Energy for the Future

According to one top scientist, to create the energy of one nuclear power plant, you would have to build 10,000 wind turbines. When people here this statistic, they straight away decide that nuclear power is definitely a better option. On the surface, the idea that nuclear power is better than wind power seems completely true. But there is a lot more to wind and nuclear power than meets the eye.

Let's start with the face cost. Both sources require a big amount up front, but not too much after. Nuclear requires a lot of maintenance, thus upping the cost, whilst wind turbines don't require too much maintenance. You can't skip on nuclear maintenance, because otherwise there could be a nuclear meltdown, which would make the whole surrounding area fairly uninhabitable. If a wind turbine breaks, it might destroy anything or anyone unlucky enough to be under it, and rebuilding/repairing it wouldn't cost too much.

Taking all these costs into account, wind power costs about $1200 per kilowatt, and nuclear power costs between $1500 and $2000 per kilowatt. So, wind power is definitely the cheaper option.

Then there is, of course, location. Nuclear power plants, particularly small ones like pebble bed reactors, take up a very small amount of space, whilst wind turbines, there needing to be 10,000 to create the same power as a nuclear power plant, take up a lot more space. Also, their placing needs to be away from buildings, on flattish surfaces and out of the path of migrating birds. They also need to be built near meteorological towers, so incoming winds can be measured, and in places where there will be strong wind currents. Also, you will have to build a lot of wind turbines to get enough energy to power even a city, so this also takes up a lot of space. Meanwhile, nuclear power plants can be built almost anywhere, as long as they are on stable ground. On this aspect, nuclear power plants are a lot better.

Construction is one of the biggest issues with any power plant. There are materials which must be moved, people who must be hired and architects to be commissioned. Plus, the project has to be approved by the government, and get a building permit, which, depending on the plant may take many a year.

Nuclear power plants are quite a problem when it comes to building. They can take up to ten years to be commissioned, and then they must be built. Also, there are many, complex materials that are required in the construction of a nuclear power plant. Then there is, of course, the uranium which must be transported to power the plant. All of these construction costs and problems make building a nuclear power plant very difficult.

Wind turbines, on the other hand, are a lot easier to build. It takes only three to six months to commission the construction of a whole farm of wind turbines, and they require very few materials. They don't have complex reactors or expensive safety features; the most complex part of them is their gear box. The materials used in their construction (steel, aluminum, carbon) are all readily available all over the place, so transport isn't an issue. They are also really simple to construct. They are, compared to nuclear power plants, a lot easier to build, the only issue being the quantity and the locations where they will be built.

Then there are, of course, all the other little issues. Nuclear power, although completely safe in its production, produces a lot of dangerous, toxic waste, which is hard to dispose of. Coming into contact with this waste can cause genetic mutations, which will almost certainly affect your children. But it can be disposed of quite well. Burying nuclear waste miles underground, out of the way of humans, can be perfectly safe.

Wind turbines don't have many major issues, apart from the previously mentioned killing of birds. If they are built in the paths of migrating birds, they can destroy whole flocks of birds and endanger species. The other issue with wind power is where the turbines need to be built. Some people let them be built on their private land (such as farms) for a small price, but a lot of people oppose them being built on their land. If there isn't enough public land to build them on, such as on the side of big roads or public park, wind energy is not viable option for many towns and cities. Also, wind power relies entirely on strong wind currents, and if it isn't windy, power might not be produced.

All of these problems aside, you can see that nuclear energy and wind power are two of the best alternative sources of energy today. Others, like coal, oil, hydro and solar energy, are either unreliable or wreck the environment around them. If used in the conjunction, clean and cheap wind power and CO2-free and reliable nuclear power could be the two energy sources of the future.

Sustainability - Nuclear Energy

Nuclear Energy: How does it work? Is it safe? Is it effective? Can Australia support a nuclear-driven power system?


Nuclear power is a form of electricity produced by creating controlled (in other words, non-explosive) nuclear reactions, which are then used to heat up water, which produces steam, which is harnessed to produce energy. Commercial and utility power plants that harness this power use nuclear fission, the splitting of an atom's nucleus. They usually use uranium, the only naturally occurring mineral which is fissile (able to be used in nuclear fission). Australia holds 23% of the world's uranium.


