World reserves of uranium are in the order of 35 million tonnes not 5.5 and most experst think there is a ltest that much again to tbe found. Add that to the reality of the cusrrent generation of Nuke power plants only buring 1-2% of the fuel, then new tech that could burn 80-90% of the fuel would make these reserves last even longer. There are plans for nuke power that doesn't create waste and we should explore these as well. No new coal fired power stations should be build in Oz form now on. any new power station should be nuke,wind and solar. Nuke to supply the baseline and solar and wind to help with peak.

I'm surprised that no-one has so far mentioned the possibilities of thorium reactors.

Thorium reactors, while not yet developed I believe, offer many advantages over conventional uranium reactors. Firstly, the reaction in a thorium reactor is not self-sustaining, thereby reremoving the risk of meltdown. Secondly, thorium reactors produce about 3% of the waste of a uranium reactor; the waste also only stays radioactive for about 500 years.

Even better, thorium reactors do not breed plutonium, and can actually be used to convert existing weapons-grade plutonium into a non-weapons grade material.

Finally, guess which country has the world's biggest deposits of thorium?

Attendant irony: yes, I went to my share of anti-nuclear demos, in the late 70s and early 80s. Ralph Waldo Emerson was right.

Nuclear is the only solution. All energy, food and life on earth depends on our wounderful nuclear reactor, which we call the Sun.
All other forms of energy are detrimental to life on earth.
It is time for humans to modify our behavior to fit the environment.
smartie

Kenny- In the spirit of maintaining INFORMED opinion in OLO, could you please cite your information sources for your assertion of 35 million tonnes? I'm citing the International Atomic Energy Agency IEA- they are supposed to be the most authoritative source. Do you know a better source? The main point that I'm making is that these so-called "advanced" reactors have been mooted for many years, but all seem to have practical difficulties that prevent them from going commercial. In the meantime, the very limited uranium supply is being consumed in conventional reactors.

There seems to be very little comprehension of how darned complex and difficult nuclear power is. This translates into time and money and, more importantly, net energy. For a detailed analysis of the energy balance and nuclear power see http://www.stormsmith.nl/.

Wishful thinking and unfounded assertions won't cook our meals or power our cars.

BHP Billiton has published the EIS for its Olympic Dam expansion, in which it appears that to reach the first combined ores (of copper, uranium, gold and silver) 300 metres down around 2 billion tonnes of rock has to be set aside from the initial big hole. This is anticipated to take five years and requires the moving of the current Roxby Downs airport. It will need additional imports of diesel amounting to 2 billion litres. If it goes ahead it will take a decade before the developers get a return on the capital, as yet undefined.

In Canada uranium production has fallen 23% since 2005, because the new Cigar Lake mine is flooded and the existing mines have passed their Hubbert peaks and are closed or in decline. Australian production has fallen 11% in the same time frame. A 6% rise in global production last year was due to a 95% rise in Kazakh production, due to the opening of new mines.

To extract the uranium reserves needed for the so-called "renaissance" enormous capital sums will have to be expended to open the needed series of replacement new mines.

Meanwhile the cost of the new fleets of nuclear power stations is soaring, characterised by the overexpenditure of the first EPR in Finland.

Nuclear power can only be funded with state funds or loan guarantees and the latest "free market" stratagem is to glean carbon credits from levies on fossil fuel competitors to fill the income over expenditure deficit. As this will progressively bankrupt its competitors the developers in the UK have asked for the carbon credits to be state guaranteed for the 60 years' life of the projects.

The ten new starts in 2008 were all state funded. Perhaps we are fortunate that the Western states promoting nuclear power are debt laden and the "dark dawn of the nuclear age" will fail to rise, at least in the West.

For most countries the clean power choices are importing clean power across their borders or having nuclear power from within their borders. anyone who has followed the difficulties europe has had with the USSR playing games with their natural gas supplies would understand both the strategic and balance of trade implications of importing power, often via very long power lines that will cross a number of borders.

As far as the world is concerned the nuke debate is over. in the case of Australia there is no overwhelming reason to go nuclear for the next 20 odd years. In the mean time there are promising developments going on that may allow us to completely clean up eelctricty without the need for nuclear.

In the meantime it makes sense to keep tabs on gen 4 nuclear and thorium developments and develop the regs we would need to go nuclear.