Following my recent post, a number of commenters suggested that I ought to respond more directly to the arguments of James Hansen and others for a CO2 target of 350 parts per million, as opposed to the 450 ppm that forms the basis of much current policy discussion. I’m using this paper as a basis, and take the following two points as its central claims
* To avoid unacceptable risk of passing a point of no return beyond which explosive feedbacks (icecaps melting etc) are inevitable, we should aim to reduce CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm by 2100. This is below current levels and won’t be achieved simply by ending net emissions
* We can achieve part of this (maybe a reduction of 60 ppm) through reforestation, biochar and similar measures
* Further reductions will require expensive technological solutions, estimated cost $200/tonne or $20 trillion to remove 50 ppm. Given a maximum point around 450 ppm and 50 ppm from reforestation, that’s about the amount required.
What then should we do? In particular, how much should we be willing to pay now, to avoid high costs in the second half of this century?
It’s important to note a big shift in focus here. Most of the discussion so far has been along the lines “What do we need to do by 2050 to avoid unacceptable damage to the climate later this century”. Looking ahead for a century is challenging, to put it mildly. But the questions raised by Hansen shift the time-scale for action out another 50 years, and the consequences are centuries into the future. That means there are huge uncertainties that are difficult to reason about. As a starting point, I’m going to follow Hansen and co-authors in treating the problem as if it were deterministic, with a known target of 350 ppm and costs as stated.
With these drastic simplifications, the problem is not all that hard, and can be made a bit simpler with the right choice of parameters. The question is, how much would we pay (in $/tonne) today (I’ll say 2010) and around 2050 (I’ll say 2045) to avoid a cost of $200/tonne in 2080 (all in constant value dollars). With a 2 per cent discount rate (I’ve argued at length that this is a good choice), the answer is given by the rule of 70: values double every 35 years. So, we ought to be willing to pay $50/tonne now and around $100/tonne in 2045.
I’ll come back to this a bit later and discuss less simplified estimates. The main point that would suggest a higher current price is a lower trajectory with the same endpoint implies less residence time for CO2 in the atmosphere and therefore less risk.
John Quiggin 
Struth John, did you know that a former nuclear power plant engineer, Andrew Siemaszko, was sentenced to three years probation and fined $4,500 for misleading regulators in 2001 so as to delay a safety inspection at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant and cover up the worst corrosion ever found at a U.S. reactor. Inspectors later found an acid leak that nearly ate through the reactor’s 6-inch-thick steel cap. That was a close call.
@jquiggin
There are a couple of problems with this claim John. Firstly, all alternative sources of energy supply to coal and oil need a high carbon price, principally because those that produce energy by burning carbon get the benefit of a massive externality — the right to dump their effluent into the biosphere for free. All of the costs to the commons — the measurable harm and the unliquidated but very real prospective harm is paid for by the commons at large. Not only the actual and prospective costs of climate change, but the health costs to coalminers and their families, to people along the routes where coal is trasnported, and of course those within the footprint of coal-fired power stations who suffer from injuries associated with elevated levels of radioactivity, mercury, SO2 etc are paid for every day by somebody else. Every person who sufferes from the breakdown products emitted froim car exhausts too, and all those lost working days and all of the consequences of configuring cities based on cheap petrol, the costs of maintaining armed forces in the middle east — all of that is paid for other than by the suppliwers of these energy sources. If they had to put this cost into their energy supply, all non-fossil sources of energy would look cheap by comparison. Not the least of the costs borne by operators of nuclear power plants is the cost of sequestering the hazardous materials their production produces. And yet by volume and by area of dispersion, it is a tiny fraction of the size of the effluent from fossil fuel combustion.
I might also add that much of the cost of nuclear power lies in the relatively high installed cost of the plants, but this largely reflects the costs of single project design. To use an analogy, if everyone whoi wanted a car had to go to an engineering firm and have them custom design one, not only would there be far fewer cars on the road, but they’d be orders of magnitude more expensive. Buying replacement components would be hideously expensive, and you’d probably have to keep masses of redundant parts in your garage so that the handful of people qualified to replace those that broke could keep demurrage to a minimum. If you had to pay up front then debt service costs would be very large, and if the government insisted on safety certifying every component before the final build was approved as you built it onsite, and you had to pay for that, then it would be more expensive still.
