If, as I think is now possible, the Copenhagen summit leads to an agreement to reduce CO2 emissions substantially in the next decade and to very low levels by 2050, we will need to replace, or do without, a lot of energy currently derived from carbon-based fuels. It’s probably a good time to take a look at the main contenders for achieving this. Here’s my form guide. (I’m not going to give lots of links – Wikipedia is, as usual, a good place to start).
Efficiency: Often ignored or left until last, but improvements in energy efficiency will probably be the most important single response to the imposition of a price on carbon. Across a wide range of activities there are 50 per cent gains to be had at low cost, as can be seen by comparing the average energy-intensity of most activities (cars, lightbulbs, industrial processes) with the most energy-efficient commercial option. For example, the average fuel efficiency of the existing Australian car fleet is estimated here at 11litres/100km, but there are a wide range of vehicles that use half that, and plenty of options that use even less. Given some mixture of price incentives and regulation it should not be hard to achieve similar savings in most activities. In the transition to low or zero emissions, we can also make some big efficiency gains in the way in which we use carbon-based fuels, most obviously by shifting from the worst such sources (brown coal, oil from tar sands) to the best (gas and other hydrocarbons)
Substitution: Even less commonly mentioned, but again a favorite if we get a serious carbon price. For most energy-using activities there are easily available low-energy substitutes: warm clothes for home heating, cold beer (or iced coffee) for air conditioning, public transport for cars, communications for transport in general. People don’t like talking much about this because the debate is dominated by two polar opposite viewpoints: that we should consume less of everything, or that we must never reduce consumption of anything. In fact, though, over the last century we’ve consumed more of most things, but not of everything. To give just one example, although we consume more of most kinds of health services, house calls by doctors have disappeared and lengthy stays in hospital have become so expensive that they aren’t offered except to those who absolutely need them. As relative prices change, we consume more of things that are cheaper and less of things that are dearer.
Offsets: There are a bunch of these, but reforestation is the big one, probably big enough to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations by 50-60 ppm over a century or so.
Zero carbon energy sources: These are usually discussed first, but I’ve left them until (second) last to make the point that we shouldn’t think about replacing all existing energy use with new sources. There are a lot of options and a fair bit of uncertainty about all of them, but it seems reasonable to expect that, if we give a general price incentive and put a bit of money into each of them, at least some will pay off. Here’s my list.
Hydro: Well established but not much capacity for growth
Geothermal: Exists on a small scale already and this could be expanded with modest technical progress. But the contribution will still be relatively modest. The big obstacle is the need for transmission lines from locations to markets: we need technical innovations to reduce costs and changes in market institutions that tend to discourage investment
Carbon capture and sequestration: The horse Australia would most like to see win, since a cheap and effective CCS technology would mean that we could declare the problem solved and go back to mining and burning all the coal we have. The capture part seems feasible, but there’s not much to suggest that the difficulties of underground sequestration are going to be resolved any time soon. If CCS is going to be an option, my guess is that its going to have rely on something like using the captured CO2 to grow algae. This is probably also the most promising route to biofuels. I haven’t seen much on the economics of this – any good sources
Biofuels: Technically feasible, but since most biofuels either use food crops as inputs or compete with food crops for land, they can be economically and ethically justified on a large scale only if we can achieve increases in productivity big enough to feed a growing population and have a surplus output large enough to use for fuel. I’m less optimistic about this than I once was, but it’s important not to over-react to the brief upsurge in food and fuel prices a year or so ago. Commodity markets are highly volatile and short-run movements are not a good guide to the long term.
