Antinuclear

Uranium, nuclear power? not economic

The [2006 Switkowski] report’s caution that nuclear power would probably be between 20 and 50 per cent more costly to produce than power from a new coal-fired plant is even more unpalatable at a time when electricity costs are soaring, 

Forget uranium sales, nuclear riches always bomb out by:Terry Sweetman  The Sunday Mail (Qld)  October 28, 2012  URANIUM has been the biggest disappointment in my life since Santa Claus turned out to be Dad tripping over the Christmas tree while three sheets to the wind.

People of my generation grew up with fantastic promises of clean, limitless energy that drove everything from flying cars to spaceships. Prowling through newspapers of the late 1940s and ’50s, I find that even adults were fed the same reassuring diet under the label of Atoms for Peace, all the while being pumped with pride over bigger and better nuclear weapons to defend them and democracy.

It never seemed to happen, any more than did the endless riches that were to feed through the land when places like Mary Kathleen sent Geiger counters clicking and Australians went into the uranium business, big-time.

Under the every-little-bit-helps theory of economics, uranium mining has undoubtedly had an economic impact, probably going way back to when we opened Radium Hill in 1906, but it just never seems to have lived up to the promises of an industry more famous for big talk than for delivering the goods…….

In the case of uranium, it was Senator Barnaby Joyce, who called on us to develop a nuclear power industry.

He would welcome a debate, he declared, although I’m not quite sure what we might discuss that wasn’t discussed back in 2006 when the Howard government (of which he was a member) went down this road.

The headline memory of that report on uranium mining and nuclear energy was a scenario in which 25 reactors would produce about a third of our electricity by 2050. That faded when no politician from John Howard down was quite prepared to say in which backyards these reactors might be built.

The report’s caution that nuclear power would probably be between 20 and 50 per cent more costly to produce than power from a new coal-fired plant is even more unpalatable at a time when electricity costs are soaring, apparently largely as a result of over-investment.

In 2006, the report was able to say: “Since Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, the nuclear industry has developed new reactor designs which are safer and more efficient.” Today it might have to rework that in the light of the vulnerability of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear facility. The Japanese might not share our confidence.

October 29, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News