Antinuclear

An Australian visitor to Japan reflects on the impact of Fukushima

If nuclear power was safe, practical and cost-effective, I’d be all for it.

the downsides of the nuclear power industry are both numerous and severe.

It amazes me that we continue to participate in such a dangerous industry, even if only as suppliers of the raw materials.

Japan highlights risks of nuclear energy NT News, KRIS KEOGH   |  October 16th, 2012 I RECENTLY got back from visiting Japan. It’s an exciting place to be; a land of contrasts, both hi-tech and traditional all at once….. Wherever I travelled, the resulting nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant was something still very clearly in the mind of nearly everyone I met.

People are worried about radiation, both in the air they breathe and in the food they buy. SoftBank, one of the biggest phone companies in Japan, recently released a phone with a built-in Geiger counter, and you can buy Geiger counter adapters for your iPhone….
Seeing how one isolated, single accident has had such a lasting effect on a whole country really made me think about the pros and cons of nuclear power, especially since we have a uranium mine in the middle of Kakadu that supplied raw materials for the Fukushima reactors…. there are some benefits, but the negatives of nuclear power are so many I’m going to need to list them …

Accidents: Even in a country as regulated and safety conscious as Japan, nuclear accidents still happen.

Any potential accident that can cause mass contamination of land, air, food and water supplies should be avoided at all costs.

Waste: Nuclear power production generates nuclear waste, with some isotopes having half-lives of thousands of years.

Creating dangerous materials we have no way of storing over such large periods of time is creating serious problems for future generations.

Cost: Nuclear power plants are more expensive to build than nearly all other energy sources, without even taking into account the cost of the raw materials needed for operation or the decommissioning process of retiring an obsolete reactor, which can take decades to complete.

Inflexibility: Nuclear power plants cannot be easily expanded if demand increases, unlike large-scale wind and solar generation systems, which can be added to incrementally as needed.

Construction time: Nuclear power plants take 10-20 years to build, meaning building them will not help decrease carbon dioxide emissions in the short or medium term.

Put simply, new nuclear power plants won’t help solve climate change, as we need to make emission cuts now, not in future decades.

Security: Participating in the nuclear cycle creates nuclear security risks.

Raw materials can be used to make nuclear weapons, plus nuclear power plants have the potential to be targets in conflict situations.

If nuclear power was safe, practical and cost-effective, I’d be all for it.

But the downsides of the nuclear power industry are both numerous and severe.

It amazes me that we continue to participate in such a dangerous industry, even if only as suppliers of the raw materials.

Let’s end the risks now. Leave it in the ground.   http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2012/10/16/314359_ntnews.html

October 16, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News