Well this ostensibly objective study predetermines its conclusion from the outset by clinging to the furphy of "baseload power". A smartly managed grid doesn't need a single "baseload" source.

That's interesting Geoff, perhaps you could tell us where one of these smartly managed grids could be found.

If you find one, please go tell the Danes about it.

As I'm sure you know, they are a top wind power nation, & they can't do it. Your superior knowledge would be welcomed I'm sure.

I'm also sure you know, but don't want to admit, that those Danes have to sell most of their wind power to Sweden, for a pittance, just to get rid of it. They can't use it, as it destabilises their grid.

Those cleaver Swedes use the cheap power, when the wind is blowing, to pump their hydro water back up hill, to use again to generate useful, controllable power, when they want it.

I would expect any one interested in this debate to also know, that while the Danes are pushing their troublesome wind power over to Sweden, they are simultaneously buying sensible controllable "grid ready" nuclear power from France, to supply their demand.

You may be right that a grid doesn't need a single source of base load power, but what it definitely doesn't need is a destabilising dose of wind power. Just go ask the Danes.

In my experience those who recommend a "mix" of power supply always want to add unreliable, expensive power into that mix.

There are so many “if and or” items which could be brought into discussion on the arithmetic of nuclear power. As a result, any number of cost outcomes relative to other energy sources that the issue is a woolly pup. As has been pointed out, “baseload power” is one of them; decommissioning to adequate community standards another; etc..

If nuclear power is so arithmetically sound, I would expect private industry would be keen to make a buck by going it alone: - no Government subsidy, get insurance cover, purchase their own powerhouse site, and provide adequate bond for decommission-and-clean-up at the end of its tenure. Considering the astronomical subsidies which nuclear has had over the past half-century, it is not reasonable for Governments to mollycoddle it further.

Australia has so many alternative energy sources that it can invest in, nuclear has one major thing going against it (in my humble opinion at least) and that is - toxic waste. Which ever way you look at it, it's not something that you can simply shrug off.

The only difference in the toxic waste between wind & nuclear is the huge volume generated in the up front building of those damn wind things.

Start with the result, in China, of the mining, & refining of the rare earths used in the electrical gear, which is horrific, through to the manufacture of the cement in their construction.

We should have grabbed all the nuclear waste we could get, in a service to mankind, [one of self service like the UN], & stored it free of charge, it's going to be worth as much as our uranium, for reprocessing in the near future.

In a power hungry world, & getting hungrier, you don't really think all that energy is going to be allowed to go to waste do you?

Well, on Chernobyl, it depends whose arithmetic we use.That of the New York Academy of Sciences or WHO’s.

WHO estimates 50 deaths already and potentially, 4000 as a final total. Independent researchers from all over the world, estimate 985,000 by 2004.



See Yablokov, A., Nesterenko, V. and Nesterenko, A. Chernobyl: consequences of the catastrophe for people and the environment. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1181, Wiley Blackwell, February, 2010. (330 pages, 800 references)


Gavin Mooney