“Oh, yes. All this hand wringing in the US/developed world is moot if China and India can’t be persuaded to curb their coal emissions.”

The fact is that in Asia they want to stop, and will as soon as they can. In the West we are still left with forces that want to keep using carbon based fuels.

As to fusion? I like the Polywell Fusion Reactor work being done by the US Navy.

And then there is the coming ice age. Very hard to grow crops under ice. Talk about glacier melt – Chicago about 18,000 years ago was under a mile of ice.

Here is a pdf file explaining much more about the sun than you seem to know
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123222295/PDFSTART

The sun’s determinative effect on climate points towards not only the end of the “modern maximum” that warmed us during the latter part of the 20th century but now we can expect significant global cooling over the next several decades. This event will be associated with a sharp decline in agricultural output, just as occurred during the Maunder and Dalton solar minimums, when many died of starvation.

Just in time humanity’s activities may be increasing the level of atmospheric CO2, which will raise crop yields to offset partially the agricultural output decline due to a cooler earth. Furthermore, the idea that CO2 increases will cause harmful warming is being unmasked as intellectual garbage. Developing countries such as China and India will block it. Nothing now stands in the way of continuous and sharp increases in CO2 levels. Brook is dead wrong in presuming society cannot act in its own interests.

(Moderator: This post corrects a slight error I made in my previous post. Thank you).

Grimes says the actual cost of solar thermal today is around $200 per MWh and, in the US, Google-backed developers are quoting $US120-180 per MWh ($A133). ”We’re forecasting a cost reduction of at least 50 per cent over the period, which would put it in parity with non-renewable energy by 2030, if not below,” he said.

… and that’s a statement from an optimist of the technology. EPRI estimated much higher costs.

On another but related matter – perhaps the breakthrough claimed by Google on the construction of mirrors will have the desired effect of reducing the cost of solar thermal power generation below that of coal fired power generation without the necessity of carbon pricing that the nuclear path seems to rely on. They appear to be claiming it will.

I notice with some interest that one of the regulars here — Fran Barlow — is offering Barry’s position energetic support. I wonder if those who thought she was trolling here and prompted her to leave still think so?

I thought she offered no solutions only throwing up endless political meandering observations.
DV8 seems to think politics is the main problem to overcome, so perhaps she was on the right track after all. I wish she could have condensed her stuff down though. I’m still suspicious the intent was to use up time and space and cloud the issue – we need to find a way to convey the message “Nuclear is good and necessary” in a short and convincing fashion.

How’s about we don’t call it a “Nuclear Waste Dump.” How is it waste if it can be re-used in a fast breeder reactor?

The radioactive waste we’re dealing with in Australia is different from power reactor fuels.

It’s largely low-level waste from hospitals, universities and scientific institutions and radioisotope production at ANSTO.
So it’s not really material that can be constructively used.

The very idea of a nuclear fuel repository gives credence to the term nuclear waste. Once the actinoids are buried and gone …

That’s incorrect because “repository” is a long word for “cache”. It is is a place where the stuff reposes, which is to say, is buried but not gone; retrievably buried.

(Boron: A Better Energy Carrier than Hydrogen?)

Hell, I’ll pay you $12 million to take it off your hands, so long as I get title to the material. I’ll turn a profit on the technetium alone before I sell the rest on to India to start up their fast reactors.