That, in a sense, is what happens with nuclear plants. Mass manufacturing of components and modular design would radically lower build costs, probably boost reliability, shrink build times and lower debt service. Ye even as things stand, it’s still cheaper per unit of delivered power to build standard LWRs than wind farms. Nuclear can be built for around $US2500-3000 per Kw which, at 85% CF works out at about $3500per Kw. Wind, assuming a fairly high CF of 35% and an installed cost of about $US1600per Kw works out at about $4500 per Kw. Wind of course has to be placed where wind actually is fairly constant, so one has to include the costs of transmission to a grid unless the system is purely stand alone. Nuclear can be sited to take advantage of proximity to the grid.
Hi Fran,
In your unpacking there were a few zips left unopened. Whilst Iran could have tried a 1950’s ploy it would not have left too many doubts as to the real intention. A power plant leaves a little more room to manoeuvre.
It is touching to see your faith in the security system for power plants. I am a little more cautious now I know that there are significant risks as a result of “risk assessments” and privatisation of security of many previously secure facilities. An attack on a sporting event would be a terrible thing but it wouldn’t leave the whole economy in tatters plus the long term doubt in people’s minds about how their health in the future would be impacted.
What I didn’t mention was the embedded energy in construction, the costs of decommissioning and the long term storage costs of nuclear energy and the fact that we have no way of being able to ensure these things into the future as no society has ever had the kind of stability required.
I didn’t examine those things you mention because whilst no country can stop another acquiring nuclear weapons it is not a sound proposition that the more that have weapons the less likely they are to be used. Examining this argument in the context of the number of guns owned in the USA shows it is flawed thinking. The more there are, the more likely they are to be used as there is a greater chance of a nutcase being in charge of one.
It does make a difference as to whether control is at the local or overseas level as at the local level there are local controls. Multinational corporations will not operate for the benefit of people in a region but for the corporation with little regard for affordability, sustainability or suitability. The error you make is to assume that profit will be at the same level whether it is local or multinational. Monopolies however are far more likely to have large profits than small firms which must be more responsive to the marketplace.
The hard reality is that whilst there are big companies demanding nuclear power (or to maintain coal fired energy), alternatives such as solar are starved of development funds and companies are being forced to go overseas for funding and taking talent with them. This is a serious future cost to the nation. There have been considerable advances in solar and geothermal energy despite the lack of funding. The problems with sustainable energy are far less significant than those of nuclear energy but nuclear offers far greater control to those large firms that stand to benefit. And no peasant economy could ever hope to install a small nuclear power plant whereas they probably could have a wind and solar turbine to power light, cooking and internet access at an affordable cost. This would be a significant economic loss to those firms who feel that they have a right to certain kinds of profit.
However, there is no benefit to the planet by solving one problem through creating even more problems for future generations and what is required is a little less of business as usual so we can solve the problems for the planet’s benefit.
@Jill Rush
9/11 certainly did harm the US quite seriously, and indeed, still sits in the minds of many. It was the excuse for nearly a trillion dollarss of war on terror spending. It royally screwed tourism and the airline industry. If that’s not a blow, it’s hard to know what would be.
This is called a FUD attack — fear, uncertainty and doubt. It would be well worth your while to have a look at David Mackay’s discussion on this. The volumes of waste we are discussion are tiny and can easily be sequestered from human contact. Certainly, they are nothing in comparison to the waste that will certainly follow from coal combusiton, which is inevitable if we await renewables to replace it. It is also doubtful if the embedded energy costs of nuclear are greater than the embedded energy cost of wind turbines and roads and copper cable. Do you have any actual numbers?
The even harder reality is that if we do not get nuclear then over the next 15 years about half of Australia’s coal plants (most in the southeastern part of Australia) will be replaced or upgraded and then the sunk cost implications will ensure they get at least 40 years protection from closure. Hazlewood — one of the world’s dirtiest plants – responsible on its own for 5% of Australia’s GHGs has just been licenced until 2031 by Brumby. No amount of support for renewable R&D can change that.
