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The Sa Wasteland

heslo

By heslo,
in South Australia

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Dohmar Grand Master

Dohmar

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Owww - I have many first hand experiences of why the collins craps all over the LA.......... but nevermind......

ahh true, I was more inferring the diesel powerplants are inferior to a decent nuclear reactor :devil:

i remember the collins beat the la's a few years ago when doing their war games in the shallows of the pacific ... caught the yanks by surprise

-D

Inline 6 Grand Master

Inline 6

Posted
Posted
ahh true, I was more inferring the diesel powerplants are inferior to a decent nuclear reactor :devil:

i remember the collins beat the la's a few years ago when doing their war games in the shallows of the pacific ... caught the yanks by surprise

yes we get told this at work regularly along with our subs are the best. but then i figured if they wernt the best would they really tell us here. i mean its not quite as motivating to let people know your working on the worst active sub in the ocean.

Damo_R34 Grand Master

Damo_R34

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why is the government so against anything nuclear? Is it the lack of efficient disposal of the waste? They will lose votes because of it?

taken from readers digest:

Australia has around 40% of the world’s uranium reserves – more than any other country – and exported nuclear fuel worth around $520 million last year. While we’re happy to sell uranium abroad, the idea of nuclear reactors being built here to provide our future energy needs doesn’t sit well with some.

Last year, the government appointed ex-Telstra chief Dr Ziggy Switkowski, a nuclear physicist and now chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), to head an inquiry into nuclear energy. His report, Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy – Opportunities for Australia?, recommended that Australia aim to have its first nuclear reactor operational by 2020, and a fleet of 25 reactors by 2050.

In April, the government announced it would start putting regulations in place to see this happen – a move that would mean a third of our electricity needs are met from nuclear power.

What do people in the know on both sides of the nuclear power debate say about safety? Here are the facts and views, for and against. You decide for yourself – and we invite you to register your opinion on whether Australia should go nuclear in our website poll.

Yes: It's safe

* The nuclear industry has an excellent safety record over 50 years. Reactor design has improved substantially since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

* New Generation Three reactors are more fuel-efficient, safer and cheaper than the old reactors. A modern reactor costs about $3 billion, half of which is spent on safety and security systems. New reactors have less chance of a core meltdown, produce less waste and have more passive safety features, reducing the risk of human error.

* Modern reactors can withstand the external threat of missiles, even of an aircraft crashing into them.

* Building nuclear power plants won’t increase the threat to our electricity grid from terrorism.

* The danger of nuclear arms proliferation will remain the same whether or not Australia introduces nuclear power.

Radioactive waste is stored in underground repositories in geologically stable locations that are remote from the population. More than 90% of the Australian continent satisfies these criteria. Repositories occupy the space of less than half a swimming pool. By contrast, there are millions of tonnes of heavy metal waste produced by fossil fuels, which last forever.

No: It's too dangerous

* It’s 21 years since the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, and 350,000 people are still displaced and vast tracts of productive land unusable.

* As well as Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, there have been hundreds of nuclear accidents and near misses, says the environmental group Friends of the Earth. Eight have involved damage to or malfunction of the core and five have resulted in deaths.

* High-level nuclear waste would need to be transported across Australia, then isolated safely for 200,000 years. The waste is very unstable and vulnerable to earthquakes and natural disasters.

* The legacy of toxic radioactive waste could lead to cancer epidemics, genetic diseases and foetal abnormalities.

* Expanding the world’s nuclear industry could lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

* Dr Helen Caldicott, anti-nuclear activist: “We spend millions of dollars trying to find a cure for cancer, [yet] here’s an industry that will directly propagate that hideous disease. Nuclear power is medically contraindicated.”

Technology of the future?

Technology developed by ANSTO uses synthetic rock (Synroc) to immobilise high level radioactive waste for disposal. Synroc is an advanced ceramic that uses geochemically stable natural compounds to incorporate the elements present in radioactive waste into the internal structure of the material.

Synroc is already being used to encapsulate the waste from nuclear plants and as a result of military activities overseas. Elsewhere, a form of glass is used to immobilise nuclear waste. The nuclear industry says these technologies immobilise the radioactive waste for 100,000s of years.

In the next 25 to 30 years, Generation Four reactors are expected to come online. These will have the capability to further “burn up” high-level radioactive waste to reduce the need for isolation to just 300 years. “If this works as proposed, it will transform the whole waste issue,” says ANSTO Chief of Operations, Ron Cameron

Boof Mentor

Boof

Posted
Posted
ahh true, I was more inferring the diesel powerplants are inferior to a decent nuclear reactor :devil:

i remember the collins beat the la's a few years ago when doing their war games in the shallows of the pacific ... caught the yanks by surprise

-D

my father inlaw is in the raaf and he keeps saying that our F111's still beat the yanks in black flag and other assisgnments....last year for them though, their retired in decemeber i beleive...

