People who always know best are hardly ever likely or even capable of listening to the wisdom of others!

For some the spectre of storing radioactive waste will continue to remain a totally no go entirely irrational emotive issue!

To the point they will oppose it with their last breath!

What is required is the inescapable facts and a logical response, followed by just getting on and getting the job done!

Even if that means the minority opposition is challenged with bean bag rounds and pump action shotguns

And exactly What we pay our so called leaders for, regardless of the hyperventilated hysteria!
Rhrosty.

From "Since over twenty years..." onwards this is a brave attempt by Ms Niepraschk to write in English as a second language.

Oh! And let all us "voluntarists" hold hands and sing Kumbaya.*

Sing it Anica https://youtu.be/QKAolQ0yxIo .

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbaya

Macfarlane could always nominate his own land. Failing that, the way the Whetherill Labor government is driving jobs and industry from S.A, it will soon be declared terra nullius, and he can have the lot for nothing.

(from Noel Wauchope)
Anica Niepraschk's article makes complete sense.

Australia must face up to the reality that its radioactive trash that originated in Lucas Heights must come back to this country.
It's not a large amount, and probably could be safely stored at Lucas Heights.

Relatively safely, that is, because it will remain toxic for thousands of years.

Australians need to wake up to the distinction between this situation, of legal obligation to have wastes returned, and the cranky South Australian plan to be the only nation in the world to actually INVITE in the world's radioactive trash.

In a reasonable world, in which future generations are considered, the sane thing to do is to shut down the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, and stop making this trash.

The cry will rise up - "medical benefits, blah blah". Well the medical isotope thing was the fig leaf tacked on to the nuclear reactor. Medical isotopes can be made by a speciaLised cyclotron, as is being done in Canada. Sure, that's expensive, FOR THIS GENERATION. The current system's plan is to pass on the costs to our grandchildren and beyond. So yes, it LOOKS cheaper.

Hi Noel Wauchope/ChristinaMac1

I agree with your stand against nuclear waste dumps and against nuclear reactors.

My problem is how the tone of articles like Anica Niepraschk's gives the anti-nuclear movement a bad name of being full of airy-fairy, visionary dorks.

Niepraschk has clearly seized the voluntarist cause of voluntarism with both hands voluntarily. It may be besotting and no doubt liberating for her, but as a persuasive approach it looks "lets all hold hands, Kumbaya".

(from Noel Wauchope) Thank you Plantagenet. You make a very good case here about "lets all hold hands, Kumbaya".

It reflects a dilemma that I've been having: is it better to "sock it to 'em" with the truly horrific facts about the nuclear industry?
Or is it better to take a softly softly approach, which will not alienate people?

Those who do go along with this apparently so "reasonable" approach do seem, to me, to have an effect of slowing down the progress of the nuclear juggernaut.

Time is money for the nuclear industry, as the French company AREVA has found out - with its boondoggles in Finland and Flamanville. As renewables become ever cheaper, the whole nuclear fuel chain looks ever less viable.

So there's role for the Anica Niepraschks and the David Lochbaums.
So, I oscillate between the two approaches. But yes, spelling out the reality is really best.

Hi Noel/ChristinaMac1

Yes approach and reaching the desired audience are problems.

On a different matter. Nuclear reactor competitiveness has always been illusory. Even more so when it is was started by and still intimately connected with state spending on nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion for warships (e. AREVA France). The big exception, Japan, wouldn't have closed down its reactor industry for years (sincle 2011) if Japan had nuclear weapons.

Where this is going is that for Australia this means we should only get into the nuclear enrichment and power reactor game if we anticipate military nuclear uses. This is only a policy in the very long term - and not terribly attractive, of course.

Pete

Nuclear weapons were the real goal, supported by both Liberaland Labor, when the uranium industry and the first Lucas Heights reactor were set up after WWII.
http://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2013/04/14/australia-and-the-bomb

The push for nuclear submarines in South Australia, and for defense industries there, suggest that Australia's involvement in USA's military nuclear strategy is likely to increase.

