Another thread for lengthy debates, off-topic exchanges, long posts on regular hobby-horses etc.
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Another thread for lengthy debates, off-topic exchanges, long posts on regular hobby-horses etc.
John Quiggin 
Goody, fresh sand.
“It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”
Hal Lewis
John Quiggin,
If there’s one thing that needs to be widely discussed if the world is serious about CO2 reduction as well as minimal earth surface degradation for environmental protection, it’s nuclear power.
To shut down debate and /or relegate it to the sandpit is pathetic.
the Prof didnt relegate it to the sandpit – if you check the previous thread “Nuclear the last post” not so long ago spangled – you obviously missed it – the Prof allowed that thread to run on and on up to 411 posts – so must has been covered in depth here a number of times – that is hardly shutting it down.
Drongo-talk from a drongo? How apt.
Finrod in the Nuclear, again thread:
I was referring to Nuclear competing with hydro generally, i.e. around the world. There’s nothing that says Aluminium must be made in Australia. Of course, as time goes by, hydro may become more valuable in Australia and thus uneconomic for use in Aluminium smelting. This doesn’t mean the same must apply elsewhere in the world. Other places are much better endowed with hydro than Australia.
Also Professor Q, Finrod may have been swamping the thread but I think a lot of his comments were relevant.
Better endowed indeed, but as demand grows these sources will ultimately become less of the overall mix, and then nuclear will be the only game in town.
But as social conscience grows these sources will expand and then nuclear will be the only albatross around some natoins necks.
@Finrod
It is quite clear you, Finrod (and others like you), think nuclear is the only game in town right now. Others of us are not as convinced as you and some of use are unlikely to be as convinced as you ever. In fact some of us dont seek an oil/coal alternative power source to provide 100% of existing energy usages (coudl it be that some of us dont think we need as much evnergy as we currently use? Yes.)
Can you possibly even imagine that ie a curb on existing usage and renewables or is it only coal or nuclear, thus status quo unchanged usage levels for you?.
Nice but self serving.
@Chris Warren
As time goes by…we have discovered the dangers of coal… so why are not take two steps and omit the dangers of nuclear (which we already know exist).
Two giant steps for mankind. Beyond coal and beyond nuclear. It couldnt be that hard.
@Alice
When taking giant steps, the direction they lead is a very important consideration. What’s your plan for running the Haber–Bosch process once the gas fields are depleted? At the moment the hydrogen required for the process comes from natural gas. When that is no longer available, we’ll have to return to producing hydrogen from water. Note that the global population is currently projected to peak at nearly ten billion.
@Finrod
When taking giant steps, the direction they lead is a very important consideration. What’s your plan for running nukes once more Chernobyls erupt and waste storage facilities are exhausted? At the moment long-term waste is stored in short-term facilities. When that is no longer available, we’ll have to return to producing power from fossils. Note that the global population is currently projected to increase exponentially.
@Finrod
Finrod if we we concentrated more on national industry and its development concerns and less on pandering to the elite industries and their captains in the global markets..have you ever thought of the possibility that people may not have to traverse the our spreadeagled cities to get to their employment with some large international firm and instead go to work in a local business?
Imagine the petrol they wouldnt have to use. Imagine that smaller scale firms would again be viable to sustain our national population instead of endlessly obsessing over global participation and worrying which international conglomerate wanted to aggressively take our businesses over to satisfy the sharemarkets insatiable desire for short capital gains (and spit the pips out).
Im not trying to kill ideas of globalisation Finrod but it does tie in to rapid and unsustainable use of energy resources also, which we have seen over the last century. Ideas of globalisation will die naturally as energy reserves decline.
To advocate for nuclear over coal in order to maintain the lifestyle status quo we currently have now, with coal, …is like choosing to drive your unnecessarily large car down the same old self destructive road in the same self destructive traffic jam. Yet we do it over and over…many of us… twice a day.
Its not lack of energy that is the problem. Its our perfectly wasteful consumption of it. Perhaps our industry is not organised efficiently at all.. (quite tragic – after all the years of freeing capital and so that it could become “more efficient”) Perhaps we need to be thinking of how can we produce using less energy, or how we can better organise production and transport so that we do use less, travel less etc rather than what will provide the same energy needs we have now.
I dont want my kids to be in that worsening traffic jam. The golden age of driving is already over.
