"The main problem of course is solar is not currently cost competetive with other methods."

Solar thermal electricity is not cost competitive with coal or established nuclear fission reactors because it remains underdeveloped, just like PBNRs. But it is in active development all the same, and stands to gain much more than PBNRs in the near future because it is being developed by dozens of competing entrepreneurs. Its ongoing running costs are very low indeed; it requires no material inputs, merely maintenance; its security requirements are minimal; and its capital costs are comparable to (perhaps triple?) those of nuclear or coal-fired power.

600 square *kilometres* is a very conservative requirement to replace *all* of Australia's baseload generation with *one* renewable technology.

Solar PV is even more expensive, but it *is* cost-effective for many applications, because it can be installed anywhere. It doesn't need a desert; it goes very nicely on rooftops or alongside streetlamps or on top of parking meters. It is, likewise, falling dramatically in cost.

The unavailability of drills for hot-rock geothermal exploration is a minor technical issue. Possibly it is due to obstructionism from oil companies, but so what? Geothermal energy doesn't compete with oil (for custom; it does compete for equipment) any more than coal does, and they don't go out of their way to nobble coal.

Any thermodynamic consideration that might nobble renewables, nobbles nuclear worse, for the required energy inputs are greater. I don't think either are nobbled, by peak oil or by political considerations or anything else.

Who's going to clean the collectors, you ask? I ask you who's going to dig your uranium. Is diesel going to be scarce to ship solar collectors to the desert? Yes, but it will be scarce to truck yellowcake out of it, as well.

But "environmental rape?" This is the man in the rose-scented nuclear goggles speaking!

I laugh. Sadly.

http://www.sea-us.org.au/ranger/ranger.html
http://www.wise-uranium.org/uwai.html
http://www.springerlink.com/content/l2443mj8574034p5/
http://www.wise-uranium.org/udec.html#AUS

The “pros and cons of every electricity generation method”:

http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/EventsDiary/eventputin181007.htm?tr=y&auid=3105542

Have a look at this:
http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/austriangovtreport607.pdf

Nuclear Power,
Climate Policy and Sustainability
An Assessment by the Austrian Nuclear Advisory Board
Vienna January 2007

A pertinent excerpt:

"Austria takes the view that electricity production from Nuclear Energy is neither sustainable nor environmentally sound and is therefore not suitable to contribute to the solution of the climate
problem or the peak oil crisis:

• Even when ignoring the possibility of severe accidents, Nuclear Energy is burdened with a large number of environmental problems and risks, such as possibly health damaging low level radioactive emissions in normal operation and the worldwide unresolved problem of final repositories for nuclear waste.

• Cost cuts necessary as a consequence of the deregulation of the energy market have negative effects on safety culture and safety margins during construction and operation.

• Investment in Nuclear Energy impedes or at least delays investments in efficiency measures and therefore impedes sustainable, resources preserving solutions.

• The increasing world population, the growing scarcity of resources and the increasing global inequity are likely to raise the number of wars and augment terrorist activities: this prohibits the
support of technologies and structures that enhance the vulnerability of a region, and calls for a rapid dismantling of such technologies and structures and for transformation of these into decentralized technologies and structures with high error tolerance and low potential of damage."

Wake up people.

Australia is going to sell yellowcake no matter who wins federal rule.

The worst nuclear consequences will be had with the minimum of Themodynamic and economic benefits.

My point is to awaken people to the benefits of total-value-adding our Nuclear-bounty:

A reduction in mine-to-deep-sea-subduction-zone-grave nuclear technologies, the PBR safety condom, a bridge over PEAKOIL, an economic bonanza and a brain-boost for the Australian populace based on the Thermodynamic fact: "ENERGY=ORDER".

It is lazy, ignorant and Xoddom-and-Gomorrhic to watch our leaders arm the rest of the world wth nuclear fuels for little economic gain. It is incumbent on Australians to PARTICIPATE and that means LEARN about the research options with PBR that will make NUCLEAR safe, SECURE and always under Australian public control. This learned NUCLEAR approach will endow us with THE post PEAKOIL $currency$ de-jour. Future Australian/Global $currency will no longer be based on HOWARD'S mines, incestuous and gridlocked GST and immigration follies but on the only future export apart from dwindling oil supplies that will 'cut-it' in a PEAKOIL economy ... NUCLEAR energy.

And remember you can't EXPORT solar-power-technology. Its NOT raw energy. Solar panels for example will have to be IMPORTED in a cut-throat global market where transport costs will be more than 10X $current. That is the basic mechanics of why solar, wind etc technologies will doom us and NEVER get to BASELOAD power and sustainable economics. There is also a Thermodynamic predictability about this and I urge readers to STUDY Thermodynamics very hard because that will mean we can all be on-the-same-page when rapidly predicting imminent-future-global-catastrophes and the hi-tech manouevres like PBR, Geothermal, SPACE based solar and Laser-based Nuclear-Fusion-research required to skirt them.

For most Australians, things NOW seem better, economically, than ever. But it only SEEMS that way.

For our survival over the next 20 years Australia must value-add yellowcake exports. We must build a total PBR-NUCLEAR-technology mine-to-subduction-zone-grave industry and research infrastructure ... or PERISH.

As for Austria's anti-nuclear rantings. They're on the Euro-grid and receiving nuclear power from Germany. They are the new European-neanderthals. They'll NEVER last.

One must be ill-educated, playing particular English accent only local to be happy for offers of seemingly decreasing taxes and monetary benefits from selling yellow cakes around.

From a point of the newest data, it is utterly clear recently, that a bio-fuel is even more harmful than traditional energy-sources limited and near-existing worldwide.

Sometimes, a novelty-introducing necessity rules.