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 
@Fran Barlow
Nuclear is high cost, and huge footprint, like mountains of Yucca’s.
To really cut carbon emissions, we need to go down a sequence – replace coal with gas (carbon reduction) – then phase out gas as renewables develop.
Nuclear only becomes an option when a more efficient space-lift system is developed.
In any case the real solution lies with population controls.
It is time to divert the subject a little. This is the dilemma that will hit first. Not just first but very, very soon.
http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/aspo-peak-oil-energy-crunch-association/10/14/2010/id/30551
Two massive problems at the same time with a common solution.
@gregh
The analogy fails because in the case of a car, it is not merely generic transport one gets out of cars, but comfort, the ability to convey goods, ease of use and a even for many a statement of one’s cultural identity.
In the case of power, few know the composition of the technologies supplying what drives their TV or refrigerator or the petrol pump at the service station. It is a generic product, even more than is water.
In the most general sense power makes human labour more productive. Subject to the considerations I outlined above, how we come by it is less important than that we should have it in abundance.
@Chris Warren
You keep saying this but nuclear power is still cheaper and lower foot rpint than virtually all renewables. The sheer mass of concrete, copper and steel (and by implication, coal) needed to build renewables utterly dwarfs that of nuclear power on a dispatchable kWh basis. Imagine how many Yuccas you’d need to decommision every wind, wave and solar plant if you built enough to deliver 100% of US electrical energy demand. Imagine the embedded energy in that. Imagine the cost in associated emissions.
Now that is mind boggling.
@Fran Barlow
Why do you think that people’s knowledge of the technology influences the commitments that technology entails? That seems a strange and magical claim – like the line at the beginning of Monkey that so encapsulates boomer hubris “with our thoughts we make the world”
You seem to miss – and again this is a very common mistake – that technologies require social and material processes that are not value free or that cannot be easily deliimited or encapsulated (the distinction between social and material is one of convenience which I’ll leave unanalysed). Manufacturing requires resourcing as does power generation. Your reference to water is revealing – the way in which water is considered as a resource and the way in which that resource is harnessed and distributed has profound implications socially and ecologically. Simiarly when you buy a car you become part of a vast chain of processes that go beyond the personal. As is the case for power generation.
@Fran Barlow
Fran Barlow says “One suspects your hatred of Howard largely reflects the fact that he also appropriates your golden age, minus the social progressivism.”
I suspect my hatred of John Howard relies more on the fact that despite professing to deeply admire Menzies, his views are really more sympathetic to the libertarians of the “Monty Pelicans” society or the “have mores” of George Bush’s base.
Howard did much to damage the social fabric of Australia, caused deep divisions, engaged us in a stupid and wasteful war without ever seeking a referendum, dismantled socially beneficial public services, catigated and denigrated public servants and the ABC as “left” ie sought to create a new downunder version of McCarthyism during his leadership, berated us using people likee MIranda Devine, Piers Ackerman and Janet Albrechtsen and the IPA (contributors solicited from the ranks of the liberal party to prepare rightwing media blitzs, encouraged and supported private sector corruption in what had previously been useful public bodies (the AWB), Austrade, the Reserve Bank due to his own political narrowness.
I do not need to go on Fran but your fervent advocacy of nuclear and on market pricing models as a remedy for all policy matters, which you judiciouly intersperse with “I am leftist” or “I am progressive”, I find quite unique.
You cannot blame me for noticing Fran. As many have identified here – if you are “leftist” you have certainly moved to the far righter side of “leftist” and beyond IMHO.
Just a heads up for today’s Science Show which starts shortly on Radio National:
Allison is a professor of physics at Oxford. Robyn Williams is most astute and I’m sure will press him on any shortcomings of his position.
Alice, could you please research his politics, to save everyone here assessing his argument by more conventional methods?
@Ernestine Gross
I am very familiar with what Ian Lowe believes and has been saying for a long time. Just as I am familiar with Mark Diesendorf’s arguments and the many other anti nuclear people in Australia and overseas. I do read and listen to both sides (less now that I used to because there is nothing new in the tired old arguments). However, I also crunch the numbers myself and I do have some understanding of the electricity generation, transmission and distribution industries.
Have you read “Why versus Why” In that Ian Lowe and Barry Brook present the for and against case for nuclear power. If you have an open mind and are genuinely interested, why don’t you read it and consider both sides of the argument.
http://www.panterapress.com.au/shop/product/5/why-vs-why-nuclear-power
You may need to revise your post – you have jumped into an irrelevant area.
You do not need to decommission wind, wave, solar, geothermal, or biofuel.
The despatchable power basis is not the basis that drives public policy. Again you have jumped into an irrelevant area.
The cost comparisons between nuclear and renewables were in the charts I mentioned from Peter Lang’s cited source.
They show nuclear going up, renewables going down.
