examinator, you are getting close when you said “I suspect what you found was unintended by the author.” That’s my point, the “fear” triggers ideological conditioning; Jim Green can’t help but telegraph that which causes him angst.

I feel the debates to which I refer will happen in Australia. We actually don’t need to address the scientific reality behind AGW, the US Senate and legal system is about to deal with that big time.

As I just posted on another thread, with the recent issue of “Litigation Hold Notices” by the US Senate to all the main players in AGW science, we have seen another step towards legal action. A further 8,000 personal e-mails have been sent to employees cautioning against the destruction or altering of any related data held on any media whatsoever. Any further debate by us is futile, just sit back and watch.

The first big domino to fall IMHO will be in the USA. It won’t be long before it registers with those involved in the alleged Climategate fiasco that they are now dealing with the “big boys”.

We are however, entitled to have a rational debate about the alternative energy mix, all alternatives. This is not so much in response to the alleged AGW, more that we really do need to modernize our energy and transport sectors and reduce all forms of pollution.

“Yet in terms of energy the solution is:
- energy conservation & efficiency measures as paramount (wrt elec, transport and industry)
- a *combination* of renewable, sustainable, safer alternatives, much of which can also be decentralised, drastically reducing transmission & distribution losses.”

Whist these are admirable measures, atom1, they don’t really equate to the real world. Are you suggesting cities with electric trains halve their services to conserve energy?
How about factory workers only working a 19 hour week? At the price electricity is in Qld., I can assure you most of us are not wasting it. (Does anyone know where I can get a kerosene fridge?)

And I particularly liked this quote from your blog –“'If we look to the history of nuclear weapons development, we can see that those countries with nuclear weapons developed them before they developed nuclear power programs. They have produced the special nuclear materials required for nuclear weapons using facilities operated specifically for this purpose - enrichment plants producing (very) high enriched uranium, or reprocessing/plutonium extraction plants together with reactors designed and operated to produce low burn-up plutonium. Indeed, in some of the countries having nuclear weapons, nuclear power remains insignificant or non-existent.'
- John Carlson, head of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office.

So we can have bombs without nuclear power! Puts a hole in the argument that they go hand in hand. I must further add that so many of your quotes are so out of date – Paul Keating for heavens sake, really scraping the bottom.

We are about to enter 2010 – a long way from the 60s and the Second World War. Technology has developed. Safer cleaner plants are on the drawing board that will have very little waste. Why keep burning coal when there is a viable alternative?

Examinator,

With France the only industrialized country to have had steady economic growth and GHG emissions lower presently than in 1980, there is tremendous energy being spent on nuclear research, and a plethora of new experimental reactors being commissioned. A very likely scenario is that by 2020 (or even 2017), most of the OECD with the new reactors being installed will start to show significant slowing or reverses in GHG and Aus will not. Labor with its strong climate policy and rabid anti nuke policy will be caught in a huge wedge.

I have never pretended to be a fan of Labor and it's populist politics, so when I view the strategies being played like a chess game, it is interesting to see who is playing one move ahead, and who is playing several moves ahead.

Without exception the populist governments have fallen when the people can no longer afford them, Abbot is positioning himself into a "I told you so" position when the ETS starts to bite. When people take home less, their priorities change.

SM,
Are you telling me that the Liberal party didn't indulge in popularist politics (pandering to their rump..apt that term) during it's last period at government and wouldn't again?

Are you telling me that a Liberal govt will close down Big coal in favour for foreign nukes?

What is their solution to the waste? the sites in NT have been *scientifically* challenged?

As I have said before the best Answer is, logically, a cornucopia of solutions.

I also suggested that if Big anything is the only answer then the question is flawed on several grounds.
Not least, the issue under debate, the waste.

The figures you've quoted before are assuming stasis, I refer you to current scientific research and development on related disciplines.

You should also note, that Nuke power requires a static technological point. i.e.a 3 gen reactor is such untill it's demise. not necessarily so with alternatives...there is an upgrade path.

Both political parties bend to the disproportionate power of the mega corps (too big to fail principal, aka good money after bad.)

Examinator,

Perhaps a review of the definition of populism:

- any of various, often anti-establishment or anti-intellectual political movements or philosophies that offer unorthodox solutions or policies and appeal to the common person rather than according with traditional party or partisan ideologies.

- representation or extolling of the common person, the working class, the underdog, etc.: populism in the arts.

Would show why your comments/ questions were so inane.

As far as my figures are concerned even assuming realist advances, renewables will still be incapable of meeting base load demand in the next few decades, and will still be more expensive than nuclear.

While a gen 3 reactor will work for the 60+ years it is designed for, the infrastructure of new plants are being built to allow for reactor upgrades once the reactor itself has passed its use by date. (also obviating the greens assumption of the energy costs of reclaiming the site.)

The new Gen 3+ reactors now being built and the new reprocessing technologies would produce a fraction of the waste with 1/1000th of the radioactivity of the Gen 2 reactors that the previous storage systems were about. So your assumptions are not only static, but mired in the past.

Reality check on nuclear power and climate change leads me to the conclusion that people like Dr Jim Green are it least in part responsible for global warming.

If the world would have progressed with building Nuclear Power plants thirty years ago the technology would have progressed in the meantime to generation four nuclear plants eliminating most of the CO2 produced by the developed countries plus eliminating the nuclear waste problem.

Today sadly, the green anti-nuclear environmentalists have become the biggest problem to actually rapidly reducing the threat of dangerous global warming problem.

By promoting technologies like wind power that became outdated with the emergence of the industrial revolution hundred yeas ago, the greens stoped the rapid introduction of modern high density energy forms like nuclear and so prolong the use of dangerous carbon emitting energy forms like coal and oil.

Clueless politicians with no future vision confused by the green ideas try to deal with the problem of global warming by introducing ineffective and costly bureaucratic schemes like taxes on carbon or the ETS that will do little at a very high cost.

The only solution to dangerous climate change is the fast track progressing of new advanced technologies like nuclear, electric cars, HVDC power supply, nuclear fusion to name a few, everything else is just a waste of time.

Don’t be fooled, by fancy buzz words like calling a wind-mill a wind turbine; a change of words is not making wind-mills a piece high tech equipment, it is still using low density unreliable wind energy.
This is just like building a B24 US Second World War bomber out of reinforced carbon fibre, it still is a B24, yes it will probably flight better but it is noting like the Dream Liner.