Byork,

re your comment,
"The good news is that in 2006, the US, Russia and the EU agreed to build the world's first nuclear fussion reactor"

It may also interest you that on the SBS news last night, there was an item on how, in July 1975, Soviet cosmonauts and American Astronauts shook hands in space. See
http://en.rian.ru/science/20100721/159896958.html

I would like to add that you have missed my points entirely.

See Rocky Mountain Institute's "Forget Nuclear" article, at:
http://www.rmi.org/cms/Download.aspx?id=1802&file=ForgetNuclear.doc&title=Forget+Nuclear

What applies to nuclear electricity also applies to fusion electricity, in spades. Neither can hope to compete with cogeneration and end use efficiency measures.

Not to mention the points I made above.

But I'm glad that the Ruskis and the Yanks shook hands in Space.
The world's a better place for that, don't you think?

Sir Ivor, I would take you more seriously had you not included wind power along with solar. Wind power is a costly and inefficient joke, as this article originally published in The Guardian reveals: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/4527

Solar cannot, as yet, provide primary base load power to run industry. But it's not about running industry, it's about extending it, and also extending human creativity and productivty in the interests of a better world. Thinking BIG rather than small. Nuclear fusion is by far the best for that - it basically solves the energy needs of all future generations on this planet. And once it is harnessed, who knows which other planets we humans may colonise?

Fission is a good medium-term response - as the Europeans are showing - but the future is with fusion!

It seems that your position is to stop R&D into it. How reactionary.

Sir Vivor, just like solar, & wind, co-generation is another joke. Alternate fuel works, [inefficiently] when you have a constant supply of the same fuel, eg, wood chips, but burning variable waste has never worked anywhere, when the truth is told.

It is just the sort of garbage we get from pie in the sky dreamers, who have no idea of the chemistry & physics controlling combustion processes,

You must have forgotten the Rocky Point co-generation power house. It did produce some quite expensive electricity burning be-gas, the residue of the cane used in the sugar mill, but that was only the for 5 to 7 months of the harvesting season.

The fact they could not get it to run with any other feed stock made that bit of expensive power horrendously expensively on an annual cost basis.

It was sold off for peanuts, at great cost to the Qld tax payer, & I believe was turned into scrap. The same fate that befell the hugely expensive Spanish wave power fiasco.

Why is it that it is always the totally impractical people, with no idea of the problems that promote these processes? I suppose I know the answer, but I'd better not post it.

HasBeen and Byork,

I admire your obstinacy, but not your judgement.Time, tide, economics and opinion are against you. But of course I would say something like that, if I really am a reactionary.

As for nuclear electricity, great for centrally planned economies, but not so good for capitalist paradises, unless the proponents are into socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor - - -

Both of you ought to read the RMI article - far better than your links, Byork.

Hardly an argument, Sir Vivor. I would think the growing public acceptance of nuclear power (thank you greenies for facilitating this with your alarmism about CO2) and the new countries that are planning to go nuclear, and the existing nations with a nuclear power component who intend expanding it - (go Obama, yay!) - prove you wrong in the claim that everything is against nuclear.

Sorry I cannot continue in this thread.

Mikk,

I am fully in favour of nuclear power for Iran. What I don't support is its weapons program.

South Africa has a nuclear energy program that runs without any enrichment, and any other country is free to emulate including Australia.

Sir Vivor,

Considering that CO2 emissions are about 6% higher since Labor was elected, and projected to rise by about a further 10% by 2012, with a further 12 coal fired power stations on the books, the push for renewable energy appears to be coping with only a portion of the increased demand.

Australia's emissions are set to increase dramatically by 2020, and without nuclear, there is no chance what so ever of reducing emissions.

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

France is the only industrialised country in the world to have emissions lower today than in 1990, and has emissions per capita nearly a quarter of Australia's.

Emissions can be reduced, but there is only one proven method of doing it. All other method can contribute, but cannot do it on their own.