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 
“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.”
No, Tim Macknay, you haven’t been unfair in taking aim at Fran exclusively. I suggest that you have not checked your impression (“it occurred to me..”) against the data.
The winner of this debate is John L. He has provided references. None of the content in the references I’ve checked so far has been disproved or even challenged. John L. did not object when I asked for others to check his references. By contrast, there is no evidence that Fran Barlow and her support staff have any reliable source material. Social science-media management theory does not count.
I have posted one reference on the topic and one in my academic research area. The content of these references has not been disproved; it hasn’t even been challenged.
I am not an advocate on this topic. However I plead for a tax on PR-media management activities and I propose that the tax revenue is made available to support talented novelists.
@Chris Warren
That’s a question that demands first evidence and then an ethical judgement.
1. Are there renewables that can in practice provide baseload?
In Australia, this might describe some geothermal, and quite possibly solar thermal, though that’s less clear as assumptions about storage and insolation patterns are called for
AND
2. If so, can we afford them at the scale needed? If not then what may be possible in engineering terms may never see the light of day, or see it much too late to do what we want it to do and thus imposing a different and greatly more dangerous legacy on future generations.
Nuclear plants do not have “huge” risk and waste problems relative to thermal fossil plants. On the contrary the relative size of the problem is tiny as I showed above. Not only that, nuclear plants per GWh don’t have anything like the morbidity of the coal or gas fuel cycle. One can scarcely go a couple of weeks without a major coal mine accident somewhere — typically, through gas explosions. The most recent one in Russia has not only killed about 60 people, and trapped a bunch more, about 19 of whom were rescue workers. Then there are the diseases associated with coal mining, the fact that in many places children are sent down the mines, the coal dust in transport and then of course the suffocating and toxic effluent that emerges from the coal plant — which is orders of magnitude larger in volume than what is visible at a nuclear waste dump and in part radioactive too.
Unless you can show that renewables can and will likely in practice foreclose this damage by permitting the retirement of this fossil capacity then advocacy of renewables is disingenuous and indirectly, to take political responsibility for all of the damage and all of the legacy of the non-retired fossil capacity.
I say we should establish with certainty which means can in practice meet these tests on timelines of use to us and choose them, whatever they are. Don’t you agree?
I still say the winner of the debate is John L for reasons given above.
OK JQ
This calls for a serious message…
Weve got five years, stuck on my eyes
We’ve got five years, what a surprise
We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot,
We’ve got five years, thats all we’ve got.
Enough already. Curtains. Exit. Goodbye Fran and find a new topic to badger us with….
Fran,
There is any amount of evidence that renewables provide base load power beyond any doubt from both European and US governemnt agencies. There is no ethical consideration involved with the use of solar energy, basic commonsense.
Simple conceptual test,
Can we live with solar radiation alone? Yes.
Can we live with earth sourced nuclear radiation alone? No.
Can we live without solar radiation? No.
Can we live without earth sourced nuclear radiation? Yes.
1. Renewable baseload, PROVEN. Insolation, PROVEN.
AND
2. Renewable Scale, PROVEN. Renewable affordability, PROVEN. Renewable energy infrastructure implementation, UNDERWAY.
NUCLEAR
1. Dangerous to all life? PROVEN
2. Absolutely safe? NOT
3. National security risk? PROVEN
4. Toxic waste? PROVEN
5. Commercially successful? DOUBTFUL
No-one is seriously doubting the dangers of coal use. Yes, there is political responsibility for the failure to act upon its retrenchment. And, YES, I do agree that it is time to get moving energetically on the rapid expansion of the integration of renewable energy into our energy infrastructure.
Blimey – at this stage, this is not appropriate. The baseload problem has been discussed before and the potential solution includes blue energy, pumped hydro, pumped wind, tidal, hot rocks, hydrogen, new battery technology, and etc.
This is not ‘some thermal’ and there are no assumptions about storage and insolation patterns.
