Professor Brionowski says "leave it in the ground". No just dig it up, build a nuclear reactor in Prime Minister John Howard's electorate of Bennelong and then he will have a real mandate for his next term. Come on Liberal Party representatives. Why aren't you pleading to John Howard for a chance to have a nuclear reactor and storage depot in your electorate -in your backyard.

Rancitas' faults are many
The Liberals have only two
Everything they say
And everything they do

I suspect another slimey Howard plot, he is an expert in mean and tricky.

I bet the washup of the Uranium enquiry is that "Coal is wonderful".

Just what Johnny wants.

I think Bush told him to do it and then sell uranium to India in spite of the fact they haven't signed the non-proliferation treaty.

Just business for the big boys.

And to take our minds of the new anti-refugee policy which he utterly failed to sell even to many of his own party.

Richard's Bronowski is clearly neither an Engineer nor a Physicist. A properly designed nuclear reactor (Chernobyl was not) is covered by a massive concrete shield strong enough to contain a nuclear explosion within. This would be quite sufficient to deter any terrorists.

I wish the "Social Engineers" would leave it to real Engineers for information about nuclear plant. Then and only then can we have a sensible and informed discussion, I have no idea what direction the final outcome would take.

The arguement that greenhouse house effect cannot be amelierated unless we do something tomorrow is a furphy. Climate change may already be in progress, the issue is what can we do not to make things worse when the 3rd world brings itself up to our levels of comfort and energy use.

Unfortunately the anti nuclear lobby feeds on misunderstandings and sophistry which obscures any rational debate. It is much easier to study propoganda than do the hard yards of mathematics and physics and chemistry necessary to make a proper comment on this issue.

The idea that Australia has plenty of uranium to provide the world with energy needs a closer look. The Ranger mine is due to close in 2008, with processing continuing to 2011. Beverley is a minor player providing >1000 tonnes/annum. BHP Billiton reported in its last quarterly report that copper and uranium production from the Olympic Dam underground mine is falling due to low ore grades. So everything depends on its expansion as an open pit. If it passes its pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, digging will start in 2009, reaching the ore deposits in 2013. Four years of diesel-powered excavation will mean expensive imports of crude oil, more energy will be required for the water desalination and associated pipeline, for a rail link and for an extension to Roxby Downs. The uranium is a co-product with copper, silver and gold as the grade is too low for its extraction as a single product. So the go-ahead depends on the maintenance of the copper price during the next seven years. Australia supplies the US, Europe, South Korea and Japan with yellow cake (U3O8), so if it supplies China, it will have to disappoint its current customers. The same applies if it decides to generate its own nuclear power. If the fossil energy input needed to provide others with electrical energy exceeds what they gain, the whole exercise is a nonsense. The politics have no chance in beating the laws of thermodynamics

I am sure that Bronowski's article is based on the tried and true maxim of the extreme left that "We must make demands that cannot be satisfied. "

There are several points about global warming gases and nuclear energy that need to be made again:

1. Australia is so small and insignificant that it just doesn't matter what we do. The countries that matter are China and India.

2. Although we possess a sizeable percentage of the world's uranium, whether we export it or not will not alter the prospect of nuclear proliferation by any appreciable amount. One fact that not many people know is that Iran has the only uranium mine in the middle east, and so is not subject to any restrictions imposed by the exporting countries. That is why they are such a threat.

3. The provision of electricity is now vital to the continuing existence of the world's population. Any interruption to the supply would result in mass starvation, as well as economic collapse.

4. The population of the world will increase by 50% over the next thirty years, making all of these problems much more acute.

5. Current comparisons between coal and nuclear power stations do not take into account the pollutants currently being released by coal stations, which include 6 grams of uranium released into the atmosphere for every ton of coal burnt, as well as oxides of sulphur, nitrogen etc. The possible risk from nuclear power pales into insignificance compared to the many thousands of people (mainly in China) dying each year in coal mines.

6. The only way we know how to run an economy is to have it grow constantly. The last protracted period without growth was called the Great Depression, and I don't think many people want that repeated.

It looks like being an interesting century.