It is rather unlikely that another Chernobyl-type accident will occur again, however much the anti-nuke community might long for it. If such an accident does occur, we’ll deal with it and move on. The same cannot be said of the genocidal disruption to human civilisation which the inability to run Haber-Bosch would entail.
The used nuclear fuel will be recycled in breeder reactors to extract the remaining available energy, vastly greater than that won through the current once-through cycle.
Where did you get the idea that current population projections were for exponential growth? You seem very ignorant of these matters.
@Finrod
You are obviously a computer program. All those issues have already been done to death.
Your statement that the anti-nuke community long for a Chernobyl-type accident is obscene, and displays ignorance of the capitalists’ assurances prior to the BP oil spill.
Functional breeder reactors which leave no waste are further off than improved renewables. They are a concept, essentially based on recycling plutonium from decommissioned warheads.
All percentage growth is exponential.
I agree with Chris on this. Tone it down, please Finrod – JQ
Sadly I missed the opportunity to comment in the ‘Nuclear, again’ thread because it was so quickly closed down. I was hoping to address Barry Brook who quickly shuts down any criticism on his own blog.
I’ve found Brave New Climate to be the energy equivalent of WattsUpWithThat. It’s atrocious pro-nuclear propaganda. It goes from desperate fear-mongering – “Nuclear Power or Climate Change: Take Your Pick” – to ridiculous articles that are nothing but collections of strawmen – “Hypocrisies of the antis”.
He even produced a ‘business card’ for visitors to print out which says ‘Renewable power does not work.’ It’s hard to believe Brook is a scientist.
And it’s made all the more ludicrous that Australia has massive potential for clean, safe, renewable energy, especially solar.
Ultimately, it looks very much like Brook and the rest of the nuclear fan club have backed the wrong horse. New nukes are barely being built quickly enough to replace old ones going offline. Google ‘Nuclear: New dawn now seems limited to the east’ for a Financial Times article on the reality of nuclear in the short to medium term.
Meanwhile, renewables are being deployed at an accelerating rate and falling in cost as a result. That process is only likely to move further in renewables favour in the coming years.
@DavidC
That is simply untrue. Stephen Gloor, Peter Lalor & BilB who disagree have never been barred from posting there.
That was not produced by Professor brook but a contributor, John Morgan, so this is wrong too.
And yet fossil hydrocarbon usage continues to grow, despite subsidies/support for renewables. Go figure.
Nobody will be happier than I am on the day, if it ever comes, when the the first coal or gas fired plant is retired in favour of some combination of renewables, but I won’t be holding my breath for that to happen.
No need for alarm, the hockey stick was only a delusion.
@el gordo
No need to bother – el gordo is only a delusion.
@DavidC
I agree David. I also find it a bit hard to believe Brook is a scientist (or perhaps a truly objective scientist may be a better description) given what appears to be a slight religious fervency of pro nuclear advocation. Take no prisoners – there are no alternatives????
(but then other scientists have been guilty in the past of being slightly overdevoted to their own fields of “expertise” or “solutions” – for example Dr McBride or Harry Bailey in the medical fields are two examples of what one might describe as eminent in their fields yet somehow tripped up). Couple this with his webistes obvious attraction to “disciples” and the tacit approval of what seems to me to be a sloganistic anti renewable stance ie a business card with “Renewable power does not work”.?
Dr Barry Brook may not have made that business card but he obviously doesnt object to it being on his website. To answer Ernestine’s question Professor Barry Brook does not appear to be a nuclear physicist as far as I can ascertain. Accordining to his blibliography he has a degree with honours and a PHD from Macquarie uni in science (major not specified or I couldnt find it).
Perhaps Fran might know.
“Nobody will be happier than I am on the day, if it ever comes, when the the first coal or gas fired plant is retired in favour of some combination of renewables”
That is the bit that the anti-nukes just do not get.
I have been using off-grid wind since 1957 and solar since 1985 and I know what their limits are. Check how well the solar thermal is going at Windorah. [They still run the diesel generator almost as much as they did before the ST was built at $100,000 per household]. If the residents paid the true cost of this power it would cost them over $20,000 per annum per household.
I thought the nuclear thread was interesting, though a little too personal towards the end, alas internet threads can easily dissolve even with the best of intentions. If there ever is another nuclear thread perhaps we could cover a narrow topic such as ‘economics of the AP-1000’ etc?