Check out hyperion. Safe, secure and capable of being funded through MDG. No grid link needed. No waste residue.
What you need to show is how renewables can do the job of decarbonising as quickly as nuclear can in practice. In some places, renewables can make a great contribution, and in a hurry too, but in many places, it’s simply a forlorn piece of handwaving.
Fran Barlow, what has changed since 1985 when Forbes called the nuclear industry “the largest managerial disaster in history” that makes nuclear technology so appealing today? My understanding is that at best nuclear energy can only reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by about 2%.
JQ – in Australia the biggest advocate for Integral Fast Reactors is Barry Brook. He is not a AGW skeptic. Quite the opposite in fact.
His blog is here:-
http://bravenewclimate.com/about/
An extract from his blog:-
He thinks AGW is a serious threat to humanity. He also seems to spend a fair bit of time attacking the views of people such as Ian Plimer. So he is pretty much onside with your views on AGW.
Here is an article (one of many) by Barry Brook on the Integral Fast Reactor topic:-
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/12/13/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power-q-and-a/
The Intro:-
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/12/13/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power-q-and-a/
p.s. And James Hansen pretty much shares his position on this issue.
@Dan Pangburn
Dan
I am a mechanical Engineer as well, although a lot of my career has been spent in Engineering related IT. I have always had a keen interest in science.
There are far better sources for rebutting/debating your views but one of the most important is the very climate scientists themselves. This is why realclimate.org and tamino are such good sources. You have views about what you think the data you have researched means. Please go and see what other people think it means. In particular people for whom understanding and analysing climate science and science data is their profession. You and I as Mechanical Engineers are not well qualified to make good judgements about these subjects precisely because our training leads us to think we do have enough knowledge to form good opinions. As the old saying goes, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Having read the document you referred to let me point out several obvious flaws.
I will assume that your views are well intentioned but perhaps not well informed. However I must point out that many of the arguments you make match many of the standard Climate Change Denialist arguments. And they have all been thoroughly shot down by the climate science community.
Firstly, 1998 and the climate has not got warmer ever since, maybe even cooled. Why 1998? Because it was one of the most powerful El Nino events ever recorded. And El Nino events have the effect of warming significant parts of the lower atmosphere. Note I did not say the climate, I said the lower atmosphere. There is a body of research, although not conclusive yet, that major El Nino events can have an effect on atmospheric temparetaures for several years. Also near then end of this period we had a significant La Nina which has the opposite effect.
Next, what data set is this based on. All of the major data sources have a problem handling coverage of temperatures from the Arctic ocean since there has been little broad sensor coverage of this area. Different data sets handle this in different ways but all will tend to underestimate global warming in recent years since they do not adequately measure the recent warming in the Arctic
And you are correct, the solar susnspot cycle is at a minimum right now, so warming will tend to diminsh over that period. Not because CO2 doesn’t cause it but because the output from the Sun drops off a tiny fraction. It is likely that as the sunspot cycle turns up again solar output will rise slightly
Next in referring to temperatures since 1998, you talk about what happened this year or that. Who cares. Climate Change is not weather. It is the long term average of weather. And long term means that averages over periods of 5 to 10 years are the MINUMUM level of detail you look at. Year by year variability is background noise ‘the sloshing around of weather’. Coupled with a range of natural cycles other than ENSO (El Nino/La Nana) which have periods of a decade or more.
Next, you look at long term data and the lag between Temperature and CO2 during past ice ages. This is not in dispute. But your conclusion is wrong. Ice Ages are believed to be triggered by long term variation in the Earths orbit that result in small variations in how much solar energy reaches Earth. Then the CO2 and other green house gases particularly Methane kick in to amplify the effect. Then water vapour levels in the atmosphere amplify this even further. So in this context of course CO2 lags the temperature change
. The initial small change is due to small orbital changes. Then CO2 act as a feedback to modify it. You seem to assume that any feedback will be rapid. But if the initial perturbation is small and slow, and if it is the slow temperature change due to that perturbation that drives the release
of CO2 then the CO2 feedback will also be slow. However, in our current situation, the perturbation that is casing CO2 levels to rise is anything but slow. We are digging the stuff up, burning it and releasing it into the atmosphere at a blinding pace. You aren’t comparing apples with apples.