Therefore we can avoid loading future generations with our mistakes. Even yucca mountain is now seen as one huge mistake.
@John Morgan
How John Morgan? – the conventional method of assessment of the pro nuclear advocates suggest nuclear is based on here and now comparative cost benefit analysis and and simply ignores medium or longer term risk and ignores human non compliance. Wouldnt that be using the same methods that Standard and Poors used to assess CDOs?? Convenient and intended to demonstrate “technical proficiency” even if its a lie it looks numerically smart on paper.
What amazes me is the conservative view seems to have extended itself from the “climate change isnt happening” to “oh well – it might be happening after all – lets dot the landscape with nuclear reactors globally.”
Are you or Peter Lang really capable of an objective assessment of why vs why seeing as PL asks Ernestine to “broaden her mind”.
By assessing the arguments on its own merits, instead of by the presumed political stripe of its proponent.
I believe so.
Here is a 150Mw hybride thermal CSP pilot plant soon to be commisioned in Egypt.
And another on order for UAE.
The links disapeared, they ma turn up shortly
@John Morgan
John – Are you denying that strong pro nuclear advocacy and anti renewables has been taken up by the political right (republicans in the US and liberals here) as a political concern?
Why should I not concern myself with the politics of it? Why should you not concern yourself with it?
Alice, its possible to make some fairly objective engineering determinations about the fitness for purpose of nuclear power and renewable power. Whether the left or the right then choose to make a political football of it is irrelevant.
What your question suggests is that you form your position on renewable energy and nuclear power is based on the politics of their advocates. I don’t care if that leads you to agree with me or not, thats a terrible way to form your opinions, and excuses you from being responsible yourself for your own understanding.
@John Morgan
What about the moral, social, economic, and environmental determinations of the unfitness of nuclear and renewable power.
Most engineering determinations of dealing with nuclear waste do not give an authorative listing of isotopes, quantities, nor the decay series they must pass down to get to lead.
Their concept of waste management is just a poetic concept – not a hard reality, and it can only be imposed on society by ….. wait for it ….. “politics”.
@Alice,
What John Morgan said. The engineering and to a considerable extent, the economic, issues of sustainable, low emission, low environmental footprint energy production must be examined in an objective and to some extent apolitical sense. There are clearly issues around the ownership and control of those assets which fall in the political sphere, but it is easily possible to make the separation. Indeed we should strive to do so because there is so much at stake.
I also think your reading of US politics is wrong. Oil and coal interests are aligned with the loony Republican right. Nuclear already has demonstrated the capacity to almost completely displace coal (and all fossil fuels) in electricity generation. That nuclear, not wind and solar, is the big enemy of coal can hardly have escaped the attention of the likes of the Koch brothers.
@quokka
It hasnt escaped the attention of Cato and the Koch brothers quokka. thats what makes nuclear all the more dubious. Really its just another dirty dangerous but easily extractable fuel and Cato is vocally anti renewables and favours nuclear in a standoff (but what would you expect from coal and oil Kings?). My reading isnt wrong – the brothers Koch are hedging their bets in a more expensive coal world. Not necessarily the best outcome for mankind, the Koch Brothers hedging.
Click to access pa422.pdf
@John Morgan
John Morgan – I take any political football with a healthy grain of salt and suspicion. So should we all. Forgive me for saying so but I also take “costings” regarding nuclear use and risks with an even bigger grain of salt, no matter how nicely presented.
I dont vest in economics the power to produce numbers that are correct – there are many dubious methods, anmd equally dubious economists or scientists?? to contrive numbers that purport to show this or that (depending on the assumptions and biases or income source of the author). There are indeed all sorts of fabrications “out there.” Sad but true.
I question sources and political vested interests John as I should – as you should, as we all should. To get to unbiased genuine science and statistics these days means crossing a minefield of marketing and other questionable BS.
This shows France’s actual electricity demand, generation and the CO2 emissions right now (or yuesterday if the generation chart is blank):
http://www.rte-france.com/fr/developpement-durable/maitriser-sa-consommation-electrique/consommation-production-et-contenu-co2-de-l-electricite-francaise
Move your mouse left and right over the stacked area chart
(the second chart area. If it is blank select yesterday) .
Notice changes in the pie chart below.
I’ve selected 14 October and I point you to notice the following:
1. Nuclear’s share of the generation is 76% to 86%.
2. Nuclear power output is varying to follow the load (by about 1700MW)
3. Coal is generating 4% to 5% and gas 4% to 5%
4. Hydro’s share varies between 0% and 15%. It is the most flexible and best able to follow the demand changes
5. Wind’s share is 1% to 2%
Now look at the CO2 emissions chart (below the pie chart). The CO2 emissions vary between 3400 and 5000 tonnes per hour. Two of Australia’s power stations alone produce that much CO2 per hour. So all France’s electricity generators are producing about the same CO2 emissions as just two of our power stations (Hazelwood and Loy Yang A).
