I think OLO readers must be getting weary of point-for-point rebuttals of anti-nuclear arguments. Suffice to say that the alternatives mentioned either demonstrably don't work on a large scale or won't be enough to prevent a return to a peasant economy. If this becomes official ALP policy they won't get my vote.

If you want to engage the rational elements of the public you'll have to do better than eternally trotting out the old scare campaign.

Meanwhile, because of Oil Parity Pricing, Australia's reserves of crude are being sold at inflated prices overseas (and internally) by the foreign owned oil companies that can't pump it out of the ground fast enough to cash in on this limited resource. These resources would last Australia hundreds of years if we kept them to ourselves, but instead the oil companies have decided that we will run out in 2020 like everyone else.

There are a number of problems which Mr Albanese fails to address. You can't fly a plane on solar power. Industry and infrastructure are geared toward oil. The cost of changing just cargo-ship engines back to sail would be enourmous. Trucks and trains that deliver food to shopping centres could run on electric/battery engines (or even hydrogen) but the energy for this has to come from somewhere.

Nuclear technology is NOT SAFE, Synroc is only guaranteed for 500 years or so before actinides leak or criticality issues arise. But nuclear is available and the energy cruch, let alone environmental issues, is imminent. Chernobyl and 30 KM radius was small compared to the 12 a-bombs (and 600-700 dirty bombs) the Poms exploded at Maralinga/Emu and the Monte Bellos and the land deemed unsafe in those places.

I would hate to see us go down the nuclear path, but Mr Albanese has put forward no feasable alternative.

Jennifer Marohasy has posted on her site a paper by Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, Professor Emeritus of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, Warsaw. Professor Jaworowski was a former Chairman of UNSCEAR.

Therefore it is worth reading his account of the Chernobyl accident-CHERNOBYL: THE FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN. A copy can be found on the web

http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001334.html#comments

I'm with you Anthony;
because there has not been a viable energy alternative to oil proposed at this point doesn't mean we have to accept the polluting alternative of nuclear. I don't want waste stored in my dung hill. in the Northern Territory.. Tasmania might take it...

An intelligent, civilised community must examine all the alternatives before we rush in to make Uranium mine leaseholders and shareholders rich to profiteer on another expensive energy source.

I don't know what has contributed to the increase in cancer......Are we witnessing present day cancers contracted as illnesses of slow onset as a result of Maralinga, Bikini Atoll, Chernobyl Three Mile Island, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.?
Are we experiencing globalisation in Radioactive Fallout ?

Anthony Albanese, I like it.

“With investments in solar and wind power, clean coal and gas technology, and with the right price signals in place, Australia can transform today's energy industry into tomorrow's energy economy without investing in nuclear power.”

YES! But I don’t see encouraging signs from Beazley. Everything suggests that it would be just the same old same old if Labor won power.

Of course, Labor should be going much further than this, and concentrating on directing our society onto a genuine basis of sustainability, as opposed to the lunacy of continuous economic and population growth.

The trouble is, that with issues such as nuclear energy, peak oil, biofuels, wind power, etc, the motivation is basically to prop up the same sort of paradigm that we have now, in which economic growth means everything.

The key to the whole business is to make the switch to a paradigm of economic stability, not continuous growth. If we did this, we would not be forever increasing rates of consumption of all manner of non-renewable and potentially renewable resources, we would not be pushing for high immigration in order to maintain ‘healthy’ economic growth, we would not be continuously developing (and degrading) our coastal areas, we would not be continuously increasing the pressure on already highly stressed water supply infrastructure, and so on.

THIS is where the most amazing political opportunity lies – with the party that can get up and go for true sustainability. The Greens ain’t gonna do it, which is a crying shame. The Democrats are as far away from it as the Libs and Nat. So that just leaves Labor. I reckon with intelligent people such as Kevin Rudd and a few others (that’s right, I didn’t mention Beazely), it just could possibly happen.

Labor is urinating into a gale if they think they can win power by towing the same old line that they have been for years, and which is insignificantly different to that of Howard.

The time is absolutely right for a major environment / sustainability political force to emerge in this country.

Re Zbigniew Jaworowski, he's also a global warming sceptic. But before rushing to quote his global warming "science" I'd suggest you look here http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=7 or possibly here http://timlambert.org/2005/01/hissink3/ Jaworowski would seem to be a bit of a contrarian, always on the lookout for some free press. I suspect though that working on a paper for Lyndon LaRouche http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/sci-techs/3019us_nuke_safety.html probably didn't do much for his scientific reputation.