Nuclear: In the Australian context, talk of nuclear power (for and against) is mainly political pointscoring. Even with a big government push behind it, it would take decades for Australia to build up the kind of regulatory, technical and educational infrastructure we would need for a substantial nuclear industry. And realistically speaking, we aren’t going to move until some other developed country shows that it’s possible to start a nuclear program from scratch or at least, restart a stalled program. The leading candidate is the US, which has been pushing a ‘nuclear renaissance’ since the Energy Act of 1992 and particularly since the Bush II administration came in nearly a decade ago. So far, all they have to show for it is a dozen or so proposals, mostly at existing sites. From what I’ve seen it’s unlikely that more than a handful will be in operation by 2020, which puts a large scale resurgence of nuclear power off until 2030 or later. Of course, as has long been true, nuclear plants will continue to be built in countries with a military or national pride motive, but that kind of thing is a dead end as far as any real contribution to global energy needs is concerned.
Wind: already commercially viable or nearly so in lots of places, and bound to become even more significant once carbon prices start rising to $50/t or higher. The big issue raised by critics is variability of supply. That hasn’t proved to be a problem in jurisdictions with up to 20 per cent wind. Given smart metering (and automatic processes capable of responding to higher prices by lowering energy use) this proportion could probably be raised to 40 or 50 per cent, and with storage, even further.
Solar (photovoltaics and thermal): I used to think this technology was a long way off being a serious contender, but recent progress has been striking. As long predicted, the shift from small-scale specialty production to large scale industrial processes has produced big cost reductions with no obvious end in sight. In particular, the industry has ended its reliance on the semiconductor industry as a source of cheap offcuts for silicon, and has been forced to develop low-cost processes specifically designed for solar cells. Assuming a good outcome from Copenhagen (and no breakthroughs on CCS), I predict that by 2020 most new electricity generating capacity will be either solar or wind, while more coal plants will be closing than opening.
Last of all, there are a variety of geoengineering solutions to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. As I said recently, these are a long way off, but could be important after 2050.
John Quiggin 
@JohnL
I wouldn’t trust anything by Greenpeace.
Feeding and watering the plants involved in such massive reforestation might be the fly in the ointment. In many areas of Australia the summertime temperatures are too hot for trees to transpire – I’m not sure of all the reasons why, but at least one of them is to stop water loss – and the shut their stomata. If the overnight temperatures stay above 30 or so degrees, the trees may remain in this state. Certainly a lot of work has been carried out on matching plants to anticipated climate, but there are some local climates that are toxic for all but a handful of adapted plants.
One possibility is to provide drip water to trees in the more arid areas and to have decent vegetative ground cover to the greatest extent possible. If the plantations is sufficiently elevated and relatively close to the coast, a combination of desalinisation and pumping of water uphill could be done with wind turbines. Water that has been pumped up to the plantation could be stored for later use either as plantation water or for electricity generation by dropping it down through a generator. If the water is ponded at the bottom it may be re-used as storage by pumping it back up at a later time.
Whether the cost of all this, and the sheer labour-intensive nature of getting so many plants to fully establish, matches up with the imposed cost upon carbon pollution, I don’t know.
If you would not trust anything by Greenpeace, then surely you are not a Rationalist. Try Climate Change Sceptic (or Denier). I venture to suggest you would trust a report commissioned by Peabody or Exxonb-Mobil, though.
Agree with most of what you say. However, don’t agree with the constant assumption that we have to put a price on carbon. It would be smarter, for example, to use regulation to drive down the average fuel consumption of new cars instead of increasing the price of fuel. Historically most of the reductions in emissions have been acheived by regulation so it may be smarter to see using price increases as the last resort instead of the first option.
Simarly, potential investors in clean technology are looking for price and sales guarantees and don’t really care what happens to the price of the dirty alternative. Only putting a price on the clean alternative means that the average price only ramps up slowly as the proportion of clean product increases. A lot more price effective than raising the price of all electricity high enough to make the clean alternative competitive.
@JohnL
Consider this JohnL:
If there were no cap and there were a disaster in excess of $US9.5billion, what are the odds that the damages would be paid? The companies could and would just declare bankruptcy. Price Anderson ensures that the whole industry takes a share ensuring that only damage that in practice would not be recoverable from any business is carried by the state.
