Dear Sue, I guess we will have to put up with yet more of this type of alarmism. I find it curious that as a GP you would presumably send a patient for the appropriate nuclear medicine, yet are willing to carp on about the low to medium level waste this creates.

The “electrically emotional” words such as Chernobyl are trotted out to reinforce more fear, uncertainty and doubt amongst the ill informed and vulnerable, shame on you.

By all means play your own version of King Knut ordering the tide to turn back and feel free to link nuclear war with nuclear energy just to add more fear. In the end, human progress in new generations of safer power generation will leave you far, far behind. As for renewables, you are welcome to them, just don’t keep wasting our money, you want it, you invest in it. Urban Elites are both affluent and passionately irrational.

The sad part is that you really do believe you can make a difference. The genie is already out of the bottle and we will have to make the best of it, and we will

“Disastrous though they are, nuclear accidents are not the only nightmare scenarios to be considered. For nuclear power and nuclear weapons, the technology is virtually the same.”

This is truly a remarkable observation, given that the technical details of bomb manufacture are classified and therefore not in the public domain. I have to ask what is the basis for this statement? As far as is known not even Wikileak has not been able to obtain the secret data on bomb performance, yield or isotopic composition.

However, it is known that the performance and operation of power reactors is unsuitable to obtain bomb grade Pu-239. A cheaper solution would be purpose built military research reactor. The Manhattan project for instance was entirely a military operation and did not predicate a civil power generation industry.

I am aware of the claim that in a test about 1960 the plutonium was obtained from a power reactor (presumably to show it can be done). However, as I observed above the technical details of how the reactor was operated to produce bomb material is still classified. The details of the bomb fabrication, including the management of decay heat and the isotopic composition also remain classified

There are many points on which I would disagree with Wareham but this sentence "For nuclear power and nuclear weapons, the technology is virtually the same" is difficult to pass over. Pardon me, but they are quite different matters. Wareham may mean that the fuel used for both comes from the same source.

To make a pile of uranium go bang(or just a nasty pop, if you mess up)rather than slow burn, requires considerable extra effort.

In any case Wareham needs to address the question of why terrorists or rogue states have not actually used nuclear weapons when, according to her, its all so simple. At point after the disintegration of the old Soviet Union grabbing a bomb from the Soviet stockpile should have been a simple matter, and never mind the hassles of building your own.

It never happened. The security services of the time were reduced to inventing nuclear thefts to justify their continued existence. So why didn't it happen? My own theory is that agents of terrorist organisations (as opposed to the suicide squads) are as reluctant as any one else to go near nuclear material. After all, they also read the western press which demonises the stuff.

Another is that even just to operate a finished bomb requires some technical knowledge. Okay, how do we arm this thing? How do we set the clock ticking like in those James Bond films? Does anyone have a manual?

Note, also, that most bombs would be made to be launched and detonated at (or above) the target area. Another whole level of hassle. How do you deliver it to the target?

We'll soon see if there are genuine alternatives to nuclear. Germany may end up building more coal fired power stations and importing nuclear electricity across the border. Short term Japan may run gas fired power stations harder which is not only expensive but won't get the long term 80% CO2 cuts we want. For irregular energy sources like wind and solar enormous overbuilding, new power lines and energy storage is required. This is not only expensive and intrusive but may require energy to be rationed at times such as a cloudy windless week.

Nukes just bubble away day and night. In half a century over several hundred reactors there have been three really major incidents, two of which appear to have killed nobody. Even nuclear terrorism is likely to hurt the terrorists more than the public. By creating alarm the panic is multiplied. As for waste disposal it will be minimal when fuel reprocessing becomes the norm. That leftover component can be buried down deep mineshafts in the outback. If society disintegrates due to lack of energy it's hard to see anybody good or bad removing that waste.

Sue Wareham should be recommending funding for research into safe thorium nuclear reactors. Uranium reactor waste was first used to make nuclear weapons not for electricity. Thorium nuclear research could be part of multi national effort with Russia, India, and China and Australia to produce a safe reactor. The largest new U S giant uranium reactors in South Texas have been dumped because of safety concerns about the nuclear disaster in Japan ; writing off $A 315 million already invested. (Wald, Mathew.2011)

The US from 1964 to 1969 used Thorium-232 for breeding nuclear fuel – uranium-233, for example, in the molten-salt reactor experiment (MSR) However most of the US test reactors were closed down as their primary concern was producing nuclear weapons. It is clearly time for the nuclear power generation to shake off its military past (Editorial New Scientist 2011)

Thorium nuclear power reactors, are needed because they are potentially safe and can be used to replace coal fired power stations to reduce CO2 emissions to a level that does not produce a genocidal increase in global warming. Without these reactors to bolster the development of renewable energy, the preservation of a democratic and frugal but healthy way of life will be impossible. Australia has 20% of the worlds thorium. The current policy of opposing the building of uranium nuclear reactors in Australia should continue. However the design and testing of thorium nuclear reactors for power generation in Australia is research policy that should be pursued w in this region as proposed by the Chinese government.

Hi Sue,

Nuclear power can not save the planet from further global warming since it releases additional heat. All heat above the solar constant will heat the planet in the long term.

Even without nuclear weapons countries can use nuclear threats. Imagine for a moment a ricidulous scenario where a war was about to break out between France and Austria (no nuclear reactors). France could not risk that war, and not try to defend itself but have to give in at the beginning. Would they start a war Austria would only need to destroy 2 or the of the 75 reactors in France to destroy the country. A country with nuclear reactors is not defendable. All the atomic bombs are already in place ready to be detonated by some fighter jets of the attacker, or even a shoulder supported rocket.

The waste will have to be protected and cooled for tens of thousands of years, and our grand-grand-grand children will not have any other choice then doing that, earning money and taxes and still risking their health. They will have to pay big in three or four thousand years - for nothing, better said for electricity we are using today. I am sure they will with us to burn in hell for eternity.

You said if we had no alternative we might use nuclear. I think even without alternatives no one has the right to leave that waste and that debt for those after us who will have to pay for nothing and no way to escape that situation. That is an utterly criminal behaviour. Lucas Heights and uranium mining must be stopped immediately.

(And don't expect too much sympathy in this pro-nuclear dominated forum ;-)