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John Quiggin 
It got down to 30.6 degrees in Melbourne overnight. We don’t have airconditioning, this is a conscious choice we made due to electricity consumption, but I tell you, my sense of smug moral superiority was really tested. Very grumpy today, didn’t get much sleep, and the kids are grumpy too.
Makes Canberra look like a chilled out paradise with an overnight minimum of 19.5 degrees.
That nice Mr Rudd’s subsidy for insulation has helped a bit – though I am expecting it will help bring down my heating bills quite a bit this winter.
Just posting this again because the Message Board wasn’t up yesterday – and I think many people would have missed this material… It’s relevant to the discussion re: the heat wave…
Elderly at risk from heat stress!!! Read and discuss
[Yesterday] the Australian Medical Association (Victorian branch) made a powerful plea for compassion, justice and common sense. This statement was made in light of extreme heat conditions recently – which have seen appalling rates of death amongst the aged and the infirm.
See:
http://www.facebook.com/l/935f3;leftfocus.blogspot.com/2010/01/protect-aged-this-summer-stop-deaths.html
Please feel welcome to discuss these issues at the Left Focus blog itself – and/or at the Left Focus Facebook group – or otherwise here at this thread you’re reading right now!
sincerely,
Tristan Ewins (Left Focus moderator)
@wilful
And just think wilful if 100% of the power for your a/c came from nuclear power, then the marginal CO2 cost of running your a/c would be … zero
erm, Tristan, what on earth is to discuss?
Fran, I don’t need to be convinced, ever since I discovered Barry Brook’s blog about two years ago, I’ve been a convert. HOWEVER, let’s not make this another nukes thread, eh?
As a matter of fact, we’ve got grid connected solar and 100% green power offset, so technically we’re emissions free. But that’s mostly a load of bollocks I think, and clearly my purchasing of indulgences hasn’t had the necessary effect, I obviously wouldn’t make a good catholic.
I was aware of your position, wilful but I just thought I’d remind those reading here of the broader context …
Well I enjoyed the last few days in Adelaide (cat-sitting for some friends on holiday), as it meant I wasn’t enduring the hellish temperatures in Murray Bridge 🙂
MB yesterday hit 46C according to this morning’s report, whereas Adelaide couldn’t even make 43C !!
As for a/c: I broke down around 6pm and turned on a/c for the evening. Woke up at 5:30am with cat whiskers on face – no, that’s the beard – cat walking up and down on me, saying in that oh so very cat way that I’m forgetting something, namely to feed it. Get up, feed cat, go lie down.
Woke up at 6:30am with cat whiskers definitely on face. Forgot to pour it some milk, I think the cat is saying…get up, give cat some milk, clear out kitty tray, go to walk out back door and woosh! Down came the rain (I did my laundry last night…)!
Hot weather has left for a few days at least.
@wilful
I agree – the pro nukers drive me insane, and also for the reason I know people who devoted their lives to banning the ugly stuff. You put nuclear power in and its an invitation for a power hungry bunch of bastards to turn it into something ugly and destructive…you are playing with uranium. Its worse (much worse) than playing with fire.
@Alice
Unintentional irony, Alice?
I have to laugh.
Pick one, coal or nuclear.
@Rationalist
I’m glad Samso Island doesn’t have your type of blinkers on.
@iain
If the world had the needs, the population density and the local resources of Samso Island, then all we’d need is the embedded energy in the products they import for your comment to be apt.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled Samso Islanders are making good use of wind. Part of the reason they can do that though reflects the fossil and nuclear resources others are deploying of course.
@Fran Barlow
Then Laugh away Fran
@Fran Barlow
Fran, if you don’t like emerging practical examples of why rationalist’s dichotomy may be self limiting, then you are welcome to review the theoretical position presented by Diesendorf in “Greenhouse solutions with sustainable energy”.
