Australia has quite a few salt pans. I'm sure we could spare one of the smaller ones. There is no law of physics that says nuclear reactors must be physically capable of melting down. Even if there was, it doesn't have to be put in a city or town. Believe it or not, the Japanese way in the 1960s is not the only way.

In any case, if you really believe nuclear energy is more expensive than alternatives then you have nothing to worry about.

Australia has quite a few salt pans. I'm sure we could spare one of the smaller ones. There is no law of physics that says nuclear reactors must be physically capable of melting down. Even if there was, they don't have to be put in a city or town. Believe it or not, the Japanese way in the 1960s is not the only way.

In any case, if you really believe nuclear energy is more expensive than alternatives then you have nothing to worry about.

In 2009 25GW capacity wind power produced 25000 GWh of electricity.
In 2011 they had 62GW capacity (extrapolate to 62000 GWh of electricity)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China

In 2011 11GW of nuclear capacity produced 54800 GWh of electricity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China

You don't just get to say the word "waste" and act like that's an argument. That's not an argument, that's just one word. You don't just get to say the word "waste" and expect to get some sort of Pavlovian conditioned response of fear , uncertainty and doubt.

What is this "waste" you speak of? Tell me something about it, scientifically. Try and elucidate an actual argument.

"What about the waste? Where do you store it? Guarantees about meltdowns, leaks, contamination etc.... Not so straight forward as saying we must have fission i'm afraid."

Regarding used reactor fuel from conventional LWRs, you just store it on site, the same place we always store it, until you recycle it as fuel in IFRs.

Guarantees about meltdowns? Sure. Fuel damage or "meltdown" is physically guaranteed to be impossible in an IFR or PBMR by the intrinsic physics of the system, i.e. Doppler broadening of the fission resonance cross-sections and other effects which determine the overall temperature coefficient of reactivity.

In a liquid-fueled reactor such as an LFTR fuel damage or "meltdown" is physically guaranteed to be impossible because, well, the fuel (which is also the moderator and coolant) is already a liquid under normal operational conditions. In fact, if you shut down the reactor and dump the fuel salt into its storage tank and wait a little while to allow radiological heating to decay away a bit, you might be looking at the horrible, dreaded worst-case failure scenario for an LFTR - the "freezedown" of the fuel, where the liquid salt freezes solid.

It doesn't quite have that same ring to it, does it?

Even if you have a core damage accident, i.e. a "meltdown", in a conventional, existing, LWR, like Three Mile Island or Fukushima, this worst case scenario of damage to the reactor core for a conventional LWR has never hurt anybody - either at TMI or Fukushima.

Of course, I have to point out that in many cases - not all cases - that when you talk about "guarantees" you're asking for perfect certainty, a probability of 1 in every single case, for ever - and except for a few cases where the laws of physics do provide for that (like I mentioned above, like core damage in an IFR, PBMR or LFTR) you're asking for something unscientific - something which exists outside the realm of real-world science and engineering and exists only in pure mathematics or philosophy.

"Leaks"? "Contamination"?

Why don't you elucidate, in your own words, with as much technical substance as practical, what you mean exactly by these words. What exactly are you arguing?

Where have these phenomena occurred previously in the history of modern nuclear energy? Have they ever hurt or killed anybody? Are there any concerns here which are actually frequent enough so as to have any statistical significance?

Do any of these concerns involve any realistic scenario by which any member of the public could receive any ionising radiation dose statistically distinguishable from background? How would such ionising radiation doses compare to the doses people receive living in high-background-radiation areas of the world such as Ramsar or Kerala? How would such doses compare to the occupational radiation doses received by, say, airline crews and pilots, who have the highest occupational ionising radiation dose of any workers in any industry?

Mark, you wrote "And that's in 2009. Remember that nuclear technology isn't in stasis either, it too will have improved well before 2050. Such as Generation IV reactors, which extract 100 times the energy per unit fuel of currently operating designs, and consume what is presently considered nuclear 'waste'."

Maybe, but what we have going now is the older type of reactors. China needs a lot of energy, as fast and cheap as possible so they will try for nuclear, as simple and safe as they can find. But :) The waste seems to be there even so.

As for the ones we have going.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/07/japan-fukushima-nuclear-power-earthquakes

China will become the new testing environment for those molten salt reactors. And, with time, we will learn if they work out as promised. And what waste they will leave. Give it a decade or two.

Although geothermal and wave technologies are still in need of further research and development, wind and solar are already technically proven. The question is whether Government funded research is capable of substantially reducing the cost of renewable technologies so that they are economically feasible without subsidy. Substantial increases in the scale of production and competition between manufacturers are far more likely to drive down costs than Government investment in research. That is where the RET comes in - it creates a large market for renewable energy, which can provide long term certainty needed to encourage private sector investment in new production methods needed to reduce cost. That is why the Grattan Report is fundamentally mistaken in questioning the value of maintaining the RET. Policy uncertainty will destroy any appetite for private investment. As an example, in the early 2000's BP established a significant solar PV production facility in Sydney, which was ultimately closed as there was insufficient commitment on the part of Government to a domestic market for solar energy, and BP could more readily meet its needs by importing PV panels from larger production plants overseas.