What France has works. It has proven this over 30 to 40 years. It is clearly low emissions. We know they have near the lowest cost electricity in Europe. We know they are exporting a large amount of electricity to the surrounding countries, which demonstrates it is low cost and provides good reliablility and power quality. It has proven to be safe and clean. What more could we want? Where is there any evidence whatsoever (other than wishful thinking) that renewables can do the job?
@Peter Lang
Yes, I have read “Why vs Why”.
I agree with John Morgan that the formation opinions via indirect means (ie political alignment) is not helpful.
It is unfortunate to have web-sites like “Brave New Climate” because there is a lot on this web-site that appeals to the emotions of people. The alternative universe transformation of the nuclear danger sign is, IMO, the worst bit of marketing I’ve seen for a long time.
I also agree with John Morgan that grid design and other engineering topics are crucial inputs into decision making. However, as Chris Warren argued (and I earlier on), this is not sufficient for decision making. Similarly, talk about ‘cost’ (presumably accounting numbers) is only one of many variables that enter decision making. If monetary cost minimisation were the only relevant variable then Mercedes cars would not exist because there are much cheaper cars that carry passengers across the Harbour bridge during day time or along any congested road just as fast.
Then there is the ‘irrational fear’ propaganda. I suppose its not worth while spending much time on this one.
In non-dictatorial resource allocation systems people have a right to consume less energy if they wish to do so. They have a right to make up their own mind including rejecting corporatist propaganda. The ‘irrational fear’ stuff belongs to corporatist propaganda just like the line that people complain about aircraft noise because they ‘don’t like’ the ‘aviation industry’. Utter rubbish.
On the applied level, we associate the term democracy with non-dictatorial resource allocation systems.
@Peter Lang
France has three times as many people as Australia (or did not long ago) and produces about the same CO2 emissions. i.e. one-third the CO2 emissions per person.
Alice, I’m not suggesting you should not look critically at your sources and be aware of possible bias and interests.
Chris, I’m not suggesting there is not a political dimension to nuclear power. Its a truism that everything is political, and energy is up there with capital and labour as a political commodity.
There are important real political aspects to the development of nuclear power. By and large, they haven’t been discussed here. The so called “political” discussion here has simply been to use nuclear power as a token in a culture war between left and right, and the core argument in that discussion has been “the right supports nuclear power, therefore its evil”. But thats not a political debate, its pure tribalism, and its intellectually vacant. The people here who think they’ve been talking about politics are having themselves on.
If you really do have an interest in the political dimension of nuclear power you may find theactual political discussion at Left Atomics of possible interest.
Alice,
Then cross it.
You appear to have abandoned the idea that facts can be checked, arguments can be inspected for logical consistency, empirical data can be obtained from multiple independent sources and crosschecked, that the rigor of statistical analyses can be inspected, and so on. In short, you have abdicated responsibility for understanding your own position. And what do you replace it with? Contrarian insinuation, guilt by association and scare words? The sum of your decision making process now appears to be, “Is this statement coming from someone I like?”.
Chris,
The moral, social and economic aspects of nuclear power are roughly in the same range as other means of boiling water to turn steam turbines. The environmental dimension is quite different.
The environmental impact of nuclear power is orders of magnitude less than our current fossil fuel system, and any proposed renewable alternative. Mining, for instance. It takes about a million times as much coal as uranium to produce a given amount of energy. The Hunter Valley, for instance, has been virtually honeycombed. That didn’t have to happen. It takes 2-3 orders of magnitude as much steel for renewables as for nuclear, and there is a similar story for concrete.
There are many other qualities that make nuclear power the best environmental choice for energy, but the most important right now is the low CO2 intensity. Climate change (and its marine counterpart of oceanic acidification) supersedes all other environmental issues. I spent the 80s fighting for the northern NSW rainforests. We saved them. Now we stand to lose them, but not to the loggers. I have a terrible sense today that that achievement was futile, along with the other great achievements in wilderness and ecosystem preservation of that time. Nuclear power is the sine qua non of ecosystem protection into the future, because its the only available energy option that can meaningfully cut our co2 emissions.
Ernestine, I’m pleased to see we are in agreement on some points.
I’m not sure what you mean by the emotional appeal of Brave New Climate. The appeal is to rationality, not emotion. It appeals precisely because the discussion is data driven and held to high standards by the host and the various contributors. Your remark puzzles me.
With regard to your earlier posts on spreading risk in the grid, I’m afraid my reaction to that was precisely the same as quokka’s, and I decided there was little point formulating a response. Fortunately quokka took the trouble to do so.
And yet their collective choice is to consume as much as is economically available to them. They have the right to consume less in the same way the rich have the right to sleep rough on the streets.
@John Morgan
Classic.
I predicted that, nukoholics would say that:
without mentioning the isotopes in nuclear waste, their longevity, nor the transitions they need to pass through to get to lead.
