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 
@Chris Warren
Yawn.
@Chris Warren
Seriously, Chris… this stuff is very well known. It’s based on the amount of energy which can be gained from fissioning fissile atoms, on known decay times for fission products, and on technological developments which have been ongoing for decades and which has produced a number of prototype and operational commercial and military plants. The ‘evidence’ you seek is mostly in any good first year physics textbook. Or on wikipedia.
@Chris Warren
Actually Chris, thinking about your comment there, I’m starting to wonder just what the basis is for your opposition to nuclear power. I’m not an expert on the subject, but when I became interested in it and began to research it a few years ago, it didn’t take me long to get a few basics under my belt. It’s not as if this stuff is particularly difficult to find or to learn. Now you are very passionate about your opposition, so I’m asking you to help me understand why this is. If you’re not familiar with stuff which I learned in a few weeks of occasional reading, how have you reached the position you hold? What drives you?
Breeder reactors; another pipe dream ….
According to IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers)
So how much has Australia paid to have our waste reprocessed in France and soon to be delivered back here.
What was the isotopes going out, what is the isotopes coming back?
@Finrod
If
So … post a citation or a link.
@Chris Warren
We’ll start with these.
http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/
Yuk! This cesspit is full of radwaste. Get a half life Quiggin, your irrelevancy is showing.
I just love the way the pro nukers in here want to chalk up 456 posts – a most monumental discussion of nuclear energy (more than anything Prof Brooks has ever chalked up in the same period of time at bravenewclimate) in the sandpuit which is supposed to be for general discussion (IMHO this is a takeover by pro nukers who should be banging their tin drums in bravenewclimate).
but at the first hint that people are tiring of the discussion they want to turn around and suggest its “The Prof that shuts down debate on nuclear” or “I blame Quiggin” (Lang, el Gordo, Finrod et al)
You people really make me laugh.
The base line is – the pro nukers cant cost the risks of nuclear properly and they make no attempts to cost the risks properly – so its not even worth arguing on their costings. They have huge black holes in them.
Their costings are about as useful as the ratings agencies before the recent GFC.
as for el gordo at post 7 here – he is just a resident pest (if I didnt know better Id say he was a cousin of Tony G).
@Alice
Actually Alice, Prof. Quiggin, although he shut down the thread he started, at least permitted the discussion to continue here. It’s you who wants to shut the discussion down altogether.
As for the risks and their costing, I’m not a finance person, but the risks compared to other power generation technologies are minimal. The main ‘risk’ from a financial point of view is that of political interference posed by anti-nuclear activists such as yourself. This is a real issue, and part of the reason for this outreach is to reduce that risk so that capital can see the kind of long term political stability it needs to put money into this.
@Alice
It’s good to see that there’s something we can agree on.
@Finrod
So which citation relates to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
There seems to be a whole lot of auxiliary material that do not go to your claims.
Which sources in:
http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/
did you use to cover your points 1 to 7?
None of them. I used my own general knowledge of the subject.
I provided you the link to those papers for you to improve your own knowledge of the matter at hand. Happy reading!
‘Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification.’
Tim Ball
I’d be really interested in the answer to this question too? Genuinely.
Why the passionate opposition. Why keep talking about irrelevant, “down in the weeds” minutiae points and not put them in the overall context of what it is that concerns you?
Is your real issue with nuclear:
1. the cost
2. the sustainability
3. the environmental foot print,
4. the health risks
5. the ‘evilness’ of the technology
From what I see being posted the real underlying reason is #5.
Please reply and explain what your opposition is really based on. Then we could have a rational discussion.
@Peter Lang
The real reason Peter is 3 and 4 and you pro nuclears dont cost the risks asosciated with nuclear energy properly (so your costings are a sham)… and you prefer your own point 5 as an explanation for why people oppose nuclear use.
Your choice but once again wrong headed. You make sweeping statements and have no evidence for them as Chris called you at post 12 here but you have selective responses as well – because you didnt respond to Chris’s call for citations. This is very normal from the pro nuclear advocates.
You ignore the risks of nuclear or you deny the risks of nuclear. You place unrealitsically high expectations on human compliance and regulatory management. You assume it wont fail (when failure is more the norm).
