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 
Well,
Peter Lang,
I have just printed off your “Solar Power Realities” fiction fantasy and from a quick scan through you provide no quantitative information for CSP and you storage arguments are base on entirely irrelevent and incompatible technologies. Furthermore all of you “costings” are assumptions. This is not even vaguely credible, it is just a mumbo jumbo of ideas prettied up with some cut and paste graphs and a few pages of calculations to make it look “technical”.
That is my first impression, but I have to go off to a trade show for the rest of the day and will read through this to see just where you depart from reality.
Not that anything that is said will alter you self impression as you seem determined to ignore any information put before you. I say this because you have not commented on the SolarPaces document.
Gregh,
OK. Be specific. Which “specific substantive points that were not successfully countered”. Please link to the specific statement(s) and I will then link to where it was refuted.
You talk about “nice rhetoric”, but you are making sweeping statements without any substantiation. I’ve given you the substance, but you either don’t understand it or prefer to ignore it and continue to try to persuade people that we should adopt an irrational approach. It is the anti-nuclear propaganda Australian’s should be concerned about.
sure Peter, whatever
@”Ernestine Gross”
You were dissembling, as your text [in non-dictatorial societies, it is not you or Fran Barlows sic who is in charge of what people want but it is the people themselves] made clear.
We are not in charge of dictatorships and in any event I know of none within the EU. And whatever one may make of the people themselves being in charge of resource allocation in any jurisdiction, public policy is everyone’s business, even if you don’t live within the jurisdiction.
I was a Trotskyist but that isn’t relevant here. Trying a red-bait simply affirms how pathetic you deem your case to be.
BilB,
So you’ve printed off the first paper, haven’t read it, haven’t looked at the cited references and are now criticising it. Doesn’t sound as if it will be worth taking much notice of what you have to say.
If you are not even prepared to read the papers (not just the first one) and understand them, then your mind is closed. The CSP is expanded in the second paper. Each paper until the fourth is a limit analysis. The sources of the figures are provided. They are authoritative sources.
I have no intention of talking about the research paper you’ve linked to (which I have read before), until after you complete the undertaking you gave. I fully expect you are going to renege.
If you have specific criticisms of the papers, could you please post them on the relevant thread of BNC so I can track them, others can discuss them, and if errors are found, I will fix the error(s).
The next step, is for you to post your basis of estimate.
@Fran Barlow
You are a bore, really.
@Fran Barlow
You are a bore because you keep on trying to side-track with your ping-pong word games.
You can avoid being acused of being a bore by doing what I have asked you on many ocasions, namely not to integrate me into your stories.
Why we must keep nuclear vandals outside our walls – 1
There was celebration and relief in Vermont on Feb. 24 when the State Senate voted to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant owned by Entergy. Citizens’ outrage had overcome a concerted industry campaign of deception, with pro-nuclear propaganda repeated by the media and politicians all the way up to the President. What is telling is that there could be any question of granting Entergy’s request to renew the license of this plant for another 20 years–as it approaches the end of the 40 years it was designed to last, it is falling apart. In 2007 one of its cooling towers collapsed. This year, radioactive tritium from the plant was found in groundwater. It will inevitably end up in the Connecticut River and in drinking water.
TRITIUM LEAKS COMMON
For a year Entergy had told Vermont regulators and legislators under oath that it had no underground pipes carrying radioactive material. This year, they were forced to admit that it does have such pipes, that they are the likely leak source, and that they had even found a leak of tritium from an underground pipe in 2005! This kind of cover-up is completely typical of the nuclear establishment since its birth.
Why we must keep nuclear vandals outside our walls – 2
The US federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has quietly stated that at least 27 of the nation’s 104 reactor units–more than one quarter–have leaked tritium. That does not count the “normal” tritium releases that are a routine part of every nuclear plant’s operation. The nuclear establishment–industry, regulators and their kept scientists–blandly reassures the public that the levels are too low to be dangerous. But there is no proven safe level. Tritium is a cancer-causing substance that becomes a part of the water we drink and is incorporated into the environment and our food, effectively lasting for over a century.