Next point, as for evidence of warming. It has not stopped since 1998 anyway. Changes in heat content in the atmosphere are really a side show. Since we have had reasonably reliable data from around 1960, the key environmental change has been the increase in the heat content of the oceans. Over 90% of all the heating that has occurred since around 1960 has been in the oceans – we don’t have data for before then. You are an engineer, you understand about the much greater specific heat of water. Well total heating of all components of the environment is estimated at 15.9 * 10^22 Joules – that around 2.5 billion Hiroshima bombs. Most of that is heating of the oceans. Source, the synthesis report from the March 09 climate change Conference in Copenhagen.
Please Dan
Take what you believe you have found from your research and critique it by comparing it to what the professionals have done. All the points you have raised have been addressed very thoroughly within the climate science community through the correct processes of peer review.
The very real debates about climate change are not well served by individuals going over old ground that others have already covered. Whether by intent or not, it muddies the waters. And we can’t afford the terrible cost of the delay that triggers.
TerjeP (say tay-a), I’m a bit thick and slow these days but can you answer one question for me, do IFR’s produce weapons-grade plutonium?
So long as the IFR are first built in and around Canberra…that should ensure no risk factor is left unconsidered 🙂 And if one fails catastrophically during a parliamentary sitting, what’s the harm in that?
Seriously, people shouldn’t downplay the risks in dealing with something like nuclear waste; think asbestos to see what a mess up humans can make of something if they focus too narrowly on money. If risks are considered properly then nuclear power is definitely a prospect in Australia. However, finding sites will be an interesting political exercise, to say the least. Personally, I vastly prefer putting money into wind and solar, and into improved use of energy at the household level, than chucking it at nuclear. The risk I see is that Australia adopts a nuclear + CCS strategy and loses interest in wind and solar.
Dan, no doubt some climate scientists are untrained in control theory, but plenty of the more mathematically inclined ones are perfectly aware of techniques from control theory. Even laypersons such as myself have formally studied control theory and optimal control theory. I’m pretty sure that Pr Q and other economists have a familiarity with such heady stuff as stochastic dynamic programming and variational methods for optimisation, take your pick. Dan, so what? It’s not a magic bullet to understanding the world.
Michael of Summer Hill — no, they do not produce weapons-grade plutonium. Indeed, it is not possible to separate Pu (any isotope) from the minor actinides using the pyroprocessing technology used in reprocessing IFR fuel, let alone to produce an isotopically pure 239-Pu stream required for weapons production.
I thank you for joining in Professor Barry Brook but where is the evidence to say it can’t be done?
To have any chance of producing weapons-usable material, one would need to run the reactor on a short-cycle and then build a heavily shielded offsite PUREX facility. Both are easily detectable and would ring the proliferation alarm bells. Neither fit the definition of an IFR, and there are plenty of simpler routes if a nation state was to choose this path (U-enrichment, small research reactors).
Barry Brook, correct but if I’m not mistaken it is still only an extra chemical separation step required and that is the problem.
The problem with what? Nuclear technology, uranium enrichment, research reactors or?
Professor Brooks, we are both reading the same text.
Fran,
I am not sure how to take your arguments in that you seem to have zipped off to another dimension. To argue that the events of 9/11 are similar to a sporting match is strange. It was seen as an attack on an icon of capitalism by others and not a football in sight and affords no protection to nuclear energy facilities.