The issue has progressed.
Similarly the comparison with fossil energy, is no longer relevant. We are developing better renewables. Again the issue has progressed.
It seems Fran has not been digesting what other people have been saying.
What does this mean:
Obviously if society commits to such renewables development – this will allow the retirement of fossil fuels. It may be more expensive as fossil, but the gains are social and environmental.
I would expect the commitment of resources, would be on a similar scale as when we invaded Vietnam.
Developing renewables automatically provides the means for retiring fossil fuels. You just have to keep an eye on the vast range of emerginf technologies and improvements in efficiencies.
I say we should establish with certainty which means can in practice meet these tests on timelines of use to us and choose them, whatever they are. Don’t you agree?
The timeline would also be similar.
We do not have to eliminate fossils entirely – we may just have to reduce them to very small proportions of existing levels.
@BilB
Not simple, but simplistic
Define “we” and “live” with precision. Sure, early h0olocene humans lived with solar radiation, but is that the kind of “life ” “we” are aiming at and how do we push population in that direction sharply enough?
Plainly this isn’t so. If “we” includes “the French” for example we largely do. So do “our” neighbours.
Nobody is suggesting we try, so it’s a red herring
Misleading since we have Earth sourced nuclear radiation all the time. Got a granite benchtop? Fly in a plane? Live near a coal plant? Welcome to nuclear radiation.
Not yet.
Not at issue and not proven for the things we are mainly discussing.
Simply saying nuclear is dangerous is a misdirect. Everything is dangerous at some level. The questions are: “in what ways?”; “Under what circumstances?” and “how much?”. That you are vague on.
You say that, but unless you can show how to retire it, and as yet you can’t, then in practice that is what we will have.
To paraphrase someone famous Show me the power!
@Fran Barlow
“Plainly this isn’t so. If “we” includes “the French” for example we largely do. So do “our” neighbours.”
False. See data provided in Mycle Schneider (you have to go and look up the reference on his webside and read it)
@Chris Warren
Battery technology is not “a solution” it’s an enabler if the back end supply is large enough. Pumped hydro is limited in Australia and very expensive and cannot be used by volatile intermittents. I can’t imagine what “pumped wind” is. Tidal and wind are both site specific and tidal has its own problems and would have to supply at the end of long and expensive lines. Hydrogen is an energy carrier not an energy source. Blue energy? The same.
Only if we can “commit” to about 35GW of renewables which could in practice mean about four or five times that at name plate.
I still say John L has won the debate.
@Ernestine Gross
I concur. John L wins. Now Fran…will you please leave?
Fran
Yes I thought you may not have read the previous discussion.
A battery able to provide 1 Twatt for several hours is a solution of the baseload problem. This increases the relevance of solar and wind. This is a solution enabled by new batteries.
Pumped hydro is more expensive but still preferable and only needs sites with moderate contour intervals. All intermittant renewables – wind, solar, – can increase their practicality via pumped hydro techniques and new battery technology.
Tidal looks promising, but blue energy is better if you are concerned by possible transmission losses. Blue energy has no expensive transmission lines, and can be sited much closer to urban areas than risky nuclear plants.
If you put hydrogen into an engine – it will demonstrate that it is a source of energy.
We need to commit to a target of renewable Gwatts, and then increase this over time to become the effective source of all Australian electric-power needs.
So there is a non-nuclear path available for Australia after all. This option eliminates major risks associated with fossil and nuclear.
So the Bottom line, Fran, is that you are going to ignore every ounce of information, logic, opinion, rationale, every study, every publication, and every quantitative evaluation,…..then flick back onto your Renewable Energy denying Nuclear quest. Have you thought of moving nearer to a nuclear energy source? France perhaps?
@BilB
Playing devil’s advocate, I don’t think Fran would want to move to France if Fran would indeed wish to promote nuclear power because they already have it.
