Good try at a throwaway line there, Protagoras.

>>the only significant number of reactors under construction are in China, Russia, South Korea and India<<

It may have escaped your notice that those four countries represent 40% of the world's population.

I'd say that is "significant".

"It may have escaped your notice that those four countries represent 40% of the world's population."

Well no it hasn't Pericles nor has it escaped my notice that Australia emits a whopping 19 tonnes of CO2 per capita and the US emits 19.7 tonnes of CO2 per capita.

However, the US has the highest number of nuclear reactors in the world and is one of the largest polluters on earth and has been for the last 100 years. Are you able to dirty up the maths to fit those nuclear facts in with your ideology?

Twenty five reactors in 40 years for Australia to produce just 30% of electricity requirements? Not likely!

The projections of the Howard government’s nuclear dream is a delusional impossibility and will do nothing to mitigate the pollution caused by multi-national corporations plundering Australia’s gold, nickel, tin, lead, uranium etc or save WA’s Jarrah forests from the grim reapers pillaging its bauxite and erecting filthy alumina plants, gold and nickel roasters and massive tailings dams.

What say you about Bauxite Resources Ltd acquiring 23,000 square kilometres of mining leases of private and public land including farms, state forests, national parks and other reserves across 37 different local government areas in WA? Good huh?

But then you have the U beaut Gen III dud, Finland's Olkiluoto 3 (OL3)occupying an excavation site which is the size of 55 football fields.

This reactor is well behind schedule and 75 percent over budget. Some 3,000 construction deficiencies have been identified at the Finnish site.

There have been a string of serious problems and the safety regulator is questioning the designs for the reactor's nerve centre - the Instrumentation and Control system. Of course Areva, France’s discredited nuclear giant, offers the usual implausibilities while they fiddle with the unknown, manufacturing more stuff ups than Mr Bean.

What do you propose while they're fiddling, the planet's cooking and the 20th century grim reapers you support (with or without nukes) lead a good part of humanity into a hell devoid of a sustainable biosphere?

but protagoras,

Production of metallic silicon in WA is *dependent* upon fine charcoal derived from jarrah chips.

Those chips are a *necessity* anyway.

By logging Jarrah for other purposes (like aluminium production), we are effecttively *saving* some other jarrah.

It's *all* good.

surely.

anybody?

Rusty

Solar panels on the roof, ceramic fuel cells in the garage. Throw in efficiency measure and we can easily cut carbon emissions by at least 50% in the short term.

Eventually the hydrogen economy will develop. Roofs covered with titanium dioxide solar technology would use the sun's energy to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen generated would be compressed and stored for electricity generation for the home or refueling your car.

Wind, wave, solar, tidal, hydro...this planet is awash with sources of clean renewable energy. New technologies for harnessing that energy are being devised and coming on line all the time. What is missing is governments with the guts and vision to provide the incentives to develop those technologies while regulating the dirty technologies out of existence. There are also energy sources with relatively low carbon emissions, e.g. gas, that could also readily supplant dirtier technology in the short term.

The only thing holding us back from a sustainable future is greed and ignorance.

Big energy is using every trick in the book to prevent the decentralisation of energy generation.

Nukes are another puff of their smoke up your ..... only this time the contamination and cancer potential lasts for thousands of generations.

maate, we're pouring billions into the renewables and have been for many years now, with bugger all to show for it besides more prophesies about how good it is and how simeple it is if you just throw more money at it.

recently $90M was thrown into Tim Flannery's interests in thermal rocks, but the holes collapsed and had to be abandoned, just one example of p*ssing away $.

"What is missing is governments with the guts and vision to provide the incentives etc." rubbish,the government is investing, the technologies are not up to it.

We can't even build a national road or rail system, or insulate houses effectively, let alone changing the way a national electricity or energy grid works.

This is a massive engineering problem, far more massive than anything done before, the Snowy Mountains Scheme is trivial compared to this.

It will take years just to plan it.

To get rid of dirtier technologies, before the renewables are mature enough to take over is just dumb, and it won't happen.

The only mature energy source reliable enough to take over from coal worldwide is nuclear.

Gas, we'd have just as much to do we'd just put off the inevitable running out of that resource as well.

The "Caldicotts" have stopped the development of nuclear which could have taken up the slack, so we have no means to take up the slack at all. I admit it, they won the propaganda war hands down, somewhat like Beta versus VHS, the poorer technologies came out on top thanks to people who thought coal was OK back in the 70s, now we know better.

As much as people try to make it sound simple, that you just have hydrogen batteries in your garage. Well no thanks, that's a bomb, if someone had a house fire, from their poorly installed insulation, then you would have a bleve(look it up)and heaven help your neighbours, and their hydrogen bombs.

There are a lot of problems with home storage of fuels and energy, it's not simple. The devil is in the detail.

“The only mature energy source reliable enough to take over from coal worldwide is nuclear.” Gulp!

“The "Caldicotts" have stopped the development of nuclear which could have taken up the slack, so we have no means to take up the slack at all. I admit it, they won the propaganda war hands down,………”

Well I'd say the propaganda is all yours rpg because surveys have revealed that the majority of the Australian public are well informed (despite your innuendo) and have said “No” to nuclear power and that includes the most recent survey the devious and discredited ANSTO fudged!

In fact, Mr Howard was unceremoniously dumped after he bludgeoned the Australian public with a 288 page manual on the "benefits" of nuclear, prior to the last election where his cronies, in gleeful anticipation, formed a nuclear company, in the mistaken belief they'd make a killing. Tough!