It's *not* waste people, it's fuel! Breeder reactors burn nuclear waste, multiplying our nuclear fuel by a factor of 60! We have 400 reactor-years experience with breeders.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Fast-Neutron-Reactors/

Some famous ones include:

THE EBR2 — Experimental Breeder Reactor 2 (1965 - 1995: the American program Clinton finally closed). This is the world’s only real INTEGRAL Fast Reactor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II#Integral_Fast_Reactor

The old Soviet BN-350 (1964–1992)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-350_reactor

The Russian BN-600 still works.
Japan paid a billion for technical specs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor

The Russian BN 800 is brand new!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor
From the news on the Russian BN 800!
"Fuel for breeder reactors could even be made from nuclear waste, which from an ecological point of view is a priceless advantage…..Humankind has already produced so much nuclear waste that it would take decades, if not hundreds of years to process and recycle it. "
http://rt.com/news/188332-mox-nuclear-fuel-production/

INDIA have a development program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor

The French had the massive 1200MW reactor the Superphenix which worked perfectly until ignorant anti-nuke campaigners closed it down!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Closure

The Chinese have a test fast reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Experimental_Fast_Reactor

GE have a blueprint for the PRISM reactor, based on the old EBR2. It's ready to get built in the first country that will approve it.
http://gehitachiprism.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(reactor)

But my all time favourite reactor is the LFTR (say Lifter). Watch this 2 hour documentary in half-hour chunks, and you'll get a sense of why even many anti-nuclear greenies I know grudgingly admit they would accept a fast build of LFTR's around Australia. They're inherently safe, and even Homer Simpson couldn't break one of these babies!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

Advances in battery technology are certainly making solar and windpower much more efficient and competitive. See http://www.solaraustralia.com.au/akasol_neeoqube.html and http://www.afr.com/business/energy/electricity/australia-primed-as-heartland-for-batterystorage-revolution-20150529-ghba6h .

This increased renewable energy efficiency mean utilisation of centralised electricty networks will decrease in Australia even further.

All this means is that nuclear power reactors are even less justifiable in Australia.

Please tell us how much it would cost to store enough solar power to last winter?

Yes tell us Max.

Well, given that solar *halves* during winter...
http://arena.gov.au/files/2013/08/Chapter-10-Solar-Energy.pdf

...you either have to build double your summer capacity, or you have to try and build enough storage to last *seasonal* fluctuations. So what's it going to be? I'm arguing for something that has already been done. The French electricity sector showed us the way decades ago, and that's with nuclear reactors that (just quietly) freak me out a bit. I'm not a fan of Gen2 LWR's. But I'd much rather live next door to one of today's Gen3.5 AP1000's than a coal plant. Coal is a Chernobyl every single day! So what's it to be? You going to double solar capacity during winter, and have it just sitting there spilling excess in summer, or have you got some other scheme for wasting all our money?

At least if we build nukes we can charge about half our fleet of cars at night. (NREL study for America, but same probably translates roughly equivalent here in Australia).

But... when you're too busy trying to deal with the national power emergency a solar economy calls "Doomsday" (sorry, that's this thing the rest of us call night time), I don't think there's really going to be the same energy flowing down the same wires charging my EV at night. Is there? So by sacrificing baseload power for unreliables, we have to then upgrade the daytime capacity to allow for both charging *all* our EV's during the day *and* upgrade the electricity grid for superspikes in daytime demand as we try and wean off oil as well. But the French? They could just charge all their EV's at night, and continue to have the lowest carbon electricity sector in Europe.

Ummm, Max, You are comprehensively and trivially wrong.

I live in Brisbane, well below the Tropic of Capricorn, and had moments today I desired an air conditioner. I would conservatively estimate that my total solar reception in Belbowrie on a 4.37 kW array was 97% of nominal, given that I optimised my array to support summer aircon rather than winter-heating/battery-charging requirements. Your figures are an order of magnitude out without even using a calculator.