The airlines did not carry 9/11 liability and still don’t, even though that was far more foreseeable and likely than the kind of catastrophic damage implied in the compaints over the P-A cap. No business can reasonably be expected to cover every remotely conceivable confluence of events involving catastrophic loss. Should the promoters of a major cultural or sporting event have to carry liability for someone choosing the event to release sarin gas? Of course not. Yet this is orders of magnitude more likely than the kind of loss we are talking about with proiperly regulated contemporary nuclear plants. TMI caused $70million — less than 1% of P-A and almost all of it in losses to business.
I think gas might have a role as backup to renewables but not as a replacement for coal; about the time we’ve replaced the coal burners the next stage of emissions reduction will be emanding more reductions than gas can deliver. We need to be getting serious about renewables of course and that hasn’t happened yet. The no pain policy is leaving us with no policy; understand the seriousness of the issue and expensive energy doesn’t seem too much.
Let’s at least get a price on carbon but I don’t believe it will be enough. No doubt nuclear will become the major part of our energy production. I suspect a concience vote right now would get an in principle decision to allow nuclear power, bypassing the green-left on this. Actually I think nuclear could be where the Greens and mainstream Australia part company; a lot of small ‘g’ greens are already rethinking their position on nuclear, the maybe possibility of more weapons proliferation versus the looming certainty of climate change and the absolute requirement for real, rapid and sustained reductions of emissions… if it takes nuclear to see the coal plants shut down the risks may be acceptable to mainstream Australia.
This is unrelated to this story… sorry, I really wasn’t sure where to post this. It’s not spam though.
I was just wondering to the writer of this blog, doesn’t it depress you writing about politics all the time? Isn’t it frustrating, standing by, year after year, watching new people come and go and effectively nothing change. It’s frustrating that there is so many people in the world and yet our power is all tied up in like 20 people per country (or in some cases far less)… I’m sorry I know this is unrelated to the story, but it just depresses me so much and I was wondering as a writer (or as a commenter if someone else is reading this), how you felt?
Isabella, welcome to the social democratic forum. Here we are all one big happy family Labor, unionists, greens, and conservationists. We are not racist and/or sexist and I sure JQ will go out of his way to help any depressed liberal and/or libertarian.
Isabella – it is called stalemate. Nobody wins.
@JohnL
Sure, they know what is cracking :).
Crikey John, thanks to the Coalition for sitting on the fence all these years Australia is now in a weak position of any industrialised country in a clean energy world. The G20 Low Carbon Competitiveness report has Australia as the “lowest ranked” major industrialised country in terms of its ability to generate material prosperity for its people in a world that limits greenhouse gas emissions. Drongos.
What have you got against drongoes, Mosh? Don’t you like the Willie Wagtail?
John, today CFMEU president, Tony Maher, has made a bit of a goose of himself by going against the ACTU and others pushing for a green jobs campaign. He fails to understand that Australia has an international obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is out of step with the rest of the world. Thumbs up Southern Cross Climate Coalition.
@Socrates
The big issue with the so called Hydrogen Economy is where you get the stuff and how you handle it. Hydrogen needs to be seen as a an energy storage medium, like a battery. And like a battery, one of the most important characteristics you judge it on is efficiency – how much of the energy you are storing in it is wasted. And as long as existing hydrogen production technologies are how we obtain it, then the answer is most of the energy is wasted.
Also, Hydrogen can be nasty stuff to handle. Because it is so light you need to operate at quite high pressures to store meaningful quantities in reasonable volumes. Hydrogen, since it is just a proton and an electron, leaks through metal quite easilty – not through cracks but straight through the metal. And Hydrogen burns with an invisible flame – Firefighters are trained to walk with a broom or similar held out in front of them if they are dealing with a hydrogen fire, to avoid walking into the flame
The Hydrogen Economy is an idea that has been around for some time and unfortunately probably isn’t a great idea. It really was thought of when the dominant paradigm was ‘new fuels’ rather than the broader idea of new energy sources.
