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It's a huge capital investment, huge on-going maintenance, outrageously huge decommissioning costs,

You've just described renewables perfectly, or do you think that they are exempt from maintenance and end of life costs? Considering that they use enormously more resources, and are spread over vast geographic areas, the eventual recycling and disposal efforts will be substantially more costly. They also don't last half as long as nuclear plants.

and the penalty for falling asleep at the wheel (i.e., hiring a few MBAs to improve 'efficiency') is catastrophe. It's also centralized and makes a nice juicy target for terrorism.

A reminder that the Fukushima meltdowns didn't kill anyone, nor did Three Mile Island, and only about 50 died from the Chernobyl accident. They were a financial disaster for Japan because of the extreme and irrational overreaction, including the subsequent replacement of all nuclear power by fossil fuel imports and new fossil plants.

As for terrorist targets, you underestimate the difficulty of attacking a renewable+gas grid. All of the gas plants are fed by pipelines, which present a large attack surface, and damage could easily knock most of the grid offline. The renewable super-grid, assuming it ever gets built, would also be vulnerable, because of the extremely high complexity and degree of interconnection over vast geographical areas.

Oh, and it costs more than solar or wind--once you fully account for all the actual costs. Westinghouse just went out of business (ask South Carolina).

Solar and wind generation don't ever account for their actual costs; that is left to the utilities that are forced to integrating their unreliable energy. The true system costs are captured by retail electricity prices, and renewables penetration is strongly correlated with much higher prices.

Westinghouse was a mess, to put it politely. However, the main driver of cost has been the extreme hostility toward nuclear power in the US. With sane regulations and factory production of modern rectors, nothing could hope to compete with nuclear on cost. It is a natural result of the tremendous energy density of nuclear, which also concentrates and minimizes environmental impact.

I'm guessing the future [for most of the US] looks like solar roofs with local battery storage, connected to a grid backed by natural gas peaking/backup plants and various other forms of utility power generation and storage.

This is the dream, and it is deceptively attractive without numbers. Industry, transportation, and heating alter the picture, and the task rapidly goes from daunting to utterly hopeless. See Actually getting rid of a USA worth of coal usage within a decade for a serious approach to decarbonization; one which also happens to be much cheaper.

This article puts resource use into perspective, and provides hard data. Your assertions about nuclear are very wrong. The only source that uses less material is gas turbines, and only if the fuel is ignored. Nuclear fuel is a million times more energy dense than fossil fuel, so the cost and mining impact are virtually nil, especially with thorium which is a byproduct of rare-earth mining.

A picture of a nuclear plant with its large containment structure and cooling towers may give the impression that it uses a lot of concrete, but the plants produce enormous amounts of energy 24/7. For the amount generated, the material used is much smaller than any of wind, solar, hydro, or geothermal.

Moreover, nuclear still has substantial room for improvement. The highly pressurized water coolant used in conventional reactors is largely responsible for their size and cost. The reactors must be made as heavy pressure vessels and the containment allow for roughly 1000x the volume in the event that pressure is lost and the water flashes to steam. Molten salt reactors have neither water or high pressure, allowing inexpensive components and tight-fitting containment. This will drastically reduce site work, easing construction costs and allowing factory manufacture.

Lol, Turnbull was the communications minister who said that data retention was pointless!

http://www.theguardian.com/aus...

https://newmatilda.com/2015/10...

https://newmatilda.com/2015/10...

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-...

But then again, he has done nothing to roll anything back now that he's in charge...

Lol, Turnbull was the communications minister who said that data retention was pointless!

http://www.theguardian.com/aus...

https://newmatilda.com/2015/10...

https://newmatilda.com/2015/10...

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-...

But then again, he has done nothing to roll anything back now that he's in charge...

Time for a reality check, dude.

Actually, OP is right and the onus for the reality check is on you.

The US has been exporting a particularly virulent form of institutionalised corruption for some time now, and it's damaging a large proportion of the world's population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
http://in.reuters.com/article/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
https://newmatilda.com/2005/03...
etc etc

Modded down? Seriously? OK let me rephrase that:

Nobody will give a shit unless they go on about stopping the boats.

No, genetic patents (that let a certain American company sue hospitals that offer screening of genes linked to breast cancer) is the most stupid idea you have ever heard.

...New Matilda, Conversation AU, & Independent Australia...

Thank you. I was not aware of any of these.

I found New Matilda and Independent Australia but would like to confirm I have the correct site for Conversation AU.

climategate, in australia we had Utegate, i mean how stupid can you be http://newmatilda.com/2009/07/21/real-utegate-scandal

The site may have some anti-Bush ads but the writer is from a lobbyist organization with Energy links.

http://www.highparkgroup.com/services.htm

Professor Bob Carter is a fairly prominent Australian Academic with quite a lot of anti-Greenhouse publications to his name (so much for not having a voice). Here's a really interesting article about him from Robyn Williams (he hosts "The Science Show", the Australian equivalent of Science Friday).

http://newmatilda.com/home/articledetailmagazine.a sp?ArticleID=1585&HomepageID=142

You'll see Carter's arguments neatly disassembled. The interesting thing is that reputable scientists are engaging in such quackery. It seems that it's the anti-Greenhouse crowd that's operating outside its area of expertise (or simply pandering to the wealthy Energy lobby).

Unfortunately, the federalists were wrong.

Here in Australia our constitution was based on the very principle you refer to and includes no individual rights other than freedom of religion and the right to a trial in relation to certain types of offence. To this day a bill of rights is opposed, mainly be conservative politicians, because "we couldn't list all of our freedoms" and "it would be unneccessary" and so on.

Sadly, we have recently seen wave after wave of terrible, terrible legislation encroaching on the lives and freedoms of ordinary, innocent people. Refugees are treated like criminals rather than people who are likely to be seeking shelter and are detained in appalling conditions in the desert or on remote islands, potentially indefinitely. The original inhabitants of this country are marginalised and ignored. More fundamentally, every Australian is now subject to arbitrary and relatively unchecked laws relating to 'terrorism' which allow for extended periods of detention without trial and without a warrant. These laws are enthusiastically promoted by the police and security agencies. Australia has one of the highest rates of phone-tapping in the world, and also retains ridiculous sedition laws essentially making it illegal to criticise the government too strongly.

We have it worse than the US - at least you have SOME protected rights. We have none, and in times like these that means we are gradually losing them all. A bill of rights is essential in protecting basic freedoms, which are not inherent characteristics but human constructions and therefore must be protected by humans.

If at least they had linked to a more informative article about this takeover...