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John Quiggin 
@gerard
I am curious how i kill someone with my GPS? Do I ave to club them to death with it? Annoy them to death with the voice? or use the instruction manual to bore them to death?
@Fran Barlow
“resort to coal is more hazardous than resort to nuclear”
This is tendentious. No one is arguing for resorting to coal here.
Alan Weisman’s “World Without Us” highlights a number of areas where humans no longer live where wildlife is rebounding. These include the Korean DMZ, Chernobyl and the Greek/Cypriot divide.
These areas are, of course, outstanding examples of “progress”.
Oh jesus christ, I want nuclear power for Australia and now I have to defend depleted uranium weapons as well? And be an apologist for the Vietnam war? What about the radium necrosis, is that what you’re saving for the next one?
Good to see the credible figures I have provided (unlike you) have rolled like water off a duck’s back.
@JJ
JJ, i suspect there reference is to the fact that the GPS system was only developed for military purposes, it initially had no civilian application. Yet, for some reason, it doesn’t bear the “original taint” that nuclear power clearly does.
@JJ
Personally, I believe that that method of accounting ought to be resisted. One ought to levy the utility for all compliance and decommissioning costs pro-rata on the basis of their output. The funds should be held in escrow so that in the event that the plant had to be decommissioned earlier than anticipated life-of-plant (e.g. 40-60 years) then that operator, (or another if that one had failed its compliance and fiduciary burdens) could have access to the funds for any remedies or upgrades deemed desirable.
One assumes that improvements in technology will continue to arise in coming years, and subject to feasibility considerations, it would be nice to think that the state could reuqire these things in circumstances where the operator would not be subverting to protect its principal stakeholders.
Personally, an installed cost of about $US5000-7000 per Kw doesn’t sound excessive to me (especially if these are plants that can make effective use of existing hazmat or do flash desal), though I note quotes for the AP-1000 are much lower.
Certainly, the proponents of Heliostatic CSP or diversified wind, or tidal barrages will be hard pressed to approach costs such as this, especially when one considers connection costs. AIUI, they don’t include decommissioning costs either. In the case oif wind, this is no small problem since every upgrade of a wind farm with new more efficient and larger turbines requires ne concrete footings and the disposal of old materiel. Similarly with solar PV one will be hard pressed to grant a longer effective life than about 25 years and once agian, all this hard won materiel will have to be dealt with.
You should get a job with the Department of Defense.
@gerard
i have been reading the Department of Mad Scientists which provides an interesting perspective on DARPA.
@wilful
Credible figures my eye Wilful. Absolute garbage. Numbers based on short run costings. Numbers that do not include accidents like Chernobyl and misuse like depleted uranium and political evils like Hiroshima. Your numbers are about as credible as the ducks quack itself and these sort of petty diddling twistings with numbers (I, the great Wilful, cant see beyond the end of my nose and my excel spreadsheet beyond the costs of private firms and beyond their profits…to calculate how much profit some firms need to build a reactor)
….are the most narrow, petty, costings that cant ever and wont ever be able take into account the real costs of nuclear.
You need to get out more Wilful and I dont care if you want nuclear for Australia. I dont and lots of others who are more sensible than you and have a bigger picture than your nonsense costings (or for that matter, Frans extensive “communication perfect storm” of pro nuclear propaganda), dont want nuclear for Australia either.
Numbers that do include chernobyl, and Hiroshima, since you obviously didn’t look. God knows why nuclear power should have to account for DU weapons, or Agent Orange. Maybe it should account for nuclear medicine?
All the rest, emotional verbiage. I want to keep the lights on, I want climate change solutions, you want pixie dust.
@Fran Barlow
You write in response tro my comment “its still an ugly destroyed wasted dead zone”
“Speaking of Chernbyl …
its still an ugly destroyed wasted dead zone
Well not to the recovering wildlife there.