@Alice
I think Prof. Brook studies climate change in general? I quite like bravenewclimate although I don’t read the posts there anymore as they are too long.
In all honesty I think one day we will get all our domestic power needs from uber-solar panels on our rooftops, but that could be decades away. Alice, I feel your frustration with people wasting energy, I guess one reason I advocate nuclear energy is that I don’t believe people will give up their lifestyles until there is a crisis. You can eliminate the energy efficiency conundrum with nuclear. The other reason I want nuclear is that we already have nuclear waste, and nuclear weapons- the only way to comprehensively eliminate these materials is via deep burn cycles in advanced nuclear reactors (which use the laws of physics to prevent Chernobyl like accidents).
@Chumpai
Chumpai – I live on the beach and I look at the vaste expanse water every day and Ill be damned if we cant do something with the power of the ocean. Something that may not be cheap to start with, but something that may be very powerful in the long run.
I dont want nuclear simply because its the cheapest for those with money to install now.
DavidC and Alice, Brook did not produce that “business card”, I did. I participated in the “Walk Against Warming” recently, in Sydney, and I wanted to have something to hand out to communicate the important facts of our current greenhouse situation and energy options, and I thought this was a good way to do it, particularly since I could take advantage of a company that does free business card printing, so I only had to pay postage. You can see an image of the card here: http://i.imgur.com/jsjTm.png . There was a very tight letter count, so its a bit of a haiku, but each assertion is correct. Barry saw fit to draw attention to it in a blog post, but it was my work.
There was the full range of responses too, on the walk. Some people were interested and wanted more information, there were a couple in full agreement, and wanted to know which reactors I favoured. Others disagreed, in a knowledgeable and friendly way. And as might be expected there were a couple of angry and aggressive reactions.
David, the tone of your comment suggests you object to the statement, “Renewable power does not work”. It depends on what you mean by “work”, of course. You can put an alternator on a wind powered crank and produce an electric current, but that’s too low a threshold of utility to say it works, as a useful power source. You can, if you choose, take your home completely off grid and, personally, substantially cut your CO2 emissions. But this is strictly the domain of individual hobbyists, its an available option for very few people indeed, and it will not “work” to reduce Australia’s greenhouse emissions. By “work”, I mean cut CO2 emissions by offering a societal scale alternative to fossil fuels. “Renewable” energy can’t do this. Renewable energy doesn’t work, as a greenhouse response. If we choose a renewables strategy, we are indeed headed towards disastrous climate change.
Alice: “I also find it a bit hard to believe Brook is a scientist (or perhaps a truly objective scientist may be a better description) ..”
Here’s a short list of his gongs, as a scientist of the first rank:
2007: Cosmos Bright Sparks Award: One of the top 10 young scientists in Australia
2007: H.G. Andrewartha Medal: Royal Society of SA. Awarded for outstanding research by a scientist under 40 years (any discipline)
2006: Fenner Medal: Australian Academy of Science. Awarded for distinguished research in biology by a scientist under 40 years
2006: Edgeworth David Medal: Royal Society of NSW. Awarded for outstanding research by a scientist under 35 years (any discipline)
2006: Who’s Who in Australia? (Crown Content Publishing) bibliographic entry
2005: 2000 Outstanding Scientists of the 21st Century, bibliographic entry (International Biographical Centre, Cambridge)
1999: Australian Flora Foundation Prize, Australian Flora Foundation
They don’t give these things away, Alice.
In the nuclear thread you implicitly accused Brook of having some commercial interest in nuclear power. Quiggan rightly asked you to retract, which you did. But here you are now trying to associate him with William McBride and Harry Bailey. Sure, you’ve maintained sufficient deniability to plead you meant no offence, as you did before. But you know what you’re doing. Stop it.
@John Morgan
Yes yes John Morgan – I saw all the awards too. Anyone can view the awards. The inquiry under discussion is about his qualifications. Ernestine asked if he is a nuclear physicist. That is my enquiry. I do not believe he as I cannot find anything in his blibliography along those lines, notwithstanding the awards you list.
I will not retract the references to other eminent scientists guilty perhaps of making mistakes, in favour of their own research. This is a general comment and we should be aware that it happens. I have questions over someone who permits theirw website to carry a card or a note (even though it was not written by them personally) that states
“renewables dont work”.
