Margaret:
Para 1: Tell us again, where the sodium issue arises - it is hypothetical, in part because it cannot contact either air or water in the manner suggested by you.
Para 2: Bureaucratic delay is not necessarily the same as justifiable cause. Especially in this case. As stated above, not a single death amongst the thousands of others has been due to nuclear issues. It's probable that none ever will be. Why avoid the demonstrated facts and focus on the hypothetical?
Para 3: It is simply not true to say that these costs are never included. For example, the accumulated fund in the USA for storage and dismantling is so large that some argue that it is far above that which will be needed.
Para 4. Name one instance when materials of war have originated in power reactors. Just one. You will not be able to, because it has not happened and will not happen. The fuel within power reactors is not suitable for bomb-making and Type IV will be no exception to this.
Para 5. Buying and selling universities in the manner you suggest is an old furphy. Universities have in place ethics committees and so forth to protect their reputations, which are vastly more valuable than those of any single academic, regardless of where he raises some of his research funding. Besides which, the sometimes challenging system of peer review exists specifically to ensure that poor work is not published.
Para 6: Unfounded affirmations. Please stick to the facts

@JohnBennetts

Re your "...Name one instance when materials of war have originated in power reactors. Just one. You will not be able to, because it has not happened and will not happen. The fuel within power reactors is not suitable for bomb-making"

How about looking at the instances of RESEARCH reactors being used to produce the Plutonium that is subsequently reprocessed for nuclear devices-weapons.

The example I give is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIRUS_reactor :

"CIRUS (Canadian-Indian Reactor, U.S.) was a research reactor at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC)...near Mumbai, India. CIRUS was supplied by Canada in 1954, but used heavy water (deuterium oxide) supplied by the United States.

It first went critical July 10, 1960... CIRUS produced some of India's initial weapon plutonium stockpile, as well as the plutonium for India's 1974 Pokhran-I...nuclear test."

Also Israel's Dimona (NNRC) Reactor, variously described as a "power" or "research" reactor over the years, is also known to have produced Plutonium for Israel's nuclear weapon program.

Pete

Plantaganet provided us two examples. One was essentially a miltary research reactor with no power production capability.

The other was a military reactor hidden behind a political screen of power production. If electricity was what the Israelis wanted, they would not have constructed a military one, designed to make weapons-grade materials.

Both were military reactors badged otherwise for political purposes.

It appears that we have agreed that the commercial power reactors on the market cannot produce weapons grade materials. Also, that once a military reactor, always a military reactor, regardless of re-badging for political purposes.

Commercial reactors have no other purpose than power generation, as will be the case for any reactor ever constructed in South Australia.

This discussion has been plagued by irrelevancies such as the "disaster" with no,zero, nil, zilch deaths due to radiation at Fukushima, when outside the gates there were thousands of deaths due to natural causes, plus more hundreds due to bureaucratic mismanagement and scare-mongering. Avoidable? Yes. Due to lack of maintenance and due to failure to upgrade safety systems? Yes. Hugely expensive? Yes. But the events at Fukushima Power Station were not, of themselves, the disaster.

Why sidetrack into military reactors and research reactors when the discussion is about zero carbon nuclear energy?

Why are we not spending our efforts comparing and contrasting the specific merits and drawbacks of the various designs of Power Reactors that may be of use to Australia, in particular South Australia? The byproducts and fuels of these plants simply cannot be diverted to weapons; indeed some designs are consuming massive amounts of weapons grade materials at present, not because they have to but because they can.

This is the only way to rid the world of the existing stocks of weapons grade material, including plutonium.

It is streets ahead of chucking energy-dense materials down deep holes or hoping that future generations will learn to love and look after the bomb.

Hi John

When there is an increase in a nation's nuclear know-how, nuclear organisational size and increased budget size there are always dual-use concerns and assumptions - even if not intended.

Within Australia many on the green side of politics will always oppose nuclear development unless gradually argued otherwise.

People inside and outside government are concerned with foreign policy implications under such headings as South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone and relations with some neighboring countries.

There are many issues to explore:

- It would be interesting to get a handle on what is happening with international exchange and trade in high level nuclear waste at the moment. For example is Japan paying France much to store spent fuel rods at the moment?

- And what difference might Japan's developing reprocessing facilities have on nuclear waste trade?

- What market distortions in the high level waste trade might be caused by the US and Chinese energy and defence departments?

Meanwhile as the cost of hydrocarbon energy (oil, gas etc) increases the political and economic arguments for nuclear will strengthen.

Regards

Pete

Hi, Pete.

Small Modular Reactors, SMR', will soon be available commercially.

These will be pre-loaded and sealed, come in sizes to 100MW and will be formidable challenges for terrorists who seek to divert fissile material for other purposes, eg dirty bombs.

Organisations and individuals who share the Greens' security concerns will find middle ground once their proliferation are resolved. Of course, these reactors must be opened somewhere and either maintained, refuelled or dismantled. My hope is that they last at least 60 years and a dozen refuellings.

The obvious question is "Who opens them, and where?". The original equipment manufacturer. That means only a few sites globally, where security can be more tightly managed than in 500 or a thousand individual locations.

I don't mean to underestimate your knowledge or that of other readers, but it is simple to find information about SMR's. Each searcher will find articles at his or her level fairly easily, both for and against.

I really regret having joined the black coal fired power game at the end of its domination of the market. Younger engineers entering their profession have a wider range of technologies to work with. My own experience during development and construction of megawatt-scale or larger solar thermal installations has been a great ride, although after a decade of enthusiasm it appears probable that low temperature ST will not win the race to commercialism. Maybe tracking mirrors, very high temperatures and cunning energy storage solutions will do the job.

Good young engineers have dozens of energy technologies in front of them, none yet commercially dominant in the way that coal has been king for 100 years. The smartest and quickest have an opportunity to develop a exciting multidisciplinary professional career.

Some who are about to leave Australia's automotive industry will have draughting, design detailing, materials engineering, metallurgy, laser welding, fabrication, robotics, numerical control and general production experience and much more that will be needed in the emerging energy technologies.

How good is that?

Thanks John for the information and comments.

I need to write an article to continue the discussion on nuclear waste and power development in Australia.

Regards

Pete