Well said Xoddam, a ray of light in yet another rehash of apocalypse and doom. Keep the faith

Wind may be growing at 25% a year, but it's from a very low base, such that it currently represents only about 1% of capacity. Indeed, demand is rising faster than wind capacity. It is only because the penetration is so low that wind farms have not destabilised the grid to the point of requiring additional non-wind capacity to be installed to compensate.

Installing 3KW PV panels at one third of Australian households would cost in excess of $70 billion. It is hardly a practical proposition.

Desalinating water requires about 6kWh per kilolitre, so 162,000,000 litres per day would require 972,000 kWh per day, or an average power of 40MW, not 400MW. The consumption of 162ML per day should be compared with Australia's average daily farm irrigation of 27GL. As I said, it's not large by comparison with other uses.

The fact that nuclear power stations (as currently implemented) require more cooling water than coal fired stations is of no particular consequence. Nuclear power stations can be built near the sea and cooled by sea water

Sylvia

I wholeheartedly agree with you on your proposal to replace coal fired plants with gas and I have argued for a conversion to gas for some time. For an interim period, gas fired plants would show a significant reduction in the emissions of CO2.

"As for the thousands of square kilometres devoted to Uranium mining, I'd have to wonder whether it really is thousands, but even if it is, what of it? Australia's area is over 7 million square kilometres. We can afford to devote a fraction of a percent of it to energy supply."

As previously mentioned, livestock and crops already occupy some 3.7 million square metres of Australia's land mass.

There are about a hundred uranium players listed in Australia and you may be interested to learn how much land mass some of those companies occupy at present:

.....Company.... ...............Square Kilometres

Fusion Energy...................1,300 WA

Marmota Energy.................7,000 SA

Rubicon Resources...... ..10,000 WA

Buffalo....................................2,000 NT, Qld

Archer Expl. ............................5,693 SA

Chesser.................................2,603 SA

Southern Uranium...............10,393 SA

United Uranium.......... ........4,073 Vic

Centram............................10,000 Charlie Creek survey project
" .".........................................25,000 Chilling project

Kalgoorlie/Boulder Res. .....5,040 WA, SA

Deep Yellow Ltd..................56,105 (Kms) WA, NT

Palace Resources..............12,400

Mega Uranium..................27,000 WA, NT, Qld, SA

Only 87 uranium players to go now Sylvia with some much larger than those above. I strongly disagree with you when you describe these tenements as merely a "fraction of a percent" of Australia's land mass, particularly when uranium mining renders our lands, uninhabitable.

It is also interesting to note that from the 194 countries on this planet, only 34 have gone nuclear.

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:j2KzzWs3pQwJ:www.radiation.org/press/limerick_0405.html+death+totals+nuclear+reactors&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=au&lr=lang_en

Why do anti-nukes on this thread resist reading solutions to their inane questions. I reiterated them several times in earlier posts.

For instance I recommend nuclear cracking of steam to produce HYDROGEN based fuel for cars. Mini PBR reactors for shipping and heavy military equiment. Yet they can't read simple english.

I have told them that Autralia exports yellowcake and the only thing they can do is to push for PBR-value-added and in-ground solvation Uranium extraction technologies.

What hope is their for Australia when it is being wanked back to the dark ages by ignoramuses who can't even fathom that the entire Universe is run on thermodynamic laws. Those laws have even more relevance to Australians because as petrol reaches $5/litre their mastery means the difference between our being prosperous and DUST.

I will make a prediction. Kevin10 will be the Howard07 of Australian politics if he doesn't understand the gravitas of thermodynamics in coming times. If Rudd's government fails to get over their ENERGY policy constipation, the Australian people will oust them as sure as they just ousted Howard out for treating Australian citizens as personal commodities to be bought and sold on the global market. Howard's sin went beyond buffoonery and reached the dizzy heights of BETRAYAL with the attempted Snowy sale, workchoices, unsustainable immigration into drought and buying farmers out for a pittance in lean times.

Rudd's failure to even consider or introduce GEOTHERMAL and Total-Nuclear-Industries into the national energy mix will see him ousted in 2010. Having spoken to many people about thermodynamics and PEAKOIL I am continually surprised at how au-fait Australians are with such a difficult subject. I put this down to education syllabi and the impact of discussion webs on the net. I am also surprised at how piggish and ignornt Labor leaders like Robert Mclelland are about thermodynamics and Nuclear power. I put this down to the cloistered, insular nature of the Labor Party and the fact that their incestuous polling is ALREADY not reaching average Australians. A bad sign!

Continued..

Continuing..

Australians have understood the dangers of Howard's betrayal and acted.

Australians are now keenly aware of the next threat of foreign invasion stealing precious energy resources like Uranium and will choose the next Government on the basis of which future government can engender a futureproof Australian lifestyle based on high-density Geothermal Power and Total-Nuclear Industries.

The consensus is that Australians want to face the future on our terms as ENERGY leaders in a world whose $currencies will soon be based on ENERGY. We will not go into the night, wanked back to the stone age by ignorant war-of-the-worlds-artillerymen who don't have the mental capacity to understand the overwhelming BENEFITS of a Nuclear energy bridge AS WELL AS its inherent risks, nor the crippling $cost, distribution and maintenance problems associated with puss-box-green-power technologies.

Its ALL THERMODYNAMICS ... from now on Australian Governments will rise and fall on their ENERGY policies

I was going to stay out of any further debate, but the figure quotes by Dick Head need some explanation.

That are not the area being mined, it is the area of the tenements over which the companies have leases to carry out exploration, a vast difference.

If you want to see a big mine, go to Kalgorlie and have a look at the big pit there. Even that is is less than 100 square kilometres and believe me it is big.

There is so much mis information being peddled by the anti nukes that no further discussion of a rational nature is possible. Give up Kaep, let them all go back to donkey carts and cooking fires fueled by the dung of same.

David