http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/power-plants-leave-me-nukewarm/story-e6freai3-1225808184320

I would point to pretty much all of the citations you have provided in your ramblings upthread, and your interpretations thereof.

Helen, if you are laboring under the impression that any web-based poll on a contentious subject isn’t gamed by bots, you are far more out of touch with reality than I originally thought.

As for your demagoguery about, “…crusty and cowardly old men who convert the nuclear scourge into war machines to intimidate their enemies and kill children,” it stands an an open insult to the intelligence of all those that participate here, and demonstrates only that you hold us in contempt.

David

“I’m utterly disgusted by the tactics anti-nuclear protesters will stoop to. They are every bit as bad as climate change deniers. Pathetic” proclaims Barry Brook.

“Here here!” indicates John D Morgan who reckons environmentalists have resorted to the tactics of “climate change denialists- tobacco scientists and creationists.”

Can Brooks and Morgan enlighten the reader? To whom do they refer and what tactics have these alleged environmentalists “stooped” to? Failure to substantiate these allegations will influence the public into believing that Brooks and Morgan are engaging in a disingenuous form of discourse

This example appears to be a prime illustration of mud-slinging which is effective in diverting attention away from the matter in question and onto the individual or opposing group rather than addressing the issue.

This thread demonstrates the subterfuge and denial which must be practised by an atomic industry which is committing intergenerational tyranny.

This type of diversion has been used for decades by crusty and cowardly old men who convert the nuclear scourge into war machines to intimidate their enemies and kill children.

Dr Adi Paterson, Chief Executive Officer of ANSTO has “unreservedly” apologised to the public on behalf of his employee who fraudulently manipulated poll results to favour nuclear energy. In no part of Dr Paterson’s written apology did he refer to a “poll bot.”

Who then, may I ask, speaks with forked tongue?

- climate change denialists
- tobacco scientists
- creationists

and any number of fringe conspiracy movements or commercial lobbyists that start with their conclusion and cherry pick their way back into the research. They are cut from the same cloth.

http://www.ansto.gov.au/home/left_column/latest_news_item/news_items/poll_apology

ANSTO is interested in stimulating public debate and discussion about nuclear science and technology. In so doing, it recently began a web poll on whether nuclear power should be part of Australia's future energy mix.

As a result of a dramatic change in poll voting patterns over the weekend, a staff member, without authority, modified the poll by changing the "I am against it" answer to "It is one of the options" at around 7.30am today. This was an unauthorised change. ANSTO acknowledges that both making a change and changing the answer "I am against it" to "It is one of the options" was a serious error of judgement by the staff member. This gave misleading and incorrect results to web visitors and poll participants.

Following an approach by an online news service, the staff member then changed the answer to "No" in a bid to correct the situation.

When ANSTO management became aware of the situation, it took action to restore the poll to the original answer and also included "No" to ensure all voters in the intervening period would be included in the statistics.

As the CEO of ANSTO, I wish to apologise unreservedly to stakeholders and participants for this unauthorised intervention in the poll results. The poll is on the front page of the ANSTO website at http://www.ansto.gov.au.

I’m utterly disgusted by the tactics anti-nuclear protesters will stoop to. They are every bit as bad as climate change deniers. Pathetic.

cursory examination of on-site NPP accidents causing NPPS to go offline, and including deaths due to cost-cutting on materials or intra-NPP assembly faults or inadequate NPP operator training, are quite numerous in the history of NPPs. As France is the poster child of this blog (“cheapest and cleanest power in the EU,” etc.), one can look at its NPP history, which is marked by state centralisation, if one takes the history of Areva :

In 2000, the French govt. supervisory body admitted that the 2 x 880MW PWRs at the 30-year old NPP at eathquake-prone Fessenheim a few km from the 200,000-strong city of Freiburg in Germany on prevailing south-westerly winds, were not secure in respect of cooling in case of an earthquake. Nearby Basel was eradicated by an earthquake in the Middle Ages.

It has transpired that the Fessenheim operator suppressed various safety documents over the years.

Refer also to Tom Blees’ opinion in his book of the dangerous collusion between private sector NPPs and their so-called supervisory body in the USA.

Summarising, the record inspires no confidence whatever in any mode of managing NPPs, private or public sector. Reasons include the profit motive (bad operator training, as in the case of the 2 operator deaths in Japan; low-quality parts); bad luck/Murphy’s Law (faulty assembly); bureaucratic careerism and turf-fighting.

Would a BBC commissioner care to outline how Aust. or SA NPPs would be administered to avoid the above? And is that commissioner looking forward to the police state, as predicted long ago by Robert Jungk, necessary to beat down and, as required, execute opposition to NPPs?

You see, all I have read so far is lame reference in this blog to “educating the public”: with Tasers or tonfa night sticks or something more futuristic such as a heat weapon or high-pitched acoustic device , provided the BBC commissioner in question has equity in it in the All Ords?

Or does the BBC believe that Gen III NPPs, which are what BB wants for SA, will as by magic avoid all of the above?

Given that the BBC seem on balance to have no insight into or interest in power structures in SA or anywhere else and smear opposition to them as “hairshirt greenie”, may I assume that the BBC will volunteer as auxiliary policemen?

dv82xl, they’re facing the death of the renewable dream, and going through the five stages of grief:

Denial No nukes! We’ll do it all with renewables
Anger (we’ve seen plenty of that here)
Bargaining If I use less power, have a distributed grid, and a mix of renewables, and smart appliances, then renewables will be enough
Depression ….
Acceptance Well, ok. But we won’t officially endorse it

Have fun identifying which stage your favourite commenters here are at.

Going nuke will rock their worldview, and thats going to take a while to work through their psyche. I just hope they get through it quickly.

That position, observers say, marks a significant departure. “Because of global warming, most of the big groups have become less active on their nuclear campaign, and almost all of us are taking another look at our internal policies,” said Mike Childs, head of climate change issues for Friends of the Earth in Britain. “We’ve decided not to officially endorse it, in part because we feel the nuclear lobby is already strong enough. But we are also no longer focusing our energies on opposing it.”

It’s a shame FOE in Australia, led by Dr Jim Green, are not more pragmatic like this.

many of the articles on the website are open access, including this one

Sigh – it was open access when I posted that, but Crikey have now restricted it (i.e. you need a paid account or free trial to see the article).

For those unfamiliar with it, Crikey is a medium-sized, but remarkably influential, news/comment service in the form of a daily email and a website. The email service is paid, but many of the articles on the website are open access, including this one.

The first piece today by Bernard Keane (Crikey’s main political writer in Canberra) basically contends that nuclear is too slow:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/11/19/the-nuclear-option-part-1-too-slow-too-costly/

Tomorrow’s piece will apparently contend that nuclear is too costly.