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 
Conrad, coal is actually quite expensive as it causes a great deal of environmental damage. As for poor countries, generally they are asking for richer countries to reduce their emission earlier and faster than they do. (Also note transportation costs can add considerably to the cost of coal.)
1. Reduce regulatory risk.
2. See 1.
15% of global electricity is produced by nuclear. It’s not exactly a failed technology.
ok, so if both coal and nuclear are expensive, what are you suggesting people use?
.
Also, I think you’ll find many of the poor countries just want money as their primary goal, and that reducing emissions is often a secondary consideration. This is of course no surprise, because if the average person has a quality of life less than people’s pets do in rich countries (you could compare the number of vets in Australia with the number of doctors in poor countries, for example, and find Australia has more vets), making their lives better is of importance. This of course means that if some big company wanted to invest a few billion dollars in a new coal plant or two in, I doubt many of their governments would say no.
Provided similar funds are used developing renewables as were used developing nukes, and are on new nukes, then the future of renewables is bright.
Apart from membrane and tidal plants which are now being built, new battery technology is emerging to store megawatts of grid power.
The New Scientist of 10 April 2010, described a new battery holding 20 times the power of current lithium-ion batteries, and using cheaper materials. A rechargeable battery the size of a shipping container can deliver 1 megawatt for several hours.
The only way nukes can continue is through corrupt politics.
Conrad, I suggest putting a price on carbon and lettin then power companies (and individuals) decide the best way to meet the demand for energy.
TerjeP, regulation in France has been quite nuclear friendly but they have not been able to produce electricity than Australian coal plants, so how can reducing regulatory risk make nuclear power cheaper than fossil fuels. If regulatory risk is what is preventing nuclear power form being cheaper than fossil fuels, why are there no nuclear reactors in Mexico exporting electricity to the United States?
Sorry Conrad, my typing and posting is atrocious today. I meant to say: I suggest putting a price on carbon and then letting power companies (and individuals) decide the best way to meet the demand for energy.
Conrad, your comments at 50 are interesting but my understanding is that Hong Kong legislators are in the process to legislate change so as to improve the quality of air. According to a paper written by HKUST for Civic Exchange, during 2006 regional sources were the primary influence on Hong Kong’s air pollution for 132 days (approximately 36% of the time) while local sources (including vehicles, marine and power plants) were the primary influence on 192 days (nearly 53% of the time). Based on these results, it is clear that reducing emissions of air pollutants in Hong Kong would have a significant positive impact on local air quality, which would in turn improve public health. However, since 2006 things have got worse whereby the number of hours for which street-level pollution has exceeded the danger level in some of the city’s busiest districts rose by 14%. As for nuclear energy feeding into the Hong Kong electricity grid I’m not convinced.
“but my understanding is that Hong Kong legislators are in the process to legislate change so as to improve the quality of air”
.
They’ve been legislating things for ever (that’s why buses don’t idle, the taxis use gas etc.), but it won’t make much difference (the smog has got worse pretty much every year for many years), apart from the occasional gem (like the stairway in the Midlevels). This is just what happens if you live in the most industrialized region on Earth, and that area doesn’t have very high environmental standards. Even if they force the use of better filtering in their own power plants (this is why you don’t get much SO2 now), it’s only going to be a drop in the ocean.
.
“As for nuclear energy feeding into the Hong Kong electricity grid I’m not convinced.”
.
You don’t need to be convinced — it already does. CLP power buys some of it’s supply from Guangdong nuclear plants already. No doubt they’ll get more once the cheap new nuclear power comes online. See the glossy brochure here. As can be seen, this is something they are proud of, not something they want to hide.
I don’t know much about nuclear power regulation in Mexico but In general Mexico is a place I think of when it comes to low regulation. Typically south America is loaded up with red tape of all variety.
Conrad, you are correct in suggesting the Daya Bay nuclear power plant will continue to supply a quarter of Hong Kong’s future energy needs until 2034. As for the other matters it has only been a few days that the Legislative Council sat going through the motions of proposed amendments to “Improving air quality”.
TerjeP, in your opinon are there currently any places on earth with insufficent red tape so as to make nuclear power cheaper than the cost of fossil fuels in Australia?
A good demonstration why we cannot allow profit-driven companies to spread nuclear infrastruture through-out Australia, based on promises and commitments about safety.
Safety Fails
Gosh this has been a painful thread to read. Though since it’s strictly a re-hash of all of the other ones, I’m not sure why i bohtered.