@iain
4000 people? Yep, that sure proves something…
Yesterday, picked apricots ’til smoko, 10am, had a cuppa and went out again with a wet cloth around my neck. Picked for 10mins in 40 degree heat and said to boy wonder (son 14) “I think we should stop” and for once no backchat.
Today, picking apricots all morning in the rain, two changes of clothes despite raincoats. “This is fun” says boy wonder, as he shakes wet branches over me and does pushups in the mud to keep warm. Wouldn’t be dead for quids.
@Rationalist
Since electricity accounts for about 25% of world GHG emissions and since nuclear accounts for around 14% of world electricity, then a doubling of world nuclear generation over the next 20-30 years will reduce total emissions by around 5%. If you factor in less conservative GHG lifecycle assessments of the nuclear process the real reduction may even be closer to 0%.
Unfortunately, the nuclear vs renewables debate is mostly based on how to continue with business as usual. There is no doubt that either or both could be used by the human race to continue BAU and the cost would be accomodated.
What most people don’t get is that we can’t have BAU without increasingly bad consequences the further we go into ecological overshoot. Economists the world over need to promote a better way of doing business. Growth as we presently know it is not only unsustainable but destructive.
Overpopulation and overconsumption are the root problems. Humanity needs to learn to live in balance with the rest of the natural world and debating the best source of energy to continue destroying the natural world is pointless.
@iain
Really Ratio – fancy that – a 0% reduction in emmissions…thats impressive (not).
@Salient Green
This is very valid. And possibly a more productive line of reasoning than coal v nuclear ultimatums.
Politically we have reasonably bipartisan support for:
-energy efficiency
-20% MRET
-attempts to optimise terrestial carbon (ala Wentworth)
These points alone aren’t going to solve very much. And beyond this we really don’t have much agreement, or much clue for that matter.
@iain
I bet its BS – as soon as one these things (nuclear reactors) blows or leaks or cracks – even the most pro nukes will be saying – how could I be such a fool? Why didnt I just volunteer to turn my damn lights off?? Why didnt I put up my hand to use less power. Why didnt I get rid of all the cheap crap in my house that uses electricity? Did I really need electronic opening garage doors – did I really need push button gates to my house? – Did I really need – an electronic alarm clock – did I really need a gas heater on standby?
Do we really need half the crap we have that eats power?
Then you pro nuke idiots want to come in here and say – we can do it cheaper with a nasty subtsance….and to hell with the risks to your grandchildren when the bolts and nuts start rusting or when the government is overthrown for a rationalist fanatic government that doesnt like maintaining the deadly infrastructure of nuclear reactors…
You all have a now costing, in a now mindset and its sooooooo shortshighted it almost makes me feel ill in my stomach, for our future.
We can do much better than your two minute solutions to a “now” problem. We can invest in the future. We can invest in sustainable energy. We dont need it all to be private sector (profit ? we want it now) firms. We need to think ahead. We need to plan ahead.
We need to wipe uranium out of the equations. We need not to dig the damn stuff up. It should stay where it is and forget anyone ever discovered its properties…
The aboriginals knew that centuries ago…but white man is stupid.
@Alice
Level of emissions is a good measure of how prosperous a country is.
I think we should have a few nuclear reactors, not because they are great sources of power but they are useful for producing nifty little weapons. [Note that North Korea remains uninvaded and who really believes that Iraq would have been invaded if the US had any doubts about their not having WMDs.] With a few of these weapons we could strike terror into all the surrounding islands (Fiji, for example, would suddenly re-install a democratic government) and we could rightly take our place as the (US’s) deputy sheriff of the South Pacific. We could also nuke the japanese whaling force just to remind them who won the war, as they seem to have forgotten!
Yes Iain “a more productive line of reasoning ” is a good way of putting it. By concentrating on the consequences of overpopulation and overconsumption – resource depletion, biodiversity loss, pollution, damage to the the natural world which sustains us – the issues of GHG emissions and future energy sources will be naturally encompassed without the conflict they now generate.
