Butch You should be commended for your concern on employment issues surrounding alt energy fuels. If we had a down trodden govt; in power that thought that way, none of the hard issues would have ever taken place. We are 2 percentage points off full employment. Maybe you are over reacting some what. Nuclear power is an issue on its own, i have not seen an example that could not fail in future dates as yet.
Misleading politics from who! Roll back Tony is surely got to take that prize. When you think the libs have done nothing but negatively abuse every effort to do any thing positive for this country, even to the point of politicking in kindergartens, while important discussions are taking place, their absence is noticeable by public concern.

The Japanese nuclear power problem after the tsunami is the result of poor civil engineering not poor reactor design.
Nuclear power plants could be built on large barges floating on cooling water "lakes" at least 30m above sea level.
For example, on the western side of the Dividing Range,(and even on the eastern side) in Australia there are many elevated dams capable of supplying back up water for the cooling lakes. Floating barges would not be earthquake prone. The Russians with atomic powered icebreakers and and the Yanks with their nuclear powered carriers have shown how to use vessels as support mechanisms for atomic reactors. We just need designers capable of lateral thinking.

Belly,

I was a student in 1985, and there was a period when there were a string of major air accidents, with nearly 4000 killed in multiple large jet crashes. (more than killed with nuclear power since 1945). As air travel was essential, the Green's precautionary principle (of simply shutting down air travel) was not considered a viable option. This lead to failure analysis systems such as TQM etc, which lead to the ultra low level of accidents we have today.

Similarly the plants at Chernobyl and Fukushima were of 50's and 70's vintage, and were both close to retirement. The only design failure of the Fukushima plant was that they had designed for a 10m Tsunami and a 14m wave hit which was the biggest in recorded history.

The plants of today are very different, and much work has gone towards making them inherently safe, which means that even if all the safeties fail (as happened in Fukushima) that an orderly shut down is still possible.

Given the absence of base load renewable power generation, the carbon price cannot force a complete move to renewable power, only increase the cost.

France is the only OECD country to reduce emissions below 1990 levels already, and has done so cheaply and safely with nuclear. China and India's main push for non carbon energy is also nuclear with plans for about 10 new nuclear plants per year each.

Nuclear power and nuclear waste are too important issues to be left at the mercy of incompetent governments and corporations who put other interests before safety.

No matter the brilliance of technology, human error whether it be greed or incompetence, is always with us.

It is not worth the risk. Isn't Japan and Chernobyl enough to convince people that the reality is different to the dream of nuclear.

Exactly the opposite pelican.

They are enough to show us that even a major nuclear accident, either man or nature driven, is a very minor happening, & soon obliterated in the scheme of things.

Hasbeen I would not call a nuclear accident a minor event. The long term effects of radioactivity make any accident or debates about storage or disposal a major issue.

What you probably meant I think is a rare event. However, a few rare events involving nuclear accidents have a longer term impact than a plane accident or natural disaster.