Then you simply omit costing the risks of nuclear. You say “most of the dangerous stuff decays to background levels in 300 years”.
Wow – 300 years for the really dangerous stuff to hang around (even given most people know thats false and a gross understatement) is a damn long time.
Too long.
Alice said,
“I just love the way the pro nukers in here want to chalk up 456 posts”
A large proportion of them are soilly posts by you trying to disrupt any discussion because you don’t want to hear it (“hear no evil, read no evil”, that doesn’t agree with your beliefs), and many others are simply repeating the anti-nuke mantra without any rational supporting argument or facts. It is thas that is adding to what otherwise could be an intelligent debate about a really important policy issue for Australia. I presume that is why the Professor has started the discussion twice on threads then moved it to the sand pit, then raised it a third time. He shut down the debate on each of the three threads. And you want to see it shut down on the sand pit as well. Why? You don’t have to participate. You don’t have to disrupt it.
Alice said:
“as for el gordo at post 7 here – he is just a resident pest”
No, Alice that is you!
@Finrod
And Finrod – Im gald to see you are at least being honest enough to admit that the Prof does not shut down debate on nuclear (in fact he has been extraordinarily generous in terms of time and freedom).
But why should a general discusssion thread be hijacked by pro nukers who have their own site at bravenewclimate?. Could it be you dont get enough comments going there to have a good old fashioned rumble in the jungle? Maybe there is not enough interest in nuclear advocacy from most people. Maybe you are only a minority special interest group and the weight of opinion is not at all on your side.
Have you considered that?. I know you think you can change peoples minds to be pro nuclear but has it happened here to one person despite all your arguments?. If I was a market researcher and using this thread as a case study – Id say give up and find a better product to sell.
Alice, you said:
“The real reason Peter is 3 and 4 and you pro nuclears dont cost the risks asosciated with nuclear energy properly (so your costings are a sham)”
Would you like to discuss points 3 and 4 then?
Why do you say that nuclear doesn’t costs the risks properly? Do you mean that other technologies cost their risks but nuclear does not?
@Alice
I have already addressed these issues.
And as far as success at changing people’s minds goes, yes, I’ve enjoyed quite a bit of that. Possibly even here, although it’s difficult to say for sure.
Peter L@15,
As the famous trillion dollar man that you are I have to asy that
1. you have absolutely no idea about costs
2. you have not the foggiest idea about what sustainability means
3. Environmental foot print…mmm… to you that is only what you can see in your mind, and you mind is completely blocked from see the 3 dimensional impint of nuclear energy and its extended devastating radiational consequences. You go on endlessly about the extended footprint of coal energy, but that is our heritage and only relevent in that it must come to an end. True, the new footprint is time/action/consequence, and in that everything that you aspire to is illusiary.
4. You have got to be kidding. Everything nuclear contributes to the rising tide of environmental toxicity, in the most dangerous and invisible manner. And it is this invisibility that supercharges backround radiation. Constantly the charge from nulcearphobes is “prove it”. Well, it is pretty hard to prove that a neutron blasted through ones body triggering a devastating change to a key DNA sequence. Where there is proof it is routinely ignored or discredited leaving demoralised but still dying victimsin the wake.
5. What the….Nuclear energy has very much been a government sponsored plaything. It does exist without government sponsorship. And where government promotes a technology that is more weapon than civil function there is the ever presence of evasion and evil.
France, your ever favoured example of nuclear harmony is also the classic of example of “good” bookended by evil. France built its civil nuclear programme in order to service its Nuclear weapons programme, generated civil electricity for many years, this produced a sizeable mountain of toxic waste which it cleared away to other countries where surveylance was neglible.
Good, bookended by evil. That is the nuclear story.
********************************************
This is the absolute reason why our nucoholics have to dissimulate,
misrepresent, blow-hard, and shift goal posts.
As soon as you try to get rigorous argument – they just revert to fiction and poetic concepts.
We saw this over nicotine, and huge damage was done to the community for the sake of profits.
We have seen this with other toxic chemicals as well.
Throwing ill-digested mountains of proximate papers is just embarrassing to them.
*************************************************
So this is the end of the line for this chap.
@Chris Warren
Not at all, Chris. I’ll admit I was being a bit lazy, but I’ll try and find some time later to walk you through the details. I’ve still got to do that for BilB too, on another site (I haven’t forgotten).
