Surely this is not a balanced article. Nuclear power requires enriched uranium don't it? In my dim memory from school chemistry uranium comes out of the ground as 235 and is enriched to 236. Or is it the other way round? The point is, environmental uranium produced from coal etc is the safer stuff ain't it. Or am I just plain stupid.
During my long suffering life I've watched cancer patients die rather nasty agonisingly slow departures - we are not allowed to euthanise. The medical experts say cancer rates increase around nuclear power stations. I know coal does a similar thing, that's why alternatives to both are better.
Anyway, why can't we wait for fusion?
Barfenzie

Cancer increased near Nuclear power Stations? Please what is your evidence? Can you please provide references from the peer reviewed medical and/or scientific literature?

Statements from anti-nuclear advocacy groups are not reliable and therefore can not be considered as evidence.

The nuclear proliferation argument (which I assume Barfensie is referring to) is indeed one strike against uranium exports to other countries. However political and economic realities agaist this argument are: uranium can be sourced to other countries; and most customer countries already have nuclear weapons (eg China) or can acquire them with increasing ease with the assistance of North Korean or underemployed ex Sov Bloc scientists.

Leslie's point about uranium oxide being produced in the coal burning process is a very interesting aspect - new to me.

Nuclear power seems increasingly the way to go.

The alternative to nuclear/coal/oil power stations are political window dressing by politicians and energy companies. Wind power and solar power suffer from high startup costs, allied to extemely low output (compared to power stations) and frequent down time periods. One can feel all warm and fuzzy putting X cents of your power bill into these technologies but only a small proportion of the self consciously "enlightened" would see the joke on themselves.

Meanwhile "cold" fusion (rather than "hot" fusion, which is a tad explosive) is as easy and far off as travel to Mars.

While nuclear should be used as a stop gap it is simply foolish to say solar and wind or some other tech will never be worth while. solar and wind is now a good supplementary power source. Solar and wind is already superior is some situations (remote sites). Solar cells with 50-60% are predicted by researcher in the not to distant future. So the point is goal should be to develop cheap effective and safe power supplies and close doors through natural attrition not politics.

For Barfenzie’s info, uranium ore consists of about 99% U238 and 1% (maybe less) useful U235. Enrichment consists of separating out enough U235 to be useful as fuel in a power plant or (even more enriched, to weapons grade) a bomb. Plutonium is made artificially in some kinds of nuclear reactors.

I would like Leslie Kemeny to support his statements regarding the decay of radioactive waste products. Some have extremely long half-lives (eg, plutonium, approx 240,000 years) and even though a relatively low level alpha particle emitter is extremely dangerous, both because of its activity and because, as a heavy metal, it is a chemical poison anyway.

I accept that Australia has geologically stable formations. However, given the long half-lives of some waste products, it is clear that we cannot ever guarantee the security of any repository. Humanity has had civilisation for maybe 7,000 years. Here we are talking about periods up to 30 times as long. And note that in 240,000 years any given piece of plutonium will still be half as radioactive as it is today – that’s what half-life means.

For this reason, as well as others – mainly related to nuclear power plant security and the disastrous consequences of safety failures – I cannot support a move to nuclear fission power, despite the obvious greenhouse advantages. Hot fusion seems more promising, even if it takes more decades to develop commercially.

The author states, "The burning of brown coal in Victoria's Latrobe Valley produces about 70 tonnes of uranium oxide per gigawatt of electrical energy per year." This statement is confusing. A Watt is a unit of power, not energy. I think it would be better to state the total amount of uranium oxide emitted per year in the Latrobe Valley (assuming that the total amount of coal burnt every year would be roughly constant).
Re Mhoram's comment, "even though a relatively low level alpha particle emitter is extremely dangerous, both because of its activity and because, as a heavy metal, it is a chemical poison anyway.", an alpha particle is the nucleus of Beryllium (I seem to recall). By no stretch of the imagination can it be considered a heavy metal. I also seem to recall that an alpha particle emitted form a nucleus during a nuclear decay is stopped in a few centimetres of air. Therefore it is usually not dangerous.

Of all the nouns attached to the term nuclear, 'dump' is not the most offensive or emotive and 'energy' barely registers alongside consideration of the words 'weapon' or 'accident'. 'Contamination' is fairly ugly and today Bob Carr used the word 'nuclear' in conjunction with 'terrorist attack'. All the peer reviewed journal articles and specialist jargon in the world won't change people's minds while the word 'nuclear' is so easily graspable in negative terms.

Taanstasfl's post reveals only his ignorance. An alpha particle is a nucleus of helium minus its "orbiting" electrons. I did not say an alpha particle is a heavy metal; I said plutonium is. And while it's true that alpha particles are very short range, that's no help if the emitter is already inside one's body. Alpha particles are massive (compared to betas [electrons] and gammas [zero mass high energy photons]) and do a lot of damage to molecules they impact in their short journeys. This is why alpha emitters are dangerous. And of course plutomium is chemically toxic as well even were it not radioactive at all.

Anti-Green,

CHERNOBYL

I do believe that the rate of leukemia and other cancers near this nuclear power generation facility were definately above the median rate in the ukraine, and remain so.

Sorry, could not help myself.

However,

I am in favour of Uranium mining, what i have significant issues with is the control of the fuel after use. I feel that Australia should act to take charge of as much of this potentially fissile material, and also assorted non-fissile material, all of which is capable of being used to make weapons (non-fissile radioactive waste would probably make fairly effeicient dirty bombs).

The required installation will be in the Northern Territory, and the Norhtern Land Council has already suggested that it is willing to provide the site, in return for long-term (seriously) job creation, for local residents, and traditional owners. This will solve a global problem, and provide serious economic benefit for the long tern economic prosperity of both Aboriginal Native Title owners, and the Northern Territory, with the added benefit of co-operation being the ability to provide a culturally appropriate site for the storage facility.

Ironically, the employment and economic benefits from the storage of uranim and other radioactive material will replace those that will be lost when the Ranger mine winds up in the near future. i like it, replacing radioactive material, with radioactive material, and getting paid double for the privelege.

NICE