geoffreykelley:

You say that I lost my argument ( I didn`t know we were having an argument,....I thought that we were having an informed discussion) with my first sentence using the word "cronies" as John Howard supporters?

The word "crony" means "close friend or companion" according to "The Australian Secondary Dictionary". Coincidentally, the folowing word in the same Dictionary is "crook" but we will leave that one for another day!

Whether I am a Howard supporter or not is hardly the issue here, as Howard is merely the tool being utilized to try to implement the Nuclear Policy at hand.

I might mention that some of your "ill-informed" fellow students and others like myself, protested resoundingly against Australia`s involvement in the US inspired war in Vietnam!.....strange how some of us seem to have differing views to others in this community!

The whole issue of this discussion is the "folly" of the use of Nuclear Fission in the domestic arena and to proliferate the possibility of the use of alternative methods available, in an effort to avoid what could become another Nuclear disaster such as:

Hiroshima - Nagasaki - Three Mile Island - Chernobyl

at the same time we should NOT discount all of the ex-servicemen and civilians who died or are dying from radiation contamination, resulting from our own Atomic Tests carried out at Maralinga etc

CupHandle,

Whether you want to call it a discussion or an argument is irrelevant. As is your mention of John Howard and the Hippies protesting the Vietnam War.

We can remove Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Maralinga from our discussion about civilian nuclear power because these incidents were deliberate exposure of humans to radiation.

Three mile island occurred in 1979 and there were NO deaths directly related to this accident. Deaths from coal fired power stations massively overshadow any deaths or injury caused by the nuclear power industry. Deaths per TWy of electricity produced are 885 for hydropower, 342 for coal, 85 for natural gas, and 8 for nuclear.

Chernobyl was the worst nuclear accident ever, but the effects could have been controlled had the reactor been encased in a protective containment building which all western reactors have.

Modern nuclear power plants aren’t even in the same league, in terms of safety, as the reactors at Chernobyl and three mile island. Lucas heights has been operating for decades without any problems.

Ybgirp,

Earthquakes occur along fault lines in the tectonic plate. These fault lines do not occur underneath the Australian mainland. As for falling bombs, well, that would take an invading Air Force. This is not even a remote possibility.

"Earthquakes occur along fault lines in the tectonic plate. These fault lines do not occur underneath the Australian mainland. As for falling bombs, well, that would take an invading Air Force. This is not even a remote possibility."

Hmm, on the first, you might want to go and have a chat with a few Novocastrians about that.

On the second, falling bombs may be out of the question, however falling jets aren't, as we have already seen. Hell even a truck bomb properly placed could cause severe damage to a nuclear power station.