http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/8/7/195721/3132
I draw heavily from the above website as this is where I obtained the heading for this new topic that I present to you.
The title presents it better than I could ever put into words for an energy source that has been around since June 27, 1954, when in the USSR an approx. 5MW electric power plant became the world's first nuclear unit to supply electric power to the grid.
I personally would embrace Generation 3 nuclear power plants here in Australia as this latest level of technology is so far removed from the world's worst disaster - Chernobyl, it is not worth even comparing the level of safety that comes with a gen3 to what existed in a plant that was built in 1970.
The author in this presentation is the same author at the website mentioned within http://www.nuclearinfo.net namely Assoc. Professor Martin Sevior. I presented Assoc. Professor Martin Sevior to another fora that I am a member of where he enunciated his views and in general replied to questions that was fielded to him from those that participated.
I have been following nuclear here in Aust. for some 13/15 years and I believe that Australia needs to seriously look at this energy source where we here have the raw resources right at our doorstep and refuse to see what we have right in from of us. We sit third in the world insofar as production of uranium, yet we ourselves do not have a fully operational nuclear industry and are prepared to sell our resource to the rest of the nuclear power generation world. This is sheer lunacy as I see it!!!
We have the personnel here in Australia to assist us and I am confident that their collective knowledge will see a world class nuclear industry that draws from 56 years of use that the rest of the nuclear world has to date.
LATEST NEWS RELATED TO PRIS AND THE STATUS OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
Current status of the nuclear industry:
438 nuclear power reactors in operation with a total net installed capacity of 372.006 GW(e)
5 nuclear power reactors in long term shutdown
58 nuclear power reactors under construction
http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Occurrence ........ "The concentration of uranium in soil ranges from 0.7 to 11 parts per million (up to 15 parts per million in farmland soil due to use of phosphate fertilizers), and its concentration in sea water is 3 parts per billion." This snip has been added to give an idea re: the quantities that currently exist in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Australia
I welcome your thoughts or views on this most important subject - Nuclear Power for Australia.
Cheers,
IAEA