Ridding our dependence on foreign oil.

[Surgo]

The nuclear reactors as "safe cheap energy" thing is pretty much pure propaganda.

The whole industry runs of government subsidies (where-ever it happens to actually run at all).

Hold up.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that because one nuclear technology runs entirely on government subsidies, that a completely different technology and industry would do the same?

[Username17]

Are you seriously trying to tell me that because one nuclear technology runs entirely on government subsidies, that a completely different technology and industry would do the same?

No, we're saying that currently there are no power companies on the entire planet that have figured out a way to generate power economically with nuclear technology that currently exists. Full stop.

The reason that no nuclear plants have been built for some time is not because people are not allowed to build nuclear power plants, they are allowed to make nuclear power plants. It's not even because they have not been granted the ability to store their nuclear waste and permanently irradiated equipment on government land forever without paying the thousands of years of rent that should logically incur - because they've got that too!

The reason that none of the big companies are making nuke plants is because they can't make them profitable. That's why they are asking for huge piles of government subsidies before they'll consent to making reactors. Reactors that they intend to operate in a manner where they get all the money from operating it and the public gets all the poison that no one has figured out how to safely store and will apparently outlive humanity.

Even on those frankly ridiculously generous terms, the power companies of the world find that it just isn't worth their fucking time to do it unless governments are paying them giant wads of cash on top of taking all their nuclear poison away and storing it in vault after vault for a thousand generations without charge.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

To answer simply. Yes.

The fat cat lobbyists who campaign for nuclear power like to pretend that what everyone is criticising is the first generation clunkers, the reality is all the criticisms I just went through are in fact targeted on the most modern and efficient reactors we have.

Now if you imagine that there is a super magic fairy reactor that is so so so much better than our current best that it makes a highly limited fuel supply NOT limited and turns that fuel into undisposable waste at a rate so much slower that it almost doesn't at all...

Then I point out that actually, no that tech doesn't exist, and won't exist.

Wake me up when they master cold fusion. Until then there is nothing substantively different in the issues.

[Maj]

Even if nuclear power were efficient, wouldn't we have to import the uranium, thus not actually creating energy independence?

Or is the policy for energy independence really the policy for Middle Eastern Oil independence?

[Crissa]

America has one of the great deposits of radioactive minerals. We even have towns that have to watch the uranium levels in their water supply.

The other large deposits are in Russia, North Korea... Umm... Presumably there's some in the Andes and Himalayas, and there's deposits scattered throughout west africa and south africa, niger, etc. Iran should have some, but they've been importing, which indicates an inability to find it in appropriate quantities.

Technically, it is possible to make nuclear power profitable. The problem is that 99% of the cost is in insurance and safety, which isn't 99% of the cost of any other type of power. And so they want to cut corners (to make profits) but cannot (because then they wouldn't make profits). The other sources of power get to blow their pollutants out stacks and dump it where ever they please, etc, etc.

There's really no way to make any sort of power generation 'profitable' as long as the various generation sources are riding under different standards and profit as an indicator wins out over safety in the future. Reliability in safety is just something that is immiscible with profit motive.

It doesn't help that they're stymied at any turn to make smaller nuclear based power sources - NASA has some wonderful nuclear batteries, but they get injunctioned and protested whenever they want to put them on a space probe.

-Crissa

[Username17]

A quarter of the world's mined Uranium comes out of Canada, with Russia, Australia, and the United States having huge reserves of the stuff as well. The US shut down their last open pit mine over fifteen years ago, but could easily start one or several up again in a number of places if for some reason getting large amounts of Uranium was considered important.

If the US wanted to run itself on nuclear power and run the power plants on domestic fuel sources it could just do that. It doesn't, because Uranium mining leaves vast areas really shitty and nuclear power plants don't give the kinds of monetary returns that the free market is willing to care about.

But this chart:



Doesn't mean what it might look like it means.

-Username17

[RiotGearEpsilon]

Then what DOES it mean?

[IGTN]

Russia has a lot of land that is was useless except for the uranium (recently) under it, apparently.

At least, that's my guess.

