Once again Senator Bob Brown has shown just how uneducated and unrealistic the greens party is in an interview this morning on Channel 9's "Today" show. This time his ill-concieved comments were in regards to a recent suggestion by John Howard that the government would consider a move towards Nuclear Power.

The Interview featured a number of baseless accusations, such as "Australia Doesnt need it" and suggesting the idea that nuclear power is safer than coal power is "bumkin" (is bumkin a real word?).

Lets have a look at some facts:

86% of Australia's electricity is supplied by coal fired power plants
Australia makes up around 0.3% of the worlds population
Australia generates around 5% of the worlds greenhouse gases
The majority of Australias greenhouse gas productions is a result of electricity generation.

These figures plainly show that if our nation is to make any attempt to become more environmentally responsible then we need to shift away from coal fired power plants, so lets have a look at some alternatives

Gas fired power plants - Gas power plants are less pollutive than coal, but nevertheless still produce greenhouse gases.

Oil fired power plants - Oil power plants are worse for the environment than coal.

Hydroelectricity - At present Hydroelectricity is the only viable renewable energy source for baseline electricity production, unfortunatley due to Australia inherent lack of water it is not practical here.

Wind - Wind power is far from good for the environment. Although it does not produce any emissions it requires vast empty tracts of land where there is a fairly constant supply of wind, although we have vast amounts of empty space in the desert, those areas are both a) not all that windy and B) would require a significant engineering effort to transmit the electricity to civilisation, doing further damage to the environment. In addition wind power is highly unreliable and only produces a small amount of electricity from a massive and very expensive turbine.

Solar - Many people advocate solar power as being the holy grail of energy production, and whilst that may be true at some point in the future it is certainly not the case at the present time. Solar power is inefficient, less unreliable than wind but unreliable nonetheless, and incredibly expensive. To generate the same the same amount of electricity as a single power station a massive amount of land would have to be cleared to make way for solar cells, sure you could put them out in the desert, but then how do u suggest we get the electricity to the city? Unfortunatley you cannot simply run a really long cable, the resistance of a transmission wire of that length would probably eliminate the current altogether. In addition to that, current solar technology incorporporates a number of toxic chemicals, and whilst these are of no concern during normal operation, they are potentially hazardous during manufacture,  would be released into the environment if an event such as a fire were to occur and pose an interesting challenge when the solar cells are disposed of at the end of their usefull lives. Finally solar cells require energy storage as they obviously do not produce energy at night or when it is dark, which is when most of us use electricity the most. This means that massive arrays of batteries are required which throw a whole new range of dangerous chemicals into the mix, and batteries certainly do not last forever, how long did you last mobile phone battery last before it needed to be replaced?

Geothermal - Geothermal electricity is expensive, unreliable and hazardous. In addition Australia does not lie anywhere near any geographic faults so utilise this energy source would be challenge.

Nuclear Fission - Nuclear Fission power produces no greenhouse gases, is comparable in cost to our current energy production and is significantly safer than our current primary electricity generation, coal power. The only significant number of deaths to have occured as a result of Nuclear Fission electricity generation is in the aftermath of the Chernobyl Explosion. To compare nuclear vs coal, here are some figures. There is a wide range of figures into the total death toll from the Chernobyl incident including deaths which have not yet occured, ranging from an unrealistic 52 to and equally unrealistic 500,000. The UN's official estimate is 4000, and whilst Greenpeace vocally rejects this estimate (http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,411864,00.html) I know which agency i put more trust into. In comparison more than 6,000 deaths occur each year due to coal mining in china alone, let alone the rest of the world. As I have mentioned in the past using Chernobyl as a model for possible future incidents is foolish, as such an accident could never take place outside of a 1st or 2nd generation RBMK reactor, which were only built by the Soviet Union due to their inherent safety flaws. In addition if such an incident were to somehow occur the released radiation would be held within the reactors containment structure, a feature which was and is required in all western reactors but was not present in the RBMK design. There is a great deal of nuclear physics behind this that I dont care to explain, but feel free to look into it yourself. There is a great deal of fear surrounding nuclear power, partly as a result of the Chernobyl accident and partly due to an unfounded belief that a Nuclear power plant is a nuclear bomb waiting to go off, which is simply not the case. It is in fact scientifically impossible for the fuel within a nuclear reactor to form the supercritical mass required for a nuclear detonation. The other cause for concern is the disposal of waste fuels, personally i have no problem whatsoever with the idea of digging a big hole in the desert and burying it, we dug it out of the ground we may as well put it back, and the Australian outback is geologically stable so there is no real concern from earthquakes or other siesmic events. In any case the development of Generation IV nuclear reactors is well under way, which will singnificantly reduce the amount of waste that needs to be disposed of. Nuclear power is still a non-renewable energy resource, but it certainly appears to be a good interim solution whilst solar technology is improved and the real holy grail of renewable energy production is perfected - Nuclear Fusion.

Bob Brown and his party of hippies jump up and down about Australia not signing the Kyoto protocol and yet when Howard suggests an idea that will substantially reduce Australias Greenhouse Gas emmisions he doesnt like it, what a pack of hypocrits, they will only be happy when we are all back to living in caves.