bugsy wrote "but there is absolutely no evidence of a planetwide extinction event looming on the horizon for us. Unless you want to count those pesky asteroids....."

er... if you look at all the 'material relevant factors' you will see that we have whittled away at the dynamic balance of life sustaining nature to now where we have moved to the edge of the system where one catastrophe can topple our whole ecosystem...

eg in the past the forrests like amazon (the lungs of the world) used to produce some 40% of world o2 and now its daily rainfall has diminished, and stopped to drought. from factors like deforestation affecting critical tree density to lower air humidity to affect the self sustaining cycle of daily rain. We are relying on plankton to produce our only source of o2. A virulent virus that wipes out plankton, or out of control algae affecting most of the ocean and game over... for all o2 relying life forms on earth

If we go nuclear, murphys law applies. Something will eventually go wrong. If the mealtdown gets into our water table and underground water flow and spreads far and wide... game over as all life forms that depend on water will get radiated eg http://www.springerlink.com/content/372k7101tr402128/ of chernobyl affecting austrian water

So many examples exist to show we have put every life at the edge... smile though as now almost every person on the street has some awareness of this and so no destructive entity is going to get far without us noticing and acting to prevent further damage to earth which might include pulling the teeth out of these entities or enforcing an direct accountability...

Sam
Ps~keep your eye out on not just what the corporate media is parading, but more importantly what they are not as corporate interests used to rule and now look, see any of them accepting responsibility for foreseeable damage...

I keep hearing Doomesday scenarios from all the anti nuclear lobby, but I am yet to hear anyone come up with a practical alternative to supplying base load power in the next ten or twenty years. It is all very well condemning nuclear power as being a source of fissile material with which to make bombs, or Chenobyl type accidents. Have a look at the present state of Pebble Bed Reactor technology. It isn't too far off getting over those problems.

If all you anti nuclear geniuses out there can come up with some answers, then I will be glad to see nuclear power plants closed down, but if you want to reduce greenhouse emissions, there is currently no alternative that can be shown to work.

VK3AUU, I'm not anti-neuclear per se, but I have done a little homework on the subject. Pebble bed technology sounds great in theory, but my understanding is that it still has a mutitude of hurdles to overcome before becoming operational and therefore will be many years, if not in fact decades away.
That leaves us with current neuclear technology which, although it does work, continues to be plagued by cost and waste problems to which nobody has found a satisfactory answer. To make current neuclear technology even worse is the fact that so called "clean" neuclear is only possible by using very high grade neuclear fuel which is not only more difficult to mine and process, it's supply is rather limited. After the high grade fuel has been quickly expended, neuclear reactors will have to make do with lower grade fuel and the consequences that come with it, the biggest being CO2 emmissions similar to burning coal.
That being the case, why spend billions of tax payers money building neuclear power plants that will, in a short space of time, equal the CO2 output of coal fired plants? Not very clever. Then there's always the question of where to put the bloody things. None of them can be guaranteed to be anti terrorist. Better to face facts and start down a more sustainable way of life while we still have a chance to adapt. It's extremely foolish and selfish to suggest we can continue to keep on with our present greedy and self serving lifestyles.

A thoughtful item. Yes it is only a brief moment in the development of the human race, and all other species on this planet, plus some yet to be created. Neanderthal thinking and beliefs still reign supreme though. Like most seek God. So we are not that much further along from peering out of caves as yet.

What is disturbing of course is the apathy of Bugsy who can't see the problem(s). Bugsy will be staring into space wondering what went wrong seconds before he hits the window screen of life at 300 km per hour. We all know what the last thing to go through Bugsy's mind will be don't we. His derriere of course.

Doosday predictions.There's the climate, the tipping point has passed and changing light bulbs isn't going to reverse anything.

Most potential though lies in the hands of a moron or two. Bush has the access to create Doomsday and given his loss of support it is growing more likely he will use that power to show the US can still dominate. How many such lunatics have access to this same power? We don't really know do we? Cheney would have. Howard has a pop gun so we're not concerned there.

These people are supposedly leaders of the Free World. Yet they can't go anywhwere in public without shutting down all traffic and excluding all members of the public. Does that tell anyone what danger lurks for all of us? Just attend one of these visits and pull a cigarette lighter quickly from your pocket and see how many bullets head your way. Taser's, dogs, you will go down. Too late of course if you had any real intent but still.

Above all Mother Nature has her own plans and will let them loose as they develop. Man will never be able to predict or control this power. It's just nature and all we can do is try to adapt to it. Apparently. If we don't have the foresight to build pipelines from where the water is to where the water isn't what hope is there?

Airne,
You wrote "To make current nuclear technology even worse is the fact that so called "clean" neuclear is only possible by using very high grade nuclear fuel which is not only more difficult to mine and process, it's supply is rather limited."

Wherever did you get all this BS about nuclear fuel? What you are saying is completely wrong. I used to work at a uranium mine. The product of ALL uranium mines is "yellow cake", almost pure U3O8. It isn't difficult to mine or process, neither is its supply rather limited. This is the material which Australia sells overseas to the Chinese etc., who then process it into whatever type of fuel they need for a reactor. That is where it starts to get a bit harder.

It would be great, if you people would stop believing all the BS about the nuclear industry and learned some of the fscts. One thing is for certain, whatever we use as sources of clean energy in the future is going to cost us a lot more than we are paying at the present. None of it is going to be developed quickly and perhaps time is not on our side.

VK3AUU - Here is the most interesting solar technology I have found to date. I encourage all persons to peruse this site:

http://www.nanosolar.com/

It would appear to be at the cutting edge of solar power development.

"Nanosolar is poised to produce enough to generate 430 mega-watts of electricity a year—four times the amount produced by all solar plants in the U.S. combined. Perhaps more importantly, Nanosolar is the first company to figure out how to produce these cells cheaply. How cheaply? Less than $1 per watt, or one-tenth of the cost of traditional cells."