Troublemaker,
The sun is an inexhaustible source of energy. nuclear fuel is not.You are deluded.
you want energy production to keep up with the rising population of the planet. it is the already over-populated planet that is the source of our problems. If you think the human population can go on increasing ad infinitum, you are again deluded.
As West said, wash your hands in cold water and ride a bike. I add the suggestion that you encourage everyone you know to stop breeding.

Haydon Manning's membership of one or other environmental organisation is irrelevant. After all, Philip Ruddock wears an Amnesty pin. Where Haydon comes from is clearly shown by the way in which he tries to belittle rather than analyse Mark Diesendorf's scholarly and closely referenced work, while citing approvingly the effusions of the mining industry's Uranium (dis?)information Centre.
Just to comment on one point Haydon makes: When we point out that easily accessible uranium cannot last long if world-wide nuclear power were to really take off, we are not concerned with dollar costs, but with the energy investment required in the tortuous process of mining and enriching the stuff. That, in the case of Roxby, (and Roxby only) uranium can be considered a by-product is irrelevant from the point of view of energy production.
I cannot understand the term base-load, meaning that it can be generated 27/7 every day of the year. There is no such animal. Indeed, Hazelwood was criticised on the ground that each unit was too large. The notion of having one bloody great boiler and turbine aggregate for the whole of Australia is obviously ludicrous; whether the demand can be met by capacity of one particular technology alone or a mixture is purely a matter of logistics. Of course, if you are determined to reject all manner of renewables in favour of someone's pet technology any obstacle will do.
From the Howard government's and the mining industry's point of view there is one major advantage shared by uranium and "clean coal" technology: it will take 12-15 years to develop, during which time much fossil fuel energy will have to be expended on these projects and politicians will be excused (in their eyes) for doing nothing except talk. Uranium energy has the added advantage in Australia that it is politically highly divisive, delaying the day of reckoning still further.

To West & ybgirp

You're dreaming! Do you really believe washing your hands in cold water will help the environment? Do you really believe people are going to change their habits to save the environment? Do you really believe people will want to ride bicycles to work when there are so many great cars to drive? Get real ! ! Do you really believe that ANYONE will want to stop reproducing children ? ?

With respect to costs you have no idea what you're talking about. Plants built by Areva in countries that have gotten rid of their "overkill" safety regulations cost less than a third of what they presently cost in Australia or the U.S. I'm not talking about ANY nuclear power plant, I'm talking about the "cookie cutter" plants being built NOW by Areva. They are safer than any existing nuclear power plants, and all 441 plants now operating have a perfect safety record. No other industrial technology can equal that record. Those are facts, not wishful thinking.

You must face it. There is only ONE answer to global warming and the pollution that is causing it and that answer is NUCLEAR POWER. It is the answer and the only answer. Face it, because it's the truth. I urge both of you to visit our website, www.nucleargreen.org. You might learn something in spite of yourselves. :-)

antigreen - re:
“.. the relevance of [international influences] to a civil Australian nuclear industry is entirely speculative"

What about speculation regarding France, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea? Was the relevance of their civil nuclear industries also "entirely speculative"?

An ABC Background Briefing program, 3 September, 2006 includes:

"Sir Phillip Baxter[archived]: "It is of the greatest importance for the long term security of Australia ... that the option to make such weapons be kept open."

"Tom Morton: Opposition leader Kim Beazley has ruled out any move towards enriching uranium under a Beazley Labor government."

"In a recent speech to the Sydney Institute, Mr Beazley argued that enrichment would send all the wrong messages to countries in our region, because it would raise the spectre of Australia acquiring nuclear weapons."

"Kim Beazley: There's a strange echo here of Liberal Prime Minister John Gorton's attempts to keep Australia out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and his plans for uranium enrichment in Australia back in the 1960s.
At the time Gorton hid his motives, but 30 years later he too admitted the truth, saying, 'We were interested in this thing because it could provide electricity to everybody, and could, if you decided later on, it could make an atomic bomb.'
That's just another reason it's so irresponsible for John Howard to talk up processing without addressing the strategic policy issues that arise."
How would John Howard reassure our neighbours that processing facilities in Australia did not reflect wider Australian nuclear ambitions?”"

"Addressing the strategic policy issues that arise"...

Who trust Australia anyway?

Troublemaker seems to think that heat generated by the Earth’s ‘internal combustion engine’ is an “exhaustible form of energy” and no doubt will end soon (if it does, forget life as we know it, the planet would not exist anymore).

Australia is well placed to utilise this form of energy source (so called 'hot rocks' technology) to power its needs. This “exhaustible form of energy” is the basis of geothermal power and will outlast any nuclear resources by hundreds of millions of years.

Troublemaker also seems to think that our Sun is also an “exhaustible form of energy” and no doubt will end soon (if it does, forget life as we know it, the solar system would not exist anymore).

Australia is well placed to utilise this form of energy source (so called 'yellow ball in the sky') to power its needs. This “exhaustible form of energy” is the basis of solar-thermal power and will outlast any nuclear resources by billions of years.

Nuclear power is ok in some countries, and the technology for its safe use will only get better. However, WE DO NOT NEED NUCLEAR POWER IN AUSTRALIA YET and probably won’t for a long time to come – for the many reasons alluded to in previous posts and contrary to what many in the nuclear lobby (including the Troublemaker) suggest.