Brin-l Digest, Vol 377, Issue 3

[Charlie Bell]

On 03/05/2008, at 11:24 AM, dsummersminet at comcast.net wrote:
>
>
> I realize that the newly discovered, offline, Australian reserve is  
> in a
> national park.


Yes, and in indigenous land. But it's not that that I mean. National  
Parks aren't inherently more sensitive, they're just areas reserved  
for non-development and wilderness.

What I'm talking about is the distances - the NT reserves are several  
hundred km from Darwin across some of the most unpleasant and  
difficult terrain. Jungle, biting insects, dry half the year and  
flooded the other half (there are rivers in the area that change depth  
by more than 30 metres through the year), and crocodiles. The ore  
either needs to be refined in situ, which leads to energy generation  
and chemical waste locally, or refined somewhere else which means  
trucking the ore out, which means a lot of diesel in trucks or diesel  
in locomotives if they put a railway in.

But I talk your point about other reserves being discovered or  
becoming viable as the price of U increases, or as the carbon taxes or  
carbon offsets or carbon licensing schemes increase the coal/oil  
burning costs closing the gap to nuclear.

I'm not against nuclear power in principle, ftr. Certainly Australia  
has enough U to be totally self-sufficient (instead, we're selling it  
to China - there are only a couple of very small scale research  
reactors in Oz for creating medical radioactives)

Charlie.