[Gelare]

You know, I was wondering something. Remember that energy crisis? The one that happened, like, two months ago, when oil was up to five dollars a gallon, nearly 150 bucks per barrel, and the sky was falling, and we all needed to rid ourselves of our dependence on evil foreign oil and invest in (stupidly inefficient) ethanol and other (currently nonviable) alternative energies right now or else those evil Saudis and their OPEC groupies were going to ruin the entire western world? When everyone was supposed to invest in hybrid technology, the way of the future, even though the cars aren't actually more fuel-efficient enough to make them worthwhile to anybody given their high cost? Well I just drove past a gas station with oil at $1.87. A barrel of oil is happily under sixty dollars. Did I miss something? Did the sky already fall, or what?

[Crissa]

Several things happened:

Investment companies in EU and the US got caught double-dipping in the futures market for oil. Demand decreased/supply increased.

Demand in the winter is actually less; most fuel is used for transportation, and transportation is most needed in harvest/growing/vacationing seasons. Demand decreased.

An Election came up, and if the price was still high, the oil man would lose, so they increased supply. Damage to oil rigs was repaired. Supply increased, the amount of money (profit) pre barrel was lowered in growth.

The Economy went in the shitter, so no one could get loans to buy more oil so demand fell.

See what all these elements have in common?

-Crissa

[Username17]

OPEC seriously drops prices in response to rising political will for comprehensive energy policy in the West.

Part of it is that energy demands are generally higher in the summer than in the winter, because it is easier to heat things up than cool things down - and more people live in the Northern Hemisphere than in the South. But the other part is that since OPEC is a cartel, they seriously can and do alter prices in an attempt to undercut peoples' attempts to get people to buy in to an energy policy. Because it takes a significant period of time to get an energy policy together, and if you can get consumers to lose interest part way through the process then you have to start over again in the middle.

I mean seriously, President Carter had solar cells on the roof of the white house. President Reagan took them down.

Which brings us to the other part: prices on oil are artificially raised and lowered in an attempt to make Republicans look better just as Republicans artificially scuttle alternative energy plans in order to give more power and wealth to oil companies. Not just in the US, but around the world.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

Then what DOES it mean?

Frank is implying that people could look at the graph and get the impression that .au has more uranium than .us. All thre graph actually means is that .au is digging up more dirt than the US, which has no bearing on the relative amounts of dirt that could be dug up for nuclear goodness.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Which brings us to the other part: prices on oil are artificially raised and lowered in an attempt to make Republicans look better just as Republicans artificially scuttle alternative energy plans in order to give more power and wealth to oil companies. Not just in the US, but around the world.

You know, it really pisses me off how short-sighted people are. But then again, I guess that's why Gore and Kerry didn't get net +10% popular vote in their elections over Bush and Obama didn't get +20%.

But anyway. It seems that our only hope right now is that the Democratic party won't be fooled by OPEC and pursue an alternative energy policy regardless.

I also hope (yet laugh at said hope) when certain people start manipulating the price of oil again the American public will realize that they're being had and to go forward with AE no matter what.

But anyway, I just want to be able to kick Saudi Arabia and Israel to the curb. Fuck those countries.

[cthulhu]

PL: The only reason Australian doesn;t have a nuclear storage facility is that rampant not in anyone elses backyard either, ever, for any reason even if its the most geologically stable hole in the ground ever-ness precludes us from carring

The reason uranium reserves are so small is that its a huge waste of time looking for more, is because we don't need it, so no-one does.

Fuck off with the nuclear power is unprofitable bullshit. Nuclear and solar are both unprofitable because coal and natural gas is much cheaper.

But I thought we'd all decided that continuing to dump tons of carbon into the atmosphere was uncool. If you want to only run cheap energy can we stop whinging about the planet and just get back to building more coal power plants.

Now having decided that, lets go back to comparing nuclear and solar.

Nuclear is cheaper per kilowatt hour including the cost of waste storage and decommissioning- in Australia - if you were actually allowed to buy it - you could just create a holding corporation and throw all the waste down a big hole and pour concrete on it after a while.

Also you guys talking about people artifically manipulating the oil price? Well, I suppose its true, but massive specualtion ahoy. It was just people pricing in all future demand from china into the current price, creating a huge bubble with all the analysts going 'hohoh, I call 200 dollar oil!' until everyone relised that was complete bullshit and the entire thing unwinding.

