He did make the point that oil reserves kept going up until the went inexorably down..

What is described follows the general principle of over-optimism followed by over-pessimism, if I may put it like that. For ex. I have money in the bank to refurbish a house, I over estimate my resources, don’t husband them properly, or plan well; when things start going west I suddenly say, no we can’t afford this, or that, or the other, we are broke, etc. Result: the house is not properly done.

Social psychology has shown, if one extrapolates from all kinds of studies on germane or tangential topics, that group-think, or group-processes (as contrasted with my illustrative individual example) can both amplify and mute such phenomena. In some cases, the group exagerates or polarises the individual opinions or planned actions (eg. risk taking: groups like it, individuals are more wary, which is quite comprehensible; or crowd behavior, everyone becomes infected with nutty zeal...) and in others it smoothes out the extremes to settle on a mean which is often very sensible and accurate (eg. bets; judicial decisions, etc. - the ‘hive’ mind.)

It is all a mystery.

Energy ‘reserves’ or energy future 'projections' are definetly subject to these processes. That is hardly STOP PRESS material I know..

Nice. The "position of the nuclear industry" here also happens to be the "position of reality." Should we dig up a quack to claim up is down just to make sure that this "up is up" stuff doesn't go unchallenged? You've watched too much nightly news, not every issue has two equal sides that can be faced off in the sound-bite-athon.

Martin Sevoir's speciality is particle physics, not nuclear. He, together with scientists from various specialities, conducted an impartial investigation into the issues surrounding nuclear power under peer-review.

They did indeed use data from the nuclear industry as this tends to be high quality, being independently audited or peer-reviewed. They also consider data from nuclear detractors (Storm/Smith), geologists (Ken Deffeyes) and the companies that actually mine the uranium (Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton).

The fact that a study with no hidden agenda weighed the evidence and concluded that the anti-nuclear arguments were lacking and that the nuclear industry's have substance is noteworthy and I'm glad you acknowledge it, Miquel.

Interesting, so global warming isn't happening then, right? After all, only those pesky climate scientists say it is, and of course their research funding under the extremely liberal Bush administration is linked to them finding critical environmental problems that will cripple the fossil fuel industry, right?

How about peak oil, clearly that isn't happening either, as only the geologists and scientists say it is. For every scientists who believes this, Exxon can show you 50 hairdressers who do not.

Science isn't a popularity contest. 99.99% of the people who know anything about the field concluded that the Reimann hypothesis was true about 100 years ago, and yet a mere vote isn't enough, they still are trying to show it.

Here's my idea. If some tenured professor who answers to nobody (even his students perhaps), and spent his life studying a field you haven't the foggiest clue about says a thing is true, and the rest of these scientists agree with him, and they put their research out there where you could review it if you had the skills and inclination, perhaps it is more prudent to believe that it is probably true than to believe that it must therefore be false.

The greens and the right wing could really learn from each other, well, already have I guess. The greens complain about the wingnuts dismissing every shred of scientific evidence with respec to global warming, while simultaniously doing exactly the same thing with respect to nuclear power. Funny how life works.

I commented on this below, but the pro-nuclear posters are (mostly) neither polite nor very constructive.

When one is refuting the same obvious half truths, statistical misrepresentations and outright lies over and over, polite manners are often in short supply.

But 100:1 doesn't look right. Such a dream EROI would have made Nuclear really cheap no matter the technology costs and all the world would be building nuclear plants. I guess we'll know for sure only when the good ores are depleted. In a free energy market it has not proved that it is as cheap as they say.

Are we talking about energy payback of fuel? If we are, then solar and wind has an unmeasurably high energy return. Or are we changing the subject again?

Again, energy return of 10 on the fuel is absolutely ridiculous, because today most of the energy cost is enrichment via centrifuge, where we got ore from similar grades fifty years ago with gasseous diffusion, 50 times more energy intensive.

The notion that energy return on fuel or systems is directly tied with the price has been bandied about forever, but it just aint so. Its a bastardized simplification of economics.