The mightly atom

Just when you think things can't get any worse, the Nuclear Lobby rears its ugly head again. Tony Abbott, Minister for Being Persuaded by Vested Interests. I would like to voice a truism here: the ETS might be awful, but nuclear power is worse. Much much worse.

To be fair, mining companies are businesses, out to make a buck, just like everyone else. They make their money digging stuff out of the ground. Uranium happens to be one of those things. Why not try to make a buck off it?

It's all so seductive. They promise you all the electricity you can eat, enough to power hundreds of thousands of air conditioners, enough to keep every home and office cold enough to chill milk even at the height of summer. Goodbye energy scarcity, hello energy security! No need to think about your carbon footprint - nuclear energy is guilt free. You know you want it.

People, please do not buy this crap. Do not touch it with a barge pole. They are lying through their teeth because there's lots of money in it for them. Nuclear power is not cheap, it's horribly expensive, and it is not clean, it's stupidly dirty.

1) EXPENSIVE
Digging uranium out of the ground is cheap. It's all downhill from there.
First the uranium has to be refined to fuel grade. That will require a special facility with special staff and special safety systems. Expensive.

Secondly, the uranium fuel has to be used to generate electricity. Again, a special facility needs to be constructed to do this. The amount of safety and risk management built into nuclear power plants makes them expensive to build and run. And then if something does go wrong, it's much more expensive to clean up the mess than would be the case with a non-radioactive power station.

Thirdly, after the fuel is spent, it still needs to be managed. CO₂ can look after itself once it leave a coal fired station. It's aggregate CO₂ over a number of years that is the worry, because of the greenhouse effect. However, radioactive material is a direct threat to all living things all of the time, and needs to be managed through every little step of the process, including disposal. So even after the spent fuel has stopped generating a profit, it is costing money, time and effort to manage.

2) DIRTY
With non-radioactive solid waste, Australia can afford to dump. Because we have a low population density, and we can rationalise dumping by saying that the land wasn't going to be used for something better in the lifetime of the dump. Besides, there's always the chance that in years to come, new technologies will emerge that will enable dumps to be mined for their resources. Or the land could be remediated and turned into new housing (hello Cranbourne!) or recreational facilities (hello Sydney Olympic Park!).

Not so nuclear waste dumps. Once you build a dump, it has to stay a dump. A very well guarded dump, too. It will have to be placed out in the middle of nowhere, because nobody wants to live near it, which means it is more expensive to maintain and guard. You can tell yourself that it's useless land, but it's a bit bloody presumptuous to decide that it is going to be useless land for the next 100 years, let alone the next 10 000. Not to mention that nuclear dump design is mostly temporary at present, because they're still hoping someone will come up with a better dump sometime soon...

3) You won't like it.

Honestly, you won't. They will put a dirty great nuclear reactor somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard (probably NSW), because that's where all the air conditioners live. Then your cute little coastal town within commuting distance to Sydney will become a social pariah. No tourists will visit and the fall in property prices will mean you can't retire until you're 102. Radioactive material will be trucked around your home town on its way to or from the reactor. It will probably be trucked around Sydney too, so don't think you're going to get off lightly by making it someone else's problem, Sydneysiders. Much extra security and restrictions and inconvenience and fear are going to accompany the trucking.

Even if you're in favour of nuclear (and lets face it, unless you're going to make some of the stupendous amounts of money that will be thrown at it, you're probably not in favour), you will have to put up with the constant fear and loathing of the anti-nuclear lobby, who make up in volume what they lack in grooming and taste in suits. They want everyone to realise that if the reactor explodes it will be the end of the world. They will use the C-word. You can argue to your heart's content that the C-word will never happen here, that the reactor will not explode and everything is going to be ok. The problem is that you cannot state categorically that "this reactor will not fail catastrophically". You can only say "the catastrophic failure of the reactor is not a part of the plan, and we will be sticking to the plan to the letter". And who trusts a bunch of capitalists to go against their instincts to make maximum profit and actually put public safety first? Even the commy bastards couldn't get it right, so what chance do a bunch of privateers have?

Every dollar that gets spent on nuclear power is a dollar of taxpayers money handed over to the private sector and a million dollars robbed from the future, where they will still be dealing with the leftovers of today's nuclear power generation. At least wind and solar generators pay off their energy debt, which is the energy cost to produce the generator, and make an energy profit. You can't say the same for nuclear. It's just not worth it.