You then go on to argue that many coal fired power stations will be closing in the next 15 years. I was under the impression that the lead time for a nuclear power station was even longer than this – that is if you could find a community happy to house it- although Donald Oats suggestion that the first nuclear power station lights up Canberra is a good one. So, the harder reality won’t benefit from your preferred option as something quicker is required. Barry Brook provides good reasons as to why we should be thoroughly investigating other options. Whilst he argues that enrichment facilities would be easily detectable I recall the search for weapons of mass destruction and the impotence of other nations to prevent Nth Korea developing nuclear weapons. Nuclear energy should really be seen as a least preferred option for many good reasons. It is a genie which will be impossible to bottle once it is out and in the hands of the mad, bad and sad.
Fran Barlow @2 and 4, page 2
I am a little familiar with your FUD counter argument. It is not new. It has been used by the aviation industry in Sydney and elsewhere when people complained about air and noise pollution.
Similarly, your focus on production costs (investment) belongs to the said management strategy.
John Quiggin’s point is spot on. Given the economic failure (ie once all negative externalities are taken into account), supporters of the nuclear industry will have to advocate a carbon price. I’d like to add in the belief they will pull the wool over people’s eyes.
There has been a lengthy discussion on this blog on the negative externalities of the nueclear power industry, supported by empirical evidence. Essentially, the costs are not amenable to measurement in monetary terms. No other industry is in this predicament, not even coal and other fossil fuels.
Professor Brook, if Leslie Burris 1993 conclusion is correct and an offending State only needs seven weeks to produce plutonium then that is cause for concern.
The attractive thing about Integral Fast Reactors is that they can be fueled from existing stock piles of nuclear waste. In other words the more of them we have and the more we fuel them with nuclear waste the less nuclear waste we will have. At least this will be the case for about 700 years until we start to deplete our stock piles of nuclear waste. Integral Fast Reactors can be part of the nuclear waste solution even whilst providing the world with electricity for centuries to come.
MoSH – the easy solution to your concern (perhaps not the best solution) is to ramp up the use of Integral Fast Reactors only in countries that are already nuclear. This still covers a heck of a lot of ground in terms of reducing CO2 emissions. And so long as the IFRs are burning up nuclear waste they are making us all safer from nuclear threats.
TerjeP (say tay-a), when you come up with something sensible I wil answer it.
@Ernestine Gross
1. Fairly obviously, I am advocating a carbon price — about $100 per tonne. I’d do that even if I weren’t advocating nuclear power as part of the mix.
2. What ‘externalities’ with nuclear power? The nuclear power industry internalises all of its costs.
@Jill Rush
It was apt as you claimed that only an attack on a nuclear power plant could wreck the economy.
The typical lead time for a nuclear power plant is 7-10 years. Of course, there’s no reason in principal why it should take more than five years, even allowing for a robust EIS clearance. Modularisation of construction could shrink this further.
Apologies for overlooking the end blockquotes tag …
James Hansen is interviewed in the following, soon to be released movie – his comments re. Steve McIntyre are priceless –
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/09/not-evil-just-wrong/
Fran,
It appears that when others raise issues of genuine fear, genuine uncertainty and reasonable doubt (FUD) you respond by misrepresentation, insistence, stridency, supposition, errors and defiance otherwise known as MISSED the point. It’s a new theory but I commend it to you.
John, yesterday I mentioned Leslie Burris concern’s about rogue States using IFR to produce plutonium in seven weeks. What concerns me is that if it is only the PUREX (aqueous) reprocessing required for cycling plutonium back into thermal reactors that produces chemically pure plutonium, then it disingenuous for anyone to claim that ‘It’s impossible to handle for weapons and/or for someone to make a weapon’.
@Jill Rush
Jill, you say:
Yet you specify not one example of misrepresentation, insistence, stridency, supposition or error by me. Why is that? And defiance???? What entitles you to the submission of others?
I note also that while your fear may well be genuine, it’s not based on anything in your posts that could be called reasonable doubt and your uncertainty simply reflects a disinclination to avail yourself of the material that could clarify matters.
I’m not sure what your game is, but I doubt you are as you claim.
@Jennifer Marohasy re: pro-pollution-as-usual spam
Ms Marohasy — why are you spamming the blogosphere with this polluter-driven nonsense? Not content with running this on your own site, you’ve hit Larvatus Prodeo and Deltoid too.