Now that Yucca Mountain, which originally was only for the storage of ex-warheads, is not going ahead (according to Obama’s promise), the USA has no waste storage plan except keeping it above ground and by nothing more than simply looking at it.
Apparently they think this creates a environmental problem “orders of magnitude less than … any proposed renewable alternative.”
So what is the waste problem for future generations, from wind, solar, tidal, geothermal?
Where do we have to store wind waste – waste sunshine, worn-out tides, and exhausted hot rocks?
What data, what comparison, puts this cost many magnitudes greater than for high level nuclear waste in what time frame?
@John Morgan
That was exceptionally well put John.
All types of power generation has it’s share of dangers. Here’s some results I got for solar:
http://www.paystolivegreen.com/2009/01/solar-panels-dangers-to-the-environment/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Solar-Panel-Production-Releases-Dangerous-Chemical-97366.shtml
http://www.homesolarpanelsonline.com/home-made-solar-panels/how-to-make-a-solar-cell
Complex processes, toxic chemicals, under-regulation, death and dire consequences… Remind you of anything?
We could freak out and shut down the industry.
Or
We could impose stricter regulations, require manufacturing facilities under-go regular inspections, ensure any hazards to the public are identified and rectified in a timely fashion, ensure the safe disposal or recycling of it’s long lived waste eg cadmium (which is highly toxic and NEVER breaks down), support R & D into better solutions to solars problem areas and agitate for the implementation of those technologies once they have been developed. You know, like the nuclear industry is doing.
You’re scare mongering Chris Warren and while, as you can see, two can play at that game, is it really helpful?
John Morgan,
“And yet their collective choice is to consume as much as is economically available to them”
Not true at all. If it were true then no one would buy energy efficient light bulbs. The fact is that they do, in huge quantities. In fact, as the distributed electricity generation owner/user capacity grows what will be seen (is already being seen) is that people reduce their own energy consumption in order to maximise their energy export ot the grid for other users. Your image of an indolent public wallowing in energy is a huge stretch of credulity.
Future electricity use as far as the public are concerned will have 2 huge sinks. Space cooling and electricity for transport. The grid has one major problem that has not presented until recently. Quarterly billing. As electricity consumption increases with global warming driving more people to utilise plug in EV’s (electric vehicles) on top of their airconditioning the difficulty of quarterly billing, or even monthly billing will become a limitation for EV uptake. People will have difficulty with large accumulated expenditures that stretch beyond a week.
This will be a major factor in the uptake of GenIIPV in favour of grid supply energy. NB it can be any alternative self owned energy system with sufficient output, it doesn’t have to be GenIIPV. While the system is being paid off it is a premanaged payment. Once paid off distibuted generation becomes a living standard increase.
This is the main reason why nuclear energy will not eventuate. It will become an increasingly risky investment. An investment requiring long term stability from a market awash with highly negotiable independent energy. At present feed in tarrifs protect the investment environment for high capital cost energy infrastrucuture. Future distributed energy producers need primarily to balance their production shortfall, essentially a timing issue. The energy system that offers the greatest flexibility of output will become the natural partner to distributed (and wind) energy production. These systems are Hydro, Geo Thermal, thermal CSP, PV CSP, and CCGT. Coal and nuclear fade from sight.
I think that if you run the numbers correctly you will see that you are flogging a dead horse. The arguments put forward are simplistic from a market persective and highly speculative. In fairness to Barry Brooke, the full ramifications of the distributed energy system were not evident when he made his assessment that nuclear would be the energy of the future. In due course he will see past this mistake.
Embee,
You missed this “paystolivegreen” quote
“Don’t get me wrong, Solar energy’s benefits far outweigh this one negative. I would choose solar energy in a heartbeat over horrible energy sources like coal and nuclear”
Also please note that the nuclear industry is a massive consumer of fluorine in various forms, and on an ongoing consumeables production basis rather than a capital manufacturing basis. But..timely warning these are things to be aware or.
The risk of fluorine gas release is well known. In bromochlorodifluoromethane (BCF) gas the main risk element is the fluorine component. Its realease in any form is taken seriously as we have only now prevented the ozone hole from increasing in size.
I haven’t heard of any silicon foundries exploding due to dangerous doping. The have main imploded in recent times due to the GFC.
@embee
Don’t stop there – keep going with the facts:
All semiconducters, integrated circuits, and many plastics industries have hugely toxic byproducts and wastes. The governments have taken action to ensure that florides do not get into the atmosphere where they have been scientifically shown to deplete the ozone layer.
So why should we let incompetants, use the facts of general waste, (biowaste, cyanide, cadmium and mercury fumes are another examples) to seek the introduction of tons of long-lived, radioactive, accumulating waste from nukes for thousands of years? Anyway Nitrogen Triflouride (NF3) is not a by-product of production of solar cells, it is a chemical used in cleaning rooms, within which production takes place, and if you look at your own cited reference you will see there are alternatives to using Nitrogen Triflouride. They are more expensive, but so what – they should be used.
