Ye that is the noise going around
Im pretty sure Australia mines that stuff they should at least consider nuclear power but their afraid. What is it, uranium, plutonium, Australia mines it and sells it to everyone else.
We have old coal power stations that need to be either refitted or rebuilt. But our state government is so overwhelmed by "climate change" that he closed old coal stations which was our reserve supply. Now in the summer we have to deal with "brownouts", scheduled blackouts, cos we haven't got enough power. Fools
I think hydro requires heaps of flowing water like Niagara otherwise the power needed to pump water uphill doesn't make it very cheap either i think. Stralia is a dry country, flowing water is not in abundance here
Uranium is usually "mined" by drilling a shaft and then pumping boric acid into the ground and then pumping the pregnant solution back out.
This solution is then processed to remove the uranium...and then refined a bit more.
Then the uranium 238 is blended with a bit of uranium 239 (from a breeder type reactor) and then layered over selenium rods.
This is just one rod... generally speaking you need a couple dozen of these rods for fission to occur which then heats absolutely pure water into steam which in turn heats more less pure water (usually river water or well water) into steam to turn a turbine.
The maintenance on nuclear power is astronomically high. And reactors can not be turned off or turned on with a switch.
So backup safety systems are usually 3 deep in every system. Even with these safety systems massive disasters have caused several instances of last ditch efforts to stop things from becoming even worse disasters.
In Chernobyl they pumped concrete into spaces under the reactor core to keep it from burning through the bedrock.
In a few instances they pumped unfiltered seawater (for lack of any other water supply) into the system to try to cool things down.
Seawater creates hydrochloric acid which will destroy all seals and plumbing. The reactor cannot be salvaged when this happens.
Nuclear power on submarines and aircraft carriers is really a misnomer of sorts. Yes they produce electricity from these...but the reactors are sealed and fueled in such a way that when they "refuel" them they actually are taking the plutonium out and putting uranium in. The plutonium is used in bombs and satellites to do various things.
Again...super high maintenance and risk. Also "spent" rods are highly radioactive with very few places to send this waste and the unfiltered water that they must sit in.