A friend of mine who was before retirement an expert in nuclear power
stations confirmed to me what Martin said.
The recycling processes now available will extend the availability of
nuclear fuels many times over and leave a residue that is no where
near as radio active as current waste.

Peak coal will occur in 2025 at current usage.
It is actually worse than that because the BTU output per Kg is
falling due to the lowest fruit being picked already.
However the 2025 date is the world peak. I just do not know what the
Australian peak coal date is at present.
However I remind you of the Chinese premiers comment;
"We will burn all our coal and then burn all yours !"

We should build a uranium precessing plant and instead of selling
yellow cake, lease the enriched fuel for use and if not returned then
no further supply.
That will fix the proliferation problem and give a supply for reprocessing.

However I agree that we need to know very quickly if geothermal from
the great depths being tested in SA will work. It is urgent.

The recent cold weather in the UK resulted in extended days of dead calm.
Not much wind power there, not much solar either I imagine.
Anyone who thinks we can just shut down the coal fired stations is
away with the faries.

The author paints a bleak picture where Australia and the world fail utterly to deal with the challenges of global emissions and climate change. What Chris fails to mention is the likely cost and consequences of such failure. When pricing energy options he fails to mention the 'subsidised' costs inherent in fossil fuel energy, those deferred, external costs that are being billed against our future climatic security - initial payments of which are only just beginning to come due. How much is SE Australian agriculture worth? What's a Great Barrier Reef valued at? With more up-front accounting the costs of continued fossil fuel use don't look so economically attractive and the costs of renewables (or nuclear) don't look that prohibitive.

If Australia is to have any domestic and international environmental integrity, it's time Rudd and Abbott changed their parties' energy policies to ending every kind of public subsidy paid to coal producers and scrapping all the proposed free emission permits to the coal industry.

Sure, there will be withdrawal symptoms, and adjustment does involve short term pain to many. Our addiction to coal has escallated over the decades. Winding down, decommissioning coal power stations requires tough decisions. We also need to get our heads around the idea that being the world's biggest pusher of this pollutant is not the way to a sustainable future. Winding back coal exports needs to start now.

We can become a world leader in renewable technologies if the government just has the wisdom to skillfully manage the transition of enegy technology and reap the medium to long term benefits of being a clever country.

Ken Fabos and others

I am not necessarily against any energy option (nuclear or rewewable), but main point of article is to point out likely Aust policy trends and contradictions based on recent trends.

I also agree (as stated) we need to reduce our carbon footprint, although just how we do so is certainly not straight forward and may be costly (although doing nothing may be more costly in terms of environmental damage)

I guess Chris Lewis for at least be given a guernsey for persistence in pushing his nuclear power band wagon. Surely no one has much to add over the last few times we have had this debate.

But yes, Martin N and for the matter Chris in earlier articles are absolutely right in saying that next generation nuclear fission reactors would solve our energy problems, and be relatively clean and safe. Nuclear proliferation is still a worry, but then it has been a worry for 50 years now and we are still here.

They are also absolutely right in saying that the competitors to nuclear at their current state of development could not complete with these next generation reactions when and if they appear in 10 or 40 years time, or whatever it takes to get these next generation reactors working.

The only fly in ointment in the wonderful vision is that 10 to 40 years, those competitors won't have stood still. That one off 25% price drop in photo voltaics is misleading Chris said. It just restored PV prices to the trend they have been on since 1997 or so - a 5% drop per year. If they continue on that trend then in 2050 they will be 1/10 of their current price. And therein lies the rub - nuclear can't complete with solar if it is 10% of its current price.

This is of course all just crystal ball gazing. No one can really be sure what is going to become reality, and what will turn out to be just hopes and fancies of wide eyed entrepreneurs.

Agnostic of Mittagong, Australia’s proud record of being the <<highest per capita greenhouse gas emitter>>

I keep seeing this one repeated. Just to be factual, this is not true; Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are ahead of us. In any event it’s a statistical anomaly as Australia’s only significant factual measure is 1.4% of global emissions.

When shown in an historical context, that of the industrialization, Australia doesn’t even register.

Leave the “Over egging the pudding” to the IPCC, they such a good job.

Chris Lewis’s article is balanced however, Martin N hits the nail on the head, we are still having these debates because Nuclear Power has been and still is, “politically strangled”