And they want to force nuke waste on our grandchildren even though their own cited sources shows that the cost of development of nukes goes up, as the cost of renewables goes down. They wave NF3, when their own source says there are alternatives to it.
So you cannot impose nuclear based on a waste argument, and you cannot impose nuclear based on an economic argument. There is only the politics of commercial greed. And one can only assume that commercial greed is what is stopping regulation of NF3 usage.
No-one is supporting the continued production of NF3 and no-one should support continued production of nukewaste.
Why would you want to replace the risks of NF3 (which can be replaced) with the risks of nukewaste (which multiply over time)?
Renewables need to deal with waste, just like all, so-called, EWaste. Again, embee’s own cited source, shows this issue is being dealt with, see:
What nucoholics hide .
embee suggests there have been many deaths from silicon, but forgot to mention where these deaths are, which are in the Third World where old computers and other electronic goods are dumped. Modern standards of OHS do not apply in dumpee countries.
So I suppose to be consistent, embee and co, could argue that nuclear waste is ok, because there is toxic Ewaste coming from the production of your TV, mobile phone, computer, and air travel.
This is an argument of last resort. They think they can improve things for themselves by making matters much worse for others.
They will cut off your nose to improve their face.
Peter Lang,
It always comes down to your packaged conclusions
“It has proven to be safe and clean. What more could we want? Where is there any evidence whatsoever (other than wishful thinking) that renewables can do the job?”
“clean”?? France has a mountain of accumulated waste to clean up, including Muroroa Atoll. I believe that they have stockpiled waste in other countries. Only now they are attempting to solve their waste problem with a highly controversial solution.
“renewables”?? energy agencies around the world are reporting that renewables are all of realistic, cost effective and the best alternative. Nuclear does have its place though. Just not Australia.
Thanks to George Bush’s ideological predecessor, Ronald Reagan, Solar energy and renewables development was stalled for decades. The pace of renewables technology catchup is stagering and is now in the process of matching conventionals technology for both cost effectiveness and efficiency. The technologies will produce a massive performance overshoot as their appears to be now slowing down in the improvement of the renewables technologies.
“no slowing down” not “now slowing down”
Gee, so you mean I cherry picked data, distorted facts, exaggerated dangers and knowingly presented a purely emotive argument.
How does it feel to have to defend against disinformation and scare mongering?
I note in todays paper the NSW State Government has decreed that radioactive waste, at a site in Hunters Hill from a company that closed in 1916 and has been blamed for a number of cancers and leaukemias causing death in residents since, has now been declared by the State Government to be “residual solid waste – not dangerous”, despite still be radioactive. The waste is planned to be excavated and moved in sealed trucks by the State Government, in order that it can sell the land lots for 3million each.
Where is the State Government moving this radiactive waste to? A properly constructed and well planned radioactive waste storage facility?
No – it has persuaded the owner of a private waste landfill site in Mulgoa to accept the waste for a payment of 3.5 million dollars.
This is the reality of human non compliance and government non compliance and this is how compliance can be so easily traded off.
Is this in the pro nuclear costing experts designs?
No it isnt – so John Morgan, how do you convince us that good compliance and regulation will solve all in the “brave bew world” of nuclear use. Even regulation and compliance has a dollar price so easily traded away.
@BilB
Peter Lang says of nuclear energy use in France
“It has proven to be safe and clean. What more could we want?”
That has to be the most absurd statement I have heard here. France sends thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste to Russia each year where there a serious concerns over how it is stored.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31466
Why dont you also look at the leakage and contamination from the Centre de Stockage de ‘Aube (CSA) – which has resulted in contamination of aquifers in the Champagne region. This is one of the largest nuclear waste dumping sites in the world. The people of Champagne were convinced when the dumping started (of course) in 1969 that there would be no danger to them. In the 1990s arfter accepting nuclear waste from across europe the authorities realised they had no correct inventory of exactly how much waste had been dumped there. By this time contamination around the site was high. By 2006 in nearby agricultural land water from aquifers which is used to feed cattle was registering 90 time the safe limit of radioactivity. In a recent incident associated with the site a concrete storage bunker has cracked under pressure due to a design flaw by the French authorities.
And this is just one nasty nuclear associated incident in thousands across the world..
Yet – you would have us believe nuclear is all perfectly safe Peter / John / Fran???.
Its even safer when the mafia agrees to dump the nuclear waste of developed nations on the nations of the poor for payment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta
@embee
So did you deliberately, cherry pick, distort and manufacture emotional arguments, just to advance nuclear waste?
Did you deliberately create a false argument?
Are you now bragging about it?
Is this the level of your morality and public sensitivity?
