Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Well SM, maybe maybe not but i have no doubt that no matter how you rig a nuclear power station it still requires a reaction to work. So no matter what happens if there is a mistake it will be a disaster. Thinking man can be trusted with nuclear power is like thinking nazi's can be trusted with gas, it's a fools paradise. Nuclear power has so many problems from design, operation, cost right through to waste that the whole argument is as futile as the global warming debate. Solar is the answer, it only requires the will and commitment by government to fund it and the needs will be fulfilled. Every domestic house hold could be serviced now with the available technology and with development it could do the job on a wider scale. Stop looking for the easy answer or even giving in to the wants of big business. Nuclear is a disaster waiting to happen, we have already had it once so where will it lead if the planet is littered with the toxic bombs.

Ditto Nairbe [dead excuse the pun] against Nuclear power here, Africa or anywhere! Healthier and safer alternatives sourced, funded and implemented!

The green movement has spent so many years vilifying the nuclear industry, and dramatising the dangers, that the population in general believes that any nuclear power station is a bomb waiting to go off, and that wind and solar are completely risk free.

The harsh reality is that any industrial process has its dangers, and the intense focus on the dangers of nuclear industry have resulted in plants that are the safest form of generation on the planet.

If you look at the deaths per GWhr of power, nuclear (even including Chernobyl) has less than half the fatalities per unit power of any other source including wind. If one excludes Chernobyl, the nuclear industry becomes safer by another order of magnitude.

For example, if you took all the high level waste generated in the US for the past 40 years you could store in on a single football field. If waste was reprocessed, this would be further reduced, and the level of radioactivity would reduce to about 1/1000.

If, as planned, the reprocessed uranium is re used in the new technology reactors, the final waste volume will only be a tiny fraction, and the storage facilities presently being built will suffice for centuries.

The Boers have always been a very pragmatic people and the Africans are no slouch at calling a spade a spade so this common sense approach is almost an expectation. We were like that here once, but with the current crop of pollies on both sides we have politically correct enablers rather than insightful enablers.

We can't have coal and we can't have nuclear and all the other technologies are useless to the grid even when combined, so it could be guinea pigs running in little fly wheels in vast guinea electro farms if not for the mammal mafia. There is no synopsis in the greens energy agenda for global carbon free power; they have a salami approach, slice by slice because banning coal would see the immediate crash of the global economy. I am sure that global emissions would reduce remarkably for about 5 minutes if we stopped burning coal, until we understood that this “no power” is the status quo and we started to burn anything resembling wood daily for heat and cooking. The suburbs would have the sort of smoke haze that the queen’s birthday weekend had after cracker night. We cannot regress, it’s not in us and it is not in 99% of the cocooned urban greenies typing away on their coal fired computers.

For those anti-nuclear activists, worth a visit to the following: nuclearinfo.net for some enlightenment on the benefits & safety around nuclear energy.