They say being marched to the gallows concentrates the mind. We'll understand that when Hazelwood closes in April taking 12 Twh of reliable electricity much of it at night, in wind lulls and when dams are dry. In my opinion creating the Citizen Jury was not astute. The correct path is for Australia to build one or more nuclear power stations, maybe even a generic thorium burner when they are ready in the 2040s. Let spent fuel accumulate for one or two fuelling cycles. If some or none of the spent fuel can be re-used look for a remote spot to bury it. I think it can be done at a fraction of the $40.2 bn cost originally quoted by the Royal Commission.

If nobody gets irradiated in that time then maybe think about taking foreign waste in an expanded facility, logically in SA. I think this is the only approach likely to work. Meanwhile no doubt opponents have got employment prospects lined up for retrenched Holden and Arrium workers, perhaps with cheap reliable power for new industries.

We shouldn't have to wait until 2040 for a thorium reactor! And before waste can be buried, it needs to spend some time above ground. So burying it before we build a walk away safe, molten salt thorium reactor, seems counterintuitive?

By all accounts, the Indians are well advanced on a 300 MW thorium reactor? I mean they claim to have one third of the world's thorium in their beach sand. And their plans include using thorium to burn their current stockpile of nuclear waste!

It's odd don't you think, that some of the anti nuclear brigade are green advocates, who accuse climate change denialist of ignoring the science?

Yet when it comes to the peaceful use of safe clean cheap nuclear energy? They are the most vociferous deniers of all!

And greet the factual evidence, with no nay never! Or kick it down the road too far for it to reverse climate change!?

Climate change science good science!

Proven nuclear science. Bad science!

Why? Because it fits the confirmation bias and the ideological imperative!

Reason and logic trumped by dogma and ideology! Factual recorded evidence! Just some nuclear nut case's opinion!

Herding cats would be easier than getting these folk to take an objective look at the huge body of scientific evidence and journals, daily reports and records!

Science must be objective not predetermined! The green approach toward nuclear energy?

Climate change deniers, not the only folk able to ignore a mountain of scientific evidence? While hundreds of Australians wait in vain for their chance of a cure!

And tantamount to a (willful, killed by neglect or self induced, selective blindness) death sentence?

Why don't we reintroduce corporal punishment? At least we'd be honest?
Alan B.

from Noel Wauchope, in reply to Alan B.

I completely agree that science should not be ignored. That applies also to pro nuclear lobbyists, who have a distressing tendency to not only ignore science, but to be unaware of science outside their own narrow technical discipline.

For example, all world scientific bodies accept the Linear No Threshold Theory (LNT) of ionising radiation - meaning that every additional amount of radiation increases cancer risks. This has been further backed by very recent research in Scientific Reports http://www.nature.com/articles/srep32977

On climate science, it is clear that for nuclear power to have any effect at all, it would require the rapid build of thousands of reactors. In the case of thorium reactors, this could not possibly be done for decades - too late. Meanwhile rapid advances in genuinely clean, safe, technology, and in energy conservation might be in jeopardy, if public effort and funding were diverted to the thorium dream.

While science is important, it is not the whole story. The economic realities do matter - and they don't favour the costly thorium experiment.

The social realities matter, too. Indigenous people worldwide are getting fed up with being the toilet for modern technology.Thorium fans make the extraordinary boast that their devices leave only 300 years worth of toxic radioactive wastes. Just the mere 300 years! And where is that poison expected to go?

When the last ferry is about to pull out from the wharf? Intending passengers have to stark choices! Climb on board, or miss the boat! And if missing the boat is linked to massive misinformation as to the power source?

A very long swim in shark infested waters beckons!

Look, we're confronting some economic realities only present in history, as a prelude to the great depression, only more so!

The world is awash with massive (unrepayable) debt! Some of which could cancel each other out?

Even so, we confront two equally stark choices?

The point I'm making, with my homespun homily. we can rescue our economy with a debt led (frying pan to the fire) recovery? Then as is most likely confront runaway inflation, increasing interest rates and consequent, suddenly, massively unaffordable mortgages!

And record bankruptcies, foreclosures, bank auctions, and or bank failures! Interest rates as high as a historical 17%!

And folks working three jobs, selling family heirlooms, the family jalopy and household furniture etc, to avoid the inevitable! Job queues, tent cities and soup kitchens!

Get the picture?

Alternatively, we could have an energy led and an energy underpinned recovery that allows us to go from strength to strength!

Always providing we can keep it out of the hand of the parasites, who have created the current problem, by sucking too deep and too often on our finite wealth!

So, stop prevarication and assembling entirely counterproductive roadblocks and interminable mindless delays, and just get on the far king boat!
Alan B.

The LNT hypothesis fails to explain why residents of high background radiation areas (eg Kerala, India) are exceptionally healthy.

I'm told the mayor of Hawker SA was on ABC radio early this morning and expressed fears that the low level waste site will morph into high level. There was talk of storing spent fuel canisters above ground at a holding site before reprocessing or outback burial. If true that is another example of how the SA govt has mishandled the issues. Put any such canisters at the top of a remote mineshaft but get it sorted out beforehand not afterwards.

The premise that we (as a country who exports a resource) e.g. Uranium Oxide, should become a repository for the waste product of the original exported commodity is preposterous. Given that line of thinking, should we then accept that all waste steel products should be dumped here because we have in the first place exported that iron ore and coal?

Mac, as you surmise, the only folk to benefit will be the operators of the "dump", the government who let the dump happen and probably a few others associated with the operation.

Having been the driver who came across the drums of Uranium Oxide which had spilled across Victoria Rd, Glebe in the early hours of a cold winters morning during the 1980's. Many years later working as a mechanical fitter on the actual 'calciner' (gadget that bakes the Yellow Cake into U2) at Ranger ERA Jabiru, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that: the care and control of hazardous radioactive within this country still leaves a lot to be desired.

I for one have great concerns for the way many companies handle hazardous substances generally. That highly radioactive waste substances were going to be left at Pangea's (mid western WA) and Muckaty Creek (NT) sites, both of these were over the Great Artesian Basin. Capital idea - let's pollute forever, the one resource that we all need for survival.

The definition of safety is nothing more than this: "A risk mitigation strategy designed by lawyers at the behest of insurers to minimise the losses to ordinary shareholders".