Dear Shadow Minister, the Geothermal Hot Rocks (GHR) I have been talking about, (the which you would have seen if you could have stirred yourself to look at my informative link,
http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/faqs.html
is as far away from volcanic activity as you could possibly imagine, - ie in the ancient (4.5 billion? year old) granite massifs under Australia, - supposedly the worlds oldest continent.
2/ The water, highly available from shallower deposits from the Australian Artesian Basin, is totally recycled, just as in a Nuclear reactor, - in a way one could say that the Nuclear cycle is the black version of the GHR cycle, and the redeeming feature is GHR can use that technological development, so fraught with danger in the Nuclear situation, in a positive way.
Before dismissing the very real solutions, - tried and tested, that GHR provides, (although admittedly still new) and not only easily base load for Australia, but for probably most countries in the world, you should do some research, - not accuse me of grandiose statements, but actually do that research your self, - what have you to lose? only Nuclear waste, - surely you do not want that dreadful legacy to our descendants?
This reality is something all the Nuclear grant applications should fall to the side of.
Cheers,
Geoff

Geoff,

I have read the link you provided apparently better than you have. You evidently did not read what I wrote.

GHR is not tried and tested, in fact it has yet to provide a single economically viable site.

Your projections of what might be possible on a small scale as a solution to the entire world's energy requirements can be described kindly as grandiose.

What irritates me are wild predictions of well meaning greenies who have neither the facts nor the wherewithal to grasp either the practicalities of their claims or the implications to the economy of implementing policy based on their fantasy.

> We all know that supplying India with nuclear material ... merely frees up more of the current imported nuclear material

By that logic, any power generation technology that "frees up" Indian Uranium would be helping its nuclear weapons development.

So no coal, no oil, no solar panels, no windmill sales to India.

And behind this is the assumption that India is interested in building an enormous nuclear arsenal.

India tested a nuclear device in 1974 but did not weaponize until Rajiv Gandhi ordered development in 1988. India had no actual nuclear weapons until that time. Pakistan actually had deployable weapons years before India. In spite of having enough Uranium to build thousands of bombs, India choose not to.

The Indian 500 MWe Fast Breeder Reactor has a core loaded with two TONs of Plutonium (just 5 kg are needed for a weapon). India clearly chooses electrical power over weapon development. It could have used this Plutonium for military purposes instead.

Dear Shadow minister, it is always a worry when folk in a discussion stoop to insult as that usually means they have run out of facts, and sad to see you using the insult grandiose as you have.
With my comments about tried and true technology, there are two elements to the Geothermal Hot Rocks, one is using heat to generate electricity, - that is indeed extremely well developed, and as I mentioned the GHR uses precisely the same generation system of a closed unit and a heat exchanger as is done in a nuclear reactor power station and indeed many other situations, so that part of your accusation is false.
The other half is the deep drilling techniques, - Oil companies have already gone down over seven kilometres in already existing situations, so that half is also tried and tested.
The Geodynamics company is now drilling their 4th well, the previous ones tested their assumptions about hot fractured rock, and proved absolutely spot on.
All they and others need now is to replicate what they have already done and build as many power stations as are necessary to provide Australia with baseload power and close all the coal fired stations, - it is not grandiose, the economics are pretty straight forward, the money willl go round and round in Australia and not affect our balance of payments, but will stimulate our internal economy. Workers in the coal industry will have skills usable by the GHR industry, the real risk of massive damage from global warming will be avoided.
There is nothing "wild" about the solid and indisputable information concerning this recent development within the Geothermal industry which solves the past problems thereof.

Both China and India are expanding their consumption of fossil fuels at an alarming rate.

India already has sufficient fissile material to make more nuclear weapons than it is ever likely to use in any nuclear exchange (100s) so the premise that uranium sold to India is enabling the production of further weapons is simply political posturing by the Rudd gov. The decision of the US (leading the charge against nuclear proliferation) to sell refined uranium to india puts the final nail in the coffin.

The greens simply oppose anything to do with uranium. Once this is realised, the rest of their arguments can be seen purely as a smoke screen.

Geoff,

Sorry if you find the term grandiose insulting, unfortunately it is the most appropriate adjective to use, where world changing predictions are made without substance.

The fact that the wheel is tried and tested technology is no foundation for claiming that solar powered cars are tried and tested.

Generation using steam is the simplest and easiest part of generation, the majority of any power plant is dedicated to producing and feeding the turbines with energy in a usable form.

Thus the car analogy. Having wheels is one thing, making them go round is the hard part.