Howard, Costello, Bishop, Turnball, McFarlane, Downer have made it crystal clear they do want Australia to become Nuclear Power reliant. But this is not what Conservative Activists want. They know that it is too dangerous and will put their families at risk. This is why the Howard Government has become so unpopular. Australian people do not want another asbestos type problem. Nuclear Reactors are being decommissioned all over the world because whether fission or fussion the emissions do kill. Droplets fall out onto the grass. Cattle eat the grass. Strotium B 90 acts in the same way as Calcium. Our children drink the milk from the cattle who eat the grass. This ends up into the bone marrow of our children hence the many various cancers, myloid Leukeamia is treatable but is terminal. so please you that believe Nuclear Power is the answer think of your grand children because Europeans are escaping to Australia to get away from a known cancer breeding ground.

Nuclear power plants do not emit Strontium.
And Coal fired power plants put far more radioactive material in the air than Nuclear ones do.

Strontium is from a different song - and as exeptionally right mentioned by LOGIC recently Australian-produced technical regulations look novels-like rather than engineering normatives. Tell me, why...

Randwick ("but... I doubt very much if their Agni3 missile can reach anyone of note but Pakistan and China"). Is that not enough??

Logic dismisses the possibility of base load power without nuclear (or coal I assume). Stuck in the past. Natural gas, with around 50% of the CO2 emissions of coal, is a proven and existing bridging fuel, whilst, given foresight & investment:
Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free:
A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy (pdf)
http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/summary.pdf
and The Base Load Fallacy:
http://www.cana.net.au/documents/Diesendorf_TheBaseLoadFallacy_FS16.pdf
Quote: "Base-load alternatives to coal power can be provided by efficient energy use, bioenergy, wind power, solar thermal electricity with thermal storage, geothermal and gas.
Large-scale wind power from geographically distributed sites is not ‘intermittent’. However it may require a little additional low-cost peak-load back-up from gas turbines."

John, maybe you could explain from whence the Strontium 90 contamination from Chernobyl came, if "nuclear power plants don't emit Strontium"?

But Bronco Lane, ("but this is not what Conservative Activists want.") thanks for clarifying that this is goes beyond politics or "leftism" as it's simply not what most AUSTRALIANS want, nor would any sane person favour the only WMD-related energy source.

BRIDGING DOOM

Australia's best plan to abridge a 2025 overpopulation-meltdown and for its economic security, is to build UF6 centrifuge farms NOW to manufacture Nuclear PEBBLE fuel and the engineering capability to build medium to small PBR (Pebble Bed) REACTORS. These reactors can power ships, or medium to small cities. Australian cities over 50,000 people, should have such reactors within 5-10 years. Large reactors are beyond our capability and can't be EXPORTED.

Not only should Australia Export PBR Reactors but we should give REACTORS as aid to selected cities in poorer nations and supply PBR fuel on condition that recipients maintain a flawless one child per family policy. Australia too should have an equivalent one child per family policy plus an end to immigration and a compensatory technology boost so we can prosper while keeping our population, even if it is ageing, to 21 million people. That is the sacrifice we must make to BRIDGE the looming PEAK OIL crisis witout a bloody civil meltdown. HC's NIMBY nuclear phobia equals national suicide.

As for nuclear security/safety:

* You cannot use PBR fuel in breeder reactors nor can you use it to make bombs. You could crush the pebbles and make a dirty bomb but it would be just as effective to use an old car battery.

* PBR reactors automatically shut down when they reach critical temperatures and thus nuclear accidents are absolutely impossible.

* Long term wastes from tailings and processing (not from safe enclosed PBR pebbles) could kill or injure in the thousands over long periods of time, WORST CASE. Technology will make this waste future safe. This assessment must be weighed up against the 6 billion people, including millions of Australians, likely to be exterminated if we reach peakoil(~2025) without a reliable stop-gap, base-load and green-energy alternative.

Virtually unlimited GEOTHERMAL power will make Nuclear power obsolete within several decades so nuclear isn't a permanent solution. IF we get pat 2025, as Laser drilling technology matures and means are secured to prise it out of the hands of cowboy oilmen, nuclear facilities can and will be phased out.

KAEP, please read through the thread as you've ignored all the many reasons why nuclear is not a viable, sustainable, fast enough or safe enough option for addressing climate change.

"It is clear that no international safeguards system can physically prevent diversion or the setting up of an undeclared or clandestine nuclear (weapons) program."
- IAEA, 1993.

"Saying that nuclear power can solve global warming by itself is way over the top."
- Alan McDonald, senior IAEA energy analyst, 2004.

In relation to weapons proliferation and pebble bed reactor designs:
- The nature of the fuel pebbles may make it somewhat more difficult to separate plutonium from irradiated fuel, but plutonium separation is certainly not impossible
- Uranium (or depleted uranium) targets could be inserted to produce thorium targets could be inserted to produce uranium 233
- The enriched uranium fuel could be further enriched for weapons
- The reliance on enriched uranium will encourage the use of and perhaps be used to produce highly enriched uranium for weapons. And in China's pebble bed test reactor, "What to do with growing piles of nuclear waste is a problem that not even this reactor can solve".
- 'Catalyst', ABC TV, Feb 2007.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1854362.htm

Nuclear power is a 20th Century white elephant; it being a "solution" for climate change is a red herring (for uranium export deals and military relations); the Ziggy & the Libs' Report is a trojan horse and we could face a pandora's box of consequences. It's not worth the risk and is unwanted.

If you oppose WMDs, you should strongly oppose uranium mining, nuclear power and the fuel cycle.

http://www.votenuclearfree.net