Australia wont get nukes, we’re too thick. Not for 20 years or so anyway, and then we’ll be in line behind Brazil or someone to get the latest South Korean design. Instead we’ll get some lovely niche renewable projects, built jsut to make a poliie look good, and meanwhile we’ll stay #1 all the way on emissions.
yay us. Thankfully, one thing the denialists say actually is true – what we do down here is pretty much entirely irrelevant to what the US and China choose to do. And at some stage, maybe it’ll be an ego thing, or maybe it’ll be an overdue dose of common sense, they’ll be crash-building a lot of reactors. Fuelled by Aussie uranium no doubt. Which we will refuse to have back, we’d prefer it stored somewhere desperately unsafe but far away from us. Because we’re grown-ups.
@wilful
The USA just announced 2 new reactors and is planning more. Britain announced plans to build 10 more, various European countries are thinking along the same lines. There is going to be a “crash building” and it is happening now.
Wilful,
Why would storing nuclear waste be safer in Australia than anywhere else? Surely every country has a variety of suitable rocks. If it is so safe here, then it will be equally safe there where ever that may be. Where the benefit of the energy was gained that is the responsible state entity to take charge of its own waste.
“The USA just announced 2 new reactors ….,various European countries are thinking along the same lines”
Countries don’t think nor do people you think that countries do think.
Before you have time to write … and people who can’t write…
“The USA just announced 2 new reactors ….,various European countries are thinking along the same lines”
Countries don’t think nor do people who think that countries do think
“Gosh this has been a painful thread to read”
Don’t add to the pain.
@Ernestine Gross
Is that best you can contribute, some cheap shot. The physicist Bohr once stated to a student: You are just being logical, you are not thinking.
You are just being grammatical, you are not thinking. My condolences on the abject failure of your prefrontal cortex to ascertain meaning.
Britian is not buidling ten more. Companies can build ten more if they wish too.
@John H.
I was not the student in Bohr’s class. Were you?
@Ernestine Gross
No, but I am widely read. It is a great line by Bohr but sometimes I wonder if the import of it is lost on people. Look at this way:
“It is always easy to be logical, it is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.”
Camus, Myth of Sisyphus.
Being logical is easy but learning to think anew, to find new ways to understand an issue, is often incredibly difficult. At least for me. Don’t know about others. Wasting our time over grammatical pedantry will reduce us to the endless and all too often pointless discussions that typify so much of philosophy. For instruction in that regard, the little known Australian philosopher, David Stove, as some important lessons for all of us. He is also wonderfully sarcastic and down to earth, a refreshing change in philosophy.
@John H.
You didn’t answer my question.
@Ernestine Gross
First word in my reply: No.
@John H.
Thank you.
@BilB
Strictly speaking, you are right on this. Most countries capable of running nuclear plants have suitable storage.
The reasons for storing here would be that we could:
a) make a political contribution to clean energy, by allaying the unfounded fears of people in other countries, obviously after allaying our own.
b) get paid to do it
c) use the hazmat ourselves in IFRs
If there were a genuine plan for a true conversion to low emissions energy for Australia from mainstream Australian politics it would probably get my support whether it includes nuclear or not.
That’s “If”.
From the current bunch that’s “As if!”.
Nuclear is here to stay in the global sense; nuclear regulatory regimes and waste management are absolute requirements whether or not Australia sticks to just selling them uranium or we choose to go all out and develop nuclear power generation ourselves with all the trimmings. Get a serious carbon tax in place mainstream Australia’s dislike of nuclear will probably ease – but over the time scale needed to begin deploying nuclear power we can expect ongoing gains in the reliability and costs of renewables. Those are likely to be substantial. I think renewables are where Australia’s main efforts should be; new nuclear – mass produced nuclear – will have to prove itself elsewhere first.
And would Australia’s all-powerful fossil fuel lobby use their unparalleled behind the scenes influence to advance or to hinder nuclear power? Anyone who thinks the green-left are the biggest stumbling block to developing nuclear power is probably underestimating the deep desire of Australia’s energy sector to resist change.
Fran,
I did not say that nuclear waste was safe, and therefore safe for Australia. What I said was that Nuclear countries can clean up their own mess and not foist it upon others, particularly Australia. UK is looking at the Sahara desert as a dump site, which I bet never happens. Why would they want to ship the problem away if it were perfectly safe.