In short, you are desperately in need of a laxative.

My (step) brother in law is in London. I assisted him and his partner in placing an array seven months ago in Acton Green, London. In the middle of winter we immediately got better returns than you suggest, you can guess how much better, but cost-effective (to save you calculation, which you are not good at). Regardless, a sample of One exceeds your predictions. A sample of two in two continents exceeds your predictions of solar effectiveness prodigiously and trivially. Have you anything more to say except your apology for misinforming us all?

Rusty.

The PDF I quoted was discussing Concentrated Solar Power which tries to make solar 'baseload' and actually deal with this horrific, mysterious thing we call *night* time. Now, unless you're willing to pay double to triple the cost of the average grid for a Powerwall + extra solar system to go 'off grid', you're replying to the wrong subject! While you might be able to angle your Solar PV in a different angle and get some OK electricity in Brisbane, if you're drawing down from a coal fired grid at night you're being a goose and giving coal another reason to exist!
( BTW, I'd still love to see you quote a peer-reviewed journal that shows how much insolation Brissie receives at this time of year because Page 272 of this ARENA government PDF shows significant losses.)
http://arena.gov.au/files/2013/08/Chapter-10-Solar-Energy.pdf

Let's look at other countries that might *really* struggle in winter!

In Germany solar is 3 times more expensive than nuclear: and it doesn't run on a cold German winter night.
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2011/03/doing_the_math_comparing_germa.shtml

Secondly, to back up renewables seasonal fluctuations in northern countries like Germany could bankrupt any nation that tried it. You can *either* buy Tesla Powerpack batteries to back up *one week* of winter in Germany (at a hypothetical 30% penetration of wind and solar, and these wind and solar farms must still be bought), OR you can just buy safe modern nuclear-waste eating nukes that will do the whole job for 60 years. Again, *backup* a third of a renewable grid for just one week, or nuke the whole grid for 60 years! That’s the economics of renewable storage V nuclear.
Point 2 below
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/renewables/the-grid-will-not-be-disrupted

Third, in some places like Germany, Solar PV + STORAGE may not even be much of an energy source!
Nuclear, on the other hand, can have an ERoEI* of about 75 to 100 or more.
(* ERoEI = Energy Return on Energy Invested: or how much energy you actually get after all the energy to build it).
http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/

Perhaps, Max, you are not considering a "responsive" system. A few moments attention helps people decide it's time to sleep, rather than stay up. I guess you are willing to subsidise the unresponsive. Fair enough, you may be a great humanitarian, and teenage playstation time is worth more than your time at work (almost certain I suspect). Maybe some some night activities are truly worth the extra cost....let the investors bear them.
Yes, your averages may *even* be sound......why would *anybody* who can do better them be bound to them? Perhaps you have not considered the ramifications of a "market" where the disadvantaged purchasers are not bound to continue as purchasers?

Rusty

Hi Rusty,
imagine having to buy 6 cars because each car was only 1/6 reliable, and you still might have the rare day when all 6 simply refused to work and had to catch a cab. That’s renewable energy for you. So we overbuild capacity that is, fortunately, becoming cheaper and cheaper, in an attempt to arrive at a reliable grid. As you can see, I can admit that wind and solar are both becoming cheaper: as long as we’re not comparing them to baseload electricity. I’m not against renewable energy outright. Far from it. I actually celebrate Labor’s decision to go for 50% renewable electricity by 2030.

