Atom1 "Had nuclear power existed in WW2, much of Europe and the UK would have been rendered uninhabitable, essentially forever, due to conventional bombing alone. Something to think hard about."

I did, and since there has not been a world war since the development and use of Nuclear weapons, conclude that WWII would not have happened if there had been such weapons around.

Nuclear weapons are peacemakers, have you not noticed?

The problem with Caldicott's reasoning, even if we take the facts cited in the article at face value is that she is not comparing nuclear power with other power supplies. Everything she says can also be said about coal, except that coal involves a great deal more material and vastly more waste. It even involves more radiactivity. there is very little radiactive material in coal, but coal plants go through so much of it that a great deal is injected into the air.
In contrast, the volume of waste from nuclear energy world wide is actually quite small. Storing it somewhere remote on, say, an island should not really be a problem but activists insist that it is..
And, no it is not easy converting reactor grade fuel into bomb grade. Once you've got the bomb-grade material making the bomb is comparatively simple (I say comparatively). the real trick is getting the bomb grade material..

"We ... (produce) more CO2 per capita than any other country".

Wrong.

Do some fact-checking, people, and stop spouting conventional wisdom.

I should congradulate Helen for the most comprehensive collection of half truths, outdated facts and irrelevant scare mongering that I have yet seen.

I also notice that her acedemic credentials that she posts seem a little shady as her organisation's site seems no longer to exist.

Helen, if you are going to cobble up such plate of tripe, you should rather direct it to a group with sufficient naivity to swallow it such as year 3 children.

Name-calling for Helen Caldicott? How about fifth columnist, and useful idiot? The so-called Peace Movement and anti-nuclear lobby were creatures of the Cold War, nurtured by the Soviets as a counter to their technological and industrial inferiority to the West. Members of the Communist Party of Australia from the forefront of the Moratorium movement in Vietnam days carried right on into the Peace Movement, acting as pied pipers for the wellmeaning protestors at Pine Gap and Exmouth, and the self-righteous morons of the anti-nuclear movement were backed by CPA members.

The Soviets gave testimony to their sterling efforts by awarding them free holidays on Soviet cruise liners in the Pacific, and cruises on the Don. This is not secondhand - I am talking about people I know.

Caldicott and her mates such as Vallentine were willing associates and tools of that appalling regime, responsible for liquidating millions and chaining the minds of hundreds of millions.

If the pro-nukes want nuclear power, then I suggest they cease the spin and provide evidence to show that the nuclear industry is economical, competent, ethical and well regulated. To construct a logical argument, they would need to acknowledge the documented information I have provided in their assessments.

Furthermore, Bruce’s “latest generation of nuclear power” does not exist. There is not one operating commercially on the planet. Could he please advise us on how many he envisages operating by 2050?

1: Ocean dumping of nuclear waste was banned in the 60s. During the 90s, a Russian naval ship dumped hundreds of tons of low-level nuclear waste into the the Sea of Japan, touching off a sharp diplomatic dispute between Tokyo and Moscow just after they had declared a new era of cooperation.

2. "Last year uranium miner, Marathon Resources got lazy, greedy and deceitful in dumping 22,000 bags of mine waste in the unique Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in South Australia, rather than disposing of them properly. It’s not like they fell off a truck – they were buried."

3. August 2009: "Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet has been hit by a series of serious safety breaches involving repeated leaks of radioactive waste from submarines, broken pipes and waste tanks at its home base on the Clyde, the Ministry of Defence has disclosed.

"In a confidential report released under the Freedom of Information Act, the MoD has admitted that safety failings at the UK’s main nuclear submarine base at Faslane near Glasgow are a “recurring theme” and ingrained in the base’s culture.

"It emerged that the radioactive plant manager had no qualifications in radioactive waste management. The Ministry of Defence is legally exempt from the civil radioactive safety regulations policed by Sepa but promised the agency a number of times it would voluntarily uphold those laws at the base – promises that Sepa has now accused the MoD of repeatedly breaking."

Contd......