Shadow Minister and Scott Ludlum,

Perhaps you could both provide more citations and links for the facts and opinions you rely on.

Shadow Minister, Ho9w many of these countries expanding their nuclear electricity programs are also nuclear weapons states? How many are not? Norway is building a reactor, I seem to recall. It is not a nuclear weapons state, I believe. Kindly corect me if I am mistaken. More details are welcome, with sources cited, of course.

Also, Shadow Minister, you have identified Scott Ludlum's area of expertise as " a graphics designer". What is your recognised area of expertise?

Sir Vivor,

Without trying to do all your work for you:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html

New reactors are planned in most of the nuclear armed countries (which include most of the world's population and power consumption) but also include power expansions in Finland, Sweden, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland.

I am an electrical engineer that has designed and built large power systems, and negotiated long term contracts with large power suppliers. I would not call myself an expert, but I am a long way from being a beginner in the terms of generation, distribution and consumption. I have also presented papers to technical conferences on quality of supply etc.

You can view the debate online here:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2010/03/18/2849810.htm

I am pleased to see the level of support for nuclear dropped after the debate. There were lots of emotive and fuzzy appeals brought by both sides, but from what I could tell the against side more solid points. It was nice to see your average Joe blow was swayed by this.

As a general comment, I found the style of the debate very good. The moderator did wonderful job. I hope there are a lot more of them.

As for those of you here arguing nuclear must be part of the solution, that question has two answers, depending on the time scale you are looking at. In the short term nuclear is the only commercial, working base load solution we have right now. However, there are several big buts that apply to current technology.

But 1: hideously inefficient, so inefficient that we only have a few decades of known fuel reserves if used to generate all our electricity needs.

But 2: it generates wastes that last on geological time scales.

But 3: insanely capital expensive. That has two sub-buts: we can't building them fast enough to fix the problem is almost an impossible ask, and technological improvements happen very slowly (we have been at it for 60 years now).

But 4: proliferation issues.

Add it all up, and what you have is an expensive, dirty, stop gap solution that may well take too long to build. Is this cure better than the disease?

Newer nuclear technology could well solve 1 & 2 and might solve 3. This would make it a wonderful solution - right up there with renewables. But, there is a but ... it doesn't exist, and will require billions dollars and decades in building experimental plants to make it happen. This is exactly the same position the other renewable technologies are in, so why give it preferential funding to nuclear?

I think a few people who went to the debate left asking themselves the same question.

Amicus - tnks for that.. the link worked. I shall read with interest.

Others - If Australia does switch to low carbon generation then the way forward is obvious. Retire the coal-fired plants and build properly sized closed cycle gas turbines. These are very efficient and operate with greatly reduced emissions. We will also need open-cycle gas turbines for peak and shoulder loads but, above all, we should dump wind as it distorts the network badly. Wind represents a vast increase in investment for very little return.
Switching to gas, on the other hand, will make major savings in emissions wqithout any of the controversy and political hassle of nuclear, and Australia has plenty of the stuff..

@Curmudgeon: but, above all, we should dump wind as it distorts the network badly

Surely we are better off just funding all ways of reducing our emissions equally, and letting the market decide? We have a free market solution for electricity retail now. If the investment in ruddy great transmission lines around the country makes wind unprofitable, then let the suppliers of wind power decide that.

The enthusiasm for supposedly "right wing" commentators to leap in and impose their of government regulations rather than let the market sort it out amazes me.

“Power reactors under construction, or almost so” (WNA)

“Almost so?” I’m intrigued with the World Nuclear Association’s hyperbole as I am with Shadow Minister’s disinformation:

“Given the rapid expansions in the nuclear fleets, and France being the only modern country to reduce CO2 emmission (sic) whilst tripling its power consumption at one of the lowest costs in Europe, (all this being well known last year) would indicate that Scott is being economical with the truth.”

The harsh realities for SM is France’s nuclear dilemmas which are well known where France was forced to import electricity from Britain last year to cope with a summer heatwave that had helped to put a third of its nuclear power stations out of action.

With temperatures across much of France surging above 30C EDF’s reactors were generating the lowest level of electricity in six years, forcing the state-owned utility to turn elsewhere for additional capacity.

In January, Electricite de France had nine nuclear reactors off-line, more than twice what it forecast the previous month, as a cold snap boosted power demand and prices. France had to import up to 9,000 megawatts of power a day to keep the lights on.

Out of >190 nations worldwide, the only significant number of reactors under construction are in China, Russia, South Korea and India with 5 under construction experiencing stuff-ups, cost over-runs and delays.

More hypocritical, as pointed out elsewhere, is the disingenuousness about many nuclear advocates on the issue. It’s ironic that so many of them hail from the Right, which normally harbours deep suspicions of big government and supports privatisation of public utilities, despite the fact that nuclear power would require massive public funding and the re-entry of government into power generation,

The majority of nuclear advocates on OLO deny that humans are altering the climate or are elevating global warming and are telling big government to butt out, so what is their motive for spreading falsehoods on nuclear energy (ignoring the scientific and empirical facts) and insisting that Australia's government go nuclear thereby exacerbating the already dire environmental carnage that prevails?