'plantagenet' says,

"... nuclear power is often a step towards developing nuclear weapons due to the dual use nature of nuclear technology and processes.

"The Federal Government can use an enrichment plant to enrich uranium to reactor grade ..."

It's easier to make a reactor for producing bomb-grade plutonium than to make an economical power reactor. There's also the reactor-independent Hiroshima route.

That's just the way it is. I don't make the rules. The good news is that this, plus the relative junkiness of the plutonium from economical power reactors, puts them above genuine suspicion. The proliferation argument is just another petrodollar casuistry.

Uranium is intrinsically reactor-grade: natural UO2 can burn in a matrix of carbon or heavy water. Enrichment is necessary only if it is to burn under ordinary water.

The natural richness of uranium 1.8 billion years ago was higher, and it then could, and did, burn in wet ground. This tended to heat the ground and dry it out, two effects that both retard the reaction, so it went slowly for tens of thousands of years. More at http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/Files/Okloreactor.pdf

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html --
oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes

Nuclear weapons are a waste of resources and bad strategy. Australia would adopt a better defence strategy by researching and building up stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. Australians could be immunised and enemies brought to genicide.

The U.S currently have mature millitary robot research programs. Their wars in the future will be fought mainly by machines even in a post nuclear genicide.

Currently nuclear energy is generated to recharge ipods, allow workers to watch big brother and to waste most electricty in lighting the skies above cities and highways. Soon we will run out of quality grade uranium and nuclear war heads will have to be dismantled to recycle plutonium to keep the nuclear reactors running a decade more.
Australia would be better off for a fraction of the cost of nuclear running a cable from NZ and buying clean energy from there.

It is a small planet people , there is already raised radiation levels in Adelaide, Brisbane , Sydney and Melbourne from the tests at Maralinga. There are 1500 asbestos particles in a cubic metre of air from past milling over 30 years ago. Lead in soils along roads from the age of leaded petrol. Carbon dioxide from the first FJ Holdens are probably entering your lungs this moment. We have to get smart in how we do things, we are effectively drowning in our own muck.

The question is do we want to risk burning pin holes in our childrens and decendants cells so we can see a McDonalds sign from 20km, beam streetlights out into space and watch imported garbage on television?

We Australians would be served better at investing the money to be wasted on nuclear into more socially, economically and militarily advantages sectors such as stem cell research and robotics.

Uranium is a precious resource but not to us. For us it is inefficient and we have no worthy use for it. If we and our decendants can survive our religious wars and our over consumption the next major boom for humankind will be space travel, exploration and exploitation. We wont see it , it will happen in one or two hundred years. To go into deep space our decendants , the carriers of our genes, our children so to speak will need nuclear energy to escape their dependency on the sun. If we waste nuclear energy on toys and cooking up dinner parties or as weapons of tantrums because our gods dont lift a finger against his enemies we will seal the fate of human kind to extinction. We wont be able to expand and will be vulnerable to the wheel of fortune that will bestow this planet.

We are at this time the greedy piggy generation, its time we grow up and work with the future , not against it.

Yeah, West, surely “We [you?] are at this time the greedy piggy generation, its time we grow up and work with the future , not against it”. And the future does not belong to kowtowing up to overseas masters mere racists exporting their dirt while simultaneously mentoring the rubbish-recipients on environment, no practical personal expertise in.

That is why a “We Australians would be served better at investing the money to be wasted on nuclear into more socially, economically and militarily advantages sectors such as stem cell research and robotics” is like building pokies venues for "improving economics and finances" of the poor robbed and betrayed, made once again to substantiate fat national-liberal cats’ tax savings the most recently.

re:
"My own view is that this subject [non-proliferation] is for specialists. Proliferation is controlled by International agreement and overseen by the IAEA. A civil Australian nuclear industry will have no relevance to undesirable military activities in other countries.
Posted by anti-green, Monday, 18 June 2007 5:52:43 PM"

Let's rephrase it as:

"A civil IRANIAN nuclear industry will have no relevance to undesirable military activities in other countries."

Spot the difference?

To suggest that an Australian nuclear industry, or any country's nuclear industry, will have no relevance to global proliferation is to make a grand, sweeping gesture and reach a grossly improbable conclusion.

I guess it make sense if you have no understanding whatever of the relationship between nuclear electricity and nuclear weapons.

The nexus which enabled the birth of the nuclear electricity-weapons weapons industry is dated to October 1952, in my post above.

Consider the arguments put forth by Amory Lovins, in
http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E77-01_TheRoadNotTaken.pdf

Lovins makes the following, highly prescient observation, toward the end of his article, originally published in "Foreign Affairs", October, 1976:

"Finally, as national purpose and trust in institutions diminish, governments, striving to halt the drift, seek ever more outward control.

We are becoming more uneasily aware of the nascent risk of what a Stanford Research Institute group has called "…'friendly fascism'—a managed society which rules by a faceless and widely dispersed complex of warfarewelfare-industrial-communications-police bureaucracies with a technocratic ideology."

In the sphere of politics as of personal values, could many strands of observable social change be converging on a profound cultural transformation whose implications we can only vaguely sense: one in which energy policy, as an integrating principle, could be catalytic?"

"This article [Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?
By Amory B. Lovins] is reprinted from Foreign Affairs, October 1976, ... Copyright 1976 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc."

Many readers here will agree that we have moved in the direction of the Orwellian transformation described above. A look at the Rocky Mountain Institute website suggests that Lovins is too busy, committed, engaged and successful to stand around telling everyone "I told you so."

GRL Cowan

You said “It's easier to make a reactor for producing bomb-grade plutonium than to make an economical power reactor.”

I agree that its technically easier to build what is effectively a nuclear explosives factory. However most nuclear programs have found a dual use façade politically essential particularly in the early stages. By politically I mean taking account of public opinion (most would reject Australian made nuclear weapons so we’d have to beg for US weapons) and diplomatic relations (ASEAN countries and NZ would also oppose a nuclear armed Australia).

So the Government needs to operate by stealth supporting “nuclear power” for its dual use potential. The public can hardly imagine how dangerous the nuclear threat from other countries will be in 20 years time. I’ve attempted to establish the risk in my posts above and on my website http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/

Will we want to be even more dependent on Uncle Sam for our nuclear protection in 20 years than we are now.? This is the unintended result Pollyannaism will attract.

While the public will be surprised in 10 years time that the Government has had to hide a nuclear weapons program I believe its better to be honest. If the people reject it they’ll know why our Government needs to continually suck up to the US.

WEST

You say “Nuclear weapons are a waste of resources and bad strategy. Australia would adopt a better defence strategy by researching and building up stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons..."

In terms of surprise and effectiveness your proposal is out of touch. Enemy retaliation might be nuclear, or a contagion for which there is no immunity, or nerve gas (no defence).

I’m mainly talking about highly accurate and small nuclear weapons to take out hardened targets (enemy missile silos, command bunkers) and invasion fleets.

Doomsday weapon’s have not been seen as essential since the 1970s when accuracy was poor and mutually assured destruction (MAD) was the reigning doctrine.

I hope this isn’t too incompatible with environmentalism.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/