[Username17]

Nuclear is cheaper per kilowatt hour including the cost of waste storage and decommissioning

Only if you take the same "the future doesn't matter" approach that makes coal so cheap right now. The truth is that we actually can't decommission a nuclear reactor. We can just cover it with concrete and walk away. If you count the cost of "walking away" as zero then sure it costs less than Solar. But frankly, having a big block of essentially permanent poison monolith lying around is not a zero cost to society or the planet. The fact that no one is paying anything for the scar is not the same as there not being a cost.

Until we get some magical rail guns set up to dispose of the waste and even the reactors themselves by firing them into the sun, the real cost of nuclear power is going to be prohibitive.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

The only reason Australian doesn't have a nuclear storage facility is that rampant not in anyone else's backyard either, ever, for any reason even if its the most geologically stable hole in the ground ever-ness precludes us from caring...
...Fuck off with the nuclear power is unprofitable bullshit. Nuclear and solar are both unprofitable because coal and natural gas is much cheaper.

Let's be clear here. Storage costs money.

You have this stuff that needs storing. No one wants it anywhere, it is very dangerous and NO you can't just put it in a hole in the ground and no "geologically stable" doesn't mean half what you think it means and NO the scientific community is NOT in agreement on any kind of safe place or way to store the stuff.

So when you add all that together that means that the price to set up storage is high, so high in fact that last I heard there isn't a single legitimate safe permanent nuclear waste storage facility in the world so far as no one is prepared to pay the price.

And it's not a one off magic fee. Storage is an ongoing cost. And it goes on as far as human history is concerned, until what may as well be infinity.

You just plain can't profit in that set up. You have an upfront cost so massive no one will pay it and then ongoing costs that stretch into infinity.

And this is in a situation where we have a fraction of the waste to dispose of than we would have if we became nuclear dependant.

You think it's hard to build a single teeny little nuclear waste dump in the Australian Desert or Yucca Mountain NOW? Can you imagine trying to dispose of an entire worlds power generation worth of nuclear waste?

The reason uranium reserves are so small is that its a huge waste of time looking for more, is because we don't need it, so no-one does.

Yeah because you know, we haven't geologically surveyed most of the planet ANYWAY looking for oil and just for the hell of it.

And we sure as hell didn't pay attention to the distribution of a resource of totally zero strategic value that certainly isn't a key component in the most powerful weapons known to man...

And in no way might undiscovered (or merely unconfirmed) uranium deposits be accounted for in government funded estimates of potential world uranium reserves in the same way we estimate undiscovered oil reserves.

you could just create a holding corporation and throw all the waste down a big hole and pour concrete on it after a while.

Your massive ignorance of the issues involved in nuclear waste disposal is astounding.

Also you guys talking about people artifically manipulating the oil price? Well, I suppose its true, but massive specualtion ahoy. It was just people pricing in all future demand from china into the current price, creating a huge bubble with all the analysts going 'hohoh, I call 200 dollar oil!' until everyone relised that was complete bullshit and the entire thing unwinding.

Actually there are a wide variety of pressures on oil prices. And frankly China's demand WILL only grow, the worlds demand is growing and even rate of increase in production can no longer keep up with rate of increase in demand.

And there are very real fears we either are at, or near this funny thing called Peak Oil. You should look it up. It's a big deal.

There is simply a limit on how much Oil we have. And frankly there is also a limit on how much natural gas, coal, and uranium we have.

Some of the more independent (ie non nuclear industry/agency backed, and those guys are notoriously dodgy) studies suggest we could also run out of Uranium within 30 years.

Even the optimistic ones that estimate double the known reserves in undiscovered uranium only estimate we can supply EXISTING reactors for a measly 100 years and admit problems in rate of supply within the very near future as we run out of decommissioned atomic weapons (you know only about 60% of current uranium supplies are dug out of the ground).

Hell even more entertaining is the fact that even COAL is a limited non renewable resource and we could very well be running out of IT within the next century as well.

But seriously.

Have something official sounding.