@iain
For the record, I started with Diesendorf, but really, you owe it yo yourself to look at the basic numbers and to ask yourself how, on a world scale, renewables can make the kind of impact they’d need to at acceptable cost.
Peter Lang over at BNC has done some excellent comparative work.
You might also read the TCASE series.
See what you’ve done Fran?
F
U
D
that’s the basis of the anti-nuke crowd.
(FYI peoples, as stated, I have solar PV – but a) I’m affluent, and b) the government are more about votes than sense, I mean fancy giving me $8000)
@iain
The reasoning here is specious even without running the numbers. Plainly, if you’re right, then if renewables such as wind and solar went to 28% (the number you were offering for nuclear, the same would be true. Actually that wouldn’t be quite true because the LCA of renewables is likely to be much higher. Really, all you’re saying is that 5% isn’t very much and that’s true however you get it.
The other two questions you overlook are — how will new sources of energy in the developing world be sourced. However they do it, stationary energy demand will increase. It’s also likely that there will be a shift from liquid transport fuels to electrically-based transport. So your 25% number for electricity is very conservative in the long run. You’re assuming development everywhere outside the top 10 emitters plateaus.
The numbers for nuclear in general and GenIV nuclear in particular are excellent — less than 0.5% of your average coal plant, 16% or so of biomass and competitive with wind and solar without backup or the other site constraints.
You could also check out David Mackay’s site. Very interesting.
@Alice
I want to stay polite Alice, but really that screed ill-becomes you. Take a deep breath and consider how silly that looks.
Do you really think that the world’s energy needs can be covered and CO2 reduced to that which is necessary by first worlders living a slightly more ascetic lifestyle? How does discarding my TV translate into the energy needed to refrigerate food in the Horn of Africa or smelt aluminium in Brazil?
At most, reductions in first world per capita consumption could reduce the need for growth in new installed capacity but new capacity will still be needed and old dirty capacity will still need to be replaced with something. That is certain. If the new capacity is really expensive — as fully redundant wind or solar would be, then the growth will be very slow indeed which must mean that coal possibly with some Brayton Cycle gas will continue to be with us for a very long time. That’s in effect what you are advocating — and it doesn’t add up to a low emissions path.
As has been pointed out a number of times the places with the best renewables all have non-renewables backing them up. (With the exception of Iceland which is lucky to have lots of local geothermal and hydro and only has 500,000 or so people to look after). Everyone else is going to have to have some mix.
Consider this too. Current emissions are about 8Gt of carbon dioxide each year. To capture all that carbon dioxide would require about 18 billion trees for just 1 year of emissions. Or you could try some other method but nothing that doesn’t savagely reduce emissions in a real hurry is going to foreclose disastrous warming with feedback.
What is your solution for biting into that 8Gt each year? Ditching the plasma TV won’t be enough. Not even close.
@wilful
Oh I know, but sooner or later, surely, the message will hit home. There ios no other solution that is technically feasible or that can be done at scale at cost and which can be reconciled with the expectations of most of the world’s populace.
They worry about hazmat but as Mackay points out
To ;put this into some perspective the image here represents the containers which hold all the once-used fuel from 30 years of production of a nuclear power plant (185 MW, 44 TWh). Imagine what the waste from 44 Twh of coal combustion would have been if you could put that into containers under pressure. Yet it hasn’t been. All of that is out there in the living tissues of those who were in its footprint. That waste is forever.
And with GenIV the hazmat above would be further reduced as this would be used as new fuel.
@Fran Barlow
Fran, if you can highlight the error in Diesendorf’s work, please clearly do so (or withdraw your comment).
Nuclear may make an insignificant and highly uneconomic contribution to reducing an additional 5% of GHG emissions over the next 20-30 years.
Nat gas and renewables may make a much more significant reduction at far less cost (refer Diesnedorf which you dismiss without any serious rebuttal). In combination with the Wentworth group’s optimising terrestrial carbon and enegy efficiency you have a reasonable and low cost start to a low carbon future.
