I’m getting tired of comments threads being derailed by disputes over nuclear power. So I’m going to give everyone a final chance to state their views on the question, then declare this topic off-limits. Here are my views:
* If there is no better option, I’d prefer an expansion of nuclear power to continued reliance on fossil fuels (particularly coal) to generate electricity
* We don’t have enough information to determine whether nuclear power is more cost-effective than the alternatives (conservation, renewables, CCS) and we have debated this question at excessive length (a fact which itself reflects our lack of info)
* In practical terms, there is no chance of any movement towards nuclear in Australia for at least the next five years.
So, I’m going to ask everyone to have their final say, and come back in five years when we might have something new and relevant to say.
Update I’ve been asked by Fran Barlow in comments to reconsider my policy, and here is my response. If I see anything new and interesting (to me, that is) on the topic, I’ll post on it, and open up discussion. Readers who see something suitable are welcome to email me and tell me. Otherwise, nothing more on this until further notice, please, including in open threads.
John Quiggin 
The beautiful thing about Solar GRLC is that the sun takes care of all of those messy nuclear waste matters 93 million miles from here, regardless of the size of the industry.
The real issues with nuclear waste are the varying decay performance, water considerations, and accessibility. Influx of water can completely remove isolation. Just as pyramid treasure has been picked through over the thousands of years, so also can nuclear waste be reaccessed for nefarious purposes.
‘rdb’ says
As a beneficiary of power from CANDU reactors, I recommend you build those, and run them on unenriched uranium.
If you can get the public servants who must approve this construction to live near natural gas pipelines until the reactors are in service, and then live in the reactors’ vicinity, you’ll find licensing and construction timelines can be quite remarkably shortened.
I should add that exceptions under the above would be confined to open threads.
I do agree with PrQ that the first GwH of nuclear power in this country is unlikely to appear within the next five or even ten years. Even if (utterly improbably) one of the major parties adopted this policy at the next election, and won, the process of discussion and specification, site selection, EIS/DA and build time probably would not permit anything before 2020 and given the improbability of a proper debate any time soon, 2025 is probably the earliest one could imagine the first nuclear plant selling energy.
Hopefully though, Australian engineers can at least be involved in developing such solutions off-shore in PNG, Indonesia, China and so forth. That way, if and when the time comes, we can hit the ground running.
@Fran Barlow
I understand that a site at Jervis Bay has already been selected on Defence land. ACT Chief Minister put out an ambivalent Media Release, maybe, 4 years ago. A future Liberal ACT government will probably fast-track the necessary changes.
I have heard that work on either obtaining quotes, or getting design work for a concrete slab, was considered, by the Commonwealth in the 1980’s.
Luckily, the strength of common-sense in the 1980’s (eg Nuclear Disarmament Party) meant that such moves went nowhere.
We now have a beefed up ‘research’ reactor, so the nuke-pundits at least pushed the issue this far.
@G.R.L. Cowan
How does this relate to the levels of radioactivity already posted on earlier threads?
See |Long-term Radiation|
What is the cost of digging a 1 metre hole 56 metres down?
Chris Warren, concrete footings for a reactor were put down at Jervis Bay at the end of the 1960’s (I think) when Gorton was PM. I understand Gorton also created controversy at the time by refusing to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of the specs for the reactor was that it would be able to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
@Tim Macknay
This is probably right.
I worked in Office for NDP Senator in Canberra in 1987/88 on all nuke issues including the then Inquiry into Visits by Nuclear Powered Ships, and this fact came to my attention.
If the Liberals are relected, expect a nuclear reactor in the next following Budget.
A timely point to respond to Socrates’s assertion that
“Nuclear proliferation has NEVER occurred from domestic nuclear power reactors, only clandestine weapons programs, because the reactor fuel is far less enriched than weapons grade uranium.”
This is disingenuous. Most nuclear power programs, like Australia’s own ANSTO, exist primarily to maintain the skills and capacity to credibly threaten potential enemies with a nuclear weapons response. There is a good reason why states lavishly subsidise nuclear so as to pretend that it’s all about ‘atoms for peace’, and it’s not because nuclear will ever be a commercial bonanza. It should be noted that the current confected kerfuffle about Iran’s nuclear program is all about stuff Iran has done in compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, under which it is entitled to enrich uranium to power-station grade. The fact that the US, Britain, Australia and Israel don’t believe a word of it should tell you all you need to know about the role the civil nuclear industry continues to play in those countries’ nuclear weapons programs.