There is an alternative possibility. Fran Barlow may be on your side. Ask yourself whether you remember anything Fran said in favour of nuclear. I tried it. I cannot remember any coherent argument or data Fran posted in favour of nuclear. I remember only ping pong, ping pong, ping pong exchanges of words. People may remember only the data provided by John L and some of your arguments.
As it stands, I still say JohnL won the debate.
@Chris Warren
Good grief … have you any idea how big and how expensive such a battery/such batteries would have to be? And while we are on it, how would one charge such a battery? You do realise that if you were generating 5 tWh per day would be about a couple of order of magnitude above current capacity? You do realise that wind at 1600 per KW would cost 1.6 trillion at name plate (allowing 33% CF) — so about 1.5 years and a bit of Australian GDP without the huge battery. You do realise that if the wind turbines were 5MW each, we’d need about 200,000 of them? Let’s assume a 20 ton reinforced steel and concrete base for each turbine. That would be 4 million tons of concrete to pour and deliver. Then there are the roads to the turbines that make it possible to move cherrypickers up to them and criss-cross the 2000 km3 of sites. A bit more concrete and excavation there too. Oh ,,, and thousands of truckloads of cable …
Again I say … good grief …you do realise, that apart from the fact that we are talking about $2000 per kWh (1 tW for several hours (5tW?) would be about $10 trillion) that intermittent sources like wind are simply no good at running the pumps for these things?
So it’s going to transcend laws of physics. Cool.
Maybe you meant GW above, so divide by 1000, but that would then be well short.
You can’t just dream up engineering solutions and scale them up.
No change.
@Fran Barlow
But I provided the basis for this earlier at: Battery Size :
A GigaWatt therefore is no bigger than 10 shipping containers wide X 10 shipping containers high X 10 shipping containers deep.
This is the size of a small building, and would be affordable by every local council in Australia. As these small plants are rolled out across multiple sites, the total capacity will easily reach a TerraWatt – which only needs to be accessed to fill in gaps in base load. The general renewables grid will provide the underlying power.
Maybe we do not need a TerraWatt – but it is feasible (at least for those who have read the recent easily accessible literature).
Alternatively a large plant equivalent to 100 medium buildings, would provide a terrawatt. This would be affordable by State governments. But I prefer a distributed power supply.
Your question “how would we charge such a battery” indicates you have not read the citation I provided. This was explained in the cited New Scientist article.
So I do not think you are really attending to these issues in a useful manner?
As you know, it is not possible to estimate the costs of a new technology as first-of-a-kind factors inflate initial costs. However if you read the article you will see that there is a clear statement about this.
The rest of your post was a bit jumbled and too much stream of consciousness.
Why does running engines on hydrogen “transcend the laws of physics”?
Hydrogen + Oxygen = energy + water.
So you get hydrogen to energy link directly out of this chemistry. Where is a problem?
Another thing I do not understand:
Nothing I have said has been dreamt up. This just shows you have not read the cited sources.
Why cannot these new batteries be “scaled – up”. Why cannot the blue energy osmosis technology be scaled up?
There is a lot of exciting developments you seem to have missed out on. This means many of your posts are ill informed.
For those who may be interested;
A better and earlier reference was at:
New Scientist Battery Size :
Maybe this link will work?
@Chris Warren
Great. No numbers and it might happen.
No, it wasn’t. Admittedly I didn’t sign up to NS to read the last 358 words.
Which makes it a carrier of energy rather than an energy source. You can only obtain hydrogen by using other compounds of which it is a part as feedstock and breaking the bonds to release the H2 and then trapping it. It’s not as much an energy source as the water in the top reservoir of a pumped storage unit since some of that may have got there without human intervention.
Err … cost? Heat? (They are said to run at 700C) Does anyone say they can be scaled up who has the standing to declare on it?
So again you assume that this will scale up to GW standard. What sort of membrane would you need across the mouth of a river to manage that?