Alternatively let’s just have a robust and stable carbon price above $30/tonne and see what wins.
Nuclear proponents may probably better off focussing their efforts on longer term fusion research.
@Fran Barlow
lifestyle changes can be significant though Fran – for example, Nigeria with a pop of 140 million consumes 1% of the energy of the USA. Put another way – if the USA decreased energy consumption by 2% and half the energy saved went to Nigeria, the Nigerians would be much better off and the USA would barely notice it and total energy consumption would be reduced.
ref from http://www.energybulletin.net/node/29925
@Rationalist
That’s true but misleading. The emissions don’t make them rich. Activity leading to emissions does. Structure the activity to reduce emissions and they are at least as rich and in practice healthier …
@iain
I will respond later on Diesendorf as it’s late …
As to a carbon price I’d be happy with a price at which most analysts say CC&S would be economic — about $100 per tonne. If people are putting cash into CC&S then we had beetter have a price that makes it viable, no?
Then let us allow the market to determine which suite of solutions works out best. Remove all the subsidies and all the MRETs and lift the ban on nuclear power (including breeders) being considered. Require all energy producers to be stewards of all their waste and to bear the full cost of any disposal and decomissioning. In the case of nuclear, charge least for low level waste storage and most for high level waste storage in the cost.
That’s a perfectly simple set of solutions. If nuclear isn’t economic, it won’t be chosen.
@Fran Barlow
“I will respond later on Diesendorf as it’s late …”
This is normally the point where someone gives me an inconsequential quote or two from Barry Brook’s site.
If you can do better, then I’m willing to reconsider my take on Diesendorf’s work.
@nanks
It’s an appealing thought isn’t it — a bit like the old trope our parents would hand us when we didn’t finish the food on our plates — think of Bangladesh, my mother would say.
To begin with, there’s no easy way of sending 1% of US energy to Nigeria. I suppose they could pack up 1% coal capacity across each of the states and the coal to feed them and ship them across. Not really feasible though. They could help Nigeria build more capacity by charging all electricity users the same bill for 99% of their power and use that money to build new capacity in Nigeria. Presumably though you wouldn’t want that to be coal, so again the question arises — what would you do with it? 1% isn’t going to buy you a lot of wind or solar — certainly not the equivalent of 1% of US capacity since that is largely coal.
At the moment, Nigeria uses almost no coal at all, and since the bulk of its limited supplies of coal are sub-bituminous and lignite that’s just as well because it’s especially filthy. Then again, burning that coal might be better than stripping their forests to get the fuel for woodstoves, except that they’d become ill instead. Bugger.
About 39% of Nigeria’s energy in 2006 was NG so presumably you wouldn’t want to replace that. Another 7% is hydro and again, you wouldn’t touch that. So that just leaves the other 53% — petroleum burning — well they are an oil exporter. (Sidebar: Nearly half (44%) of all the oil they export goes to the US whom you have cutting their energy usage.)
Would the US ship in coal or support nuclear? Interesting.
Out in the rural areas there are some solar projects and they are fine of course but this isn’t going to make a huge difference in the urban centres.
@Fran Barlow
Nothing like sending crusts to the sub-continent Fran. You could allow an increase in the Nigerian consumption of oil and have the USA reduce their consumption by twice the increase of Nigeria. Net reduction in emissions. You could have the USA pay Nigeria to leave ‘their 2%’ oil in the ground but allow Nigeria to take out half that for domestic use as part of the deal. That’s effectively shiipping 1% of USA energy consumption to Nigeria but without the costs of shipping.
“And just think wilful if 100% of the power for your a/c came from nuclear power, then the marginal CO2 cost of running your a/c would be … zero”
Reminds me of ad slogans for consumer goods from the 1950s. The missing bit is ‘you can pay it off in regular installments over x-thousand years, ask the people of the Ukraine (once upon a time known as the breadbasket of Europe)’.