But what I’m against is ruling out any safe, clean, cheap alternative to coal, especially one that can be reliable 24/7 instead of unreliable like the 6 cars above. One that can run not just playstations at night, but hospitals and police stations and transport and some industries that might have night shifts. I note you didn’t mention charging electric cars overnight? Pro-renewable anti-nukes like Dr Mark Diesendorf simply dismiss overnight baseload power as wasteful, unused spare capacity. But an American study by NREL shows that a baseload grid could charge 84% of family cars and trucks and SUVs, especially when considering that 45% are charged overnight! Page 10 below
http://energyenvironment.pnnl.gov/ei/pdf/PHEV_Feasibility_Analysis_Part1.pdf

This is on the existing grid infrastructure, without adding a single extra power station or powerline. So if we simply replaced today’s coal stations with SAFE green LFTR technology, we could be some way towards weaning off oil as well. Who can disagree with that? Renewables not only struggle to replace coal, but would have to build almost double the daytime grid to try and wean us off oil as well!

Try the following video about LFTR’s. You may find yourself HATING older Gen2 reactors like the Fukushima power plants even more, but strangely warming to the LFTR concept. The first 5 minute summary is a little rushed, but everything is unpacked in more detail later on. I know anti-nukes that love the LFTR concept!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

(from Noel Wauchope)
Nuclear power "safe' clean, cheap" ? Oh give us a break from these deceptive mantras!

Chalk River 1952- 58
Rocky Flats 1957
Windscale 1957
Mayak 1957
Soviet ice-breaker Lenin 1966
Three Mile Island 1979
Chernobyl 1986
Tomsk 1993
Hanford polluting site 1986 and continuing
Fukushima Daiichi 2011 and continuing
Many other nuclear and radiological accidents 1942 - 2015

As for "cheap" - I don't think there are any examples.
Even when "cheap" excludes the uranium industry and its health and environment toll too, and the transport of toxic radioactive trash plus the security costs involved, and the temporary and eternal storage of radioactive trash, and the costs of security for that - even without all those costs - nuclear still ain't cheap!

Dear Maxy G

Just surrender mate. The march of batteries are making renewables efficient.

That lefty outlet, Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/chipregister1/2015/01/13/the-battery-revolution-a-technology-disruption-economics-and-grid-level-application-discussion-with-eos-energy-storage/ explains to residual Strangeloves:

"The Battery Revolution: A Technology Disruption, Economics and Grid Level Application Discussion with Eos Energy Storage"

The ability to store power bridges the reliability gaps that occur with renewables, when, on any given day, the sun just doesn’t shine bright enough or the wind doesn’t blow hard enough to feed the hungry power grid.

So what is this amazing new technology? It’s batteries – yes, batteries.

But we aren’t talking about any old battery here; rather, we are talking about super batteries with the ability to store megawatt-sized loads, enough to power entire neighborhoods or towns if need be. While you could theoretically achieve the same result by stringing together the type of batteries used to power your laptop or smartphone, the cost of doing so would be economically prohibitive. But entrepreneurial companies, such as Ambri and Eos Energy Storage, are pursuing the next generation of battery technology, with the aim of bringing storage costs down significantly for utilities."

And that is renewable-batttery setups moving up on fossil fuel power generation - let alone your "cheap" multi-$Billion nuclear power reactors. Nuclear dreams were for the late Admiral Rickover and now retired Admiral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Scarce

Your nuclear dreams are just too extreme for normal Australians.

Confess Maxy matey.

Hi Christina Mac,
Please tell us what generation of nuclear power all those incidents were? How many people died at each incident? How many die from coal each day? The statistical reality on a deaths per terawatt basis is that more people die falling off solar rooftops and wind turbines than have been killed by radiation!
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/want-to-kill-fewer-people-go-nuclear-20130710-2pqbq.html

http://roarmag.org/2011/04/coal-kills-4000-times-more-people-per-unit-of-energy-than-nuclear/

http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/191326/deaths-nuclear-energy-compared-other-causes

Please don’t let raw emotion compel you into fearing old Gen2 reactors when even their antiquated technology proved safer than today’s renewables on a per terawatt basis! The way you quote a few power station names rings of the melodrama of saying “Fukushima and Nagasaki!” No. That will not do. Even the peer-reviewed journals say Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in human history from the worst regime operating the worst possible nuclear-configuration (a type of reactor that was NEVER built in the west!) turns out will probably only kill 4000 people. The worst hydro dam disasters kill order of magnitude more people! Banqiao Dam killed 171,000 people and left 11 million people homeless! That dwarfs Chernobyl by a factor of 42.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_station_failures

But coal? That kills around 3 million people a year. It’s almost 2 Chernobyl’s a day! So if you want to create fear and mayhem around an energy source, please get your facts straight and pick coal. It causes climate change and chokes people to death. Then maybe have a long hard look at the money we’re paying for wind and solar that kill more people than OLD nuclear technology AND are OFF more than they are ON!

