Adventure Ausrama Blog

The Australian government has opened the way for Australia to have nuclear power stations. The Liberal/National Party government (note these are not liberals: they are right wing conservatives) plan to lift the ban. Anthony Albanese leader of Labor says that the ending the ban is fantasy. Why would Australia even want such a dangerous electricity generation system when it is fourth on the planet in coal reserves and is ranked even higher on quality coal. Just like Donald Trump this business government is in gaga land. Their fantasy is to put power stations and hide the waste on Aboriginal land - let Aboriginals die of radiation poisoning. We have only to look to Japan to see what can happen. Remember Chernobyl and One Mile Island? People are filling up the planet. There nowhere to pur contaminated waste. The current Australian government treat Aboriginals as third class citizens even after illegal immigrants. Aboriginals have had their unemployment benefits taken away. Their wiv...

Nuclear physics used to track australian waterbirds. Australia's native birds are on the decline - those damn humans! Yes, we are destroying the planet and we have to do something about it.  Obtaining data on bird numbers is paramount. Nuclear physics is the answer.  Researchers are examining feathers recently dropped by waterbirds. It provides information on where birds have been and what they have eaten.  The I-TRAX Core Scanner shows chemical changes over time. A mass spectrometer is also used to determine oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen isotopes. Feathers are composed of keratin like hair. Water sources have different chemical composition. This is stored in the keratin, so a map can be created of where birds have been living. The method of feather analysis is much cheaper than leg banding or satellite tracking. Members of the public can contribute. At present scientists are picking up feathers then posting them to the Australian Nuclear Science and Te...

It seems it is not only nuclear power that pollutes the earth with radioactive substances. For centuries coal and oil production has brought thousands of tons of polluted material from beneath the planet to the surface. Further processing concentrates it even more.  Apparently the sludge is left lying around and is not isolated from the population. For every barrel of oil pumped up into storage, ten barrels of polluted water is dragged up as well. Uranium and radium occur naturally below ground. In the US plastic pipes used in the production process were given to kindergartens to make playground equipment. The coal and oil industry has known for many years about the problem but has kept very quiet about it. While nuclear power stations are closely monitored, limits are set high for coal and oil which allows producers to pollute at will. Tests for radioactivity on dumps of sludge give readings 700 times higher than clean areas. With new housing estates being built on top of dis...

There is an energy crisis slowly creeping up on us. We go about our daily business enjoying the benefits of computer advances while not realizing that massive amounts of energy are being consumed. Mobile phones are designed with very little hard storage. Reliance on cloud services is increasing at a rapid pace. Many developing countries do not enjoy continuous energy supplies. When the electricity goes off so does cloud storage. In advanced countries aluminium producers were blamed for eating up too much power, now everyone is responsible. A new study, The Power of Wireless Cloud , clearly shows that the continuing use of electricity is not sustainable. Energy use by cloud services will be equivalent to 4.9 million cars over the period 2012-2015. This is known by comparing energy from petrol to power station input. It is not just the cloud. Wi-Fi will use more power than anything else. Computing networks are not "clean". Many do not consider that most electricit...

The last thing the world needs is an easier way to enrich uranium. There is nowhere to put the used uranium and the disaster in Japan shows the potential risk and damage from nuclear power stations. A new laser enrichment process has been developed by General Electric. It enables production of enriched uranium cheaper, quicker and in larger amounts. It is feared that "rogue" states will get hold of the knowledge and make uranium for nuclear bombs. Claiming that nuclear power is a way of reducing greenhouse gases is ridiculous. If more power plants are built more will be at risk from natural disasters. Vast tracts of land will be left uninhabitable as in Japan. It is ironic that GE has made this leap forward in partnerships with a Japanese company, Hitachi. They are talking now about turning the damaged power plant back on because the country cannot manage without it. Workers there will have to wear full-protection suits all day every day to generate electrici...

Ian Mcfarlane the Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources says Australia should still consider nuclear power. He must be off his bonnet if he thinks Australians will have a bar of this dangerous form of electricity generation. If a Coalition government seriously suggested a move to nuclear energy people would be protesting in the streets. Then there is the " not in my backyard " syndrome. No community would accept such a potentially toxic plant in their area. For Mr Mcfarlane's information lessons have been learned from the impossible situation in Japan where there in no solution to the problem. Australians do not want nuclear and will never want nuclear. Japan's economy is severely damaged and the Japanese will have chronic illnesses into the future. Much of the country will have to be fenced off, never to be used by humans ever again. Australians like everyone else in the world will have to pay much more for electricity as systems of clean coal power generat...

The world is in a tight corner and people are far too optimistic. Thinking that carbon pollution will cure itself is not scientific fact. Only a fool would hang onto the notion that nothing is wrong. The poles are thawing out and that is fact. Polar bears are dwindling in number as their traditional frozen feeding grounds get warmer. Butterflies that used to stay on in winter in southern England have moved north to colder climes. Those species that stay are getting larger. Despite coal power stations being the main culprit more are being built to meet Mankind's increasing demand. Much is said about nuclear power stations holding the key to a "clean" future. Used uranium is going around Europe at this very moment without finding a home in any country. Where will this dangerous product be put in the future? Unless it is blasted into space toward the sun there is no where for it to go. France gets more than 80 percent of its electric power from nuclear means, but this is th...

Countries are going ahead with investment in nuclear power despite very real dangers. Similar crises to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island will definitely occur in the future with catastrophic results for resident of neighboring nations of the country experiencing the problem. Where are they going to put the contaminated material after use? Putting it deep under landfill and into natural cavities in the earth have failed in the past. The only answer is to launch it into space on a trajectory to the sun. But what if the rocket explodes in the earth's atmosphere or crashes to earth? Nuclear power is also very expensive. It is too high a price to pay to reduce green house gas pollution. Electricity charges are already going through the roof in Australia and the green tax hasn't even been instituted yet. There is no way the use of uranium purchased from countries such as Australia can be policed. Once another country owns the uranium it can use it for military purposes, though all nuc...