I'll take one thanks.

One out of a decommissioning US nuclear sub would be fine, after all, they have a perfect safety record.

//From Noel Wauchope//

//Posted by ChristinaMac1//

Why is your name Noel and your user name Christina?

I smell a rat.

". The nuclear industry is very fond of proclaiming that wastes from small thorium reactors would need safe disposal and guarding for "only 300 years". Just the bare 300!"_ Noel Christina Activist MacWauchope .
Rubbish . It will be fitted into Wombat ICBMs and exported in stages to Kim at ground zero.

In reply to Toni Lavis

My full name is Noel Christina Macpherson Wauchope.
10 years ago, when I starting blogging, tweeting etc, I adopted my middle names. It was in a period when it was sort of fashionable to have an "Internet name". I set everything up that way. More recently, I saw the value in using one's real name, But it is too late, too tricky, to unravel all the connections with "Christina Macpherson". This site is an excellent example. Try though I may - it seems to always want me to be Christina. No big deal. No rat.

//No big deal. No rat.//

Ah, my mistake. Must of just been the smell of hippy. If only you guys would bathe, people might take your anti-nuclear nonsense more seriously. But probably not.

Hi Noel

An excellent article, as usual.

Yes the smaller and more isolated a reactor the greater the greater the comparitive security hurdles. For example:

- in Small Town A, 20 odd guards with assault rifles would be required in shifts 24/7 to defend against terrorist attacks. This extra security, greater than for other extricity producing modes, would be expensive for communities/electricity customers.

- if Small Town A is isolated the greater the delay in State and Federal Police special weapons teams arriving by helicopters, in case of terrorist attack.

- mini-reactors need as many security and environmental approvals as large reactors with the same lengthy approval processes

- even mini-reactors need large perimeter fence exclusion zones to keep protesters and terrorists away and, by law, to protect communities against nuclear accidents.

- even mini-reactors are vulnerable to 9/11-like large aircraft strikes. Isolation is no protection. Hence, mini-reactors need the shielding of the type that was placed on Lucas Heights reactor(s) after 9/11. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/02/1088488155666.html?oneclick=true

- large aircraft may not even need to rupture a mini-reactor's protective shell. Vast amounts of large aircrat fuel burning could create enough heating to cause catastropic steam/gas buildup effects within a mini-reactor.