Incidentally, I picked up a few suggestions from this blogsite when renovating my house regarding verandas, insulation, roofing material… Result: The other day we had 41 degrees in Sydney (more in some locations). Inside my house the maximum temperature was 27 degrees without air conditioning or even a fan. What is the problem?
@nanks
There are a couple of basic problems here.
1. We would like the US to reduce its carbon dioxide footprint by a lot more than 1% or even 2%. We actually need the US to reduce its CO2 footprint by about 25% on 1990 levels by 2020.
2. 2% is quite a bit. It’s estimated that to get consumption of liquid fuel down by about 2% you’d need about a 10% rise in real fuel prices that people thought was permanent. Admittedly over time that permanent 10% rise would translate into people making major lifestyle changes and base purchasing on it — so that five years in consumption may have dipped as much as 5%.
You want an across the board cut so to get 2% you’re probably going to need a tapering 10% rise in real prices not just of fuel but electricity. Selling that in the US is going to be hard enough. Selling it on the basis that we’re giving the money to Nigeria … hmmm I can see lots putting their hand up for that.
3. What would that mean in practice though? Does everyone decide to drive their cars only 98% of the distance of the year before. Reduce cold starts by 2%. Increase acceleration times by 2%? Turn off the lights and TV 2% earlier? Switch off the water heater 2% of the time? All 280 million or so?
And do they stop buying 2% of US produced goods and services and not replace these purchases with imported goods and services?
Tricky stuff. Much simpler to just force them to buy energy with all of the externalities priced in. With nuclear, the footprint is near zero. If most of them are recharging their cars and running their households and businesses from that grid it’s still near zero.
@Ernestine Gross
Blockquote>I picked up a few suggestions from this blogsite when renovating my house regarding verandas, insulation, roofing material… Result: The other day we had 41 degrees in Sydney (more in some locations). Inside my house the maximum temperature was 27 degrees without air conditioning or even a fan. What is the problem?
No problem at all, but is your usage of power typical of the power demanded by industrial economies? Can aluminium smelting and steelmaking and car manufacture and concrete construction make better use of verandahs and insulation to cut the Co2 usage associated with these activities? How many extra lengths of copper wire can be forged as a result of your foregone consumption? If every householder in your circumstances duplicated your efforts would that free up enough energy to build a windfarm 2 Km further from the inverter to take advantage of a better wind regime?
Your reference to the people of the Ukraine (why do so few mention ByeloRussia?) is sad. Here was a military reactor built to standards that even then were considered poor and run outside of design specs by incompetents. It didn’t blow up or meltdown — it caught fire. If it it had had a containment structure the fire would have been a damned nuisance, but nobody would have been harmed.
You might as well say that because there is a huge human cost attached to the use of motor vehicles (it’s orders of magnitude larger every year in the Ukraine and ByeloRussia alone than even the worst stats on Chernobyl) that nobody should drive cars ever. Almost nobody draws that conclusion even though it is far more plausible. All sorts of idiots drive cars and they are often drunk and they are used in crimes. It’s one of the leading causes of death and disability in the developing world amongst people under 30. But ban the car? Unheard of.
People take balloon rides even though they’ve heard of the Hindenberg disaster. The Titanic was unsinkable, but the fact that it and many vessels after it also sank didn’t stop people taking cruises. Every year aircraft crashes kill many people but every year people pay big money to ride in them. Three commercial crashes last year accounted for 546 people. There’s also a risk of terrorism but few compare one A310/330 to another and fewer yet ask whether the DC9 specs are relevant.
We can’t roll back the film and undo Chernobyl, sadly. But continuing to poison the Earth’s biosphere and to load people up with coal combustion toxics to honour the losses from that tragedy makes no sense at all.
Has anyone seen Henry Ergas’ sermon in the ‘What’s right’ column of the Tuesday Australian (titled ‘Maggie showed Keating the way’)?