More biodiversity at Chernobyl
August 12, 2005 Nineteen years after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, researchers say the surrounding land in Ukraine has more biodiversity. Some 100 species on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List of threatened species, as well as bear and wolf, have been found in the evacuated zone, says Viktor Dolin, of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in Kiev, reported the Moscow News Thursday. There are a lot of mutations in species but they get weeded out and many young fish living in the reactor’s cooling ponds are deformed. But adults tend to be healthy, implying that those harmed by radiation die young, said James Morris of the University of South Carolina.”
Wow this idiot comment really takes the cake Fran. There isnt a human being in Chernobyl. Not one living there….
Yet plants have grown at Chernobyl….how utterly amazing is that????. Of course they have grown – and they didnt die of thyroid cancer or leukaemia. Isnt it wonderful we have such wildlife diversity somewhere we humans actually cant even live or grow food from or eat anything produced there…nice trees to look at – just dont walk on the grass, touch the lower branches or dig up the soil underneath.
Unless you are insinuating Chernobyl is now OK because Humans who return to Chernobyl will eventually turn into mutants if they stay there…..and all this is great news because it adds to wildlife diversity
Hmmm really interesting take Fran but Im tiring of the pro nuke lobby group of yourself and Wilful in this thread. Im tiring of your persistence and your sheer volume every time the topic comes up. Its ill thought out propaganda Fran.
@wilful
Nuclear energy doesnt have to account for agent orange Wilful. Stupid people do though and there are no doubt many similarities between the pro agent orange camp of the 1960s and the pro nuclear camp of the 2000s plus. Some forms of stupidity in mankind have a longer life than uranium itself.
@Alice
Fran was just commenting that the phrase you used, “ugly destroyed wasted dead zone”, was simply not true.
But no one is defending the Chernobyl accident, nobody has to. It has about as much relevance to the nuclear power that Fran and I are advocating as a 1970s Ford Pinto driven by a blind drunk man late on a Saturday night versus a Volvo estate driving to school.
If you’re taking “pro-nuclear camp” to mean those supportive of nuclear weapons use, then there might be a similarity with the pro-agent orange camp of the 60s. Nuclear power generation is not nuclear weapons.
Presumably someone has done the maths to see how many accidents it takes for nuclear (at coal replacement levels) to exceed coal wrt to deaths and decline in ‘quality years’. As we know continued use of coal at current outputs is incredibly toxic it would not surprise me to find that nuclear is safer in the shortish term. How it stacks up after say 1,000 to 10,000 years given global usage and some reasonable assumption about accidents with concomitant environmental write-off I don’t know.
And it isn’t that important because neither coal nor nuclear are necessary and nuclear is only attractive if you are looking for a plug and play business as usual transition away from coal/oil/gas as energy supply.
Personally I’d rather see renewables for a range of reasons – one of which Ernestine touched on in terms of decentralisation and autonomy – another being the expansion of research across a much broader range of disciplines than that required by fossil fuels or nuclear. It follows reasonably that the potential for spinoff domains of interest is greater.
Australia has enough potential for renewable resources to take over from coal. But I’m not sure a place like China could, and still maintain its pace of economic development. If China were to make a rapid switch to nuclear power and away from coal, the net effect long term effect would be to save the lives and health of millions of people. Speaking of China, if its cancers, birth defects and poisonous waste that is of concern, when are we going to start treating all our cheap manufactured imports with the same horror we reserve for the nuclear bogeyman?
@gerard
As a purely technical question, Australia has enough, but the cost of making indutrial-scale use of these would be prohibitive. Some places don’t have the technical capacity but the difference is moot.
How would Japan go using renewables … do you suppose?
Japan would be an immediate beneficiary of an all nuclear power grid in China because its airmass would be radically cleaner.
Except that when you talk about “plug and play” you really mean that if the government was to make a decision immediately, it would only take 10-12 years for the first plant to be operational. It would take at least 3 years to do necessary siting and environmental approval. 2 years of procurement and contract negotiation. 7 years to build and commission.
