We have all heard the debate in relation to climate change regarding the use of Nuclear Power as a potential replacement for our coal fueled power stations. Is Nuclear power clean and green? Will nuclear power decrease the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions and thus decrease global warming?
In 2007 around 15% of the world’s electricity came from nuclear power. The United States produces the most nuclear energy in the world with nuclear power providing 19% of its electricity supply. France supplies more than 78% of its electricity through nuclear reactors and the European Union as a whole relies on nuclear power for around 30% of its total electricity needs.
The reality is that enormous amounts of fossil fuel are used to mine, mill and enrich Uranium that is needed to fuel a nuclear power plant as well as construct the enormous concrete reactor. Nuclear reactors have a 30-40 year life cycle and massive amounts of fossil fuel energy are required to complete the dismantling process. There is also enormous fossil fuel energy required to transport and store the nuclear waste which is buried underground.
Scarily radioactive waste like Strontium 90 remains radioactive for 600 years. Plutonium is the most significant element in nuclear waste and is so toxic and carcinogenic that 500 grams of the waste evenly distributed around the globe would be enough to cause cancer for every man, woman and child on the planet and Plutonium waste remains toxic for 500,000 years.
When considering radiation it is easy to look at Dentists when they X-Ray your teeth. The dentist will leave the room because any amount of radiation is dangerous if you are exposed to it often enough. The USA currently has more than 55,000 metric tons of nuclear waste that it has stored with each reactor producing a further 25-30 tons of nuclear waste annually.
Australia currently has no commercially operational or planned nuclear reactors. Our focus should be on the harnessing of solar and wind for our energy production. The Kyoto Protocol requires that we produce 20% of our energy needs through renewable means by 2020.
I would like to see our politicians commit to the British plan of producing enough off shore wind farms to produce all of the energy required to power the entire nation by 2020. If nuclear power is too dangerous for Iran to have we should not be looking to increase its use anywhere in the World.
Given the location and size of Australia it is possible that we could lead the world in solar and wind technology. We live on the largest ssland in the World, have the 7th largest land mass of any country, we are surrounded by ocean and have a population of just over 21.84 million people. We have an abundance of land, plenty of ocean and enormous deserts.
Wind farms throughout the world are being set up with a few dozen to several hundred wind turbines. Some are being set up offshore to take advantage of strong winds over lakes or oceans. Germany currently has the largest wind generation capacity followed by USA, Spain, India and China. The United Kingdom plans to power all of its homes by wind power by 2020 through enormous offshore wind farms.
By ratifying the Kyoto protocol in 2007 Australia committed to producing 20% renewable power by 2020 – in other words we have just 11 years to improve our performance from just over 4% to the 20% target. Australia currently uses wind technology to produce just over 1% of our energy needs and a further 3% is harnessed through solar. Scotland is already using renewable sources to produce 19% of its energy needs.
Germany has 100 times more installed solar capacity than Australia. Australia has only 25,000 households with solar panels installed and solar installation is increasing at 15% per year compared with 30-40% globally. With so much capacity to produce energy through renewable sources the Australian Government must put policy in place to encourage installation of solar and wind facilities. There is no excuse for Australia to be anywhere but first place in the race to be green.
As energy prices continue to climb, the idea of utilizing solar energy is common sense. The process of getting solar panels installed, however, is quite the opposite.
RoofRay, a new Californian business, aims to give home owners better information to enable them to make more informed environmental decisions for their home. Using the site’s modeling tools, consumers can estimate how much solar energy a home could capture and how that would affect their monthly bills.
The data provided is based upon historical weather conditions, current power usage charges, the gradient of the property, and the maximum amount of solar paneling the roof can hold. One tool uses Google Maps to let users calculate the size of their roof and build virtual panels. RoofRay then estimates the output potential of the solar panels as well as financial considerations like costs of installation, upkeep and return on investment.
Whilst not yet available in Australia, such a tool would be a welcome addition to our growing eco-conscience and our excessive reliance on fossil fuels. Furthermore it would be useful for would-be real estate buyers in making purchase decisions, something that the Marquette Turner team are increasingly finding is a factor in how and where buyer’s buy.
To find out the latest information available in Australia, a good start is the federal government’s portal climatechance.gov.au and Marquette Turner’s Clear the Air site
