Hi, I'm William and today I'll be answering this question: In order to reduce our carbon
emissions, should Australia replace our coal-fired power station with nuclear power
generation?
Well I think we should. Here's why:
Australia relies primarily on coal-fired power plants, which work by burning coal
to heat up water which then turns to turbine.
Nationwide we have 23.
The problem is that world-wide about 50% of our co2 emissions come from
coal-fired power plants.
In fact, Australia alone released 400,000 metric tons of carbon
dioxide each year
with around 50% of that coming from our coal-fired power plants alone.
The bad thing about co2 is that it kills our planet because it's a greenhouse
gas and makes holes like this one. On the other hand, nuclear power doesn't
create harmful emissions. Most nuclear power works by using the energy from the youth of the
fission to heat up the water, which then turns to turbine. So it works in the same effect
as coal-fired power stations only without burning stuff to make harmful gas. So,
nuclear power is obviously greener. Now, let's compare how many resources coal-fire in
nuclear power plants will use. In Australia, we have 23 coal-fired
power stations which generate an average of 1200 megawatts.
Each megawatt produced needs roughly 7 tonnes of coal per day.
From these rough figures, you can work out that an average Australian coal-fired power plant will need 80,000
tonnes of coal per day. The grand total of 184,000
tonnes of coal used by all coal-fired power stations in the nation per day.
That's 67,160,000 tonnes of coal per year.
Now I'd assume that if we going to change to nuclear power, we'd make PWR's or
Pressurised Water Reactors seeing as they're the most common
type of nuclear reactor. Typically, a PWR needs about 80 tonnes of
uranium to run,
changing roughly 25 tonnes of it in every two years. With this, it produces
about 1200 megawatts of power,
the same amount as the average coal-fired power plant. So, we'd be using less
resources with nuclear power and we'd also need less maintenance seeing as you only have to
change uranium once every two years. Now let's look into the economics of things.
Coal costs around $60 per tonne, which isn't bad. But, uranium costs a massive $90,000 per tonne.
Australia trades both coal and uranium
because we have massive reserves of both. By using nuclear power instead of coal-fired,
we will be forfeiting about $26,000,000 in profits that we could have
gained through the uranium trade, which isn't that much considering that our GDP is
$925,000,000,000. In other words, if we were to sell the uranium we would
potentially use in nuclear reactors
we would boost the economy by 0.00003%.
Great, that's only taking into account the money we'd be potentially losing from
nuclear power though, not the money we'd be potentially gaining through the extra coal we're not using anymore.
Coal trade makes up 16% of our commodity trade and we supply 27% of the coal used in the world.
Remember when I told you how much coal costs?
$60 per tonne right?
and we burn about 184,000 tonnes of coal per day
for coal-fired power plants. So, that's roughly $11,000,000 per day. That means that
every year we burn roughly $4,000,000,000 worth of coal. Sure, that's still only boosting
our economy by 0.0004%.
But, hey, at
least we're not losing money. Another point of argument is the safety of nuclear power.
In general, coal-fired power plants pose no huge risk to the general population. Nuclear
power, on the other hand could be extremely dangerous if not handled
correctly because it's radioactive. A tragic example of a nuclear power plant accident is the 1986
Chernobyl disaster. Where the Chernobyl reactor exploded creating
flames which took fireman nine days to suppress. 30 operators and fireman died within
three months of the catastrophe
and several others died later from the aftermath.
Not only that, but Chernobyl caused multiple birth defects in ensuing generations and
large amounts of thyroid cancer victims, most of them children.
Chernobyl was a disaster but not one brought about by the general danger of nuclear power.
Out of the 440 nuclear reactors that exist at this current moment, only
Chernobyl has caused a disaster this catastrophic. And that was because of poor building standards and
inadequately trained staff.
Keep in mind as well, that the design of the Chernobyl reactor has not been mimicked
in any other instance and that no other reactors have exploded in
such a manner, ever, in history. So, as catastrophic as Chernobyl was, the likelihood of another
disaster of a similar scale is minimal if proper precautions are put in place.
What about renewable energy? Good question. We could invest in solar, geothermal
or wind power but the honest truth is that all of these sources of renewable
energy simply don't generate enough. For example
it takes the US 77 geothermal power plants to create as much
energy as 3 nuclear ones and the largest solar energy plant in the world only makes
one fifth of the average energy produced by 1 nuclear power plant.
So, until we have more efficient renewable energy resources, nuclear power
is by far the better choice in terms of efficiency Other concerns that come with nuclear power are the
disposal of uranium and terrorism, with 25 tonnes of uranium
getting replaced every two years, where does it go? The thing is, is that uranium can be re-enriched
so there's no real worry, we can re-use it.
From this, however, the problem of terrorism arises. The theory is that
terrorists could potentially get hold of spent uranium rods, re-enrich them and then use them
for nuclear weapons. In reality however, in the 60 years that we have had nuclear power plants,
not once have spent uranium rods been stolen. If need be, one could simply implement
more security to safeguard spent uranium, but there really is no need.
In the end, nuclear power is probably the best choice we have at this point in time
when it comes to energy generation. It's both cost effective and environmentally friendly.
The only reason people don't seem to like it is because of events like Chernobyl, which are rare anyway. The end.