So assuming the decision is made immediately (which it wont be) then we could expect to have the first plant online in 2022. With a few more to follow after that. Doesn’t really sound like a “plug and play” solution at all.
seven years to build? Why? China is building them in three years. And why would you need to run contract negotiation after environmental approval, they can be run concurrently.
but yeah, these things do take a while to build, and given community feeling, it would be ten years or more. As a matter of fact, I don’t think any nukes will be built in Australia before 2030, due to opposition. Until then, we’ll remain the dirtiest nation on earth, while struggling with brown-outs and saddling ourselves with hideously expensive and unreliable renewable ‘solutions’.
@wilful
Since (all credible) government studies find that nuclear is one of the most prohibitively expensive options, what adjectives do you use to describe the cost of nuclear? Hideously, hideously expensive? Any solution that relies on discounting significant costs to future generations should also be seriously questioned (on that basis alone).
You are correct in identifying that the ramp up time for nuclear (plus regulatory hurdles and public opposition) mean that it isn’t a solution for the next 20 years.
Since we need GHG reductions in the order of 40% in this time frame, we need to be clear that nuclear isn’t a serious, nor effective, solution over the short to mid term.
Credible alternative solutions are outlined by a number of people, including Diesendorf (and despite attempts at obfuscation, appear perfectly valid). Regardless, the exact make up of any final energy mix will become clearer when we get a robust and stable carbon price above $30/tonne.
Nuclear proponents are possibly better off focusing on research in fusion.
“You are correct in identifying that the ramp up time for nuclear (plus regulatory hurdles and public opposition) mean that it isn’t a solution for the next 20 years.”
You can say the same for any large-scale renewable scheme.
@Jarrah
No you can’t.
Significant GHG reductions, with sustainable energy solutions over the next 20 years, is perfectly feasible. In fact, even over the next ten years it is quite feasible.
Click to access GHsolutionsWithSustEnLatest.pdf
I challenge you to point out any significant flaw in this position.
@iain
the money goes to the wrong people?
@nanks
Of course, like going to the nuclear crowd. Or the standard BAU apologists. But there aren’t any other good options but to keep advocating for reasonable responses.
@nanks
Id say thats it Nanks – big Coal wouldnt like it at all..
@iain
Neither would any new potential big diggers of uranium.
Puts a whole new slant on the old Ozzie expression “digger” doesnt it?
Maybe its time we stopped digging our way to riches and started manufacturing and producing and building our way to economic health with less environmental vandalism (oh we are so good at it here in Australia – even when are emitting madly we are also giving other nations a helping shovel or container load to dig their own graves) with some large scale sustainable clean energy infrastructure. Hmm – maybe we need to go back to the 1950s for that. Managed a hydro scheme back then did we? Wow. Thats impressive with a population half the size and unemployment low.
But these days who really is in charge of vision….big BHPs vision of its profits…besides cant BHP sue governments for interfering with their free market rights? One too many publically constructed windfarms and they get the cheque book out and start suing for yours and my taxes?
I dont see much hope we will get any emmissions reduced actually. First we have to face facts about past atrocious policies that ceded the most heavy weight power to the private sector and corporate lords. I never minded the private sector having a good healthy business environment – I just object to them using bully boy tactics over the rest of us and the government.
We need nuclear power for all these submarines the DoD is building. It is ridiculous in this day and age to have submarines that are not nuclear powered. And if you are going to have submarines, where are the nuclear missiles. Its a poor submarine that doesn’t have a fuel complement of ICBMs. What if Fiji starts to get stroppy?
@iain
iain – thanks btw for the most refreshing sensible post in this godforsaken thread all day.
Also, we need depleted uranium. Its twice as dense as lead and its armour piercing properties are unrivalled. Without using armour piercing shell the last Iraqi war would have taken as much as half an hour longer to have won. Maybe it would have been a half hour more of compelling TV viewing but that is not the point. It just wouldn’t have been as shock and awe-ee.