Not all are as credulous as you, it seems:
Personally, the idea of huge membranes across our river mouths sounds potentially environmentally worrying. We might do it as a matter of last resort … if it worked and was all we had.
It’s telling that you are credulous of everything except technologies that are proven.
Ernestine, what we are are seeing here is someone throwing a nuclear paddy. If it is that important for that individual to have something that it is impossible to have where they are, then they have only one option, move.
Fran, wants there to be a national evaluation of nuclear energy. We just had that a few years ago with John Howard, and it was rejected, along with John Howard. Kevin Rudd was elected in the anticipation that climate change action would begin, there was to be a huge study of renewable energy, none of that has happened and now he is about to be rejected. These politicians, and Fran, just don’t get it.
@BilB
Nonsense. We had a very narrow review not a through examination of all we know.
He won’t be rejected because in the main, people on election day will trust his government to do the apparently right thing ahead of the Opposition. Even those who favour renewables will vote for him ahead of the Opposition because they will conclude that he is the lesser evil.
None of that changes the reality that until most people on the left and a few on the right as well stop seeing nuclear as unthinkable and weigh up the options with an open mind, energy policy in this country will reflect the interests of the fossil fuel industry. In a Mexican standoff, the status quo is always the winner.
If you really believed that renewables were the best option, you’d favour a fair evaluation of all the options, but deep down, you know that any fair inquiry would show that renewables can not yet (and may never) do what we need them to do whereas nuclear can. You know that the kinds of cultural considerations that your lot deem so critical and which move you to prefer renewables will not survive rational examination.
So everywhere you go your lot (if not you personally) want to shout down anyone who speaks truth to power on this matter. You want the issue off the public agenda. You aren’t a witting accomplice of the fossil fuel crowd, but they are the greatest beneficiaries and the environment the biggest loser from your advocacy. You can continue to entertain the dream of a renewables-centred economy that none of us here will ever live to see. If you have your way, and we are all posting here in 20 years time, we will still all be thinking much as we are now and the energy system will be much as it is now, albeit there will be some more “green” tinsel on the windows. That won’t hide the filth that will continue to spew from places like Hazelwood though.
I’m determined to try to prevent that happening. Even if I don’t succeed, I don’t want political responsibility for the failure. I want to be able to show that I spoke up when it might have made a difference and that other people are to blame for the mess — people like you.
JQ – save us! If Fran was so fervent about a clean technology and some genuinely sustainable technology, the woman would be a saint but, as it is Fran is dangerous because she is passionate about a hideously dangerous substance.
Hmm coal or uranium? Coal or uranium? Buckely’s chance of doing better with both.
Lets get to work on tidal power, solar power. We can do better.
Lets not give the “baying for nuclear” diggers and shippers and their supporter (singular it seems) a chance to dirty this planet more.
“@Alice”
Shorter Alice/Ernestine/Other …
Let’s pretend that renewables can do the job so we can all feel good inside as the diggers and shippers of coal, gas and oil continue unmolested to filthy up the planet while we shed tears and talk about the sinfulness of growth, how big business runs everything, how we can get population down, and why solar panels on our rooves and fiddling with rivers and tides can really make a difference
Hear, hear.
Coal and uranium are poles apart in terms of safety and cleanliness, but they share the attribute of being cheap. In round figures, coal is a quarter the price of natural gas, and uranium is a twentieth the price of natural gas.
So no-one minds living near nuclear reactors — they say they do, but they lie — but if they are publically supported, money drives them to love gas, with its royalties and excise taxes, and hate the fuels that cancel those government revenues. But they don’t hate uranium so much that they’ll move away, and nearer to a gas pipeline. Gas pipelines have hurt people.
Over the last several days I have slowly come to the inescapable conclusion that we have discovered a new sustainable potential energy source, though how to tap it does remain unsolved. That energy source is discussion of the merits, or lack of, of nuclear power.
