With the earthquakes and subsequent tsunami in Japan causing widespread damage, and specifically damage to nuclear power plants, the world not surprisingly is re-thinking its stance on nuclear power and its safety. Only this morning the German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested a non-extension to Germany's nuclear program and France is very seriously looking at its power plants, considering that 70% of French electricity comes from nuclear.
So what of Australia?
I think a very strong case can be made for Australia embracing nuclear power for precisely the same reason that Japan is considering abandoning it.
As far as plate tectonics go, the entire Australian continent sits on a very solid bit of dirt. No fault lines pass anywhere through the continent, and although there have been earthquakes in Australia; they have been the result of the underside of the Australian plate scraping against the Moho or Upper Mantle.
The point being that unlike say New Zealand, Japan or even California, earthquakes in Australia are not directly caused by plates banging into each other, sliding past each other or pulling away. Even someone with a rudimentary knowledge in Australian geography will tell you that the big mountain ranges in Australia are not volcanic, but sedimentary.
What is the point of all this? Put simply, Australia currently relies on lots of coal for its electricity which is terrible for greenhouse gas emission, at the same time it is the world's biggest exporter of uranium with 23% of the world's uranium ore reserves but somehow never finds the political will to make use of it.
It's the same story for a lot of Australian industry, we dig up stuff, sell it overseas and wonder why the country is on the express train to oblivion and can't afford the diesel to get there.
The truth should bet staring us in the face. Australia suffers an earthquake actually on the continent as opposed to offshore roughly every 13 years and at an average of only 5.8333 on the Richter Scale. In contrast Japan in the past week has had more earthquakes of 6 and above than the entire of the records in Australia by nearly a factor of 90.
When it comes to earthquakes, Australia is ludicrously stable. I bet that you actually have more chance of being killed by a falling toilet, than ever feeling an earthquake in your life in Australia let alone actually being killed from it.
If that then is the main reason why we don't use nuclear power in Australia, it's a pretty pathetic one.
I suggest that if the nuclear boogieman is the only reason why nuclear power isn't used, then that too is pretty pathetic. Admittedly the worst case scenario is a disaster like Chernobyl of almost 25 years ago but that wasn't exactly helped by an economic system which was on the brink of total collapse and a workforce which was paid a pittance. Would such a thing occur for the same reasons in a supposedly first-world industrialised nation like Australia? I think not. Then again, if people like Premier Keneally can sell our power companies to private interests looking to cut costs, then the same motives which caused the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 will be in operation, so who knows?
If we're that worried we could always build out nuclear power stations in places like Olympic Dam which is already in the middle of nowhere and on top of the world's biggest uranium deposit. Even if a fallout cloud the size of the like that was seen as a result of the Chernobyl disaster were to occur, three quarters of bugger-all would be affected, or better yet bung it out at Ngaanyatjarra-Giles in WA. You could launch either moon of Mars into the nuclear power plant out there and no-one would know save for the fact that their lights would go out.
The fact that we're quite willing to sell Uranium to the rest of the world but don't use it ourselves smacks of hypocrisy. Wollongong City Council proudly proclaims itself to be a "Nuclear Free Zone" on massive billboards as you head down the F6. Do they not realise that the University of Wollongong happens to be Australia's leading exponent of Nuclear Medicine and Clinical Oncology? Do they also not realise that just to the north happens to be the ANSTO Open Pool Australian Lightwater reactor at Lucas Heights?
Australia could cut its greenhouse emissions by 35% if it went to all-nuclear electricity generation. I'm not suggesting that it's a magic bullet, but leaving it off the agenda entirely and as part of a total plan for dealing with a far bigger issue, I think is quite quite quite stupid.
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