But compared to today’s Gen3.5 reactors that are self-cooling, the safety of Gen2 looks like the stone age. Technologies like the LFTR CANNOT melt down, as they are already a liquid.

Lastly, what do we really know about radiation? Did you know there is 3 times as much radiation in Kerala, India, as there are at Fukushima, and that cancer rates there are down compared to the rest of the world? We should move everyone home to Fukushima and alleviate evacuee related depression.
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/nuclear/five-surprising-public-health-facts-about-fukushima

Hi Plantagenet,
Many renewables die in winter. You don’t need a battery to last a day, you need weeks at a time! But the reality is the cost of batteries is so astronomical that just buying 1 week of storage (not power systems to charge that storage!) could completely power Germany with SAFE modern reactors like the Gen3.5 AP1000!!
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2011/03/doing_the_math_comparing_germa.shtml

These aren’t even the cheap nukes. AP1000 still use water as a coolant, requiring high pressure vessels. They’re safer than coal, and probably safer than wind and solar with all those accidents. But they’re not Gen4. Gen4 reactors like the Integral Fast Reactor and Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactor will use different coolants and run at normal pressures. That’s a big deal with cost, as it means the reactor core can be mass produced on a factory line, not just a huge single-cast steel core 2 stories high and 12 inches thick from the one foundry in the world that can do it!
Basically, a 50/50 renewable /nuclear grid is probably possible. But 100% renewables? Yeah, right. When wind and solar are mostly off, not mostly on!
As Dr James Hansen, the grandfather of modern climate science said:
"Can renewable energies provide all of society’s energy needs in the foreseeable future? It is conceivable in a few places, such as New Zealand and Norway. But suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy."

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/08/05/hansen-energy-kool-aid/

Thar advanced batteries is gittin cheaper n cheaper Maxy http://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/13/battery-costs-may-drop-100kwh/ :)

No worries Max.

Can't afford a reactor, even a pretty one. Can afford a battery soon!

Or do you plan to coerce me not to?

Rusty

There's a certain familiarity in "Max Green"'s demands that I provide all the statistics of the nuclear facilities and the exact "reality on a deaths per kilowatt basis" of the 10 major radiological accidents that I listed.

Now where have I heard that kind of questioning before?

Oh, now I remember - it was from the tobacco industry, when a few "emotional" people, like Sir Richard Doll, had the effrontery to suggest that cigarette smoking was harmful to heath.

And then there was the asbestos industry - very affronted with the "emotional" approach of people suggesting that their product was unhealthy.

Of course, "Max Green" must be right, with all his detailed technical knowledge.

And the Soviets and the Japanese must be stupid - evacuating all those people when ionising radiation is not harmful at all.

Even the conservative old World Health Organisation, contracted as it is to not impede the nuclear industry, also got it wrong. Their Director, Dr Margaret Chan recently said "There is no safe level of ionising radiation". But then she is a woman , and therefore "emotional about such things.

WHO should put Max Green in charge. He obviously knows best.

ChristinaMac1 also wrote about the costs of “eternal storage”.
She obviously doesn’t know about ‘breeder’ reactors that fission away nuclear waste! Yes, we have the technology to burn nuclear waste and turn it into abundant energy. Don’t beat yourself up about it. I’ve met people who used to work at Yucca Mountain who just could not believe nuclear waste could be burned away to a tiny amount of fission products (real waste) that only has to be stored for 300 years. True story!