@Stewart Kelly
If you were aiming for about 25GW of capacity you’d need about 25 reactors (although obviously, as you note, these could be on 4-8 sites). I’d say the way to go would be to put them on or very near the sites of existing coal or other heavy industrial plants. That way the local environmental impact is at worst neutral (but where it replaces coal) positive.
15% of the worlds electricity is produced by Nuclear. It is a mature technology. It works.
As a matter of practice of course, Australia’s emissions will contribute hardly at all to near surface insolation. And of course if we continue to trash our own envioronment with coal and gas that’s our problem.
The real problem is the scope a policy of weak or no emissions targets sends to the rest of the world. If we cop out — which we certainly will if we have a renewables and CCS centred strategy for managing emissions — then everyone else gets to free ride by poointing to the fact that we are doing just that.
The reality is that we can’t reduce emissions substantially or cheaply without nuclear power. Our choices come down to reducing them hardly at all and at high cost, or talking people into paying far more than they seem willing to get there with renewables, and that over a very long period of time spanning perhaps 15 governments and reaching towards the end of the century.
That’s not realistic. If we went ahead today and rolled out 25GW or so by 2035 on a phaseout of coal we would have removed the lion’s share of our emissions from the mix and could argue for really ambitious targets at subsequent conferneces. No government could backslide once the architecture had been laid down and a strong cap would favour Australia.
Fran, I think you need to look up the meaning of “insolation”. It doesn’t mean “temperature”.
Terje #10,
Now you see, Terje, that is the problem. If Nuclear worked that well, considering the time that it has had available to penetrate the market, Nuclear would have been producing all of the world’s electricty now. The fact is that it does not work that well. Nor can it improve sufficiently to satisfy government and community concerns.
Renewables on the other hand are improving every day in leaps and bounds. Just today’s announcements a California company has achieved 19% efficiency with low cost solar panels, and 2 German Institutes have produced a process to use electricity (from wind) to generate natural gas as an energy storage strategy. Every day there are improvements because there are millions of people working on better solar solutions in thousands of ways.
This is energy democracy at work. Nuclear represents energy autocracy. Given the choice of energy independence I know which way most individuals will go. Big business will go the other way.
@Fran Barlow
Nuclear is the lesser evil. If we had more time we could wait for fusion power generation, there are currently a number of research projects underway there but the technology is too far away to address AGW issues. Same is true of renewables, these technologies will not scale up to address all our energy needs. We would prefer not to go nuclear, just as the cancer patient would prefer not to be irradiated because that in itself increases later cancer risk. No choice, take the poison or die.
You are wrong about the scaleability of renewables, JohnH. Do you have any real information or are you just goin on what you have heard?
@John H.
You are way off. So far renewables can be scaled up to 1,600 Twh globally. See Osmosis Blue Energy
And there is no problem with:
– baseload
– waste
– catastrophe
– intergenerational equity
– monopolisation
– mining
Future membrane research may improve matters further.
Clearly we do not need fossil or nuclear. If Blue Energy develops, the nuclear argument is finished.
@BilB
The problem with so many renewables is that the power supply becomes environmentally contingent. Nuclear power will work no matter what the weather is and given climate change that seems like a good thing.
If renewables are fully scalable then please explain why so many countries that have invested heavily in the same are also planning to increase their nuclear capacity. That this is happening suggests analyses conducted in various countries put forward a picture of renewables as a valuable source of power but insufficient in themselves.
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/4138
http://www.energyportal.eu/research/37-all-research/8632-can-renewable-energy-save-the-world.html
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf16.html
@Tim Macknay
I know that it doesn’t mean temperature Tim. What inclined you to think that I thought it did?
@John H.
Even were AGW not a problem, there would be a persuasive case for replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power on the grounds of
a) resource depletion
b) environmental pollution
c) human safety
As you say though we face a crisis that must be dealt with very rapidly. The expense of renewables will delay the scale up needed to address this problem. The world’s industrial and industrialising economies simply could not build at the rate needed to accomplish this and would require orders of magnitude more steel, copper and concrete to do it.