@BilB
BilB, anti-nukes have been trying to prove that NPPs are deadly to their neighbours for decades. You see junk ‘studies’ performed in Germany all the time along these lines. They simply don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Chris Warren said:
“This is the absolute reason why our nucoholics have to dissimulate,
misrepresent, blow-hard, and shift goal posts.
As soon as you try to get rigorous argument – they just revert to fiction and poetic concepts.”
That is how I see the irrational anti nukes such as yourself.
From my perspective, you want to divert to irrelevant, ‘down in the weeds’ issues that have no relation to the context.
Alice said her concerns with nuclear are the environmental footprint, the health risks and that the costs of these are not properly included in the cost of electricity.
Does that summarise your concerns too?
Peter Lang,
How do you feel that neither Finrod nor Barry Brooke are willing to endorse your claim that to achieve baseload electricity for Australia’s 35 gigawatt system would cost 4 trillion dollars? I would call that a discreditation.
Finrod,
I wouldn’t waste your time with BilB. You know what is going on there. (follow through the thread from here (or earlier):
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/#comment-67531
Fair enough ………….
I presume BilB is referring to Table 9 here:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/
I’d point out for the benefit of others this comment by John Morgan (there were many similar comments by Barry Brook and others, but BilB continued in his manner of throwing out unsubstantiated statements and could never be pinned down. He continues in the same vein here where his utter rubbish is allowed to continue unchallenged)
“BilB, once again,
* what assumptions do you object to? What are your preferred alternative assumptions?
* What new techniques do you refer to? How do they alter the estimates?
* What lifetime do you think should be attributed to nuclear plants?
* What (definite, not indefinite) lifetime do you attribute to a capable CSP system?
Just throwing out unquantified, unargued statements like this is vacuous.”
So I do not bother with BilB.
Sorry, Peter, first up I missed out that that is 4 trillion dollars for baseload RENEWABLE electricity. For the benefit of others, but you knew what I meant.
It is your claim, Peter, which you have stated on both LP and here with at least a year span in between. I notice your running mate Finrod is not leaping in here to say that he absolutely endoreses this evaluation which you very clearly laid out on Larvatus Prodeo (I recall), and on goodness only knows how many other forums in between.
If your BNC colleagues are not prepared to endorse your calculations then they have to be assumed to be fictional. Are you credible??
I’d suggest anyone interested in BilB’s comment should read this to understand the background: http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/
(all the assumptions and calcualtions are substantiated and shown. So what are the specific assumptions or calculations that are wrong?). ZCA2020 exstimated the cost for their plan to provide Australia’s electricity by 2020 from wind and solar power would be #70 billion. The assumptions it is based on are ridiculous. This is laid out in the critique and still heroic assumptions are used. The technologies assumed in the ZCA2020 plan do not exist and probably never will. Howver, using heroic assumptins about what may be possible by say 2030, and saying they are available now, and using projected costs of the enthusiastic proponents, the estimated cost would be $1,709 billion with a range of uncertainty of $855 billion to $4191 billion (compared with the ZCA2020 plan’s estimate of $370 billion).
For comparison, I estimate the cost of doing the same job with nuclear would be $90 billion to $170 billion, much less if we replace coal fired power stations as they reach their use by date).
You can see why there is no point in discussing anything with BilB. He distorts, misleads, and cannot be trusted. He is just advocating for his business. By the way, professional engineers have a code of ethics.
Looking at your BNC link you come up with a figure for 87 gig of CST at 1.27 trillion dollars. This comaparable with an extention of the Egyptian 150 meg hybride project just completed. But twice the tendered price for the extended price of the UAE project. At this stage all of the installations are small and therefore should be considered forom a costing point of view, experimental (sililar to nuclear) which is comparable with pricing cars based on the aglomerated spare parts price. But even at that price $1.27 this is one third of your original claim. And yet again fully based on one technology in omne place rather than the full spectrum of dispersed renewable technologies. This grabbing figures out of thin air approach of yours, find the highest printed number then multiply it out of reason, is very unprofessional.
No wonder no one will back up you claims.
