Solar v Nuclear

It is like the stuff of Science Fiction! Seville in Spain has opened a 4O storey solar tower, the first of a series...The Sanlucar la Mayor Solar Platform will eventually comprise nine towers by 2013, requiring a total investment of [euro]1.2bn. The towers will produce enough energy to power 180,000 homes, equivalent to the needs of the whole of Seville but without producing the 160 000 tonnes of greenhouse gas that is currently released in bringing power to the citizens of Seville.

To do the same for Australia's estimated 7.4 million households would require the country to build 370 of these towers at a total cost of 67 billion US dollars. A massive investment.

It has been proposed that Australia move down a nuclear path, instead. 25 nuclear power stations would be built across Australia to provide one third of the country's power needs.

25 power stations at 1.5 t0 2 billion US dollars each is between 37 and 50 billion US dollars.
The differences between the solar option and the nuclear options are:

• annual running costs for solar would be much less
• australia could start building the solar plants now..nuclear plants will take at least a decade to come on stream
• the amount of water required to run the nuclear plants would be much much less
• solar tower collectors would be less likely to be a terrorist target
  
• there would be no waste products from solar towers - compared to waste which would last thousands of years from nuclear
• if something went "wrong" with a solar plant, the damage is minimal - from nuclear the damage could be catastrophic ala 3 mile island

How about it Howard and Turnball??? Solar not nuclear.