Those who think that wind and solar can displace coal burning should look at the evidence. Despite strongly favourable policies countries like Spain, Germany and Denmark are unable to expand production or reduce CO2 at affordable cost. In Australia wind and solar are minor and show no signs of entering the big league. Experimental energy sources like wave and geothermal are bogged down. Therefore you must ask what can possibly displace coal to the tune of say 20 gigawatts continuous equivalent. The answer is either gas fired generation or nuclear. Since politicians follow a path of least resistance I suspect we will go the gas route. Though perhaps taking longer we will then repeat the unhappy experiences of the UK with its North Sea gas reserves.
I suggest the medium term alternatives Australia now faces are more coal burning, a temporary gas fix, nuclear power or economic contraction.
some nostalgia
http://www.aceee.org/pubs/e934.htm
How did that work out?
I can’t help but notice that some of the largest solar installations in progress or planned around the world are of the Photovoltaic type. It seems people are saying hang the initial expense, it is more than compensated for by the elegant simplicity of PV. It is scalable to almost any sized area, uses otherwise wasted space, almost maintenance free, set and forget, upgradable, dependable, not toxic, non threatening, long life and feel good.
PV is far from mature and that sort of investment has got to speed it’s evolution. Household storage of solar power is a minor thing compared with the storage required for transport which is pretty much doable. Other storage technologies are being worked on such as zinc-air, flow batteries, hydrogen, and once again, although expensive, will be attractive for their elegant simplicity. In the powered down, less industrialised society of the future, which it will be, renewables should be adequate.
MoSH – I’m not trying to dismiss your concerns about nuclear weapons. I think nuclear weapons in the wrong hands (and even in the right hands) represent a terrible threat. However I’m not pursuaded that banning fast breeders like IFR makes us safer. In fact given that they create a commercial use for the existing stockpiles of plutonium I think they’d possibly help to keep plutonium stocks out of the wrong hands. At the moment the only significant alternate use for plutonium is in bomb making and we have several hundred tons of the stuff sitting in storage. Given that we can turn it into bombs, store it, or turn it into cheap electricity, I think the latter is the best options.
@Jennifer Marohasy
I returned the favor with a link at your site, pointing out that talk of a DDT ban represents a silly/dishonest conflation of the actual ban on agricultural use, supported by all those concerned with disease control, with the non-existent ban on antimalarial use invented by Milloy, Bate and others and a staple of rightwing propaganda until relatively recently.
Priceless JQ….As Fran noted above I dont know why we get that sort of non useful spamming in here either. Things must be quiet in Maroville…
@Salient Green
I agree, Salient Green. My two comparison products are the mobile phone (GSM onwards) and the personal computer. Each have gone through several major generations and countless minor ones. Both are technologically complex and required solid research investment to get going. Both were initially unwieldy (motorola brick, sat phones, and the Osborne “portable” computer – Ha!) but quickly morphed into the indespensable devices they are today. Both technology-reliant products had to get to about the third major product cycle before gaining widespread acceptance. Both have had an exponential growth curve. Both have taken an entire human generation to achieve world domination.
PV solar is a similar beast in that it requires ongoing research to fulfil its potential. PV solar is already a commercially viable product; what it needs now is a bit of a push to get further along the exponential growth curve. Then the research will be well and truly funded by corporations rather than a hodge-podge of university and government grants, venture capital and individual entrepaneurs.
It’s not a shortage of ideas that holds solar PV back – at least three major developments are well beyond proof of concept – but the continual mucking around by governments in the way they play to other false-competitors, such as CCS, muddies the water so much that even venture capital can be scared off.
Now before anyone goes “Nuclear IFR! is the answer, Don!” I think we should all be well aware of what’s at stake. I mean, the Flinders Ranges just get in the road of the view ‘n’ all, but mining there is probably a bit much to take.
As for CCS, check out “Four Corners” tonight on the ABC. They give us the dirty on clean coal and carbon sesquestration.
Donald, yes, if it was a simple question of IFR or coal, the IFR would easlily win but it’s far from being that simple. PV has a long way to go and part of that journey includes storage but it has a huge headstart on IVgen nuclear, not to mention a smoother path.
