Jim Green has clearly refuted James' Lovelock's case that nuclear power can be considered separately from nuclear weapons.

I continue to wonder that Lovelock is taken seriously on this issue. In Australia alone, as well as in the UK, we have far more convincing scientific experts, people like Ian Lowe, for example, who explain the futility of nuclear as a solution to global warming.

James Lovelock is certainly an interesting writer and speaker - with a rather charming sort of imaginative, spiritual quality.
I wonder that Lovelock is admired for his somewhat spiritual and emotional approach to this issue of global warming and nuclear power.
Yet - when we hear from the very passionate Helen Caldicott on the dangers of nuclear power, she is criticised as being "emotional". This apparently labels Caldicott as "inscientific", while Lovelock, with his very passionately held Gaia theory is a "scientific expert.
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

"Nuclear power is the one and only energy source with a repeatedly-demonstrated connection to the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction."

Oh really? How many countries have developed poison gas that didn't already have a petroleum industry?

OTOH there's no argument in nuclear power's favour. Lovelock should ask cancer victims living in areas bombarded with "depleted" uranium munitions if 238U is "useless for making bombs".

Fact is, energy efficient loads and smaller-scale electricity generation from ambient energy or from piped natural gas is potentially vastly cheaper than nuclear electricity, by virtue of being faster to approve and commission, being distributed throughout the electric system close to demand, and being mass-produced.

Big generators have long lead times and need huge spinning reserve in case of failure (even coal-fired steam turbines are available only 85% of the time; and nuclear power stations have a worse record than that in most countries); it is actually a risky business to operate them.

Not to mention that the fuel price of renewables is fixed at zero.

http://www.smallisprofitable.org/

Albert Arnold Gore versus James Lovelock is a no brainer. Gore has a B.A. in government and also attended the School of Religion at Vanderbildt University, hardly sufficient to make him a nuclear expert.
Control over the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons requires mainly control over the supply of Uranium fuel. Devising such control should not been beyond the capability of the leaders in countries with the raw resources or the United Nations Inspectorate. No supervision no more supplies coupled with other embargoes. The recent closure of the North Korean reactor shows that such controls do have the potential to work effectively.
Foyle

I'm not so confident Foyle. There was the theft of uranium in India, as recent as last year.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has poor physical protection and accounting measures in their nuclear sector. Only this year, 2 senior nuclear officials of the DRC were detained over allegations of uranium smuggling.

During 2006, a hacker stole the records of some 1500 employees from the US agency guarding the country's nuclear weapons' stockpile.

Then there was the "theft" from a US government agency of damning evidence against the government over the poor health and deaths of Gulf war veterans exposed to depleted uranium.

Questions have been asked in the British parliament also over the alleged theft of uranium.

The uranium industry in Australia does not have a good record to guard against leaks and spills and only a couple of years ago, workers were seriously exposed to high levels of radiation and the company prosecuted.

In addition, our "expert regulators" in Australia have been responsible for catastrophic releases of other types of hazardous pollution.

Their reluctance to competently regulate pollutant industries is on record and speaks for itself. Community health is not factored into their equations!

How could one trust them to safely regulate a nuclear reactor?

"Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot, that it do singe yourself." (William Shakespeare)

Nuclear power requires continuous and large amounts of cool water. More than any other method of power generation.
Where will that come from in Australia?

I think we believe and rely too much on nuclear power to be our main power source in future. We should understand and be aware that renewable power sources can be the alternative to nuclear power despite what James Lovelock says. We are at the crossroads of that happening now.
Also he fails to cite the very obvious that we will never have a safe nuclear industry because we live in a world entrenched in crazy ideologies. We are in dire need to have safe cheap power sources and reduce global warming as well and only renewables will in the end do that.
There has been a breakthrough in renewable energy base power production! I refer to solar thermal power using a cheap flat mirror system and storage by the disassociation of ammonia in an endothermic reactor then stored at ambient temperature and used at any later time even during wintertime the sun's energy is not lost being chemically locked up. Then reapplied to an exothermic reactor heat is produced at about 500 degrees to provide steam for power generation. This closed loop system enables 24/7 base power production for industry and it also is able to provide medium or peak power on demand. Not only that the storage system is easy to do and cheap and is based on mature technology and enables the sun’s energy to be stored any length of time without loss so that the energy can be extracted in the wintertime if necessary or any time in the future! No other storage system can do this and it is a real breakthrough. A gigawatt plant is right now being built in America financed by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla who says that solar thermal power is poised for explosive growth because of it’s low costs together with Australian scientist Dr David Mills.. A general understanding and awareness of solar thermal power (CSP) can be seen on http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/index.htm and (http://www.trecers.net/index.html and http://www.trec.net.au/ and understanding of the storage system in schematic form can be seen at
http://engnet.anu.edu.au/DEresearch/solarthermal/high_temp/thermochem/index.php