French Island (Victoria) - Proposed Nuclear Power Plant Site

Proposed Nuclear Power Plant Site

In mid 1967, the SEC applied to the Lands Department for the reservation of 400 acres (1.6 km2) of French Island for future construction of a Nuclear power plant. The plant was speculated to have 350-500MW generator capacity and would likely have been built during the 1970s. Other plants around Australia were also envisioned after the construction of a successful, fully operational plant in Victoria. If the SEC did decide to construct a nuclear power station, it would have continued to construct brown coal power stations as well for some considerable time.

Due to the low cost of brown coal in Victoria and mounting pressure from the anti-nuclear movement, the SEC subsequently decided against commissioning a nuclear plant and instead continued the commissioning of brown coal plants. These included the Hazelwood Power Station, which was completed in 1971. Nuclear plants were not constructed in NSW as access to Black Coal allowed for bigger generators. The declaration of various areas of many Australian states as nuclear free zones was a key factor in the selection of coal plants over nuclear plants.

Read more about this topic:  French Island (Victoria)

Famous quotes containing the words proposed, nuclear, power, plant and/or site:

    “I have always been, am, and propose to remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to myself is to say, this and this I have learned; thus and thus have I learned it; go thou and learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders the responsibility for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my authority, conclusions the value of which you ought to have tested for yourself.”
    —Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)

    “American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone.”
    —Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

    “He who has power can be king.”
    —Chinese proverb.

    “What do we plant when we plant the tree?
    We plant the ship that will cross the sea,
    We plant the mast to carry the sails,
    We plant the planks to withstand the gales—
    The keel, the keelson, and beam and knee—
    We plant the ship when we plant the tree.”
    —Henry Abbey (1842–1911)

    “I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)