It reads as though it was written as a pre-selection speech for the Raving Bloody Loonies Party. In the two concluding paragraphs he ends with a spray of memorable but in most part absurd bon mots …
“ The challenge for economic liberals is therefore far-reaching. The recrudescence of crude interventionism, disguised as Keynesian stimulus and nation-building; the risk of emissions trading schemes bringing into play a huge administrative apparatus and vast opportunities for redistribution to favoured groups; the seemingly inexorable rise in the power of the unelected, and the need to limit and discipline that power: these are central elements in that challenge.
Ultimately, the role of government, should be that set by Albert Camus: “to do the housework”, not to cram recipes for perpetual happiness down the throats of mankind. But that demands a humility most rulers reject with asperity. Faced with that rejection, the liberal task is to be tenacious in pursuing economic and political liberty, which, as a way of addressing global needs, remains by far the best approach we have. ”
So the stimulus was a mistake? As I think I have seen him claim elsewhere.
How like late 19th early 20th century anarchists or other bomb wielding revolutionaries these ‘classical liberals’ sound?
No wonder the foolishness that led to the most recent disaster.
Crazy, but certainly entertaining. Makes one almost tempted to help storm the ramparts.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/maggie-showed-keating-the-way/story-e6frg6zo-1225818205617
The version in print seems to have benefited from editing.
@Ernestine Gross
Ernestine says “Reminds me of ad slogans for consumer goods from the 1950s. The missing bit is ‘you can pay it off in regular installments over x-thousand years, ask the people of the Ukraine (once upon a time known as the breadbasket of Europe)’.
Well said Ernestine.
@Fran Barlow
Fran – no “We can’t roll back the film and undo Chernobyl, sadly.”
No we cant – not now, not for thousands of years to come..
Its no use saying it wouldnt have happened if Chernobyl had this or that or if we did this or that. You are right the titanic wasnt unsinkable and no nuclear reactor is infallible either and when they fail the damage vastly exceeds any benefits of its use. No one costs that.
We do need a couple of reactors, though, so we can be a ‘player’.
@Fran Barlow
The 1% figure was notional – not sure what the USA could save through general efficiencies and stuff like mandating small efficient cars etc. I would think quite a bit. But they won’t do anything that will impact on business anyway. The only practical political issue for the USA is how to shift even more money to corporates and sell that to the public – same as here.
Fran, @40,
In reply to my message,
‘I picked up a few suggestions from this blogsite when renovating my house regarding verandas, insulation, roofing material… Result: The other day we had 41 degrees in Sydney (more in some locations). Inside my house the maximum temperature was 27 degrees without air conditioning or even a fan. What is the problem?’,
you say:
“No problem at all, but is your usage of power typical of the power demanded by industrial economies?”
What is this, Fran?
I didn’t tell you anything about my usage of power. I only talked about how a few simple architectural measures resulted in avoiding airconditioning and even a fan to achieve a bearable internal temperature in summer in Sydney. Sure, this measure involves a power usage reduction relative to mechanical means. But this is not all. It also reduces noise pollution. I also don’t have to worry about maintenance and disposal of an airconditioning unit after a few years, and replacement costs.
Fran, I know it was late when you wrote your reply but I should be honest with you. It is silly to ask whether my power consumption is ‘typical of the demand of industrialised economies’. It is silly because I am merely 1 member of 1 out of many industrialised economies. Furthermore, the distinction between ‘industrialised’ and ‘non-industrialised countries is particularly unhelpful in this case. Consider the USA as an example of an industrialised economy. I suggest one doesn’t require empirical research to reach the conclusion that the occupants of skyscrapers in cities, illuminated all night and airconditioned for many hours use much more power than the people who currently live in tent cities. So, the distinction between ‘industrialised economies’ and ‘non-industrialised economies’ is a red-herring in this instance.