The Russian BN-600 still works.
Japan paid a $billion for technical specs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor

The Russian BN 800 is brand new!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor
From the news on the Russian BN 800!
"Fuel for breeder reactors could even be made from nuclear waste, which from an ecological point of view is a priceless advantage…..Humankind has already produced so much nuclear waste that it would take decades, if not hundreds of years to process and recycle it. "
http://rt.com/news/188332-mox-nuclear-fuel-production/

INDIA have a development program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor

The French had the massive 1200MW reactor the Superphenix which worked perfectly until ignorant anti-nuke campaigners closed it down!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Closure

The Chinese have a test fast reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Experimental_Fast_Reactor

GE have a blueprint for the PRISM reactor, based on the old EBR2. It's ready to get built in the first country that will approve it.
http://gehitachiprism.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(reactor)

CONCLUSION? It means the nuclear 'waste' in America is now a *resource* worth $30 TRILLION, and that the American's could run themselves for 1,500 years burning their waste!
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/10/16/ifr-spm/

Former Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Prime Minister, David Mackay, estimates that the UK has enough waste to run her for 500 years.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/02/nuclear-reactors-consume-radioactive-waste

But my all time favourite breeder is the LFTR (say Lifter). Watch this 2 hour documentary in half-hour chunks, and you'll get a sense of why even many anti-nuclear greenies I know grudgingly admit they would accept a fast build of LFTR's around Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

Just the mere 300 years of toxic radioactive wastes to be safely stored and expensively guarded. What a relief!.

And don't let's worry about the technetium-99, iodine-129, and cesium-135 with half-lives between 213,000 and 15.7 million years (Technical options for the advanced liquid metal reactor). Tiny amounts, but so toxic that the volume of space required for storing these ends up being just the same as for the original so-called "fuel resource" - not wastes)

Don't worry Maxy.

You're not getting the $$Billions of public money for your nuclear hobby :)

Hi Christina,
I guess the first thing I should do is thank you for not challenging that there *are* breeder reactors that can burn most actinides back to safe levels within 300 years of storage. The list also appears to have conceded that:-

1. Kerala India is 3 times more radioactive than the 20km Fukushima exclusion zone

2. Cancer rates in Kerala are 3 times *lower* than the global average.

3. Nuclear power is safer than solar or wind on a death per terrawatts basis

Now, as a general rule of thumb you know that the longer lived a radioactive item is, the less radioactive it is? Just how radioactive are technetium-99, iodine-129, and cesium-135, and why do we need to ‘worry about’ tiny amounts of these if they’re being stored locked in synrock in with the really radioactive fission products that are burning themselves back to safe levels in 300 years? Why worry about them? At just one golf ball per human lifetime for *all* the energy a person would ever use (including nuclear generated synthetic fuels like hydrogen or ammonia), why would we ever need to move them from the reactor energy park? They’d go in a concrete pit there and never come out. Park security would take care of it. If energy is half renewable and half nuclear, it’s one 'golf-ball' of waste for every 2 people's 70 year average lifetime. Think about it. If all NSW energy came from the one reactor park, it would only be (rounding up for population growth) 7 million golf balls to bury, or 3.5 million golf balls if we're half renewable. That’s one deep Olympic Swimming pool's worth of waste for an entire 70 year generation! That’s utterly *trivial* to manage, and there’s no extra cost for security because it's on site. Reactor security are managing it! Millennia later, they may have concreted over the thing and turned it into a carpark and built new reactors down the road a bit. But they can keep an eye on the old waste for millennia. Easy.

Park security, transport security - cost of guarding for 300 years - dangers from increasing extreme weather events due to climate change.

Dream on , "Max Green"
And while you're dreaming, - faster, clean renewable and and energy efficiency technologies are established globally, even including Australia.
And all the while, you nuclear shills know that you've got to lobby fast, not only because clean technologies are beating you, but because the next nuclear nightmare could happen any day.

