Is nuclear energy a clean source?
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Transcript
- Quentin
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It’s absolutely clean, the only by-products, are in fact you actually get water as a by-product from all this. Now if you can reach this point, then this becomes a sustainable form of energy. You do not have the problems with burning fossil fuels you do not have the carbon dioxide. So it is very strange that what we have is a process in the last 10/20 years of cutting back a lot of research in this field, and now they are beginning to have to turn full circle, reinvest, and they are actually talking about recommissioning nuclear power stations because of the risk of fossil fuel exposure.
Now you get some countries that are very proud of the fact that they are nuclear free countries. And New Zealand is one of those that has obviously had a long record and everybody remembers the Rainbow Warrior incident, and these things have got very messy, but I think there is no way to go forward into the future, and keep tangled up views from the past. You have to look at these things afresh, rules have changed because fossil fuels are dangerous, they are dirty, you don’t want to go back there.
Most forms of natural resources, oil, gas, even uranium, have a natural kind of period where we don’t find any more of them. There is this thing called the peak oil effect, and I was talking about this in Nelson last night, where you simply run out of these things, we are no longer finding any more oil. American oil production is down to half of what it was only a few years ago. So we actually have to already….this is completely on top of the global warming stuff start finding alternative sources. And if you think oil by the way means fuel for your car, this is oil that makes you know over a half a million different products that are in everyday use rely on oil, from probably the microphones that I am talking into, to the television sets that you are watching me on, to you know half of the bits of clothing, anything involving plastics, and we are running out of the stuff that makes it, so we do need to think again.