Read the comments on this thread and judge for yourselves.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/
And here is another critique of the Zero Carbon Australia plan, by Ted Trainer of Uni of NSW:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/09/09/trainer-zca-2020-critique/
As usual, BilB is throwing out unstabstantiated assertions designed to mislead.
@BilB
Understanding “the full spectrum of dispersed renewable technologies” seems to be outside the scope of the pro-nukes. For a link that is not hostile to nuclear at all, yet identifies numerous problems that the pro-nukes tend not to give appropriate weight to, see
http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/
Note that the MIT report, by design, only considers nuclear and doesn’t consider opportunity costs (which of course make nuclear even less attractive, particularly within Australia where we have no potential to develop our own nuclear technologies).
@gregh
Gregh – directly above you at post 33 we have Sir Peter “PostaBNClinkalot” Lang and at post 23, Sir Finrod Lazyhazy, who, despite promises still fails to answer Chris’s reasonable queries at post12 asking for evidence behind his sweeping pro nuclear statements…instead replies with this shady cop out..
“Not at all, Chris. I’ll admit I was being a bit lazy, but I’ll try and find some time later to walk you through the details. I’ve still got to do that for BilB too, on another site (I haven’t forgotten).
Finrod is not too busy to post spin in here. This is starting to smell like a big tobacco campaign.
All smoke and mirrors and no substance.
greph,
“Understanding “the full spectrum of dispersed renewable technologies” seems to be outside the scope of the pro-nukes”
Not true.
This simplified analysis (so any interested, intelligent, not specialist can follow it)
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/
shows that the more different types of renewable technologies we add to the mix the higher the cost. And no matter how many technologies you add to the mix you still cannot get a reliable pewer supply that can substitute for fossil fuels. This is obvious if you think about it.
No, Peter Lang, I have asked Finrod on a number of occaisions if he endorses yet conclusion that Renewable Electricity for Australia will cost 4 trillion dollars. This would be affirmation of your credibility. I do not see Barry Brooke leaping in here either. Now we know that you have his ear, so ask him to endorse your published conclusions, specifically himself.
Just because I make comments here on the John Quiggin blogsite does not mean that JQ endorses what I say in any measure unless he specifically chooses to so do. But as you have declared yourself as an adviser to government in your publications, I think that it is important to see how well support your conclusions are amoungst your peers.
Finrod, are you to prepared to endorse Peter Lang’s 4 trillion dollar conclusion?
Alice,
Are you avoiding the questions I put to you at post #19.
There is an element of truth to the ‘lazyhazy’ thing. I do tire easily, and my memory has suffered a bit over the last few months. There are some tasks (both physical and intellectual) which do not come to me as easily as they once did. I apologise for this. Please be patient and I will make time to fulfill the undertakings I’ve committed to. The reason for this can be gleaned from the following article:
http://www.gleninnesexaminer.com.au/news/local/news/general/crash-shatters-family/1839110.aspx?storypage=0
For clarification, I am the ‘Craig Schumacher’ mentioned in the article, and ‘Cherrilyn Collins’ was my mother.
I’m actually a bit busy with some paperwork connected with the whole unfortunate business, so it may be a while before I can properly address the stuff here I need to.
That is a brave disclosure there, Finrod, and I am sorry for your losses an your personal trauma. Time will be the best test of all that we are thrashing out here, so please do not feel pressured by me or my comments. I have some appreciation of the disruption as I came off my motor bike in August and suffered breaks and sprains, loosing a month of time in my business, all in the most testing business environment that I have experienced for many years. The head injury is the hardest to cope with I imagine as our brains are really what we are all about. Just concentrate on getting well. BilB.
Peter Lang, I am asking you to provide here on this forum your calculation of the ‘economic cost’ of nuclear power for Australia. You can make a simplifying assumption, if you want, namely on you can pick the scenario you consider the optimal for introducing nuclear power in Australia. I am only interested in the mathematical model, with variables nicely defined and data sources specified. Don’t worry about the numerical values of the variables at present.
Then we can have a ‘rational discussion’ in an area where I don’t claim to be unqualified.
