Whatever one says will never be enough to dissuade the purveyors of this kind of recycled tripe about the horrors of nuclear energy. But I never cease to be amazed that the folk who are terrified about radioactivity are the very same who will sit in a treetop in blizzards for 6 months or lie down in the mud in front of a bulldozer. It's weird. Perhaps even more weird is their propensity to offer free business advice to any industry of which they disapprove. Very touching.

This is straight alarmism where the "facts" presented are obviosuly wrong.
This statement:
"Uranium mining causes severe and sustained damage at and around mine sites, especially through the production of large volumes of long lived radioactive mine tailings."

Quite false. the degree of radioactivity in any mine depends on the ventilation. It has nothing to do with the ore being mined. I don't believe they even bother with special protection for those working in the mines with the ore. It seems highly unlikely the post-treatment tailings would be a problem at any stage, particularly as, by definition, they should have less uranium in them than the ore itself.

What may be a problem is the chemicals in any run off from on-site treatment, but that is a matter for existing mining regulations.

I think the best uranium deposits will be just over the SA border in the 'Curnamona' geological province that includes Radium Hill. Whether or not the NSW Bayswater B baseload station needs to be built is unresolved with declining electricity demand. However since a couple of big Victorian brown coal power plants (Hazelwood, Yallourn) have put their hand for 'contracts for closure' perhaps NSW black coal or nuclear will have to take up the slack. Even if they don't eventually we're meant to reduce CO2 by 50-80% so most of the big NSW black coal power stations will have to be replaced. The signs are coal seam gas won't be cheap enough in the long run and coal based CO2 capture appears to be a dud.

While I doubt NSW will find much uranium I think nuclear power is on the cards for the State. Perhaps a north coast site will be less problematic than the Hunter Valley though new transmission may have to be built. Logically I think SA and Vic should consider nuclear before NSW.

Basically agree with the patent pragmatism of Peter Lang's informed commentary!
One option that come to mind is the pebble reactor, which can be mass produced in small modules and the trucked to site to begin almost immediately generating power. The pebble reactor describes a process where small marbles of fissile fuel are encased in a grapefruit sized balls of carbon, able to achieve a fissile reaction but never a meltdown. To reiterate, the fuel design means, there is never ever any likelihood of a fissile fuel meltdown, even where the coolant, helium, is stopped/turned off!
And would I want one in my backyard?
Yes, given I already have a coal-fired one there and vastly more health concerns; than I would have too endure, with a small pebble reactor doing duty.
These very small, very safe reactors could be located comparatively close to intended users, to reduce transmission losses, which still must be paid for by the end user.
Moreover, this would result in much more reliable localised supply and significantly reduced costs! Possibly lower than rock bottom coal fired power costs?
Other than that, we could also build modest thorium reactors, which would likely produce even cheaper carbon free power; and, no weapons spin-offs.
We have around 40% of the world's known Uranium and even larger reserves of thorium, currently a waste product of rare earths/mineral sands processing!?
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty,

No need to lock in on one design. No need to pick winners. Instead, we should encourage competition. Let's just remove the barriers, then competition will do its thing - give us the technologies that best meet requirements at least cost.

There are many small modular nuclear power plant designs. Many have been held up in the US Nuclear Regulatory Commissions processes for very many years. Here is one example and you can see other in the links on the left margin: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced/hyperion.html

Okay - I made an effort to read "A Question of Balance".

It quoted heavily from The Stern Report, which was clearly an attempt to reconcile physical reality with the cult of economics, growth and money. They had to twist themselved into pretzels in order to arrive at an inconclusion.

How you can conflate all of this into an appeal for nuclear energy is beyond me, unless you assume the rest of us don't think.

The nuclear boondoggle requires vast inputs of precious liquid fossil fuel. Will we have sufficient resources left to clean up after ourselves when it has inevitably been reduced to a stinking rotten radioactive slag heap? Why should our children be saddled with this?

Once having lit the nuclear fire, it doesn't go out... that's a fact. Just ask the martyrs attending Fukushima Reactor 4 spent fuel pool. And don't give me all that flannel about reactor design. The reality is that the remediation will cost more energy than all the "cheap" electricity that Reactor 4 ever produced! Same for all the rest.

A Question of Balance begins with a quote from Leonardo, "Simplicity is the highest form of sophistication". I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this irony.

The future will be simpler whether we like it or not. It's back to the daily drip of sunshine, because nature always bats last.

You can stick the nuclear fire where the sun don't shine.

.... both literally and metaphorically.