@Fran Barlow
Fran:
No-one is suggesting you put batteries in pockets?
Hydrogen is an energy source and being a “carrier” does not change this.
No-one is suggesting you put membranes across rivers? Why didn’t you digest your own citation, which said:
“The plants could even be located underground, placing minimal impact on communities and land. ”
Why did you try to imply that I assumed it would scale to GigaWatt standard, when in fact your own citation said:
“At full capacity, though, Statkraft predicts blue energy will be able to produce 25 terrawatt hours, which is equivalent to 20 percent of Norway’s power production. ”
If you stick to the evidence – you will reach a different conclusion. While in 2007, it took a lot of effort to get blue energy to work, this is not so in 2010. The current efficiency is 3 watts per metre of membrane, and a practical system needs around 5 watts per square metre.
Renewables are clearly great possibilities for providing terrawatts of power including baseload.
With more research, we can go down the renewables path.
Everyone should have a look at these new developments as they progress.
@Chris Warren
So join with me in urging that all energy sources and their enabling technologies that might plausibly deliver some serious fraction of the fossil thermal load over the next 15 years get properly investigated for feasibility.
@Fran Barlow
Fran Barlow, you have persistently ignored the information content of all research based references provided, in particular those in the posts by John L and one paper I have referenced. The only reference you have posted is actually a source partially relied on by BilB. To spell this out clearly. The only reference you have supplied contains information in favour of renewables.
BilB and others have patiently refuted your talking points.
You have given a history which mixes up horror movies with major nuclear disaster events, namely the Three-Mile-Island (TMI) and the Chernobyl events. To spell this out clearly, you argue as if people would not be able to distinguish between fiction and reality.
You ignored the content of the ABC Late Line program, even though you wanted to restrict the information source of commenters to ABC programs during a specified period. The content of the ABC Late Line program did not support your beliefs.
On several occasions I have asked you not to integrate my name into your stories. You persist and by doing so you create false images.
I conclude that the research based information provided on this very long discussion thread does not contradict anything in JQ’s post. The budget presented last night does not signal a change in policy stance (no nuclear power in the near future). On the contrary, the financial support for the renewable energy sector as well as the super profit tax on the mining industry suggests that the near future may be longer than 5 years.
@”Ernestine Gross”
You inhabit Fantasyland — the happiest kingdom of them all
Would I end this thread if I said;
Hitler supported nuclear power?
We talk a lot about the challenges of decommissioning nuclear facilities, but what about when renewable energy installations get there?
Even sources of clean energy can get dirty when they sit around for ten, twenty or fifty years. More often than not, renewable energy power plants are upgraded—or their equipment replaced—because their locations were selected for their excellent renewable resource. But stuff happens: businesses go under; policies and incentives change; more efficient technologies are discovered, etc. And as a result, relics of a renewable past are left scattered across the global landscape.
I’ve had a quick scan through the comments on this thread. Most of the comments seem to be emotive rather than rational. I seem many comments about safety and cost. Let’s have a quick look at these two issues.
Safety:
Nuclear is about the safest of all the electricity generation technologies. Nuclear is some 10 to 100 times safer than coal for generating electricity. This has been demonstrated by 55 years of nuclear electricity generation. For those who are numerate and can read and log-log chart, you might like to look at Figure 2 here: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/13/wind-and-carbon-emissions-peter-lang-responds/
Cost:
Nuclear is by far the least cost way to provide low emission electricity. One way to do a fair comparison is to compare the cost of various technologies, or mixes of technologies, that could provide all the power we demand.
The capital cost to build new generators that could provide all the power we demanded in the National Electricity Market (NEM) in 2007 would be:
$132 billion = Nuclear
$120 billion = Nuclear with 8GW pumped hydro energy storage for peak power
$350 billion = Wind with pumped hydro storage
$2,800 billion = Solar PV and pumped hydro storage
$4,600 billion = Solar PV and NaS battery storage
$4,400 billion = Solar Thermal with molten salt storage (but this technology is not expected to be capable of providing 24 h storage until after 2020, and anyway we’d need much more than 24h storage to provide reliable baseload power)
From this it is clear that wind with pumped hydro storage would be about three times the cost of nuclear. However, Australia would not have the pumped hydro energy storage sites available even if we wanted to go this way.
