Australia To Go Nuclear Too ?  

During earlier posts on the resurgance of nuclear energy I wasn't imagining that it was actually going to be raised as an option here - I was more thinking of energy deficient, densely populated northern hemisphere countries.

So I was more than a bit appalled to see the Financial Review raising the topic in a number of articles (which seems to be a theme they've been steadily developing since they first raised the peak oil topic earlier in the year). They also included a good survey of new activity in the sector - there are currently 439 nuclear plants in operation worldwide, with 25 under construction and another 74 being planned. Uranium prices have doubled since 2003 and look to double again in the next 5 years.

Henry Thornton comments, quoting a ex Rio Tinto chief executive (note that Rio Tinto is one of our biggest uranium miners) :

The AFR article begins by quoting former RIO CEO, Leon Davis, who calls for a national debate on the subject. Nuclear energy, Davis says, "is the elephant in the room in the whole greenhouse debate." Later in the article [a Greenpeace spokesman] comments "Nukes are a dinosaur technology. It has an intractable waste problem,... It creates a kind of pollution which is more odious than greenhouse pollution."