Two brothers, eight cousins

[dreamer_easy]

Now that Jon and I have nieces and nephews, this whole global warming thing is suddenly concrete instead of abstract. For several reasons, we plan not to have any children ourselves, but the tots give us a connection to a hot, dry future. I heard the PM on the radio extolling nuclear power as "clean". Now there are arguments that the global warming crisis makes nuclear power look like a good stop-gap, but I don't accept that - we need to put money into actually clean solutions, rather than trying to make a buck out of the disaster. I don't want to leave Charlotte a bunch of plutonium to cope with.

Comments

[whochick.livejournal.com]

My thoughts exactly. It's like we're moving from a stance of immediate-impact to postponed-impact on the environment. Yes, nuclear power will make things cleaner initially, but where are we going to put the waste? Will we really stoop to dumping it out in space as some people have suggested?

I'm sure that's a sign of a civilised society ...

[angriest.livejournal.com]

I know I'm in the unpopular minority here, but I actually really support the idea of nuclear power for the next generation of energy. There is *a lot* of space in Australia to store the waste, of which there are comparatively small amounts in modern reactors (most of the ones people see on TV and freak out about are decades old and far larger and less efficient than a new one would be - not to mention not as safe).

Shut down the coal reactors, replace them with nuclear for the next 20-25 years, and develop renewable resources in the meantime.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how much of the "solar not nuclear" sticker on my head is coming from gut feelings (and enormous suspicion of govt and industry desperate to continue making a profit) rather than facts, so I'd better have a poke around for information. Lessee...

Greenpeace reckon that nuclear stations right now are producing less power than alternative sources, and building more stations would cost "trillions of dollars", with that money diverted away from the switchover to alternatives. (I can see that latter as a real risk - the tendency so far has been to procrastinate as much as possible. Get the nukes in place and govt and industry may just put their feet up for a few decades.)

Greenpeace also state the switch to nuclear would take decades and be more expensive than developing alternatives, and that a major barrier to those alternatives is govt subsidisation of "conventional" power generation.

Now if all that's true, it may be that even as an emergency stop-gap, nuclear power would be economically out-competed by alternative power.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

I've read claims in both directions from both sides so much that I wouldn't honestly be able to say. I do know that wind power, for example, requires massive amounts of real estate to have enough turbines to make it worth a damn. Geothermal is supposed to be great, but is limited in the places where you can set it up, and hydroelectrics screw up the environment in different ways.

It's such a knotty problem.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Knotty is the word. I've become completely sceptical of anything claimed by government or industry, but that doesn't mean I want to swallow anything Greenpeace tells me unthinkingly. I must see if I can ferret out some genuinely independent scientific commentary on the economics of alternative vs nuclear.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

I have some fairly significant reservations about Greenpeace: like many left-wing organisations I have a tendency to run down their list of beliefs going "yes... yes... yes... oh my word Christ no!!!!" : )