AS,Bazz,

Chernobyl type bang is very unlikely and is not the issue as such.
My point was that regardless of technology it is operated/controlled by TWO unreliable elements.

People and capitalistic motivation.
If one examines all the nuclear whoops' the common element are the above.

Chernobyl was a case history on neglect, penny pinching (cost savings) and human error.

As stated to me the risk with nuclear is that its consequences are effectively for ever.
In Washington state one human error released contaminated water which has gone in to the ground water and has now affected hundreds of sq ks with potentially deadly radioactive isotopes.

Note also that the consequences various cancers etc. are never sheeted home to the root cause ...the research is never really done then there's the legal play pen the courts where the bully(richest) mostly wins. look at how long the tobacco industry got away with their deliberate lies....US companies kept steel radials out of US regardless of the death count.

AS with car accidents there are possible solutions, however, with nuclear there are no real solutions.Least of all long-term storage of waste and the hidden costs that we the tax payer will bear. A cynic might point out that we will be paying a premium to suffer and die while various o/s corporations make big profits..to me there is something wrong there in the logic.

Adelaide, Canberra, Perth etc all rely on groundwater in the event of a plausible leak and life in Adelaide would have a substantially elevated (unacceptable) health risk equivalent to Witanoon (WA asbestos mining town in the 50's and 60's) now a ghost town. One family I know from there has suffered 4 deaths from related cancers 30-40 years later.

Bazz, I didn't know that coal was THAT bad but it makes sense.

AS stand by mate, I agree! time will prove you and I are right.
We will use this fuel, soon, no later than the third term f Rudd's government will see back down planned nuclear power stations in this country, bettcha!

Examinator,
The Chernobyl problem was none of these;

>Chernobyl was a case history on neglect, penny pinching (cost
>savings) and human error.

It was a design fault. It was pointed out to the Russians in 1956 when
they showed the design of the reactor to a conference at the IAEC in
Vienna. They chose to know better. The failure was exactly as they
were warned about.

The test they were running would not have caused the disaster if the
design had been modified as suggested.

Reactor accidents

The nuclear power plant design strategy for preventing accidents and mitigating their potential effects is "defense in depth"--- if something fails, there is a back-up system to limit the harm done, if that system should also fail there is another back-up system for it, etc., etc. Of course it is possible that each system in this series of back-ups might fail one after the other, but the probability for that is exceedingly small. The Media often publicize a failure of some particular system in some plant, implying that it was a close call" on disaster; they completely miss the point of defense in depth which easily takes care of such failures. Even in the Three Mile Island accident where at least two equipment failures were severely compounded by human errors, two lines of defense were still not breached--- essentially all of the radioactivity remained sealed in the thick steel reactor vessel, and that vessel was sealed inside the heavily reinforced concrete and steel lined "containment" building which was never even challenged. It was clearly not a close call on disaster to the surrounding population. The Soviet Chernobyl reactor, built on a much less safe design concept, did not have such a containment structure; if it did, that disaster would have been averted.

Risks from reactor accidents are estimated by the rapidly developing science of "probabilistic risk analysis" (PRA). A PRA must be done separately for each power plant (at a cost of $5 million) but we give typical results here: A fuel melt-down might be expected once in 20,000 years of reactor operation. In 2 out of 3 melt-downs there would be no deaths, in 1 out of 5 there would be over 1000 deaths, and in 1 out of 100,000 there would be 50,000 deaths. The average for all meltdowns would be 400 deaths. Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm

Bazz
True but dials didn't work, valves seized (should have been replaced but weren't) parts were difficult to get long lead times etc....poor maintenance, workers were under trained , not enough safety equipment/procedures, skills and machinery wasn't upgraded or REPLACED known flaws weren't addressed(that in my mind,is a definition of penny pinching neglect/management failure.)
I envisage the same will happen with corporate profit chasing "neglect". (See Bopal, Longford) will inevitably infiltrate any entity sooner or later. Bureaucracy tends to over engineer and suffer from "galloping inertia". Commercialization tends to suffer from profit maximization by saving on maintenance and staff etc. Look at Telstra and the banks ....mass layoffs closing of branches service dropped alternatives popped up now both are re-instituting service.

Think air line industry... saves money with cheaper maintenance etc e.g. the one that lost its wheel on the tarmac stopped engineering inspections before every flight. In any accident there is always a confluence of causes that results in the disaster.
The weak link usually included a bean counting decision (human judgement) and human error. Reality things do go wrong the difference between an incident and disaster is preparedness but that costs.
The Victorian bush fires for example. The risk was known but 'so far so good' mentality prevailed.
A look at the environment and how our focus on the now is coming back to bite us. My question is can we afford that to be the inevitable SERIES of Nuclear whoops' and their inexorable CUMULATIVE effect?

Belly
One time you asked me to come in Adelaide and discuss with me. I did not answered to you, may be later I can sent you an invitation when you come to adelaide to stay in my home, at the moment it is very mess!
About nuclear power, some say that nuclear energy is a capitalist issue this is not truth, nuclear energy have used in the communist china or in the past in the communist soviet block.
In west countries The Spanish socialists, the UK Labours, The Sweden Social-Democrats, the German Social-democrats or Obama support the use of nuclear energy, only Greens are permanently against the nuclear energy BUT they are a small minority and they will stack there if they ignore our needs for energy and better life.
Of cause there are some risks, we try to minimize them but we can not return to stone age, because greens are against nuclear energy.
Of cause we try to use more solar or any other reneable energy BUT WE CAN NOT IGORE OUR NEEDS IN ENERGY.
I do not try to seem good I preffer to prepare people for some future steps not popular but neccessary, IF I HAVE TO GO AGAINST THE WINDS I WILL GO, IF I HAVE TO GO AGAINST THE STORMS I WILL GO, IF I HAVE TO GO AGAINST THE WAVES I WILL GO, BUT ALWAYS I WILL TRY TO BE USEFULL FOR OUR PEOPLE AND OUR COUNTRY.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide