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 
Sorry, that is too much of a jumble to sort out.
Why are you trying to deflect onto some irrelevant request for more error spotting?
This thread really goes to the dogs when people spend far more time attacking each other than attacking ideas. I suspect you wont see much of me here, it’s too unpleasant, much to pointlessly bitchy.
BilB, you’re still playing nice.
But I cannot believe your point of disagreement – wishful thinking, that companies would pay to have their wastes stored?? Depending on how you calculate it, there’s maybe US$56 Billion in US fuel wastes alone. Let alone other countries, other sources.
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/7/12/165520.shtml
It’s pretty simple and risk free for us anyway, we take most of the money cash upfront, with limited trailing commissions. From my understanding, this stuff, once vitrified and stored deep underground in the right place, basically needs zero maintenance. It just sits there, glowing a bit, until someone comes along and says “can we buy it back, please?”. It’s of no value whatsoever for terrorism fears or anything really, it’s extremely inert.
@wilful
Unfortunately John Quiggin is sitting on posts carrying exactly what you are seeking.
So your comment is not appropriate.
The “nuclear renaissance” has been described as “a catechism whose basic function was to answer infidels and sustain the faith of the converted. The result, a circular flow of self-congratulatory claims, preserved the discrepancy between promise and performance”.
The description comes from Dr Martin Cooper, senior fellow for Economic Analysis at the University for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, in his June 18, 2009 study “The Economics of Nuclear Reactors: Renaissance or Relapse”.
His description highlights why those proclaiming a “nuclear renaissance” often avoid and/or ignore facts (including comments by nuclear industry experts) they find uncomfortable.
A major fact ignored is an overall reluctance to invest in nuclear power, despite the huge incentives offered, particularly in the US.
The problem of high capital and maintenance costs for nuclear power was mentioned in the 2008 and 2009 editions of the International Energy Outlook (IEO) of the US Department of Energy (see previous post by me).
Some other examples are:
• a January 2009 working paper of the Asian Development Bank on “Energy Policy” restated its “policy of non-involvement” in the financing of nuclear power generation”. The working paper listed barriers to nuclear power development as being public concerns related to nuclear proliferation, waste management, safety issues, high investment costs, long lead times and commercial acceptability of new technologies.
• in its June 23 2009 report “New Nuclear Generation: Ratings Pressure Increasing” Moody’s Global Research Credit said: “…Moody’s is considering taking a more negative view for those issuers seeking to build new nuclear power plants.”
• in mid 2009, Exelon indefinitely postponed plans to build two reactors at a site in Texas. Reasons given for this included the economic slump had pushed out the need for baseload generation and that the price of natural gas had plunged.
• in early 2008 billionaire investor Warren Buffet’s Mid-American Nuclear Energy abandoned a proposal for a plant at Payette County in Idaho saying it did not make economic sense.
• at the April 6 2009 presentation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace International Non-Proliferation Conference, held in Washington, Robert Rosner, director of the Argonne National Laboratory, said: “Nuclear power is unlikely to play a critical role in limiting CO2 equivalent concentrations in the atmosphere until mid-century at the earliest…” (I take that to mean 2050). “No realistic plan foresees a reactor build rate that allows nuclear power to help stay below 550 ppme CO2 within the next 30-40 years.” Rosner also said: “We are here to discuss the promised Nuclear Renaissance – within the US, this Renaissance has yet to come about…”
The Argonne National Laboratory is a US Department of Energy laboratory employing nearing 2900, including 1000 scientists and engineers, three-quarter of whom hold doctoral degrees. Its mission is to apply a unique mix of world-class science, engineering and user facilities to deliver innovative research and technologies … and to create new knowledge that addresses the most important scientific and societal needs of our nation.
Its vision is to lead the world in providing scientific and engineering solutions to the grand challenges of our time: plentiful and safe energy, a healthy environment, economic competitiveness and a secure nation.
• on April 6, 2009, John Rowe, Chief Executive Officer, Exelon Corporation at a panel discussion “Toward a Nuclear Power Renaissance: Fact or Fiction” at the same conference in Washington, DC, said: “The problem is, of course, first, a new nuclear project is vastly expensive. We estimate two 1500 megawatt units to cost in the order of $12 billion in today’s numbers. I represent the biggest company in my industry and that’s bigger than my balance sheet. So we can’t do it without the federal subsidy.” To be fair, Rowe said earlier he believed there was a genuine beginning to a nuclear revival (mainly due to the climate issue), instead of just a Prague Spring.
Plans for new nuclear plants in North America and Europe are running into problems. Some examples are:
• on June 29 2009, the Ontario Government announced it had suspended the competitive bidding for replacement nuclear reactors at Darlington, near Toronto. On 14 July, The Toronto Star reported that the bid from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, the only “compliant” one received, for two next-generation Candu reactors would have cost around $C26 billion. On February 9, 2010 the nuclear N=Former reported that the recession, which curbed industrial production and reduced demand for electricity, gave the province some breathing room.
• on October 19, 2009, the interim report from January 1 to September 30 2009 of Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO, Finland’s electricity utility) stated: “The nuclear power plant unit Olkiluoto 3 (OL3), currently under construction, was commissioned as a turnkey project from the consortium (referred to as the supplier) formed by AREVA NP GmbH, AREVA NP SAS and Siemens AG. Originally the commercial electricity production was scheduled to start at the end of April 2009. The completion of the plant unit, however, has been delayed and, according to the schedule given by the supplier, the commercial start-up will be postponed until June 2012.”
• On April 21, 2010 Industrial Info Euro reported that construction at the troubled Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant project in Finland has run into further delays, which will cause the completion of the project to be pushed back by up to six months. The latest delays confirm Industrial Info’s reports from the end of last year, when project builder Areva SA admitted that a completion date of June 2012 was not going to be possible
@ “Alice”
I am appalled at your rather pathetic slander of Dr Barry Brook. His intentions are clear: discuss the advantages of nuclear power over renewables in solving climate change. There is no hidden agenda, no capitulating, no changing of the science. Dr Brooks honestly sees nuclear power as the cheapest, fastest, best way forward in solving the problem of climate change, something he is professionally acquainted with and academically qualified in, the discipline of climatology.
Who the heck are YOU to attack him, other than just another attention seeking internet troll?
@Eclipse Now
You are over-reacting for the sake of effect. Anyone can claim to be “appalled” and accuse others of “pathetic slander” etc etc. But so what?
Only trolls cry troll.
@Chris Warren
Ah … instant paradox. This terms make this unfalsifiable and imply that there are no such things as trolls.
Substantively:
PrQ maintains:
Plainly, I believe we do have sufficient information — as Mackay and others show. Really though this is also (partly) the wrong question, because energy conservation doesn’t actually deliver new capacity and for that reason address the longterm problem. While at least some energy efficiency or consumption avoidance measures may defer some of the need for new capacity and allow us to ramp up at a slower and more economically affordable rate (thus costing less per unit of abatement than some capacity augmentation measures) there’s a distinct limit to these savings and the closer we get to this limit, the more costly they will become. Moreover not all measures will be equally cheap. I’ve seen estimates on insulation that put the cost at $200 per tonne of CO2 abated — (though I’m not sure what modelling this uses.). If this is anything like accurate though, it’s too expensive by at least 50%. At the moment, the political class doesn’t want to pay more than $35 per tonne, if that. FTR, I’d be happy with $100 per tonne.
If the low hanging fruit all gets picked and we have to go beyond that, we still have to solve the capacity problem. At best, it makes the challenge somewhat less urgent but it doesn’t get us a free pass.
Chris, I’m not seeking anything really, apart from civility. I’ve made a few small claims, fairly uncontroversial, but no requests. Maybe your reply was supposed to be directed at someone else?
I wonder when Prof. Quiggin is closing this thread.
Re: Nigeria
To address rapidly increasing base-load electricity demand, Nigeria has sought the support of the International Atomic Energy Agency to develop plans for up to 4000 MWe of nuclear capacity by 2025. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and its power demand is expected to reach 10,000 MWe by 2007 – current grid-supplied capacity is 2600 MWe. Power shortages have caused industries to relocate to Ghana.
Early in 2008 the Minister of Science and Technology said that the government has reaffirmed its determination to initiate its nuclear energy program by approving a technical framework for it. This is to proceed through manpower and infrastructure development, power reactor design certification, regulatory and licensing approvals, construction and start-up. In mid 2008 the target was moved forward to having up to 5000 MWe of nuclear capacity by 2017.
This is pretty important as
a) the lion’s share of the country’s electricity is still produced by burning diesel, often in small inefficient generators
b) The country is being put under stress by a low level civil war over control of oil when the roll out of a grid supported by nuclear power could radically improve the country’s BOP and its GHGs.
@Ernestine Gross
really soon i hope
Fran, I’ve defended you before against unwarranted personal attacks on your right to your opinion on this issue, but I’m going to join the chorus and express my irritation at the sheer obtuseness of so much of your argument. Why is it relevant that you think we have sufficient information? The issue is whether there is objectively sufficent information.
Quite plainly, virtually all the information you rely on is contested, frequently by people better qualified than either you or I to assess the issues. Now, I am a fan of forming one’s own opinion rather than just relying on “experts”, however, given the huge level of debate and uncertainty around this issues among the experts themselves, to hold an opinion as firm as yours appears to be on this issue is entirely unreasonable. Your level of knowledge just doesn’t warrant the level of certainty you express. It smacks of Dunning-Kruger.
You’re also highly inconsistent in your arguments. At one point, a few comments ago, you were saying that you favoured a “best mix” approach of rolling out various technologies where required. This is completely at odds with your usual position, which is that renewables don’t work and therefore nuclear is the only answer. Maybe you’re one of those people with “low ambiguity tolerance”, who needs to take a strong stand on an issue even where there are no good reasons to do so. Your apparent advocacy of a nuclear industry for Nigeria, in full cognisance of the fact that that country is in the midst of a civil war, most clearly illustrates the degree of unreality which permeates your take on this issue. How do you possibly suppose that the Nigerian Government, which barely functions, is going to be able to implement the regulatory requirements necessary for a safe nuclear industry? Are you aware of the current environmental, occupational health and safety standards of Nigeria’s oil industry? Do they inspire confidence? Of course, proposing nuclear power stations for Nigeria puts you in the position of being able to accuse anyone who criticises this notion as being unconcerned about African poverty. But you wouldn’t stoop to such a dishonest straw man argument now, would you Fran?
@Tim Macknay
I agree, and as I also said a few posts ago, what I would like in an Australian context:
I’d like to see a scientific and economic commission into nuclear power set up which would have expertise on its panel in each of the key areas of feasibility to be considered — proliferation, hazmat and stewardship, engineering and specification, economics, CO2 mitigation, etc and to examine the feasibility of specific locations. The panel could examine each question in phases publishing draft reports for public discussion and feedback. It might take 12 or even 18 months with a new report published quarterly. It’s a scandal that this has never been done.
I still do. I’d like a level playing field where the best mix got up. I’m against excluding nuclear power from consideration.
No it isn’t. I think any fair assessment nowwould bear out that in practice, nuclear would be the sine qua non of a viable clean energy system. Of course, that could change over time as new developments became available.
Perhaps you would set up the system under international control, as Blees suggests. Maybe you could supply from outside the jurisdiction.
No — I’ve never accepted this argument when it is directed against advocates of mitigation and I would not put it now. That said, whether there is a civil war or not, there is a problem to be addressed. Civil wars tend to preclude development but since part of the civil war is over oil and access to energy, one can see the basis for nuclear taking some of the heat out of the conflict over resources.
This paper argues that wind power can generate a vast amount of power, in one instance asserting that wind power can generate x23 of current electricity consumption for the USA. Promising analysis but keep in mind it is a model and I find the “x23” problematic. Seems too good to be true.
Global potential for wind-generated electricity
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/27/10933.long
——-
There are some concerns about the effects on humans from wind power. This problems are addressable but it does highlight how seemingly innocuous technologies can have unintended consequences.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17332136
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19640029
I have posted earlier a good review on noise from wind power John H
http://www.acousticecology.org/spotlight_windfarmnoise2009.html
It is worth pointing out that there is a body of research on sound and terrain so that it should be possible in the future to pla wind farms suitably to minimise noise problems .
@gregh
Yes you did and I recall writing back with some detailed acknowledgements of the usefulness of the information. Sydney residents are surely aware of acoustic pollution due to aircraft noise and other transport noise. The problem is by no means unique to wind turbines. Hopefully any EIS for wind turbines will be free of the PR stuff that came along with the EIS for the Third Runway at KSA.
yes Ernestine thank you for that – I hope that a whole range of aesthetic issues become more prominent. It strikes me as very reductionist (in the pejorative sense) that human sensibilities are somehow considered of little or no value when they stand in the way of the benefits of others. Typically the aesthetic response is deemed ‘subjective’ (also in the pejorative sense), as though so many of the values of a partial economic distribution are objective and thereby pre-eminent.
Fran, did you read this link from BilB @ # 39 (189)?
http://www.sea-us.org.au/wastenot.html
There is no doubt that current nuclear technology has a lot of problems and we should be doing things a lot better. Even if current nuclear technology is better than burning coal it is only marginal when compared to renewables for being environmentally benign.
The links I posted from TOD on 4th gen and fusion indicate there is a lot more development to be done before Gen IV is up and running and fusion is still pie in the sky.
Nuclear power is difficult, complicated, dangerous, high maintenance, creates pollution at every step of the process, imposes waste management problems on many future generations and is still not sustainable.
Even if nuclear power could solve our energy problems, there are so many other problems with our civilization which can’t be solved by huge amounts of cheap energy. In fact, huge amounts of energy will only worsen our problems.
As a farmer I see huge challenges in the form of rapidly rising farm inputs such as fertiliser, fuel, chemicals, water, labour and many unsustainable practices. The disasterous state of the world’s fisheries means even more pressure on farming to provide food which means even more of the natural world destroyed to feed the Human plague. Nuclear power will not solve these problems and will make them worse for future generations.
We need some clean, sustainable energy on which to build our civilization which needs to be a completely different civilization. The same politics and the same economics won’t work.
Everyone seems to be focused on which energy form will maintain our current civilzation but it can’t be maintained. Not on this planet. We are consuming more than the planet can supply and we are stealing from future generations. This civilization has to end and a new sustainable one needs to take it’s place. Renewables will easily provide power for the new sustainable civilization.
Forget about nuclear vs renewables, if you can. The real challenge is to change the current paradigms of consumption, wealth and growth to ones of moderation, quality of life and the steady state economy.
@gregh
Gregh and Ernestine…really really soon I hope (with the exception of Salient’s excellent post above. Id rather listen to a farmer who makes more sense than some of the number spinning pretenders in here and others who drop in from the dark side of the moon that no-one knows. Fancy me being called a troll by a sockpuppet!).
@Salient Green
Forget about nuclear vs renewables, if you can. The real challenge is to change the current paradigms of consumption, wealth and growth to ones of moderation, quality of life and the steady state economy.
—-
You are correct about that Salient Green. It was always obvious but our economic system is critically dependent on sustained growth. Without that it falls into a heap. The economist Kenneth Boulding wrote: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
Sorry Salient Green but our leaders are mad. I don’t know what to do about this. I’ve spent time over recent years looking for alternative economic models but have found nothing satisfactory. I suspect the problem is much more than economics, it is about the value systems on which the West is constructed. So if you can point me to some sources in that regard I will appreciate it.
@John H.
LOL John H. Its not only our leaders that are mad. We are surrounded!
Nuclear best practice? Just check out tonights Lateline (ABC).
This is the future for much of the worlds population.
@John H.
Do you happen to know whether Kenneth Boulding made the statement you quote at a conference on macroeconomics or at a public address given to bankers? I am asking this question because it seems to me the statement has been made in jest.
The limits to growth of GDP or related ‘economic activity’ measures has been discussed many times on this blog-site, possibly before you joined. To start off with, Debreu(1959), Theory of Value, contains a concise model of an economy which makes it perfectly clear that the life of the planet earth is finite and resources are finite. This is only one of a series of models that differ in the assumption about the institutional environment but not about resources.
@Salient Green
Good one – putting things in perspective in a down-to-earth fashion.
@Ernestine Gross
You have previously stated I do not think, thus you regard me as an idiot. There will be no further responses to your questions.
Well Salient … it took a while, but we got there in the end …
So, for argument’s sake, if anyone did work out how to do nuclear fusion, and we could all really have limitless supplies of energy, that would “only worsen our problems”.
These are cultural claims, rather than engineering ones. Your pleading, like those of BilB and the others, are mere attempts to lend a degree of objectivity to the kind of society you want.
Providing we can mobilise energy sustainably, the more we can have, the better, IMO. There is a whole section of the world who don’t live anywhere nearly as well as we do and if we could get large quantities of cheap energy to them, they’d live a lot better. And if we could produce our energy without leaving a huge mess, they’d also be less worse off.
We are never going to be able to live frugally enough not to leave a huge mess — not with living simply and not with renewables alone. We must find a viable and clean alternative to fossil fuels for most of what we do. If we don’t, nearly everyone loses, but the poorest half of the planet especially. And if we do, and we get the governance right, everyone gets clean water and shelter and food in abundance. It is that simple.
@Fran Barlow
There are a number of differing approaches to fusion power, eventually they’ll get there.
There are some very promising hydrogen power based technologies receiving a lot of research interest. Eventually it will work.
Energy in abundance is very important, if only because it will help us survive the next ice age.
These issues around AGW are obscuring a whole lot of other environmental issues that are in a temporal sense more pressing because the problems exist now. For example, an Italian study last year found that for people of equal levels of obesity the principle determinant of becoming diabetic was the level of persistent organic pollutants in their bodies. Convergence emerges when it is considered that one of the most common compounds in plastic, BPA, is known to induce insulin resistance and obesity.
A Swiss study on ground water a few years found a surprising number of pharmaceuticals in the water supply. The widespread use of antibiotics is making nature a culture dish for rapid evolutionary dynamics leading to increasing multi-drug resistant pathogens.
A study last year found that we are sending so many antidepressants down the toilet that these compounds can now be found in fish.
A meeting of endocrinologists at the turn of the century issued a paper citing that many endocrine disruptors are now found in humans at levels that cause problems in other animals. We are pouring this pollutants into our ecosystem. A Danish study, since replicated, has found a direct correlation between endocrine disruptors and testicular cancer, the same holds true for breast cancer.
An Australian study released last year advised pregnant women to stay away from main roads because the analysis found a clear correlation between this exposure and slightly reduced newborn weight.
Pregnant women are now advised by many governments to avoid eating Tuna and some other fish species because the mercury levels are too high. Repeated studies from the Uni of Penn have found unacceptable levels of mercury in Swordfish.
Pesticides are now accepted as a risk factor for Parkinson’s Disease. Mitochondrial toxins(eg rotenone) are very bad for brains because brains must generate buckets of ATP and ATP loss is a key problem in aging. A great deal of research is pointing to mitochondrial dysfunction as being a key player in neuropathologies.
Allergies, autoimmune disorders, and immunologic dysfunction are increasing.
——
That list is off the top of my head, I’m not going to dig into my archives to site more because there is a mountain of it. AGW is a serious issue but it is one of a great many environmental problems that we are failing to confront.
I agree, we are probably never going to change our way of life. Even if we do address AGW that is only a start. I have no vision of a future society or a sustainable society. But if we keep doing what we are doing now then we can be sure that any future society is going to have a very big clean up problem.
@John H.
Passing over the specifics I’d agree with your proposition in broad terms. It is the case that industrial societies inevitably create new and different challenges for the people who compose them. There can be little doubt that adding 50 or so years to the life expectancy of humans over our ancestors in the early holocene does open us to diseases they would not have suffered. Even subsistance agrarian existence and animal husbandry took their toll. Progress always comes with overheads. Social and technological development enables us to better specify the overheads and to work out how to lower them.
That’s how it goes with all the things we modern humans do — whether in energy, transport, food production, building or medicine. We try new things, discover new problems, and then try newer things so that we can deal with the problems.
In this respect at least, the future will look much like the past as we endeacour to reconcile meeting our material and cultural wants with sustanability.
So true, Fran,
” And if we could produce our energy without leaving a huge mess, they’d also be less worse off”
.
And Solar energy is ABSOLUTELY the only energy source that achieves this. I am doing some research on the amount of cabling required to achieve a centralised power system for under developed countries against the total amount of material required for distributed power systems. I think that you will be amazed at the amount of material required to distribute centrally generated electricity.
@Fran Barlow
Fran – Genuine intent doesn’t always result in adequate policy. In any case I wouldn’t oppose simply because of the inclusion of nuclear.
It needs a major shift in priorities for mainstream Australian politics to come up with policy genuinely intended to result in substantial change to how we make and use energy – genuine intent to roll back fossil fuel extraction and use just isn’t something the current crew seem capable of genuinely contemplating; they’ll maintain faith in the imminent development of economical CCS a couple of decades from now as their excuse and continue to fully support the massive expansion of that extraction. That the major players have shown minimal desire to actually invest heavily in such development themselves just adds to my conviction that CCS is a crock that’s perpetuated as an excuse for failing to act.
The arrival of cheap as chip wrapper solar and low cost energy storage right now would be very welcome here in Australia – actually just better energy storage would make existing solar economically viable – and some IFR facilities somewhere in the world to demonstrate and confirm their effectiveness and safety are fine by me.
“…our leaders are mad.” LOL John H. Fear and greed. The madness of markets. The whole world is now a market.
Have you read Ted Trainer’s The Simpler Way, John?
http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/
Amazing post of your’s above the way you knew all that stuff off the top of your head. I know all that, read about it all the time but too many people don’t know about it. Wouldn’t do to have all these unpleasant side effects of our wealthy civilization plastered over the MSM.
The sky hasn’t fallen in on nations with no population or economic growth. I see Cuba with it’s urban gardens, beautifully kept old vehicles and remarkably good health despite a fraction of the health spending per capita of most developed nations. What Cuba could have become with today’s renewable energy technology gives me pause for thought.
@Ken
There’s really very little with which any reasonable person could disagree in what you say, IMO. CC&S certainly is nonsense — and dangerous, expensive nonsense at that — as it is rolled out to give political cover to prolonged fossil fuel usage. That is the beginning and end of its contribution to energy policy.
It’s worth noting though that in Australia, only about 13% of electricity demand is household. Of course for us renters, or people living in high density, solar PV is not really relevant. Perhaps you might want to bracket some small businesses with household (which would make the figure larger) and moreover, if cars began recharging at home, it might be larger still — but even so the really big usages — industrial scale usages — are not going to be powered by PV.
It’s said that solar thermal might be able to carry some of this load, and I’d like to see that idea tested. If it really could, in practice supply power to the grid reliably and at a price that wasn’t prohibitive, then in practice, I’d be thrilled to see it scaled up. PrQ is right that we aren’t getting nuclear here any time soon, and in the struggle to abate emissions, ceteris paribus early is better than late, even if it turns out to be somewhat (or even IMO, quite a bit) more expensive.
The fact that so far there is no serious proposal on the table to do this here, despite the fact that solar power is a lot more popular here than coal urges the conclusion that the cost really must be prohibitive. We have just gone through a period where the government decided to spend $US2.4 billion on insulation and where NSW is handing over squillions in FiT for Solar PV. If this kind of money were even in the ballpark, why wouldn’t the government have spent this money on building this — even if we were only talking about 300MW or something?
Since the issue of hazmat storage and decommissioning has come up, I thought one case study might be helpful:
The Yankee facility in Rowe, Mass.
Began commercial operation in 1961 and was permanently shut down in 1992 when the plant was determined to be no longer economically viable.
While in operation, safely produced 44 billion kilowatt hours of electricity for New England customers.