Fran @18: the fact that you used it in a completely nonsensical context, which made it obvious you don;t understand its meaning. I was actually trying to be helpful, but unfortunately you’re doing your usual trick of using a technical term you don’t understand and then trying to cover it up. I could just explain it to you, but that would be letting you off the hook. So instead I’ll ask you: Fran, what do you think insolation means, and how do you think CO2 and other greenhouse gases affect insolation?
@Tim Macknay
The solar radiation at the surface of the planet …
And the second part of my question (which is relevant, because of the context in which you used the word)?
All 3 of your examples there JohnH suffer from a different form of incompleteness. The first isolates renewables into small areas. The second isolates renewables in to types, and the third leaves out one key load balancing renewable type. As Europe knows and is proving, it is the combined force of the renewable system that provides supply stability. And even in Europe the system is not complete yet. The closer is CSP which has the capacity to provide energy at varying rates throughout the day and night. Europe needs the Desertec system to fully balance its renewable system. But Europe is doing very well as is to date. To look for one global solution technology is to follow the death path of all past civilisations. And that is exactly the path that the Nuclear lobby wants the world to travel.
For Australia, the sunburnt country, Nuclear has no place.
@Tim Macknay
Incoming solar radiation is absorbed and reradiated by CO2 and other GHGs, increasing the quantity of solar radiation at or near the surface over what it would be if these GHGs were less concentrated in the atmosphere and in the upper clines of the oceans and other bodies of water.
This shows up in the Earth’s radiative “budget”.
@BilB
And yet Britain has announced the construction of 10 nuke plants, Germany is forestalling the decommissioning of some plants, France is 80% nuclear powered. What Europe is proving is that despite the huge investment in renewables European countries recognise the limitations of their utility and are responding accordingly.
I never said to look to one solution. I asserted a mix so please don’t misquote me.
Oh, now I see where you’ve gone wrong, Fran. GHG’s don’t work by absorbing solar radiation (to which they’re largely transparent), they absorb and re-radiate infrared radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface or from lower levels of the atmosphere. This increases the temperature, but doesn’t affect the level of insolation, which refers to incident solar radiation only. IR radiation emitted by atmospheric particles isn’t solar radiation. On the other hand, pollutants like atmospheric aerosols can affect near-surface insolation (negatively) by reflecting solar radiation back into space.
I’m not trying to be argumentative, BTW – I just couldn’t figure out why you used the word in that context.
I’d want to know that a) nuclear technology is now demonstrably safer than it was at the the time of Three Mile island and Chernobyl, both at the reactor level and in disposal/storage: no more suburban reactors; no dumping of waste in zones where water tables and the like can proliferate waste.
b) an open and transperant legal frame work to ensure compliance and accountability, in place BEFOREHAND ( eg, no chance of further stunts like Gunns and Lennon subverting commissions of inquiry trying to assess a project on ecological and economic grounds, as happened with the Launceston pulp mill).
c) In short, the thing is economical compared to alternative sources and where improvements are needed, some sense that solutions are within the grasp of modern science and technology.
d) Some sort of international regulatory agreement is in place to ensure safety and security.
I wasn’t necessarily saying you personally, John. The general thrust of the Nuclear enthusiasm is “nuclear first then amuse youself with your solar magnifyer in the lunch break”. Brittain only has an option if it invested in the Desertec system. But they have notr done so and now have run out of time. If they build 10 new plants nuclear plants it will be a decision that will haunt them. Brittain has nothing of the flexibility of Australia with its energy options. Germany is still committed to decommissioniong its Nuclear plants, and they will. France built its nuclear industry on the back of national pride and an aggressive nuclear armaments programme which included demolisihing an Island in our hemisphere with nuclear bomb tests, and all reinforced by Frances second experiences of devastation in two world wars. It is highly unlikely that they could achieve the same effect starting from now.
@BilB
This and similar slogans about “autocracy” versus “energy democracy” locate the central foundation for your anti-nuclear pleading in culture. Really it’s an aesthetic preference that is in search of a technical solution that seems plausible.
That renewables simply aren’t techncially feasible at a cost which any democratic government could sell is something you decline to acknowledge, but whether you do or you don’t, others will draw conclusions. Excluding hydro, it is hard to imagine that renewables in this country will deliver as much as 20% of total stationary energy within the next 25 years, which, absent nuclear power means 80% being delivered by gas and coal.