You just love using this word “hazmat” as though it was a thing. It is simply a protocol for identifying hazardous materials of all kinds, and establishing proceedures for their handling. It in no way guarantees absolute safety. It attempts to do that, but is only as meaningful as the reliability of the equipment and people undertaking the handling.
Making a political contribution to clean energy by taking away their nuclear and radiation contaminated garbage??? NO.
@BilB
Oh I know what you said, and of course you use here the word “foist” which expresses your underlying attitude. Of course, if some countries negotiate equitable and effective arrangements with other countries to accept waste, there’s no “foisting” going on.
It is a thing — materials that pose a hazard to the public, from “haz” for hazard and mat for material.
Nonsense.
Nothing about procedure there. Calling nuclear hazmat waste when it is now a potential fuel source is not only imprecise but a political manifestation of the irrational anti-nuclear power campaign. Clearly, even at the end of the chain, there will remain some materiel that will be waste, but we are some hundreds of years of intensive use away from that.
Your only interest is in amplifying the political problems associated with nuclear power. Grossly exaggerated politically disingenuous concerns over nuclear hazmat stand in the way of roll out, so it’s not surprising you’d prefer dozens of arguments about this than just one. We here could author a win-win situation. In one fell swoop we could render moot hazmat and proliferation-derived objections to nuclear power by storing it here, thus making a massive indirect contribution to a cleaner atmosphere — one that would be orders of magnitude larger than anything we could achieve by cleaning up our own emissions. We could also make money on the deal and raise demand for a product we export. And we could use the hazmat not as waste, but as fuel, leveraging our own role in developing the cleanest energy technology currently within reach.
There is a lot to like about that.
@Ken
Why “probably”, if you regarded it as “genuine”?
Spot on … look at the hue and cry over RSPT and the CPRS from these elements …
The solution to less coal = more nuclear according to the pro nukers that proliferate in this thread…or is that no less coal but with more nuclear? (and we will generously accept the worlds nuclear waste from everywhere).
Sure we will (not).
Nothing about any other energy source that may be more suitable – nothing about ploughing some money in to invest in renewables – oh no – that might mean higher taxes when some are already willing, able and equipped to dig?.
Dull, boring and predictable …even that they actively seek to solicit a change in the Profs mind by badgering.
Reading this thread is tiresome – like listening to broken down records “nuclear is safe” (not) “storing nuclear waste is safe” (not) “there are no other alternatives” (false) “if there were we dont have any figures or statsitics on those because we have not checked or read about them” (true).
The only figures they have are “pro nuclear” because they have no imaginations and get most of their statistics from anti science pro nuclear websites like (Frans case) “bravenewclimate” – a misnomer for “sameolddirtyclimate” with a new “hazmat”. Talk about dancing with yourselves.
The expression “clean up your act first” springs to mind.
Fran, it’s always tricky to give unqualified support for proposals that are unseen. “Very probably?” or “Almost certainly?”. I’m just reluctant to say “Absolutely.”
“@Alice”
It’s clearly replace fossil thermal capacity with nuclear capacity
@Fran Barlow
You saw this, as the next post you made linked to it and quoted words from it, so here you are simply lying and misrepresenting in the service of your position, as usual.
I am appalled to read this politically-driven smear. This comment is, at least in theory, actionable IMO.
I am going to ask you, PrQ, to censure Alice for slandering and verballing a fellow academic in direct contravention of the facts. Professor Brook’s site has a science focus and is very much a supporter of the mainstream science on climate change. Alice may want to disagree that nuclear power is a bona fide part of the solution, but this doesn’t warrant her impugning the reputation of one of our leading academics and who continues to make an important contribution to Australian public life. Will you allow this here? I would hope not.
Alice may be as strident as she likes on this matter, but she ought not be entitled to lie about public figures on your site.
She ought to be compelled to issue an unconditional retraction of this smear and a suitably earnest apology specifying why these claims were baseless, IMO.
@Ken
You qualified the proposals as genuine. You could not qualify the proposal unless you had seen and evaluated it. So in the event that the proposal were genuine could you not commit to supporting it certainly?
@Fran Barlow
And FTR. if someone could show me a plan to eliminate or very substantially reduce (say 80%) Australian reliance on fossil thermal capacity on an early timeline that had a rough chance of garnering public support and which had no significant negative externalities then I would commit to it certainly whether it included nuclear power or not.
@Fran Barlow
Fran – your “figures” have been repeatedly been shown to be false here by numerous other posters and your facts have been questioned numerous times and yet you continue in the same vein. Others have called for your lengthy posts advocating the use of nuclear, not only in this thread but others, to be halted. Ill leave my comments at that.