Why we must keep nuclear vandals outside our walls – The hoodwink
The US President, following the coal/oil/nuclear company line, portrayed nuclear expansion as a “green jobs” initiative. Pretending to be part of the solution instead of the biggest part of the problem, these industries have launched a slick “All of the above” campaign to hoodwink people into thinking that, since the problem of climate change is so huge, we can’t rely only on solar and wind power and had better keep burning coal, now baptized as “clean”; drill here, drill now; and keep the radiation glowing.
Billions are then gifted to these companies to establish nukes in non-white regions;
including $8.3 billion in loan guarantees to build the first nuclear reactors in three decades. That is only one of the subsidies for adding two more nuclear reactors to Plant Vogtle, located in the majority African-American Burke County, Georgia. This is one part of Obama’s plan to expand available loan guarantees for new nuclear plants from $18.5 billion to $54 billion.
@Fran Barlow
So was John Kerr, and Keith Windschuttle.
Presumably both would support “nukes as the only solution to climate change” line
John Quiggin phrases this as: “I’d prefer an expansion of nuclear power to continued reliance on fossil fuels (particularly coal) to generate electricity”.
All these pundits, get fixated on solar and wind, as “renewables”, wihtout exploring all the many new developments that are being starved of funding by governments.
“All these pundits, get fixated on solar and wind, as “renewables”, wihtout exploring all the many new developments that are being starved of funding by governments.”
Such as modern nuclear reactor designs?
Nuclear is renewable. Stars are producing more uranium every day.
Ronald Brak
May 12th, 2010 at 22:29 | #33
“TK, sorry to get all picky but rich countries generally don’t use methyl isocyanate to make carbaryl. And quite possibly poor ones don’t either anymore.”
You’re probably right, I concede on that. It doesn’t change my point though; that there are other industrial processes existing in the suburbs of most cities, that are every bit as dangerous as nuclear fission, but don’t invoke the same sort of emotional response as nuclear (I would argue that many are actually far more dangerous because there’s not as much regulation on most of these processes).
@TK
Tell me, were you a student in Fran Barlow’s class at HS?
You can always pick a zealot.
When the very basis of a view is removed they still blandly say:
So if evidence and facts, do not sway these pundits … what will?
What are these “dangers in suburbs of most cities every bit as dangerous as nukes”?
Does the radiation from our roadways asphalt bombard are genes? Do our automatic teller machines leech tritium into our drinking water ? Do alpha rays stream from our light bulbs? Do our flour mills collapse and vent radioactive gas downwind across the land?
Do our photocopiers mutate our unborn? Do our mobile phones require residential exclusion zones?
How our nuke-zealots think.
First the evidence;
Obama plans to expand available loan guarantees for new nuclear plants from $18.5 billion to $54 billion.
Then the zealot suggests:
“modern nuclear reactor designs” are starved of government funding.
Apparently they cannot link $54 billion of government loan guarantees for new nuclear plants with any assistance to develop new nuclear plants.
So how can we follow such fellows? You show them a mountain and they see a valley.
Nuclear “Loan Guarantees” are Actual Taxpayer Loans
President Obama’s announcement 16 February 2010 of a “conditional” $8.3 billion loan “guarantee” to the Southern Company for construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia obscured an important fact about the loan guarantee program: taxpayers are not just providing a guarantee, they also will be providing the actual loans.
According to a press release from Southern Company yesterday, “Total guaranteed borrowings would not exceed 70 percent of the company’s eligible projected costs, or approximately $3.4 billion, and are expected to be funded by the Federal Financing Bank.” (Note: the discrepancy in amounts–$3.4 billion vs $8.3 billion, is because Southern Company is only a partial owner of the two reactors, the rest of the funds will go to the other owners).
The Federal Financing Bank (FFB) is a little-known government entity that more typically makes loans to universities, colleges, rural electric co-ops and other small-scale projects. Interest rates from the FFB may be lower than offered by private financial institutions. Use of the FFB means that the loans themselves for new reactor construction will come from taxpayers, putting taxpayers in the risky business of both providing the loans and guaranteeing to themselves that the loans will be repaid.
Similarly, UniStar Nuclear, which is said to be on the Department of Energy’s “shortlist” of loan guarantee applicants, states in its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “It is expected that, with respect to the portion of the debt guaranteed by the Department of Energy under the loan guarantee program, the source of financing will be the Federal Financing Bank, and with respect to the portion of the debt insured by export credit agencies, the source of financing will be commercial banks.”