If they do, much of it will have to come from geothermal, but it is very clear that that 20%, if we get there, will cost us a good deal more per unit of power delivered than it would if we included nuclear power.
I’d love to see a cost comparison of the cost per tonne of CO2 abated for each of the energy options at penetrations of 10%, 20%, 30% etc. The full costs per Kwh delivered of the major renewable options (including connection and backup costs) would surely be embarrassing if published.
@John H.
Unfortunately your references represent sloppy thinking.
The first 2 are essentially the same points by the same author, who seems totally unaware of Blue Energy Osmosis power.
The third is from industry lobbyists who do not discuss waste amangement or inter-generational equity. Their presentation is a nicotine presentation covering one side only. For example they state;
@Chris Warren
You’re out by a couple of decades. I remember visiting Jervis Bay around 1970 and being taken to see the excavation – the project had already been abandoned then. It never got as far as pouring concrete.
Fran,
Where do you get
“That renewables simply aren’t techncially feasible at a cost which any democratic government could sell is something you decline to acknowledge”
from? I’ve gone through the costings of various renewables technologies at length with you from a first hand point of view and by direct connection with industry players, but you refuse to acknowledge reality. Your only approach is to hunt around the internet for someone, anyone, who is talking about nuclear with a number attached to it, the lower the better. The latest very real figure on Nuclear which I supplied for you came highly qualified as the figure being quoted for the next US nuclear reactor which was requiring US federal government guarantees and was well above the US$10 billion mark. Franz Trieb gave you a highly dependable figure of 4.3 billion dollars per gigawatt for continuous name plate delivery. That is reality.
You are just throwing words around with gay abandon hoping that the profusion will cause confusion, and people will asume that you know what you are talking about.
What ever do you base
“it is hard to imagine that renewables in this country will deliver as much as 20%”
that on?? That has already been achieved in one state and they are looking towards 40%. Unless you are sporting a post doctoral degree in energy research, or the results of some one who has such a degree, or a highly detailed original research piece of your own, statements such as that are laughable. This blog-go-round thing does not qualify as authoritative research, as quite a few people have attempted to point out to you.
@Chris Warren
But Chris we are still left with the problem that given so many countries are now going down the nuclear path and many of these countries are also heavily investing in non-renewables then surely this multiple types of analysis are suggesting that most governments and experts have very high doubts about the ability of renewables to meet our energy demands.
It is not a matter of renewables growing as hoped for. Expert analyses take such growth into account and they still find an energy deficiency. Now if you want to suggest that so many countries are engaging in sloppy thinking go right ahead but after that demonstrate the paucity of their analysis.
The technologies you mention are to be developed and explored but given the urgency of the situation I do not think it is wise to hope that renewables can solve our problems. It may well be the case that nuclear energy will be transitional and we can move onto other sources of energy.
In my younger years I heard any number of greenies(I used to be involved in green groups) argue that renewables will solve all our energy needs. History has not supported that faith. I would love nothing more than to avoid the nuclear issue but waiting for all these technologies to be developed and come on stream is waiting too long.
I’ll accept the argument that renewables can solve our energy problems when I can find one developed country in the world that has most of its power generated by renewables. There has been plenty of time for that happen so please explain why it hasn’t happened.
If you can point me to modeling that demonstrates the potential of renewables to address all our energy needs I would appreciate that. If we can now see a way to address this issue without resort to nuclear fine, but I want that analysis predicated not on some faith in the potential power generation but on well established facts about power generation today.
@BilB
Which state have they done that in (apart perhaps from Tasmania where they have hydro)
SA has nothing like that even as installed capacity. Their capacity credit counts wind as 72MW
@BilB
Moreover BilB Trieb’s cost doesn’t include storage for 24/7 or connection cost …
John
Please re-read the discussion.
1) I never mentioned concrete pourings – just planning. Another author introduced this.
2) I am not hung up about which decade as I heard about it in the 1987 or 88 informally without dates attached. I make no comment as to which decade.
3) I was not aware that there were actual excavations in the 70’s. Are you able to post a Google map showing the site?
This
I heard any number of greenies……argue that renewables will solve all our energy needs”
Is not a fair statement.
