There is nothing in the article other than one side propaganda and inference. No discussion of the Pros and Cons, no discussion of the NEGATIVE impacts of Coal/Oil and RENEWABLES (solar, wind, batteries, hydro, tidal).

Simply saying 'support me and all my green mates' (see list of over 20 support NGO's in their submission, which I assume this article is trying to promote) is not a useful approach., Try again Pass/Fail - in my book for this effort in terms of arguments. Still well written, but wasted opportunity to make his/her/it/their case.

The author forget to mention a new uranium mine near Wiluna WA, the re-opened Honeymoon SA and the possible mine at Jabiluka NT. Uranium is everywhere there is even a small deposit near Adelaide's Myponga reservoir. I'd worry more about lead, arsenic and copper in the water supply which affects perhaps 20 sites across Australia yet the people somehow carry on.

BHP's Olympic Dam financially supports the Arid Recovery project which aims to preserve endangered animals like the bilby. More to the point their uranium creates about 200 Twh a year of carbon free electricity overseas. SA itself uses 14 Twh a ear of electricity 45% powered by dwindling gas reserves. Yet they crow about their battery that can power the state for 3 minutes on a hot day. Somebody is not seeing the forest for the trees.

Sorry aj, renewables have NO negatives.

Why bother discussing uranium or anything nuclear. Our thick politicians won't countenance it, preferring Chinese made windmills and solar panels, with French battery electric submarines that have been out of date since the first nuclear one.

Ms Pepper writes: "The reality of uranium mining in Australia has been one of leaks, spills, accidents, license breaches and a failure to rehabilitate."

But what happens when you change 'uranium mining' to 'urban development'? The sentence could read something like this:
"The reality of urban development in Australia has been one of broadscale clearing of native vegetation, species extinction, adverse changes to hydrology, draining and filling of wetlands, crime, deaths and serious injuries from motor vehicle crashes, air pollution, domestic violence and a failure to live sustainably."

Every human activity can be described in negative terms if the author is so narrow and biased in their attitudes as to deliberately ignore the positives and only focus on the negatives.

Ms Pepper is described on her LinkedIn site as the 'Nuclear Free Campaigner at Conservation Council WA'. Says it all really.

Spill some uranium (yellowcake) on your shoe and what happens?

SFA!

Spill some sulphuric acid and you may be lucky to get outta those brogues before they dissolve?

Now if you are really concerned about rogue emissions? And extinction? You'd ban all coal-fired power today! Because of the melody of highly toxic materials given off via the smokestacks/ash dumps.

Apart from the CO2 which will in due course if allowed to continue to pollute the atmosphere, will result in guaranteed extinction of all life.

Some of the toxic substances spewed out of coal-fired power stations, include uranium, lead, carcinogenic cadmium, mercury and arsenic. Facked gas always comes with radioactive gas (radon) when burned

Renewables are not as clean and green as presented. Solar voltaic comes with mountains of toxic waste! When used up need to be buried in landfill!

Windmills have a high rate of bird kills some of which are threatened species.

Moreover, need to turn for up to thirty years before they offset the carbon created during their manufacture phase!

MSR thorium, on the other hand, can be burned and reprocessed to be burned again and again! To make just around 1-2% as nuclear waste, which is less toxic, has a half-life of just 300 years, stabilises in around 30, and is eminently suitable as long life space batteries which burn up with reentry! How long have we mined uranium? And coal? During that time, how many fatalities have each caused?

Coal has a dark history that encompasses centuries. Uranium not so much unless you include Hiroshima and Nagasaki! And some of the accidents associated with the extreme pressure of the earliest examples of solid-fueled reactors. Some of which allegedly operated att phenomenal, 300 atmospheres.

Today, the modern versions have gotten it down to 70 atmospheres and MSR, just 29 PSI! There's more pressure in your tyres!

I'm glad the board includes some experts, given the lady is clearly not one of them, but rather a modern-day Luddite obsessing over Skyfall? Needs to talk from much higher up!
Alan B.

Correction, 29 PSI should read 20 PSI.

A. J. Having probs with memory stick downloads.

Microsoft seems to think my passwords are in error! I guess that's because they can't get past them to hack into my system or email accounts?

So unable to comply with request.

If I can still help you? Would appreciate a temp email address to which I will send what I'm able, on MSR thorium, if that's ok?
Alan B.

