Bugsy and Dickie
It is great to know we have good people like yourselves trying to help Troublemaker see the light. Troublemaker has to have a vested interest Uranium shares are becoming one of the most expensive commodities and as we in the western world are addicts to oil so we will be to Uranium because that is what the establishment are working on. We only have to open the West Australian Newspaper and Mr Murdoch's rags to tell us that is where the investments will be heading. We are glad Dickie you mentioned Strotium B 90 which we were aware of in the sixties. Children were dying of Leukemia normally at the age of 10. The places that they went for picnics were Hanningfield Reservoir close to Bradwell Power Station. Strotium B 90 acts in the same way as calcium. The emmissions from the Nuclear Power Station give fall out dropping down from the clouds similar to those that linger over Rockinham. The droplets settle on the turf absorbed into the sods cattle graize on the grass. Children drink the milk from the cattle. Which inevitably ends up in the bone marrow of the child as would calcium. Many Hollywood stars appealed to parents to save the milk teeth that are discarded by the children to be analysed for radiation. Authorities are blindly ignoring what is happening to its people. Australia must learn from what Germany are doing we fear that if the Howard Government is re-elected he will commit contracts that cannot be broken. Many Liberals do have reservations. We do not know one that will put their hand up to say put one in my electorate in case they have riots on the streets.

Dickie,

Your words would normally be very insulting. But your post simply proves that you're an idiot who has no idea what he's talking about, and no one can be insulted by an idiot. I can only feel pity.

Don't bother to reply. I'm off this thread. In fact, I'm sorry I started it in the first place. I just hope that you're not typical of the average Aussie because you're a disgrace.

Ralph

Too true Bronco Lane

Only in March 2006, a nuclear accident occurred in Fleurus, Belgium.

The worker wasn't even aware that he'd received a huge dose of radiation until sometime later when his hair fell out and he became critically ill. He was hospitalised in a French hospital for a month. Not a good prognosis for a long life!

Brazil has only 2 reactors and has already had 20 accidents and 5 fatalities (well to date anyway!)

The US, up to 2005, has had 289 accidents and 30 fatalities.

And of course, the nuclear institutes fail to acknowledge that there is a lag time for symptons to appear in humans and animals (unwittingly exposed to radiation from the industry) where these symptons may only become apparent after many years.

Professor Monson of the Harvard School of Public Health warned of the elevated risk of cancers from X-rays and advised that there is no threshold of exposure which levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial. That advice was announced in 2005, and our governments continue to remain silent!

The often lengthy lag times for radiation illnesses to appear, enables the pro-nukers to deny any liability whilst they continue to commit their crimes against humanity and planet earth!

Sylvia, you are right that you can't just up and build a geothermal (I include the "hot rock" tech in this category) plant wherever and that the geology has to be suitable. The same goes for any power plant, the environment has to be suitable. You can't build a nuclear plant near a fault line, all thermal exchanger/turbine plants (coal, geothermal, nuclear etc) require a water source, so in Australia's case they should be near the coast. And so on...

As I said before, there are many technologies that can reduce our emissions profile, they are not considered high-risk and they can be started today. Complete replacement of coal seems to be your ultimate goal, but why can we not reduce now and replace later? Why do we have to have centralised power generation? Peak power and base load gap can be taken care of by gas turbines, which can be scaled to any output desired. While gas is more expensive for constant peak load, it's quite reasonable for intermittent supply.

And while our power storage capacity is currently inefficient, the nuclear argument relies on it always being so.

I'm sorry to see you spit the dummy Ralph, so long and I hope you will eventually find the answers, because you didn't write any here.

Bugsy,

There are plenty of places where you could build a nuclear plant in Australia, but few where a hot-rock plant would be economic.

If you use a gas turbine generator to stabilise the output from a wind farm, then you have to carry the cost of that generator as part of the cost of your wind farm, which pushes up the cost of the electricity from the wind-farm.

Sylvia.

Sorry, Sylvia I just don't see your point. You seem to assume that complete replacement of coal technology is essential and that no technology can replace it except nuclear. Except for the fact that getting a nuclear facility up and running requires more than what you believe it to require. Renewable technologies are currently more expensive in the short-term than current conventional methods, thats true. But as I said before, they can start today to reduce our peak loads and can be phased in gradually, and can be replaced easily when they become obsolete. Nuclear facilities are a massive whack of capital, so you'd better be damn sure that it's going to be economical for the long term, and that includes waste management.