@Freelander
What if Fiji starts to get stroppy? (LOL Freelander)….problem solved? One nuke and thats the end of Kava ceremonies forever. You see those nuke reactors have a variety of productive uses dont they, according to this dismal lot in here.
Iain, you give political and technical reasons why nuclear will take time. Large-scale renewables face different delaying factors, but they include political (1) and technical (2) ones. I put it to you that these would mean a similar deployment timescale to nuclear.
(1) Overcoming entrenched fossil fuel interests, convincing the voters to spend more on electricity and local goods that have electricity as an input, overcoming NIMBYism with plant and line placement, etc.
(2) Sourcing sufficient silicon for PV, scaling up geothermal from its current small experimental size, finding enough spots for wind turbines and then building them, building new gas and thermal power plants, upgrading powerlines, etc.
Re Diesendorf, unfortunately you have given me a link to a Powerpoint presentation instead of something substantive, so I’ve had to glean what I can from it. Thus I may be misinterpreting his proposals. Having said that, I’m happy to give you my opinion on them.
The emphasis on energy efficiency is something I applaud, and something often left out of these discussions. My preferred carbon tax would provide a big impetus towards greater energy efficiency. I’m also a fan of solar, biomass, and geothermal solutions. It might not be clear from my defence of nuclear, but I’d prefer we only used renewables for our power. So I’m glad we have many people pushing for their implementation, including Diesendorf.
However, his criticisms of nuclear are poor (p. 5), his scenario includes no land clearing (though I suppose you could get net-no-clearance with enough tree planting), a reduction in aluminium smelting, something to do with agriculture (?), and apparently a reduction in population (p. 9).
To cut to the chase – I don’t favour nuclear. But I also don’t have an irrational fear of it. It has risks, but everything does. It has costs, but everything does. What I’m most concerned with is that all risks and costs are borne by those who will benefit. The precise make-up of our power sources is beside the point, and I don’t really care which ends up being the cheapest and most effective. Put a price on the currently-unpriced pollutant that is CO2, and let our proven system find the best solution.
@Jarrah
That’s pretty much my position. I’m less in favour of nuclear than I’m in favour of what suite of solutions would most closely approach the optimal solution, or to put it as Professor Mackay does, I’m not in favour of nuclear, but I am in favour of maths.
If there are places where the natural advantages of what we think of as renewables are significant enough to make it the best option, then by all means let’s have these.
Iain @9, p2 provided a reference by a credible source, Diesenberg, UNSW.
nanks @13, p3 pointed to positive externalities from renewable energy such as research involving possibly many disciplines, which in turn may result in spin-offs for local enterprises.
gerard @14, p3, introduced a possible scenario regarding China’s decisions.
Now it is interesting from an economic perspective.
Suppose China were to switch to nuclear quickly. This would result in a reduction of coal exports from Australia. But it is exports of coal and iron ore which provides a significant source of foreign exchange and foreign exchange would be required to pay for nuclear plants since Australia hasn’t got its own tested nuclear technology.
By contrast, developing a variety of renewable energy technologies provides not only meaningful work (job satisfaction) but also reduces the risk of financial macro-economic distress.
The ABC program, landline, has shown several examples of how land-owners are enthusiastic about changing their methods of production to more ecologically sustainable methods which turn out to be also financially viable.
My casual observations from conversations with real life individuals indicate that architects, builders, housewives and the proverbial ‘average family’ are quite excited about learning more about the environmental implications of their activities.
At Left Focus today: Martin Luther King Jr – Born Jan 15th 1929; murdered April 4th 1968 – Civil rights leader and activist for peace, justice and human rights… On his birthday – trying not to lose the real man – and his real message…
see:
http://leftfocus.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-his-birthday-jan-15th-trying-not-to.html
@Ernestine Gross
[ugh it’s Diesendorf] He’s from this village rather than this peak 😉
Amusing that you can’t get the name of this important person right even when it’s in the thread.
