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.

Why Jaworowski is quoted on the LaRouche web site I do not know? I can assure you I have no time for the LaRouche cult. Jaworowski has of course published articles in other forums. In any case, his politics is not pertinent to this discussion.

None-the less Jaworowski observations of the “Linear No Threshold Hypothesis” in radiation protection is pertinent. I can assure you not all the critics of LNTH or for that matter Greenhouse are right wing fanatics, or members of bizarre cults. The literature debate regarding LNTH has been heated for more then thirty years. As yet, the protagonists show no sign of agreement.

There are regulatory arguments in favour of LNTH. For instance a number of concepts used in radiation protection such as; justification, optimisation (ALAR), dose equivalent and so on depend on LNTH.

On the other hand at low doses, considered in BEIR VII to be less then 100mSv, there are several non linear biological processes that work in either direction, so as to cause a departure from linearity. The magnitude and direction of these effects is as yet not clearly defined. I list here; the adaptive response, apoptosis, various cellular DNA repair mechanisms, problems in correcting double chain brakes, by-stander effects, genomic instability and so on.

However, there is general agreement that at low level any carcinogenic effect from radiation will be slight and undetectable by epidemiology. Further any prediction of number of cases based on LNTH co-efficient will be so lacking in precision as to be exceedingly rubbery. A former chairman of ICRP* has commented that the A bomb survivor studies only have the power to detect risk of LET radiation down to 50-100mGy.

My view is that if the LNTH is used to make predictions of radiation detriment, authors should quote 95% confidence limits, and explain all the errors in their methodology and assumptions.

*Clarke R. Control of low level radiation exposure: time for a change? J Radiol Prot 1999; 19:107-115.

AG, before I posted I just did a web search on Jaworowski. I was interested in his credentials. His expertise obviously lies in radiation, rather than climate change, but his poorly-researched foray into climatology damages his credibility (in my view). Until a couple of years ago I was a climate change sceptic, but the evidence seems pretty overwhelming now (sorry this is bit off topic). With genuine climatologists who disbelieve climate change now more-or-less extinct http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/26/1101219743320.html , any scientist who supports the other side (no matter what their specialisation) can get a hearing; a bit like the Intelligent Design "controversy". Jaworowski got a resounding rasberry for his climatology paper.

Having stumbled across the LaRouche connection I thought it was amusing, in a surreal kind of way. The article begins "Two eminent experts, Zbigniew Jaworowski and Michael Waligórski, discuss", which suggests it was written for LaRouche. I could be wrong, no offence intended.

As you rightly point out re radiation and the LNT hypothesis "the protagonists show no sign of agreement". I think I'll avoid a holiday in the Ukraine until the jury is in, or delay it 200 years if LNTH wins the day.

A HOLIDAY IN THE UKRAINE WHY NOT?

“At present, in most of the settlements subjected to radioactive contamination as a result
of Chernobyl, the air dose rate above solid surfaces has returned to the background level
predating the accident. But the air dose rate remains elevated above undisturbed soil in
gardens and parks in some settlements of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.”
[The Chernobyl Forum: 2003–2005]

Table 11 of Annex B,UNSCEAR-2000 lists a number of areas in the world together with their population, where background radiation is far in excess of the average, about 2.4mSv/y.
Brazil Monazite area 73,000 people
France , Central South West 7,000,000 people
Kerala, India 100,000 people
Iran, Ramsar 2000 people.

The table lists 18 places in 9 countries. The air dose in the table is quoted as nGy/h which can be converted to mSv/y. The average dose in Kerala for instance is about 15.7mSv/y. The highest doses are in the monazite area of Brazil and/ or Ramsar (Iran).

BEIR VII report summarises four ecological studies in high background areas. All four are negative. [Ecological studies do not provide information on the dose to individuals].

On current evidence a Ukrainian holiday should not give rise to any radiological concern.

As a wary Greenie I am not prepared to accept pro-mining assurances of radiation safety in disaster areas any more than assurances by mining companies of the restoration of mined areas . The multi Million dollar taxpayer funded cleanup in 1977 after Rum Jungle finished is still contaminated 30 years on. I don't think the Finniss River will ever recover from heavy metal tailings .
We are now faced with an estimated $7.3 million taxpayer funded cleanup at Coronation Hill which will then be included in Kakadu National Park. ERA was piping contaminated water to residents of Jabiru and so the list goes on... Nuclear ? No Thanks !!