Physical decommissioning of the plant site was completed and approved by the NRC in 2007.
Used fuel and Greater than Class C (GTCC) waste will continue to be stored at the site’s Independent Spent Fuel Storage Facility (ISFSI) in 16 Vertical Concrete Casks (VCC) in accordance with NRC requirements and applicable regulations until the federal government meets its statutory and contractual requirements to remove the material.
A picture of the the total waste resulting from 44TwH of output is shown at this link.
For those interested, assuming the plant operated 24 hours per day seven days per week for 31 years at a steady output (which would be impossible) this implies a steady 162MWe. Of course, with IFR, we could have had about 160 times as much output for this mass of hazmat. — ie a steady 25.924 GW — around about what Australia would need. This is what the next 31 years of Australian hazmat might look like.
It’s not so scary really.
For those interested in the issue of the state being offloaded with the costs of dealing with hazmat, this may be of interest:
It does rather put this aspect of the problem into perspective.
And there I was, being convinced the point of exhaustion had been reached of the exhaustive discussion on nuclear power we had to have, according to Fran, when Fran decides it is time to start all over again.
PS: John H, if you still maintain that geo-political units, named countries, think then I am afraid I have to drop my assumption that it was merely a thoughtless moment on your part, which can happen to any of us. I have no questions for you, in particular not on anything in relation to the human brain.
See chapter 16 — “It Has All Happened Before” — in Geoffrey and the late Sir Fred Hoyle’s 1980 book, “Commonsense in Nuclear Energy”, ISBN 0-7167-1237-7.
Interesting to note: the arithmetic of the diminution of spent fuel radioactivity is such that there is much less nuclear waste, by that measure — its radioactivity — in the 16 casks whose photo Fran posted than there is in the two reactors Lonnie Dupre once pretended to tow.
John Quiggin,
I am sorry you plant to shut down discussion on nuclear power. Admittedly it is controversial. However, without it as an option, there is no realistic or economically viable way Australia can move to clean electricity. I wonder if your readers have seen this comparions of the costs of six options to transition us to clean electricity.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/ Best to read the pdf version accessible from the link.
I hope you will allow the debate on nuclear energy to run. It seems to me to be one of the most important debates Australia needs to have. In reality it is only beginning.
And further to the more general problem of energy in Africa, and Salient’s comments this (from 2007) may be of interest.
It’s sometimes interesting to get a perspective that isn’t simply about what power means for us first worlders.
And another thing …
As long as this really is a last post on the issue for five years, we really ought to have a word or two about the historical context about debates in the country over the worthiness of nuclear power and where it stands now.
In the early 1970s in Australia, nuclear power was not a controversial issue and certainly whatever one felt about it wasn’t really closely aligned along a left-right axis. While the principal arguments we hear today were certainly raised, at least until the mid 1970s, under Whitlam, Australia had not ruled out including nuclear power in the mix.
In the early 1970s, the most controversial part of discussion turned on resource nationalism issues — would Australia get enough out of digging up uranium and selling it? Should the nuclear industry be a government monopoly and value add by producing fuel rods for sale?
Needless to say, when the Whitlam government was toppled, the new government took a much more pro-mining-business view of these matters and so the basic architecture of the current left-right division was established. Those who wanted to resist Australia’s mineral wealth being plundered cheap or “the farm sold off” in the parlance of the time actively opposed uranium mining, and sought any ally they could to ensure this result. This was culture war and in the end, all was fair in this war.
When TMI and the movie The China Syndrome came along in 1979, this was grist to the mill and the anti-uranium mining cause got a great boost. The timing could not have been better. Throw in one sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and Chernobyl and the the image of anything to do with nuclear power was bound tightly to government perfidy, nuclear war, French colonials, corporate incompetence and those crazy Russians. It’s hard to think of a single demographic that wouldn’t think of a reason to be against nuclear power. If you were pro-ALP, you were against it because you hated Malcolm Fraser. If you were patriotic or hated big business, or were keen on indigenous rights or simply hated the French or the Russians or were frightened of cancer — you were against it.