World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2015 (WNISR 2015) gives a full, independent assessment of the nuclear industry's current state and trends for the future. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (27/07/15)gives a summary of the Report's findings. And it's not optimistic http://thebulletin.org/deconstructing-nuclear-industry8565

Yeah, that report seems to be on track but a little pessimistic with regards to how soon GenIV reactors might arrive. GE *has* the PRISM ready for the first country that will let it build one.

The real cost and safety advantage will come from LFTR's, and they can eat the waste of all the GenIII+ reactors we're building now. They're a way off, but once they get going they'll be modular, and broken down into their component parts on an assembly line. We'll be able to build them like we do airlines: one SMR a day!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor

from Noel Wauchope
A pity that no-one wants to buy "Small Modular Reactors". Babcock and Wilcox, also Westinghouse pulled out of them - both citing poor economic prospects.

The current makers of these reactors, NuScale, SNC-Lavalin, are pinning their hopes on some tax-payer funded purchase. For example, an ignorant government such as Australia's present one, might be sucked into buying them.
Hence the big support from overseas companies for South Australia's shonky Royal Commission

As for the Power Innovative Small Module (PRISM) - that is an idea in UK, mired in controversy, and so far even the Conservative government and nuclear authorities have concluded that deep burial of radioactive wastes is cheaper and safer than the magical PRISM.

I simply don't see any alternative.

Renewables can do about half the grid, but once they get too high the either the backup costs start rising exponentially, or we turn back to ever more gas in winter. We've got to prevent what climate change we can with real world solutions, not magical wishy washy wishful Diesendorf or BZE thinking. Their 'efficiency gains' are highly suspect, as I don't think Australians would cop a 50% energy cut in 10 years! Please note that I'm all for energy efficiency and New Urbanism and public transport and all that, but there are limits to what efficiency can do.

Mother Jones puts it well:

>>"What people really miss about storage is it's not just a daily storage problem," says Armond Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force, a group that researches low-carbon energy technologies. "Wind and solar availability around the world, from week to week and month to month, can vary up to a factor of five or six."

Storage has to account for when the wind cuts out for weeks due to seasonal weather variation. It's easy enough to make ice one night to cool your building the next day, Cohen notes, but to save energy for three weeks of low wind you would need to store up enough ice to cool the building for that whole time.

Accounting for sufficient storage, then, increases the costs and scope of the energy transition. Jacobson calls for 605,400 megawatts of new storage capacity. US grid storage as of August 2013 totaled 24,600 megawatts, meaning a nearly 25-fold increase would be required to meet the roadmap. That's not impossible, but it's an effort that would not be necessary with continuous energy sources.<<
http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2015/07/nuclear-power-renewables-climate-change

The obvious step is to stop making radioactive trash.

Well I thought the obligation was to stop climate change the fastest way possible. The French cleaned up their electricity sector decades ago, and I see *absolutely no reason* to give into hysterical fear-mongering when modern nukes are safe and *far* more economical than renewables at taking the grid to 100%. Sure renewables can be cheap enough for the first half, but the last half is a killer. Unless you can show me a nation that is 100% wind & solar? They're the 2 most abundant renewable sources, so surely you can point to a nation that used them to power their whole grid? No?

Shame. Dr James Hansen calculates that nuclear power has *saved* about 3 million lives in America alone due to reduced coal burning. I thought coal, being 4000 times more deadly than nuclear power, *and* changing our climate, was the *real* enemy here. Can we at least agree that today's Gen3.5 nuclear would be infinitely preferable to coal?

If not, why not? Do you have a single rational reason when there's no nation on earth that has done 100% wind and solar yet? When batteries cost so much that just backing up ONE German winter week could buy nukes for their whole grid? When nuclear waste is not a problem, but a resource the world could burn for 500 years of clean energy, and the final fission products *are* trivial to deal with? This is a dream energy source, and you're reacting to childhood memes from Godzilla movies. It's time to get real!