Protagoras,

You obviously neither have the desire nor intellectual horse power to vet the drivel you so happily regurgitate. If you actually bothered to read completely the links you quote you might not appear such a twit.

What links would you like for the SG of uranium, or granite? Puleez!

The calcs you posted are so obviously rubbish, and I notice that you have not tried to defend them. Non of Storm Van Leeuwen's papers are taken seriously by those who actually have real experience in the field. These calcs of yours are not the only ones he "accidently" dropped a few zeros.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Willem_Storm_van_Leeuwen

" among ORG’s staff, consultants, patrons and trustees is an impressive array of people trained in nuclear physics" Please name one currently on the staff.

I notice that Desmond Tutu is a patron of theirs. If you listen to the you tube clip it is clear that while he gives notional support, he has never heard of them before.

The uranium resources quoted are recoverable at US$86 /kg. Also mentioned was that there are orders of magnitude of uranium available at higher costs.

Considering enriched uranium makes up 0.7c/kWhr this is clearly not a limitation.

“The uranium resources quoted are recoverable at US$86 /kg”

”But, but, but ahhhhh......ahem” Shadow Minister (as the mad monk would protest), just how can 10.5 million tonnes of U be assessed when it has not been discovered?:

http://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/meetings/PDFplus/2009/cn175/URAM2009/Opening%20Session/3_112a_Ganguly_IAEA.pdf

And Mr Tutu has never heard of ORG but supports them? Wot? That’s some oxymoron! [Deleted for abuse] you then resort to Wikipedia. Perhaps you’re unaware that even nuclear despots are permitted to edit this nonsense and "Wikipedia’s" drawn its conclusions predominantly from the open pit Rossing uranium mine in Namibia – a JV between Rio Tinto and the Government of Iran? “Puleeze!”

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future was announced earlier this year, tasked with developing a new strategy for nuclear waste management in the US. This could potentially include options such as reprocessing and recycling of spent fuel - a major motivation for cancelling the Yucca Mountain Project.

However, sixteen nuclear corporations have now filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Energy seeking a suspension of payments into the country's nuclear waste fund because of the cancellation. That reminds me of Canadian miner, Mega Uranium’s arrogant threat to sue the Western Australian government if they maintained the ban on the mining of uranium.

Despots, hypocrites and liars rule!

[Deleted for abuse and poster suspended for a week.]

Protagoras,

[Deleted for abuse]If the IAEA says that there is 5.7m tons of Uranium recoverable at x price, it does not mean that only 5.7m recoverable tons have been discovered. [Deleted for abuse.]

Similarly when I said that Tutu did not know of the O.R.G BEFORE, I obviously meant before they contacted him, not when he was talking about them. [Deleted for abuse.]

Although I do not consider Wikipedia to be authoritative is has the benefit of often being succinct. To follow this more closely try this link. [Deleted for abuse]

http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/SeviorSLSRebutall

The issue with Yucca mountain is that if the waste is reprocessed, the facility will have nothing to store.

[Deleted for abuse.]

[Deleted for abuse]

I wonder if there is any value in responding to people who clearly are not interested in evaluating their own position in the light of alternative arguments.
Thus Shadow Minister seems to be merely an apologist for the nuclear industry. (Please note an apologist may or may not be a paid employee)
In an earlier post he asked me to provide evidence that it is possible for Australia to make a switch to 100% renewable energy for the generation of electricity. He may not have liked the response for I have heard nothing since.
Or perhaps he is less than impressed by my reliance on Amory Lovins - Lovins has consistently demonstrated the shortcomings of nuclear power:
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E05-04_MicropowerDatabase
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E04-02_EnergyEfficiencyTaxonomicOverview
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/S80-02_NuclearPowerNuclearBombs
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E90-20_NegawattRevolution

These are just four taken at random. The last one of these describes one of the critical problems that is ignored in the climate change debate - the failure of governments to demand that business uses energy more efficiently.
It could so easily be done - instead of allow a tax deduction for the energy used the govt could give a tax rebate for energy efficiencies. (The formula would have to be designed with some care to ensure that the efficiencies are real and not merely the product of imaginative accounting.)

Baygon,

I asked for examples of commercially operating renewable plants. The salt energy storage while a "comparative" cheap energy storage method is constrained by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which would result in significantly lower efficiencies, and to add this on top of normal solar collectors would mean that the cost is significantly higher than for straight solar.

As the technology is still in the development phase, cost figures on construction and operation are either not available or purely conjecture. (I stand to be corrected), but I would guess that they would be at least twice that per kWhr of straight solar.

The slides showing a requirement of 40bn a year would therefore be wildly optimistic, let alone the simple logistics of a project that size, and the crippling of the economy.