Atom1 and others, it's no longer up to you to state what the conditions are, or are not, that Nuclear Energy is debated under.

We need energy, the developing world needs energy and if coal is running out and is possibly guilty of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, (if you subscribe to that, fine) we need an alternative.

So Nuclear Energy OR coal (or anything else) is on the table - in the past the No Nuclear activists enjoyed the no competition situation, that's changed.

I can see how it is really irritating you all to have this now to argue in addition to vilifying Nuclear Power, but times change, so you better get used to Nuclear Power being held up against other power sources, and the hobby, early versions of renewables are just not realistic yet.

I'm not in the Nuclear, or even the power industry, but I can see we need energy, I can see coal is being vilified so use will possibly be reduced. (no one is paying me to write this or have the point of view I have, I thought I better state that now since it is part of the "anti nuke kit", like the AGW folks, you have to attack motives don't you. Like others, I don't reveal my identity as there are mitigating factors, not related to energy, but to privacy)

Really your only course of action if you want to continue with your Caldicotting, is to jump on the bandwagon to free coal of guilt and pump it up as a safe source of energy.

I do hope all the No Nukes folks feel properly silly that they have held back development of a technology and now that we need it in an advanced, safe for, it's not available - we could be up to 7th or 8th generation reactors by now. I'm sure someone from the Climate modeling world would be able to put something together to support that presumption. (/sarc)

rpg "held back development of a technology" ?? It's been with us for 60 odd years, and still accounts for only 14% of global electricity production.

As for any discussion on the Chernobyl disaster, it's worth bearing in mind some facts: The UN Chernobyl Report (whilst being only a draft report & thus compromising the World Health Organisation's relationship with the IAEA) ignores that 53% of the radioactive fallout fell across Europe, it ignores the long latent period of cancers and, thus, that no accurate assessment of the death rate can be made based only on the past.

I thank Richard Bramhall for drawing attention to the Committee Examining Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE). The committee ranged over many disciplines and sub disciplines in radiation science. No one person could claim to be a master over the whole field. There was no universal agreement among the CERRIE members; a spectrum of views was expressed from over to underestimating the hazards of radiation. This is not surprising considering the membership and affiliations of committee members. The dissenters (a committee term) were not allowed to publish a separate minority report, but their views were recorded. The greatest opinion differences were in the section devoted to epidemiology.

Radiation protection is at the interfaces between science and societal concern. The risks and/or benefits of radiation and setting legislative standards raise problems in economics, philosophy and ethics.

From the beginning of the 20th century ionising radiation has been of benefit to mankind in medicine, science research and industry. For the past 6 decades power generation can be added to the list. It is not claimed that there have never been accidents (some very serious indeed). However, these are well recorded in the literature. Studied and investigated in depth and remedial action taken. Few complex activities are accident free.

CERRIE points out many uncertainties in radiation dosimetry. However, humans have always had to make decisions on uncertain and inadequate evidence. This is certainly true in medicine and I am sure is also the case in business and governmental decision making.

It is clear that the “dissidents” have but one political aim; to curtail by law all applications of radiation science to human welfare. The downside and detriment of such a policy is never considered. Compared to say smoking and asbestos dust and certain infections, etc. low level radiation is a weak carcinogen

How would Dr. Caldicott like to practice paediatric medicine (even allowing for dosimetric anxiety about some modern imaging studies) with out the services of radiological and nuclear medicine facilities?

Atom1 "It's been with us for 60 odd years, and still accounts for only 14% of global electricity production.", yes because of the scaremongering and whiny activist industry.

Yes, it has been Caldicotted, that is constantly berated and beaten up by scare campaigns, exaggerations and general BS. The average punter is not going to fact check everything, and usually thinks where there is smoke there is fire .. it's reasonable to them.

If the industry had not been scaremongered and catastrophied to near death then we would have way more than the tiny percentage of nuclear plants - that's what I said above, but obviously you only want to believe what you want.

It would be generations ahead, but your activist society can be proud that you held it back with scare campaigns - well done that chap!

So now we have basically no alternative to coal .. good on you mate, that's great, do you feel good about it, fine. Don't tell me about "renewable" sources, none of them is mature enough to replace coal. Try me on "future" green technologies, pull the other leg, it will be decades before anything is nearly ready - Nuclear would have given us breathing space, but no, you people selfishly decided you knew better.

I'm not trying to convince, you, you're a believer, I'm reinforcing the doubt most reasonable folks see in all the BS that gets sprayed by Caldicotts, our modern version of Luddites.

AntiGreen seems not to have understood the clear message to be inferred from the arguments and links I provided and he falls into the trap of thinking "dose" is the right yardstick. It isn't, and that is the key message from CERRIE. The right yardstick is ionisation density at the target of interest - almost certainly DNA. There are no grounds for claiming that low levels of radioactivity are weakly carcinogenic. The Uranium which killed Lance Corporal Dyson was very weakly radioactive. In light of all the new information, especially from Chernobyl ("a low dose event", according to the old way of thinking) we have to revisit the whole topic.
AntiGreen is right that risks have to balanced but decision makers (including the public) need accurate information. This is exactly why Michael Meacher set up CERRIE as an oppositional committee to explore all views and explain the differences of opinion remaining at the end of its life. But the Committee fell under the influence of the old-fashioned Whitehall mindset and its Majority Report failed the remit - even COMARE criticised it for that. Some of its substance is farcical - see for example the reporting of the increase in infant leukaemia after Chernobyl (http://www.llrc.org/rat/subrat/rat61.pdf page 11)

Sir Vivor: "It's a shame tha the ALP has forgotten that among the conclusions of the Ranger Uranium Inquiry of the 1970's was the expert opinion, never refuted, that uranium mining contributes to the risk of nuclear war."

Yep, nuclear wars require nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons require nuclear reactors (processed fuel), nuclear reactors require uranium, uranium has to be mined. Did we really need an expert to tell us that?