The analysis of data on uranium resources leads to the assessment that discovered reserves are
not sufficient to guarantee the uranium supply for more than thirty years.
Eleven countries have already exhausted their uranium reserves. In total, about 2.3 Mt of
uranium have already been produced. At present only one country (Canada) is left having
uranium deposits containing uranium with an ore grade of more than 1%, most of the
remaining reserves in other countries have ore grades of below 0.1% and two-thirds of the
reserves have ore grades of below 0.06%. This is important as the energy requirement for
uranium mining is at best indirectly proportional to the ore concentration and with
concentrations of below 0.01-0.02% the energy needed for uranium processing – over the
whole fuel cycle – increases substantially.
The proved reserves (= reasonably assured below 40 $/kgU extraction cost) and stocks will be
exhausted within the next 30 years at the current annual demand. Likewise, possible resources
– which contain all estimated discovered resources with extraction costs of up to 130 $/kg –
will be exhausted within 70 years.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

Can't we just dump it in to a subversion fracture at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohorovi%C ... continuity via deep drilling and let the subversion flows suck it back down in to the depths of the earth?

Granted, that's a reasonably expensive 'just'. But it turns the storage-in-to-infinity cost to a large storage-up-front cost.

[cthulhu]

Did I say the costs were free? Fuck off I did, the cost of decommission and storage of waste is one of the biggest costs full stop.

But seriously, the issue is overblown, Australia is ideally suited to long term waste storage because we do have large areas that are extremely geologically stable, completely uninhabited, significantly subsurface, and outside the water table in which you could store treated waste outside of the water table at minimum risk. There are multiple independent government reports on the subject.

Now, you can choose not to believe that anyone who is paid can truly be independent, but please go ban auditors if you want to believe that. I welcome your moves to improve ASX disclosure.

If you want to talk about the 'debate' against those reports, I'll laugh, and say well there is a 'debate' about climate change, but in both cases I am happy with the independent reports produced by the Oz government for both.

Moving along.

I'm also assuming we're only talking about the minority of waste that is actually a serious long term hazard, I'm not concerned about the megatonnes of soil that is containment with uranium tailings for example, because thats a non issue that clouds the debate.

Also, the uranium shortage issue is total bullshit. No-one is doing any uranium exploration at all, so we have no idea how big global reserves are. Doubling of current reserves is an extremely conservative estimate, but we'll never know because everyone is off busily finding iron and coal to make more pollution in china. At the current price of uranium, it is just not viable to mine anything but the very richest of sources, and we have huge resources at current levels of consumption.

But that doesn't matter at all anyway, because the cost of fuel is less than 1% of the costs of managing a nuclear reactor. As you rightfully point out, commissioning, decommissioning and labour make up the vast majority of all costs. The price of fuel could increase massively (and way more than the 140 dollar figure quoted, you could easily rich 400 dollars before it had a significant impact. i've seen studies that indicate that a 1000 dollars a ton, it is still cheaper)

Finally the huge concrete monolith shit is bollocks as well, you can (and people have) completely removed nuclear reactors during the decom process for unconditional site release. Admittedly thats only like 15% of total decoms, but hey, if you state that up front you want that, it can certainly be made to happen

Now having established that, yes, I am talking cost per kilowatt our of nuclear engineering including commissioning, decommissioning and storage, yes I am aware of the issues, no your stuff about concrete moniliths doesn't have to be true. Sheesh.

However, the real problem with nuclear power is the extreme difficulty of getting a plant, waste dump or anything through the approvals process to operating, and at any time the government can say 'well no' and you lose all your money. Yucca mountain is a great example of a project that has been completely derailed at vast expense by politics.

The cost of nuclear power would actually decrease significantly if you could count on automatic operating approval based on meeting the plans that were orginally approved - which is by no means certain. Several plants in the US have been built to the plan, then not received operating approval, writing off the entire investment.

Due to this purely commercial risk, nuclear power is currently not viable - and this commercial risk is what will sink everything.


Finally, I don't give a shit about a global solution. I only talked about australia for a reason, other people have to solve the problem, and they will solve it differently. For example, nuclear power is fucking stupid in the cayman islands. I suggest they need a different solution.

For 30 billion dollars, which is less money that we need to spend on a fucking economic stimulus package, we could have 100% carbon free power generation. The altenative is spinning a fucking roulette wheel and hope that the chinese are willing to keep poisoning their countryside for long enough for us to build solar farms sufficent to power australia - which will still cost more.

Because for all the whinging, the demonstrated alternative solution currently proposed is seriously use cheap Chinese made panels with no industrial or environmental controls that are poisoning massive tracts of land with heavy metals.

Nice guys! Go go green power, lets keep oppressing the yellow people. That or play roulette and hope we manage to invest something cheap enough to do it before the world explodes.