“This is not like Dad co-signing a loan for a child’s first car,” said Michael Mariotte, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service. “The idea that these are just loan “guarantees” is fictitious: these are actual loans. Giant nuclear utilities will be raiding the federal treasury for money to build reactors, and they are expecting the taxpayers to bail them out if the project goes bad.”
“Coupled with Secretary Chu’s astonishing admission yesterday that he was unaware of the Congressional Budget Office report estimating a 50% failure rate for new reactor projects, the administration has chosen a path of enormous risk to taxpayers and is obscuring the real nature of that risk,” said Mariotte.
@Chris Warren
“How our nuke-zealots think.”
They don’t.
@”Ernestine Gross”
And you can stop being “integrated” when you stop trolling this site. You’re plainly here for the flame rather than a debate and you are obviously misrepresenting yourself to boot. Stay substantive and I’ll take the substance.
We need more recent information on nuke costs.
This is useful: http://tinyurl.com/NukeCosts
It just shows how high the costs actually are.
Chris Warren,
Okay, another example; toluene diisocyanate and methylene diphenyl diisocyanate are major monomers in polyurethane production. Highly toxic compounds again. Surely you are not going to argue that there are many, many highly toxic chemicals used in industrial processes in an industrialised city?
Now unless you can conculsively say that there are no other industrial processes which would cause significant fatalities if something went drastically wrong with the production process, you aren’t refuting my point.
Does the radiation from a nuclear power plant bombard our genes? No.
Do nuclear power plants leech tritium into our drinking water? No.
Do alpha rays “stream” from nuclear power plants? No.
Do nuclear power plants collapse and vent radioactive gas downwind across the land? Not if they’re built with a containment wall.
Do renewable energy sources require 10 to 15 times more resource input, and thus far more mining? Yes.
Are modern nuclear power plants the only way of immediately getting rid of highly radioactive, long lived nuclear waste? Yes.
Can renewable energy sources replace ALL fossil fuels, as well as ALL nuclear, as well as meet the rapidly increasing demand for electricity capacity in developing nations, as well as the continued demand increase in developed nations, as well as providing extra electricity for electric vehicles so we can de-carbonise the transport sector? I highly bloody doubt it!
By the way, this is an Australian blog. There are absolutely no loan-guarantees for nuclear power plants in Australia, so I stand by my initial comment.
Retract immediately because what you say is slanderous.
@”Ernestine Gross/Alice”
It’s not slander if it is true and a matter of public interest.
A review of your comments shows a persistent pattern of hectoring abuse, often without a figleaf of substantive commentary, sometimes too rapidly for me even to respond. If that’s not aiming to provoke flames then nothing is. It strains credulity to imagine that your posts and those of Alice are authored by different people. On several occasions you have posted within 5 minutes of each other with nothing more than self-affirming remarks aimed at haranguing me. yesterday, not for the first time, you posted within minute of each other.
Coincidence? I’d say not. If, improbably, you are not the same person, you two represent a distinction without a difference. At least one of you is superfluous. My own suspicion is that you are Alice’s Plan B for those times when PrQ asks her to “take a break”. You are her slightly more polite web identity.
Whatever the truth, you are certainly trolling this site. And at least for me, that has nothing to do with our different attitudes to nuclear power, though this is the principal reason that you are getting all hot and bothered.
@Fran Barlow
It should be obvious that they are not the same person.
Fran Barlow, it is slanderous because what you say is not true.
Fran, I don’t agree. Alice’s posts are never worth reading, whatever the topic, and she’s only been here less than a year I believe, however I recall that Ernestine has been commenting here longer, and on other topics, not this one, s/he’s mostly quite reasonable. S/he also definitely knows something, academically at least, about economics, unlike the other one.
@Freelander
Freelander – it would be obvious to everyone else but not Fran because basically she is a boring troll on behalf of her pet source pro nuclear agenda all from one website “bravenewclimate” – a pro nuclear political site.
