All

The problem I have with discussions like this is they tend to into a combative predetermined polarised mind sets, *arguing* either pro or con, often little more than emotive raves.
Contrary to common thought selling an idea is dealing with the buyer's needs, not the opinions of the salesperson i.e. if a relator's opinion a particular property was better value than one interstate or another area, would that convince you to buy it?

I am in data acquisition mode, comparisons with coal is irrelevant and 'only' 100 years (sic) is raises more questions than it answers. How much and who pays? At what consequence/risk and to whom? Is the risk comparison absolute or relative? How many big power execs and their families live next to their stations?

Clearly the issue to me is that coal/fossil fuel has gotten us into this mess in more than one way, toxic waste, excess CO2 , limited resource (if only where to store the waste) etc. One could suggest that we should be looking for a solution that at best minimises their effects, not simplisticly exchange one set of problems or limited resource ( incl water) for another. This doesn't necessarily exclude nuke power but let's not go down the “too big to fail”, lack of public transparency route, if we can avoid it.

Likewise , the big anything is big business' “endless growth” toxic mythology.

I have often suggested decentralised and a spread of technologies make the most sense.
Big anything, tends to create hidden problems, risks and distortions in 'power (both senses of the word).
As it stands, is the 'cheapest' necessarily the best?

Baygon,

Please refer to these simplified articles:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spent_nuclear_fuel_decay.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/ral.htm

I understood that there was no problem reading latin from 2000+ years ago, and 1000years will reduce the radioactivity to a nuisance level.

If the waste is reprocessed, a shorter time still will be required, and there will be only a fraction of the level of waste.

Only if you use 70s type reactors, no reprocessing, and extrapolate the highest level of radiation for the entire containment period do you get the problem that the greens are raving about. As none of those conditions are even slightly probable, the situation has been blown out of proportion.

Without nuclear it is extremely difficult to reach the 25% (of 1990 levels) reduction by 2020 or 50% by 2050. The fiddling around with renewables has not produced a viable solution yet.

In this country don't have any alternative in the future than to look to nuclear power. The country has it's own uranium source and I cannot understand why it has not been used earlier.

We need approximately 35 nuclear power stations NOW in this country. We cannot do that immediately but we must start. We don't need to institute a new type of nuclear power station, all we need to do is learn from the best existing models and start from there.

This country is wealthy in technology and a "green, clean" power source is needed, but we don't use it - amazing!! We sell it but we don't use it! It is quite ludicrous.

This country is denied the power source because our politicians want to tell India what to do or not to do with uranium. We deny them because they might develop a nuclear device to drop on their neighbours and, in the doing so, deny ourselves clean cheap fuel.

It is their business what they do with their purchase and I don't believe, looking at India's power needs they are going to make nuclear weapons. But that is their business not ours.

Alex Goodwin: "the LFTR is NOT a fast spectrum reactor - the flouride does too much moderating for that. You also seem to have not read the evidence about 4-5 year construction times for PWR that I have provided links to."

Touché.

Alex Goodwin: "Accident or mendacious oversight?"

Neither. Lazy perhaps? I wasn't preprepared to spend the hours of reading your links required. I doubt it would help though. Whatever they said, unless I saw a reactor that was indeed built for $500/kW hr I would find that figure very difficult to believe. Given current reactors are coming in around the AUD$2300 .. AUD$4000 per kw hr price, even the most optimistic promises are for around AUD$1200. If they really did cost AUD$500 they should be poping up like weeds after summer rain. (I got the figures for normal reactors here: http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeCostOfNuclearPower )

But instead all we have is you spruiking them. What has changed recently to drop the price so dramatically?

Examinator - you make the point:
I have often suggested decentralised and a spread of technologies make the most sense.
Big anything, tends to create hidden problems, risks and distortions in 'power (both senses of the word).
As it stands, is the 'cheapest' necessarily the best?
Hermann Scheer's book The Solar Economy tackles this question.
We tend to forget that centralised power generation was basically a product of the steam age. Steam ushered in a period of big factories with big and hungry power needs - electricity could only compete if it could generate sufficient power to replace the steam engine. Surplus power was then onsold for domestic consumption. Our domestic technology developed in response to the existence of centralised power generation.
However, as Scheer documents, the technology exists to decentralise power generation using a mixture of solar and wind. (Since the publication of that book there has been a successful trial in Germany where a community sourced all of its energy needs from a combination of solar, wind and methane)
We rarely seem to stop to think about how inefficient AC is as a source of power, DC is more efficient but tends to need to be produced locally.
The history of the last 50 years has shown that no matter how well entrenched a particular technology we are willing to make the transition to a new technology - so why not to a more efficient technology?

It is good to see alternatives to our present damaging sources of energy being considered .

Unfortunately all these air , energy and water saving sources will eventually flag the end of the natural environment .

Big Business Science at this point in our history is simply being used to increase Population Growth everywhere to increase profits - and at present all the [few]Green Votes in the World will not stop that growing Population from consuming ever increasing amounts of the Word's natural resources from land and our oceans .

Already we see in Australia many ignorant commentators and politicians wanting more dams and more people.

Weak politicians,cheap power and saved water will hasten the end.