Reading Alan B's comment, I am struck by the language he uses, in his attempt to counter the facts provided by Jim Green in this article. Alan B begins:

"A piece of patently political propaganda, written by a dimwitted greenie"....." just spew out the same verbal diarrhoea"......"Mr Green and his like-minded, cult member acolytes"......." they know SFA about the latest advances in this area"....."These folk spout their dribble daily".

Alan B goes on to advocate burning of nuclear wastes, and nuclear molten salt reactor technology - without any attempt to substantiate his argument with facts.

Anyway, I was quite fascinated, as only today, by coincidence, I happened to learn the meaning of the phrase "ad hominem attacks". And here, with Alan B's comment, I find a perfect example of that phrase! Thanks, Alan B

Regarding Peter Lang's comment - I do feel quite flattered. As an anti-nuclear activist, I had no idea that I was part of a group that has succeeded in delaying, and nearly shutting down the nuclear industry.

I really had thought that that the nuclear power industry had become so costly, and other forms of energy, gas, wind solar, etc had become so much cheaper, that this was the cause of the nuclear industry's economic woes.

I didn't know that the nuclear industry is "the safest way to generate electricity and always has been" as Lang asserts. How come that no insurance company will insure against major accidents? Is that because, while the RISK of major accident is very small, the CONSEQUENCES of major accidents are very big? (Ural Mountains 1957, Windscale UK 1957,Chalk River 1952-58, Three Mile Island 1979, Chernobyl 1986, Fukushima 2011 - to name just a few)

There are also the longterm health effects on workers in the uranium and nuclear industries- with costly compensation schemes now paying out thousands of workers and their families.

It's hard to believe that we activists are the cause of the nuclear industry's decline.

ChristinaMac call me cycnical but I have a suspicion that outback indigenous groups are being co-ordinated by non-indigenous people in the city. Recall a couple of years ago that Muckaty NT was a shortlisted site. They went on TV and talked about 'sickness country'. Now there is a seemingly unrelated indigenous group near Hawker SA over 1000 km away also talking about 'sickness country'. Someone is writing the script.

Nuclear opponents should work on how we will reduce emissions at least as much as political promises and how to reliably charge millions of electric cars, desal plants and air cons in a carbon constrained future. By manipulating indigenous groups nuclear opponents have lost the argument.

ChristinaMac1,

Most people who are alarmists and activists and share your beliefs are ignorant of the facts. They stay in their silos and read only what supports their beliefs. If this is not the case for you, then you might like to read and comment on these:

'Nuclear Power Learning and Deployment Rates; Disruption and Global Benefits Forgone' https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/12/2169/htm . Be sure to also read the Notes in Appendix B.

'Origins, Goals, and Tactics of the U.S. Anti-Nuclear Protest Movement' https://www.rand.org/pubs/notes/N2192.html

'Costs of nuclear power plants - what went wrong' http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html

There is much more to read after you've read these.

CM1. you've never bothered to even listen to engineer Jam Petersen, his short talk on Thorium as waste-burning technology. Or Kirk Sorensen, NASA scientist and nuclear technologist. Or prize-winning investigative journalist and science writer, Richard Martin, his book, Super Fuel, subtitled, green energy.

Your stubborn refusal to look at the facts have effectively prevented large-scale production of miracle cancer cure bismuth 213, a byproduct of MSR thorium.

You IGNORE confirmed science or latest advances!

But mindless fearmongering typical of cults. Those preventable deaths number over 60,000 a year in the USA and at least double the annual road toll here.

Every nuclear accident has been caused by the pressure the oxide reactors operate at. The fact that they use solid fuel.

Those problems disappear when you change to completely unpressurised MSR and Fluoride, which only boils at temperatures of around 1400C. The hottest ever needed to operate MSR thorium is 1200C.

Built-in passive safety automatically shuts down the reaction with any power failures. That's why the technology is WALK AWAY SAFE! Can't meltdown, because it's already molten and specifically designed to VERY SAFELY, operate as MSR!

Radiation is safely contained inside a NON PRESSURISED water jacket and simple concrete walls!

Let's be clear, the longer the half-life? The less radioactive the material. Uranium with a half-life of around 5 billion years is not particularly radioactive or especially dangerous. And four times more abundant and much-much cheaper thorium has a half-life of around 15 billion years even less so, making it less radioactive than a banana.

Yes, of course, we'd need to treat toxic radioactive waste with respect and handle it with all due care and appropriate safety controls, by properly trained personnel whose pay grades would reflect their responsibility.

And as Peter has noted have been doing so in nuclear-powered vessels for nigh on sixty years.

We need a nuclear industry the world will have no choice but to emulate if we are to prevent and reverse GW, climate change, which ultimately will destroy all you claim to want to protect!
Alan B.

Christinamac1.

You are totally wrong that the consequences of nuclear power station accidents are "very big". The opposite is the case. They are negligible. In the 17,000 reactor-years of operation, the only major accident that has killed people is Chernobyl. 28 clean up workers dies with a month of the accident from acute radiation sickness (about the same as in many coal mine accidents, oil and coal industry accidents). On a life cycle analysis basis nuclear is by far the safest way to generate electricity and has been from the start. Read Appendix B, Note VIII here:
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/12/2169/htm .

The LCA analyses include mining, processing, manufacturing, fabricating, construction, operation and maintenance, decommissioning, waste disposal, and transport between all stages. Deaths for pollution are included - these are the major component for most technologies.