Breathtaking! How could anyone who is seriously interested in reducing world emissions, not to mention the immediate damage to ecosystem services and the amenity of humans in the footprint of coal harvest and combustion be less enthusiastic about the radical and rapid cut in emissions implied above than Australia’s balance of trade position?
If I had Alice’s methodology, I’d now be wondering out loud whom you were working for. As it stands though I will observe that this is a level of parochialism that would redden the face of Barnaby Joyce. If China reduced their combustion of coal to near zero then the singler biggest argument the deniers have for not reducing Australian or US emissions (fugitive emissions) would vanish. The US would have to follow suit and so would India. What Australia managed in response would be almost entirely moot because a huge step forward towards combating environmental disaster would have been made. That said, if China built nuclear facilities on that scale then the marginal cost to Australia of adopting that technology would fall dramatically (perhaps to as little as $1100 per KW), so the argument about what the economy would afford would be silly. Nukes really would be cheaper than coal, even without a carbon price.
@iain
Not directly, but implicitly, since nobody here has tried to show that any technology apart from nuclear can (on the timiline neded and at ac ceptable cost) do the job now being done by coal (even allowing that that job might, ceteris paribus be less with some demand management, energy efficiency etc). You are paying lip service to renewables but in practice it is a fantasy and must be deemed so at least until someone can show that it is a plausible way of meeting projected demand in the most plausible scenarios when we need it to happen. Until that time, it is really cover for something very much like business as usual. While it may be more culturally felicitous to say “I’m for renewables” instead of “what ya gonna do?” stripped of the handwaving, that is what it is. One might as well say things such as “one should never abandon hope” for all the difference it makes.
This is hugely revealing. You, a proponent of technologies that are utterly unlikely to work at the scale needed anytime in the foreseeable future invite us to become invested in technologies that are even less likely in that time to prove feasible. Fusion was about 30-50 years away from being feasible 30-50 years ago and it still is What’s next? A pot of free energy at the end of the rainbow?
Also really revealing is this. Why would one who thinks GenIV is out of the question prefer nuclear fusion to nuclear fission. GenIV contributes as much new hazmat as fusion and is far closer to commercial realisation. You also overlook the fact that opposition to nuclear power is based, as we see in Alice’s case, on ill-informed fears of anything associated with the nuclear brand. Fusion wouldn’t change that even were it available.
And what might one do with a “fusion” weapon … hmm?
@Fran Barlow
Fran @40,
Yes I spelt the name of Dr Diesendorf wrong. Since I provided the reference on this thread there was no harm done.
I am happy to have provided you with an opportunity to finally come up with a good joke (village rather than peak).
I don’t work for anybody. But, since you are so interested in generating innuendos about people, I am asking you: Who do you work for? This is not a rhetorical question.
@Ernestine Gross
Plainly, you don’t read very carefully. I didn’t imply you worked for anyone. I said:
Alice implied that I was one of a number of people working for someone merely on the basis of my belief that nuclear power was worth evaluating as part of the mix.
Whom do I work for? The DET (NSW), as a high school teacher.
@Fran Barlow
Correction:
Fran @36
1. Yes I spelt the name of Dr Diesendorf wrong. Since I provided the reference on this thread there was no harm done.
I am happy to have provided you with an opportunity to finally come up with a good joke (village rather than peak).
I don’t work for anybody. But, since you are so interested in generating innuendos about people, I am asking you: Who do you work for? This is not a rhetorical question.
2. Fran, you have again changed the topic from discussion alternative energy sources to only 2 alternatives, coal and nuclear. I have not talked about coal at all but about nuclear versus renewable. To make it clear to you, in the current policy debate, the term renewable refers to sources other than fossil fuel and nuclear.
3. My post was related to three specifed posts. None of them related to you. There is a reason.
4. What are your qualifications? This is also not a rethorical question.
@Fran Barlow
“If I had Alice’s methodology, I’d now be wondering out loud whom you were working for. …
Well, Fran, you were wondering out loud!