Even Professor Brooks own papers in other areas do not indicate that he fully subscribes to the view that “renewables dont work” – so why permit it on his website??
Could it be that there is more funding available from short termist capitalists for pro nuclear research. We all know increasingly, public sector researchers and academics are being pressed (pressured) to seek private sector monetary grants.
I know what I am saying. I may not agree with the system of grants and the soliciting of private sector grants for research in universities but it now exists all the same which only makes it harder to discern genuinely objective scientific research and separate it from money and egos.
I will not stop John Morgan. This is the sandpit. Save your misinterpretations and skewings of my post for someone less gullible.
@John Morgan
To be more precise Barry Brook won the following for the following reasons…
the 2007 Cosmos award – Barry Brook:” ecology & climate change”, University of Adelaide.
2007 Fenner medal – I can not find the specific research that gave Professor Brook the award – he was involved at the time in research into whale shark mammal decline. It is for distinguished research in the field of “biology”.
2006 – Edgeworth David medal – he was awarded it in 2006 but we dont know his field of expertise because it isnt listed. See below.
http://nsw.royalsoc.org.au/awards/edgeworth.html
No – they do not give these things away as you say John. Im sure Professor Brook is an eminently capable scientist. Whether it makes him an expert in the field of nuclear technology and appropriateness of use is quite another question entirely.
Professor Barry Brook has published extensively but not all his publications , unlike the website “bravenewclimate’ are about his pro nuclear advocacy John Morgan and I would be interested to know exactly what research about which subject saw him gain the above awards.
Why don’t you ask Barry about his awards and expertise directly? The comments on the ‘About’ page at BNC would be appropriate.
I dont need too Jon Morgan. Professor Brooks publications are in the public domain. I do not see many publications linked directly to nuclear power although he has recently published a book about it and he does have pro nuclear website.
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/barry.brook#Publications
@spangled drongo
You need to put up some evidence.
Was this plant a ‘first of kind’?
What does “almost as much” mean?
AGL is building a 52MW wind farm for $120 million [“Hallett 5” as advised to Australian Stock Exchange on 26 August 2010].
Theoretically this is 1MW for $2.3 million, but windfarms do not produce consistently.
If it averages just under 30% capacity, each MW will need $8 million in construction costs.
At 5%, the capital cost for this is $400,000 per yr. per MW capacity (which gives 8,760 MW-hrs per year).
This may be more expensive than fossil, but at $45.70 for each MWhr it seems affordable and efficient.
If the windfarm only performs at 25% capacity (over a year) then each of 8,760 MW hrs per year will cost proportionately more.
So, even adding in overheads, transmission costs, and depreciation – this still seems affordable and efficient.
If we develop renewables further, these costs will fall.
Alice, you’re not discussing his publication record. You’re mischievously raising a number of different questions that go to his credibility. These are the questions I suggest you put to him.
@John Morgan
What Alice is doing has been dubbed “the Gish Gallop”.
@Alice
Alice said:
Oh, right, I see. So if a nuclear physicist or nuclear engineer says that nuclear fission energy is an appropriate and effective way to cut carbon emissions, then you’ll ‘believe’ and ‘support’ it, eh Alice? Right, got it, thanks for that clarification.
Fran, I think she’s doing something darker than simply overburdening us with questions. Its very close to the Fox News “Some say ..” tactic, used to make an insinuation without being responsible for a direct accusation (if you ever saw the doco Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Jounalism, you’ll know what I mean).
This comment was posted by Seth on BNC today. It is probably more applicable here. Those with an open mind might appreciate the its applicable to some of the contributiosn here:
QUOTE
One of the major roadblocks in getting nukes built at any cost in the west is the massive unreasoning opposition of antinuclear greenies. Any attempt to educate the undecided is met with vicious opposition.
This extends to the deletion of critical comments on greeny web sites.
No better example than antinuclear advocate David Roberts who runs Grist.org. He has an article there on how prevalent the climate Denier community is amongst Republicans and how how the progressive politicians are avoiding the fight.
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-08-telling-the-truth-about-climate-change-is-good-politics/#comments
I made the following comment pointing out that its while he thinks it’s okay for antinuclear progressives to make fun of climate deniers, by rejecting nuclear power as a solution nuclear deniers are just as dangerous to civilization’s survival as the climate variety in fact more so.