On the point about electricity grids, distance to market etc. High Voltage DC can be used for major trunks and is much more efficient than AC, and the distance to market issue only seems particularly important in Australia with our few large cities and geography. In many countries, markets and energy sources are far more intermingled.
JQ
“Assuming a good outcome from Copenhagen (and no breakthroughs on CCS), I predict that by 2020 most new electricity generating capacity will be either solar or wind, while more coal plants will be closing than opening.”
Here’s hoping on the Solar/Wind front. Sometimes it is nice to see dreams come true.
On an agreement from Copenhagen, getting an agreement is one thing, seeing what is agreed actually being delivered is another. And most of the assumption behind any carbon pricing type of approach is that such an indirect approach will deliver the results required. There will be a hell of a lot of people out there looking for clever ways to rort/fudge the system – offsets that aren’t, clever financial engineering etc
What would really focus the minds of everyone would be making the CO2 target levels absolutely binding. On this date CO2 levels will be X, non negotiable. And we will shut down power plants for example to make that happen if necesary. Obviously political fantasy land.
My expectation is that we will get a moderate outcome from Copenhagen, but China in particular won’t be bound by limits; working hard to improve their performance yes which they are doing now, but not limits. The Chinese have already indicated that they wont sacrifice the improvement of their peoples standard of living for climate targets. Then progress towards the agreed targets will be slow to take off, hit legislative hurdles and generally proceed but not as fast as hoped.
So I disagree with you John that most new capacity will be S/W by 2020, unfortunately. 10 years is too short a time frame. 20 – 30 years from now, yes they will be roaring away.
Ken said:
And some big ‘g’ Greens as well … see for example.
[…]
From the link:
And that goes double for driving stop-start between 0 & 10kph from the outersuburbs
My position on nuclear power hasn’t shifted since the 1980s. I’m not opposed, provided it’s safe (ie modern design and with no cutting of regulatory corners), not tied to any military program, and cost-efficient. The first two can be delivered more or less, but the third is a long way off.
More recent converts to this position seem to me to be overoptimistic about costs.
@Isabella: John Gray got it about right in Straw Dogs. The situation is depressing to the extent that one clings to ‘progress’ as more than a contingent and reversible possibility. We’re all heir to that illusion, at least intermittently, it seems, but it has become, paradoxically, more prevalent in recent times with the Right (neo-conservatism, End of History, etc), and less with the Left (with the death of utopian socialist hopes). Though there was certainly something messianic in the hopes heaped on (and courted by) Obama.
But on the other hand it only looks like ‘nothing changes’ if you do cling to radical and permanent change as the only type worth attaining. Lots of things are getting better in many ways (and lots worse), but the transformations are contingent and fragile.. Indeed they’ll all reverse at some stage (tragedy is inherent), but that hardly makes them lacking in value to current beneficiaries.
Meanwhile, back in the real world…
Coal booming despite emissions
Yay Australia!
@carbonsink
I think the obvious answer is if the coal customers won’t cut back we should cut it for them. Henceforth all coal customers get 2-5% less a year. Or perhaps an arbitrary 15% tariff on their finished goods if they won’t accept coal cuts.
Sometimes I think the coal industry is having a quiet chuckle at us pale, medium and dark greenies. Anna Bligh has apparently given the unofficial nod to a power station that promises to be ‘carbon capture ready’. She obviously doesn’t watch Four Corners. China wants to dig up chunks of the Liverpool Plains with the full blessing of the NSW government. China incidentally will want to import a lot more coal as it has apparently sucked Vietnam dry. Good old Oz will help out as always.
@carbonsink, @hermit
Can you imagine any possible world in which (a) our ruling elite will do anything to jeopardise the profits of Big Coal and/or (b) our population will permit any more than the fig-leafiest of reductions in our voracious energy use to be encouraged (let alone mandated) by government policy. Without violence or some unforeseen shock, I really can’t. The issue’s surely an animatronic duck.