Solar power would be 20 to 40 times the cost of nuclear You can mix and match, but it makes little difference. Renewables are far more expensive than nuclear.
You can reach the same conclusion from another direction. Solar PV has to be subsidised to about ten times the cost of power from a conventional power station. Al renewables have to be massively subsidised. Wind power is mandated. If the electricity distributors do not buy sufficient wind power thy have to pay a fine that is more than the cost of conventional power. Wind power costs about2 to 3 times the cost of conventional power, and that is before adding on the cost of the back up generators and the extra transmissions and power stabilisation that is required.
I urge the people who are numerate to check the figures and the underlying assumptions they are based on. There is an enormous amount of spin being presented by advocates on all sides. You can check the background of what I’ve said here: http://bravenewclimate.com/renewable-limits/
Peter Lang,
I have to say, from your fairy tale above, you have absolutely no first hand knowledge of energy systems and their cost. Quoting the same wingnut source that Fran Barlow inhabits is no verification at all. BraveNewClimate information is demonstrably flawed.
Are you able to cross verify your assertions with first hand information from industry players?
@BilB
BilB
Peter is not a random blogger. He is a highly qualified engineer with extensive experience in the power industry. He has had his papers and modelling verified in public by well qualified engineers.
He knows a good deal more about these matters than you appear to. Your eagerness to take a swing in defence of your solar power interests ought to have taken a backseat to finding out who you were abusing.
Peter Lang,
I’ve just done a quick calculation based on the latest information from SolarPaces which puts the cost of 30 gigawatts of 24/7/365 Solar Thermal at 180 billion dollars and form another source for GenII high efficiency Solar PV at 240 billion for sufficient capacity to generate 220 billion kilowatt hours per year.
I can verify my figures, can you veryify with direct information your claim?
The CSP figure is just mind blowing wrong.
@BilB
And saying BNC is “demonstrably flawed” without saying how just makes you sound silly.
A useful resource exposing the ineffectiveness and relatively high cost of nuclear compared with renewables is the Environment California report on the subject, produced in response to the Cheney ‘100 reactors by 2020’ thought bubble. Comprehensively gives the lie to Peter Long and Fran Barlow’s figuring, btw:
Click to access Generating-Failure—Environment-California—Web.pdf
Fran,
I went over that with you at length. In Mackays BraveNewClimate Solar contribution he makes a series of conceptual errors then continues to do calculations based on the flawed concepts, and then he even fluffs the maths.
You personally have the SolarPaces information direct from the manufacturer and this therefore supercedes any information on CSP that BraveNewClimate has published.
And all of the assertions that are coming from the BraveNewClimate fan base on “storage” are clearly contradicted by the European experience information that JQ published in an earlier thread.
If you are going swim in that BarveNewClimate pool of fantasy “information” you are living in a fools paradise.
Go get some accurate information that is not rehashed^2 blog comments.
“If Fran was so fervent about a clean technology and some genuinely sustainable technology, the woman would be a saint ”
You reveal yourself – despite the complaints purporting to be about Fran’s persistence, what really bothers you is that she’s persistent about something you disagree with!
I hope JQ never lets this blog become an echo chamber, despite your urgings.
@Fran Barlow
You’ve got the name of the suburb wrong @30, p 6, not to mention the exaggeration of the expression my house is my castle.
@Jarrah
Everybody has understood that Fran Barlows wants nuclear power. How many more pages are required for her to make this point?
@BilB
Again, you reveal your carelessness. Professor David Mackay runs http://www.withouthotair.com whereas Professor Barry Brook runs http://www.bravenewclimate.com. Different people and different sites.
