What Powers Australia?

Countries are powered by a diverse range of energy sources, but in Australia electricity generation mainly has one source: fossil fuels. Coal, natural gas, and oil account for over 90% of the country's electricity. Hydro provides 7% with only 0.3% provided by wind and solar. Should Australia consider nuclear power? It is a complicated issue leaving many uncertain about its place in Australia's energy future.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• science literacy
• electricity sources
• australian power
• nuclear energy
• coal power
• electricity
• wind power
• hydro
• solar power

[Nathanchooper]

@1:55 and @2:11 at last, the voice of reason.

[diahorror]

its clean, apart from the waste

[geligapictures]

hey, can you comment a little bit about rare earth processing plant of Australia that is built in MY COUNTRY, Malaysia..

Why not just build it in Australia???

[DrSwNemo]

I'd like for there to be wind and solar power, but until prices come down and it becomes more commercially viable, nuclear is a slightly risky source of energy, but is still better than coal and should be used.

[LukeLAMMan]

@diahorror eating packaged food is clean, apart from the waste.

[supergsx]

@diahorror Really, he misspoke. It's completely clean. The waste is dealt with.

[Sh4d0wQu33n]

1:00 'We have many nuclear power plants in Japan. It's like... normal.' o.o Start of Fukushima I Nuclear Plant Crisis: 11 March 2011. Posting date of video: 27 March, 2011. EPIC bad timing...

[Horatio268]

Didn't thunderbirds have an episode with Australia and nuclear power?

[islagkage15963]

in theory all forms of our current power is nuclear or coming from nuclear power the sun is nuclear power. coal and oil came from different life forms such as plants and animals. the wind comes from the sun warming up air. and hydro power is partially from water evapourating and condensing to make rain which fills lakes and rivers to run the hydro plants and then the sun affects the tides ever so slightly tho the sun has a lot less pull than the moon.

[kindpotato]

wow the people aren't completely incompetent. A lot of the time veratasium does a very good job of making people look stupid. I thought that every would be against it or something even the pros outweigh the cons.

[pdieraue]

@imamadmad1 The question is HOW do we capture the energy from the sunlight? You have to build some sort of device capable of capturing that energy and converting it into electricity. It's a very difficult problem, and a lot of really smart people are working really hard at it, but their best efforts so far just can't compete with the low cost and high energy output of coal.