So do you beat your own wife, to prove that honor killings are OK?
Why protest honor killings, if soldiers kill Iraqis?
Why impute your own crimes onto others?
Your prediction is a sound one Chris, because the statement is correct.
What in particular would you like to know about the isotopic makeup of nuclear waste? Does it bear on some point you wish to make?
Spent fuel from light water reactors is primarily uranium and plutonium isotopes, higher actinides (ie elements above plutonium), and fission products (ie lighter elements like caesium, iodine and xenon). Their half lives are well known, from very short to very long to completely stable. The decay sequences are well known. The particular composition depends on what you started with and the way it was used in the reactor. There are codes available which model the time evolution of this mix.
So what do you want to know?
There are two principle waste forms from wind, solar and tide. The one that most concerns me is co2. The co2 derives from the continuing reliance on fossil fuel we commit to if we make the mistake of attempting a renewables only path. The waste from wind and solar is the co2 from coal and gas plant required to sit in spinning reserve, to “firm” the wind, and provide backup in the event of lulls, cloud or night.
This waste stream is exceptionally dangerous, as we are currently around 390 pp, atmospheric co2, tracking to 450+ before there’s any prospect of stabilization, and we need to get below 350 to avoid more than two degrees of warming. We’re tracking for much more than that, and its hard to overstate the global ecosystem disaster that that will take us into. There is no similar consequence associated with nuclear waste. The existential threat is from the two stable isotopes of the 6th element in the waste stream of renewable energy.
This is the real waste problem for future generations from renewables.
The other waste stream from renewable power is the abandoned infrastructure. This is a huge problem, although its not an existential threat. Compare say a compact 1 GW nuclear plant with a 1 GW wind farm of, say, 2.5 MW units, and give it a generous 33% capacity factor, and generously ignore additional overbuild requirements. Thats 1200 large steel generators with concrete footings, each with its own access road, concrete footings, and power line to the transmission trunk. They are spread over a large geographic area. Optimistically, these have a 20 year lifetime. Current nuclear plants have about 60 years service life, and possible much longer. So your looking at about 3600 wind turbines to decommission compared to a single nuclear plant. Its actually much more than that because I’m ignoring whats really required to give reliable wind power. This dead infrastructure is a huge environmental burden and amounts to turning large areas of land in high value wind resource areas into a light industrial wasteland.
Unlike nuclear plants, there’s typically no allowance built in for decommissioning costs, the plants are being built by fly by night developers, who disappear and leave others to pick up the clean up costs. Have a look at some of these abandoned wind farms to get some idea. Its a disgrace.
What goes for wind goes equally for solar and tide. There may be no fuel residue, but because the energy flows your trying to tap are so dilute you need a vast industrial contraption to collect it, and these contraptions wear out fairly quickly, and you have a major disposal problem.
On the flipside, nuclear waste is very compact and easy to store. The entire cumulative high level waste from 30 years of French nuclear power generation is stored in a single room in Le Hague. Its not waste. It still holds 99% of the original energy. This is something we want to keep. Ironically, we don’t have enough of the stuff. Its needed to start up the next generation of metal fueled and thorium reactors, which is the real path to long term energy production, and we need more of it. The Indians have a very forward thinking nuclear programme mapped out through to about 2050, where the end game is a thorium reactor fleet as the basis for their power supply. This starts with a rollout of conventional reactors to build inventory of nuclear “waste” because we don’t have enough of it. If you have to invest to produce this material, how is it waste?
The end point of this fuel is a radioactive mix about 1/100th the mass of current nuclear waste per unit energy produced whose radioactivity falls below the level of the ore it was originally mined from in about 300 years. So don’t give me this nonsense about having to shoot it into deep space as if it is some ineffable chthonically evil material that needs to be exorcised from the planet.
“nukoholics”? Sorry, am I talking to an adult?
John Morgan,
There are wildly differing opinions on what is nuclear waste
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31466
I don’t see that as a fruitfull passtime. There is way too much doubt as to what is real. Nuclear fails to win in Australia for far more robust reasons.
On abandoned wind farms, these are “not yet recycled”. I was living in New Guinea in the 50’s when the Japanese came through and cleaned up all, really all, of the junk from the second world war. Abandoned windfarms are a sympton of oscillating government policy and huge advances in wind technology.
The only abandoned renewable energy facilities that I have ever seen are the well pump windmills of the early 20 century. Most now removed, but they were are feature of the Australian landscape. I liked them, working or not.
@BilB
I note that you linked over at LP to a new version of a windturbine that was 7MW (an E126 as opposed to an E112)
It was appreciably larger and if you believe the claims, better designed than those it replaced. What happens to the iterations of wind on good sites that are now obsolete? Bear in minf that the whole site has to be redisegned to take account of different wind shadows, access roads for cranes, and footings. In short — decommissioning will be needed if the site is to be used, and if it isn’t, then even more land will need to be taken up and the old site abandoned and left to decompose.