@Donald Oats [38] CCS
CCS should stand for Clean Coal Scam. As PR, it’s understandable, but really, given that it can’t work this side of a CO2 price of $100 per tonne, a price nobody making policy is toying with …
The other bizarre thing is that when people object to nuclear power they often say the “waste” has to be managed for 50,000 years. That’s of course an order of magniture and then some too large, even for the small volume of most hazardous material — about 1000 years is closer to the mark. But how long do they think CO2 buried in acquifers @ 650 + bar pressure has to be stored securely? Effectively, forever, and unlike with radioactive hazmat, which will simply sit wherever we put it, any flaw in the containment could trigger sudden release. Anyone who wants to see what would happen in such a circumstance should google Lake Nyos.
People often express fear of living near a nuclear plant, but I wonder how keen people would be to live near a carbon dioxide sequestration point containing massively compressed CO2 in volumes that make Lake Nyos, Cameroon or Lake Monoun appear trivial?
Donald – you should not conflate problems with uranium mining and Integral Fast Reactors. IFRs can be powered by existing stockpiles of nuclear waste. You could roll out IFRs on a massive scale even whilst banning all new uranium mines. If we use nuclear waste (eg basically so called depleted uranium and plutonium from decomissioned weapons) we could power the planet for 700 years before we need to consider another mine.
You can support a ban on uranium mining and support large scale deployment of IFRs without any inconsistency. You may not like the IFR option but don’t throw mud in the water.
Fran – my understanding is that the nuclear waste from an IFR is relatively low risk and needs only 300 years of management. Still a tall order but given that the input fuel (existing nuclear waste) is an existing management nightmare it is a massive improvement on leaving existing nuclear waste in storage. A technology that takes a very big bad problem and converts it into a medium sized problem is a wonderful thing – especially if it also gives you cheap, zero carbon electricity in the process.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
That’s as I understand it too, but I was discussing waste from the more typical LWRs. See for example Mackay pp 169-170
Fran
I’m quite open about the fact that my personal preference is to avoid nuclear power, just as I’ve made clear that I’m fairly certain it will become part of Australia’s future power generation capability. I don’t think that I’m throwing mud in the water to suggest that nuclear power generation also implies uranium mining. Technically it is unnecessary as you point out, Terje, and as you state they are two separate issues, at least logically; however the policies of whatever government is in power are likely to link the two items together.
Anyway, if people accept the risks and costs associated with establishing widespread use of nuclear power – IFR or other – and if they accept the environmental costs of large scale uranium mining, then nuclear power and uranium mining we shall have in spades.
Meanwhile, South Australia has gone quite some way to wind-generated electricity. By the end of 2009 SA should have approximately 20% of its power provided by wind (and no, that is not nameplate capacity, that is actual power). The grid hasn’t collapsed yet. Thumbs up Rann.
Thanks Donald. Personally I don’t think Australia should go nuclear any time soon either. I think those nations that are already nuclear should go to IFR technology and then scale up. We should burn coal and adopt other technologies as and when cost permits. We are not big enough to matter much either way.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
I think that whatever we do, we here in Australia must stop burning coal for electricity ASAP, and not merely because of a desire to participate in CO2 emissions abatement but as a basic health measure and in order to abate the damge to the oceans.
Fran – I suffer from a possible perceived bias in any such discussion because as of 12 months ago most of my personal income is now derived from the coal mining industry (it hasn’t stopped me promoting nuclear). Having said that I’ll plough on anyway.
Independent from CO2 emissions how does Australia burning coal impact on our oceans?
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Deposition of SO2, mercury, PM, radon etc. Also, CO2 emissions are not merely about AGW but about making the seas more acidic.
Jennfier Marohasy,
Obviously “comments” by James Hansen re: Steve McIntyre (whatever that means) completely invalidate all of Hansen’s reasearch, and remove all possibility of AGW being correct.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
PS … kudos to you for the disclosure of pecuniary interest. Nevertheless, in the interests of human wellbeing, I’m hoping to truncate your longterm income from this source!