Also let me disabuse you of the idea that any energy conversion/storage technology does not have significant losses – the laws of thermodynamics in fact guarantee it.

Lastly, I suggest that you calculate the size of the facilities that you would require to produce enough power to satisfy demand 24/7 year after year, and I think you will find that it would be a staggering amount of land that would have to be covered by these plants. Although we tend to see places like the Australian Outback as waste land, the fact is that they are ecosystems in their own right and they will be utterly destroyed by projects of the size and number required to eliminate Australia’s use of carbon-based fuels.

There has been a breakthrough in renewable energy base power production! I refer to solar thermal power using a cheap flat mirror system and storage by the disassociation of ammonia in an endothermic reactor then stored at ambient temperature and used at any later time even during wintertime the sun’s energy is not lost being chemically locked up. Then reapplied to an exothermic reactor heat is produced at about 500 degrees to provide steam for power generation. This closed loop system enables 24/7 base power production for industry and it also is able to provide medium or peak power on demand. Not only that the storage system is easy to do and cheap and is based on mature technology and enables the sun’s energy to be stored any length of time without loss so that the energy can be extracted in the wintertime if necessary or any time in the future! No other storage system can do this and it is a real breakthrough.

A gigawatt plant is right now being built in America financed by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla who says that solar thermal power is poised for explosive growth because of it’s low costs together with Australian scientist Dr David Mills who had to leave Australia because of our government’s unfavorable policies. We could have had this happening in Australia if our government had been receptive. There is certainly no need to have nuclear power here! And in Europe a TRANS-CSP report commissioned by the German government calculates that solar thermal power is likely to become one of the cheapest sources of power including the cost of transmission. Not producing any carbon and it does not have safety issues it’s easy to see why. This is the power that needs to be, and can be sent to third world counties and the rest of Europe via High Voltage Direct Current Transmission lines from solar thermal plants in North African deserts or the Middle East with only 3% loss in transmission.

In fact the whole world could use this as a major power source as there are many deserts around. The potential for it to power the world cleanly and safely and reduce greenhouse gasses at the same time is a real bonus. And it is being done now. Lets get on with it and continue! A general understanding and awareness of solar thermal power (CSP) can be seen on http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/index.htm and (http://www.trecers.net/index.html and http://www.trec.net.au/ and understanding of the storage system in schematic form can be seen at http://engnet.anu.edu.au/DEresearch/solarthermal/high_temp/thermochem/index.php

I missed that one the first time through. They’re joking, they must be joking do these idiots have any idea just how much ore would have to be mined to make a device? Do they think that a bunch of terrorists or saboteurs could refine that much ore and process out the weapons-grade uranium at the required purity to make a weapon?

This is really the most farfetched nonsense ‘threat’ I have seen to date. A great demonstration of the intellectual dishonesty, and contempt of fact that is the hallmark of the antinuclear movement.

Single nuclear units and even multiple unit sites periodically go offline unexpectedly in the US, but due to the regional nature of our electric grids and the excess margin they maintain this does not result in widespread power outages. The great East Coast blackout of a few years ago was in part the result of multiple nuclear and fossil units shutting down unexpectedly in a short time period.

Otherwise the points raised by the various articles strike me as valid on the surface – - but they must be put in context. I know nothing of nuclear mining and enrichment and can’t comment. Regarding damage to plants and spent fuel dispersal, we must be careful to separate out public fears about radiation from medical fact about the effects of radiation. The outcry over the recent Japanese earthquake nuclear plant mess has shown again that the general reaction of the public to radiation is to treat it like nerve gas, where any amount can do catastrophic damage. This is not correct – it takes a very sizeable amount of radiation to cause long-term or widespread damage to an individual or area. (And yes, Chernobyl managed this.)

I would be curious if, when speaking of widespread radioactive contamination causing serious environmental damage effecting the population (beyond psychologically, I presume), the authors are considering the amount of radioactive material release. If they are speaking of some sort of release of spent fuel products (presumably from onsite storage) they may have this covered to some extent, but other assumptions must be made regarding the dispersal, and each of these has odds associated with it, even if some of them are the result of deliberate human actions.

Finally, there’s the broader perspective to be considered. Here in America , about once a week we evacuate a neighborhood when train cars carrying toxic chemicals derail. We have a number of very toxic “superfund” sites requiring extensive cleanup, and many more of our landfills contain stuff we wouldn’t want to be around. Natural gas explosions kill people every year. Some environmentalists claim widespread heath effects from fossil-fuel burning, even without considering global warming. People die every year during summer heat waves due to lack of air-conditioning. How does the risk versus reward stack up for nuclear power versus other power sources (or large scale conservation) and other risks we accept? For power sources, is better to accept a known quanty of X number of deaths per year from non-nuclear sources, or reduce this by using nuclear with the understanding there is some (probably low, in my view) chance of X++ deaths due to an accident or sabotage, etc. As I mentioned in my comment on the previous article, I believe public is nowhere near making good judgments in this area based on their current level of understanding.

James Aach

Author of “Rad Decision”, the thriller nuclear power novel.
See Rad Decision.blogspot.com

Death-over-death the chemical sector’s disasters have dwarfed those of nuclear, yet I see no hand-wringing calls for the elimination of that sector or demands that it must meet a higher standard of safety than other industries.

This is typical of the fear mongering that has typified the nuclear debate from the beginning. Get a grip people, a great deal of the technology that we depend on is potentially dangerous if someone is sloppy or wants to do harm and we live with it every day. Nuclear is no different, and in many ways it is less dangerous than some other forms of energy production.