Oh and that only works if you can invent a better battery, or ludicrously over provision so you can make hydrogen during the day and burn it at night.

We need to cut carbon emissions by 80%, and we need to start now to achieve that. Of the options that we can implement right now nuclear power is the only option to achieve that goal, despite the compromises, because there is no other demonstrable solution.

You are of course welcome to disagree, and heck, you guys will and we'll never build it, but I'm also totally confident we'll never make the sort of carbon cuts required as a planet. I am looking forward to the massive refugee problems and increased brushfire wars - it'll be therapeutic to have the final solution replace the pacific solution and have more blacks kill each other in Africa.

But anyway, yeah, I know we'll never have nuclear power, and I'm just raging against the small minded tyranny of the flower children, but its a shame to see the green movement poision the planet with their own bloody mindedness.

[PhoneLobster]

Now, you can choose not to believe that anyone who is paid can truly be independent, but please go ban auditors if you want to believe that. I welcome your moves to improve ASX disclosure.

If you knew, I don't know, anything about the issue, you would know that there is a long history of dishonesty about nuclear technology and its risks from so called independent studies.

Did you know it was the former head of the CSIRO that discovered and proved the link between radiation, fall out and cancer? And that it was covered up by the Australian government, for decades.

You will also know for instance the "independent" commission Howard put together on the issue was full of known pro nuclear hacks. And the moment the members were named the honesty of the outcome was discounted by everyone that knew a damn thing about it.

That isn't debate, there is simply no respect for the people or methods involved from the general scientific or policy community at all!

I'm not concerned about the megatonnes of soil that is containment with uranium tailings for example, because thats a non issue that clouds the debate.

You know, one of the things that CSIRO guy proved was that there is NO safe level of additional radiation. But also, I call total bullshit on that on the level of the old 1950's radiation is harmless propaganda.

No-one is doing any uranium exploration at all, so we have no idea how big global reserves are. Doubling of current reserves is an extremely conservative estimate

Did I not point out that that was the OPTIMISTIC estimate of undiscovered reserves.

What about "estimated undiscovered reserves" do you not understand? You are outright claiming there are ADDITIONAL undiscovered reserves that they are not in actual fact including in the estimate!

And there would need to be multiples of multiples of the current (already double known) estimated reserves before it impacts the problem.

Seriously go read some real information on this, possibly starting with my official sounding quote you seem to have missed. Even the optimistic group foresee a very real problem with rate of supply for existing reactors within the next decade. Without magical technology they estimate only 100 years of total supply for existing reactors.

That is just plain not enough. It sure as hell isn't enough when 60% of that period is based on unconfirmed supplies.

Finally, I don't give a shit about a global solution.

Well that's a pity because then you actually are utterly incapable of suggesting a solution that will actually work.

Of the options that we can implement right now nuclear power is the only option to achieve that goal, despite the compromises, because there is no other demonstrable solution.

But er... nuclear power is demonstrably NOT a solution. I mean we will probably start having supply failures within the next couple of decades as it is... You just ignore that and declare there must surely be even more undiscovered uranium SOMEWHERE god damn it! Start digging radioactive pits under major cities or something god damn it!

Its costs are massive, its environmental hazards as great as any carbon emitting technology, its supplies as (or more) limited as any other non renewable resource.

You've fallen hook line and sinker for propaganda spread by nuclear industry cronies looking to line their own pockets at the expense of the people now and for countless generations into the future. Right down to the scornful and ignorant dismissal of every single other (and better) power generation technology we have.

I am looking forward to the massive refugee problems and increased brushfire wars - it'll be therapeutic to have the final solution replace the pacific solution and have more blacks kill each other in Africa.

OK, WTF? "And in conclusion I would like to add that famine, flooding and genocide make me happy!".

Where that came from I don't know, but it only provides ammunition to say "Well no wonder you like nuclear power!"

[Gelare]

I'd just like to mention, lest people be mislead, that the whole deal about speculators driving up the price of oil by two hundred million percent and they need to be shut down right now and brought under strict government control was a ginormous straw man argument, since analysis showed that speculation had an effect of maybe 2-3 USD per barrel. The real deal was, of course, the massive and rapidly increasing demand in China and India, and the fact that they, like the rest of the world, are currently undergoing a recession is also the reason for the massive fall in oil prices going on right now. Speculation was not the problem.