Fran is also totally insensitive to the views of others because she is here to “sell” someone elses pro nuclear agenda. Her lengthy posts (raving at times) have got the host ticked off because of the derailments of other threads. She insults people who dont agree with her. She tells lies about fertile imaginings and makes up stories about other people including both Ernestine and myself supposedly being the same person.
All of it is in Frans vivid irradiated imagination along with her ideas of a trouble free nuclear future for us all.
Boring and dangerous to boot and if anyone is guilty of mindless hectoring it certainly isnt Ernestine but Fran herself.
It should be obvious to all and by this time I think it well and truly is, that Fran is trolling here and wasting all opportunities for useful discussion on alternative energies.
JQ please pull the plug on this.
@wilful
Thankyou Wilful – for whats its worth at least you are honest about some things.
This may be of interst to some people:
“The author is a retired physicist and astronomer who, as an associate professor at the University of Newcastle for 24 years, taught nuclear and reactor physics to senior classes. These duties induced a deep suspicion of unsubstantiated claims on nuclear matters by persons and organisations promoting anti-nuclear agendas. In the interests of his students he began to identify and correct the disinformation, truth-twisting, false claims and plain lies that flood the media. As a scientist who has investigated phenomena governed by the inviolable laws of nature he finds it very difficult to understand why anti-nuclear activists refuse to believe the hard facts about energy, even when drawn to their attention on many occasions. In the interests of a better future for Australia it is imperative that disinformation and fallacies are dealt with accurately by presenting, as answers to them, the authentic verifiable facts surrounding nuclear electricity generation. He has no past or present connection with the nuclear industry.”
@TK
Quoting fancy chemical names doesn’t amount to any significant point. People just ensure they are handled according to the relevant material safety data sheet.
No issue – a distraction.
TK seems to be exercising low grade denialism. There is huge evidence, posted above, from US Federal Regulators, and Vermont regulators that tritium from nuclear power plants which inevitably will flow into the Connecticut River and into drinking water.
So thats the evidence.
So all that nuke-pundits can do is, just deny.
So we get TK’s rhetorical question?
Do nuclear power plants leech tritium into our drinking water?
With the denial “No”, flying in the face of evidence, appended.
This is the definition of denialism.
Similarly there is huge evidence of genes being bombarded by radiation in the Ukraine, but our nuke pundits, simply deny this.
So clearly nuke pundits are impervious to facts, are unable to deal with the actual history of nuclear plants even when the details are placed right under their nose.
In these circumstances they can only disrupt, distract and mangle discussion they do not like, not progress it.
All pro-nuclear pundits and industry lobbyist rely on secrecy, misrepresentation, and well funded propaganda. This attracts some pundits and it takes a lot of effort to untwist their tales.
Denialism is their last resort.
@Peter Lang
Oh so its “persons and organistions” promoting anti nuclear agendas now is it Peter?
What a lot of rubbish. In fact its “persons and organisations” (mostly who subscribe to one website which has already been named and shamed here dozens of times, promoting “pro nuclear” agendas). The trouble with you nuke spruikers is the great majority doesnt want it here and its not on any political agenda either side here.
Its called a democracy, one where supposed freedoms exist for people to make their political choices….not be bullied by the few noisy lengthy clumsy and belligerant posters into accepting something they dont want here.
@Peter Lang
great example peter lol- consistent with your other work.
peter’s link (2002) says “Denmark is calling a halt to their program which has given them the dearest electricity in Europe.”
whereas in 2009 “Denmark Inaugurates World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm – 209 MW Horns Rev 2”
@gregh
should of course filled in the missing word – wind –
peter’s link (2002) says “Denmark is calling a halt to their (wind) program which has given them the dearest electricity in Europe.”
@Alice
If you and Ernestine are the same person then the posts have been a remarkable achievement. Just as remarkable as it would be if Fran and you were the same person.
@Freelander
Freelander – Id take it as a compliment to myself if I could portray Ernestine as well as I could portray myself. Wilful, aside from his obvious distaste for my posts, (a feeling that is mutual having been the victim of Wilful’s “surround a lefty with mates in tow” style before today), even acknowledges the same himself.
