The key issue is maintaining the geometry of the fuel rods and keeping them cool stops a partial or full meltdown, however it is essential that the geometry is maintained to avoid any criticality and injection of absorber material is essential to protect against loss of Geometry. A solution maybe to use Boron Dust or Small Boron glass beads which are the ultimate protection for Gas Reactors.

It may be necessary for the US to seize the site and take over control. The IAEA has never had any teeth really. The learning curve may be too steep for the Japanese to be able to react in time.

The American Nuclear Society, whose stated vision is to “be the recognized credible advocate for advancing and promoting nuclear science and technology”, NOTE on their website the following:

“A very small amount of radiation was released from the plant. The releases were not serious and were not health hazards.”

http://www.ans.org/pi/resources/sptopics/tmi/whathappened.html

By the time Australia builds its first reactor, costs of Gen III+ (and, I’d hope, the first fleet of Gen IVs — and indeed the costs of large-scale deployment of wind and solar thermal) will be well-established (assuming a 10 to 15 year time frame for Oz for nuclear, which seems on the cards).

So…we are trying figure out…where the rest of the 4 to 9 billion goes to? Fun, huh?

Also, in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning Annabel Crabb has a piece defending Peter Garrett, which turns into a strong statement urging a rational national debate on nuclear power. Its quite good.

I just thought I’d mention some thoughts on the other half of the Counterpoint team, Michael Duffy, by Clive Hamilton, author of “Scorcher – The dirty politics of climate change” and currently Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. Please see page 8 of his September ’07 presentation to the Brisbane Writers Festival at the following web address:

http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/media/documents/articles/The_Scary_Politics_of_Climate_Change.pdf

Neil left out what the Chinese price is for new nuclear: $1400/kW…I think it’s “kW” not “kWh” as prices as given in over night costs not per per watt per hour.

Unfortunately while the Chinese do have fast reactors on their mind, only French, to my knowledge, are actually putting *money* into a uranium driven MSR.

David

I’ve taken to calling these horrors coal reactors. Thats what they are. If people don’t like reactors let them think about that. Same applies to natural gas reactors. Or even the small diesel reactors used for remote power applications.

The case for providing Olympic Dam with 690 MWe and 120 ML/day desal via nuclear seems overwhelming to me. As one of the world’s wealthiest corporations BHP Billiton should pay for much of it.

AK: In 2006 and 07 you conducted an enquiry into uranium mining and processing and nuclear energy, but nothing happened and in fact I can’t even find your report on any government website. It seems to have disappeared. So, how do you reflect on that work you did and the consequences of it?

ZS: I have a much more positive commentary than that. Firstly, the report is now on a government website where such reports are archived, so you can find it if you want to. The purpose of the study at the time was to recognise that for probably 20 years the country hadn’t had a national debate about the validity of nuclear power and that any debate would have to be based upon current information and awareness of what was happening around the world and so the study was intended to update the Australian community’s understanding of what was happening with nuclear energy around the world and provide the facts.

So, I think the report succeeded in doing that and I know prior to 2006 you couldn’t get an intelligent discussion of nuclear power in the community because the topic had been demonised and people were poorly informed and surveys suggested that the overwhelming majority of Australians at the time did not support nuclear power. Today those surveys suggest that a majority of Australians support nuclear power and wherever I go people are now talking about the subject and are talking with much more relevant and accurate facts than was possible a couple of years ago, so I think we’ve made progress.

AK: Do you think it’s on the national agenda? It doesn’t seem to be a part of the climate change discussions?

ZS: No, because the government is clearly not supporting nuclear power having the condition of Australia has many other more attractive options, nuclear power is not part of the national agenda and probably won’t be for some time to come. However, whenever any of us or any of our political leaders travel, they usually land in a country that uses nuclear power and increasingly they’re in environments – given that two-thirds of the world’s population gets some form of their electricity from nuclear reactors – we are seeing around the world the deployment of more and more nuclear energy. So, I think it’s inevitable that nuclear power will be part of the national energy and climate change debate, but the present government doesn’t see it as being part of their approach and so we don’t have a national debate.

SB: When you released that report you’ve said that there’d be at least 15 years before we saw a plant in Australia. Is it now 13 years or is it still at least 15 years?

ZS: Oh look, it’s got to be 15 years from the point at which you get a national policy supporting the nuclear energy and we’re not there yet. This is an industry where you cannot take shortcuts and so once we get agreement that we’ll go nuclear and that agreement has to be a bipartisan agreement, because you’re making a commitment that’ll extend over decades. Once we get that in place then you’ve got to add another 15 years, but in the larger climate change challenge I think the decisions the country has to take are decisions that will make a difference over decades, that are well thought through and relevant. I don’t think making decisions in order to meet election timetables are relevant to the larger climate change challenge.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/15/nuclear-power-plant-cost-bombshell-ontario/#more-9129

These costs(>$8,000/kWh) are higher than the EIA article you posted on BNC a few weeks ago, and much higher than Chinese estimates. I would note that China seems to have very low estimates for wind(<$1000/kWh) and for solar.
Perhaps it would be better to go for a smaller(100-200MW) molten salt/thorium reactor even if the costs per kWh are high the overall headline cost would be much smaller. If we have a 5 Billion cost over-run of the first reactor(1000MW) it may be the last.