[PhoneLobster]

Actually speculation was a problem, just not the only problem.

And fixing it sure as hell wasn't the solution.

Oil prices will rise again. A lot. And soon.

[cthulhu]

You will also know for instance the "independent" commission Howard put together on the issue was full of known pro nuclear hacks. And the moment the members were named the honesty of the outcome was discounted by everyone that knew a damn thing about it.

Okay, we are never going to agree, so I'm just going to look at one issue you raise.

I'm talking about the engineers reports about the suitability of the sites for nuclear waste dumps. They concluded the sites were safe.

Why is it okay for engineering and consulting firms to tell you that buildings, cars, planes, food, medical implants, chemicals, dams, power lines, and god knows what else are safe, but not anything involving nuclear waste?

You're welcome to decide its only nuclear waste management of course, but I'd love to hear why the water management plans are invalid for that and entirely valid for why much water the murray darling basin needs?

I know they get it wrong sometimes, but you rely on these guys ever day for pretty much every aspect of your life - but suddenly they get it wrong when it comes to nuclear waste, even when it impacts on their core competency?

No-one is doing any uranium exploration at all, so we have no idea how big global reserves are. Doubling of current reserves is an extremely conservative estimate

I read it. I said it is a huge underestimate, and then you said I hand;t read it which shows that you're not really paying any attention to me - but thats okay, we're just going to talk past each on this one.

For example, you can extra uranium from phosphate mines at less than the quoted 140 dollar price which would quintuple reserves, assuming you can flog the phosphate. Which you can. You could build breeder reactors. You could actually mount an exploration effort. The British geological survey cites 100 years based on current reserves and usage in 2003 and we've found more deposits since then.

Really its all over the place, but if the experience with minerals such as bauxite is replicated - and all evidence points to the fact it would be - once you seriously start looking, you'll start finding more.

But it really doesn't matter because the operating life of all these plants is less than 80 years, so the reality is you've going to have decommission them all before reserves run out anyway. If we run out of fuel after all the plants have retired its not really an issue. I'm not suggesting we need this forever, just until we come up with something better.

oil prices

Speculators don't need to be brought into line, speculation is a valid component of the free market.

But seriously, it was a commodity bubble. When prices suddenly drop 50+% we call it a bubble. We always have. That is what we called the housing 'bubble' and prices haven't even dropped that much.


So why are you saying 'huge rises soon' calling 'peak oil' and 'huge increases in china's production' and 'prices being driven by a global ression' when its not supportable by any evidence. Chinas demand did not increase that drastically in a year to result in the massive price spike. Chinas demand has not dropped significantly either (OMG 7% growth instead of 9.. and you think china is having a ression. Fuck off)

Traders just changed their pricing model, resulting in contango, then prices collapsed like every other pricing bubble in commodities ever when the market exhibts switches from contargo to backwardation. Prices soon collapse. This happens fairly regulately and pricing bubbles are a measurable psychological phemona.

Can we please move along and stop pretending that this particular episode is different when it isn't. My favourite quote on the topic

We probably shouldn't assume that the world has suddenly changed so dramatically that the demise of fossil fuels and the extinction of mankind as a species has to be priced in by Labor Day, and then continually revised so that prices form an ever steeper parabola.

[Crissa]

Lemme see... A limited resource, might run out in a hundred years, requires me to stick to the grid...

...vs an unlimited resource, might run out in a few billion years, doesn't care if I'm on Mars.

Also, A kills me now, and later, while B might kill me later, if I ate it, rather than sat next to it.

-Crissa

[PhoneLobster]

I am simply flabbergasted by your remarkable ignorance of reality and the fabricated reality you substitute in its place on several issues.

I find your faith in the neutrality and good will of paid consultants and the free market absolutely hilariously icing on top of the cake.

No a couple of borderline imaginary super cool engineering reports do not in any way invalidate or address a single damn thing me or Frank or anyone said. The scientific community REMAINS at a loss as to how to safely dispose of nuclear waste. As far as they are concerned NOWHERE on earth is geologically stable enough, far enough away from water tables or sufficiently secure from people, or sufficiently well engineered to withstand THE REST OF TIME.