Shame Fran hasnt acknowledged a single thing here in regard to a) her pro nuclear illusions b) her blatant falsities when it comes to the statistics c) her own personal assaults on others…
Which I might add Wilful has also blatantly ignored in his quest to villify me…. He thinks I wont notice but perhaps Wilful also needs to know that others are willing to defend the truth, not the lies told by a noisy delusionist deceptive and misleading minority on the matter of nuclear.
Yes Ernestine is nicer than me….a lot nicer but we happen to agree on this one. The discussion has been hijacked by propagandists.
@Freelander
Hardly. Granting the hypothesis we have someone who has authored two characters. The first offers torrents of semi-literate vituperative pseudo-liberal moral effluvia and a second who glosses the content with the syntactic pretensions of someone who is familiar with the forms of academia but not the substance.
“Alice” says nothing, and “Ernestine” maunders approval and high dudgeon before they “both” call for silencing the dissenters. If this is remarkable it’s only because the author has the brass to try it on.
@Fran Barlow
Thats five against you Fran…now. Yet still there is Fran’s world (its like Waynesworld isnt it?)
Go home.
Tyrone, I mean Fran, I’d like to have a free copy of your novel.
JQ, isn’t it time to close this thread?
is there where we stand up, clasping hands to bosom and cry out “No, I am Alice”… “and, I am Ernestine”…No, I am Ernestine…
@Fran Barlow
For everyone of you Fran there are five, ten or a hundred or more against the use of nuclear. The numbers (your false numbers) – they just dont matter. They are totally irrelevant. People are smarter than you think. They remember Chernobyl longer than they will ever remember your kws/per hour quotes and your comments on how cheap it is…and it matters not what false statistics you use here, or how long you bombard us with your posts….people not only recall Chernobyl…the memory is deeper and longer than anything you have to counter.
People remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki and they remember the name of the plane that unleashed such horror…the Enola Gay…and people recall the fear of the nuclear arms race and the cold war and the near catastrophies of that period Fran…
…deeper than any of your posts Fran. You dont have a hope in hell.
But part of me is flattered you think I am Ernestine…and I rather like the illusion you have created, even if it is just an illusion. If I was clever enough to be Ernestine or to create Ernestine…then perhaps I would be smarter than I am.
Its an appealing thought…bit like being able to create and be both Dame Edna and Les Patterson isnt it?.
Now there is a thought. Perhaps sock puppets could be put to an entertaining use after all. Perhaps the centrists and the left have not quite caught on to their use yet…although the right seems to have mastered the use of sock puppets…their puppets are rather boring, predictable and definitely lack creative flair.
@Fran Barlow
The knowledge and analytical capacity that Ernestine has displayed in her posts fits with her self description so I don’t think the harsh ‘not the substance’ is at all accurate.
So, Fran Barlow, what exactly was your contribution to this thread?
None that I can see Ernestine…except for the fact that I am getting fond of the idea of being you….or perhaps fond of being perceived to have the “brass” to be both of us.
I really hope we havent confused Fran too much…but I suspect that Fran was already confused before we muddled her further…
@Alice
I have to disagree. There is nothing I have done to muddle Fran.
I’ve been leaving this open, so everyone could have their say, but I think it’s time to stop.
In future, if there are concerns about possible sockpuppetry, please raise them with me privately. Accusations of this kind, unless very firmly based, violate the comments policy. In this case, I can assure readers, with high confidence, that Ernestine and Alice are different people.
To repeat, this thread is closed, and the topic of nuclear power is now off-limits, except when I post something specifically on that topic.
@Ernestine Gross
That is correct Ernestine. You have done nothing at all to confuse Fran. Actually neither have I but it is becoming tempting now to add to Fran’s confusion my being more “vituperative” that you…and my patience worn thin posts and posts ago…and what with Wilful popping up. Im expecting Jarrah to arrive any minute. Some here hone their incisors and pack hunting skills on Catallyxy you know (and its none to pleasant).
I know its not right to be dishonest or misleading Ernestine…but some, like Fran, appear to have no qualms about it whatsoever.
I dont want to start this thread off again…..and I wish JQ would bin it (say last rites etc)…maybe he is just hoping Fran gets to dump so much fallout here…they can have intelligent conversations somewhere else in another thread.
Clever JQ.
oops – I was half way through JQ – pardon.