A lot of flannel from the nuke claque but still not a word about who pays for the public insurance for mining, ore processing, transport, storage of fissile materials and their use in energy generation.

If their latest propaganda attack on the safety of the public becomes a national conversation, adequate public risk insurance for events which they insist won't happen will feature centrally in trashing their case.

In Japan, those who own the Fukishima plant from which nothing could go wrong haven't paid a brass cent to compensate the people. Guess who's paying to insure the Europeans against any attack on nuclear facilities by Moslem terrorists. Guess who's paying for the heightened security around the plants. Y'got it - the mug public.

By the way, anyone know what French householders compared with German householders pay per unit for electricity?

Spot on EmperorJulian

Further on the nuclear spruikers denial of responsibility for Fukushima's nuclear cleanup.

According to the UK Financial Times, the Fukushima nuclear disaster has cost Japan US$118 BILLION to date and Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO's) shareholders have picked up only 20 per-cent of the tab.
The Japanese government and consumers paid the rest.

Nuclear operators are not required to have the capital to cover the costs of a giant disaster and they do not have the insurance coverage either. That means that the government, taxpayers and specific utility customers have to pay.

This discussion may well be redundant. I doubt we have the money to
build a fleet of nuclear power stations.
To complicate matters we may for economic reasons abandon coal as an energy source.
Australia is better off than most, but it will become uneconomic eventually.
Some coal fields cannot be developed without destroying our food and water supplies.
We are already in the process of abandoning oil.

Some of Rhosties suggestion would seem viable but they just never seem
to get taken up. Are the costs when multiplied up more than can be afforded ?

Solar & batteries already seem to be flogging a dead horse.
We might already be seeing the start of a civilisation reset !

plantagenet,

Apologies, it appears that not only greenies resort to baseless fear mongering. Thousands of security personnel required, what BS.

All the hysteria over the taxpayer being hurt by nuclear applies 10 fold to renewable power, where subsidies paid to renewables have contributed significantly to push the price of electricity through the roof. Where Aus a few decades ago had one of the lowest costs of power in the world, it now has one of the highest.

Nuclear power could be built on the sites of existing brown coal stations such as Hazelwood, where the land is already a moonscape, and there is already a strong connection to the network and a source of cooling water and ponds. Reprocessing plants could enable Aus not only to accept and process waste, but use it to produce fuel rods to burn in Candu reactors etc to reduce the risk of proliferation without the need for expensive enrichment facilities.

What we have instead is greenies that are generally technological pygmies whose sole function in life is to stop anything wanting to block nuclear, CSG, and even wind farms. These pinheads try to claim that base load is a myth and are oblivious to the dangers to the network of unreliable wind and solar plants to the network.

Until such time as reliable and cost effective renewable base load is available the choices are nuclear or climate change.

There is currently on the Resiliance.org web site an article about
the closing of coal fired power stations being closed but that world
wide there is an increase in new coal fired power stations.

I suspect that this comes about because grid operators are realising
that wind and solar cannot do the job.
If enough solar stations and wind was built we could power everything.
However no one takes into account a series of overcast days and
windless nights.
You have to generate and store in one sunny day enough power for all
those overcast days plus that day and have enough to start up the next
sunny day.
The cost of such a system increases dramatically by the number of
overcast days you decide to cover.
The difficulty is for how many overcast days do you cater ?
Would it ever be possible to build batteries big enough to supply
say NSW for five days plus one ?
Are there locations anywhere that dams could store enough for 6 days ?

What happens when there are six overcast days ?
Are these the reasons that grid operators and governments are building
more coal fired stations ?

The catch is worldwide coal is leaving us anyway.
What system is ready to build now at maximum base load scale ?
If the only answer is nuclear then how do we overcome the insurance problem ?

Lots of ideas about but nothing at proven base load scale.
I do not see any politician or industry tackling the problem with
a strong dose of realism.

Hi Shadow Mini

I had a decko at the dirty brown coal Hazelwood Power Station - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station which is past its economic/wear and tear Use By date.

As Hazelwood is a 1,600 MW power station it would probably need 2 x standard 1000 MW reactors to replace it. Its not clear however whether there is sufficient economic water flow to keep such reactors cool.

The 1,000 MW reactors should ideally be of a well tested, economically proven type - probably meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-water_reactor

The beauty of large reactors is also that provision of security is more concentrated hence economic than protecting small reactors in Wup Wups all over the countryside.

Also - use of already proven and costed large reactors would be easier to politically and economically sell than immature small un-business proven LFTR small reactors projects all over Australia.

Victoria is as NIMBY as South Australia but at least Victoria has the money and the right economic size and user distribution profile to better utilise large reactors.

Perhaps more politically robust NSW will need to lead the way with one or two large reactors in the Hunter Valley to make the idea palatable.

All longish term, 40 to 50 years until the reactors are working - mind you.

So the above may be viable - especially if the price of hydrocarbons (coal/gas/oil) goes up (as it will) making proven Uranium reactors more competitive.

Pete