As far as safety goes, hydrogen is not that far removed from other gases. We use an awful lot of LPG and LNG (even natural gas). If it's so dangerous, we should cancel these gas export contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars? It comes down to engineering solutions with appropriate safety standards. Besides, any accident with hydrogen doesn't hang round to pollute the environment for thousands of years. Hydrogen is the future.

With regard to the $90mil blown on the geothermal project (I'll take your word for it although that has been disputed), it's no different to the money sunk into fruitless oil or mineral exploration. Win some, lose some. That's the nature of venture capital. Just ask those sinking hundred of millions, if not billions, of dollars chasing the clean coal chimera.

I've taken advantage of the Kevin's largesse with (extra) batts and a small solar system to start off and have cut daily electricity usage from about 7kWh to less than 4kWh. Most days it's pumping power into the grid even while we go about our normal business. Yeah, we were frugal to start with but we're no technophobes. I'm now saving for the ceramic fuel cell.

Did you look up ceramic fuel cells? Aussie tech, ready to roll out. Their output could easily be controlled by a wireless network and on top of their inherent efficiency over most electrical generation technologies they don't suffer anywhere near the transmission losses. There is your baseload generation outside of sunlight hours.

Build some state of the art gas fired power stations and shut down Hazelwood for starters. That would be a huge step to reducing our carbon footprint by 2020. Your reactor would still be in paper form sitting on some engineer or bureaucrats desk.

Nuclear is so 1950's. Why you'd bother with that toxic crap when we have so many inspirational alternatives is beyond me. It must be pathological.

I tired of nuke apologists doing their Pythonesque Black Knight routine and now we get their version of the Parrot Sketch? She's a gone mate! Not now, not ever.

qanda when you get into this insulting, frothing at the mouth mode, you're not worth dealing with.

You should have mentioned in your first post you had a vested interest in GDY, you bray about credentials which really just get you started in life, not to lean on forever.

I'm not here to answer all your challenges, I just stated my opinion, I responded to some of your questions, but now you have gone too far.

Go cool off somewhere, have a lie down and think about why you get into this position all the time, it probably relates to your lack of career success.

I've got a "vested interest" in environmental, ecological and economic sustainability - not only future geothermal base-load energy supply, if you mind.

Post doctoral work was my graduation to life. You obviously and absolutely have no idea who I am so your spray about me having had no career success is utter crap.

Maaate has an innocent naivete about the complexities of the issues the planet is facing in the next few decades - much the same as you do, like it or not.

On the contrary rpg, you should answer my challenges - as you expect others to answer yours.

I will cool off when petulant tunnel-visioned stick-in-the-muds like your engineering self start to use their 'assumed' knowledge to actually tackle the storm on the horizon. I will cool off when people like yourself start to apply themselves to a whole range of technologies that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels when the human population is expected to hit 9.5 billion by 2050.

In other words, I won't cool off anytime soon because the average joe/jill now expect people like me to stand up to the guff that the recalcitrant and myopic pseudosceptic trot out with gay abandon despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I think the question is worded badly. Of course nuclear is not the solution to climate change, climate changes....

Nuclear is the solution to our power requirements for the future, and we would be crazy in this country not to have a future plan.

Of course more economical use of power is needed now, but that is a stop gap measure and fiddling around the edges by governments is not the answer for the country's future needs. They have to make hard decisions and they don't seem to want to do that.

Solar power, wind farms, etc, is all very nice but it is quite simply not enough.

If governments want the population of this country to grow obviously people will need electricity, therefore, any government has to put long term plans for infrastructure in place. How can the country progress economically otherwise?

@Shadow Minister: there would be sufficient [Uranium] for at least 200yrs of total generation.

I have given you links for my claims in the past, Shadow. It would be nice if did the same.

@Shadow Minister: They are hideously expensive. Reality, they are still a fraction of the cost of "renewable" power per kWhr to build and run.

True. I should have been clearer. The issue isn't the kWhr price. It is the financial risk. The ideal way to build up any infrastructure is to start small, letting the earnings from the small beginings pay for future expansion. This is a low risk strategy because if it fails all you have lost are those small beginnings. Engineering wise it is wonderful because you can go through a process of continuous improvement as your experience accumulates. Most renewables can be developed in this sort of way.

This style of development is impossible with nuclear. Nuclear has a perfect storm of four disadvantages. Firstly, almost all of the money is spent on construction before a single watt is produced. Secondly, the plants have a long lifetime - at least 20 years. Thirdly, there is no such thing as a small nuclear plant. Combine those and it means you end up having to borrow billions of dollars upfront, before a single cent is earned, and then gradually repay that money over the plants 20 year lifetime. This in turns means for the planet to be feasible the borrowed money must be cheap, which depends on the entire venture being a very low risk enterprise. Which brings us to final disadvantage: plants have failed, so the risk isn't negligibility low.

Thus, they only countries you have seen nuclear development are those where the public purse takes some role in funding it. They are the only one with deep enough pockets to take on a financial risk of the size needed. This is true in the US today. The only reason the US is building new plants is because the government is guaranteeing the loans, so the interest rate drops to a viable level. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/obama-nuclear-plant-presi_n_463754.html

@Shadow Minister: Myth 3. They produce waste that lasts on geological scales. Reality, If one reprocesses the waste and store it for 1000 years, it is safe to handle and would only be a tiny quantity.

I suspect 1000 years is a bit short considering the half lives or same wastes are over the 10,000 range http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Long_term_management_of_waste , but regardless the civilization that gave rise to Nuclear has existed for only 200 years and has gone through a few major wars in that time. And yet here you are treating 1000 years like it is a long weekend.

The real issue is this discussion should be irrelevant. All that should be necessary is to raise the price of CO2 emitting energy forms until others become viable. Provided legislation ensure appropriate safety mechanisms are in place it doesn't matter what combination emerges as the winner - I am more than happy to let the market decide that. So, no nuclear should not be banned, not inside of Australia anyway. If it wins the battle in the short or long term than so be it.

The real issue is what the nuclear needs to be viable is risk subsidies. And they must come from the government. Minor R&D subsidies to get things started is one thing. Risk subsidies to fund an entire industry for 20 years is quite another. If industry wants to take the risk, let them bear the cost, just as all competing technologies must bear their costs.