Antinuclear

At the same time, the nuclear priesthood, like some gifted but autistic child with specialist knowledge in just one area, seems to have little grasp of other issues concerning nuclear power — blinkered as they are in their apparent view that the technicalities are the whole story.  This is the case with their latest propaganda for the ‘Integral Fast Reactor’ or IFR.

For instance, they ignore the fact that IFRs needs plutonium or enriched uranium as fuel. So, to have fast reactors, Australia would need to import these, or set up nuclear reprocessing or uranium enrichment here. This would also involve issues such as cost, politics, public opinion, issues concerning our growing renewable energy systems, radioactive waste storage — just to mention some of the more obvious of the considerable obstacles to Australia ever getting fast reactors. Nuclear lobbyists seem naively oblivious to the importance of these factors in the minds of the general public.

In Australia, the high priest now is Barry Brook. He and his acolytes proselytise the case for Australia to get IFRs.  This latest enthusiasm seems to have been inspired by Britain’s present crisis of nuclear waste……..

there’s that final problem of the wastes. 

David Biello from the Scientific American comments:

‘Ultimately, however, the core problem may be that such new reactors don’t eliminate the nuclear waste that has piled up, so much as transmute it. Even with a fleet of such fast reactors, nations would nonetheless require an ultimate home for radioactive waste, one reason that a 2010 M.I.T. report on spent nuclear fuel dismissed such fast reactors.’…..

It will be great pity if Australians let themselves be mentally paralysed and muzzled by the nuclear technocrats into thinking they can’t understand nuclear issues. Frankly, events like Fukushima show ordinary people probably have a much better grasp of issues surrounding the environment, economics, safety, nuclear radiation, and weapons proliferation than the nuclear hierarchy does.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/in-dispraise-of-integral-fast-nuclear-reactors/