Mackay’s calculations were adequate or close enough for imprecision not to matter. They say nothing about Professor Brook however.
You don’t care about details like whom you are assailing or the basis for the asaults as long as they are on the other side from you. Of course, in Trieb’s case, he gets a free pass.
Good to see the engineers performing like nicotine scientists.
No-one doubts that renewables will be economically more expensive than renewables during initial stages.
However in the long-term after assuming at least one nuclear accident similar to the oil well disaster, and a renewables accident similar to a motor accident, the cost equation shifts.
When engineers estimate costs, they look at engineering costs, and cite “capital costs” which excludes future generations and all downstream accumulated obligations.
Remember too, that a capital cost of $100 million will produce less jobs than a capital cost of $300 million, so we should not baulk at such engineering comparisons.
Also $300 million is not expensive for a society of 30 million people, and with exports in the 10’s of billions.
So if Australia was to commit $300 billion (an exaggeration) over 10 to 20 years, the funding cost at 5% is around 1 billion a year. This is less than $100 per head of population per year.
Now just education exports by themselves bring in over $15 billion a year, minerals more, and agriculture a similar amount.
So with other options, such as Tobin Tax as a buffer, I feel that the funding cost sounds large, but is affordable and equivalent to the funding effort Australia needed to make to assist America in Vietnam in the 1960’s.
Clearly the argument is not economics, and the more our nuke pundits talk economics the less we need to listen.
Australia just needs to take the political decision, that we want a environmentally sustainable nation for both ourselves and our descendants.
Ernestine, you could reformulate that into “Everybody has understood that [commenter x] wants [process/outcome y]. How many more pages are required for them to make this point?” and could include everyone, even JQ himself. For example, we all know you disagree with Fran, so how many times do you have to express it?
The point of blogs is discussion, so when talking about complex topics, it’s normal to present different arguments in different ways when others disagree (which they do repeatedly, with different arguments in different ways). Ideally, we would tend towards consensus, but we all know what really happens 😉
I’ll leave it to Fran to correct you on her ‘wants’, which if she is being repetitive you should understand by now, but clearly don’t. This may be a clue as to why she keeps putting her case!
Big Ernie, if you’re so bored, nobody’s keeping you…
This sentence, from above, needs adjustment.
I’ll let readers work out where the typo was.
“No-one doubts that renewables will be economically more expensive than renewables during initial stages”.
@Fran Barlow
The book by Professor David Mackay, available on http://www.withouthotair.com, is a popular science book. I do not question the quality of the book as such. It is written from the perspective of the UK.
The problem is your debating method. Your method might work if there is a class of say u.g. non-science students and they are given the task of discussing the book using what looks like ‘deconstruction’ and having a finite time limit. In this case the only source of information is this book. Personally, I would not enrol in such a class, while I might want to read the book. In fact by now I have read quite a lot of it. However, this is not crucial. On this thread your debating doesn’t work. It comes across as propaganda. I am not convinced this is what Professor Mackay had in mind.
This is the kindest explanation I can find for what is going on here.
You are correct on Mackay
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c6/page_38.shtml
Mackay’s calculations are nothing like close. Again if the original assumption is invalid then the subsequent conclusions only become progressively more inaccurate.
Barry Brooks information is also off the planet. We’ve been over his stuff (that’s all I can call it) before. But I will wade through his CSP diatribe and point out the flaws.
What intrigues me Fran is how you cast aside direct information and return to the colloquial science of BraveNewClimate. I suspect because the inflated flawed information makes you desperate position feel better.
@Chris Warren
Nope … 5% of 300 billion is 15 billion per year, so there goes an order of magnitude. Based on 22 million, that’s about $660 per head or about $2000 per family, not counting recurrent costs and decommissioning.
@BilB
Classic projection … You are happy to read Trieb uncritically because he plays to your predisposition.