Michael k's comments were about as comprehensible as all the other posts supporting the dirtiest, most dangerous technology humans have ever been stupid enough to invent.
I realise this site is just idle chat, but it is alarmingly revealing. Do all you people promoting the notion of nuclear really not give a damn about the problem of waste? Do you really think it will be great to have used enriched uranium rods returned to us to dispose of? Where? How? Is the rational part of your brains switched off? Are you hoping one of the gods will solve this intractible problem? Walter Raleigh was wise 500 years ago when he wrote:
I wish I loved the human race
I wish I loved its silly face
I wish I liked the way it walks
I wish I liked the way it talks
And when I'm introduced to one
I wish I thought what jolly fun.
Instead, away I want to run.

Australia is too diverse with a relatively small population to justify nuclear power in the short term. In the medium to long term, it is a possibility.

Mine uranium (with conditions), sell it (with conditions) – but we don’t need nuclear power plants in Oz just yet.

Nuclear costs a lot (in more ways than dollars) and the alternatives (geothermal and solar thermal for base load power for example) can be implemented NOW if we really wanted to.

Other renewables will and should play a part but it is a mine field with NIMBYs.

“Clean coal” – yes, go for it, but it is still years away from big time.

For now, individuals can improve personal energy efficiency (or their carbon footprint).

Improved energy efficiencies is a must for big users (and emitters of GHG) – and get rid of the subsidies for the vested interest groups in maintaining the status quo (e.g. aluminium smelters and the traditional coal mining lobby).

And let’s not forget our land and water (mis)use policies, seriously in need of an overhaul.

Transport fuels, it really is cheap! WHY?

Biofuels, they’re not that cheap and they’re really not that clean.

The upcoming federal election? Even if Rudd’s party won, they would still have a hostile Senate to contend with (not necessarily a bad thing).

We need political leaders and business leaders with a vision – where are they?

Commentators might be interested in my analysis of the Olympic Dam expansion in an article for Sanders Research Associates entitled "The big hole" on http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1122&Itemid=105

In my view the desalinated water from Wyalla will be needed for drought relief for farmers rather than used for ore processing.

Try Googling this - it’s worth a read.

Reactor Science and Technology October 1952 TID-2003 (DEL) Vol. 2 No. 3
[US] Atomic Energy Commission

T Keith Glennan - Editorial

[selective quotes]

"The Atomic Energy Commission and its staff, during its early stewardship of the [atomic energy] program, speculated at length on ways of bringing industry into the atomic energy picture on a more realistic basis, consistent with our normal competitive private enterprise economy.

On June 20, 1950, [Dr Charles A Thomas, the Executive Vice-President of Monsanto Chemical Co ] sent the Commission a letter, stating that he believed the time was ripe for industry, with its own capital, to design, construct and operate reactors for the production of plutonium and power.

This suggestion was based on the following assumptions:

that the long-term military requirements for plutonium exceeded the then existing and planned production facilities;

that it would be desirable to reduce the cost of this metal to the government;

that it would likewise be desirable to make use of the large quantities of heat attending the production of plutonium and not being utilized under existing conditions; and finally;

that the most nearly practicable use of such heat would be for the generation of useful quantities of electric power.

It was Dr Thomas's contention that the program … would offer industry an opportunity to contribute to the reactor program directly and to earn a profit which could be related to the effort put forth"

The penultimate paragraph of this 1952 editorial states that:

“A multitude of other factors also must be considered, such as preferential position, adequate security measures, suitable safety precautions, public relations and international relations.”

Waste disposal does not get a mention.

Will 500 more nuclear reactors making hydrogen for automobile fuel help solve these problems, now or ever? In your dreams. Look at the US solution to the public liability issue: The Price-Anderson Act! What will Australia’s solution be?

No doubt the current government, firmly rooted in the 1950’s can reinvent the wheel to their satisfaction - or maybe borrow a fifth wheel from the USA

Fifth wheel is sometimes helpful-and the more the lesser four others reliable become.

Natural resources definite are as using renewable energy is still a wish only.

Yes, I see it as essential that Australian remain in a Pollyanna state of denial concerning nuclear threats. Lets set a Ghandi-esque example of niceness.

We must be clean, and green. We have no enemies if we are nice. However should we be passively shielded by the US nuclear umbrella like our Kiwi cousins?

Something to mull over:

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1057723

"Tuesday, October 10, 2006 HONG KONG: North Korea’s nuclear test has an unsavoury connection with the sub-continent: Pakistan’s brazen complicity in helping North Korea build the bomb in return for missile technology. It’s a connection that the world has been blind to for some years now, despite compelling evidence of Pakistan’s involvement, because it was seen as a frontline ally in the “war or terror” since the 9/11 attacks on the US.

Journalist and author Seymour Hersh has noted that in June 2002, a CIA document, had revealed that Pakistan had been sharing sophisticated technology, warhead-design information, and weapons-testing data with North Korea since 1997.

That year, according to the report, Pakistan began paying for missile systems from North Korea in part by sharing its nuclear-weapons secrets. Pakistan also sent prototypes of high-speed centrifuge machines to North Korea, and sometime in 2001 North Korean scientists began to enrich uranium in significant quantities."

We can't be touched. We're Europeans in mystical yet quaint Asia (not).

Pete