To me, a 20 year life-cycle for wind (and solar) sounds optimistic.
@BilB,
The article you linked to concerning the transport of depleted uranium is just a tad hysterical. You do realize that if you travel on a 747 you are traveling with depleted uranium which is used as a counterweight in the tail section to maintain the aircraft’s centre of gravity?
To be sure, it would not be a good idea to inhale finely powdered depleted uranium, but the same goes for many heavy metals.
Depleted uranium is used in armour piercing munitions because it is very dense and also, I think, because it is combustible and not as the Greenpeace spokesperson said, because it is “carcinogenic”. The US military would I am sure prefer that it was completely non toxic so they could get on with their business of killing people minus some bad publicity. In other words, it’s toxicity has no military value.
As to what terrorists might or might not do with DU, we can only guess but they could almost certainly do a lot more damage with a lot less bother with some ammonium nitrate.
Transporting DU is probably less dangerous than transporting petrol or gas by road or rail.
@Alice
Hypothetically speaking, Australia could avoid leakage and contamination problems better than just about any other country because it has a supply of salt pans, one of which could be sacrificed to nuclear (re-usable) waste storage. The problem of course, as with anything else, is that humans are going to take short-cuts and cut costs wherever they can get away with it so a lot of the risks still remain. I’d say it should be possible to economically deal with nuclear waste safely, the problem is that you’ll always get someone who is prepared to take risks, especially risks that affect someone else, just to save a few cents.
Regarding the cost of nuclear electricity generally, it (somewhat ironically) has the same type of problem as wind and solar, i.e. it is inflexible, except at a cost. This doesn’t matter up to a point because there is a minimum demand that could be supplied economically by an inflexible source like nuclear (as is done in the US). Our biggest problem is that most of the demand is variable, and none of the expandable non-CO2 emitting sources are capable of supplying this economically.
John Morgan,
The only point I know I agree with you so far is that it is not a good idea to form expectations indirectly on the basis of political party alignment. May I take it that you now agree that grid design is merely one element in the description of an economic model of a non-dictatorial society?
You say Brave New Climate (BNC) is ‘data driven’. I am sure it is; the longer the blog, including comments, the more data. In between there may even be good data. But I am not a nuclear scientist and therefore cannot form an independent opinion. Time is a limiting resource for me as it is for all humans. The best advice I can get on all maters ‘nuclear’ is from people in my circle of friends who have appropriate qualifications. If the modification of the nuclear danger sign on BNC appeals to your intellect then so be it.
It is you, not I, who interprets ‘risk diversification’ only in terms of ‘the grid’. Since you say quakka has dealt with my point, there is no need to explain to you why quakka doesn’t understand.
From your last paragraph, I deduce that you are not well read in Economics.
May I suggest, you, quakka, Peter Lang and Fran Barlow put your hands and your life where your words are and clean up the nuclear waste from Hunters Hill. You can take along the modified nuclear waste sign from BNCand find out empirically how useful it is. As to the acute problem regarding tax payers money and equal treatment of the relatively rich (Hunters Hill) versus the relatively poor (Penrith) , see: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/state-sends-radioactive-waste-west-20101016-16oaj.html
Quokka,
If your read a little more thoroughly on depleted uranium you will learn that it is anything but safe if it is ingested. Someone in the military failed to realised that when a DU shell hits a target it releases an airbourne dust which becomes ingested. Opps how could they have missed that. Furthermore it has a variable radiation life. It increases in radioactivity along its decay life span. As I said radioactive contamination is one problem. The real issue with Nuclear for Australia is that it fails the overall commercial test.
Fran,
Your comments on service life for machinery are nonsense. For starters had you read the whole article and more importantly understood what you were reading, you would have noticed that the E126 was specifically designed for a greater service life. To achieve this the machine is designed without a gearbox. This change made possible by its size makes it comparible with Hydro turbines for overall service life, only the wind turbine will not suffer from sand abrasion.
The service life for most solar devices will more certainly be in multiples of 20 years. Solar thermal CSP plants have an indefinite service life as they are replaced progressively over time. Your 20 year assertion is immediately proven false by the life of the Kramer Junction and the Harper Lake facilities. 20 years plus and delivering more energy today than when they were commisioned with continuous operational service throughout.
Your wind shadow argument is I suspect similarly lacking in understanding and certain to be false.
The only real danger from wind turbines, and this only relates to the older smaller high speed machines is when the furling mechanism or the shaft brake fails and the machine overspeeds in high winds. Such an incident occured last year blocking a highway for several days for fear of parts flying off and being flung great distances. dangers from this sort of infrastructure is extremely rare, very local, and very short danger period. The only accident from a CSP plant was from a solvent tank explosion.
