Climate Change and Civilisation

[Dutch!]

Okay. Clarify some things here. Not defensive, just hoping to make other parts of our situation (as I see it, of course) clear to everyone else.

To be honest, I see nuclear power as a clean, viable and safe source of energy...but yes, there is the problem of where do you put the left over junk? At the moment, the Moon is a little too far away, eh? And yes, I know they can have a meltdown and explode, but it's only really happened once, eh? People still get on planes and fly around the world and into cities with big buildings, eh? Anyway...that's a different point.

There's two reasons I don't think Australia can have a viable nuclear power grid to replace our current brown coal system (I live smack bang in the middle of the biggest brown coal energy producing region in the world...it's as clean as it can be here, no matter what the scaremongers on that side of the political fence in the capital cities say or show on the news).

The first reason is basically that we'd have to bring in the power plants and reactors from overseas...where they are made to work. Now, Australians have this bad habit of tinkering. Basically, if we got an American Nuclear Reactor imported here, all well and good...but we'd improve it. We'd improve it until it broke. Then we'd use it. We're funny like that.

The other reason why it isn't really viable, and this is the serious side of it, is that the reactors use an enormous amount of water to keep the uranium and exploding stuff inside cool. Yes, coal fired power stations use steam to power the turbines to produce the energy, but that is recycled fairly efficiently. Our local power station (really just over the hill from my community) is self sufficient in this regard.

A nuclear power station would require much more than our current ones use to operate safely. Australia's problem is that there just isn't enough water to go around. Already most of my state is on third and even fourth level water restrictions. The major cities are finally even on second level restrictions (cos they are more important than us, eh?). Basically, except for parts of Queensland and the Top End, Australia barely has enough water to get through from year to year as it is. Relying solely on nuclear power for our energy needs just isn't viable as we don't have the supply of water required.

There is a nuclear plant in Sydney, but I do believe it is the only one. Yes, we do export uranium, which is a controversial subject here with the Government for selling it for peaceful purposes, and the Opposition flipping back and forth between no and 'yes, but not like you're doing it now'.