I'm pleased to confirm that Kirk Sorensen has been given a job with the U.S. Atomic agency, now working o solve a few minor problems with MSR. Most of which seem to be the production/release of Tritium? Some minor corrosion.

Seems well on the way to solving those probs, getting a thousand MW reactor off of the drawing board, generating extraordinarily inexpensive carbon-free electricity.

Activists generally obsess over strontium 90 and cesium!

However, even these nasties can be put to positive use in a controlled environment. To preserve biodegradable products, i.e., food!

Cryovaced, irradiated meat treated in the proscribed manner? As fresh as the day packed, seven years later. Ditto fresh fruit/vegetables, even without refrigeration, regardless of temperature variations. Should have the preppers the world over queuing to buy a couple of years supply?

Keep our farmers flat out like a lizard drinking trying to satisfy that demand?

I expect some very positive announcements regarding licking the final minor probs with MSR thorium inside a year, now that Kirk has been given his job with the U.S. Atomic commission!

Our government is elected to govern and for all of us, not just a small vocal minority who wouldn't know you were up them, unless you hollered!

Our fuel supply is threatened and wouldn't be, if we simply cooked thermal coal to create CNG, using safe clean nuclear heat.

In the process create thousands of new longer-term, transitional jobs.

As would the enormous medical tourism be for our outback via the rollout of bismuth 213, day clinics, out there!
As a queue that would be all, we could possibly handle, for a decade or more!

Deionization dialysis desalination would allow us to use desalinated seawater instead of river water or that of aquifers. This method creates as much as 95% potable water and for a quarter of the energy input and cost of traditional desalination! Cheap enough for cost-effective, broad-scale irrigation! Rice? Cotton?

Bismuth 213, day clinics? Over the cold dead hand of big pharma and their puppets in "Australian" medicine!
Alan B.

Thank you, Mia Pepper, for clearly setting out the need for the Review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to find that the Act needs to be strengthened, rather than weakened.

It is clearly absurd to assess uranium mining and milling as not "nuclear actions'. Obviously they ARE nuclear actions, and are the front end of the whole radioactive nuclear chain. The nuclear lobby likes to pretend that the uranium industry is the same as all other mining. But it's not, as it carries its special radioactive danger to human health, and to the environment.

The fiasco of the federal Environment Minister (Melissa Price at the time) overriding Western Australia's EPA, and approving Cameco's Yeelirrie project, illustrates the weakness of Australia's environmental laws. In that case, it concerned the protection of species. And this is another part of the EPBC Act which needs strengthening, (not removal, as the nuclear lobby would wish)

Australia's little coterie of nuclear schills will be doing their usual jump up and down, in the comments section. But that won't stop Mia Pepper's article being seen by many as credible and convincing.

C.M. Tour diatribe is, as usual, a fact-free misrepresentation of the nuclear industry and uranium mining.

No mining operation is risk-free and none are more dangerous and come with a huge cost in human life and ill-health than coal.

Used to be Asbestos.

I'm glad the government has finally starting to take expert advice as opposed to jumping to the tune off diabolically disingenuous mendacious antidevelopment antinuclear activists like yourself.

The government is elected to govern tor all, not the loudest noisiest, vocal minority which knows as much about uranium mining and nuclear operations as I know about the chemical composition of the dark side of the moon!

Fact. Nuclear power has a history of lower fatalities than your renewables! FACT!

Get an education and some factual knowledge before you start trying to control our energy policy and through it, our recovery?

Or maybe you and your crazies, don't give a Rat's about anyone else or anyone else's rights, least of all the preventable death toll among death sentence cancer patients

I get that you and yours just don't give a toss for those thousands that outnumber the annual road toll by more than double/die in unimaginable pain!

YOU REALLY SHOULD BE IN POLITICS!

And just not good enough C.M.!

Your crocodile tears convince nobody! But your completely transparent and complete lack of anything resembling normal human empathy in an of your posts, clearly does!

And completely clueless about mining or safe clean carbon-free, nuclear energy!

I promise the sky won't fall, your phone will still work, the trams will still run and the cow will still produce milk, regardless of your insane obsessions!
Alan B

Greenies love their EPBC act. It'd have to be one of the most harmful legacies of the Howard government. The only fix needed is complete repeal.

poor old ateday.. ...Renewables have no downside impacts... you naïve little thing!.

Alan B, try rory996@gmail.com That would be appreciated

I don't know why Christina Mac and Mia feel the need to bend the truth. Obviously anti Nuc activists feel that lying in a good cause is justified.