@John Morgan
That assumes that fossil fuel will be the cheapest, Carbon-costed way to provide spinning reserve. I wouldn’t write off pumped hydro that easily. There is already pumped hydro in Australia, even at the extremely cheap prices for electricity we now have compared with what we will have in a Carbon-priced world. Variable reserve has to be provided simply to cover variable demand and nuclear won’t be cheap for doing that.
Chris O’Neill,
John Morgans claim that Thermal CSP requires “spinning reserve” is false. Hybride CSP has intergrated natural gas backup, as I’m sure you are aware. This backup is highly reactive and does not require being “kept warm just in case”. It is designed to be able to provide none, extra, or all on demand as required.
@Ernestine Gross
I fail to see what your point is about Hunters Hill. I actually don’t know enough the situation and what they are doing be able to express an informed opinion about it. Most likely everybody else on this thread is in the same situation.
Historically there are endless cases of reckless disposal of toxic substances. This is hardly news. Things certainly have improved but are obviously far from perfect.
The mud at the bottom of Sydney harbor has excess heavy metals and other nasties from past environmental crimes, but that does not mean that heavy metals must be banned unconditionally but that rather that they must treated as responsibly as possible. The same is true for nuclear materials. There is no excuse for reckless handling of any toxic substance – including nuclear materials – and nobody in their right mind thinks otherwise.
BilB, there are different gas turbine designs, and as you say some can cold start quite quickly. But in describing hybrid CSP, you make my point, that these renewable technologies do not exist without some form of conventional backup. I am saying that it will basically never be possible to eliminate this requirement at meaningful scale.
Allow me to quote a press release the UK Renewable Energy Foundation issued last month, on the question of whether wind can enable UK power supply security. I don’t usually like to post lengthy quotes, but this release is so on topic for this discussion, and directly affirms much I what I have been saying here that I hope you will indulge me:
John M,
Firstly the total Australian renewable energy solution will be a mixture of systems (just as it is today) These will include Geothermal, Hydro, Pumped Hydro, Biomass, Wave, Tidal, Wind, PV CSP, Distributed PV, CCGT and the main stabiliser Hybride Thermal CSP. If you do the calculations based on that mix you will finf that the gas component of the overall system over time amounts to a very small percentage.
Looking at one part of the system. CO2 emissions in a predominately renewable system for AUSTRALIA are a matter of percentages. In an all CSP thermal system fossil fuel content is about 13% based on experience to date. This is reduced to less than 10% in more recent designs. However if you have been following the discussion you will be aware that I am confident that I can prove that the future system will at least 50% user owner generated electricity. This means that the grid thermal CSP content is likely to reduce further to nearer to 5%. There is another factor in that the distributed system will be supply most of the personal transport electricity charging directly at the house or remotely through the grid. This energy is not included in any current models so the 5% energy generation containing CO2 is further diluted by the addition of the transport energy to which it services. So the overall system CO2 emission is negligble. Further more as it is the distributed system that will accelerate uptake of electric cars above all else this model is by far the fastest and most direct method of achieving zero CO2 emissions. There are a truck load of other advantages and features which I could go through but I perceive that even the most basic description is beyond this audiences interest.
Studies for the UK have litttle relevence to Australia. Further the extracts above present a very shallow understanding of the entire energy system. For a more comprehensive study refer to the highly detailed studies undertaken by the German Government and well publicised on the web. These tell a very different story and cover the full spectrum of energy flows.
I think that you have to refer to public comments by your own ___ Mackay, now on the advisory body for the UK to put wind into the proper context for the UK and Europe.
You guys keep trying to play the game with most of the cards missing. Get you act together and come up to speed with a complete understanding of the issues.
Chris Warren,
Firstly, did you notice the last sentence of my post @28?
I think this makes it quite clear I was at once following your lead and rejecting your approach (although I concede it was unfair of me to single you out on this). Scaremongering is by definition, cherry picking, distorting facts, exaggerating dangers and presenting purely emotive arguments. These are all tactics used by yourself and others here in your defense of your narrow renewables only position. For example:
Chris Warren @ 26
Here you’re implying there are no waste products associated with renewable technologies – distorting facts – because we need only look at their ‘fuel’ source – cherry picking.
BilB @ 32
Muroroa Atoll was the site of bomb testing not a nuclear power station – distortion – by conflating power production with weapons testing you are dishonestly and outrageously exaggerating dangers and presenting a baseless and thus purely emotive argument.
Alice @ 35. “Residual solid waste” may still be radioactive, but then, so is everything, so are you. This is a purely emotive argument, you’re hoping the word radioactive will scare people. Much of this waste originates from our hospitals in the form of gowns, aprons, gloves and medical equipment used, for example, when preforming X-rays and administering chemotherapy. Are you implying we can do without nuclear medicine? If so there would be little hope of anyone surviving cancer. I can’t believe this is really what you want. You are lying by omission, distorting facts and exaggerating dangers, in short, you are scaremongering.