O.k. Fran, you would like to have the image of Chernobyl erased from the public memory and you want me and other readers to take on board your message, namely to distinguish between ‘military’ and ‘non-military. Not a good idea, Fran, because people have memories and they have invented writing and record keeping. For example, for military see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki. For non-military (in my closest vicinity) see http://www.smh.com.au/environment/radioactive-waterfront-home-to-be-razed-20091227-lga9.html.
Fran, @40,
In reply to my message,
‘I picked up a few suggestions from this blogsite when renovating my house regarding verandas, insulation, roofing material… Result: The other day we had 41 degrees in Sydney (more in some locations). Inside my house the maximum temperature was 27 degrees without air conditioning or even a fan. What is the problem?’,
you say:
“No problem at all, but is your usage of power typical of the power demanded by industrial economies?”
What is this, Fran?
I didn’t tell you anything about my usage of power. I only talked about how a few simple architectural measures resulted in avoiding airconditioning and even a fan to achieve a bearable internal temperature in summer. Sure, this measure involves a power usage reduction relative to mechanical means. But this is not all. It also reduces noise pollution. I also don’t have to worry about maintenance and disposal of an airconditioning unit after a few years, and replacement costs.
Fran, I know it was late when you wrote your reply but I should be honest with you. It is silly to ask whether my power consumption is ‘typical of the demand of industrialised economies’. It is silly because I am merely 1 member of 1 out of many industrialised economies. Furthermore, the distinction between ‘industrialised’ and ‘non-industrialised countries is particularly unhelpful in this case. Consider the USA as an example of an industrialised economy. I suggest one doesn’t require empirical research to reach the conclusion that the occupants of skyscrapers in cities, illuminated all night and airconditioned for many hours use much more power than the people who currently live in tent cities. So, the distinction between ‘industrialised economies’ and ‘non-industrialised economies’ is a red-herring in this instance.
O.k. Fran, you would like to have the image of Chernobyl erased from the public memory and you want me and other readers to take on board your message, namely to distinguish between ‘military’ and ‘non-military. Not a good idea, Fran, because people have memories and they have invented writing and record keeping. For example, for military see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki. For non-military (in my closest vicinity) see http://www.smh.com.au/environment/radioactive-waterfront-home-to-be-razed-20091227-lga9.html.
Apologies, JQ, I used twice the space necessary for my anyway long post.
@nanks
One of the attractive aspects of alternative renewable energy sources is to reduce the concentration of power of large corporations. There are examples where relatively small communities in Germany have invested in waste recycling technologies which results in local self-sufficiency of power supply. Their stated motivation was independence of large corporations.
You people who think that there’s any lesson for nuclear proponents arising from Chernobyl are nutters.
Oh, and by the way Ernestine, yes, all of the Ukraine, it’s a desolate wasteland now, oh yes. That’s precisely what happened. Lost the ‘breadbasket’ tag the year after Chernobyl, of course they did.
Look, there are two and only two substantive potential issues with gen 3+ and gen 4 nuclear power – will it cost too much, and could they be built fast enough in Australia, given the NIMBY FUD campaigns.
The answer to the first is probably yes if we have proper accounting for climate change, and a carbon price, and to teh second, probably not because there are so many irrational beliefs hanging around, such as the nonsense that they are dangerous.
How many people have died from nuclear power accidents in the past 40 years, excluding the irrelevant chernobyl?
Fran @40,
Fran, I can’t help but pointing out that your attempt to influence risk preferences (about nuclear) by means of suggesting an anaology of road and air traffic accidents is particulary unhelpful for your promotion of nuclear energy because:
a) Risk is additive. That is, the adoption of nuclear energy does not reduce road tolls (not alternatives) but adds a further risk to human life and health.
b) Your promotion of nuclear energy to maintain current energy consumption does not reduce road and air traffic accidents. On the other hand, reducing transportation, as suggested my nanks, is reducing energy consumption and it potentially reduces the risk of road, air, and sea transport accidents and hence the risk to human life and the risk to health due to noise and water pollution.