I think there are several better options at the moment than nuclear power, but Dr. Green's last sentence (Nuclear power was not and NEVER will be an acceptable technological fix for our energy crisis) concerns me. Never is a really long time.

When I see this sort of statement I think she has an axe to grind rather than laying out some clear facts about nuclear power. Can I trust the rest of what she says? Is she pushing the idea that everything nuclear is bad? What are the costs of decommissioning a nuclear reactor? Natural gas power generation still produces greenhouse, so climate change really isn't that big a problem?

Maybe I'm asking too much from a 1000 word essay.

The paper by Dr. Green makes a number of assertions against nuclear power but is lacking in any numerical analysis to would backup her claim.

She advocates energy efficiency methods to off set Greenhouse gas emission from fossil fuels. No information is provided as to how this can be achieved. No mention of the importance of energy in maintaining our standard of living. No discussion on projected future increases in energy requirements. No numerical analysis of the “savings” she hopes to obtain. Sorry I am not prepared to give up my air-conditioning, domestic deep freeze, computer, digital television and so on. I am not prepared to willingly forgo a drop in standards of living to satisfy the unsubstantiated demands of Greenhouse theorists. No mention is made by Dr. Green of the importance of energy in transport, manufacture, or metal smelting. Mining is of course condemned; all mining not just uranium mining.

There is no doubt in my mind that life is easier now then in the Middle Ages. On average will live longer. Morbidity and mortality rates (including infant mortality) have all improved by orders of magnitude. There are many reasons for this, but prominent is the availability of affordable energy sources.

By the way could Dr. Green provide an estimate of the power consumed at Roxyby Downs say, and relate this to the power generated by the nuclear electricity produced from the Roxby Downs uranium? An estimate of the Joules required to produce a ton of nuclear fuel and the energy in that ton converted into electricity. Please why is nuclear electricity precluded from powering the enrichment plants, or trains transporting the fuel and eventually spent fuel rods.

The she write, “”Moreover, the cost of developing the nuclear industry would escalate wildly due to the appeal to terrorists of targeting nuclear-related infrastructure. Really what is her evidence for this statement? The unattractiveness of nuclear plants to terrorist attack is shown in a number of publications. [Science 2002; 297: 1997-199 or refer to the Nuclear Energy Institute web site http://www.nei.org .]

Like it or not the inevitable demand for power will make the nuclear option more and more attractive in the future.

Disclaimer: I have no connection with the nuclear industry

In actual fact nuclear is the best solution to our energy problems. There is a very good reason why the Europeans are still build them as well as wind generators.

The article makes good sense regarding improvements in generation technologies and efficiency of use, however I believe the comments about nuclear energy contributing to green house emissions are misleading:

"No electricity is currently being produced from nuclear power in Australia. In fact the industry substantially contributes to our greenhouse gas emissions due to its massive electricity requirements to extract, process and transport uranium ore. And where does this electricity come from? From burning fossil fuels."

Of course current extraction industries contribute to the greenhouse emissions. That's the point...using the nuclear generation option removes this problem.

The big "but" is safe use that won't contaminate the planet for a millennia! Perhaps more much effort is required now to develop future safe generation, extraction and end of life options.

I have long been suspicious of the nuclear power industry and its lobby, and one does not have to delve too deeply into its history to find ample justification for this. Its proponents have ample cause to regret many of their past claims and assumptions, such as the dilution assumptions (ignoring cancentration processes in marine food chains) by which in the past they happily dumped raw waste in the oceans. Guilty till proven innocent should be the policy on assessing its claims.

However, the link http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html?pg=1&topic=china&topic_set= provided by daveO following the Hore-Lacy article is worth a read.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the idea of harnessing nuclear energy. It is just that the technology to date has conjured up too many things out of Frankenstein and the Sorcerer's Apprentice. I would be most interested in Dr Green's opinion of pebble bed gas cooled reactors as described in this link, particularly as the Chinese are saying 'coming, ready or not.'

May a modest follower of your top-professional discussion be forgiven for expressing the opinion, that green gases just add a relatively immaterial amount of disorder to a global planetary degradation, which is a normal natural process the Universe is undergoing?

Therefor, while sustaining a living standard of even a contemporary level associated with a meaning of "a dawn of a civilized third millennium", increasing the energy consumption has been an unavoidable reality if even the efficiency of technological processes had progressed dramatically.

Bearing at least a global data on fossil resources in mind, use of a nuclear power is to become a regrettable necessity in a distant from a political consensus world, where alternative sources could as seen be fulfilling dreams of the holidaying in remote pristine areas only.

MichaelK.

Interesting that the responders, all with wide-ranging views on the topic, take issue with Dr. Green's overamping her premise at the expense of supporting facts.

Not that Dr. Green's concerns about nuclear energy are not well-founded: it is VERY important that we insist on the absolute best science and engineering in considering to use nuclear technology.

While I applaud and support all efforts to hold the nuclear industry accountable to strict science and safety, Dr. Green gets herself tripped up on some poorly thought-out assumptions, chief of which appears to be that she believes that there is no possible role for nuclear energy to generate electrical power in the future of our civilization.

Despite underlying concerns which she has about nuclear safety, her hypotheses about the economics and trade-offs of the energy sector input/output matrix are sloppy, as all of the previous responders have pointed out in one way or another.

There are certainly hidden costs in any undertaking, such as owning a home, but Dr. Green appears to be the tail wagging the dog in suggesting that either (1) a free market economy with appropriate government leadership and protections is incapable of solving that equation, or alternatively that (2) capitalism is an inherently flawed vehicle of providing long-term social well being, supported perhaps by the claim that the nuclear industry is some form of corrupt racket, propped up by the vested interests of a small number of political and corporate leaders who have managed to pull the wool over all of our eyes and are selling us a load of deadly bricks so that they may prosper in the short-term.

Nuclear energy is not a panacea by any means, but it will sure look more attractive when the planet starts to run out of oil and gas. We should not wait to develop the proper methods to harness and control that source of energy until we are forced to do it in a rushed and hurried fashion under global economic duress, for then we would certainly be inclined to make more errors than with a well-planned approach over time.

Nuclear power belongs to fields of technologies where not speechifying English of inherited skills but sharp to the point engineering knowledge and abilities are required.

For sure, both local graduates of “arts and law or something” and the privileged to upon generations spend taxpayer money on their breeds’ international calls mostly oppose introducing really modern intellect-consuming technologies in British semi-colonies.

One thing that amazes me about most critics of nuclear power is their total lack of differentiating between fission and fusion! This is amplified by people like Donna Green who state that "Nuclear power was not, and never will be, an acceptable technological fix for our energy crisis."

What type of attitude is this? Can Donna honestly stand up and say without shame that in the event of us discovering a useable form of nuclear fusion, that she would never condone its use? And in the horror event that she can not differentiate between the two, how can she even think she has an opinion of any worth.

Although I don't want to get ahead of our current technology I feel very deeply that any and all negative attitude towards "Nuclear Energy" (And of course this really means Nuclear fission) only stifles future R&D towards Nuclear Fusion unless these negative attitudes are directed against the correct form of Nuclear energy they are intended for.

Nuclear lobby groups and so forth should also take greater steps to differentiate between these two technologies in the hope of one day educating the general public that there is a difference, a very BIG difference, and a difference that hopefully one day will carry us through to clean, abundant energy supplies in the future.

P.S. (More noise should also be made about advancements in Laser technology used to speed up radioactive decay. Its these types of things that would make even Nuclear Fission acceptable to the masses)