Some good news from the “bad boys” on the block, making the rest of us look like the pathetically “sad boys” on the block.
http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-largest-solar-power-plant-china/12806/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=d3371107f9-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email
ps for JQ, low budget video conferencing…..
http://www.gizmag.com/facevsion-fxexpress-1080p-video-conferencing/12811/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=d3371107f9-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email
@Crispin Bennett
No.
Earlier I posted a dark and doomerish rant along these lines that seems to have got sucked into moderation. Hopefully PrQ deems it worthy of publishing.
@BilB
To put that in perspective:
…and growing at (say) 10% p.a. or ~50GW p.a. Even 2GW is a drop in the ocean.
What I suspect that you will discover here, CS, is that where China can install 1 coalfired power plant a week, they can also install a CSP plant a week, once they get under way. Meanwhile, Australia has done nothing….except talk…and talk. But good on you, there, for solid gold negative thinking.
[…] fuels. It’s probably a good time to take a look at the main contenders for achieving this. Here’s my form guide. […]
I think it is fair to say the Federal government and each of the States is in the siren call of cheap fossil energy, either coal or gas. South Australia and Tasmania have a lot of wind and hydro but in reality are utterly dependent on interstate coal. The problem now if there is a Federal double dissolution who to vote for. The ALP says all the right words but does nothing, the Libs will have nuclear on top of undiminished coal and the Greens will find themselves unable to achieve their utopian ideals.
However the stakes are getting higher. So far the public has shrugged off ominous climate signs. If a shocking weather event occurs comparable in local terms to Katrina in the US then the knives will be out. I’ll start the ball rolling by suggesting that it would be an embarrassment for Rudd to go to Copenhagen.
Show me something to be positive about and I’ll be positive.
Its good to see the French introducing a carbon tax, on top of their world-beating efforts in terms of GDP per tonne of CO2 emitted. Perhaps there’s something to be said for nukes and diesels?
One wonders why Sarkozy feels this is necessary given that Europe has an ETS in place (perhaps because its made b*gger all difference) but good on him for pushing through with it, even with the French Socialists now campaigning against it (shame).
I hate to say this, JQ, but this..
“‘use CO2 from coal power plants to’ grow algae. This is probably also the most promising route to biofuels”
is a non starter, because even though it sounds logical, it still leads to the release of the CO2 to the atmosphere but with perhaps at best a 2 month delay and a small second bite at the CO2 cherry. Whereas it is true that this might offset fossil oil consumption to some degree, this is a short term gain as oil consumption is required to be phased out along with the coal.
But grow algae by all possible means, using atmospheric CO2 as the feed stock. Still somewhat problematic today, however. I suspect that algal production is a more logical partner to the thermal tower generation proposals or wind power generation sites where airflows are consistent.
@BilB
I disagree BilB — assuming (which I don’t yet) that algal biomass could be harvested to produce alcohol- and lipid-based liquid fuels (eg starch-to-butanol, lipid-to-biodiesel) at prices competitive with petroleum there would still be fewer carbon miles in the fuel than that imported and extracted from oil wells elsewhere. Not only that, there are fugitive emissions of methane from all of these wells, which would not attach to algae. There would also be fewer oil spills and of course there would be a reduction in other undesirable emissions.
There are some vehicles that don’t lend themselves all that readily to electrical energy – heavy transport vehicles such as refrigerated trucks, commuter buses, heavy shipping and of course aircraft, so a liquid fuel product might be very useful. Running serial hybrid vehicles with this as the other fuel would also be sensible, at least until we get serious range out of pure EVs.
Initially what I’d like to see is algae used primarily to strip out CO2 from the air, dried and then sequestered permanently. With the right carbon price — about $100 per tonne, this would be feasible. Once the infrastructure to do this is in place, then the marginal cost of diverting some of this to do fuels wouldn’t be that great.
