Well those who know me will already more than likely be aware that I am a staunch advocate of nuclear power being the safest and more cost-effective medium term solution to both our energy needs and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Alan Jones (the unbiased commentator that he is) had a little rant on TV about the issue this morning, which was suprisingly well informed and researched given the usual quality of his presentations. I wont go into a large amount of detail of the facts and figures because I've rattled most of them off to people countless times before, but there was one safety statistic that I had not heard before and is worthy of mentioning, and that was given at the Australian Iinstitute Of Energy Symposium in 2005.

One of the speakers, a Dr Dennis Jensen, gave an address in which he gave information about the safety of electricity generation in terms of deaths per terawatt. That is, for every terawatt (1000000000000 watts) produced, how many deaths would you expect to occur, this includes mining accidents, construction accidents, plant accidents (including chernobyl), and public disasters (eg a hydro dam bursting) here are the figures:

Coal - 342
Oil - 418
Natural Gas - 85
LPG - 3280
Hydro - 883
Nuclear - 31

There was no figure available for solar, which is disapointing, however chemicals used to manufacture solar cells are toxic so I'd imagine some do occur.

Another interesting set of facts presented was regarding toxic and radioactive waste. Apparently, coal fire power plants release more uranium into the environment that a fast breeder nuclear reactor of the same generation rating. In addition the coal plant releases several hundred tonnes per year of cadmium, lead, arsenic and other heavy metals which do not decompose. Meanwhile natural gas generation produces Radon, another radioactive chemical. The difference is that the waste from nuclear power is contained, whereas contaminants from coal and gas power are blasted into the atmosphere.

Dr Jensen also introduced a product called Synroc, which can be used to store nuclear waste safely without any risk of groundwater contamination.

Another development of note lately is the pilot program for Generation IV reactors. several of the 6 possible designs destroy the vast majority of the waste inside the reactor, severly reducing the amount of waste remaining at the end of a fuel cycle.

To generate sufficent power to fuel australia at current levels, we would need around 2500 square kilometre of solar cells, assuming the are all kept clean and operating at peak efficency, this obviously is not a terribly viable endeavor.

Yet further evidence that Australia would be foolish not to embrace the nuclear alternative