As for my lying about “public figures”…where Fran Brooks? Where? On the other hand you have repeatedly declined to cite sources, despite being asked many times, for your sweeping misuse of “statistics” for a pro nuclear stance.
Fran, Alice is a nasty piece of work, far more interested in attacking people than ideas. I mean, thinking that Barry brook is a climate denialist! Almost funny… Just ignore her like I do – there are plenty of anti-nuclear people on this board with substantive points worth addressing.
Fran,
You are asuming that the only nuclear waste is fuel. A big part of nuclear waste is everything that has become contaminated on a day to day basis by the radioactve materials. Liquids, metals, clothing, concrete, tools,,etc.
Here is a reasonable summary of the problem
http://www.sea-us.org.au/wastenot.html
Apart from the dangers of harzardous spread from nuclear waste there is the commercial risk associated with material that needs to be monitored for decades and centuries. Making long term arrangements with corporations which can relinquish responsibility simply by ceasing to trade carries the certainty that having accepted the waste on a commercial basis the long term responsibility for manageing waste will fall to future generations and at there cost, not the corporation that created the waste or the corporation that accepted the waste in to this country, as both businesses would very likely have ceased trading.
@Alice the slanderer
No they haven’t. Cite one, slanderer.
You recklessly slander an honest academic and now you
a) get his name wrong
b) attribute a personal connection to assert bad faith
Again, PrQ — will you allow “Alice” to continue to cast these baseless and defamatory imputations? I would urge you to compell “Alice” to retract the imputations above and apologise in a fashion that attests that both are in earnest.
@BilB
BilB, I think Australia would be the first choice on anyone’s list for long-term nuclear storage.
a) excellent geology. There are 800 million year old rocks, without fracturing and groundwater etc issues, sitting in the Australian outback. I’m sure Australia isn’t unique in that, but given that we’re riding in the middle of a major continental plate, these rocks aren’t going anywhere for the next several civilisations.
b) political. We’re one of the most politically stable countries in the world, with very little chance of falling to bits anytime in the foreseeable future. We have high quality infrastructure and the money to keep it up.
c) technical. We know how to drill holes well, and we invented synroc.
d) moral. If the original feedstock is ours, how can we legitimately refuse to have the waste back?
If greenies truly thought globally, they would be greatly relieved to have waste safely stored several hundred metres underground in the middle of an Australian desert, rather than sitting in rusting metal containers outdoors near a nuclear power plant.
The best global solution for current high-level nuclear waste is to send it to Australia at great expense. We could charge an extraordinary amount for the privilege, and with that massive windfall of money, we could afford as many solar thermal plants as we liked. It would be awesome.
And when they all asked for their waste back, in order to feed their 4th gen nuclear power plants, we could charge them again! Win win win!
You have a slight problem either with comprehension, or with your respect for other people.
@BilB
This is true, if by “big part” you mean “the volume of waste”. Of course, not all of this hazmat is equally hazardous for an equally long period of time. Failing a technological breakthrough, at least some hazmat will need to be sequestered for centuries but much of the volume of it will be essentially innocuous within some tens of years. Co2 on the other hand, will be with us, unsequestered, for hundreds of thousands of years. So too will many of the other toxics — like mercury, lead, and even the various radioactive actinides in particulates dispensed etc — associated with coal combustion. The difference is that these will be depsoited at large where people live.
I note your link quotes the pro-dowsing, anti-science, anti-AGW agnosophist Nils Axel-Morner favourably and goes on to claim that the comparatively trivial challeneges associated with sequestration of hazmat outweight the benefits of CO2 abatement. Somehow that seems apt.
Simple. You attach a levy to cover the care and management of this hazmat based on the requirements of each and the volume. I would actually like to see the problem of overburden at the mining stage adequately addressed too, so that a commitment to restore to initial state was part of the deal. (This should apply to coal and gas and other ores as well). This might (possibly) somewhat change the economics of nuclear power in favour of IFRs and pyroprocessing, since these don’t require new mining, though the energy yield is such that it might turn out to be only marginal. It might make seawater recovery more viable of course.
There is a lot of wishful thinking there, wilful. You are assuming that companies will pay huge amounts to dispose of nuclear waste. I think that you would be surprised at how tight fisted business will be when it comes to disposing of a problem that goes back 40 years or more. Nuclear waste is the cane toad of the energy industry.