In fact James Camerson agrees.
My comment:
“People that claim to believe in climate change but reject nuclear power as a solution are actually a far worse danger to humanity than reasoning progressives’s and climate deniers who generally accept the need for nukes.
Here’s James Cameron recently
” I’m pro-nuclear, yeah, in this particular context, as a bridge to a fully sustainable future. I think the waste problem is a 500 year horizon, I think the warming problem is a 10 to 15 year horizon. ”
10 to 15 years people!!! Then add to that less than ten years for Peak Oil.
Wind and solar couldn’t make more than a tiny dint in our GHG emissions in that timeframe.
Even if it weren’t industrially and financially impossible, its politically impossible as well. Deniers hate wind/solar with a passion and will fight every effort to build them. With increased Repug control of government it is likely all subsidy will end.
Some Australian power engineers, real engineers as opposed to some Greenpeace study done by social workers, looked at a proposal to power Australia by 2020 with balanced wind solar and biomass. It was found to be impossibly expensive, utterly impractical, and an orders of magnitude more costly than nuclear with costs reaching as high as $1.20 a kwh.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/
With a World War II effort, in ten years 10000 mass produced nukes could easily with a fraction of our industrial capacity, with the costs covered at a 30% ROR by replacing fossil fuels, head off the the global warming and peak oil crises.
The three million people that die every year from air pollution will then live and the hundreds of millions sickened will live healthy lives.
The cost of mass produced nukes are a tiny fraction of wind/solar coming in at under 2 cents a kwh based on American NRC approved American engineer build reactors under construction in China with onshore unsubsidized new wind starting at 12 cents and offshore 25 cents. Solar is double that. Wind costs and solar PV have bottomed and are increasing. Solar CSP is an unknown but at a minimum higher than offshore wind.
Nuclear Waste? the usual canard.
All the worlds nuclear waste would fit in the Great Pyramid at Giza which has lasted 5000 years. Better we let a billion people die than lose a football field forever? And the stuff is not waste it is fuel waiting for recycle enough to power the world for hundreds of years. Whats left is such low level it could be stuffed back in an uranium mine shaft.
Meltdown?
The worst possible accident with a post fifties nuke happened at three mile island, the reactor vessel was barely scratched. The IAEA standard for new reactors has a core melt release probability on 1 per million reactor years of operation. The AP-1000 improves that to 1 per 200 million reactor years of operation.
10 to 15 years folks!!!! That’s what climate scientists are telling us. Wind and solar people don’t seem to believe them, while all the time dissing climate deniers. They seem to love the not so renewables more than the survival of civilization.
Stop laughing at the Repug deniers and look in the mirror. Maybe some comprise to your rigidity is in order. Add nuclear power to a RES standand – maybe that might actually get a bill signed and some process under way.”
I got this right away from Roberts as he deleted my comment.
“Seth, one more off-the-shelf rant about nuclear power on a thread that has nothing to do with nuclear power and you will be banned from Grist for good. Last warning.
– david roberts
senior staff writer”
Presumably that would include any articles extolling the virtues of wind or solar power.
This is the second time, the first note from Roberts came after my comment on a Joe Rolm article that Charles Barton was kind enough to comment on here
http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2010/09/bankrupt-criticism-of-nuclear-power.html
You will find a similar thing on Huffpo where antinuclear baiters can call pronuclear commentators all sorts of nasty names liars, shills and worse yet never get banned while the list of banned pronuclear commentators is lengthy.
It is apparent that the antinuclear component of the Green community is hell bent on shutting down opposition and any means fair or foul is all for the cause.
END QUOTE
Nothing more on Barry Brooks’ qualifications and so on, please. Let’s stick to the arguments on his site.
Strongly agree. I can’t stand credentialism. Let arguments stand or fall on their own merits.
Chris Warren,
Solar Thermals have been around for years and are claimed to be highly efficient.
Because this plant only supplies power from 8 am till 5 pm [when no one is home] peak load is still carried by the old generator so it really only “keeps the beer cold” for this incredible cost. And there is very little diesel fuel saved compared to the previous system.
“At 5%, the capital cost for this is $400,000 per yr. per MW capacity (which gives 8,760 MW-hrs per year).
