Peter Lang, I suspect you are completely wasting your time asking a cult member like CM1 to read anything, given he/she seems to have all the human empathy of a Nazi SS Sturm trooper? Or the intellectual genius of a Forrest Gump?

Typically the green movement are totally oblivious to the fifty million plus now eking out a miserable existence in real refugee camps and a world away for far superior conditions in our offshore detention now described by green advocates as hellholes.

As they ignore the fact that these same illegal arrivals chose to destroy their own personal ID's needed to get the visas to interim countries where they then paid as much as a year's salary for the short hop to Chrismas Island. As illegal border hopping arrivals.

To say that they were still persecuted or in immediate danger of political reprisal in transit countries is just more of the same from routinely disingenuous greens.

Who also ignore the fact that two-thirds of the world's households, have no washing machine and all the laundry needs to be done by hand by women living in hell holes and under slave-like conditions.

Their empathy is like their facts, very selective and as always aimed solely at political outcomes that suit their purely selfish self-centred hidden agenda?

And as you can see from CM's post, their unsubstantiated opinion is treated as proven fact!?

The only way to mitigate against or reverse much of the aforementioned is with truly affordable energy. Namely MSR (molten salt reactors) and thorium. And use that to desalinate copious water and revegetate arid wasteland.

Light homes, pump water and power affordable washing machines, manufactured with affordable power from affordable steel. All courtesy of power even the most impoverished nations on earth can actually afford!
Alan B.

My first reaction was that Jim Green had done something useful (at last) - reviewed published costs of creating and managing nuclear waste facilities and hence aiding the development of key performance indicators for the ones that Australia will inevitably require if it wants to cut its energy emissions by at least 90% (as climate scientists say is needed). My second reaction was to remind myself to read it more thoroughly, just in case. My third was to leave that to others.

//I didn't know that the nuclear industry is "the safest way to generate electricity and always has been" as Lang asserts.//

Yeah, it is. You should have a look at the numbers, they don't lie.

//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?//

Sorry, are we talking about nuclear or hydro-electricity here? Because that's a pretty accurate description of hydro-electric dam collapses: quite unlikely, but really devastating. The 1975 Banqiao Reservoir Dam collapse in China killed 26,000 people alone, over five times the death toll from all your nuclear accidents combined. But for some reason we never hear about the dreadful consequences of major hydro accidents... certainly not from hippies, at any rate.

//There are also the longterm health effects on workers in the uranium and nuclear industries//

The maximum annual dosage that workers in the nuclear industries are allowed to be exposed to is fraction the lowest dose that has been proven to be harmful. I know that hippies like to assume the LNT hypothesis, but it's never been proven and I doubt it ever will be: too much noise.

I lean towards the threshold model, and I believe that the mental health impact of low-dose radiation exposure may well be more dire than the physical effects:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model#Mental_health_effects

The last sentence there is particularly noteworthy:

"It is "only nuclear radiation that bears a huge psychological burden — for it carries a unique historical legacy"."

An astute observation: clearly hydro-electricity doesn't carry so weighty a psychological burden if 26,000 dead people can be quietly swept under the rug. The unique legacy that is being referred to is, of course, the Bomb. But nuclear bombs and nuclear power stations are two completely different things. I'm quite happy to march alongside the hippies if it's a nuclear disarmament rally - remember, you can't hug your kids with nuclear arms. But nuclear power stations are fine.

I strongly oppose the building of Chernobyl-type nuclear plants. Just look what happened 32 years ago, with that 30+ year-old plant. No, we shouldn't blindly adopt 65-year-old technology. Hmmm, are their more advanced models for nuclear plants than 65-year-old Soviet ones ?

I'm against setting up a nuclear plant like Fukushima, 50 metres from the beach in a tsunami-prone area, near earthquake fault lines. Wherever possible, Australia should build away from the coast, and not on fault lines. Hmmmm, so where else can we build such plants ? Is there anywhere in Australia which is away from tsunami-prone coasts, and notorious earthquake zones ?

So many tough decisions !

Reflecting on Alan B's latest pro nuclear comment.

I Learn that I am a "cult member" and that I have "all the human empathy of a Nazi SS Sturm trooper? Or the intellectual genius of a Forrest Gump "

I learn that he thinks that the green movement doesn't care about the plight of refugees.

My opinions are "unsubstantiated"? (What? -Ural Mountains 1957, Windscale UK 1957,Chalk River 1952-58, Three Mile Island 1979, Chernobyl 1986, Fukushima 2011 - just didn't happen? or weren't serious if they did?" )

I learn that he thinks that molten salt technology is the only way to go, to beat climate change? (bad timing Mr B, as the first much-touted MSR firm Transatomic just tanked only yesterday)

Anyway, I don't know, or care, what "cult" he thinks that I'm in. Nor do I care that he thinks that I'm like a Nazi storm trooper, and that I'm stupid. I suppose that he thinks that this is witty.

My point here is simply that all this personal abuse to me is no argument at all for nuclear power.

ChristinaMac1/JimGreen

The single biggest problem with the anti-nuke campaigners is that in scientific circles their credibility is virtually non-existent.

The reality is that most of the claims from these activists have been vastly overblown or misrepresented. The number fatalities due to nuclear power generation /kwhr is a fraction of any other source incl renewables.

The radioactivity of waste material from reactors drops by a factor of 1/100 in the first 40 years and a further 1/1000 or so in the next 1000 years so the while the material might be radioactive it is far less of a long-term risk than the activists would have you believe. And of course, if the material is reprocessed, the waste material issue is further reduced, and many isotopes are removed for medical treatments that save far more lives.

Similarly fast breeder reactors can use U238 and thorium and provide an almost limitless supply of energy for 1000s of years.