Peter Lang, besides having a current question about how power companies can make money from having both wind and gas capacity, I also have a question about the physics of your statement that wind power results in as much or almost as much CO2 emissions as gas power. I don’t see how it is possible for wind power to require that much gas even in the pretend situation where gas power is continually backed up by gas spinning reserve. In real life wind isn’t completely backed up because within the response time of gas turbines and the blocks of time that electricity is sold on the market, wind power is very predictable. But let’s assume that wind power is backed up by gas and if wind is generating 100 megawatts then a 100 megawatt gas turbine is spun up to back it up. (Or a 200 megawatt gas turbine, or a 300 megawatt gas turbine, it doesn’t make much difference.) If the gas turbine is kept spinning without generating electricity only a tiny fraction of gas that is required to actually generate electricity is needed, not as much or almost as much. Very little energy is required to overcome friction. Friction is so low some gas turbines can take about an hour to spin down once the gas is turned off. It has to be the case that very little energy is required to overcome friction and not all or most of it, otherwise when a full load of electricity was generated all or most of the energy would be coming from nowhere and would be a violation of conservation of energy and against the laws of physics. So unless people were stupidly burning off gas just for fun when the wind blows it’s not physically possible for wind to produce as much or almost as much CO2 emissions as gas, even it is 100% backed up by gas.
I hope you find this helpful. While I’m no physicist, I did recieve some tutoring in physics from high school students a while back and I like to spread the benefits.
Ernestine Gross,
I’d be interested in such a discussion. It would need to be a comparitive study to be of any value – renewables versus nuclear.
I’d ask you to lead off so I can get an understanding of what you have in mind.
Could yolu please look at this that I’ve already done so you understand what is persuading me. I can certainly elaborate on it.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/
Down load the pdf file because it contains footnotes and appendicies that are not shown in the on line version. Everyone else that is interested can also down load it.
Ronald Brack,
Can I suggest you look at (Google for it); “Cost and Quantity of Greenhouse Emissions Avoided by Wind Farms”.
or, more recent, and a better explanation (but I’ve been warned that it is on a sceptical site) : http://www.masterresource.org/2010/06/subsidizing-co2-emissions/#more-10349
Better still get the calculator from Kent Hawkins (it is an Excel file) and exercise it and understand where the emissions are going.
Ronald Brack,
The short answer to your question about the extra emissions for back up is as follows.
1. The answer is complicated if looked at in detail. It changes as the penetration of wind power increases. The proper way to do such analyses requires a Loss of Load Probability analysis. However, that is way beyond what we can do here. So lets simplify:
2. Assume we have a grid who’s generation capacity is comprised of wind and gas only
3. Peak demand is 1GW (we’ll reserve the reserve capacity margin for now)
4. Average annual capacity factor for wind is 30%
5. High wind season is 6 months long and average capacity factor is 40%
6. Low wind season is 6 months long and average capacity factor is 20%
7. Wind power can drop at up to 20% of installed capacity per hour (over a large area of wind farms). lok at the wind farm perfomance charts for August (Google windfarmperformance)
8. We need roughly 1 GW of gas capacity to back up for 1 GW of wind capacity (we can argue about the details of that statement later). So we need the capical investment for 1GW of wind (about $2.9 billion on current Australian costs, ref ABARE, 2010) plus about 1GW of gas turbines (about $1 billion), plus grid enhancements (about $1 billion).
9. If gas generators could back up for wind power with no efficiency penalty, gas would provide roughly 70% of the energy.
10. To get the least emissions from the gas generating system we need to use the higher efficiency combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT). But they cannot start and stop as quickly as the open cycle gas turbines (OCGT). So we need a mix of both. Ideally, during the low wind period, we’d have about 800MW of CCGT. During the highwind period we’d have mainly OCGT. However, we need more OCGT to be able to follow wind changes. It happens that the mix requires more installed capacity than just OCGT alone.
11. Having wind in the system requires us to have more OCGT (higher emissions) than if we did not have wind. So this is one reason the emissions are higher than the wind industry would have you believe
12. Another eeason is that because wind power can drop so quickly, and the operators do not know when it is going to occur or how far or how fast the power drop from the wind famrms might be, they have to be conservative and keep more gas turbines on standby, on spinning reserve and part loaded than they would if there was no wind power in the system.
13. When a gas turbines is running part loaded, it is less efficient and consumes more gas (emits more CO2) than when it is fully loaded. The Ken Hawkins Calculator explains all this very well)
14. Gas turbines consume fuel (and emit CO2) when starting and stopping. More starts and stops are required when backing up for wind than if there is no wind in the system.