@Jarrah
Jarrah @30 says: “It has costs, but everything does. What I’m most concerned with is that all risks and costs are borne by those who will benefit. The precise make-up of our power sources is beside the point, and I don’t really care which ends up being the cheapest and most effective. Put a price on the currently-unpriced pollutant that is CO2, and let our proven system find the best solution.”
Well, Jarrah, there is a fundamentally important questions I’d like you to answer:
What are the risk preferences of future generations?
@Ernestine Gross
“What are the risk preferences of future generations?”
Unknowable. But likely to be similar to present generations. I fail to see the fundamental importance of this question.
@Ernestine Gross
I was making a rhetorical point against Alice and underlining the perversity of the point you were making.
Modestly well-educated and thoughtful citizen with an active interest in social justice and human welfare who has made it her business to systematically follow discussions by experts on this and related topics.
@Jarrah
Yes they are likely to be similar, but exactly how similar and what they make of the data from which these preferences derive and the extent to which these will be manifest in governance all have values that, even if they were all similar to now could generate sharply differing conclusions. Ernestine’s question is therefore moot.
Gimme that old time religion …
Haiti disaster blamed on pact with devil
Also calls earthquake a blessing in disguise
From the man who popularised AIDS as god’s plague …
Fran,
Yes, my question is “moot” as in “unresolved”.
Therefore most if not all of your ‘stuff’ is empty pontification – you are out of your depth all over the place.
To prove my conclusion wrong, please provide references for all your assertions throughout this thread. By reference I mean author, publication, date.
IMO, you owe an apology to Alice (and to Terje regarding ‘feasible’; his usage of the term is perfectly consistent with the usage in economics).
I note you are not prepared to state your qualification.
.
@Ernestine Gross
No Ernestine, it’s moot as necessarily unquantifiable when it stands to be actionable.
Noted, you don’t say what for …
His usage of ‘feasible’ in the context of public policy or organisational behaviour was vacuous …
The rest of your claims are merely emty breastbeating …
oops … [empty]
@Ernestine Gross
I agree Fran is over her depth all over the place Ernestine…I just not quite sure why Fran has become such an avid pro nuclear advocate and I question whether it her political affiliations rather than her true beliefs…perhaps modestly well educated is a description that fits well.
There is a lot of that in here….
@Alice
I’m an advocate of what can work Alice. So far nobody has shown that any suite of options not including nuclear power can work, nor has anyone shown that the large parts of the world that use nuclear power will abandon it.
Show me a suite of options not including nuclear power that meets feasibility on a global scale and is not simply wishful thinking and I will be as keen as that as any other simialrly plausible set of options.
So far though, all I’ve read here from those with a bee in their bonnet about nuclear power being unthinkable is special and specious pleading agains a fair evaluation of the options. You are arguing, de facto for business as usual because nobody in a position to make decisions on these matters will deprive their populaces of the power they demand or choose options that aren’t economically viable for the people putting up the cash or incurring the liability.
For those in power now, the world kind of works and the fact that it may become catastrophically bad in the foreseeable future is not something that bothers them greatly. That setting will probably hurt most people but yet you and Ernestine spend your time prattling about things that don’t have the proverbial snowflake’s chance in hell of flying and hurling moraliostic abuse at anyone who says otherwise.
That conduct is a matter for you, but you have not earned the right to describe your conduct as rational. It isn’t. It’s visceral and emotional.
I don’t like coal and I’d like to see its use ended ASAP. Note though the “P”. If coal burning in a given setting is less nasty than all other possibilities, I’m for it until it isn’t. That’s how rational people work stuff out.
Now that India is directing harsh words toward us, we need to match their nuclear capability. With our growing fleet of submarines (suitably modified) we can regain some international respect.
And most importantly….
Australian cricketers ought to be free to humiliate foreign teams unmolested!
@Fran Barlow
Pat Robertson has it all wrong. I have it on very good authority, that this particular ‘act of God’ was the unintended consequence of someone, undeserving, praying to Mary MacKillop.
Question is, Will this negate one of her two miracles?