Personally I am opposed. It's not a sustainable option. Eventually we will mine all the nuclear material and have to move to a new power source anyway. It's also only marginally cheaper than wind energy and yet creates far more problems for the environment - both in mining, infestructure and obviously waste disposal.

I don't really have a problem with it, apart from the waste disposal. What I'm really having fun with is the ignorant idiots writing in to the paper, saying that we're all going to become mutants because we'll be exposed to radiation.

it really just doesn't sit well with me at all, even if they convince the rest of the population it will never sit well with me. It seems far to risky and overall just wrong.

To be honest, I don't know enough about it to comment, and i'm hardly going to use the generalised opinion of Nuclear Power to sustain an opinion I shouldn't really have.

Got any good unbiased links to nuclear power?

My year 11 physics text book?

As far as I'm aware nuclear power is environmenally safe provided waste disposal is done properly, I don't know enough of the subject my knowlege pretty much comes from science in high school, which I haven't touched since Year 10, which was about 4 and half years ago now.

I don't live in Australia, but I think nuclear power is unnecessary, solar energy should be used, lotsa sun in Oz.

The problem with Solar is that it can only return 4% of the power that it catches.

As to the idea of nuclear power for Australia, I don't mind it.

i agree with dz solar would be great for our enviroment surely obviously combine it with other sources of power too

Ever used solar powered devices? They suck! Always lose power :P

If it was that simple then we would be using it now. As it stands, it just doesn't work that well.

true, i guess id just rather anything instead of going nuclear.

There was a report in the Australian yesterday I think that said that that a report commissioned by the Victorian Government that said that for Nuclear Power to be viable they'd need to have a $40 per tonne carbon tax on coal power and that the world's uranium supplies could be exhausted within 35 years or something.

Though I'm guessing that the second bit is only if nuclear power becomes much more popular world wide.

I hope people don't mind me posting this here but the Wilderness society currently has a petition to stop uranium mining in Australia and have an aim of getting 5000 responces (which is a very low goal in my opinion). Anyway if you're interested in signing it you can go to this link

- I should say that I work for the wilderness society doing admin stuff so if the mods think this is advertising feel free to delete the link although obviously I am not making any profit out you signing that petition or not signing it as the case may be.

Plus solar power is quite expensive.

In California a lot of houses are starting to have solar panels put on the roof - which despite an initial large cost - is saving people almost their entire power bill. Like in Australia, in the US if your panels generate an excess of power the power company legally has to buy the power off you and you're plugged into the grid so if they don't generate enough power you still get it from the normal source. I think this kind of personal solar panels is a really great step in the right direction - imagine if every house in Australia had it's own solar and wind generation - not only would it be great for the environment but it would save people so much money. While there would presumably be a loss of jobs in the current energy market jobs - there would be an increase in sustainable technology production, as well as installation and maintainance as well as people having more money to spend would mean more jobs in other areas.

My family's hoilday house does, it doesn't do crap (granted it is old, but it was added by the old owners for that reason).

i dont know what the risk is now, the chances of another chernobyl are very slim. the enginneers back then knew nothing about it and they tried to up productivity and the plant blew (i watched the 60 minutes thing).

scientists these days know how to handle all the materials so i think we can give it a go, and if all goes well no global warming which in turn will mean we dont run out of snow in 20 years.

Actually I don't think that's true - in Europe - especially in England they have breaches releasing radioactive and poisonous chemicals all the time. Just recently the Lucas Heights reactor had a leak of radioactive Gas. Most of these are fairly minor although nobody is allowed to eat the fish from waterways near nuclear plants in England any more. While it's unlikely that another Chernobyl will occur it is definitely possible that leaks would occur. I also think your comment about global warming is a bit silly - Although Australia produces the most amount of green house gasses of any country in the world per person - we have a very small population so I don't think what we do actually has an enourmas effect on reducing global warming which is actually caused by the build up over the last 200 years since the industrial revolution of green house gasses over the whole world. If we really want to stop global warming we need to be working with the international commmunity aiming to come up with a global response - as well as worrying about our own emmissions - which probably means looking for renewable energy sources and alternative methods of Aluminium refinement.

Edit: I just wanted to be clear that when I say "especially in England" - what I mean is that I've heard most about the nuclear energy problems in England - rather than it happens most in England because I don't know if that is the case or not.

emgland have nuclear power....thats news to me

Well it has been going for the last 50 years. In fact they had their own "events" that are well known from the past. It also is the nation with the record for the first commercial Nuclear Power Plant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power..._United_Kingdom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield

lol,

I guess some people really do learn something new every day...