Normal production of nuclear power is, essentially, completely safe. The only problems with it are the waste it produces, the health risks and environmental damage uranium mining causes. There is also the extremely odd chance that a nuclear meltdown, or an accident in the plant, may occur. Only nine major accidents have occurred in nuclear power's history (over 50 years), and only of which (the Chernobyl disaster) caused more than ten immediate deaths and major, permanent environmental effects. Chernobyl only happened because of a major, unusual systems test they attempted, rather foolishly. If nuclear power is in the right hands, it is as safe as any other power production.


The effectiveness of nuclear power is a subject of much debate. When compared to others at first glance, nuclear power is a lot cheaper than all other power sources. But this doesn't always take into account the "hidden costs" of waste disposal and upkeep. Unlike other power sources, the disposal of nuclear waste and upkeep of plants can not be skimped on, otherwise disasters such as Chernobyl could happen again. But cost shouldn't be the way sources of energy are judged.
Nuclear energy is also fairly clean, releasing a lot less CO2 into the atmosphere, the only real environmental risk it causes, apart from a meltdown, being radiation. It is also a lot more effective in its energy output, creating a lot more energy per ton than oil or coal (some sources claiming that one ton of uranium creates the same amount of energy as one million tons of oil).

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a time of exploration, for better or for worse. Although many great things were discovered during the Industrial Revolution, it was the beginning of the formation of a class system, which put many people in an unfair, hard-working place where they would have to work from a very young age. It was also a time of social benefits, like Work Unions and widespread education, and social deficits, like widespread disease and poverty. Its great inventions changed the way people lived, and still affect us to this day.

Although the Industrial Revolution was an important time in history, it was merely another time of exploration in the history of man. However, it was a period of rapid discovery and invention, and the start of an exponential growth in population. Rich manufacturers began exploring how to up production, and began creating machines like the spinning frame and sewing machines. This grew to the creation of factories, the need for more power (therefore the need for more coal) and the need for more people. From there the population grew, towns grew bigger andd people began exploring new things, like the concepts of unions and widespread education.

The Industrial Revolution was mainly a time of industrial exploration, but it ended up affecting things like social welfare. There were many good things, like the revamp of the education system, the starting of the Salvation Army and the creation of work unions, but there were many bad things, like child labour, widespread poverty, unfair wages (near the beginning of the IR) and widespread disease.

Beside all the great industrial inventions used in manufacturing and the like, the steam engine was the most amazing invention that directly affected a lot of people's lives. The steam engine was first designed by Thomas Savery in 1698 as a way of pumping up water out of a well at a high rate, and remodeled to drain coal mines by Thomas Newcomen in 1711. In 1763, a Scottish instrument maker named James Watt was given the task of repairing a Newcomen engine, and noted how inefficient it was, causing him to go on and up its coal efficiency by 75%. He teamed up with Matthew Boulton, and soon his steam engine was being used all around Europe. The steam engine was such a life-changing thing because it simplified so many tasks and took away so many man hours. It was also, obviously, later used as a mode of transport. But it also upped the need for coal, which forced coal mines to do things such as hire children at tiny wages. Even though it was a very good thing, it could also make a child miss out on half of their childhood.

The main impact that the Industrial Revolution made on everyday life was the pure simplification and acceleration of almost everything. Work could be done faster, places could be covered faster and life became a lot simpler for some. However, it did create a working class, which meant a lot of people had to work more, whilst others got off with not much. It also caused the population to grow, the growth of towns and in the end the creation of the modern city. It created all of the good things and all of the bad things present in our modern-day city life.

