Shadow Minister,

Why not read the Rocky Mountain Institute material I have linked, above, instead of posting irrelevant and ludicrous comments?

Anyone going with the Sawyer strategy has my vote in a heartbeat. But in the absence of that, where to put my first preference? The "climate change is crap" Liberals, Julia Gillard's "let's abdicate our responsibilities to randomly selected giant focus groups" ALP, or the hopelessly anti-nuclear and economically innumerate Greens?

Actually, I think I could come at the giant focus group idea IF the government committed BEFORE the assembly to implement EVERY policy it comes up with. Then we'd see how fair dinkum they are about listening to the people.

Sir Vivor,

The polemic titled "forget Nuclear" from the RMI is a prime example of using worst case scenarios and extrapolating them to the entire industry.

The plant in Finland is the exception that proves the rule. The plant is being built by Areva who has recently completed several almost identical reactors in France on time and within budget. The plant being commissioned by the Finnish government has been plagued by continuous politically motivated design and scope changes from the "green" contingent leading to budget and time blow outs.

While there is cheap coal to provide power and political delaying tactics there is no serious motivation to tackle climate change. When there is, and the reality of high energy costs sinks in, the political landscape will change from necessity as it did in France.

As for ludicrous and irrelevant, your hot water comment was a corker. What next, How to fend off radio waves by wearing a tin hat?

That's OK, Shadow Minister, you just go on focusing on the trees, instead of grasping the nature of the forest.

I advise you to have a look at the graphs in the Rocky Mountain Institute article, and note the electricity costs attributed to transmission losses, in particular. Do you really think I would advocate piping hot water any extended distance, for any reason? The heat loss is significant at the household plumbing level, let alone scaled up toward centralised industrial or community heating.

But back to the forest:
Efficiency, co-generation and market solutions based on appropriate applications of appropriate technology are going to continue to outpreform nuclear electricity,
in spite of the billions of dollars of taxpayers subsidies,
in spite of the limited liability for disasters,
in spite of intrepid grassroots publicists such as yourself.

And folks who see the bigger picture are well informed by the fact that electricity, nuclear or otherwise, comprises only a fraction of the energy requirements of our energy-intensive lifestyle.

An accessible item on global energy consumption is available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption
and provides some global perspective(no doubt you will find an innacuracy or outdated figure, and of course you are always welcome in principle to enter into the wiki editing process).

See also
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/green-power-feasible/story-e6frgcjx-1225810715413 and

For an energy-flow diagram of Australia from a supply-demand economic viewpoint,
see
http://www.orer.gov.au/publications/pubs/energy-flows-2006-07.pdf
Direct solar energy input is not included, and so direct solar space and water heating seem to fall off the diagram. I'm hoping they fix that up next time.

Meanwhile, you are welcome to stay focused on those fatal errors only you see most clearly and understand best.

Enjoy your day, Shadow Minister

Sir Vivor, you seem lost in the woods.

Now you are trying to throw out red herrings as your arguments falter. Electricity generation in Aus is responsible for >40% of human generated GHGs, and while there are lots of other issues, this was not the intention of the thread.

Initial efforts such as efficiency increases may be cheaper than nuclear, they all suffer from diminishing returns and a lack of an alternative base load supply.

Given that energy demand is increasing at about 3% per annum, we are looking at having emissions at greater than 150% of 1990 levels by 2020. As long as the government pretends to be doing something with renewables etc, the prognosis is unlikely to change.

The overall picture is of energy conservation and greenhouse gas reduction by more economic and environmentally sustainable means than building radioactive terrorist targets and diplomatic liabilities, at the taxpayer's expense and risk.

I advise Shadow Minister and others who are interested in a transition toward a sustainable future, given our energy-intensive lifestyles and democratic-capitalistic expectations, to look carefully into Amory Lovins' arguments.

Lovins has repeatedly updated and refined his work over the past 30 years and more, and has been delivering solid results in terms of increasing the efficient use of coal, petroleum products and electricity generation and use. Nuclear electricity gets short shrift.