“This may be more expensive than fossil, but at $45.70 for each MWhr it seems affordable and efficient.”
For an asset that has to be written off in 20 years, the capital recouped, interest charged and maintenance, running costs and overhead allowed for, your figures are completely unrealistic.
$150 per MWhr would be conservative and at the usual 25% or less average performance, $180-200 is nearer the mark.
The cost of electricity from solar thermal is about $225/MWh according to EIA. This has risen 30% in the past year. This is the cost for solar thermal that operates in day time in summer only. So solar thernal is virtually useless and about 5 to 10 times the cost of electricity from conventional power stations.
@spangled
Sorry, we already have solar thermals providing baseload power. Even on the face of your post you are making stuff up. The sun does not rise at 8 am and set at 5 pm. Australian technology is also already providing baseload power. Sadly it’s happening in California because Australia has a more than faintly weird attitude to innovation. John Howard was great at talking points, but not so great at science.
Obviously you have to ask twice with some people; so
Silly statements such as “only keeps the beer cold” don’t mean anything.
Where is your evidence?
Was this a ‘first of a kind’?
Under public ownership, given proper maintenance, the asset would not have to be written-off. It would only be written-off if cheaper means of renewables arise.
So where is your evidence that a 54mw capacity wind-turbine produces @ $150 per MWhr before overheads.
If you read what I wrote – you will see that my costing is before overheads, transmission and depreciation as these apply to all forms of generators.
So, yet again, you have not answered the question, and have not understood the point.
It may be best if you try again …..
@Chumpai If there ever is another nuclear thread perhaps we could cover a narrow topic such as ‘economics of the AP-1000? etc?
I found a 2004 DoE study associated with the “Nuclear Power 2010” plan. Estimated levelized cost for AP1000 is $36-50 /MWh, but this assumed a capital cost of around $1300/KWh, which is about one-third of current estimated costs in the US. So, $100/MWh is a plausible minimum in the absence of subsidies. That means a carbon price of at least $50/tonne, as I think I said in the original post.
Alan,
D’you really believe you can average better than 9 hours [8 to 5] a day performance all year round?
And Windorah ST doesn’t have any energy storage which adds considerably to the price and would be useless in many of our usual wet periods. How is that baseload?
Also Howard new that Nuclear was the only serious “renewable”.
Peter Lang,
Thanks for that. I suspected as much.
On top of that Windorah is a very dusty place most of the year and they have no clean, clear water to wash those six-storey mirrors. It often doesn’t rain for months or even years.
Alan: “Sorry, we already have solar thermals providing baseload power.”
No, we already don’t. There is no baseload solar thermal anywhere in the world now, and I do not expect there ever will be.
Read what the citation you offered actually says, and I draw your attention to the use of the subjunctive tense:
Could? Doubtful. Does it? Certainly not.
Matthew has something of a blind spot when it comes to solar thermal. When he refers to “baseload” solar power you have to check carefully how many hours storage he is referring to. He promotes the Beyond Zero Emissions Zero Carbon Australia 2020 plan as having “baseload” solar thermal. In that plan, the generators are configured at 17 hours storage. What this means is that the “baseload” generator is killed by a single cloudy day. Thats not baseload. How many cloudy days in a row should the system need to cope with? One? Thats about a forty hour storage requirement (plus the additional generation capacity required to pump up that additional storage). Is one day a realistic storage requirement? What do you think? Has it ever in your experience rained, God forbid, for two days in a row? More?
Your second link is interesting – its from 2007 (!) and refers to David Mill’s solar company Ausra’s plans. From 2010 we can see how this unfolded. In 2008 Ausra built a 5 MW (ie practically nothing) demonstration plant. It is not providing baseload power for anyone, anywhere. In 2009 Ausra’s plans for a 177 MW Californian plant were shelved. In 2010 Ausra was bought by AREVA, and its not providing solar systems with storage anywhere.
You guys really need to stop drinking the Kool Aid and exercise a little critical thinking and research skills. There is no such thing as baseload solar thermal. If you disagree with me, point me to an example.
Windorah is not a solar thermal station. It uses PV cells with a mirror concentration system. The daylight hours for Windorah cane easily be googled. I’ll leave you to that. I suspect that even in Windorah the sun does not work 8 to 5.