Dohmar Grand Master

Dohmar

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Posted
why is the government so against anything nuclear? Is it the lack of efficient disposal of the waste? They will lose votes because of it?

Some good points there, however they failed to mention two of the more important reactor technologies;

One is the self moderating pebble bed reactors, such as the one that is being developed in South Africa...

The other is the thorium based reactor design, which India are being the first people to develop.

Thorium waste byproducts have a half life of under 100 years, as opposed to uranium which has beta decay lasting for a few thousand years. Readers Digest are correct when they say we have 40% the world uranium reserves, but we also have 70% of the worlds thorium reserves.

Regarding some of the contra arguments, 3 mile island and chernobyl were both 2nd generation reactors. Chernobyl itself is a graphite moderated pressurised water reactor which is one of the more common types, however it was flawed from the get go with a tendency to go supercritical (High Positive Void Co-efficient). Basically the water is there to absorb neutrons, however when pockets of steam are created, they create a 'void' as steam does not moderate neutrons due to the density being a tonne less (1/1350), which in turn raises the temperature and pressure of the coolant vessel, enough to make the reactor go critical within a fraction of a second. 3rd and 4th gen reactors are all immune to this design flaw.

Most of the negative arguments regarding nuclear are based around the long term storage of fission material (not an issue with thorium waste) as well as the safety of the reactor. Soon as people pull the wool from their eyes and actually read about these technologies, they're still going to think nuclear power is the bogeyman (based upon a 1985 accident with a reactor using 1970's technology).

Considering australia is a big continent with a lot of 'dead' space, its feasible to have nuclear generators located underground in isolated sections of the simpson desert and other places (perhaps maralinga). This way they'd be a harder target for terrorism, can use the integral cooling of the earths crust, and would prevent nuclear fallout if a criticality did occur underground.

Too bad the aust greens won't wake up and smell the doo-doo. Solar and wind are great sources of energy but they just don't fill the demand of modern cities.

-D

Damo_R34 Grand Master

Damo_R34

Posted
Posted

Yeah solar and wind are great but they just dont produce enough power relative to their size. A nuclear reactor can span the size of a wind farm, and produce shitloads more energy. We will always have wind farms tho, they seem to be doing pretty well powering rural areas, and Mike Rann uses them to gain popularity because he is looking to the future of power and creating jobs for SA. The issue is, wind and solar arent a major solution to power of the future.

from wiki:

Research into these reactor types was officially started by the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) based on eight technology goals. The primary goals being to improve nuclear safety, improve proliferation resistance, minimize waste and natural resource utilization, and to decrease the cost to build and run such plants.

So wtf are those green bastard worried about? If they had it their way, we would all be eating tofu burgers from maccas and driving Priuses.

Nuclear proliferation is another interesting topic. There is currently more than 16,000 nuclear weapons currently ready for deployment, with ranges longer than to your front doorstep. The US has nearly 7000 ready and 3000 in storage, Rusia has 8500 and 11,000 in storage. China has a DF-4 long range ballistic missile, 28 metres long and capable of reaching Australia, and contains a 2190kg nuclear warhead. It could explode on Darwin with a force of 3300 kilotons. Hiroshima was just 15 kilotons. (info from Zoo mag, strangely enough)

Dohmar Grand Master

Dohmar

Posted
Posted
Yeah solar and wind are great but they just dont produce enough power relative to their size. A nuclear reactor can span the size of a wind farm, and produce shitloads more energy. We will always have wind farms tho, they seem to be doing pretty well powering rural areas, and Mike Rann uses them to gain popularity because he is looking to the future of power and creating jobs for SA. The issue is, wind and solar arent a major solution to power of the future.

from wiki:

Research into these reactor types was officially started by the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) based on eight technology goals. The primary goals being to improve nuclear safety, improve proliferation resistance, minimize waste and natural resource utilization, and to decrease the cost to build and run such plants.

So wtf are those green bastard worried about? If they had it their way, we would all be eating tofu burgers from maccas and driving Priuses.

Sadly most militant greenies would prefer it that way, and damn everyone elses freedom of choice. I'm an environmentalist, but I'm not one of the loonies who can't compromise. Fact is we need to reduce our carbon emissions and nuclear power is the single most effective way of doing that. Otherwise we'll keep burning fossil fuels (Gas, Coal, Wood) and making a big old mess of the place.

Regarding proliferation, the thorium reactors are perfect for preventing proliferation, as there are always going to be trace elements of U232 and U233 in the reactor thanks to the thorium breeding fuel cycle. U232 can be enriched to U235 (weapons grade), U233 cannot, and its impossible to separate the two isotopes. Other breeder reactors produce U238 (depleted uranium) as a by product, which gets made into those lovely mini-gun bullets fired from A10 warthogs - and thats another ethical argument on its own (DU is bad for humans but really good for piercing reactive tank armor like chobam)

-D

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