Guest review Something strange happened last year. The debate over nuclear power, which many thought was buried with a stake through its heart, rose and walked again. In Australia it was raised by John Howard, who suggested the issue should be revisited: nuclear power might be able to replace coal and gas-fired electricity generation, and save us from global warming. An inquiry headed by Ziggy Switkowski produced the required result. Its report claimed that this was indeed an option to be taken seriously, and that some 25 reactors could help solve Australia’s greenhouse emissions problems. Labor - wedged - dispensed with its opposition to open-slather uranium mining. So, now we are on the road to sending ever more yellow cake overseas, including - it seems - to India, which has not even signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. But how realistic an option is nuclear power? Professor Ian Lowe neatly punctures proponents’ claims for this zombie technology. In Quarterly Essay 27: Reaction Time, he shows that long promised technological improvements - new reactor designs, and fusion power - remain chimera. Meanwhile, the old versions remain too expensive. Th e timelines for building additional reactors remain too long. Longstanding environmental concerns - about the quarter of a billion tonnes of radioactive waste still awaiting permanent and safe disposal, about the consequences of catastrophic reactor failure, and about nuclear proliferation - are now overlaid by new anxieties about nuclear terrorism. As far as countering the urgent threat of global warming goes, this technology remains too slow, too costly, and too unsafe - and a dangerous distraction from the renewable power alternatives already at hand. *Peter Christoff is Vice President of the Australian Conservation Foundation.*