You can point to any number of potential proposals but the fact is none of them have received anything like popular support from the scientific community, the policy making community or the general community. The ONLY community that supports them is the nuclear industry and its shills like Howard. And apparently you.

I said it is a huge underestimate

Under what the hell authority? What expertise? What knowledge? BOTH sides of the debate are using pretty damn similar estimates, you appear to be the only one NOT doing so.

But it really doesn't matter because the operating life of all these plants is less than 80 years, so the reality is you've going to have decommission them all before reserves run out anyway.

So you DON'T see that as a shockingly shortsighted stop gap measure?

We poison the planet for all god damn time and risk all sorts of nuclear disaster for... maybe 50 good years of power?

And then we don't even have any uranium left for the star trek fans space rockets just to add insult to the hideous cancerous mutation your kids have as they sit in the fucking dark because the power plants are all out of fuel?

As to peak oil. It isn't about prices. Prices are about Peak Oil.

Peak Oil is about PRODUCTION.

And it is very real, Peak Oil WILL happen, probably within 100 years, more like 50, and most models are increasingly placing it, well, basically around this decade.

But feel free to ignore every piece of information on that as well. Because contrary to the predictions of every expert in the field you may simply feel there is a whole lot of extra oil and oil production capacity that someone might suddenly find stuck down the back of the couch.

[cthulhu]

I am simply flabbergasted by your remarkable ignorance of reality and the fabricated reality you substitute in its place on several issues.

I find your faith in the neutrality and good will of paid consultants and the free market absolutely hilariously icing on top of the cake.

I'm notice you don't want to address my core point. If third party reports are satisfactory for, say, Boeing 747 engine lifespans, why not for nuclear waste? Lives depend on both of them.

I said it is a huge underestimate

Under what the hell authority? What expertise? What knowledge? BOTH sides of the debate are using pretty damn similar estimates, you appear to be the only one NOT doing so.

Well, I quoted two other sources, and you quoted 30-80, but then I quoted 100 from the british geological survey. I can find some more - the German ministry of economics cites at least 200 of commercially exploitable reserves. There is little consensus on the topic.

So you're quoting 30, I'm quoting 200, and you think they are similar? Sorry, that exceeds my tolerance for error.

So you DON'T see that as a shockingly shortsighted stop gap measure?

We poison the planet for all god damn time and risk all sorts of nuclear disaster for... maybe 50 good years of power?

Well, we're poisoning the planet right now with inaction see: Carbon emissions. We need to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, otherwise we are going to face a seriously bad global situation. We have to meet everyone elses growing energy consumption needs, because india and china are going to step up demand

What is the solution if not this? Magic faerie dust? We cannot stand around and pick our noses waiting for the clean coal crew to produce a working setup that doesn't just leak carbon back into the atmosphere, and I have no confidence that the renewable energy lobby can deliver sufficient power - mostly due to the lack of a battery technology. Hydrogen

We could create massive unemployment by scrapping a bunch of our energy and emissions intensive industries, but I figure in the current economic climate that is unpalatable, wereas a nuclear buildout would entail a massive infrastructure and educational buildout - nicely dovetailing into the larger governental agenda

Whats even better is as the labour costs are much higher than a coal plant (as a proportion of total spend due to the low fuel costs), we're creating skilled technical jobs, and a potential export industry.

It won't hurt the mining industry either because china is going to keep building coal fired powerplants.

We've got 100-200 years to invent a new technology after that. But coal is dead and we need something new now. We the west need to be fully tooled up so we can take solutions to emerging economies.

You're welcome to recommend waiting, we live in a democracy and I think you'll win, but I disagree very strongly with you. Newsradio this morning reported that labour has a movement in cabinet to unwind the cap and trade scheme while the economic troubles are still on.

As for your comments about peak oil, sure, we'll run out - but we've done many academic studies into the economics of exhaustible resources. Prices will gradually ramp up over time at the risk free intrest rate + a convince margin. Not +150% p.a, as happened over the last year.

There will be supply and demand shocks that cause short term price spikes, and speculative bubbles.

You're welcome to disagree with the numerous academic studies on this, and disagree with that the recent price spike in oil was exactly that, but that is okay, I'm not here to pursade you - instead we can invest our money in what we think will result in the best rate of return. I know I do.

Incidently, I invest in the hot rocks geothermal power scheme, and hope that comes through - a speculative bet