In that time the world with a population less than half of today’s population the world was awash with cheap oil, nuclear got the nod and got only to fail, and cheap coal then grew further to become the energy of choice and Hydro where it was available really added significantly. Also in that time in Australia it became illegal to generate ones own electricity. And that is not to mention that the technological age had not really begun. There wer a lot of good reasons why renewables other than hydro did not get fully entrenched. As there is today there was intense lobbying against renewables. Here is an article from 1937 which clearly demonstrates early bias against biofuels
Click to access 0906_AlcoholMixtures.pdf
As for modelling that demonstrates the potential of renewables here is one to start with
http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/
specific to Europe and Brittain. There is plenty of researched and published (not blogged) material. You just have to ask google the right questions.
Prof Q @31 and Chris Warren @36 – I plead guilty to mentioning concrete footings being installed in the late ’60s. I saw an ABC doco a few years ago on the history of the nuclear industry in Australia, and it included a piece on the abandoned Jervis Bay reactor project and showed footage of the site. I seem to recall that the footage did show some old concrete footings, but I suppose they could have been old WWII gun emplacements or something – the doco wasn’t specific. FWIW, the wikipedia entry on the Jervis bay site also mentions concrete footings having been put in. That project was definitely abandoned at the beginning of the ’70s, after Gorton was deposed, but Jervis Bay does seem to have come up as a site of choice whenever nuclear energy proposals have subsequently been raised (such as in 2007), no doubt because it’s Federal territory, coastal, and relatively close to major centres of electricity demand.
Fran, the document from Franz Trieb did include 24/7 power in the model 3 system which incorporated storage, which is why it was the 8000 to 9000 hours per year alternative (there being only 8700 hours per year. You just did not read it properly. It did not include connection costs but neither does any thing published on Nuclear.
I will check on the other item.
But tell me again how much nuclear is up and running in Australia?
To quote from Wikipedia, and this fits my own South Australian perceptions –
There’s a list of all the farms there. Travel into our Mid North and be amazed at the transformation on the ridgetops.
Of course, we may well soon have an enormous jump in electricity consumption for the state if the Roxby expansion goes ahead (it proposes to consume nearly half the state’s power). Most of that will come from burning coal – and that’s a generous way to describe it – open-cut mined from Leigh Creek. To try to lend some air of ‘green’ to the whole exercise a solar-baseload plant was mooted for Whyalla, but that was mostly aimed to drive the giant Desal operation required to provide Roxby’s galactic demand for water. (The GAB simply can’t handle any more extraction for the mine.) Haven’t heard much of this plant recently.
I haven’t seen much discussion of the environmental impact of the mines themselves, not to mention the huge carbon budget involved. This is hardly an abstract question, because the bulk of the world’s currently identified reserves are in Australia, and the overwhelming bulk of that is in SA (We’re ‘the Saudi Arabia of uranium’ according to Mike Rann).
When the carbon budget from all of this turns positive – if ever – is anyone’s guess. But I doubt it’ll be anytime soon.
To put in a plug for my own campaigning, you might like to see an example of what all this might mean on the ground, take the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in the far-northern Flinders Ranges.
And the rig that just failed disastrously off Louisiana was also a chunk of a ‘state-of-the-art’ ‘mature’ technology that could not reasonably be expected to fall over, was it not?
@Tim Macknay
Not to worry.
I suspect, that separate to the 1970’s, there was additional bureaucratic work within the Commonwealth Public Service.
This is what I heard and seems to match whatever prompted Stanhope’s (ACT Chief Min) more recent press release.
With all these issues areas of doubt will always exist as nuclear issues always breeds secrecy and governmental dissimulation. Remember the nuclear fallout shelter kerfuffle for parliamentarians in new Parliament House.
The highest-leverage energy technology is birth control.
Fran @ #19 said “As you say though we face a crisis that must be dealt with very rapidly. The expense of renewables will delay the scale up needed to address this problem. The world’s industrial and industrialising economies simply could not build at the rate needed to accomplish this and would require orders of magnitude more steel, copper and concrete to do it.”
But it will not be dealt with very rapidly. Clearly the world’s business and political leaders are playing chicken with the consequences of AGW and will accept major environmental damage and human misery in their attempts to continue BAU.
