage to get through heatwaves. There is no sign we will get anywhere near that amount of energy storage with pumped hydro or batteries.

Nuscale say their small modular reactor will generate electricity for US$60 per Mwh so where figures like A$240 came from is a mystery. That is a pressurised light water type of reactor. Australian uranium should be enriched overseas where there is a glut of facilities and fissioned in SMRs back here. Store the used fuel in the outback until 4th gen reactors are available to burn not only plutonium from the used fuel but also thorium. Over time we should be able to replace most coal and gas and genuinely slash emissions.
Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 8:26:10 AM
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This Author's extremely well-publicised views are well known! Is here with more of the same?

Simply put, the death toll attributable to power generation, as fatality per gigawatt, lowest for nuclear power, even lower than renewables.

But, Solar not available at night unless you add in storage! Which just doubles or triples the price!

Green advocates seem to think this is a good outcome because if it is horrendously expensive, folk will use less.

Sure we could use a lot less by going back to living in caves and running our food down with a stone tied to a stick! So much for a couple of million years of human progress/reaching for the unreachable stars!

Anti-nuclear advocates like the very vexatious and mischievious Author will always say that, OK, we might have nuclear power sometime in the future. That there's the inordinate build time, massive cost/inherent danger.

The least time from contract award to the commissioning of an operational nuclear reactor is around six months.

Yes but, say the anti-nuclear brigade, that was just a small one, using an already tried and test design. Well hallelujah. The penny drops.

Then they waffle on about Chernobyl/Fukushima as if what's proposed is anything remotely like either! Tantamount to comparing a piston engine plane to a jet-powered one!

Well yes, they are both aircraft! But where any technical resemblance ends!

Then, what about the highly toxic waste?

Well MSR uses it as unspent fuel that it more completely burns. And in the process produces a vastly less toxic material that has the halflife reduced to 300 years and as a product, eminently suitable as long life space batteries, that burn up with reentry!

And this mountainous nuclear waste, enough to power the planet for centuries!

WITH CARBON FREE FUEL!

We could but only if we are intelligently and independently led, provide a safe repository for this unspent fuel and spend it before burying it! For the annual billons, other nations would pay us for a service which could be done in absolute safety! TBC.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 11 September 2019 10:10:08 AM
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She's back. With exactly the same views.
Posted by ttbn, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 10:14:25 AM
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The only other reliable, dispatchable, affordable power, to that of coal-fired power, is the nuclear option!

Time we stopped listening to this BS, shovelled by the usual suspects, by the shipload, just cracked on with MSR and thorium.

Moreover, MSR thorium, which is converted to U233, that is the mother of miracle cancer cure, alpha particle, bismuth 213. has been clinically trialled in, CONVENTIONAL WESTERN MEDICINE, European clinics around 2006. with reported success against stage four ovarian cancer, with little if any damage to surrounding tissue!

Ovarian cancer takes comparatively young women, at an annual rate that's greater P.A., than our road toll!? Life expectancy averaging just 5 years!

Brain cancer, comes with a life expectancy, from diagnoses to death of just 14 short months with just 2% surviving beyond 5 years!
Comes with an annual death toll greater than the road toll and remained stubbornly so, over three decades.

Bismuth 213, reportedly used to CURE other death sentence cancers like pancreatic cancer, myeloid leukemia.

Yes, it's true Thorium> U233 is not the only source of bismuth 213, which in MSR thorium is a virtually free byproduct!?

Noel who knows SFA about nuclear power and its vastly superior safety record, waffles on about gamma radiation.

Almost as if anyone was or would advocate running an unshielded reactor! Thorium is 4 times more abundant than uranium, has a half-life of 15 billion years or, a couple of billion more years than the life expectancy the universe!?

Which effectively means we can never run out of it!

Compare these numbers. A conventional 350 MW light water reactor, will during a 30-year operational lifetime, require 2551 tons of enriched uranium fuel, may be able to provide power from that combination for as low as 6 cents PKWH? Over that period produce 2550 tons of nuclear waste.

A MSR thorium, a FUJI 350 MW, will require just 1 ton of refined thorium, produce less than 5% waste, which as already described, eminently suitable as long life space batteries that burn up with reentry!
Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 11 September 2019 11:30:01 AM
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From Noel Wauchope.
Disappointing to see that it looks as if Alan B and ttbn have not even read this article. There they go, accusing me of providing here "more of the same"- of my "well-publicised views"".

But in fact, in this article, I have not provided any of my own opinions. The article is a faithful summary of what people have said in their submissions to the Parliamentary Inquiry.

I fail to see how this could be interpreted as "vexatious and mischievous"".

And, by the way, Alan B. - there is no "i" in the last syllable of the word "Mischievous". Putting that"i" in changes the whole pronunciation and makes the word sound silly.
Posted by ChristinaMac1, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 4:55:35 PM
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Well, thanks for that Christine or Noel or whatever other aliases you are using If there was a spelling mistake then blame it on Grammarly spell check, which checks, edits and corrects all my commentary!

[Even so, I do OK for a bloke that attended as many schools as I did and left school the day I was old enough with only 7 months high school. Everything else including 3 qualifications in tertiary disciplines down exclusively to me night school, community college and much burning of midnight oil!]

And your endlessly repeated activism is well known!

The tide has turned with only around 4% of a recent poll demonstrating disbelief in climate change!

The average citizen with a little more intelligence than a goldfish (you?) has to know that we have to have a nuclear future if we are to address climate change.

And indeed to our economic fortunes around without harming the enviroment, just the very opposite! I couldn't care less if you don't think I read you well enough!

Your attitude to (ignorance personified) Nuclear power is no secret and all too clearly hasn't changed either, as has your debating style which when hopelessly inadequate!

Simply shoots the messenger when you've no cogent reply or rebuttal! Your current knowledge of nuclear technology and safe waste disposal is to reiterate, SFA!

Y'll have a nice day now y'hear.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 11 September 2019 5:34:56 PM
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