Woes of Wind Power

[Malacasta]

Originally posted by Snrrub What is fucked up about it? If one considers all costs associated with nuclear energy, from construction to plant maintenance to decommissioning and cleanup, nuclear is the cheapest way to produce electricity (except for coal)

Is that really true? I was looking at some of the stuff about vegetable dye solar collectors and the google funded research, and there is an argument out there that solar will be as cheap or cheaper than coal within the next few years.

I also wonder how politics will handle uranium. Here in Australia there are always huge campaigns revolving around the mining of uranium (because for one thing a lot of it tends to be buried on Koorie land and the asking price of the mining companies is embarrassingly low). There's always also a huge argument about who we sell uranium to, for example, India and China have both promised to only use Australian uranium for nuclear power even though they both have a nuclear weapons program. Some conservatives (such as Bolt) want us to sell to India because we're friendlier to them, even though they have broken the nuclear powers agreements.

If Australia condones the sale of uranium to India then there is no particularly good argument for why we couldn't sell to other countries not sanctioned to hold nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, you'd have to be some sort of naive git to believe that neither China or India would use Australian uranium for domestic power purposes only. Even if they are disciplined and hold to their promises, using Oz uranium for domestic power frees up their other uranium supplies for nuke weapon programs - so the whole argument's silly anyways; selling Oz uranium will lead to nuclear weapon proliferation. It's kinda like that old saying about digging your own grave or being given enough rope IMO.

Now I'm not arguing that the world will ever disarm itself of nukes. I have no idea how such a thing could ever be achieved. It's just that I don't know how much safer the world will be when any country can start a nuclear weapons program based on the purchase of cheap domestic uranium (and do be honest here, we are on the brink of war with a country who our leaders argue (for what THAT'S worth) is doing that very thing). Additionally, if those countries that DO create their own nuclear weapons programs (such as India and Pakistan) can do without meaningful chastisement, and other countries such as North Korea actually appear to become less threatened, then why WOULDN'T they become nuclear armed?

Anyways, these are questions that always sit in the back of my mind when we think about nuclear power stations. I don't have any answers, but I wonder if those who spruik for a nuclear powered future give them any consideration at all and what their answers are.