Man On Wire

Philippe Petit explored in almost everyway possible. He travelled to many places worldwide, sharing his love for wire-walking and street performing with many people, and made great impacts upon the people of Sydney and New York, with his Sydney Harbour Bridge and World Trade Center wire-walks. He became a cult legend in Paris for his street performing and Notre Dame wire-walk, and even more so for his amazing “coups” at the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the WTC. Physically, he explored things that were thought to be beyond human. Walking across a wire at 417 metres in the air is something that not many people could even dream of, but Philippe explored the limits and did it. In fact, possibly the easiest part for him was the actual walking. The set up was also an amazing thing. Breaking into one of the tallest buildings in the world and securing a wire between them is almost unthinkable. Also, his amazing feat broke many people’s thoughts of what is conventional. Only two and a half years after his WTC wire-walk, a toymaker named George Willig scaled the South Tower using special suction cups, doing an illegal but amazingly beautiful thing, very similar to Philippe’s feat.

Philippe was looked upon by both his friends and the general public as an amazing person. His charismatic personality attracted people to him, and made him, in their eyes, comparable to great historic figures, whether explorers like Columbus or Cook, or artist like Picasso and Mozart. He was, in some ways, more recognised by people, because he actually affected their lives and was part of their generation. Whilst explorers like Columbus and Magellan discovered new places, and even continents, Philippe Petit was someone that you might of seen, or met, or heard about in recent media. Old explorers and artists are, well, old. You’d barely ever hear about them on the news or anything, but you would hear about Philippe.

Phillipe’s natural aptitude for storytelling, combined with his amazing charisma, won him many friendships and good things. His ability to convince people to join him and help him in his crazy escapades was amazing. Almost everyone who joined him could not have been recruited by anyone except for him. Even when trying to obtain an object, such as a wire, he had an amazing ability to get by with what he had. When planning the Sydney Harbour Bridge coup, he managed to secure the wire by putting on a show for friends of the shop owner, and telling stories of some of his feats. This shows that he was naturally an amazingly charismatic person and a profound storyteller.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was an incredibly imaginative man, who, although being way ahead of his time with his inventions and painting methods, was not actually influential while he was around. He created and wrote about hundreds of things that nobody else would of thought of around the time. He even had his own way of writing things backwards and concealing things in his notes so his ideas could not be stolen. These special “codes”, although still possible at the time, are things almost no-one else would think of. But he also came up with lots of other ideas that were way ahead of his time, and would not be possible for another 400 years or so.

One of his first established, but seemingly incredibly far-fetched, ideas was his idea for an underwater diving suit. He presented designs for what he called “an underwater army”, showing a suit connected to a device on the surface that would allow for breathing underwater. He even took into account the affects of water pressure and used a specially treated material so the suit would not absorb the water around it and become weighed down. He presented it to the Venetians to help them defeat invading Turks, but it was never put to use, and never was until recent times when tests showed that the suit worked, although they found some mistakes which they believed were put in his notes on purpose. Really, this invention didn’t influence European people to do anything, just realise how truly great he was.

Another great example of his genius was his design of flying machines. Leonardo da Vinci loved birds, and also dreamed of seeing the world from their perspective; he dreamed of flying. Although slightly vague, Leonardo drew up complex designs for many flying machines, including helicopters and gliders. These designs have been tested by people today and many have worked quite well, and perhaps his designs influenced people to create the first gliders. There is no proof, however, that this invention influenced people.

But one of his most ahead of the time designs was his design for a cyborg man, a sort of robot. After much study of anatomy and dissecting many, many dead bodies, Leonardo put together all his notes to create a replica of a human made from German-Italian medieval armour and had similar joints to real humans. It was able of several humanoid actions, too. Even though the actual things the robot can do don’t seem so amazing in comparison to his diving suit and flying machines, things similar to this invention would not be discovered or attempted for a lot longer than his others. This was probably slightly more influential, especially for the time, and made people think it was okay to dissect people other than convicts and criminals, and opened up the world of anatomy to the world.

Although da Vinci’s inventions were absolutely amazing, none were actually, physically invented, and most stayed in his notes. These weren’t available for a long time, and were kept with his assistant when he died, and passed from person to person for a very long time. Eventually, though, they came up, and a lot of the things we see around us are, although not obviously, influenced by Leonardo da Vinci. Although he had almost no immediate impact on civilization, his long-term impact is amazing, and he truly deserves the title of the world’s smartest man of all time.