"Renewable energy is fast approaching the situation where it needs no subsidy"

Complete and utter garbage. I know what situation is approaching fast; the situation where those that promulgate such rubbish are dragged off to court to justify their claims.

In the meantime go and preach this drivel to the good citizens of Spain who watched their hard-earns walk out the door with the renewable energy sector.

As for Germany, you must be joking. Q-cell, once the largest solar panel manufacturer in the world and based in Germany has gone belly-up as have a host of other subsidised to the eyeballs renewable scams.

And after going all girlieman after Fukishima, which involved 45 year old bad nuclear technology, and closing its nuclear Germany is once again going after coal and gas:

http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/5143-climate-policy-on-ice.html

The only thing you will get from wind and solar is dark, freezing and hungry. It is a disgrace they are still being peddled.

4th (even 3rd) generation reactors are fine.
In Oz? Yes, but not at this point in time - we're not ready, in more ways than one.

The amount of factual errors here is just staggering.

"And in the total cycle from uranium mining to waste disposal, nuclear power IS a greenhouse gas producer"

As others have pointed out, a full life cycle analysis have been done for nuclear many times, and have often ended up next to wind in emissions.

"Let's examine the facts on the Integral Fast Reactors: It's true that with these liquid fuel reactors..."

This is the first major error. IFR is not a liquid fuel reactor. The IFR is a sodium cooled fast spectrum reactor using solid fuel pellets.
Molten Salt Reactors(MSR) use liquid fuel, where the fuel is dissolved in molten salts, which also acts as the coolant.

"But the volatile fission products evaporate from the molten salt..."

Completely false. The molten salt is an ionic liquid that forms very stable bonds with all fission products, except the noble gasses xenon and krypton that bubble out due to high operating temperature, which is a good thing since xenon is the by far the number one neutron poison.
Also, molten salts does not react with air or water.

"They are put into another chamber – they make steam..."

Except for the two gasses, all fission products stay in the molten salt. The heat is then transferred through to a secondary molten salt loop, which in turn is transferred to the working fluid of a closed brayton cycle.

"Weapons proliferation"

I will start by stating that proliferation is political problem. No technology will stop a country from obtaining nuclear weapons if they so desire.
Also, not a single nuclear weapon have ever been made using plutonium from a commercial nuclear rector. It has all been from reactors designed to produce weapons grade plutonium. This is because the isotopic mix is completely wrong, containing only ~56% Pu-239 while over 90% is required to be used in a nuclear weapon.

Continued in next post...

OK - so I have written about Integral Fast Reactors and Liquid Fuel reactors in an unclear way.

And I would be the first to admit that I find the study of all the different types of nuclear reactors quite a challenge.

My comments about thorium reactors related to the particular type of thorium reactor which is getting a lot of enthusiasm lately - the LFTR Liquid Fuel Thorium Reactor.
Noel Wauchope

Continuation...

"fast neutron reactors require a reprocessing plant nearby..."

A breeder reactor generates enough fuel from fertile material to replace the fissile fuel that is consumed.
The problem with solid fueled reactors is that the fuel pellets can only be used for a limited time before the strain from internal pressure becomes too high, and thus required reprocessing to extract and fabricate new fuel.
An MSR does not have this problem since the fuel is a liquid, and does not need a separate facility to extract and fabricate new fuel. Exactly how it operates depends on if it is a single fluid or a two fluid design.

"Thorium reactors themselves produce Protactinium-233 - from which uranium 233 a bomb grade material can be made"

Breeding of U-233 from thorium inevitable creates U-232 from (n-2n) reactions. The daughter products of U-232 contain very strong gamma emitters, making handling of fuel directly extremely dangerous and destroys electronics, making U-233 contaminated with U-232 unsuitable for nuclear weapons.

"Wastes"

Radiation is inversely proportional to half-life, meaning the longer half-life an isotope has, the less radioactive it is.
Cs-135 and I-129 are both weak beta emitters, which mean that they pose very little hazard thanks to their long half-life.
Even with its 211000 year half life, Tc-99 does not pose much risk because it is also a weak beta emitter.

"Cesium-137 and strontium-190, hundreds of years"

First, it's Sr-90, not Sr-190.
Second, they have half life of 30 and 29 years respectively, making them safe after 300 years.

"Protactinium-233 has a half-life of 32760 years"

Pa-233 have a half life of 27 days, not 32760 years. It is a step in the Th-232 breeding process which goes like this: Th-232 + n -> Th-233 > Pa-233 -> U-233
U-233 is the fissile fuel, which is used in the reactor. Neither it nor Pa-233 is waste.

"Because of the chemistry of the molten salt reactor..."

MSR is the only reactor that can be built with an integrated fuel breeding and refueling system that does not allow the diversion of fissile material.

Continuation tomorrow...

Well said, Uzza.

The article which started this thread indicates the complete lack of factual justification for the opinions expressed by this very much mistaken and illogical writer.

However, I am afraid that this is another situation where emotional preconception has bitten deep and the wound will take a long time to heal.

Unfortunately and to Australia's eventual cost, this nation is blessed with three very large sources of energy - fossil fuels (gas and oil), fission fuels (uranium and thorium) and sunlight. That we have, as a nation, embraced fossil and sunlight fuels to the exclusion of nuclear power, and for the flimsiest of reasons, is an error which our children and their children will have to remedy, because far too many have listened to the unfounded nonsense of the 1970's which has been amplified and publicised for the past 40 years by such as Helen Caldicott, who is quite possibly Australia's most dangerous export ever, when assessed on a pound for pound basis.