In response to Max Green: I’m familiar with the managed data that purport to show how much safer than every other form of energy production that nuclear fission is, but my sticking point is insurance, The nuke industry is all gung ho about uranium fuel until someone mentions public risk insurance. Who paid damages for Chernobyl being reduced to a wasteland? Or Fukushima? The costs to people in both cases were horrendous – and borne by the nation, not the industry. The Germans may have had that in mind in deciding to junk nuclear energy.

However my point is about democracy, not energy production. The entire issue that Max has raised, and a lot more, can be canvassed with the only stakeholders who have a right to decide whether Australia is to become a nuclear waste dump, namely the Australian people. Not pollies and officials purporting to represent our interests. Only we can express our interests. By referendum.

In a democracy, referenda would also settle other major issues such as whether the stakeholders (all who are affected by it) do or don’t permit the opening of huge coal mines, or the port facilities that threaten the Great Barrier Reef for example.

The Greens by the way have a visceral loathing of democracy. In WA we had had three referenda on daylight saving, and said no to the lot. After all that the issue came before the Legislative Council and the Green MLCs, despite entreaties to speak for the people, debated the issue as though it was about the pros and cons of daylight saving – and waved it through. So we were stuck with a couple more years of it following which Barnett, thinking we were cowed enough to agree, put it to referendum a fourth time. We again said no, and the big end of town gave up on it. Gone! Any controversial major matter of policy should in the end be decided by the people. Including opening Australia to nuclear waste dumps. Electoral voting doesn’t cut it.

You obviously need to read about Kerala, India, to understand what an absolute farce abandoning Fukushima was. Seriously! Kerala is 3 times more radioactive, and have *less* cancer. The human body seems to adapt.
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/nuclear/five-surprising-public-health-facts-about-fukushima

You also need to read a bit more about modern reactor technologies that would have politely refused to melt down at Fukushima. LFTR's *cannot* melt down, they're already a liquid! The moment there is a power failure the reactor fuel drains away to a safe drain tank where it *cannot* react: there are no moderator tubes. This is gravity and laws of physics stuff. When was the last time gravity failed?

And IFR *cores* are designed to expand as they overheat. When the fuel pellets expand too far, the nuclear reaction shuts down. Some people call it built in 'neutron leak'. The EBR2 was a perfect example of a IFR prototype, and they ran a TOTAL power cut test that famously passed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor

Besides, if we take Dr James Hansen seriously on climate change, maybe we should take him seriously on the solution?

“Can renewable energies provide all of society’s energy needs in the foreseeable future? It is conceivable in a few places, such as New Zealand and Norway. But suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/08/05/hansen-energy-kool-aid/

Australia has a lot of deserts. We could build them out there with massive cooling towers so they don't require as much water.
1. There won't be a melt down with modern reactors
2. Even if there is through some FLUKE series of events, Australia has lots of desert. We can abandon a bit.
3. Statistically, I would rather *yesterday's* history of Gen1 and Gen2 reactors than climate change! One Chernobyl every generation (now impossible!) would be preferable to climate change! We can manage one Chernobyl every generation. (You haven't really addressed coal which is one Chernobyl EVERY DAY!) But climate change? Sorry. That's game over.

Hi Jules,

My limited understanding is that Chernobyl was one of the first generation reactors and was about to be de-commissioned when it blew up, thanks to Soviet bureaucratic inaction and incompetence. It was a sort of worst-case scenario. And it was thirty years ago, many generations in nuke-life.

I wish more people would drive over, or around, Australia. It's a dirty big country, as we used to say. Bloody big. And if they can store nuclear waste at Lucas Heights for decades, and in your local hospital, why not in Midlanowea ?

If global warming is aggravated because of the burning of coal, then it makes the building of nuclear power stations more imperative. Isn't that so ?

Joe

Not surprisingly, the question of democracy is being bypassed by intricate discussion of the technological pros and cons of turning Australia into a nuclear waste dump, against the background of the war on CO2 which in my own opinion and that of many others is the most comprehensive attack on science by faith masquerading as science since the eugenics boondoggle. This discussion of nuclear energy in general and burying the world's nuclear waste in Australia in particular belongs in a public debate preceding a referendum to decide the issue for the 23 million Australian stakeholders. Not the pollies. Not corporate business. Not officialdom in any of its forms.

My own pitch in such a debate would be centred on the persistent failure of those who benefit financially from nuclear energy (and weapons) production to agree to a public risk insurance policy to pay for any deleterious results of the uranium cycle from its womb to the tomb. If it's as safe as its proponents claim, insurance premiums would be cheap and manageable. If not, then not.

As a sideline, one must wonder why the companies that seek a piece of the uranium action don't invest in thorium. My suggestion: thorium produces energy but not weapons, and the Yank military industrial complex is behind the drive for nuclear power.

Just to be paranoid for a minute, if you were in charge of a large company involved in the nuclear industry, who would you fund - your fellow-energy-producers in coal or oil or gas, or the Greens ?

Do we see the Greens going on about uranium and the dangers of letting it sit there in the ground ? No, we don't. Instead, we hear screams about coal and oil and gas. Given that nuclear energy is an obvious(if unspoken) alternative to these CO2 producers, are we all being set up by the Greens to accept the nuclear alternative ?

You know it makes sense.

Joe

Oh, right, so EmperorJulian pretends to be all about saving democracy, and not intricate technological pro’s and con’s, and then of course *proves* that he just wants to bypass *actual* technical pro’s and con’s in the interest of his opinion about those technical bits.

EG: “CO2 which in my own opinion and that of many others is the most comprehensive attack on science by faith masquerading as science since the eugenics boondoggle”
Oh, right, it’s all a conspiracy. Quick, let’s pretend we’re saving democracy while forgetting that climate change is basic physics discovered by Joseph Fourier nearly 200 years ago!

EG: “If it's as safe as its proponents claim, insurance premiums would be cheap and manageable. If not, then not.”
An incredibly complex intricate technological discussion is bypassed by a gigantic leap of faith in the insurance industry.

Here are 2 gigantic leaps of faith: 1. Global Warming is a Conspiracy! 2. Nuclear safety is best measured not by nuclear experts (or, let’s say, historical statistics!) but by an insurance corporation. Yeah. Like they understand neutron leak and liquid reactors!

Dude, take the tinfoil hat off. It seems to be a little too tight!