this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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Nuclear power should be expanded, a lot, it is the only realistic way to replace fossil plats for base demand.
And before anyone starts whining about "radiation scary", nuclear waste is a solved problem.
You dig a hole deep into the bedrock, put the waste in dry casks, put the full drycasks in the hole, and backfill it with clay.
Done, solved!
A bigger radiation hazard is coal ash, from cosl power stations, they produce insane ammounts of ash which is radioactive.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
Storing coal ash is also a big problem:
http://www.southeastcoalash.org/about-coal-ash/coal-ash-storage/
Here is an interesting documentary about our fear of radiation, it is called Nuclear Nightmares, and was made by Horizon on BBC:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7pqwo8
Context is important here. The conversation here was about Australia's nuclear capacity. A country where nuclear power is banned at both state and federal levels. Where the plan for it's use is currently uncosted, the planned sites have been selected without environmental protection studies and several of which are supposed to be SMRs.
Would you build a bleeding edge nuclear reactor without a legal framework to govern its construction or operation? Without a workforce trained in its functions? Without considering the environmental factors of its geography? Without considering the cost?
Probably not. But that's the current plan put forward by the reactionary right in Australia and this from a party who doesn't believe in climate change, have no emissions targets, and whose whole plan is to continue to run and build coal power until whatever time they work out the details on nuclear.
This is perfectly fair, I saw several anti nuclear power articles before thls, and I approached it from a more general viewpoint.
But if the alternative is coal, I'd go nuclear.
Well it's not really an either/or situation. The current Labor government's plan is a combination of majority renewables with gas and hydrogen. They are also running coal at the moment but have no plans to renew those plants during the transition. They've signed on to emissions reductions of 75% by 2035.
So you've got one plan which has some reduction targets (probably not steep enough) planned transition, costed and budgeted that doesn't require more coal, and one plan which will pull funding from renewables, and requires more coal until some time as which they can get nuclear approved, built and commercialised.