Protagoras, if Graham wasn't looking over our shoulders, I'd call you a patronizing git.

>>A little more lateral thinking may assist Pericles<<

But he is.

So I won't.

Yes Pericles, both you and qanda have both been a little snide since I jumped into the thread, but I think it's a low enough level that I'll ignore it unless Protagoras responds in kind in which case you'll both have wasted a post.

Rstuart,

I have posted my links several times as well. It only took me a few minutes to look through non anti nuke sites to find the answers, and see that the anti nuke sites are extremely liberal with the truth.

Most of the radiation from the spent fuel rods comes from comparitively short half life nuclides. The radioactivity reduces by 99.9% in the first 40 years, then by another 99.9% in the next 10 000 years. (after 1000 years it is considered low level waste) So the figures of billions of years are hogwash.

Reprocessing the waste recovers fuel and removes most of the radioactivity from the unusable portion, so that very little has high radioactivity.

As far as capital cost goes, a power station is no more expensive than many infrastructure contracts ongoing presently. The risk is typically political risk. The reason companies want government guarantees, is so that any limp wristed politician that wants to bow to garner votes by halting the building of the reaction will have to fork out huge penalties. (shafting the investor is easy with no penalties).

The clean up of tailings is a fraction of the clean up required from coal, iron ore etc, many of which also have a radioactive component.

"Protagoras, if Graham wasn't looking over our shoulders, I'd call you a patronizing git."

Well you just did Pericles and while Graham was looking over your shoulder too but that's not a problem because I've been called worse things than a "patronizing git."

The significant issue here is do you intend addressing the contents of my post or will you continue engaging in a side-step soft shoe shuffle?

All off topic of course but perhaps I should clarify my personal interests.
I invest in a range of listed energy companies. As far as Geodynamics is concerned, I am banking on them being a long term 'blue chip' investment for my grandchildren. No dividends yet and in terms of ROI, for me - zilch (unless you could call the warm and fuzzies a return). Anyway, at least I am putting money where my mouth is, be that as it may.

@Shadow Minister: Most of the radiation from the spent fuel rods comes from comparitively short half life nuclides.

Well, fine, but if you are saying 1000 is a short time to store the bulk of the wastes we have to agree to disagree. I was talking about the long lived waste, of course. There may not be much of it, but it dammed dangerous and does last millennia.

@Shadow Minister: As far as capital cost goes, a power station is no more expensive than many infrastructure contracts ongoing presently.

So we are comparing Nuclear Power generation plants to bridges and dams now are we? I don't see the point of comparing it to anything than competing forms of energy production, and the inescapable fact is a nuclear plant requires an upfront investment of billions before a single watt is produced. In the energy field it is unique in that regard, and this is why they need government guarantees. In the US, they are asking for $100 billion of them! http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf41.html I see from that link the US companies are also getting a 2.5 cents kw/hr tax credit.

My real point here is not that nuclear is bad, but supporting it over other competing technologies in this way is definitely bad! Let them all compete on equal terms.

@Shadow Minister: The clean up of tailings is a fraction of the clean up required from coal, iron ore etc

Wrong argument Shadow! Who cares how much it costs to clean up the tailings? All that matters is they are cleaned up and it is included in the final price of the electricity produced. Unless someone can point out a mine in Australia where this isn't happening, I don't see there could be a problem.