I raise this because it helps to show why a debate about the efficacy of nuclear power wasn’t needed for both parties in this country to ultimately rule it out — and yet you would think that there ought to have been a debate. Now we have a Mexican stand-off. No major party will even propose a debate because the other can immediately wedge them. Yet one suspects that in both parties, there is a recognition that this is at a minimum, a matter over which there should be an informed debate. Something like 40-50% of Australians now think it could be a reasonable option. Like the Republic question, the matter should be settled, one way or the other and then revisited if the basic framework or attitudes change several years from now.
If nuclear power is not a viable solution, we really ought to be able to point to a robust body of evidence for drawing that conclusion — and yet what evidence there is points strongly the other way. That we are not having this debate at the same level as, say, the debate over CO2-mitigation is very troubling, particularly given the contribution nuclear power might make to resolving that question.
Any other social science-media management theories, Fran? You may as well dump it all, once and for all.
for pity’s sake Professor Quiggin, show some compassion and shut this thread down.
@gregh
Compassion? Nobody compels you to read what appears on this topic. It is clearly marked. You can read other things.
Really, all you are doing is demanding censorship. Given that this is to be the last post for five years or so, why would you want it truncated? What is it you fear will happen if it is not?
gregh,
If you are not interested in this thread, why do you read it? Don’t you have freedom of choice? Or ar you more interested in propogating hysterical fear campaigns?
@Peter Lang
Ah, Peter Lang, choice presupposes that an individual knows what it is that is on offered for sale. If the thread would be headed something to the effect of ‘The enthusiasm for nuclear energy by Fran Barlow and support staff, then your advice to gregh might be credible.
It’s funny how personal (nearly) all of the antis get here, claiming that Fran and everyone else (whose names I mostly recognise from Barry Brook’s blog) have some nefarious ulterior motive.
It’s pretty tedious.
@Salient Green
I have tracked these studies for many years but it is not my main area of interest. It was during my involvement in research on brain injury that I became much more aware of how all these tiny insults build up to lead to increasing rates of chronic disease. One big advantage I gained out of that research into brain function was that together with my former collaborator we later went on to explore the types of diets and supplements that can preserve brain function. There is some great literature on that and having tried a few regimes I know it works for me. Brains are extremely vulnerable to insult because the antioxidant defences are relatively weak and heavy metals(mostly iron), which drive oxidation events, tend to accumulate in brains. By introducing so many potential toxins into the environment we are making our brains increasingly vulnerable to damage.
It is true that the MSM consistently fails to report environmental news. Our bodies can tolerate a certain amount of pollutant accretion but every irritant increases the probability of immune mediated inflammatory events. Inflammation is now associated with a host of chronic diseases, both as a cause and consequence of damage.
I am pleased to note that you are aware of these issues and wish many more people were informed about the consequences of continually introducing toxins into the environment and long term consequences that will arise.
Ernestine,
Fair enough, I apologise for my former comments.
Wilful @44, I thought about that after I posted my last comment, which was critical of Fran. It occurred to me that both the pro and the anti nuclear commenters engage in advocacy and quote doubtful or speculative claims in support of their positions in roughly equal amounts. I may have been unfair in taking aim at Fran exclusively.
@Ernestine Gross
Ernestine I couldnt agree more…..they do shut down nuclear plants dont they?…Well there is one in here that seems to have a half life of thousands of words.
Is there a suitable storage facility for the hazardous waste?.. because Im wasted and over this post (and all the others that got hijacked by a nuclear fuelled mostly one woman campaign)
….and I think I have radiation sickness.
Its all boiling down to one simple question:
Is it morally and socially more efficient to develop renewables that can provide base-load and that do not pass-on great risk to future generations, than to develop massive nuclear plants that have huge risk and waste problems.
I do not see this as an economic “cost-per-KwHr” argument.
@Chris Warren
It all depends on how ‘economic cost per kwHr’ is measured. For example, if people don’t want to take on various risks associated with nuclear power relative to other energy sources, then the economic cost, as measured in non-dictatorial resource allocation systems, is prohibitive.