@BilB
Companies are already paying for long term hazmat storage. The commitment is open-ended. If they could get this off their books, they’d be very happy, even if that meant a substantial one off charge.
@Chris Warren
It is very much the latter with Ernestine/Alice, although what is even clearer is that this poster (or these posters if they really are distinct) is that he/she/they have too little respect for the usages of intellectual discourse when someone offends one of their idées fixees, in this case, that nuclear power is just wrong.
When someone prposes this, then there is no longer any such thing as a cheap shot or even slander, including, (as “Alice” shows) at people who are respected public figures.
@Chris Warren
It is not I who does not respect other people. On the contrary, I respect other people but I do not respect an assertion by 1 person that there is agreement for his or her preferred outcome when there is none.
To say the USA and other countries think asserts unanimity of thought (agreement on a topic) among the people in these countries. As this thread illustrates, there is no unanimity of thought on the topic in question even within one country. Furthermore, there are survey results of the attitudes of the population in many countries on the topic. These results support what I am observing on this thread (I have provided a reference which contains data on this item). Furthermore, election results in all the countries named make it quite clear that the assertion of unanimity of thought is false. Therefore I say a person who asserts that countries think is an example of thoughtless thinking.
Renewable energy,including hydro, accounted for more net electricity generation in 2006 than nuclear power stations, according to the International Energy Outlook (IEO) of the US Department of Energy (www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html)
Here is what the 2009 edition of the IEO shows:
• Net electricity generation in 2006 was 18 trillion kilowatthours.
• Net electricity generation in 2030 is estimated to be 31.8 trillion kilowatthours, an increase of 13.8 trillion kilowatthours, or 76.7 per cent.
• Net electricity generation in 2006 by nuclear power stations was 2.7 trillion kilowatthours, which is 15 per cent of the total 18 trillion kilowatthours.
• Net electricity generation in 2030 by nuclear power stations is estimated to be 3.8 trillion kilowatthours, or 11.9 per cent of the total 31.8 trillion kilowatthours – a decline of slightly more than 3 per cent in its share of total net electricity generation. The increase between 2006 and 2030 of 1.1 trillion kilowatthours is 40.7 per cent.
(Note in the following that the 3.4 trillion kilowatthours for 2006 and the 6.7 trillion kilowatthours for 2030 are not actually given but are worked out by looking at Figure 16 – World Electricity Generation by Fuel, 2006-2030 and Figure 17 – World Renewable Electricity Generation by Source, 2006-2030 and by using the statement that 3.3 trillion kilowatthours of new electricity generation over the projection period represents an average of 2.9 per cent a year.)
• Net electricity generation in 2006 by renewables, including hydro, totalled 3.4 trillion kilowatthours, which represents nearly 18.9 per cent of total net electricity generation.
• The expected net electricity generation by renewables in 2030 of 6.7 trillion kilowatthours represents 21.1 per cent of the 2030 estimate of 31.8 trillion kilowatthours (an increase of 2.2 per cent on the 2006 share). The increase between 2006 and 2030 of 3.3 trillion kilowatthours, represents 97.1 per cent.
• The increase in net electricity generation by wind power between 2006 and 2030 is estimated to be 1.1 trillion kilowatthours, equal to the estimated increase by nuclear power stations.
After mentioning that rising fossil fuel prices, energy security and greenhouse gas emissions support the development of new nuclear generating capacity the 2009 edition of the IEO goes on to say: “There is still considerable uncertainty about the future of nuclear power, however, and a number of issues could slow the development of new nuclear power plants. Plant safety, radioactive waste disposal, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which continue to raise public concerns in many countries, may hinder plans for new installations, and high capital and maintenance costs may keep some countries from expanding their nuclear power programs.”
This echoes the comment made in the 2008 edition of the IEO, namely: “Still, there is considerable uncertainty associated with nuclear power. Issues that could slow the expansion of nuclear power in the future include plant safety, radioactive waste disposal, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which continue to raise public concerns in many countries and may hinder the development of new nuclear power reactors. Moreover, high capital and maintenance cost may keep some nations from expanding their nuclear power programs.”
But the evidence – [See Comment] indicates otherwise.
@Chris Warren
Are you John H? If not, then I refer you to the second paragraph in my reply to you. If yes, then I refer you to the same paragraph.
It seems to me the information content of JohnL’s post is much more interesting then the assertions about how ‘countries think’. JohnL provides data and any one of us is at liberty to corroborate. If you find any errors, feel free to let us know.