No. What I wrote is true – from *my* experience. I am not Stephen Gloor or anyone else.
I do apologise. Brook did not actually make the ‘business card’ – he just posted and promoted it on his blog.
It’s not difficult to figure (assuming your claim is true). Developing countries such as China and India are playing catch-up with the ‘west’ and rapidly deploying the energy sources which allow them to compete with us. When CO2 per capita of the US and Australia is ~20 tons per person and China is 5 and India is 1, there’s no moral justification for anyone in the ‘west’ to criticise them.
You’re in luck. It’s already happened and continues every day as GWs of clean, safe, renewable energy come online. Here’s a starter:
Renewables Global Status Report: Renewables accounted for 60% of new power capacity in Europe in 2009; China added 37 GW of renewable power capacity, more than any other country in the world; Globally, nearly 80 GW of renewable capacity was added, including 31 GW of hydro and 48 GW of non-hydro capacity; Solar PV additions reached a record high of 7 GW; 83+ countries have policies to promote renewable power. http://www.ren21.net/globalstatusreport/g2010.asp
There’s much more information like that if you choose to educate yourself on it. However, you will not find this information on Barry Brook’s blog.
I only started taking an interest in energy ~9 months ago as a result of climate change, and it took me completely by surprise that so many people are *rabidly* defensive of nuclear and dismissive of renewables. Evidence and reality be damned. That “Renewables don’t work” ‘business card’ promoted by Brook is simply bizarre.
“Nuclear will take us to a magical utopia! Renewables will have us all sitting in mud huts and speaking Chinese!”
One other indicator that you know something is amiss is that *every* climate change denier is pro-nuke / anti-renewable….
John Quiggan,
The projected cost of electricity from new plants varies according to assumptions. Equivalent assumptions must be used for comparisons. The $225/MWh for solar thermal is for power that is provided only when the solar power station wants to provide power. This is very different from the power supplied in response to to demand. Nuclear, fossil fuels and hydro provide power on demand. These costs of wind and solar are not comparable with costs from nuclear, fossil fuel or hydro.
For a fair comparison you need to compare on the basis of the cost of power from generators that can respond to demand. Baseload power is the power that is demanded all the time. Approximately 75% of the electricity we consume is baseload. In Australia’s NEM, the baseload varies between about 17GW (summer) and 20GW (July). Annual average demand is about 25GW. ur peak demand is about 35GW and occurs in winter at about 7 pm (after sundown!).
Cost projections for new nuclear in USA and EU are around $60 to $100/MWh as you state. For new coal about $50/MWh. These costs cannot be compared with wind or solar without incorporating the costs of the back-up generators and extra grid costs that are necessary to enable wind or solar to provide baseload power (reliable power on demand).
Wind power with gas back-up and grid enhancements necessary to provide reliable, high quality power on demand would cost about 3 times the cost of nuclear in Australia. You will hear lots of argiuments from the renewables advocates, but these are basically attempts to muddy the waters and confuse people.
If you would like more on this, could I suggest you and and any readers who are interested might like to look at these articles:
1. Critique of the Zero Carbon Australia by 2020 report
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/
2. Replacing Hazelwood coal fired power station
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/05/29/replacing-hazelwood-coal/
3. Emission Cuts Realities
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/
The first explains how ridiculous are the claims of the renewable advocates who claim that wind and solar can provide our needs for power.
The second shows that replacing Hazelwood power station in Victoria (Australia’s highest GHG emissions intensity power station) with wind and gas would reduce emissions by little more than with gas alone but the electricity would cost about twice as much.
The third compares five options for replacing our fossil fuel power stations. It compares the options over a transition period until all coal and most gas has been replaced. The options for replacing are gas alone; gas and nuclear; gas and wind; gas and solar thermal; and gas, wind and solar thermal. The options are compared on the basis of: capital expenditure, CO2-e emissions avoided, cost per tonne emissions avoided, electricity cost of the replacement technologies.
Cost of nukes ??????
Here is one take…
http://scitizen.com/future-energies/how-much-will-new-nuclear-power-plants-cost-_a-14-2287.html
The bottom line is that no-one knows, and always more than promised.
Deleted. I’m not interested in spillovers from fights on other blogs, even in the sandpit. I’ll delete anything more I see that relates to intra-blog disputes at BCN