That is exactly what I said, Fran. The part you have missed is that using CO2 from coal fired power plants to grow the algae saves nothing from an environmental CO2 point of view. At best it extends the life of the oil to some small degree.
Algal growth from atmospheric CO2 is what is required.
Algae are going to do the last part on their own. As the oceans warm, massive algal blooms will become all too common place choking many small seas and waterways.
Maybe I’m wrong but isn’t this the theory that underpins the historical creation of oil? Warm oceans stagnant oceans as a result of diminished ocean currents? Its pretty obvious that’s where we’re headed since nothing realistic is going to be done. We could have alternatives but until there is a realistic price on dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, a price that reflects what we have to do to reverse the problem or mitigate the consequences, then we are pretty much stuffed. But the economy will be ok.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
I tried to show how flawed that analysis was by only mentioning Solar PV and assuming ridiculously low CF for solar based on one PV plant in Queanbeyan. It should not be used in any discussion as it has no real basis in fact.
Solar thermal with storage can give 24X7 power to underpin wind and other forms of renewables. Baseload power stations are hopefully a thing of the past as they are inflexible dinosaurs from the Victorian era. We have progressed beyond these.
@Stephen Gloor
The link to the comment I was referring to did not come out as I expected. I was talking of course about the ‘paper’ Barry Brook posted on Brave New Climate by Peter Lang on solar power.
The coal and oil industries can marshal vast sums of money. They can buy op-eds, commission movies, pay shills, fund politiccal parties and spread fear and doubt about methods to mitigate global warming. And they will do so until there is no oil or coal left to burn.
I’ve been a strong advocate of energy efficiency measures since reading Factor Four. However, I was recently introduced to Jevon’s Paradox, which says that making things more efficient also makes them cheaper to run and so we may run them more. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox. Can someone reinstate my faith in energy efficiency?
@Ben
Ben…how can I reinstate your faith in energy efficiency when I have lost faith in the use of the term efficiency?. Its a much overrated expression that has been used to justify many destructive, unproductive and entirely wasteful decisions…
It looks like James Hanson is in bed with that evil aussie proponent of nuclear power, Barry Brook. See the members list for the SCGI:-
http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/
I don’t think you succeeded.
@Alan
300 years of black coal, 800 years of brown coal. Something like that.
700 years of fuel for a world powered by Integral Fast Reactors if we use nothing more than existing stockpiles of nuclear waste.
Fran Barlow: I have considered all the points you make and find them unconvincing. This quote comes from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Fact Sheet on Nuclear Insurance and Disaster Relief: “The Price-Anderson Act, which became law on September 2, 1957, was designed to ensure that adequate funds would be available to satisfy liability claims of members of the public for personal injury and property damage in the event of a catastrophic nuclear accident. The legislation helped encourage private investment in commercial nuclear power by placing a cap, or ceiling on the total amount of liability each holder of a nuclear power plant license faced in the event of a catastrophic accident.”
The NRC therefore contradicts your claim that “No business can reasonably be expected to cover every remotely conceivable confluence of events involving catastrophic loss.” It says unequivocally that the P-A Act was designed to ensure that adequate funds would be available for compensation in the event of a catastrophic accident, meaning the possibility of a catastrophic accident was recognised and provision made for it.
You say: “The airlines did not carry 9/11 liability and still don’t, even though that was far more foreseeable and likely than the kind of catastrophic damage implied in the complaints over the P-A cap.”
Oh, really. More than a decade before the Price-Anderson Act the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima had shown the terrifying potential of the results of a catastrophic accident at a nuclear power station. Perhaps you could advise how many examples there were of terrorists taking over commercial airliners and crashing them into a skyscraper before 9/11.
