NIMBY Reality...

Great ideas - and the author's home, Byron Bay (or anywhere else in Oz) will accept with glee construction of the first Australian power reactor.

Pete

Good point Plantagenet.
How about giving us the lifetime costs not just construction?

and storage?

oh and FUKUSHIMA.

Never mind. just sit back with your rose coloured glasses and imagine a nuclear fuelled nirvana.

We should go to where we all know we are going to be eventually.

Fukushima is a bad example do you really believe we would build a Nuke Generator at Botany Bay ?

Wasting Billions on Carbon Credits is for the Fairies , lets grow up and not behave like Pusseys .

Wouldn’t a veritable forest of wind turbines all across Aus be a beauty?. We could prop about 25 on top of Ayres rock and a whole bunch more around and through all the capital city ‘burbs. About 250 in Rose Bay would look very nice with another 75 around Blues Point.

And then what happens when we get a real doozy of a windstorm like Scotland a couple weeks ago where pictures showed a wind turbine self destructing and raining fiery embers across the landscape. Should make the bush and mountain dwellers very happy.

Please replace my local stinking coal burner with a nuke as soon as possible and stop all the acid rain that must be neutralized in my fish pond after each rain storm.

Martin's plan is still a bit wild, calling as it does for 40% renewable generation. It is highly unlikely that we, or anyone else, will have a grid that could handle that percentage of renewables, other than hydro with its steady flow, any time soon. Certainly not in his time frame at least.

The really good thing about all of this is that by 2020 we will be well aware that CO2 is not a "pollutant", & is if anything an advantage in producing our food.

Surely once we have proof that CO2 is not causing any catastrophic global warming, we will override our greenies ratbags aversion to coal fired power generation, & we can get back to using our natural advantages for the populations benefit.

With our coal & bauxite, we should be supplying the world with aluminum, nor alumina, & doing it very profitably, as well as enjoying all the jobs that would create.

I really can't think of anything much more stupid than sending our coal, & our alumina to china, having them produce aluminum with our resources, then us pay through the nose for that aluminum. What the hell does it matter where the coal is burnt?

Oh dear.....no mention of peak uranium. With current and existing projected nuclear projects known and estimated uranium reserves factored in, viable short-term nuclear energy production will only last approximately another 25 years.

Stage IV reactors (Thorium) may be viable if the boffins can get them to work effectively.

Fukushima is out of the news, never mind the 600 tonne blob of molten material that is currently boring (burning) it's way through the earth toward the water table (it's radioactivity is so high it has yet to be fully calculated). Once it reaches this I can't wait for the advocates of nuclear power to duck and weave.

Clean Coal is a pipe dream, uneconomic and will never happen.

If you fully understand the true life-cycle cost of producing power you will discover that the energy returned on energy invested is actually negative. No nuclear plant on the planet has a full life cycle (including decommissioning and storage of waste) that is economically positive. Do some in-depth research and you will find the truth.