If or when they really accepted a need for urgent reduction of GHG’s, it would be done by a mix of all technologies. We have seen recently how governments in panic mode will throw ridiculous amounts of unregulated money at solutions, and the perceived differences of cost between renewables and nuclear in today’s terms will count for nothing when the exalted ‘world economy’ is in real danger of collapsing and millions are starving.
When governments around the world end their addiction to population growth and economic growth there will be an immediate freeing up of industrial capacity as well as the other resources required for a major build up of renewables and/or nuclear power generation.
If world governments require an urgent change to nuclear and renewables it is more likely to be in response to a worsening of the EROEI of fossil fuels than the threat of rising sea levels, species extinction and mass starvation in the third world, unless the rising sea levels threaten the wealthy residents of Marinas.
@Tim Macknay
Tim, you are not the first to discover that Fran doesnt answer questions…because she doesnt know or cannot answer your questions…hence is what I would class as a pro nuclear advertiser…not anyone with any scientific or knowledgeable credibility on the subject at hand whatsoever. You may however…try “bravenewclimate”, a primarily political propaganda website, as the source of Fran’s quo vadis “comments” on nuclear. She is going to Rome to be crucified.
@sHx
Yes, I remember the time when ‘nuclear free zone’ signs were displayed in some suburbs and there were pictures of people in various cities around the globe marching with these signs.
I am not sure, though, your point about “The Left” is quite as clear-cut. Our host, Prof Quiggin, and some commentors are in a better position than I on the complex histories, particularly globally. Here, I just wish to mention a paper I read today by Mycle Schneider, Nuclear Power in France – Beyond the Myth, commissioned by the Greens-EFA Group in the EU Parliament, dated December 2008. According to this paper, one has to go back further than 20 or 30 years in French history, back to around 1946, to discover support for the nuclear program from ‘The Left’. But ‘that Left’ was associated with the French Communist party. At that time, immediately after WWII, the French government nationalised the electricity and gas industries and these state owned companies were required to give 1% of revenue (not profit) to a social activity fund that, under the control of some union network (details are in the paper). Furthermore, local acceptance of nuclear plants was apparently sweatened by offering cheaper tariffs to the population. Later on, ‘The other Left’ objected to some aspects of the nucler program.
The natural energy endowments of France should not be forgotten either, nor the geo-political drama, remembered as the cold war.
@BilB
And Bilb…Fran wont answer your questions either just as she ignored Ernestine’s questions on the subject. Evasion and avoidance is the only answer you will get from Fran. She is over her head on the technical aspects of her own posts yet purports to be “technology aware” on the matter of nuclear energy. Come now. There is a time to call a halt to the nuclear discussion when it is taken over by blatant falsehoods and nuclear spruikers with no substance whatsoever. Im sure its good advertising for the potential nuclear industry entrepreneurs…but thats all it is…advertising.
Thanks for that excellent feedback, Bill, and great website. I will start following.
Some great points there Salient Green. I don’t necessarily agree with your conclusions, but high probability possibilities.
@sHx
Corrections: Please deleate “that” in 6 from the bottom and replace sweatened with sweetened in the subsequent sentence.
I forgot to mention, I don’t think it is a good idea to confuse the need to reduce ghg emissions to counter human induced AGW with the need for nuclear energy. There is scientific justification only for the former.
@Salient Green
Most likely, they will use the cheapest technolgies — ones that are reliable and proven. That won’t be renewables — at least, not at industrial scale.
Yes cost will be an issue and reliability. They are not going to spend ten or twenty times as much as is needed.
This makes no sense at all. To begin with, government are not “addicted to population growth”. In each of the advanced countries, population growth has slowed as economic growth has taken place. In so far as there has been population growth in advanced countries, it has been through migration or in higher birth rates amongst new communities. “Addiction” to population growth is a reckless claim.
Your claim that renewables will some how be the rsult of declining growth is simply bizarre. Unless there is growth, there will be no renewables. You’d just use what you already had. That would be far cheaper. And if you needed to augment, you would choose the cheapest — i.e nuclear.
@Fran Barlow
Fran
Simply contradicting other people doesn’t really help. You just get dueling opinions.
Most likely they’ll use a mix of technologies
They will be renewables on an industrial scale
Governments are addicted on population growth
renewables are not based on growth
nuclear is not the cheapest
etc
So what – you are just contradicting, instead of thinking.