15. When you put it all together, the total emissions from the back up generators with wind power are little different than if there was no wind power. With coal in the mix, and forcing them to cycle as we are doing in Australia caues the emissions to be even higher than with a gas only back-up system.
16 Thre studies have been conducted where the actual fuel used was measured. These studies were conducted in Netherlands, Collarado and Texas. The studies have been compared with the calculator output and show the calculator output is good. The references are provided in the link I provided above.
Hope this provides some background. If you want more on this, can I encourage you to read the material I’ve linked because it is not easy to write it all, and keep every detail correct, in a blog post.
A fair question seems to me that if we took away quotas (RET) and subsidies (RECs) , would electricity resellers want all the wind power that has already been installed? A follow up question is how big a difference a carbon tax would make in the total absence of quotas and subsidies. The problem is not merely 30% wind + 70% gas = 100% but the cost of nonperforming capital. Both becalmed wind farms on new transmission lines and gas turbines on idle have capital costs. In addition there are recurrent costs like labour and maintenance for both as well as fuel for the gt’s. It seems like an unnecessary doubling up compared to just running the gt’s harder.
Sure carbon tax will make the all gas-solution less attractive, though preferable to coal. What happens when gas is depleted or prohibitively expensive and there is nothing to fill in the 70% gap?
@Peter Lang
Also the factor for reducing solar and wind production due to intermittent wind and day-night cycle is excessive as storage systems have been incorporated.
So there are quite a few holes that need more work.
@Peter Lang
actually Peter I have read your work and believe it consistent with my claims – however I do believe you have considered the issue in good faith. It is not my intention to argue in detail here as I do not believe such arguments will have any impact – this is not a personal citicism directed at you, but a reflection of my beliefs about policy formation and the political process. And I am time pressured – but isn’t everyone?.
However I would ask you to consider the opportunity cost to a small country like Australia from investing in nuclear as a primary means of power generation. As one small example, consider the educational and workforce commitments nuclear entails, remembering that we have no possibility of developing any technology of value in nuclear power. As it stands we don’t have the educational resources to train an appropriate workforce. Nor do we look like making that investment. Consider where our research strengths lie and consider that those strengths will have to be weakened to fund the training of nuclear technicians and engineers. The alternative is of course to increase funding to education – but that is against the trend, and seems unlikely. And we would of course have to overhaul secondary and primary education to feed into higher ed, as secondary and primary ed are deficient in the sciences and maths need to develop a strong nuclear engineering workforce – in addition I do understand that Australia is jettisoning higher ed in favour of workplace preparation and education (look at the proposals for the Australian Quality Framework) – which functions as a subsidy to existing corporate interests and therefore works against innovation by definition.
So the most likely alternative is perhaps to import qualified labour and support that through asset sales – that is, through the sale of natural resources. Consider then the timeline of our natural resource sales in a world driven by nucelar power- not so happy for us. Yet maintaining nuclear is a long term proposition – but we won’t be able to pay for that in the long term as our asset base is devalued by the dominance of nuclear.
It seems to me another strategy is in our strategic interests.
I apologise for the no doubt cursory and partial argument – the issues I raise in this post are only a small component of a much larger set of concerns.
No, Peter Lang, I am not going to go to the BNC web-site. As I have mentioned before, I have sampled the BNC web-site. It promotes nuclear power. I am not a nuclear scientist and therefore cannot form an independent opinion.
I am happy to modify my request by saying you write down a general model describing a non-dictatorial economy with as many production technologies as you like and as many people as you like and as many time periods required to allow the decay of all nuclear waste generated by the series of nuclear technologies you imagine provided the total number of periods is at most equal to the best estimate science can provide for the life of planat earth. The aim is to then make precise the notion of “the economic cost’ and ‘rational economic agents’ (eg people). Such a conceptual model is surely helpful to organise the arguments presented as well as empirical data.
I don’t believe my request is unreasonable, given that you and your associates are promoting nuclear power production on the grounds of ‘economic cost’ and you are of the view that those who don’t agree suffer from ‘irrational fear’.
@gregh
Your argument makes sense to me.