from the ABC

Gorbachev warns against new nuclear power plants
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose time in office included the world's worst nuclear accident, says countries building new nuclear power plants to tackle global warming should think again.

From Japan to the United States, governments seeking an alternative to burning fossil fuels for power are reviewing the de facto ban on building new nuclear plants that followed the explosion at Chernobyl nuclear station in Ukraine in April 1986.

"Think again, think seven times again before you leap and start construction of new nuclear power plants," Mr Gorbachev told a meeting of British lawmakers at London's Houses of Parliament, speaking through an interpreter.

"With my experience of Chernobyl I know what is involved. The explosion of one reactor required a superpower country to spend tens of billions of roubles.

"Still there was the longer pollution of the soil, the deaths of a number of people and consequences that will be far reaching."

Nuclear advocates, who argue that nuclear power emits little of the major greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, reject comparisons with Chernobyl.

They say the Chernobyl design was flawed and the plant badly run, and that the accident could not be repeated with new designs, fail-safe mechanisms and technology.

But Mr Gorbachev says climate change can only be stopped through a combination of developing new energy sources like solar and wind and increasing efficiency of energy usage.

New predictions being studied by UN scientists for a report next year point to average global temperatures rising by three degrees Celsius this century, melting ice caps and causing floods, storms and famines.

Environmentalists mostly agree with Mr Gorbachev that the answer lies in non-nuclear and non-carbon alternatives to traditional power sources like nuclear, coal, gas and oil.

I decided to post this comment here as well plus a bit more

One can see how the primal Munster operates with "his" enquiries about "Nuculular" energy as if he had an "open" mind about the issue... But he only has an open wallet to fertilise with public money what HE wants. Basically support a large secretive private enterprise which would not make any money without subsidies but would make profits with his little arrangements of bleeding public moneys... A scandal equivalent to bribery, corruption, two faced rhetoric, if HE does not give the same amount of dosh to SOLAR and WIND energy sources....

But our little man might get away with it because as a windmill spruiker he's good... as a statesman, he's the pits... even with his claim of whatever about the mid-term election in the US...

So then the temptation to do little nuclear bombs might and will be too strong for the Liberals, now well entrenched as dictator/Fascists. May not be Johnnee, but his successor, whomever he/she is, will go steady with porkies here and there towards the nuclear deterent-route and help Indonesia, a country riddled with earthquakes, go the same way... Hey, cream face! Beware because, Mr PM, once that country has acquired nuclear power for peaceful purposes, if it decides to shove it up yours by building peaceful purposes little bombs, we're history...

And one of the underlying reason why the primal Munster wants to sponsor and subsidise "Big" industries like coal and "nukculear" is because if you give "Little" industries like solar and wind the 'POWER" to supply energy, then who in hell is going to be able to "control" people? Control is power, isn't it? And having all the little people with their own little power supplies on the rooftops and sharing around, that would be a bit too bitty if too efficient, wouldn't it be? And then what to do with all this extra moneys that our prime Munster claims as "his" from our taxes that should have been spent on education?... "What I am going to do with my money is subsidise Nuclear Power"... Of course, following this route, due to the fact that every ounce of nuke-fuel has to be accounted and not transformed into little BIG bombs, means an increase spending in the security budgets, including armies and private consortium by a factor of 500 per cent... Then you can control people, can't you? With all this security around we would be able to sleep comfortably, wouldn't we? Except being waken up in the middle of the night by the sound of jackboots... Ah... I see... it's next door... I never liked them... really. Did I dob them in...?

And read the blog above...and the cartoon above

From our ABC

PM promises swift action on nuclear report

The Prime Minister has released the final report of the review into nuclear energy, uranium mining and processing.

John Howard says the chair of his nuclear task force, Dr Ziggy Switkowski, makes clear in his final report that nuclear power is part of the solution to Australia's future energy needs and the challenge of climate change.

Mr Howard says the Government will respond quickly to the report.

"The reality is we won't have nuclear power stations tomorrow, but over time if we are to have a sensible response we have to include nuclear power," he said.

"It is foolish and backward-looking and old fashioned of people to say 'well, we will always oppose the use of nuclear power'.

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Read all above blogs and others, including the cartoons as a lesson in shoving something forward faster than one can say booooo.... and appearing to be balanced while sweeping the problems under the carpet for future generations to clean up properly — if they can, once there is a monumentous pile of waste in their lounge-rooms. Unfortunately with our present leaders, Bush Howard and Blair, we live in the porkie-expediency era in which war, power and deciderisation are exercised without respect of their effects, flippantly for self aggrandisement of an ego-stoopid proportion, using phoney arguments to make us swallow the pill. Unfortunately this era is tempting for the average moron who thinks being in huge debt means being rich.

Nuclear power is the pits of hypocrisy, especially, as it leads countries like Australia towards nuclear bomb making even if in the first few years "it ain't so"...

Nuclear power leads to gigantic bills for clean up of waste, of transportation and of operations.