Why do we let the greatest drug pushers of all time, the fossil fuel pushers, get away with it? The CO2 externality is looking to be the greatest destructive externality of all time (though we can’t yet say that won’t turn out to be the fallout from the use of nuclear weapons). Unfortunately, by the time the bill comes due, the corporations and most of their historical backers will be largely gone. At minimum their corporate charters ought to be rewritten to prohibit political meddling.
The bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not nuclear power station accidents. That example is like wanting to ban civilian airplanes because Hitler used airplanes to attack London in WWII. Or more accurately it is like wanting to ban steel because steel is sometimes used to make weapons. At best the example simply says that nuclear power stations should be designed differently to nuclear bombs, which is kind of self evident.
Charles: “we” let them get away with it in part because it’s what “we” want (which is not to say that the elites would permit changes were they to become widely desired). Australians are largely aware of the likely consequences of their choices, and make them anyway. Look at the fuss that occurs over minor changes in petrol prices. We want: cheap petrol, cities clogged with 4WDs, 24hr a day air conditioning, and leaf-blowers; and we won’t let little things like massive rents in the global fabric prevent us from getting them.
TerjeP: What is it about the statement: “More than a decade before the Price-Anderson Act the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima had shown the terrifying potential of the results of a catastrophic accident at a nuclear power station” that you do not understand?. It is a similar potential with a nuclear bomb as a catastrophic accident at a nuclear power station (both involve releasing dangerous levels of radioactivity, which happened with the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident). I am sorry that you cannot grasp the concept that a catastrophic accident at a nuclear power station could have a similar terrifying potential for the populace as an atomic bomb attack. Just to refresh your memory the it is the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission which said the Price-Anderson Act was designed to ensure that adequate funds would be available to satisfy liability claims of members of the public for personal injury and property damage in the event of a catastrophic nuclear accident (at nuclear power stations). So you see TerjeP, it would help if you understood what is being said before making inane comments and proceeding to ridiculous comparisons.
@JohnL
To the best of my knowledge, there wasn’t one. That doesn’t make it unforeseeable to security professionals of course. Using planes as missiles started with the Kamikazes and with the advent of large scale suicide terrorism in the 1980s it was only a matter of time before people started trying it.
This reference is telling:
See also the discussion here
@JohnL and also your later postRe: catastrophic
You seem to be all over the place here. The word catastrophic is not a precise term. The US government under Price-Anderson thought it meant up to $9.5 billion, but presumably would have agreed that damage in excess of this would not have been non-catastrophic. Let me assure you that a nuclear attack on a city similar in force to Hiroshima or Nagasaki would today cost a lot more than $9.5 billion to remedy. Last I heard, the US was allowing $US5.8 million for one human death alone so the maths on 100,000 dead (and the costs of treating the survivors) dwarf that.
You refer to Chernobyl, and I would agree that this was catastrophic, but here, as far as can be told, about 50 people (mostly first responders) have died, and it may well be that eventually, a lot more (perhaps 4000) will die prematurely. See for example, this report. Parts of Belarus, Ukraine and elsewhere have suffered contamination. Interestingly, the absence of human activity from some affected areas has meant a recovery of local wildlife …
But Chernobyl did not explode like an atomic bomb. It caught fire and because there was no containment structure, there was a free air release of dangerous actinides. No plant would ever be built this way again, or run in the way Chernobyl was.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
“I don’t think you succeeded.”
Partly because Barry shut down the discussion with cries of “Ender Fatigue”.
Solar is NOT 20 times more expensive than nuclear in any reasonable analysis. Solar PV is not the whole gamut of solar power and is not representitive of the utility scale solar power that is coming online now.
Barry got the answer that he wanted to support his increasingly polarised views on nuclear. I am also pretty sure that when JQ was referring to recent converts underestimating the cost of nuclear he was referring in part to Barry.
pressurized water reactors, which are used for power generation in the US, cannot go critical and cause a nuclear explosion. If they start to go critical, it causes a conventional, steam explosion which snuffs out the reclear reaction.
All you need is a large, strong containment vessel to prevent a catastrophy.